The 60th Gopher State Roundup in Bloomington, MN

Hi, everybody. My name is Carla Ralph and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Theresa. She knows from where we come. You know she, you heard her Friday night.

Woo, I love

love you too. We'll talk after.

Oh, well, I come from a, a little town in Los Angeles or the California called Tahunga, which is a suburb of LA and, and in Southern California, we like to call ourselves the Mecca of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Well, I'm going to have to go back there tonight and let them know that there are about 8200 people in Minnesota that would beg to differ with them.

I,

I just want to thank Connie and the committee for inviting my me and my husband to come out here and share this weekend with you. It's just been magnificent. The speakers from Teresa and Scott and then Kerry and Andrew and I, I know I'm going to miss, I'm going to miss. I'm just going down a bad Rd. Here, but

and Kelvin and and I know, I know

Paul right there. I did,

yeah. Yeah. And you know, OK, I'm not going to do that. But

and then Bob and Chuck yesterday were so inspirational with their history talk on how this got started. And and you know, we are responsible when anyone anywhere needs help and reaches out, we're there. And there's so many different ways to do that. My sobriety date, September 25th, 1987 in in

that's Alcoholics Anonymous and, and the ways that we can reach out and reach back and everything. There's just so many.

So I've been inspired and, and I'm going to go home full and I want to thank my loving husband for first coming out and taking his weekend to come out here and support me and, and just

just be here for me. He's, you know, I was 21 years sober and 51 years old when he and I got together. So I'm glad when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I wasn't standing around tapping my foot waiting for that one to happen. You know what I mean? Like

my boyfriend's are going to be here any minute. You know,

I can't stay sober if I don't have a boyfriend. And

but for you know what's funny about perception, You know, when my first year, it seemed like lots of people in my first Home group, they'd, they'd get a year, they'd get meet the love of their life, get married and go to law school. And it just seemed like that was the fast track in Alcoholics Anonymous or something and wasn't happening for me, you know, in fact, I forgot that I was still married and it took me 4 years to pay for the divorce. So.

Was a little foggy

but but he is the love of my life and he was well worth the wait. And Alcoholics Anonymous taught me that just anybody is not a replacement for nobody.

And you guys walked me through all that.

I want to thank Jackie for picking us up at the airport and just making us feel right at home and, and getting us settled. And, and she's been a whirlwind. I mean, you know, we don't need, we don't need a lot of hosting or anything. But boy, she's let us know where she was and

she's been running around this place just, you know, on fire for Alcoholics Anonymous. And,

you know, that's the way that's, that's how it is. I hope that if you're new, you'll come in and fall in love with Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, whether we're and, and I'm so glad that I clamped on to the, to the idea that whatever's going on in my life, the way I like, if it things are the way I like them, the way I don't like them, that I let them drive me in instead of out.

All I have to do is come in. I mean, when I'm a mess, I'm here. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is the best place to be a mess. You know, you're not feeling so good. We'll give you a paper bag, you know, stitch in the back. You know, it's OK. It's OK.

And when you're feeling good, come in here and share that with us too. You know, I've had to look bad and good and I've been upside down and all around and Alcoholics Anonymous and, and I haven't had to go anywhere and I've been able to stay sober. And I couldn't do that before I got here. You guys packaged these principles in a way that I could hear them and pick them up and use them. When I got here, I didn't have to be any more than I was or know any more than I knew. I just came. I just came the way I was and you guys,

you, you gave it to me.

So who am I to say no to someone who's asking me for it?

When I got here, I thought it was very important, like a lot of people have said this weekend, that I figure out why I'm an alcoholic isn't my crazy, dark, dramatic, violent, perverted family. If you had my family, you'd drink too. I've been in a a now long enough to know that there are people who live far worse lives than me and, and, and charm childhoods as well. You know, charm childhoods. And they sit right next to me in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There are people out in the world who who lived like Criminal Minds,

violent lives, you know, just unspeakable. And yet when they pick up a drink of alcohol, it doesn't do for them what it does for me. So they've had to find another way to get through that. So it, it's, it's not circumstance like that that made me an alcoholic. It shaped the way that I look at things. It shaped some. It gave me an inventory, that's for sure.

It didn't make me alcoholic.

What makes me alcoholic is that allergy of the body and that obsession of the mind. Once I start to drink, I can't guarantee if I'm going to have two or 22,

and once that habit is formed, it's well established in me. That's all I can think about South. In the end, for the last few years of my drinking, I'm either drinking or thinking about drinking. I'm drinking or thinking about drinking. It's all I can think about when I'm not drinking.

I don't know how to get out of that.

I don't want you think my childhood was all bad anyway. I had a great time in elementary school. 4th, 5th and 6th grade were just horrific. I had a great time. I was a new kid on the block a lot. My my mother was a single mom of two two daughters and we moved around a lot for the rent and so I found my way in. I was at kind of an outgoing kid. I don't know if I was at people. I hate that term people pleasing. I I think that we should use self seeking. That's what it is.

And,

and our friend, our friend Ron says. And and while you're using that term, if you can find anybody who you actually pleased as you were going about that,

that might be a journey worth taking. But,

but I found my way into these into the school situations just by figuring out what are we doing here? You know, are we running track? I got to be the first. Are we doing school politics? I got to be president. Are we are we doing academics? I got to know all the answers. You know, I had to be the first and the most and on in charge and on top, you know, and by the time 6th grade was over, I was tired. I needed a drink. You know what I mean?

Is when you're running the world and you're 10, that's a big job.

I was going to be the first woman president, the first woman to run a 4 minute mile, the first woman Major League Baseball player. You know, it was just like, oh,

I got my first social resentment behind a game of Spin the Bottle.

I know they don't even play that game these days. They just get right down to business.

But we played it back then and I was at my friend Leonardt house. So one summer afternoon, it was that summer between 6th and 7th grade, you know, going up into middle school, they call it middle school now. It was junior high back then. And, and a few boys, a few girls sitting in a room and we're spinning the bottle and passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey. And, and those weren't the first drinks I ever took, but these were the ones where I really started to connect the dots that alcohol would do something for me I couldn't do for myself. You know, it had an effect. And I started to catch on to that.

And anyway, the bottle we were spinning landed on me and I went off into the bedroom with one of the boys and we were both doing the same thing as far as I could tell. But when we came back out of that bedroom, they called him a player and me a slut. And I did not think that was fair.

I still don't think it's fair. If you want to know the truth.

But every sponsor I've ever had has told me the fair comes around once a year and it lasts 2 weeks. That's all you get. So, so much for fair.

We were in kind of a conservative area. It was a lot of time, racial tension and a lot of gang stuff and a lot of a lot of stuff going on, a lot of anger, a lot of angst. You know, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated. It was just a troubled times. And the teachings of parents were coming down through kids, kids that had been my friends, good friends the year before were now it was changing and

and boys my age were looking at me funny. I got a reputation after that game of spin the bottle that ran through junior high like wildfire. And and I found out years later that I wasn't doing half of what some of the other girls were doing. But you know, I didn't get those,

those principles of those unwritten laws like good girls do and say they don't or don't say they do or something like that. I don't think I still get it right. But

you know, and, and so I had this reputation and, and the way that I am is for a while, I'll fight and then I start to back away. I just set it down. I back away. My pride kicks in, my feelings are hurt and I just back away. And I started hanging out more in the girls room than I did in the classroom with the other girls who were backing away from their lives. And we'd bring stuff from our mother's medicine cabinets and from their liquor cabinets and hang out. And after a while, school just wasn't working for me anymore.

And because of all the stuff that was happening at home, school had been my last bastion of refuge. It had been where I went to. There was no, you know, when you're doing schoolwork, there's no emotional subjectivity. You know, you do the work, you get the grade and you move on. It's, you know, you, you got the validation right there. And, and so that was all over. And at a very early age, any talent OR, or gifts or potential that I had, I began to trade away for the effect that alcohol would produce. And I did it willingly.

I didn't understand the gravity of the consequences, but I did I, you know, I just saw it. And alcohol was better.

Alcohol did the growing up for me. Alcohol was the cool for me. Alcohol was the maturity for me. It did it all. It was the spiritual experience for me. I believed in God. I believed in God up till then. Before that I'd taught Sunday school. I'd been out in the parking lots helping you find Jesus, you know, in the parking lot and

you know, but I'd go to church and somebody show up with a bottle of Strawberry Hill and over

and I started to leave home. I just started to leave home because for me, Hope is out on the open Rd. you know, Hope it just seems like it's just just just a mile away, just just up there, just over the hill. You know, all it takes really for me is a long, slow train whistle in a Willie Nelson song and I'm on the road again, you know what I mean? So I'd get out there on the on ramps of the 10 freeway going east and the one O 1 freeway going north and I'd stick my little thumb out and I'd crawl in the car, the truck going wherever with whoever and I'd be on my way to somewhere else. And I love that feeling.

For me, that felt like the bottle in the glove compartment, You know, I didn't even have to have that sucker open, you know, I just knew any minute now it was all going to be OK.

Now, consequently, because of that, I was young and I started getting picked up and I found myself being treated to some of the Southern California hotspots like Indio Jail and Riverside Juvenile Hall and

Central Los Angeles Juvenile Hall. And, and they sent me home to mom and home to dad. And we did that whole dance for a little while. And when I was 14, I found myself in a place called North Beach, a girlfriend of mine and I had gotten a long ride all the way from a place called Isla Vista, just outside of Santa Barbara, all the way up into San Francisco. And this guy plunked us down in the middle of a

of North Beach. North Beach in San Francisco, a little party town.

We got out there and looked around and there were hookers and dealers and pimps. Oh my. And

we weren't on that street 1015 minutes before a couple of guys approached us and offered us money for sex and we said yes into the next indicated thing and boom, a whole new career path opened up for us. And I started living a day at a time in a way of not had to live in a very, very long time.

And I started letting old men stick needles in my arms. And my life began to change dramatically from there.

Our book talks about our alcoholic life seeming the only normal one. And it certainly was that for me. It just seemed to me that there were more people out there doing what I knew to do what made sense. You know, you traded away. You traded away a little piece of this, a little piece of that. My dignity, self respect, Anything I knew to be true was I'd trade away for a better idea.

When I was 15, I was being admitted to a mental hospital.

They weren't talking to me a lot about alcoholism, they were talking to me about disorders. I was very disordered looking child by that time. I was alternately violent and withdrawn and living with a level of frustration down in my gut I didn't know how to talk about. I didn't know how to describe. I didn't know what made sense. I didn't know what mattered anymore.

When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous many, many years later, I heard someone describe it as like being a scream without a mouth, and I thought you guys know, you guys know, but I didn't know back then. So they were treating me with daily nutritional supplements of thorazine, malaria, Valium, down main sleepers. That was the treatment for what I looked like. I'd become intimately familiar with five point restraints.

You know, they didn't know. I didn't know,

you know, they find out by trial and error as well. And I didn't know how to tell the truth. I didn't know what the truth was. I didn't know what the questions were.

It wasn't until I was tired enough and out of ideas enough that I came crawling into Alcoholics Anonymous 14 years later,

picked up the tools you handed me, and when I started to use them, they worked. That's how I know I'm alcoholic. That's the only way I know. But I had to be Tom. Father Tom always says you got to be pretty sick and tired to find us interesting,

you know? So OK, I'll try.

But until then, man, it's a wall.

And if you don't want to go crazy in the nuthouse, you got to get busy. And one of my favorite ways to be busy was alcohol. Was was alcohol? Was boys, you know, you got no alcohol.

And you know, I've already told you that I love all the boys, but my favorites are those sexy, smoldering types. You know the kind. They just sit back there and simmer, you know,

you just never really know when they're going to blow.

I know we got some of those in here this morning.

I see the smoke curling up from the corners, you know,

But the trouble with guys like that in the nuthouse is they're usually hiding from a junior prison sentence, you know, they're, they're trying to stay out of YA. They're trying to lay low in the nut house, you know what I mean?

Yeah, that'll work. Lay low until they blow and and they blow eventually. You know, like my first boyfriend, he blew and he threw a a chair through the big plate glass window over the boys unit. And then they, my second boyfriend, he blew and he threw a nurse through the big plate glass window of the metal of the boys unit. And they've since replaced that big plate glass window with plexiglass.

But

you know, I,

we'd sit around and we play those romantic,

sentimental jailhouse songs, you know, like who, when will I see you again? And, you know, just press our little faces against the, the plate glass window in the girls unit and long for what we couldn't have across the pool. You know, the boys unit was right over there. Isn't that where that feeling is though, too? In the longing? Isn't it? In the longing? It's never in the getting you get you got to get another way. It's not good enough, you notice, but it's in that

anticipation, isn't it?

As soon as I as soon as I get there.

But I remember one afternoon sitting outside on the smoke break bench, watching my boyfriend Terry being cuffed and escorted off by security. He's the one who threw the chair through the window and he's gone. He's gone. He's out of here now, out of here for good. And I can't believe it. And I'm smoking my tragic cigarettes and channeling Greta Garbo.

And just inside, you know, I've always thought I should have a soundtrack to my life, you know, music playing in the background of all this drama. And just inside the girls unit, I can hear Diana Ross sing in a top decibel. Touch me in the morning and just walk away.

And it took me a long time to realize I was broken hearted and blue before I ever had a real date.

Because it's the way I'm looking at my life and it's what I'm looking with. And I'm. And the trouble with that is I'm always about half a bubble off what I'm looking at anyway. You know, I mistake what's out there. You know, I, I, I'd mistake arrogance for confidence. I'd mistake sex for love. I'd mistake brute strength for strength of character. And I'd get it up in my hot little hands and it would just turn to dust because it wasn't it, it wasn't it. I had to come to a A to learn that it's when I'm giving of myself that that gaping hole in my soul gets smaller. Never going to come from out there.

It's deep down inside,

but I chased it, you know, I chased it with the fur. I was a busy girl in the in the, in the mental hospital. I went from the girls unit to the Coed unit to Ward D where they put all the patients. They just don't know what to do with anymore. I turned suite 16. I was supposed to be there two weeks. I ended up being there for a year. I just, you know, sort of made myself at home. I found every escape way route out of that hospital, whenever I'd get thirsty enough, I'd go over the wall or under the gate and, and be out for a week or two and have a party. And when I was tired, I'd come home.

I'd come home through the front door because I lived. That's where I live, in the nut house. And they parked me again and I went over for the last time and met the love of my life there on that last unit. And I was a vision for you. By that time. I had casts on both my arms up to my shoulders because I've been cutting, because that was a whole different way to change my reality. Had nothing to do with suicide. It was just a release.

I was no longer bathing or getting dressed because you don't have to do that to date in the nut house. And

and I met the love of my life there on that unit, went over the wall with him. And word had it I heard just a couple months later that they saw my little foot go up over the chimney and over the wall eventually and back into the car. And they said, wait, just give her a minute. And that was the last time I left. You know, I'm back in juvenile hall and waiting for placement, sitting in front of a judge, waiting for placement. My dad used to say they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla. And perhaps they did. Perhaps that's what happened.

I'm one of two remaining siblings in my In my family,

we had out of four,

one died a suicide at 17, the other died of drug addiction at 30. And, and my youngest sister is in Wisconsin now and she's a, she's just had a double mastectomy and she can't stop drinking.

You know, no matter, no matter what, no matter what, can't stop drinking.

So

most of my adolescent life was in one rehab or another. You know, they're just trying to trying to find the thing, right. And I'm sometimes I'm in and sometimes I'm not. You know, I can walk the walk and to or talk the talk inside and I tell you everything you need to hear. And I went into the rehab that was kind of based on synonym was working, you know, way back then. And, and so they they had this adolescent program where you wear signs and, you know, two very prophetic signs they made me wear. The first one they made me wear was I think I'm Tough but I'm only a cream puff.

And the next one was Know It All Starts Again

and I hope I never forget that one.

You know, when I think I know it and when I think I know I got no chance of learning what really is.

So I ended up in a girls home at the end of all of that. I was 17 and I met my roommate and, and we were on the same page. You know, I, I, here's where I just want to tell you that I've always believed in God. I told you a little bit about that earlier. I've I believed in God. I never doubted. There was some great power that runs in and around and through us. I felt it before I ever had a resentment or ever had a drink. I was very, very young, you know, 3-4, five years old laying in my bed. I knew there was something,

but I just couldn't stay tapped in, you know? I just couldn't establish and maintain some kind of good relationship with that. And I didn't understand it. And then the more ideas that would come at me, the more confused I'd become. And when alcohol came in, man, it just smoothed the edges over all of that for me. It seemed like it hooked me up, hooked me right back up to that spirit that I knew. And the trouble with that is, like Teresa said Friday night, then it dumped me, and that's why I'm here. Alcohol became the power, and then it dumped me and I had to find a power bigger

because even though it dumped me, I was hanging on to its ankle.

Please.

You know, I tried it all. I was born into a Southern Baptist home, and that religion worked very well for my mother until the day she died just a few years ago. You know, worked very well for her. I couldn't hear it. You know, we always talk about how they don't have it. No, they have it just fine.

Kelvin said it last night. We're on. We're on the short bus, man.

We had to have it delivered special.

We rent from them. Do you get that?

Then I tried being a Catholic for a couple of weeks in the,

you know, I, I love the idea of A and, you know, I see those little girls in white dresses and the missiles and the rosary and the candles and the prayers. And I thought, God, something like, that's got to work, you know? And then I burned black candles and prayed to the other guy for a couple of years. You know, I just hedging my bets really. You know,

I just want to be on the side that's winning. I don't really care.

In the television series Kung Fu came out, you know, David Carradine was a star of that show and, and that dude walked the Wild West in bare feet. You know, he was cool. You know, his, his name was Kane. And he just walked from town to town and, and, and, and people, sometimes people would greet him. Whole groups of men would greet him with great hostility sometimes just cause of the way he looked. You know, they didn't like the way he looked. He was, you know, just didn't look like them. And, and he, they'd greet him and they'd attack

verbally, you know, and, and, and pearls of wisdom just rolled off his tongue, you know, just,

and they change and they go off to help somebody, you know, just like in a minute. I thought, oh, that's power. That's real power. They walk to another town and they greet them with great hostility again. And this time, they'd attack him physically, you know, And when they did that, he kicked their ass.

And I wonder what he had, you know, it seemed like he was a perfect balance of strength and serenity, you know?

And so I've got all these ideas, and I get to this girl's home later on. And my friend, she's on the same page now. That combined with the idea what I thought the 60s were might have been had I been out there in them. I was 12 and 69. So they were over by the time I got out in the world. But I used to watch the news. I watched those people in the 60s. I mean, they were tough. They marched. They said no. They stood up, right? They stood up. They said no. And they said they had Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Grateful Dead in traffic and blind faith,

you know? Yeah,

they had peace and love and free love. And I wonder what they had. And so my friend, she's on the same page, my roommate in this girl's home, and we're talking to our friends. And our friends said, yeah, man, those people, San Francisco's gone to sea. But those people moved to Oregon, and we said there's people and they're in Oregon. So we went out the second story window, that girl's home, and down the tree and into Randy's truck and off to Oregon where God might be.

And life was supposed to change from the outside in up there. You know, we went up there and we were going to live off the land. And they rented a little house in the Eugene Springfield area and they let me come with them and

and we planted a garden in the front yard. And that's where I learned that when they talk about hoeing in Oregon, they met with a tool. It was.

It's a whole different deal.

Two things happened to me that I couldn't couldn't see while it was happening, of course, but I saw it later. And, and one was when we couldn't always drink the way I needed a drink up there. I was trying to lay low too. I didn't want to go back to lock up. I just wanted to be unnoticed and kind of wander through through the world, you know, untouched anymore. And, and, but we couldn't. So I didn't try to steal or anything. We didn't. We couldn't always drink the way I needed a drink. And when I can't, and when I've got no steps or fellowship or God am I understanding, I've got no booze.

I'm restless, irritable and discontent. And my life becomes quickly your fault. Everything that happens to me becomes your fault. And I'm edgy and, and, and you can't approach me and I and I'm just, and I'm just like that all the time. And, and when I can drink the way I need to drink, I'm always overshooting the mark. And that was happening again and still at 17 years old,

and I was asked to leave there. And I was asked to leave a lot of places. And I always ended up in the woods out there. You know, the woods was an alternative I learned about in Oregon. And I like that, you know, it's a little little cooler, a little more peaceful. It's a little, you know, a little more worthy of the delusion, I guess. I don't know, I, I just sit out there, eat LSD and look for hobbits, you know, and just

hoping

it's got to be true.

I ended up back down to my father's house against his better judgment, and, and he let me stay there for just a few months. And now my father, he comes from a long line of Alcoholics and his father was a violent, violent alcoholic. My father's an untreated al Anon and, and he just, he does not like the idea of being detached. He thinks that we're trying to tell him not to care and

but he had this beautiful liquor cabinet in his hole in his den and, and he never drank from it. So I figured it was there for me. And every morning we get up at the same time and he'd take off for work and I'd go sit in his den and I'd drink from his liquor cabinet until he'd come home in the afternoon. And he'd see me sitting in the very spot he'd left me that morning.

And I'd see that look at his in his eyes, that broken hearted look. We all know that when we look into the eyes of our loved ones. And. And I'd have nothing to say for myself. I didn't know how to tell him. I was afraid. I didn't know how to tell. I didn't even know that was what I was. I didn't know how to tell him. I didn't know over the last few years of my life had gone.

After a few months of that, he just couldn't take it anymore. And it came to me right before my 18th birthday and he said, I, I,

I'm not going to watch you die and I'm not going to help you do it. You got to go. And on my way out the door, all I could remember is that one of the counselors at the rehab and told me I was a great actress. And I know today I must have misunderstood because I ended up out on Hollywood Blvd. and not a lot of auditioning going on out there. I can promise you that.

I was 18 years old, start my days off with a pineapple vodka and I just go wherever the day took me. And some days it was a party and some days it wasn't.

There was not a lot of hope about it getting any different. And to this day, I love driving down Sunset Blvd. Hollywood Blvd. and I get to see a whole new generation of the same girls sitting out there with very little hope about it getting any different. Only now I get to say a prayer of gratitude for myself and a prayer hope for her that maybe someday she'll get to find what I found here in a a if alcoholism is a problem.

A few months into that I met a man walking out Hollywood Blvd. and I saw the light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was orange sunshine. But we hit it off and and I moved in with him that night and I didn't even know his last name. And six weeks later, he's asking me to leave and I still don't know his last name,

but I like to bring him up because years later he was on my eight step list. He was someone who just I barely got the writing done when I knew, you know, we just got some of those people. We know we're ready, willing, able. Boom. I'm, you know, I, I know what I need to do with him. And I mean, he been nothing but kind of me. He had his own problems, but he had been nothing but kind of me. And I went through his life like that proverbial tornado in six weeks.

So I spent the last part of my first year looking for him to find a year of sobriety, looking for him to make to, to make those amends. And, and you know, I, of course, I couldn't find him. I went everywhere I knew to look. And not knowing his last name makes it more difficult.

But there was something, there was something in my heart that took that search, you know, and, and on that search, when I went to this one place where we had lived, it was right off of Highland on Camrose, right behind the Hollywood Bowl. And there was a little section of houses there. And the day that I went there just to ask around about him, they were having a big old yard sale because they were getting ready to transform that little neighborhood into the administrative offices of the Hollywood Bowl. And I felt like it was just, you know, doing my 8th and ninth steps, such a, such a symbolic

idea of transformation for me. I got to go and they were moving on. And so was I. And so I went back and told my sponsor that. And she said, you got to stop looking for him. Now you're being unproductive. You're kind of chasing your tail. If you're supposed to find that guy, you'll find him, but in God's time, not yours.

So leave it alone for now. There are some things you can do in the meantime, you know, go about your business, try to finish your other amends. But you know, you can like, change your behavior now. Like start by trying to be a friend to man to a man in a vertical fashion. Why don't you start there?

You know, all these years later, I got friends of both genders. You know, there's nothing like that feeling of self respect. You know, right up there with that feeling of being useful is that feeling of self respect. And you, you can't take that away from me. I can give it away, but you can't take it.

Right before my 13th a a birthday, I had to go give a talk on the other side of town. It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I didn't feel like going. And thank God. You guys have taught me. It's not how I feel. It's what I do that matters. You know, I went out there and I used to think I could blow off a dinner for two and not be missed. Really, you know, I just

doesn't really matter. But don't you dare not invite me, you know?

So I went out and gave that talk and of course, I felt better. And when the meeting was over, this man stopped at in the in the receiving line and he said, hey, where were you in 1976? And it was a guy from Hollywood Blvd. standing in front of me with 8 1/2 years of sobriety and I with almost 13.

So I got to make those direct amends to him. And we went to dinner and, you know, I'd ask him, you know, I told him what I knew and the harms I was aware of and what I could do to make those right and and

asked him if he had anything he needed to say. And most of his sentences started with, Are you sure you want to hear this? And yeah, I guess so. But he said, you know, Carla, that's long forgiven, long forgotten. I just can't believe you're still alive. And and he's right. You know, if we're in this room this morning, we're the lucky ones. We're the lucky ones.

Somehow, someway, we've managed to slip through that window of grace one more day to come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup and then see what we can go back out there and pack into the stream of life.

You know, grace falls on all of us. But we got to do something I'm responsible for for answering that call. Sobriety was a call to wake up. But I've got to answer,

at least it seems to me, because there are an awful lot of people that belong here that aren't here.

A lot of people dying that could be alive, maybe. I don't know,

but that was a long time to come and I left Hollywood and and you know, I hooked up with I love to be with those guys that you pay the high price for being with them. You know, there's just a there's this much pay off and that much price, you know, just seem like it's worth it or something or, you know, it's just no fun if if you're not hurting her. I don't, I don't know what it is, but

I, you know, I, I hooked up with another guy from another rehab because that's where they keep the boyfriends and girlfriends, you know, and

we're both loving the idea of peace and love and all that stuff. We just couldn't stop knocking the hell out of each other really long enough to implement the principles fully of peace and love. And we beat each other up and down the California coast and pitched a tent in the mountains in Southern Oregon and lived there till the rains came. And then moved into a ruthless cabin just north of Grants Pass and threw a plastic tarp over the top and called it a skylight. And the baby came and,

you know, back out in the woods again, you know, and prayer and meditation. I tried that, you know, meditation and you know what it and it, but I was drinking and taking a lot of things too, to kind of try to, you know, expand and access that

that. And what I discovered when I got sober was that everything I'd put into my body trying to access that were the very things that blocked me. And then when I got sober, the only thing blocking me now is me. And that's a handful in itself. But

but we had this little girl and I thought having this little girl was going to change the way I live, change the way I look at things. I love this little girl. I loved her,

but we all know that alcoholism doesn't care who you love.

Supposed to be a little girl, everything else. And it became booze and little girl and everything else

and then booze and everything else. And she got in the way of one of our fights. You know, again, we love the idea of peace and love. We just, you know, couldn't, couldn't hang. And our book talks about moral and philosophical convictions galore. You know, I want to be that, but I have to be this. I don't know how to get from here to there.

I want to be. I swore I'd never be this

and I'm this more than ever.

She gets the she got in the way of one of our fights and I had to take her up to Idaho. It's got to be better up the road, right? We're up in Idaho.

I've got three jobs tending bar and cocktail waitressing up there. I I still can't bring home enough money to pay rent for more than a week at a time. My kids, one of those kids that you see in her T-shirt and underwear in yesterday's lunch down the front of it because the moms not paying attention.

We live in the little rent by the weak motels up there. We keep moving, keep moving. After a while, Idaho's not working. We're back down in LA. I'm renting a room from my aunt and in an area called Covina and we're just about 35 miles from a a Hollywood where I got my job tending bar again, never occurred to me not to drink on the job. What else would you have? Those jobs seemed to me I was very efficient in my thinking. My daughter was almost four years old and every afternoon I'd kiss her goodbye and I'd take off for the bar in Hollywood and I'd stop at the halfway point,

which is a bar in Arcadia called The First Cabin. Stop in there every afternoon like clockwork and have my shots at Carville Gold and Bud Backs. Those are the primer drinks, the drinks that got me ready to go do my shift, get up off the bar stool and go out there and Hollywood and pour drinks and drink with everybody till the wee hours of the morning and crawl back home and start all over again. Did that like every four months. And one afternoon I kissed my real goodbye and I got up and I went and sat on that same bar stool, had those same shots of Gold and same Bud backs. And