The 23rd annual convention in Birmingham, UK

OK, it's that time, right? I've just now like to introduce one of the cutest, most colourful people that I know in Cocaine Anonymous. You're in for an emotional ride with her Share so have your Have your laughing faces and your hankies ready for Saturday.

Love you too, Lee.

Good morning. My name is Sarah Deanna Bell. I'm a grateful recovered drug addict.

I'm really nervous, my stomach is going and just really full of fear. So anybody who would like to join me, can we please just close your eyes and say Freya real quick,

God, I ask that you remove my fear, my

self centeredness, my egoism. I pray that you just come into this room and and be with us today so that we can feel your presence. And

please God, put something in my mouth that somebody in here needs to hear this morning.

Amen.

And so, yeah, like I said, my name is Sarah Dianabelle and I'm a grateful recovered drug addict.

Thank you, God.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about what it was, what it was like, what happened, and what it's like today.

I'm going to start off really young. When I was a kid, my parents got clean and sober and this fellowship about 6500 miles away from here. And so I grew up

in a 12 step household. My grandmother's been clean and sober and another fellowship since before I was born. And when I was about 5 years old, my mother and father got clean in this one,

we lived in a in a single story house and my dad built the second story on our house and built 12 stairs and on the front of each stair wrote a step. So by the time I was about eight or nine years old, I had these things memorized. And and the reason I tell you that is because knowledge clearly availed me Nothing.

Nothing.

But yeah, I grew up in a household where

there was always some, you know, some weird new uncle detoxing in the back bedroom. And,

you know, my friends would come and stay the night and be like, who is that guy? I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know. I woke up and he was having breakfast. I don't know.

My mother used it wasn't uncommon for my mother to just find people on the street and bring him home for a shower and a meal.

Really grateful that she was that example for me.

Excuse me, I'm, I'm like super nervous right now.

I feel so honored to be here and be able to share with you guys today.

So, so anyway, I like I said, I, I knew about this thing and growing up people told me that it was really likely that I was going to be an alcoholic so I shouldn't drink. And

to be honest, I didn't. I didn't start drinking until long after I became a drug addict.

And you know, I,

I remember as a kid, you know, everybody talks about it did just didn't quite feel right, you know, it didn't quite didn't quite fit in or whatever. And everybody has their reasons. For me, I was the fat kid and I was like, you know, everybody else. I grew up in a in a town where everyone was wealthy and we weren't, you know, and I never had the stuff everybody else had. And everyone was funnier than me and smarter than me. And I remember coming home from school and I'd be crying and saying I don't have any friends. And my mother would list my friends and I'd be like, no, their mom makes them play with

really like me. You know, that kind of that kind of stupid shit that, that I feel like I might not be the only one whoever felt that way,

but I, I remember, I remember the moment when the first time when I didn't feel like that anymore. And it was, it went like this. I've been hanging out with my friends. I was, I was 11 years old, OK. I was hanging out with my, with my friends who didn't like me. And, and I remember I, I never used to know how to stand. I'd be like,

you know, like I don't know how to hang out with you guys, right. And the

first moment I, I that that went away from me was we had stolen my friends grandma's cigarettes, right? And I took a drag off the cigarette and I went

and my head just like lifted off my shoulders. And all of a sudden,

you know, all of a sudden I could hang out with you guys

and you probably actually liked me,

you know, And

that feeling right there, I'll tell you, I don't remember the first time that I got high on marijuana. Don't remember the first time that I that I got high on, on LSD. I don't remember the first time that I got drunk. I remember that like it was in fact just now when I breathed out, my head kind of lifted a little bit. I remember that. I remember that head change and I chased that because for just a moment,

just a moment, I felt OK.

I was OK in my skin. And you know, I don't know that drug addicts and Alcoholics are the only ones that experience that not being OK with myself. But what I do know is that is that for me to try to fix that, to try to just not feel that way,

I started drinking and using and for me, because I have an allergy to alcohol and drugs, once I started, I couldn't stop and,

and it was really a lot of fun for a while. And then it just became sad, you know, and, and I, and about 15 years ago, 17 years ago, I had a lot of fun with party drugs and I had a lot of fun with class as and I had a lot of fun with all that stuff. And then it wasn't fun anymore.

And every place that I lived in, I turned into a crack house. And, you know, I had my children taken away from me. My personal story, this doesn't have to be anybody else's, but my story includes jail and mental institutions and my story includes homelessness and, you know, all the stuff that goes along with that to try to to try to get some money together to just not feel this way anymore.

You know, I don't really need to go into a whole lot of that because I think a lot of you probably know how to drink and use already.

I was looking for a way to do it successfully and I didn't find it and I was married for 13 years

to to heroin addict and I'm addicted to a lot of I was addicted to a lot of things. Never heroin. I, I did it plenty of times, but I wasn't addicted to it. And

for me, that's what a drug addict looked like, you know, So for for a long time,

so for a long time, he was my problem. You know,

I remember

I didn't think I had a drug and alcohol problem, but I knew I damn well had a husband problem.

And,

and that was actually really convenient for me because I never ever once had to look at myself. And everybody else in my life kind of played along with that. You know, if you just got rid of him,

you know, why are you still with that guy? And the truth is, you know, I would have had to do some work if I wasn't with him anymore.

The fact of the matter is that that it got to a point where it got to a point where I remember.

I remember waking up in the morning and before my eyes would open, I remember that feeling of,

oh God, are you really going to make me do this? One more day, One more day. And at that point of my life, I had all the stuff back. My kids were living with me. I had a house, I had a car. I was going to school. You know, I had

money wasn't that much of a problem for me. And, and in fact, the Class A's had kind of left my life. But what hadn't left my life was my addiction. And I was, I was pitiful. I was drinking in my basement

without, you know, without reprieve and doing legal hives,

and I never once had a good time on legal highs. Not once. If you guys never tried them, just really just don't. They're not even there's.

I couldn't stop. OK, I absolutely couldn't stop. And not once did I have a good time. And I remember and I didn't, by the way, before I tell this story, I, I didn't see the insanity of this until after I was already clean and sober. But I remember one one night I'm in the basement,

I'm scraping a pipe trying to get the last of this of this crap out of this pipe that so that I could feel the way that I didn't want to feel again, right. I'm like frantically scraping this crap out I didn't like so that I can get some more of it out. And I'm screaming at my husband as you were just fucking get clean. Everything would be OK.

So anyway,

it wasn't long after that, you know, and I, and I, and well, for about a year before this, I had been, I've been doing things like getting really drunk and then walking really close to the freeway, you know, kind of hoping that I trip and fall and, and get hit by a truck. And I was constantly getting these visions of like a bookcase crushing my head. And I couldn't, I couldn't kill myself, but I damn sure didn't want to be alive, you know? And if you're nodding, there might be something wrong with you

if you get that. Normal people don't feel like that.

And

and one day, my dad came to my house. And for 19 years, you've been watching me slowly kill myself. And,

and he and he kind of stood back, you know, bless his heart.

And he came to my house one day and I said, why don't you come to a meeting? I said thanks, but no. And he and he said, you know, you know, we feed homeless people at this meeting, you won't have to make dinner for the kids. I said, all right, come on, let's go. If I don't have to be a mother, I'm there, right?

So I'm at this meeting, The kids are fed. They're in this little like, daycare area

and I, this is no word of a lie. I'm in this meeting where it's literally my dad, my dad's best friend, a guy that works for my dad, my grandmother, my grandmother's best friend, and me. OK, that's it. That's it.

It's a topic meeting. The meeting is hope and they're sharing to me,

right?

This is a full four days after I'd ruined Christmas, right?

All I want to do is be dead.

And like I said, the topic was hope. I remember this really well. Everybody's talking about hope, how they got all this hope, how they talk to God, how God gives them hope, blah blah blah. And I'm thinking you lying sons of

if you have ever, ever felt like I feel right this minute, you would not be talking to me this way. There's no way, you know, and and I knew that whatever they had was not something that I could ever have. And weirdly enough, this man, I don't believe in coincidence. This man walked into the meeting. It was about halfway over. Everybody already shared already. I, you know, had my verbal diarrhea all over the place and

he came in. Everybody turns to look at him, right? It's like it's your turn to share.

Like, yeah, I'm not from around here. I'm from about four states away. I haven't been to a meeting at about seven years. And I was driving through and I don't know, something brought me here. He was clearly really uncomfortable with this little family reunion,

but he goes, he said. All I know is that when I pray, it gets easier. And he left the room. God brought that man to me that night, to me.

I went home that evening and

I was laying in my bed

and I and I heard a voice. OK, this was not my voice talking to me, this was a voice from outside of me, said Sarah. You can pray now.

I saw a light come up out of my chest, You know, may I may have still been hallucinating from the day before. All right,

I'll put my hands up to it. Whatever it was, it got me up out of bed and it got me on the floor. My knees were on the floor and my face was on the floor. I wouldn't, Tears were streaming down my face. And I said, God, whatever it is that I got to do, I will do that thing. I will do that thing. And it was the first, if it was the first real prayer in a long time for me. And what that meant for me was

I picked up a big book that just happened to be in my house and I started reading it

below and behold

and I come. I come from an area where checking the time here,

I come from an area where there's a lot of meetings anytime of day or night there. In fact, there's a there's a massive palace about about a 40 minute bus ride from where I was that literally anytime day or night, there's a 12 step meeting

of of various kinds. And I was,

I was hanging on tight. I was hanging on for dear life. And while there was meetings anytime of day or night of any fellowship that you may care to go to, I personally didn't hear a whole lot of message there, you know, and I was white knuckling it and I was hanging on and I was going to as many meetings as possible. And a kid did not, we would go, I mean, sometimes it'd be, you know, 10 meetings a week, 1011 meetings a week. And sometimes I'd be at this house and I'd have gone to one meeting and then I'm sitting there looking at what, what's, when's the next meeting on? And we'll go to whatever.

And my friends and I, I had a couple of friends and we would be hanging on to each other like this at a Codependence Anonymous meeting.

You know, anything. Anything. Please God.

And I was off the wall and

and I was hearing about people's dead cats and I was hearing about people's broken garage door openers and. And I just wasn't using today, you know, and I'm spending a lot of time in coffee shops and I'm ignoring my kids and,

you know, think, you know, by the grace of God, I stay clean and sober for a few months that way.

And my behavior was absolutely off the wall. And I was, I was using the using the rooms as a dating service. And

I got to tell you guys,

you are easy Pickens.

I mean truly, truly,

all bridges burnt, you know, show up at a meeting. She smiled at me.

Shit,

easy tickets.

Um,

but

God knew how to keep me in the rooms anyway.

So I found myself through this, through this series of events, just because I'd grown up around recovery and I knew a lot of people in recovery, a lot of people with a lot of long term sobriety. I ended up at this

at this business conference that I didn't really have a lot of business being. And

I was, I was pretty brand new. And, you know, I'm scouting and,

and this guy gets up on stage and he's got a cool accent and he's talking about God and he's talking about the solution of recovery. And I hadn't heard a whole lot about that and

and I was going to have me some of that. And

so anyway,

Long story short. And he came to visit me for a weekend, not to do step work and

and he took pity on me

and ended up taking me through the work. 13123

so.

I don't necessarily recommend it, but it's my truth.

It went for me,

but you know, something happened

and

a lot of things happened. And in that weekend,

he, he took me, he took me through the, through the action steps in about 18 hours, all right. And I was positively terrified. I'd never done a proper Step 5 and and I didn't want this guy to run away, all right. And I knew, I knew it was the, the chances were high, right? If I read him this, I But I also didn't want to die

and I did a terrifying thing and

the man was crazy enough to stay.

I caught fire really quick, you guys really, really quickly. I got pregnant really quickly as well.

And

I was, I was sponsoring it at about four months clean and sober. And I was, I was running around. I was running around. This is the way. Do this or die, you know, And I'm, I'm yelling, I'm yelling at old timers, you know, 20 years, you are murdering people,

you know,

and I stay clean and sober, guys,

you know, I've mellowed a little bit since then. I don't say everything that comes to the forefront of my brain.

But I was absolutely on fire, absolutely on fire. And, and it was a good thing I was because I'll tell you this, it didn't. It didn't necessarily go easy from there.

Fast forward a little bit,

I'm Simon has had to come back to the UK is his visas run out and I'm I'm going to have I'm going to have the baby in the States. I'm about I'm just past the year clean and sober. We're trying to do this long distance thing. Valentine's Day about four years ago now he had to fly back to the States because the baby was going to be born. The most beautiful day of my life, you guys, he proposed to me in the hospital on Valentine's Day. Well, I know what a gentleman, what a lovely man. And,

and we had a beautiful baby boy

and 11 hours later he passed away in the hospital.

And, and it went like this.

They were working on him in the hospital, you know, and, and I'm praying and I'm praying with these guys. Don't let my baby die.

And

and after a while, it becomes pretty clear that that prayer is not going to get answered the way that I wanted to.

And my prayer changed. About 10 minutes in, my prayer changed

and I pray. Please God, let me be an acceptance of whatever happens here today,

and let me just put that into perspective for you.

My trigger previously was consciousness.

Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't be, I couldn't be conscious without taking a hit or without taking a drink. And,

and the worst thing in the world happened to me on that day.

And I just prayed to be OK.

You know, we went back to the went back to the hospital room and, and Simon and I prayed together and we just prayed. Please, God, let this be. Let this help somebody.

The nurses were offering me drugs. You know, I just had a baby. They're offering me pain medication. And I and I didn't think I'm a drug addict. I can't have that. My answer was no, thank you. I don't need it. I didn't didn't fight it because 10th step promises had come true for me. I was placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected.

And a nurse came in and everybody, everybody around me was saying it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK. And this nurse said don't listen to them, it's OK right now.

And it was, you know, and today, today I try to remember that it's not going to be OK. It is OK. Worst case scenario is still okay. And God's got me,

however

disconnected,

you know, not not in communion with my higher power. Look at me funny in a meeting and I want to go get drunk and kill myself.

You know, that's my story.

So what did we do?

We were in a meeting the next night sharing about it, you know, and, and that following week, Simon and I both took somebody through the step work because that's what that's how we know, that's how we know how to live. That's how we know how to survive. And, and I'll tell you this, if you put, if you put some groundwork in in the beginning and you get some good practices in place, when life hits, and it will,

when life hits, you'll be protected, you'll be golden, you'll be all right. You know, just keep doing this. Just keep doing this one more day, one more day. And after a while, it gets easier.

The Big Book tells me to the exact, to the precise extent, you know, that I give, that I give everything to God and I trust in him wholeheartedly. That much is as much serenity as I'm going to have in the face of adversity and calamity, you know?

And I know that to be true in my life today.

So, so the plan was that I was going to come to the UK and we were going to have a happy family here and everything was going to work out great. And, and what really happened was I'm not, I'm not really the type of girl that the UK wants hanging around a lot.

They didn't say yes. Sarah, we would like you to come live here with your three children by a different father. We're happy about that. Please come join us. That's not at all what they said.

It took over two years and, and, and into the thousands and thousands of pounds. And

I love this story.

I also, I, so I was here, I, I showed up and, you know, just showed up with my cases and my kids and we had to really fight for residency. And in the meantime, I got pregnant. We had another baby here. He's three years old now. He's beautiful and wonderful and.

And have a wonderful mother-in-law who's at home watching him now.

She is Jay

Beautiful.

So this is a really cool story. We had exhausted every last penny. I wasn't allowed to work, right. We had come, we had come to the very, very end of our financial abilities. We had we had borrowed money. We had sold everything. But friends had done fundraisers in the States. People had brought, you know, got money together to, you know, to help me get through this legal stuff. And we got to a point where it was, it was

two weeks until we had to have something around £3000

together. And we had, we simply didn't have it. It was that was it. And then we were going to get deported. OK. So Simon and I sat down and we thought, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And we came to the conclusion that, well, maybe I wasn't meant to be here. Maybe I've got to go home.

And so we, we, we kind of just said, all right, God's going to take care of that. If I have to go home, I have to go home. And within a week of having that discussion, a check

came through the mail. They've been looking for Simon for about 5 years. It was a tax rebate check, OK. And it was 27 lbs more than we needed.

I'm not done yet

so I go to the bank to deposit the check and we're 26 lbs overdrawn.

So

with God as my employer, sometimes I get paid actual cash for this stuff.

So let let me tell you a couple things in that in that period of time when when I wasn't allowed to work and and there wasn't much for me to do but just sit in my house,

it just it just became the step workhouse. There was there were groups of women and they're constantly, I mean, I was taking groups 2345 at a time through, you know, I mean, once a week. We were just churning them out like a factory. It was just, you know, getting them out there, getting them out there, getting them out there. And, you know, so I think God had a plan for me, obviously, right. I was put, I was put where where I needed to be and I wasn't given a choice in the matter. And, you know,

thank God that I have that I have this work to do and,

and thank God that thank God that,

that I don't really

have a choice in what happens in my life anymore. You know, that, that I can just kind of give up and, and, and give it all to God and let God just sort of guide me because because I'm not the kind of person that would choose to give my time to other people. You know, I'm not the kind of person that would be like, oh, working for God, That sounds like a good idea.

What? What?

I'm selfish, you know, I'm really selfish and I'm a thief and I'm a cheat and I'm a liar. And I would, you know, I was never brought up to be. I wasn't going to be a nun or a missionary or something else that was going to work for God. So what God did to me was break me down hard enough to the point where I didn't really have much of A choice worked for me or die. OK, I get it. Because I was properly stubborn and I wasn't going to do it otherwise.

So I just, I just want to tell you a couple things.

Here's here's what I think about this program. People say all the time, I don't know how it works. It just works. We have there's a chapter in the book called How It Works.

I I know how it works.

How it works is this. I do what God would have me do and God takes care of it.

That's it. That's how it works. And because and because I am so blocked by selfishness and by shame, guilt, remorse, and regret, I have a really, really clear set of instructions on how to connect with God. Because I'm, I'm just, I'm just so full of myself that I can't hear him when he talks to me.

And that's how it works. You know, the step work is really, really simple. And if you're willing, it's easy as well. You know, the only way it ever gets hard or complicated is when you don't want to do it hard enough to make it hard and complicated. And,

and today I'll tell you this. If you come to me, ask me for help and then start fighting against me on stuff, I'll just tell you to go get drunk.

I'm a busy woman. I got a full time job.

I have six kids. I got a demanding husband.

I got a fellowship that I love, a legion of sponses and service work that I that I would kill and die for, you know, and a God that I do whatever I can for. And to be honest, I don't have time to argue with you about why you should do this. I don't. And there's other people out there dying who need your spot,

you know,

So I'll explain it to you. I'll even explain it to you a couple of times,

but at a certain point it's just time for you to go get drunk. And, and I'll tell you this,

those steps on the wall there, at least half of them mention God by name, right? This is a program about God.

I I don't, I don't particularly can let me call him. You know, you can call him whenever you want. I have a friend in the state that calls him Gus Guy upstairs. Great,

works for him. I don't care what you call him, but if you're like me and the amount of power that you have over drugs and alcohol once you start using is absolutely zero, you need something more powerful than you

and there's no human power that is that. You know,

if the God idea is a little too tough for you to swallow, maybe you need to try a little bit more controlled crack smoking.

Like I said, I don't care who you call them. I just care that you call them

and I'm going to tell you that I am recovered.

I am recovered. I do not fight the obsession for drugs and alcohol anymore. I don't fight it. I, you know, page 100 and 101 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me there's no such thing as a trigger. I know that to be true in my life. You know, we, I, I spent, I spent holiday, I spend Christmas, I spend all kinds of time with, with my husband's family. They're heavy drinkers, you know, and we have a, we have a good time.

You know, I go to weddings, I go, I do that stuff.

I get to, I get to be around people that I love who are absolutely shit faced.

It's hilarious.

I have a really good time and then I go home and go to sleep clean. It's over.

And that's one of the many, many, many, many, many promises that this program makes to me. And I can guarantee you something with 100% faith that if you do this program as outlined in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, you will never drink or use again.

Relapse doesn't have to be a part of your story. If it is, that's all right. You know, I mean, you're here now and you're responsible for what you do with your own out.

You know, you've been given a set of tools. Use them

so so here's what I'll say about about what to do if you're, if you're sitting here hurting, if you're sitting here brand new, look around the room and see if you can find somebody who doesn't look like they want to kill themselves.

And then ask them how they got that way.

And then do what they tell you to do

and the stuff that you don't want to do, do that first.

I,

I absolutely love this program. For me, service has been a massive part of my journey. You know, I've been, I've been in service to Cocaine Anonymous since I was three months clean and sober. And there has not been, there hasn't been more than a couple of weeks in a row that I haven't been to service to this fellowship. And it has kept me in very good stead. I'll tell you, I was just telling somebody the other day that I was, I was probably, I was probably almost six months clean. And

my, the area that I come from is very small, right. So we don't have any districts. And, and the first time I showed up to my to my new Home group, they made me the GSR.

And so I'm going to area 3 months clean. And, and I ended up also on the unity committee and I'm putting on a unity event and all this stuff, right. And I've got and I've got commitments at at various groups and, and I'm almost six months clean and I'm sat in front of this bar in my car and,

and I'm really seriously considering going in, really seriously considering going in. And my ego just would not let me tell those fuckers that I thought in the drama I was going to have to show up to all my commitments and say that I had gotten drunk. So instead I called my sponsor in the car in, in the parking lot of this bar. I said, what do I do? Because I don't want to tell you that I got drunk.

So while service did not keep me clean and sober,

service did put me in a position to be missed had I gotten drunk. And I knew that I had to do something when that when that black spot came, when that moment came, you know, there been a couple of times in my sobriety that I that I have, the thought has come. The thought has absolutely come. And

probably because I'm not incredibly disciplined, you know, people talk about they've not missed a single day of prayer meditation and they do this and that and the other thing and they're and awesome, phenomenal. That is not my story,

not my story. And what happens as a result of that is that I get really, really high on this program and then I get really, really low. And then I get really, really high. Then I get really, really low. But when I get really low, I just know that that means I've got some work to do. You know, I do have tools to take care of that stuff today. And what I do have to tell you is that I love getting high. I absolutely love getting high. And if I couldn't get high in here with you guys, I would get high out there.

I get high in here with you right now today, getting high with you guys. I get high in my front room when every time I get on my knees and do a third step prayer with somebody new,

I get high and it's got legs. It's amazing, absolutely amazing. And I get high when I see my sponsee sponsor and other people and I get high when I see those people sponsoring other people. The, the ripples that I make in my world today are positive ones for the most part. And I got to tell you, I take a shower every day. Get on that.

I brushed my teeth twice a day

a little. Stuff like that. My kids have clean clothes. Do you know? All right, all right, I'll end on this.

I, I have a job where they've given me the keys to the safe

I and they know who I am.

They know about me and they still gave me the keys to the safe.

Crazy people.

You guys, I work for God today and I invite all of you to come and join us. You know, my, my, my dream is that

we're fighting a disease. And my dream is that, you know, we all get together as soldiers and fight this together. And whether you take 18 hours to go through the steps and take people through that way or whether you take 18 months, just get somebody through.

Don't make them show you willingness. I'll say that. Do not make them show you willingness. You don't show up at the hospital with a gunshot wound and the doctor says show me some willingness and keep coming back here for three months before I'll before I so you left. You don't.

I could get talking about that for 1/2 an hour, but I won't.

So yeah, get on board. Come and join us. Can you guys please, just as a little favor to me because I'm going to wrap it up now, could you please remain in your seats and and stay quiet until we get to all huddle up for serenity prayer? I cannot wait to do a massive serenity prayer with you guys. You have meetings almost over. Thank you for letting me share.