The 4th National Annual Drug Addicts Anonymous Conference in Jensen Beach, FL

So we have our final speaker for the evening. I see some of you notice the food. We'll have plenty more food tomorrow, but we have our final speaker for the evening.

I don't really know a lot about her, but from everything I've heard, she's she's a great speaker, probably gonna have a really good message and I'm really excited to hear her. I just met her actually, and she's a really nice person. So let's see, Tara.

Hi, my name is Tara, I'm a recovered drug addict. I am really happy to be here and I want

thank the committee for asking me to speak and thank Dan for speaking and anybody who's been involved with putting this together, I know it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort of a lot of people to pull it off. So thank you to everybody and I'm really looking forward to the weekend. OK, so my story I came from I was raised in Long Island, New York. I came from a very nice house. I was raised in a beautiful suburban neighborhood. I did not see alcoholism, drug addiction, nothing. I literally

raised in a perfect family.

The only thing that wasn't perfect in my life growing up was I got teased mercifully at school. So now they have all this anti bullying stuff, right? Everybody's aware of anti bullying and it's even worse now with the Internet. But

I was the tallest kid in school and I didn't have hair on my head. So I was like 8. I had like what a baby's born with and in my generation, if you were given this medicine, tetracycline, your teeth, your permanent teeth came in black, like really black. So I black teeth, no hair on the tallest skin in school. You can only imagine you're ugly. You look like a boy. Why don't you brush your teeth? And I would go home and brush my teeth with bleach and Comet. And, you know, I feel like

there was definitely something up with me from birth because I would come home from getting tortured at school and I'd walk through the front door and my mother would say, hey, Tara, how was school today? And I'd say fine, right?

I never cried, never let him know they get to you. The walls were up immediately. And so somewhere around 4th grade, I think it was around 4th grade, I was on the bus. And that's the worst place to be when you gang bullied because there's no escape, right? So

somebody stuck with WADA gum and with little hair I had and they have this phrase where you see red and that's actually a thing because I remember seeing red and then I didn't remember anything. It's like going into a red out instead of a blackout, I guess. I don't know. But when I came to, everybody who's backed away from me on the bus and a couple of kids had bloody noses and nobody ever picked on me again. And a lot of people like, yeah, good for you, that's awesome. But it really wasn't because it it became worse because I became invisible.

And I don't know if anybody can identify with that feeling at any point in your life, but that is probably the most intolerable feeling to me. Like, see me, notice me, right. So, you know, I'm the kid that what do you find myself in the cafeteria? Nobody talked to me on the playground. I would be literally the only kid that didn't get invited to a birthday party, you know, And I escaped into books. That was my first escape. I read

constantly. I mean, under the under the covers with a flashlight when I was a little girl just to make the world go away.

And

none of that made me an addict. None of that made me an addict, right? But what it did was it primed me for my first drug and my first drink of alcohol. It just primed me because what happened was when I was 12 years old, the most popular girl in school, I used to say her name. I've gotten better. I don't anymore. She was the petite little cheerleader. You know, all the boys loved her. She played the flute.

She never even like acknowledged my existence in school.

And I was in gym one day lined up in squad sitting on the floor and size order. So I'm always last. And she turned around to me and she said, would you like to come over my house after school and drink beer and smoke pot? And I looked behind me to see who she was talking to because she literally never said a word to me before that. And I don't say this to be funny. This is a God's honest truth. If she would have said a bunch of us are gonna knock off a bank after school and we need to look out, do you want to be on lookout? I would have been there.

It was the first thing anybody asked me to do, literally was do you want to drink beer and smoke pot? So you bet your ass I showed up at her house after school.

A lot of people, I hear them talk the first time they use, it's like, oh, I felt funnier. Oh, I could talk to boys. Oh, I felt, felt this, felt that. I felt exactly what it said in the big book. And it was a physical feeling for me. I was 12 years old and I remember it to this day. It was this feeling

that came over me that was like, I can do me now. I can do me now. And the big book calls at that, that sense of ease and comfort that comes at once, right? All of a sudden, I realized I can do me. You know, my husband hates when I say this, but it's my truth, man. I absolutely believe that drugs and alcohol saved my life. I believe I would have been a teenage suicide. Why do I say that? Because when I was in grammar school, I used to watch the teacher erase the talk off the chalkboard and just

that I could be the chalk and somebody could erase me and make me go away. Now, I bet I don't have a psychology degree, but I bet a psychologist would say that was suicidal thinking at a very young age, just not having the words for it, right? So I got this sense of ease and comfort and now it's on. I can do life. And I went from being invisible to now I'm hanging out with all the cool kids, right? Hanging out with all the cool kids. I went from, you know, my consequences at the beginning where I was a straight A student with perfect attendance. When you have no friends, guess what?

You're good at school. There's nothing else to do. I mean, we weren't Netflixing back then where you could just binge watch, you know, it was like, you know, and I was, and I read my whole life. So I was very, very good at school. And, and, and that's the only thing that gave me a good feeling was getting AIDS right is something I had control over. It's worked against me with perfectionism down the line.

So anyway,

I don't even know where the hell I am. Where did I leave off?

My husband doesn't listen to me. This is the man. I'm married, so he doesn't listen to me. OK, Thanks. Great days. Thank you.

So anyway,

I I got, I go from being straight A's and having perfect attendance to straight F and having to sign in with the attendance officer for 2 1/2 years. I was not allowed to go to homeroom because I was so truing right. So those are some of my consequences.

I end up, I'm engaged in high school. Wouldn't recommend that to my first boyfriend because, you know, wow, somebody likes me. If you kiss me, you have to marry me. It's still that way. Today. It happened three times.

I sorry, I'm not saying things didn't happen in blackouts, but you know, aside from that, I know I that's just who I am. You kissed me and got to marry me. I'm that type of girl.

So I'm engaged in high school to my first boyfriend and right before this big lavish wedding that my parents planned, I thought find him find out he cheated on me. And it wasn't a delusion. It wasn't part of my paranoid thinking. It was a fact. And I tried calling off the wedding And then you know, I had this thought which makes me so sad today to think of at 18 years old. This was my core belief from being bullied and told I was ugly and and all this my whole life was well I might as well marry him anyway because who else is going to want me?

So I married a man that she'd a boy. I can't even have equal 18 year old kid, a man I married, a boy that cheated on me right before the wedding because who else is going to want me?

So Needless to say, that marriage was set up for doomed, right? It's doomed now. In New York, when I was growing up, you could drink in the bars at 18, but I had never drank in the bars yet. I had drank in like the sumps or the woods or the beach or the park or the golf course, like stuff like that, if we weren't at somebody'd house.

So I got married and I moved to this place called Long Beach, Long Island. If anybody was ever there back in the day, that literally was a bar on every corner in the West End. All four corn, all four corners had a bar.

So I moved in across the street from 2 Bars.

So now I'm experiencing bars for the first time now because of my low self esteem back in the 80s, I wasn't one of these girls who went to clubs. I don't even know what clubbing is, but all I knew was that was for the beautiful people and that was not me. I like dirty old man bars that would that would dark right where there weren't a lot of beautiful people per se. Not that they weren't, but I felt more comfortable there. And what I realized very quickly going out to these cars across the street is that at 4:00 in the morning, a lot of guys think you're attractive and want to pay attention.

So I was like, what did I marry this idiot for? Like, look at all these guys. I, you know, there's plenty of fish in the sea, so they say.

So what did my drug addiction lead me to? It led me to being an unfaithful wife. And I totally justified that because you did it to me. That's not how I was raised.

That really went against who I was as a woman. It really bothered me,

but I rationalized it and justified it and I was in love with the guy, so that made it all good. You know, that the insane thinking of going to a hotel and taking off your wedding band and putting it on the night stand and saying, well, if I'm not married right now, that made sense. I mean, it really made sense to me at the time. It sounds insane, but that's was my thought at the moment. If I take off my wedding band, it doesn't count. So, you know, guilt, shame, remorse, you know, started pretty early for me.

Needless to say that marriage did not workout. We were two, two kids who were the only ones who had an apartment out of everybody we knew. Everybody still lived at home with their parents. So you can only imagine, Can you imagine whose house would you be hanging out at, right? And people are driving 40 minutes to get to Long Beach from Massapequa to hang out at our house. It wasn't a marriage. It was a disaster.

My drug addiction,

probably when I got separated from my husband, was at the absolute worst. I worked in Manhattan

and I used to, they used to have smoking cars on the trains back then going into Manhattan. And I used to sit there with my yellow Sony Walkman because music is my passion, you know. And I have my Sony Walkman and I'm sitting on the smoking car smoking a joint on the way into the city. And then I would stand, I don't know if anybody's ever been on the, on the subway in the city, but there's like these cars and they have like these two chains like in between the cars. And I would stand like in between the cars, like surfing, smoking another joint, watching the lights folks, you know,

like any wrong turn, it was over, you know, But I'm not looking at it like that, you know, I'm just so I am shit faced wasted by the time I get to work. And when I first started, like you can see the progression, man, when I got a job, I was working on 60th and Madison and they had me right up front in my in my fancy clothes, you know,

said I could meet the customers. And by the end they had me locked in a room in the back. They said don't come out there in business hours unless you have to pee and make it quick. You know, they didn't want anybody to see me. I'm going in in combat boots, ripped jeans and like, screw you. You're lucky I showed up, you know, I

just crazy. So at any rate,

very shortly after I got separated from my first husband, I was in a bar and I met my second husband,

married in six months to the day that we met. My parents were thrilled, especially after all the money they spent on the 1st wedding. They got a phone call that was like I'm going to marry this guy, the restaurant he works and is closed on Mondays. Would you rather find out before or after?

Man, if my daughter did that to me

right?

But I didn't hurt anybody but myself.

So I got married to my second husband and

the next three years were horrendous. His drug addiction and alcoholism were way worse than mine. God bless you and I mean that.

And eventually he ended up going to a treatment center. Now back in 1983, my, my sobriety dates August 24th, 1986. So in 1986, it was, I don't know if anybody, while some people have been around that long, but I got to tell you it was it was a different ball game back then, right? So I had never heard of AAI had never heard the 12 steps. There weren't treatment center halfway houses quarter three quarter. There was none of this was going on.

There weren't. It wasn't like, I mean, we have sitcoms now for God's sake's mom right with everything's about recovery. Like people are talking about it. It's it's common. It's

it was. I knew nothing about what the hell was going on when my husband got on a plane and went to Minnesota.

Treatment. Not a clue. I went out there for family week. I was three months pregnant and

I was brutal. I bought the sweatshirt. I survived family week. It was horrible. But I learned about I learned about alcoholism. So I thought I watched Father Martin Chalk talk. So I guess I learned and they recommended that I go to Al Anon and I was three months pregnant and I was not drinking and drugging at the time. And that is not a judgement in any way, shape or form for any women who cannot stop using during their pregnancy because I get it. I was able to and I'm grateful for that, but I just not a judgement.

So I didn't think I had a problem.

I got pregnant and I was able to stop and I can control it because I made a decision. So I had a hard time with step one for obvious reasons, but

I started going to Al Anon and I wasn't identifying and I love Al Anon and I think, you know, double winners are just that double winners. But for me, I heard a lot of, you know, my husband didn't come home. He spent the paycheck. My husband, I was used my running corner. We did everything together. So I didn't have, I didn't have that identification, you know.

So I started going to AA meetings 1st and

for a couple of years I would have told you a lie that I delusion that I totally believed was that I was going to meetings to support my husband because the poor guys an alcoholic and a drug addict. So the least I can do is support him and go to these cirrhosis by the sea meetings, as they call them. It was serenity by the sea, but we called it cirrhosis by the sea.

And I believe this delusion. But let me tell you something, our past has a big impact on who we are. And my biggest, biggest, hugest, bigger than life character defects

is jealousy and insecurity because I had been cheated on, because I had been given up for adoption as an infant, not wanted. Like all this stuff, Like pick me, choose me, want me? You're gonna leave me

and the real reason, and This is why I believe 100% they say you have to want this to get it. You have to want this to get it. I say that's bullshit. Half the people that come in don't even know they need it. I didn't. You don't have to want it to get it. You have to want it to keep it because it takes a lot of effort, at least for me. I have to put a lot of effort into living this design for living, living this way of life. But I didn't even know I needed it. I didn't want anything. But all I know is the only reason I came into a A and God used my biggest character defect to get me into

program. I went there to check out the women because I wanted to find out who was going to steal my man.

That's the only reason I walked into an AAA meeting. And that's the truth. And I started hearing things and I started identifying and I really felt good when I would be there. And they go around the circle and I, we have to introduce ourselves and I'd be like, my name is Tara. I'm a concerned person and everybody will let because that's what they, that's what they called me at family week. We were concerned people. So I'm very concerned for all you people, not just my husband. Now I'm empathetic, so I'm concerned for all of you and

you know, but I'm really feeling better going to these meetings. So I I grasp this, you know, there's

open meetings and close meetings. So I literally at a business meeting once said, I'd like to make a request.

You know, I know you have these closed meetings for you people who are really, really sick and but I really feel better when I come to these meetings. So do you think you could make an exception and let me come to the closed meetings as well? And the guy handed me a meeting list that was this sick for New York and said, honey, you can go to any meeting anywhere, anytime. They had been listening to me share for months, right? So he was like, come, just come. And I'm sitting there going, these people are so gracious. I'm not even an alcoholic or a drug addict. And they're letting me come to their secret meetings.

Awesome. They really are the most loving people and just accepting.

So Fast forward, I'm going to just tell you that I have 33 years. I'm holding a 33 year coin my husband gave me

but I don't have 33 years of sobriety. I had 19 years of extreme suffering.

I can tell you more about what not to do than what to do.

Not that I could tell you more, but I've had more experience with what not to do than what to do. So what it looked like they accepted me. I finally heard my story, you know, finally clicked. Oh my God, I'm one of these people. I'm all in there, right? So I, they said get a sponsor. I got a sponsor, get a Home group signed up that day, get a commitment. Back then we could smoke in meetings. I'm cleaning out ashtrays. You know, I'm going to a, a international conventions every five years. I'm going on retreats. I'm managing a sober nightclub. I'm going to sober Club meds for vacation, for God's sake.

I am the poster child for the 12 step programs of the United States of America. At least nobody's doing this more than me. And yet I'm suicidal and want to die and I don't understand what's wrong with me now. If you looked at my life from the outside, it was amazing because everything in my life got better, right? I have a husband who adores me. I have a beautiful home in Long Beach. I'm driving around the Saab convertible. I have my own business as successful. I went back to school and got my master's degree. I have a host of friends,

like everything, everything on the outside. You look at my life and you'll say it's amazing, but I don't know about the spiritual malady. I don't know what's wrong with me. And I'm believing the lie that drugs and alcohol in my problem. And once I put down drugs and alcohol, I'm going to be OK. And what I found out is when I put down drugs and alcohol, I'm a mess

because drugs and alcohol of the solution to my problem, just like that sense of ease and comfort I got when I first picked it up, it made everything OK. And now you take it away. And I would not wish on anybody to go through 19 years of suffering, going to meetings almost every day, having a sponsor, sponsoring people. Oh God, did I make amends to every girl I could find.

I loved on them really good. And let me tell you something. You people loved on me better than I've ever been loved on in my life. But I'm dying and I keep believing the lie. But if I get that, I'll be happy. I don't know if you can relate to that. If I get this, I'll be happy, right? So I'll give you an example of, you know, being discontent,

restless, irritable and discontent. I'll give you an example of that. I'm a car person. I love cars. I always have since I was a little girl. I'm stopped at a red light. This car pulls up next to be a convertible with really cute surfer dudes in it. And I'm looking at the body type. I'm like, I've never seen this kind of car before. What is that? And I let him pull ahead of me and it's a SOB Turbo 900 turbo convertible.

Camel leather interior. If I get that car, I'll be happy. I go get that car. I don't want to tell you how much I'm spending a month of that car, but I go get that car and I drive around Long Beach with the music blasting with my bleach blonde hair. I got it going on. I am happy. This is it. That hole in my soul is filled. Until two weeks later I see a candy apple red coming at me in the opposite direction

and I said I should have got the red one, it would have went better with my blonde hair. Now I am discontent driving around for the next three years with with a car payment because I should have got the red one. Because everything I think that's going to make me happy doesn't make me happy. And I don't know what's wrong with me. What is wrong with me?

I'm not drinking, I'm not joking. I have everything I've ever wanted and I want to kill myself. You think you could say that with double digits in a meeting? Hell no, hell no. And what about all my sponsees? I don't want them to lose hope just because I'm messed up.

So what happens

when my daughter was nine years old,

my husband Ram, he was body surfing in a hurricane September 18th just a few years ago, 2003. And my whole world has changed, right? So

I don't really want dwell on that. I have,

I do have. When they say you won't regret the past, the wish to shut the door on it. I do have a regret and I'll have it till the day I die and, and I'm and I'm I accept that I have to live with it. My daughter just didn't lose her father when she was nine. She lost both parents. For a while I was not able to handle her pain in mine. I had not gone through the steps. I was selfish and self-centered. Yes, there was a lot of grief, but it was selfish and self-centered. At a time when my 9 year old needed her mom more than ever in her life. I was not there for her.

Can't make, can't make up for that.

So I have that regret.

You know, I got through the first year. Everybody's like, oh, it'll get better Once you get through the first, whatever, whatever. Don't ever tell anybody that who's going through a major loss. Don't ever say once you get through the 1st anniversary, it's like, it's like people think when they get a year, something magical is gonna happen. In this program, nothing magical happens. You get a year in a day and after, after you go through a year of anniversary, guess what? Nothing magical happens. The grief is still there. It doesn't change it. So I was worse in year 2.

So I finally have this brilliant idea

that I know what will fix it. It's two years later. I got to find a man. Well, not a man, a husband. I do husbands. I got to find a husband

and a father for my child.

Now I go up to my friend Richie. It's been 2 years. Nobody's even asked me out for a cup of coffee. My husband who drowned was a detective in this very small barrier island that we lived in. And I went up to Richie and I, I looked as good as I've ever looked in my entire life back then, okay, I went to the gym six days a week with a trainer. I mean, I had bleed swan hair. I had a six pack. I looked as good as I've ever looked in my life. So it wasn't the looks.

So I said to Richie, what's going on? Not one guy's asked me out for even a cup of coffee. It's been two years.

He goes, there's something wrong, All right? I said, well, please tell me so that I can fix it, you know, because. So he says, well, Tara, the entire Police Department of Long Beach is watching you and Carly like a hawk. There's not a man with balls in this town big enough to ask you out because of it. They hurt you that I have to move to another state. So I was like, oh, OK,

so where am I gonna meet somebody? Man, My life is meetings, right? I don't go to clubs, I don't go out. So somebody suggests

match.com.

I don't know what the hell you young people are doing with swipe and left swiping right.

I don't want it now. I got a 25 year old daughter. OK, I don't know what you're doing, but we had match.com. eHarmony came along down the Pike and that was too many damn questions to fix fill in. But anyway,

somatch.com, how do I hurt my child?

I'm on a mission to find the one. If you ask me to pass the sugar at Starbucks, I look at you like, is he the one? If you'd say, excuse me in the supermarket, is he the one? I am on a Michigan.

I attract every weirdo sicko going. Why? Because like attracts like and I was very sick.

Now the woman I am today in recovery after going through these steps and having had a spiritual awakening. If I had a kid who was eleven years old

and you were dating me, you would not get to meet her until I ran a background check, until I knew everything about you, until I was confident that you were a man of integrity that I could trust. But I would bring strangers home and have them around my kid staying over. Mommy, please don't let him come here anymore. He scares me

sober. Oh yeah. Oh, how many years am I sober now? Let's see. 21, No 1718. Eighteen years sober.

My parents are seeing this, my sponsors seeing this, everybody seeing this. It's insane. What I'm doing is insane. But God will use anything to get you where he wants to get you. So what happens? I start dating this guy Brian

from my Home group, wasn't even my type, but we just end up going to a lot of funerals together. He didn't drive

another car

and he kissed me. Well then you know what happens once he kissed me so.

So anyway, my daughter loved Brian. He was great, big heart. I mean we laughed, we had fun, I said this could really work and everything was going great. So we hit a bump in the road, see Brian start smoking crack again. He had never gotten a year sober.

He lived at home. His mother helped buy him stuff.

And now my daughter,

who was raised in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, who had never had alcohol in her house, who was raised around people like you, who's never seen anybody drunk or high, I have this guy smoking crack in my house and my daughter saying, mommy, what's wrong with Brian? He's acting funny and I'm insane. My parents know that there's a crackhead living in my house with their granddaughter, and I get the phone call. They're living in Tucson, AZ. I am sober. This is 19 years.

Drugs and alcohol going in meetings every freaking day. Always had a service commitment. Always always had a Home group. Am I get a call from my parents, find us a one bedroom condo in Long Beach that takes pets. We're moving back to New York. They literally had to move across the country because they were worried about me.

I blew up my life financially. I can't even tell you, trying to fill that hole, my soul, spending money that I didn't have. I must lost my home

and cause more harm sober than I ever did. But God will use everything for good. And everybody thought Brian was the worst thing that ever happened in my life. Everybody thought was he was a disaster. He was one of the best things that happened in my life

because Brian said

a statement that changed my life forever.

We were sitting in the car and he said to me, hey, tell you know what?

I never want you to lose you 19 years. But I can't stop thinking about what it'd be like if we got high together

and every hair on my body stood up. You got, I'm around it. I'm getting him in and out of crack house. I'm in. I'm insane. You don't think that that disease was on me. It was like a cloak. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt I was going. I knew I was going. And at 19 years, I finally got the gift of desperation because the one thing I couldn't live with

was making that girl an orphan.

You may not be able to get clean and sober for somebody else, but it can give you motivation. And that gave me motivation. And I didn't want to die, and I knew I was going to die.

So I called this woman I had met at a Big book weekend,

Val in Virginia.

She travels around a lot. She's not easy to get in touch with. She answered on the 1st ring

and I am throwing up like literally ugly crying. I'm going to die I don't want to die I'm going to smoke crack. I'm just I'm around crack I'm going to smoke crack. My daughters father died she she's going to be an I can't even breathe I'm I'm not shining out and I take a breath. Finally let her say something and she asked me the most peculiar question.

After all that this is what she says. Have you ever read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous?

You know my response was, didn't you hear me? I've been sober 19.

Of course I've been to big book meetings and I had because I went to, you know, we had all different kinds of meetings, she said. Honey, let me rephrase the question.

Have you ever followed the specific set of directions as outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous? And I will tell you what my answer was, and I'm embarrassed to say it, but this is a guy

Azar's Truth,

its directions in that book.

It's not funny. It's not funny. And I'm not meaning to call anybody out. This shit isn't funny because you know what I shared for years? My name is Tara. And I choose not to use today. I choose not to use today. And if any, if I heard any of you say that, I wouldn't call you out in front of in front of anybody, but I would pull you aside outside and say, let me ask you one thing. I wish somebody asked me the question, if you could choose, what are you doing here?

Because what I learned is we've lost the power of choice. And what I learned, I mean, I was hooked at the doctor's opinion. The doctor's opinion saved my life. Because I'll tell you why I struggle with this God thing. And I could talk for an hour about that, but let's just say I struggled with it. But I'm not perfectionist, right? I'm that straight A student. So I have the sponsor, have the commitment, have the Home group. They say you got to get a higher power. So I didn't really want one. So they said, well, you can use good orderly direction, God, or you can use group of drunks God. And I don't want anything to do it, no good orderly direction. So I'll go with the group of drunks.

For 19 years I made a group of drones from a higher power. Now, you people loved on me better than anybody else, but you wouldn't have the ability to change my mind

because I'm beyond human aid. And when I hear a doctor, a man of science who loved us, saying over and over and over again, we're beyond human aid, we're beyond human aid. We're beyond human aid. And as the other guy said, Dan before me, I'm not going to use the word he used, but we're screwed. I can't fix me. You can't fix me. You can love me

but you can't fix me. Only God can fix me. When I finally learn it was like no wonder why I want to kill myself. I'm making a group of drunks my higher power, and they never had the ability to fix me.

You think I was willing at that point to believe? Hell yeah. My third step prayer was the most powerful thing. My third step experience was the most powerful thing I ever went through. My life has been changed from that moment

from despair and darkness to the most amazing radiant light, hope, joy. I am comfortable in my own skin. It changed everything, everything. And it was this surrender. And I'm a visual person. I'm just going to share this with you because this is what it felt like to me. I am in a plane and it's going down. I'm in a jumbo jet, right? I know I'm going to crash and burn. I'm going to smoke crack. If I don't get this thing, I'm going to die.

I'm the only one in the plane. The pilot has a heart attack.

It's going down. The wings on fire. There's no doubt it's going down, right? That's what the first step is. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And God says to me, Tara, jump out of the plane. So what it was. What would a normal person do, man? I start looking around for a parachute, right? I'll jump. I may not want to, but hell, I got no choice. I'll jump. I'm looking for a parachute. God, there's no parachute.

And he says to me, Tara, jump, I got you. But I'm scared.

I'm terrified. God is either everything or he's nothing. We're either all in or we're not. And I made a decision to jump that day. And in that moment of absolute fear of letting go of everything I knew, I thought I knew was this most amazing piece that came over me, which was shit. I don't have to figure anything out ever again. I was exhausted from trying to manage my own life. I was exhausted from trying to manage my own life. I don't know if you can identify with that, but man, I was

tired. I was tired and now I'm free because guess what? God caught me and he has not let go of me since.

A piece that surpasses all understanding rocketed to the 4th dimension of existence. This stuff is real man. I've experienced it. And let me tell you something that was 14 years ago and I can feel it as real telling you about it right now as I did that day, sobbing on my knees talking to my sponsor in Virginia. I'm telling you, this shit is real.

It's real. So she knew I had a powerful experience. Like you could feel it from Virginia to New York, man, I'm telling. And and she says, honey, this is great. This is great. I'm so happy for you. And I was so happy. And I'm sobbing like a baby. And she goes, all right, now I got to give you the bad news.

It's like bad news. Come on, let me enjoy this for a little while, man, she said. You just turned everything over to God, right? She goes. I really believe you did that with all your heart and soul and no reservation. I said I'm all in, I'm all in, I'm all in. His ways. Got to be petting him my way. It's got to be, she said. All the bad news is you're totally blocked from God.

Shouldn't I have known this before I jumped? You know, like

so I said, what do I do? I mean, I, I just turned everything, my will, my life, everything, my kid, my family, everything, my job, everything, everything, she says. Well, that's why we got to force,

honey. We're gonna find out what's blocking you. And she described it like a PVC pipe between me and God. And I need that power to flow in and through me, in and through me. It's clogged up with resentment and fear and jealousy and bitterness and and all this crap, judgmentalness, criticism,

pride, ego own the biggest one that I didn't think I had at all. We have a whole separate inventory for that. I guess it's a pretty big one. Fear, Oh my God, the evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence is shot through that. I wasn't afraid of shipment. Do you know the dark hours? I walked out and put holes in my hand through a wall with money, not known if I was getting anything back. I put myself in bad situations. I'm not afraid of shit. While I had to say that when I walked down that that dark alley, I'm not afraid of nothing. Why's that guy's afraid of freaking everything,

Everything.

But I have a God who's bigger than any fear I have had, and he's removed all those fears from me.

You know, my biggest fear when I did my four step was my daughter being a drug actor and alcoholic. Top of my list.

My daughter called me one night about 2:00 in the morning drunk off her ass. She's doing drugs, she's drinking, she's not living the life I would like. I can't say who or what she is, but it's not good.

Very smart girl, very intelligent girl. She's just blown up her life at this point. And she calls me all drunk and she says, mom, I need to tell you something. You need to know this now already. I get up for work at 4:30 in the morning, right? So here's the selfish and self sentiment. She goes, you never ask me ma and I respect you for that. But I just need you to know I'm not doing heroin.

Well, that tells me something. She's around people who are

I'm working at a treatment center at the time with kids are dying every day her age.

I said, well, thanks for letting me know that. Carly talked her for a couple of minutes. I got down on my knees on the side of the bed and to something in the morning and I said, God,

she's your daughter before she's mine and you love her a million times more than I could ever love her. And I trust you and I trust your plan. And I got in bed and I put my head down on the pillow and I went back to sleep. Now this is how great my God is. This is how he shows up in my life treatment center. Next day. We're doing the 4th step. We're on the fear inventory and I'm right now on the white board to give an example. And I write the number one fear, my daughter becoming a drug addict and alcoholic, and I start bawling. It's the next morning,

the next morning and I was like, oh, I'm so sorry As your daughter drove out and alcohol. I'm like, I'm not crying, 'cause my daughter's not doing well. I'm crying because I just realized right now that God removed my number one fear because I was able to pray and get in bed and go fall back asleep. The old man would have been pacing. I have physical reactions. I would have been puking or something else, you know, I would have been waking my husband up. Fart. Oh my God, right? Do I get on a plane? Do I get her?