Mari G. from Wasaga Beach, Ontario, Canada at San Diego Spring Roundup in San Diego, CA

My name is Mary Gallagher, and I am an alcoholic. Uh-huh. And I'm so grateful to be here and grateful to be sober. By the grace of God, Alcoholics Anonymous, loving fellowship, and good sponsorship, it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink since the 10th August 1984, and for that, I am truly grateful. I would like to thank, first of all, Dave MacKay for, calling and asking me to come and speak.

Thank you very much. It's always an honor and a privilege to do service, Dave. And I'd like to thank Bill and his committee, for this. It's just beautiful. I'm sorry.

I I haven't been here since it started. And I'd also like to thank Jason and Alison for picking me up and being so gracious. And it's good to see my friends. I see some friends here. We were together at a conference in Hawaii, and I have some friends.

We were just together in El Paso, and Cliff and his wife, Pat, it's quite funny. You know, Cliff walked past me and he said, glad you could stop by. Well, what happened was, I got to the airport last night. Well, I'm I was working yesterday, and I got to the airport last night, And I got up to the, the the the desk, and it was empty. There was nobody around.

And I was beginning to get a little irate. You know how we can sometimes get self righteous, know that we're sober and get there on time. And and I I was kind of, shouting to see if there was anybody hiding around the back. And, then 2 East Indian Cleaners came, and they told me that, all flights were gone. And, I couldn't believe it because I've I've never missed a flight before.

So, of course, because I am on a spiritual path, I start thinking, so what does this mean, god? And I know that god was saying, what it means is is you screwed up. You missed a flight, and we'll get you on tomorrow. But that I called the airline, and, at first, they said it might cost me $760 cause the ticket was non transferable, etcetera. And but they got me here and they didn't charge any more money, so that was pretty nice.

And, unfortunately, I have to leave tomorrow morning. I leave here at 9:30. I get into Toronto at 7:30 at night, and I have to be at work at 9:30 in the morning. So I'm sorry I haven't been here longer. You probably heard that, I'm not a Canadian.

I cannot find Canada the way Columbus discovered America. I was looking for something else, but but I did find sobriety in Canada, and for that, I am truly grateful. You know, a lot of things have happened to me in the last year, and I'll I'll I'll I'll embroider on them a little bit later on. But in the big book, it says, the things that happen when you put yourself in god's hands are better than anything you could have planned. And last September, I moved out of Toronto, and I moved 2 hours north to a place that in summer has the largest freshwater beach in the world, and in the winter is a ski resort.

And there's a lot of snow there, but I have my own little bungalow. I was able to buy a little bungalow there, and, it's an amazing thing to me because there was no road anywhere from where I'm coming from. And it's only by this fellowship and the grace of God and being able to take instruction and and and just you know, sometimes it looks like nothing's happening in our lives, but there's always little things going on underneath. And eventually, you will see changes come about. And I truly believe in the 5 and the 10 and the 50 and the 20, these multiples of 5 that happen in our life because it is an ever changing transformation that we are going through.

I mean, this 12 step means much more to me today because I've been changed and changed and changed until finally I have become a citizen of the world. I am one of those who had gone so far with my alcoholism that it took me many, many years in Alcoholics Anonymous to be able to leave the rooms and go out there, to mix with the so called normal people. It was not easy, but now I do that. And it it's I just feel it's a miracle. I'm so grateful.

I was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and my parents were Irish. And I used to think that's why I was nuts. It's a terrible dilemma being Irish born in Scotland because half of you wants to drink all the time and the other half doesn't wanna pay for it. You know, we just had in one of our readings that nobody likes to think he is mentally different from his fellows. Well, I always knew I was mentally different.

I knew from before I drank. I knew I was mentally different from before from just as soon as I could think. And how did I know that? Because people were always saying to me, you are mentally bizarre. From I can remember, people were looking at me and saying, there's something seriously wrong with your head.

And long before I drink drank, people used to look at me and say, have you been drinking? And I hadn't even thought about it then. I was back in Scotland last year, and I said to my family, when did you notice there was something different, you know, about me? And they said, oh, we always knew you were odd and bizarre, dear. Always.

No. I don't know if I can take their judgment because, you see, I come from a very odd family. They're here, but they're not all there, if you know what I mean. For example, I have a aunt, and she can be sitting having a cup of tea, and all of a sudden, she freezes in time. And people will say, well, ham to her.

My family will say, she's just away. She'll soon be back. So it was really different. There was never alcohol allowed in my home, but all the men, my uncles and my grandfather, they were what I would call weekend alcoholics. And, they would go out and drink and then come home, and it would be, it would be bizarre.

And, they'd always promise me my grandfather was my hero, and he'd promise me he'd never drink. And every Friday Saturday night that I could remember, he was drunk. And I saw what a change it was in him. And, you know, every Friday Saturday night, my grandfather would come staggering down the street, walking that walk that the drunk walks from east to west. And the neighbors were all behind their curtain laughing at my hero, and my granny was behind her curtain.

We are rolling pinning a rosary. You know, and every Friday Saturday night, there would be war in my home. And I said, I won't ever drink. I don't want my family waiting with weapons behind the curtains for me, and I swore I would never drink. I was born with something a lot of alcoholics have, although you will never hear Al Anon give us any credit for it, and that is I had a high IQ.

And the only thing a high IQ has done for me is I've never completed anything I've ever started. You know, when you have a high IQ, you're restless, irritable, and discontent, and you get bored very quickly. And, anyway, because of this high IQ, I was sent to a convent to be educated by the psychopathic nuns, and I truly believed it was the nuns who screwed me up. But what I was to find out is that the nuns were trying to teach me to have character. I did not know that character is something you do when nobody's looking.

I was thrown out of that convent at 15 years of age, and I never drank till I was 25. But you see, I truly believe this, the one that says in the big book that some of us are born that way. It is my opinion, please keep an open mind, that I was born with a peculiar mental condition that is called alcoholism after the drink because they don't have a name for it before the drink. I wish that someone had gone to my mother many, many, many, many years ago and said, missus Gallaher, you've given birth to an alcoholic. Sad but true.

Put a little liquor in her bottle. Feed it to her as she's growing, and you will all have the only hassle free life you've ever known. And then she will get to an invisible line, get her to AA. No one was there to tell my mother that, So my mother spent all of the time, all of the years that I lived with her, pretending to read a piece of paper, a newspaper, and looking at me from behind it like this. And she used to say to me, I don't know where you came from.

It was not easy. And also, in Scotland, there is a lot of religious bigotry. Let me say no so I don't forget. I want to thank you, America, for giving all of us Alcoholics Anonymous. I am so deeply grateful to the United States of America because if it wasn't for USA, there would have been no freedom to have a god of your own understanding.

Openness and the freedom of the religious thought that actually is the mainstay of this program. I am truly grateful. So with this religious bigotry, what happened is if you were Irish Catholic, you were a second class citizen, and I was very angry about that. And I used to fight, and I used to get into lots of fights, And I was a very sensitive young person, and if you didn't love me, I would beat you up. And my family used to say, everybody is not gonna like you, you know, and I'd say, why?

Why? And, so what happened is I got into quite a few fights in this convent, and it's not the milieu for that type of behavior. And, just before, I was expelled at age 15, the mother superior took me up outside her room, and she said, if you read that sign up there, it might do something for your measly little life. And I read the sign and it said, of courtesy, it is much less than courage of heart or holiness, but in my walks to me, it seems that the grace of God is in courtesy. Now way back then, I wanted nothing to do with the grace of God, no courtesy.

But many years later, it was to come true when I came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you gave me courtesy. It was through the grace of God that you were able to give me courtesy and bring me in here so I could get well, and I'm so grateful. I eventually went down to London, England. I was very angry with the English as well. I I used to say, I was trying to get Home Rule for Scotland, and it never worked.

And I used to say, if the Americans could get freedom from the Crown, why can't we? And, I just generally I was angry at everybody. I seem to to be looking for something to project this anger onto. And I thought the English had screwed the Irish and the Scots out of our natural, rightful heritage. So I went down to London, England, and I joined British Airways.

And I had on the British Airways uniform, and I was looking good. But in the inside, I was beginning to fragment. If you ask me what is the condition of what I believe is the alcoholic prior to the drink, which is a very specific type of personality. I will say to you, it's a feeling of never being a part of the world. It's a feeling of being somehow inferior, yet feeling better than.

It is a feeling of being on the outside looking in. These were all the feelings that I had inside of me. And I also felt as if there was something that was wrong with me, and I couldn't put my finger on it. It was like there was something missing in my makeup, and I didn't know what it was. But I thought that if you looked at me, you would know.

If you looked too closely, you'd know that there was something missing in me. So I used all the type of behavior that we use to cover it up. I became an exhibitionist. I became, loud, I became, a party girl, and, I tried to cover it up. But, I slowly I went when I was 21 years of age, I went to 2 psychiatrists in London, England, and I told them how I was feeling, that I was having panic attacks.

If you read Bill Wilson's biography, you'll know before he drank, he had panic attacks and palpitations, and I was having all of those. And I sat down and I told these English psychiatrists about this and asking for help. And they looked at me and they said, you're Irish, for God's sake. I don't know what that meant. Anyway, it became so unbearable, and nothing nothing was taking the focus off of me.

Everything was about me. So I did the next best thing to drink and I could think of, and I got married. And I went to live in Kingston, Jamaica, and, I married a nice man. He was a nice man. He was a kind, good, loving man, and he married a figment of my imagination.

And it was a good life in Jamaica. Things were good. There was maids and gardeners, and after my first after a year or more, my first son was born, and I loved that child. But just after he was born, I thought I was going insane. I thought I was losing my mind.

I thought that I was about to implode into a 1000000 pieces, and I had nothing to hang on to. And somebody said, have a drink. And I drank it. And for the first time in my life, my skin fit. Doctor Silkworth said that men and women drink because they like the sense of ease and comfort that they get.

That gave me such a sense of ease and comfort. You could have taken someone who was exhibiting all the nervous conditions, and ways of being that I was, and at that pivotal moment, given them a drink, and it would have done nothing for them. They would have gone into what I believe would be full blown psychosis, and taken off to the mental institution. I have something that sits deep within me, be it in my soul, that is waiting for a drink to make me feel at one with the universe, and to make me feel mentally whole. And that's what alcohol did for me.

Jamaica has a 151 proof rum. It is beautiful. I loved it very much. Now when something makes you feel remember that I had been going along in my life for 25 years, trying to suck it up, having a terrible time with crowds of people, or just mixing generally, and envy in those who mixed with ease and comfort. You give me 2151 proof rum, and I am at ease.

I am magnanimous, and I am awfully friendly. So I drank every day. I don't know what it is to have a social drink. I drank every day on a daily basis, and I drank a lot. And I had an amazing tolerance.

And after about 4 or 5 years, my second son was born. And I loved that little boy too. But you see, I had become a drunken mother, an alcoholic. And people in Jamaica who used to call and say, Mary, I'm having a party, and invite me. Now they would call and say, Mary, I'm having a party.

Please don't come. Because I would go to these parties amongst all these very nice well, you know, I have an innate ability for making benign well adjusted people behave like morons. It's just a natural ability. So these people now just told me, say, Mary, I'm having a party. Please don't come.

And I wouldn't go, and then I would go, and then I'd get into trouble, and then I would start fights. And, my husband came from a very nice family, and they came to me one day and they said, you are embarrassing our family name. We have an old 100 years old, 100 of years old family name in Jamaica, and you are causing aspersions on it, and, we want you to do something with yourself. We don't know what's wrong with you. And you won't go to your your they were Catholic.

They said, you you won't go to church. You don't believe in nothing. Why don't you go and find some something spiritual, something to believe in? And I did. And I, I went first of all, I went to the, Baptist movement in Jamaica.

And please keep an open mind, I have lots of respect for religion. And, I was jumping for Jesus, and, it didn't work. You know, and I was jumping real high, I'll tell you. I really got into it. Because I had a few of those drums inside me, and, I like to think I took the movements to new heights, you know.

But, unfortunately, it wasn't the answer for me. Now I used to live across the road from Bob Marley on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica. Somebody had given Bob an old great house to live in. And, it was about 3 doors down from the Jamaican, the High Commission, the the prime minister's office. And I used to see these big wafts of ganja going up, and I used to think, I wonder what that's doing to the visiting dignitaries.

You know? But anyway, somebody said to me that the Rastafarians were spiritual people, and, I could go anywhere in Jamaica because everybody, they knew I was one brick short of a load. And, they were very kind to me, the Jamaican people. And, so I went up to the hills, and the Rastafarians, what they do is they read from the Old Testament. They hate alcohol, and the only thing is, they smoke a lot of pot.

And the when I used to go up there, they used to say, Mary, come try a little sense of me, oh, you man. Look how the liquor is making your eyes red. And I used to say, I don't want nothing. It's going to screw up my brain. I'll stick to liquor.

Thank you. Anyway, I used to watch them, and way back then, I saw something that has given us a lot of trouble in Alcoholics Anonymous today. In Alcoholics Anonymous today, nonalcoholic addicts are being sent to this fellowship, and it is so sad because we are killing them. Bill Wilson wrote in his pamphlet, Problems Other Than Alcohol, that there is no way to make a non alcoholic addict into an AA member. He says, if we do, we'll kill them, and they can't help us because the most important thing is one drunk talking to another.

If you don't have a drunk story, how can you help anybody? You know? And I didn't know all these things then, And I'll just tell you this very quickly. There was 2 beautiful women sent to me a few years ago, and they were basically dying. And they had been in and out of AA for years.

And eventually, I sat down and spoke to these 2 women, and they admitted to me that they were not alcoholics, that they had gone to a treatment center, and the treatment center had told them, because it's all one disease, to come and change the wording of the first step to suit them, to pretend to be alcoholics. And they were dying because they couldn't identify. And they got into service very heavily, but it didn't help them. And I'm happy to say to you to today, they both have a few years in CA and NA, and they're doing very well. And I say thank God for that.

But way back then, I knew nothing about these things, so I would watch the Rastafarians, and they would draw a big spliff. And it was so big, you couldn't even see their face. And they would go, I just want a mellow old man. Have a little vision. And they would lie down and meditate.

That's not me. When I drink, I want action. When I drink, I want justice. When I drink, I want love. I will eventually end up lying down whether I want to or not, but not right now.

So they bid me a due, and, couldn't help me. And eventually, because I became very obnoxious you see, I think that is essentially my personality, was very obnoxious and very rebellious, and, I decided to divorce my husband, and I took my 2 sons and I left the island. And my boys were 59. And, I took them to Scotland, and my family told me about my drinking. And a man that I knew for many years, he called and gave me the solution that I used to always love.

It's the easier, softer way. He said, let's get married, and I'll take you to Canada. I love those types of solutions. And I said, what a good idea. And in my head, I said, drink Canada dry.

Let's go. Let's go. He took me to Alberta, Canada. When we landed, it was minus 40. I knew I had made a serious mistake.

By this time, I realized I have a serious Valium deficiency, because I wake up in the morning and I'm shaking so much I can't lift up my drink, and I have to take Valium. So because I am a bright bunny, I get a job as a pharmaceutical rep. The man I married was my my second But he, he used to talk to I used to say to him, why don't you get a job? And he'd say, God would provide. So I sent him off for God to provide for him elsewhere.

You see, way back then, when I didn't know enough about love, when I did not know that I have to honor another human being as God's child, and that we are all equal in the sight of God. Then what would happen to me is I would fall in love, because I loved that high. I loved the magic. And him and me would be like Velcro, joined at the hip. And then after 6 months, thrill is gone, thrill is gone, and I'm off looking for that ding a ling a ling someplace else.

I had no loyalty. None. My poor little boys, they were 95. They had no adults in Canada except me. I would come home with people I shouldn't have come home with.

I never ever physically abused my children, but they saw things that no innocent child should ever see, and I didn't mean to do that. And I took away their innocence, and I'll never be able to give that back to them. And, and I started I got fired from the job. I crashed the company car one too many times, and, I started crying for help. And when I cry for help, I get a rampant case of alcoholic telephonitis.

I don't know if there's anyone in here who has ever suffered from that. Alcoholic telephonitis is a phenomenon that never attacks in the day. It usually approaches around midnight. When you're sitting alone with your jug and you wanna call somebody and tell them how you've been screwed by the world. But you don't wanna call anybody nearby because they might come.

So what you do is you call other countries, you forget there's a time change, they pick up the phone, you pass out. You don't know who's called or who you've called. And my family came and told me I had early menopause and put me in detox. And in detox, something wonderful happened to me. It was just me and 5 native Canadians.

And they told me that they were in to dry out for the summer, and they held my soup to me and my coffee to me when I was shaking too much to hold it by myself. They told me that they drank because their spirit was broken, and I could identify with that, at some level. Because many years later, when I was reading the Bill Wilson Carl Jung correspondence, And Bill Wilson had written to doctor Jung in 1961 to thank him for being, what he said, one of the co founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because he said that we were beyond human aid, alcoholics were. And doctor Young wrote back to Bill.

He said it was his opinion that what the alcoholic had at a low level was a thirst for a union with God. He said that the formula for the alcoholic is spiritus contrasiritum, which means spirit against spirit. That makes absolute sense to me. You see I couldn't drop, stop drinking spirit, until I got the infusion of spirit through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is truly spirit against spirit.

But I got out that detox and I decided to go back to Jamaica. I wanted things to be the way they used to be. I took my 2 sons, I went to Jamaica. Their father had married again. I was a hopeless alcoholic when I went back to Jamaica.

Their father asked if he could have my children for a week, and they were gone for 13 years. And I had my first suicide attempt. I took out 2 bottles of Valium and 2 bottles of a 151 Pruf rum, enough to kill a horse. But we don't die easy, alcoholics. We're hard to dead.

And they pumped out my stomach and took me up to Kingston Hospital on Christmas in, in Jamaica, And the psychiatrist came and saw me after they pumped out my stomach and told me something that was very observant, intellectually correct, and definitely relevant to my condition. The psychiatrist said to me, you mustn't do that anymore. I have a lot of remember ones, but to me and to other people who say, you got a lot worse remember ones than that. And yes, maybe. But the one that sticks in my heart is that I was living in an old rundown hotel in Kingston and drinking all the time, and finding tourists.

If there's any tourists here who were in Jamaica in 1980, I'd like to make amends. Your, American author, Scott Fitzgerald, who died of alcohol related problems, he wrote that in the real dark night of the soul, it's always 3 o'clock in the morning. It was always 3 o'clock in the morning for me. You see, what I would do is I wanted an alcoholic to drink with me. I didn't want a normal person because they just end up calling me a lunch a lush.

I wanted someone who drank like me, to go through the night with me, not because I wanted sex or passion. I wanted someone to go through the night with me because the loneliness was like a knife cutting through my heart. And also, when him and I drink together, I begin to look beautiful to him, and he begins to look real good to me. And we wander off into the enchanted cottage, and things become possible as we drink. We will be able to have maybe just 1 or 2 2 drinks like normal people.

We will get our place back in society. We will get our dignity back. We will get our children back. We maybe even get a new husband or a new a wife, but by God, tomorrow morning, things are gonna be different. And then the sun would come up.

The pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization of being with a stranger one more time. And I walked out with one of my escorts, and, a car passed by with my 2 sons, my ex husband and his new wife. And the shame was beyond endurance. And the father came and gave me $3,000 to get lost. He said I had to leave the island or he would kill me, and I did.

I went to, Florida to drink myself to death. It is very difficult to drink yourself to death. I got a little apartment. I'd drink and pass out, and they'd steal my furniture. They'd steal my clothes.

They'd take that which I had to give, and that which I did not have to give. I had to drink all the time. I had to drink all the time because if I didn't drink all the time, I would fall apart with shaking. I had to drink all the time because I wanted no recall. I wanted no consciousness.

I ended up living at the bottom of Lincoln Road on Miami Beach, selling my blood for $20 a pint. My nickname on schedule was ugly, and I never ever thought I would get there. And yet again, why shouldn't I get there? Because I could not stop drinking. I'd never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was a hopeless, hopeless drunk. There was nobody around who cared about me. My family was thousands of miles away. They didn't even know my children had been taken away, my family in Scotland. Eventually, I panhandled off an old woman who used to live in, Fort Law who lived in Jamaica, an old English woman, and she'd moved to Fort Lauderdale.

And she contacted my family. And they had contacted Interpol before, and they phoned me. And, there was a bench warrant out for my arrest in Florida, but they got me out of Florida. And, when they tried to get me shoes, I had been wearing because my feet were so swollen, I had on 10 and a half flip flops, rubber flip flops, which had become embedded in the soles of my feet with the heat, and they had to be dug out the soles of my feet. And that is where alcohol took me.

And that is why to be standing here, I cannot believe it. I am so grateful to God, and to Bill Wilson, and doctor Bob, and all of the members since that I am here. Because my life on Skid Row, to put it very bluntly, was like going through a sewer in a glass bottomed boat. I, went back to Canada and, started going into the mental institutions. Because now what happened is when I drank, I became crazy, and I wanted to hurt people, and I had so much rage and anger inside of me.

And a man I had known for a long time, he felt sorry for me. He said, I'll look after you. I'll help you. Another really nice man, John. The first time I tried to kill him, they took me to a psychiatrist.

And the second time, they put me in the mental institution. And I am a retread in the mental institution. And in the mental institution, they cannot diagnose chronic alcoholism because we never tell them the truth. We never tell them the truth. You know?

And you know all the alcoholics in the psych wards and in the mental institutions. We all have 3 or 4 packs of cigarettes clutched in our sweaty little hands. And, we're just shuffling along there. So full of medication. We don't know what time of the day it is.

I mean, the only excitement people like us ever get in the mental institutions are when we drop our cigarettes on our paper slippers, and we're too drunk to do anything, you know, except what you burn. Psychiatrist, I had several diagnoses. I had diagnoses of schizophrenia because sometimes I would be like that. I had diagnoses of manic depressive. I was treated with all kind of drugs.

And I love being institutionalized because I get oblivion, compliments of the government 22 hours a day. They just wake me up for my meals. Why would I want to live like that? Because oblivion is what I seek by this stage, because there is no road back for me. I want oblivion, I want to be looked after, and I don't want to go out there where people expect me to behave like a normal human being.

How can I, with my life I never was able to from I was born? How can I know? And there was an excellent psychiatrist, and one day he came to me. I'd been taken to the mental institution by the police. I was in a lot of trouble, and he kept me in there for a long time.

And when I got out, I had to go to court. And he had to write a letter to keep me out of prison, or to prevent to present to the court. And in that letter, he said I had 3 diagnoses, chronic alcoholic, abnormal personality, and depressive. And that just about says it all for me. 1 night, I was sitting drinking myself sober, and I picked up the phone in the phone day a.

You know what that's like, drinking yourself sober. Now I had had I've gone to a lot of AA meetings when I was in the institutions, but I never remembered anything because I was so full of drugs. Anyway, one night, I picked up the phone, I phoned AA and a man called Stan came. And this was in Edmonton, Alberta. Stan c.

He had 29 years sobriety. And he sat and he told me his story, and I told him a little bit of mine. And this was like 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. And he said, Marie, I think you're one of us. I said, Stan, I know I'm an alcoholic, but I'm also nuts.

I've got a psychiatric report that says I'm nuts. He said, Marie, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is like 12 adjustable wrenches. They're for any nut that comes through the door. Those are words of wisdom. And I loved being in AA, and I went every day, and I went twice a day.

And, I began to realize that alcoholism wasn't about drinking. Can you imagine if alcoholism was about drinking? If alcoholism was about drinking alcohol only, then in the 1st year when I was going to Alcoholics Anonymous 3 times a day, I would go into the meeting and there'd be a chairperson sitting there, and he'd say to me, did you drink today, Mary? I'd say, no. He said, see you later.

Can you imagine that? And at the end of a year, I'd be dead. And on my tombstone, it would say, she didn't drink, but her head blew apart. Because the problem of the alcoholic centers in the mind. Anyway, I had one slip.

As I said, my dry date is 10th August 1984. On 9th August 1984, some AA people came and they took me to a meeting. I was in very bad shape. They told me I was shaking so my strangers were waving back at me. And that night, a little gal called Linda spent the night with me.

She had 12 years sobriety. And the next day, she said, I'm gonna leave, you know, because you're a loser, and I wanna stick with winners in Alcoholics Anonymous. But before I go, I'm gonna ask you to kneel down and say the 3rd step prayer. And I said, sir, I don't kneel for nothing. And then something said, think of your children's eyes.

And I knelt down and I held her hand, and I repeated the 3rd step prayer after her. And from that moment to this, I have had no desire for a drink. Absolutely none. Some unmerited gift of grace was given to this undeserving person. It must be dreadful to be in AA and still want to drink.

I don't know ever how I could have done it, but, you know, it is possible that I couldn't have done it. I think that's why we have Bill and Bob. You know, Bill, he never wanted to drink again, and Bob seemed to be always thinking about drinking for the whole of his 15 years, and yet being an active member and helping so many people. But whatever happened to me, I haven't wanted a drink since 10th August 1984. Now, does that mean I'm well?

I don't think so. You know, I was not well long before I took a drink, and there's a lot wrong with me about which a lot has to be done. And, I got very active in AA in Edmonton, Alberta. I had a wonderful sponsor. I believe very strongly in sponsorship.

I need my sponsor more today than I've ever needed a sponsor because I have more to lose today, and because I'm changing all the time because I do the work. That can be an explosive combination sometimes if you feel you're having a little bit of success in life as well. So I need a sponsor very deeply. Way back then, I knew intuitively, and I'll say it today. If you said to me, what is the key to sobriety Apart from God, the 12 steps of fellowship.

I would say to you, do what I did. I had decided when I came through the doors that I knew nothing about anything, that my life had been such a shambles, that I had destroyed everything and everyone of value in my life, that my absolute best thinking had taken me to Skid Row, mental institutions, and being locked up. I knew nothing. Let me find a good AA person and do exactly what they tell me to do. It was called surrender, and I did.

And not one of the couple of few sponsors I've had has ever told me anything that has turned out wrong for me to this date. I couldn't get back to our god of my understanding. I found that very difficult. And Bill Wilson was my higher power for a long time, because I love Bill Wilson. I loved everything he wrote that spoke straight to my soul.

He was like a piece of velvet for me, reading Bill Wilson. And then the old timers came to me and they said, Mary, you have to find a God. So I went about looking for God, and I, one day I was down in the Alano Club in Edmonton, Alberta, and there was this old woman speaking from the Northwest Territories, and she doesn't mind me saying this. She was the most spiritual woman I'd ever heard, except she was saying things like, as a drunken woman, I never went in bed with an ugly man, but I sure walk out with you. She said, but I don't do it anymore because I am a lady in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I went out to her and I said, who is this god you have? I'm looking for god. She says, Mary, my god is called Harold. I said, Harold? I was expecting something fantastic like Zeus.

She says, well, you know that prayer, our father who art in heaven, harrowed be thy name. She was pulling my leg. But I found a God of my own understanding, and I believe there only is one God. But I truly believe that God has a place in his heart that has a circle and a triangle on it. And he's right here, right now with us.

This is a God given program. I truly believe that. Just before I was a year sober, my eldest son was going to school in Toronto, and I called Intergroup in Toronto, asked them if they could have some people meet my flight, and they did, Joyce and Eric, great AA members who are big who are helping to arrange the World Conference this year, in fact. They're on the committee there. Joyce and Eric met my plane, took me to an AA meeting, and checked me into the YWCA.

And I stayed at the YWCA, went to a lot of meetings, got a little job, got an apartment. My son came. I saw him. He went back to Toronto, to Jamaica, and I was 2 years sober. Now the old timers in Edmonton used to say, Mary, we usually say no relationships for a year, but for you, it's 2 because you have a propensity for getting married.

By that time, I had been married 3 times, married and divorced. So I was 2 years sober, and I went to a mission 1 morning, and, all the yellow had gone out my eyes, and I was feeling and looking quite good. Thank you very much. And I looked down the table and I saw him. And I just knew that God has sent me my reward.

And he was looking back at me with those eyes. A couple who are getting married soon in AA were talking to me today and I said to them, you know, if 2 AA people get married and they're both working their program, it can be beautiful. But look how if they're not. Or look you know, in the 12 and 12, in the 12 step and the 12 and 12, Bill Wilson writes in there about when boy meets girl on AA campus. And he says in there that they should both examine their self, themselves, that there is not some deep underlying disorder that will prevent them from having a relationship.

I didn't see that. So John and I fell in love in the rooms of AA, and here's what happens when Boy Meets Girl on AA campus. You both still go to a lot of meetings, but now you're going to see him and her, And you have one of your peacock feathers, and you strike your stuff in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And someone asked you how to read how it works, and your eyes flit across a crowded room, and you can see God shining down on him. You think the light in the eyes of the people is spirituality, but sometimes it's psychosis.

I'm talking about mine too because like attracts like. See, when I was 2 years sober, I was not well. I was a great AA. I was an AA soldier. And I went to a lot of meetings and I did a lot of service and I did a lot of good stuff, but I was still a banana man, let me tell you.

Way out there still. And, of course, I'm gonna attract somebody like that. I'm not be about to be attracting a spiritual giant when I'm like that. We attract our Think about this. There is a school of thought in psychology that says, we attract our insides on the outside.

Think about it. So anyway, what happened with John and I? We fell in right I know, as I say, I go to meetings and I see him and I'd be reading how it works and, I could imagine him and John and I walking off into the sunset under the circle and the triangle. Just blessed and whole and beautiful. And my sponsor, she said to me, don't get married because you're an emotional retard.

And I knew she was jealous. I knew that. So John and me are locked. We got married in Florida. So here's what happens.

When you fall in love and you both haven't had the personality change, and it's not just one time round of steps, Some of us need a lot of personality change. I just happened to be one of those people, and so did John. So we had a little personality change, but not enough. And here's what happens in the close proximity of marriage when you're both still sick. 1 by 1, the peacock feathers start dropping off, And in the end, all you have is the same 2 old turkeys sitting staring at 1 minute.

I had to get out of there because we were psychologically killing each other. And I went back to the Y. I was 5 years sober. I got a little job. I surrendered.