The Saturday night warmup speaker at the CPH12 v9 convention in Copenhagen, Denmark

How'd you like that? I'm Marybeth. I'm an alcoholic. I am sober by the grace of God in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. My sober date is April 18th 1988.

And for that, I'm very grateful, and it really truly is a miracle if you could see the life that I was running and what's happened to my life since. It is a miracle that I'm here in Denmark. I was walking through today through your beautiful village city and looking at all the old buildings, and, I got a little bit of tears in my eyes because when I was younger, I was fortunate to go to school in Europe and in England. And I remember those days. I was young and I was full of hope.

I was, like, 19 years old, and and, the world was my oyster. And I believed in Santa Claus. I didn't I don't know if I believed in God. I didn't have time for God, but I believed in Santa Claus. And I believed that my life would continue to get better, and I I lived through the eyes of a a fantasy world.

I was like a child constantly in a fantasy world. And, also, I don't remember that much about that trip because I was drinking a lot. So, I don't even remember going to school, but I do remember I had a great time over here overseas. I've since come to find out that that that Santa Claus that I believed in has become my god, and it looks very different today than it did before. I was always my I I was always reaching out for something that was never ever there.

The Beatles talked about it as the next big thing. What's the next big thing? I was Marybeth was never comfortable with herself or her environment as it talks about in our literature. My earliest memory of of, loving the drug alcohol was, sitting on my grandfather's lap drinking Miller beer and I loved that fuzz, you know, that that feeling that went down my throat. And then I would march into the bathroom and get up on the stool and go eat Johnson's pink little baby They were very good.

They were like candy. I didn't really have my first drink until I was, about 13 years old And, I drank, I took drugs, and I stole all on the same night. And how that happened was, I had a babysitting job and here's where the dishonest Mary Beth comes in. My whole life was a big fake trying to be something I wasn't. Just so you'll know, I wanna let you know that is part of my story.

I went babysitting, and what did I do? I brought friends with me. It was never about taking care of the children. It was about being comfortable and there were 3 of us. And first of all, I was wrong to to bring friends on a babysitting job but, to feel comfortable I took a decanter of gin.

It was a glass decanter and it had this clear gin in it. And I figured that if I could drink, then I would feel more comfortable with my two friends because I was always the odd man out or at least that's the way I felt. And, what I figured was that I could I could mix it, drink the gin, and then fill it with water, and then the people would never know. And, I did smoke the pot so that I would feel cool because that's what they were gonna do. And so, that was sort of my Marybeth off and running.

1 of the girls that, I drank with is very very sober today. She never had an alcohol problem. The other girl I was with actually died in an alcohol related car accident. That early part of my life was Marybeth became sort of disassociated from her family in the sense that, my whole world centered around me. If I wanted to go out with a boy, I would escape out the back door and and, you know, really hurt my family, things like that.

And, you know, up until then, I think that I was a pretty normal child. I, you know, I did what my parents said, and I, you know, I made my first communion, and I wore my hat on Easter like I was supposed to, but something happened to me at this age, and what an odd age is that I, I changed. I changed, and I was never again to be comfortable with myself or where I was in my life until I was the age of 34. School my I I would say that the biggest part of my story is the story of wins and losses. And everything that came so easily to me, that Santa Claus thing, I ended up losing.

And it was very, very tragic for me. I was a cheerleader. I got kicked off the cheerleading team. My parents manipulated it so that I could get back on, So there you go. I dated the captain of the football team, president of the student council, got him, dumped him.

I wanted to be in the school plays. I was in the school plays, but the problem was is I wanted to smoke cigarettes backstage and do what I wanted to, and I got caught by one of the nuns. And the nun said, well, yeah, you don't want me to tell your parents, do you? And I was like, well, not if you not, you know, that's up to you. And I got the whole cast to say they weren't gonna go on stage if I got suspended from school.

Well, when it came time to go on stage, they all went on stage, and that was the first time I learned not to trust people because I would've stuck up for them. You know? I got I wasn't allowed to go on the biology class. They had a leaf walk that they want, a nature walk, and the whole class voted that Marybeth couldn't go. So there were things happening to me.

You know, I just started my early drinking career, but there was a detached thing that happened to me. Where did Mary Beth go? It was very sad. I remember I went through my my first marriage and a divorce, and I had to get an annulment in my church, and I I wrote in the papers, I hesitate to say that high school is a good was a good time. But if you knew me in high school, you would think I was popular, I was happy, I was content, I was smart.

But what was really going on was, you know, I had this cheerleader personality, but I wanted to wear the leather coats like the really cool people. You know? And then I wanted to be sort of the teacher's favorite, the people who, never struggled, you know, and they were the captain and co captain of the cheerleading team. I had a big resentment against them, and, they did everything right. They did their homework, and they they copied their notes from class, and I'd be on the school bus just trying to quit get my notes going, you know.

I had such potential. I think that that's the way that the people could say you know, put it for me. I went on to college. I I I remember I just wanna say this one thing if anybody identifies with this. I was uncomfortable in a group of friends in college in high school and I remember sitting there and I was sitting on the lap of this football guy and drinking with all of his friends.

And, I knew I watched that bottle come around the circle, and I knew that every time it hit me I was gonna get some relief, and I was gonna feel like I was okay to be there because I did not feel okay inside. I moved on to college and what happened to me was really, if this happened to a daughter of mine, I'd be really, really sad for her. I had such potential. I had, like, all these friends, but didn't have a a kind of identity. Like, I wanted to be the girl with the long red hair.

I wanted to be when I came here yesterday, I wanted to be a Danish blonde. I can tell you that. I wanted to be the girl that lived in Manhattan, you know. I wanted to be the girl that was from Brooklyn that was really cool. There were so many different people and then the Italian, the gorgeous Italian roommate that I had, I wanted to be her.

And, my father called me luckily and he said, don't ever try to be like anybody else. You'll never be happy until you're yourself. And he he I said, how did he know? You know, how did my father know what was going on in my mind? In college, I decided that I would become become a hippie.

Okay? Now I grew up in a in a very closed household where if you had arguments, no one outside knew. No one talked to me about sex. No one talked to me about money. No one I had a mother who was an artist, a father who was a scientist, very deeply religious people.

There they never talked to me that there was an evil part of this world other than they said that about the devil. So here I am, I'm free, I'm in college, right, I can do whatever the heck I want, and they think I'm gonna be this little girl that wears her little Catholic school outfits and her plaid plaid skirts and, you know, little sweaters, and I'm gonna have a nice little boyfriend from college and maybe a nice school, and I'll go to football games. So what happened was I decided that, or my my my alcoholism decided that I would take a different route, And I ended up drinking and doing drugs and hanging out in, in, with with 45 year old men wearing top hats and going to, you know, concerts and and driving in Cadillacs, and we we were so high, like, I don't think anybody was driving the car. I hung out in pool halls, and and, I think I had a couple of different boyfriends. I had my teeth knocked out in a bar.

You know, I walked into a bar for a nice little college girl's birthday and, you know, they knocked out my bottom teeth, and and the guy who drove me to the airport was, you know, on heroin, seeing flashes going by every time we went through a light, you know. And, my parents had no idea. And when and when it came time to try to sue, because that's what you did then, to sue because this person knocked my teeth out, My parents said, oh, no. No. No.

We can't do that because, you were a bad person to be in the bar, and they're gonna see you as a bad person so you will never win. Well, I would've won a $1,000,000. I can tell you that. I was a speech and drama major. So but at any rate, that's the kind of family I grew up in.

There was nothing was you know, everything had to be secret. You know, there was a lot of shame, and, there was deep shame ingrained in all of us. And, we had 6 children, brothers and sisters, 2 sober, 2 in Al Anon. College was unremarkable. I went to school in Europe.

That was great. I loved it. I just hitchhiked. I I did I I did things like, you know, leave there, fly home to see a boyfriend, and quick get back without my parents ever finding out, you know, and here I was. I I should have been grateful just to be here for 6 months, and, I don't remember that much of it other than, you know, I found ways to sneak booze into, I would sleep in youth hostels and go eat in nice restaurants, and then I sneak my booze in under the under the, table cloth and, mix it with my Coke, and I found, you know, less expensive ways to drink.

This is just regular drinking stuff that's going on. My real alcoholism really, really took off, when I was in New York and I got this dream job at a magazine, a beauty magazine in New York, fashion magazine. And, you know, it was just like another part of my life, it's like, well, Marybeth got a nice job, she got to do this, she got to do that. Well, this is where the pain of my losses comes in. I had this amazing job, and I was a beauty assistant.

And I got to do all these really cool things like travel and and, you know, work with some really cool photographers and, you know, makeup people and fashion people and all of that. And, I was, 8 months into it and I was invited to help start the newest magazine that this company had put out in 30 years. And there were only 12 people invited to do it. And I was 1, and I was so excited. Now I'm gonna do everything at this magazine that an assistant would do with beauty, fashion, fitness, just I was like the little miss go around do things person, and they were priming me to become the beauty associate.

Well, my night job was going to studio 54, and my big goal was to see if I could get in like the models did with just blue jeans because if you got in all dressed up, that didn't really count. You know, they have to they open the gate for certain people. You know? And most people would stand outside and wait for hours and hours and hours. And, my goal was to be able to be so cool that I could get in with the blue jeans like the models did.

Well, somehow, I got to do that. I don't know even who I was with when I did it. But, so I thought that was a big deal, and I remember looking up at the bar and, seeing things I had never seen before, really. I didn't know until I had started working for the magazines that there were gay people. I didn't know that.

That's how sheltered I was. And I thought this is amazing. You know? This is really, really amazing, and I'm hanging out in the restrooms with all these people who are different genders and it's really cool, and there's transvestites hanging out here. And this, I am sitting on the top of the world.

And, that's how deep I went back then. And I remember looking at the drinks. The drinks were, like, $8, for a beer or something, and I I couldn't afford the drinks. So we would use people, you know, we girls, we would use people to get drinks, and we did. And, what happened to me in that time was we are building this new magazine.

I'm traveling to Europe to photograph the first issue. I'm doing things that there were a 1,000 women in line waiting for this job, maybe more, and I have it. And we're so new that I don't even have a real office. We only are working out of closets. The floor was still being built.

I am on this path to greatness. And when you work at a fashion magazine, from there, you can you're you're in like Flint forever. You can go to the beauty industry. You can do all sorts of things. So you're just I'm I'm seeing my Santa Claus, and, what I don't know is that the the Knights are stealing away my life.

And I added drugs into it. I don't know how that happened. Whatever you're drinking, you know what you do. You do weird things. You sleep with men.

I I had one too many of those nights, and I couldn't hold it together. My mind started to go. I, I I was trying so hard to act as if I was okay. And, one time they hired a photographer to follow me around. They were testing her, so they had her follow me around for the day And it was a great time for me to actually get it together and pull together some really cool outfits and have this big long thing.

It was like a 12 hour day. She had to follow me around and it would have been in the magazines and stuff. I couldn't even pull it together to get some great outfits and I was in the industry. So, knowing that for me was not understanding it because I didn't understand what was wrong. I knew that there was something seriously wrong.

But I couldn't stop it. And, when it came time for me to become the beauty associate, the editor in chief said no. And I was just a little disappointed. I mean, I was like, woah. You know?

That's weird. I'd probably be the best one. And when, of course, they brought in the beauty associate, I thought, well, what does she have? Well, she had it all. I could tell you that.

She had it all. She had all the experience. She she she should've been the beauty associate. But for me, I'm like, no. That's my job.

So then my boss who really believed in me said, well, maybe you'll do the fashion associate. Well, the editor in chief knocked that down. So here's Marybeth so, naive that I didn't realize that my Santa Claus could stop I didn't realize the star could stop, the whole thing could stop. I just didn't know. I thought I've always managed to get what I wanted and, I had to walk away from that job.

It was, it was pretty devastating. It was, now my connection to alcohol, I never made that connection. Smoking cigarettes, sitting at a a beauty health fashion magazine. I never made the connection that I shouldn't be smoking, you know. So I go to get this job with a fashion photographer.

My boss got it for me because she really believed in me. And, what I did instead I should've just done a slideshow up here for you guys because what I did instead was, you know, when he would go away on trips, I would, like, run around cheerleading and they would take pictures of me and we'd style our stuff and and, I would act like a complete idiot, and I'm managing the guy's studio. Beautiful studio. Photographer for Harper's Bazaar. So, I lose that job.

Now I think I'm 23 years old, and, I tried one more thing and that's to work for an advertising agency for Alexis Lachin Wines. And, I didn't know anything about wine except for I thought that I really did because I had this huge grandiose, personality. So, I thought I could write. So I could never understand, and maybe you'll identify with this, I could never understand why the writer got to write all the big stuff and I didn't because I thought I was a writer. But I never wrote anything.

But in my mind, I wrote things. I mean, you guys, this is this is my true story. I really believed I was a writer. Lost that job. So what is a what is a, little 23 year old, out of control, partying, spoiled brat drunk do?

She starts her own business. That way I don't have to get fired. So I had $5 in unemployment check, and I decided I would make some beautiful accessories for women and I did, and I borrowed somebody's clothes because I didn't have any identity again. I had completely lost Marybeth, and I borrowed this friend's clothes. And I remember the skirt was so big, she had to tie it on me with a rope belt.

And, I marched down to the store in New York called Bundles on re Bendel, and I sold them my my little item. And they they gave me this huge order. So blah blah blah. It all got better. Everything got better.

And I started selling things to the big stores, and I have this little business, and I had CNN coming after me. This was when CNN was new. And, I had, I had Vogue cover my stuff and then I had Bloomingdale's buy it because Vogue did it and then Harper's Bazaar started photographing my stuff at Woman's Wear Daily and suddenly Mary Beth is back on track again and I'm working 7 days a week. I'd spend Sundays afternoon at the at the, this outside cafe drinking by myself and, doing my books. And I was absolutely passionate about my work.

And, I'm I don't know anything. You you you you have no idea how I know nothing about business. I knew nothing about anything, and, I created this business out of nothing. Very alcoholic. And I, you know, I had this assistant that I hired, and and I ran this out of my apartment not really caring about my my roommates.

I had, like, 2 or 3 roommates in this 2 bedroom apartment in New York, and I'm running a business out of it. And I'm like, tough luck, you guys. This is what I do. It was always about me. One of my assistants came in one day, and I said, if you come back again in the condition that you were in yesterday, you're fired.

And by this time, I have a factory making my stuff and, selling it all across the country. And it was very exciting. And this girl came back the next day and she was really out of it and and and I said to her, you know, you'll be fired if you come back. Well, I was so out of it. I had been, so crazy with alcohol and whatever else I was taking along with that that upped the ante a little bit that, she took one couch, I took the other couch, and the factory called and I had my first psychotic experience where I thought that the owner of the factory was dead.

And I said that to her on the phone. Yeah. I'm like, I thought you were dead, Rona. And, you know, she thought something was a little weird and I remember how polite she was. You know what?

She said, Marybeth, I think I'll call you back another time. I'm like, alright. Well, I'm making these little gold accessories. They have a little leaf on their hair bands with a little leaf. I'm selling millions of them.

That's an exaggeration. Tons of them. And, you know, I mean, when things went wrong, I'd go to the factory in Newark and I'd sit there and reshape them by hand and I would take them to the factory and have them heat treated at another factory and I'd get them to I mean it was I was like a mad woman and I loved it, I was so happy. And then one day, Bloomingdale said to me, now they are my number one client. I've survived 7 buyers.

This was, like, a year and a half, 2 years into it. And they said to me, Marybeth, we think that the next new trend is going to be silver with turquoise. Instead of a gold leaf, we'll do a silver hairband with turquoise. And you know what Marybeth says? I don't design those.

Gold is my thing. And I lost my business. Now I felt so justified because I am a designer, and I have a vision. Can you imagine? And I lost my business, and I was so mad at Bloomingdale's because they didn't get me.

And I went into a depression and I remember lying on the floor and I'm I'm drinking and I'm still trying to design stuff and I have people asking me to design stuff. I'm I'm being sent places as this big designer from New York, and she'll go down and do stuff for Hanes pantyhose down in Tennessee somewhere and I would hold it together to, get that job done and but, you know, today if I were given those opportunities it would be a fabulously creative thing for me, but I couldn't hold it together. So I remember lying on my apartment in New York and the wood floors and I remember thinking, if I could just melt and seep into the floor and disappear and die, it would be better. Now I have photographs of me at that time, and you would never know. And there was a guy I was talking to tonight, lesson I can't say his name.

And he I was, you know, I was talking about that situation to him because it's like you get so scared. You know? You're just so scared. And so I started waking up every day totally afraid. I was afraid of everything.

I became extremely lonely inside. I had boyfriends. I had dates. I had one night stands. I had a guy who said his bladder broke in my bed, or something weird things that people would end up in my house.

Luckily, I was still dressed. I wore I had my party dress on that when I woke up, thank God, so I could tell that story. But I remember, you know, things were happening. I was I had men in my apartment. I didn't even know who they were.

And, I don't know if any of you women identify this with that, but I would sit in a bar. I was in a bar on Valentine's Day with a friend of mine and and, you know, all I ever wanted to do was get married and have babies. But I'm sitting in a bar on Valentine's Day, and I'm trying to meet any man who walked into that bar. Any man. I would have slept with him that day.

And, there were 2 guys that day and I remember they didn't want anything to do with me or my friend and I thought we were pretty cute, you know. So, okay. New York was a complete disaster for me. One time I thought men were coming through my apartment wall behind me. I've been drinking Stolchanoy vodka.

And these men, I thought, were coming through, so I had my first new credit card. So what I thought was a really good idea, was to leave my apartment in the middle of the night, take that credit card, get a train back to New Jersey to find my old boyfriend who left me at the altar, old fiance, who left me at the altar and go to his house. So I get out there and he's not there, so I break in after calling his mother and his brother and waking them up. And, I took I got a taxi with my credit card. That was the credit card.

It's part of the story. I was like, wow. This is great. You know? I have I have a credit card.

I can get a taxi. So I get to his house. He's not there. And, so I go upstairs and I go through his black book because I knew he was cheating on me all like, always. So I figured, well, he was at well, I called all his girlfriends all his girlfriends, whatever state they lived in.

I called all the old girlfriends. I knew their first and last names. I tracked them down in Connecticut and said, I'm gonna kill myself unless you come home. So his girlfriend, Sharon, stayed on the phone with me for 3 hours. And when he got home, I was really in a good mood because I had found his whiskey cabinet and I had found a shotgun.

And I had a shotgun and I'm sitting there in his bedroom drinking. Well, that was before he got home, but I was sitting in the bedroom drinking with the shotgun, not for me, but in case someone came in and broke in the house in the middle of the morning to kill me. So, but when he showed up, I'll never forget. I'm sitting on the front porch, and I'm laughing, and I'm blasted, and I'm having a great time. I was so glad to see him and we were gonna be boyfriend, girlfriend again.

He had smoke coming out of his ears. I didn't get it, and I think I'm fun. You know? Move out of New York, find a husband. Our first date was a 13 hour drink a log.

Okay? Move out of the city, and Marybeth loses herself again. I have no work. He's abusive. I'm, like, identity less.

I am we went on a honeymoon, on a drinking honeymoon to Greece, and we stopped talking on the airplane on the way over. So, it was really bad and that they took us to the police station, and he got arrested, and they put me on the phone with people that I don't know who I was talking to and and I don't know. He said I was punching the cab driver and I said he was punching the cab driver. And in divorce court years later, I still can't remember who was actually punching the cab driver. Beautiful mare I I didn't really care about him.

I had the most beautiful dress you've ever seen. I designed it, I lined it in silk. Okay. It was lined in silk taffeta. Can you imagine?

I didn't have any money. I spent every cent of my money designing this dress and having it custom made, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And, you know, I married him broke, and and he stopped by the apartment once in New York to move me, which he really resented because he hated me anyway. But I had stacks of bills this high. 2 of them were worth $10,000 each.

So but I don't see the problem because, you see, I'm getting married and I designed the whole wedding with the candles and it was beautiful. And, I saw him on my wedding day because I forgot my makeup and he glared at me. He glared at me on my wedding day. And, my bridesmaids showed up and I had been, I don't think I did any drugs the night before, but I was drinking. And, my bridesmaids showed up.

This is this is so horrible. When I have a vision you better meet my vision. Okay? Because it has a it's all tied up in a bow. And my my my best friend showed up, and she had brown lipstick on.

And she lived in New York. And I'm like, in New York, that's what you were wearing, brown lipstick. But she showed up in the country wearing brown lipstick. I'm like, you can't. It doesn't match the dress.

So by the time I walked down the aisle, none of my bridesmaids were speaking to me. And my mother's crying and I have photographs of me walking out the front door. This is the spoiled little Marybeth, the grandiose Marybeth. And I've got my dozen white roses, and they arrived dead. So I'm in a rage.

I am in such a rage. And, anyway, they photographed me in that rage. And 3 of the unhappiest years of my life later, he left. He was abusive. He would shove me on the floor, and I would keep coming back for more because there's another side to this, Marybeth, too.

I also qualify for Al Anon. You know? And the alcoholics, we chase alcohol, and the Al Anon's chase the alcoholic, you know, trying to feel some of their excitement or whatever. And I married a guy who was a heavy drinker to a whole family of drinkers and so, you know, whatever. I would call the police on him and, you know, I would get mad at him for cutting up drugs on my design studio where I wasn't really designing, and he'd be mad at me for not working.

And he would tear up my workroom, and then I couldn't work, but I couldn't work. I was I had that Bill Wilson alcoholic depression going on. And we would start out we had these friends who also were very grandiose. And the bottom line was we'd start out with the champagne on on, you know, Saturday and these nice dinners, and we'd end up in the bar and, you know, da da da, big fights and nobody can drive and, big mess and, you know, drinking beer and it was just disgusting. The whole thing was disgusting, and we lived like this for a couple years.

And, you know, leaving weddings naked, things like that. And, anyway, I remember, at one wedding that we were at, I had, I ended up upstairs in the attic of someone's house because we couldn't drive home. And and and my husband showed up, And this was just towards the end of our marriage, and he showed up and he goes, what are you doing? And it's the middle of the night. And, I look next to me, and there's the guy who owns the house in the same bed, and I'm, like, I don't know.

He had his boots on. I had my clothes on. We all I don't know how it happened. But, I mean, you know, when I looked back, that little 13 year old never thought any of this stuff was gonna happen. She just thought it was gonna be beautiful.

She was gonna have children, and she was gonna have friends with children, and they were gonna wear smock dresses, and it didn't happen. Every time I think, maybe someday I'm not an alcoholic, I think of stuff like this because and this is why I it helps me to speak, because this wasn't normal what was going on. You know? This was my alcohol drive in my life. Got out of that marriage.

They took me to the psych ward, one day when I was drinking whiskey and they took me up there. And they they put me in there, and, I just remember thinking this is very, very dramatic. You know? And I was all about the drama. And I'm in the hospital and I'm like, wow.

You know, you they tape the, the matches to the counter where the nurses station is and I'm like, love the drama. You know. And you go into the bathroom to take a shower and you can't because, you know, you can't turn the doorknob because there is no doorknob. And I'm like, this is great. And you can that was when you could smoke, you know, and I'd smoke cigarettes and my new best friend had escaped three times.

She's an important part of my story. She actually ran for office from the psych ward. She was running for a political office out of there So she found ways to get pictures printed, and I'm like, this is this woman is very cool. And she was the black leather jacket friend I always wanted. You know what I mean?

She was cool. You know? I really wanted to be cool. I was never I'm still not cool, but she was cool. So her husband was the one who actually, when I hit my bottom and who brought me to, Alcoholics Anonymous.

And it happened on a day that, my parents were living over here some in Belgium, and my family over there just didn't know what to do with me. So they stayed sort of away from me. And at this point, I'm ripping phones out of hotel walls and alienating everyone. I had nobody left in the end. And, so I'm I'm, I put my head down.

I I found a job with a lawyer. That was good. I needed a lawyer. And, you know, I thank god for him. Anyway, I put my head down on my little tin Toyota car and I, oh my god, please help me.

You know? Because I didn't know what to do anymore. I didn't know what was wrong with me because I was so naive. I had never met anybody like me. We had no one in our family get divorced.

I had an older brother who was an alcoholic, but we knew he was just weird. You know, who's an alcoholic? You don't hang out with alcoholics. He's his brother and thank God he's in Massachusetts because he's an alcoholic. I mean he was sober, he was sober but we didn't know what that meant.

And, so I don't know what's wrong with me. My psychiatrist, who I'm I'm seeing 5 days a week, I have group therapy with people who I think are very strange, you know, they had phobias and stuff. I had a psychiatrist for medication maintenance. I had a marriage counselor, except nobody was going anymore but me because my husband wasn't going. They made him come sometimes because I was, like, sort of on suicide watch.

I don't know. My psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist at Morristown Memorial Hospital said 2 things to me. 1, go to the bank and take all the money out before your husband gets it, which, of course, I couldn't do because the codepend inside of me says, I can't do something like that to that nice man who beat me up. So I didn't, and he took it. He was smart.

You know? I wasn't so smart. And, the other thing he said to me was, Marybeth, The person that you need to be afraid of the boast is yourself. He goes, he said, the one thing I have to tell you is that once you have been in the hospital like this, there's a thing called recidivism and if it's so easy to go into the hospital, you can keep going back and back and back and back. You keep giving up.

And I was so scared. I was standing in the parking lot of of the of Morrisstown Memorial Hospital and I was so scared because I I didn't know what was wrong. So I I I I that day with the Toyota, I'm, I go back. I'm I'm living this is a good one. I'm living at the at the house.

Remember the first guy I was engaged to left me at the altar? Well, maybe you don't, but I remember it. His mother took me in. His mother took me in. I'm sleeping in her attic.

Okay? So I'm living with her, and I'm standing there and I'm drinking some wine. I left I left work, and I'm drinking some wine in her house, and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do because I'm so lonely inside. I'm so lonely, you know, I don't feel God.

And, I call up Lou Anne, the one who escaped from the psych ward. I mean, I have no friends. You know, you don't call people you're in the psych ward with. So, anyway, I, I call her up. Her husband says, he thinks I'm an alcoholic, okay, because I was in the hospital.

So he goes, you wanna go to an AA meeting? And my brother had said, try to get to a meeting. My older brother saw my signs, blah blah blah. So he gets me, he says, I'll take you to a meeting. Now can I tell you something?

You guys, I am so naive. I don't know what alcoholism is. I don't know what it means. I don't know what it looks like except the guy with the bag on the street. So I go to this meeting and I sat down and I knew there was I knew someone next to me because I had recognized him.

He was a lawyer, another law. So that was God. But I knew there was a God because that's how I got to AA. I did not get to AA because I knew I was an alcoholic. I got to AA because God made this crazy woman's husband bring me to a meeting.

And I remember looking down and my God also knew how shallow I was And I don't mean shallow in a bad way, it's just the best I could do And I remember he had these really beautiful nice shiny shoes on and I thought I feel like for the first time in my life I'm at the right place And it's okay to be here because this guy has dignity because he's a lawyer with nice shiny shoes. That began a journey for me, and I didn't mean to spend my whole time here, you know, telling my whole my story. But, you know, if I've helped anyone in here re identify with their alcoholism and that loneliness inside and that uncomfortability, you know, then I've done what I needed to do. And certainly, it helps. It's helping me, and I need this to stay sober.

For if you knew me, I would never go back to anything that wasn't working for me. You know, if the party wasn't right or the people wasn't right or the store wasn't right with their nice clothes or whatever it is, I wouldn't stay. I have, roller coaster brain. You know, I get bored easily and blah blah blah. I still like drama.

It's still like excitement. But alcohol, can you imagine? I've been here almost 20 years. This April, it will be 20 years. How does someone like me who loves drama and this and that stay in alcohol synonymous?

All I ever wanted to do was join a country club or something, you know, or some club where you could put on party dresses and, you know, drink champagne and do the whole thing. And I'm in alcohols anonymous sitting in AA meetings, drinking sometimes good coffee, sometimes bad coffee in squeaky chairs. Because something happened to me in here. I believe you guys. Your message has depth and weight.

In the beginning, I was not introduced to the big book. I got sober in a town where they weren't doing that. We skipped big book meetings because they were boring. Go figure. That's alright.

I I don't judge them at all. Those people held me together. I was shattered. I was absolutely shattered. They used to have to take me out of meetings for the 1st year or 2 because I couldn't sit still in a meeting.

I was so shot out. And one night, I remember I heard a guy sharing and he stood up to share and he goes, I thought I was crazy and I found out I was merely an alcoholic. And that was I came in here, on the second step, and then I came to realize that I belonged here. It's the wackiest thing. I found out that I was I, you know, that that I had this thing called alcoholism that my brother has, and I didn't know.

And I didn't know the blackouts. I thought I just didn't have any memory. I realized it took me 5 years in Alcoholics Anonymous to realize that I had blackouts and that all the stuff I didn't remember. All the years in college, all the years traveling in Europe, I don't remember things because I was having blackouts. Okay.

Duh. I went to my gynecologist at age 40 something, and I said I wanted 13 children. I have none. That was, like, huge for me. I did not drink over that.

But let me tell you, I wanted to kill myself over that because I wanted nothing but children. And I went to my gynecologist and she said, well, didn't you know that your eggs get a hold? And I said, what? You know, I don't know anything. I know nothing about life.

And I learned it all from you guys. I've had very patient sponsors. I've had people teach me things, I couldn't go to a wedding because I didn't have the proper slip underneath my dress. So it took a 2 hour call to my sponsor at 2 years sober so she could help me go to a store and get a slip to wear under my dress so I could go to the wedding and feel like I was okay. Okay?

I was crazy. And what's happened to me in these years over great sponsorship, and then eventually I got to the steps out of the big book, And let me tell you, that changed my life because I found out that step 1, meaning I have no power, is, like, the greatest place that I could ever be because having no power meant that I didn't have to do it. I didn't have to do this anymore. You know? My god would do it for me.