The Paramount speaker group in Paramount, CA

As I said, my name is Barbara Queenie. I'm an alcoholic, says I'd like to introduce myself,

introduce the 10 minute speaker. I'm it. I want to say thank you for being invited to share for a few minutes up here and thank you to the group. The potluck was great. And thank you to Bob for doing the workshop. He's awesome.

I have no idea what I'm going to say. Whatever comes outcomes out.

I was really confused when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know why I was here.

I, my family did an intervention with me and

I thought that there was a possibility on the outside that maybe there was a chance that there might be a slight indication that I had a drug problem, but I certainly was not alcoholic. I'd never heard of the term alcoholic. I'd never seen an alcoholic. I didn't know what one was, and I certainly had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous before. The only exposure that I had to alcohol when I was growing up was my favorite granddad would come up four times a year and I'd pour him Jack and water back and we'd play Yahtzee all night long and we had a good time. We laughed a lot.

That's not what makes me alcoholic. I have an illness that centers in my brain. What happens is, you know, I was growing up and I had a sense of a partners. I'm from a very big family and I just didn't feel like I fit there. I felt like I was different. I was incredibly sensitive to anything and everything. And I just never felt like I was a part of. And we were kind of a melting pot of two families. And I ran away the first time

because I just couldn't take it. I needed to get out of my skin. And I thought, you know, going away seems like a good idea. And I'm in fifth grade, you know, and I we're living in Vegas at the time. And I end up in a hitchhike to St. George, UT and end up in AI had a bright idea. I have a lot of those gets me into a lot of trouble. They have way stations, you know, and they were, they at the time were up on hills and I came across this trucker let let my sister and I out of this truck

and and I thought, you know what, we're going to get caught because all I could see was the way station on this side.

And I thought if I walked really close to the hill that they wouldn't be able to see us down this way. Never occurred to me. There was one right across the road and they could look down and see us. Anyway, we got picked up and and I, I did what I do best. I lied and I gave him a fake name and couldn't spell it, which was a problem. They asked me what the name was. And of course it had to be something really glamorous and something that I wasn't and I rattled it off and he said, could you spell that again? And I said no,

so I was in trouble. And so they put us that they it was too late to get dinner in.

And I remember going into this juvenile haunt, I was afraid, but at the same time it was like an adventure to me. I've always liked living on the edge, the edge of anything and everything. I like everything fast, quick and a lot of it. And

I remember that there wasn't going to be any dinner. And I was in a cell by myself. It separated my sister and I. And there I know I realized that there were there was somebody else in the cell next to me. And I was talking out loud about not being able to have anything for dinner. And these crackers come sliding underneath the door. And I'll tell you what I felt love for the first time. I thought, I never want to leave this place. Somebody wants me. Somebody cares about me that, you know, they, they really care about what happens to me.

And I remember finally when they figured out who we were and my parents drove up to get us, it was a very silent ride home. And the only thing that saved me was that we had cousins in from out of town. And my my family was the type of people that you never really let anybody else on the outside know what was going on.

Had my cousins not then been there, I probably would have been beaten within an inch of my life.

I I was getting high at the time. Sorry, I forgot to include that. I had a sense of

strength and peace that came from being able to get out of my skin and not feel to the intensity that I was feeling. Even in fifth grade, I didn't think that there was anything that was wrong with me. A progression set in and I was even at that time in my life, I was doing anything and everything that I could

to change how I felt. I couldn't stand being me. I wanted to be anybody but me. And I started to build a case against myself. And that came in the form of I came from the wrong family. I live in the wrong neighborhood. If I looked a different way, if I was blonde instead of brunette, if I was thin instead of fat, if I went to a different school. I mean, you know, the the list started to begin of justifications and rationalizations of how and why I needed to alter how I felt. And I did that with drugs and alcohol.

And at 16, I ran away from home again. And the consequences for doing what I was doing, it started to mount at this point. And

there was a real desperate need in me to not be who I was and in my own skin.

And I remember my girlfriend and I, because I was living with her and her family at the time when I ran away, they they partied. And I thought, oh, how cool. See, now if my parents were like that, that would be OK. And we were leaving one Saturday night and

and I think about this, this is so crazy. And, and I was anxious. I knew that I was going to start. You know, when your heart's beating really fast and your palms are starting to sweat and you're like, hey, I know that. I know it's coming. I know it's coming. That sense of

and

it was going to come in the role of set Lemon 714 Lifesavers. And I got a role and I did a couple and I waited 5 minutes and it didn't happen fast enough. And I took a couple more and took a couple more producing the rolls gone. And I'm drinking at that time Boones Farm wine, you know, 16 that's a delicacy. And, and next thing I know I come to and I am in a youth psychiatric slash detox center in there and I'm taking this test

and they're, they're telling me that I tried to commit suicide.

And I remember thinking, no, I wasn't. I was just trying to get a buzz on you guys don't understand. I just overshot the mark. I wasn't trying to kill myself, you know, and that's pretty much the story of my life. I, I overshot the mark and everything I've ever done in the until the consequences ended me up where I felt like I was losing my sanity. I did a geographic at 20 years old from Vegas to San Diego and

I lived there. And you know, I, I switch, it doesn't matter what the product is. I switch until I burn it out and go 5 feet past that. And then I go on to the next whatever to, you know, change how I feel.

And

sure enough, I hit bottom. And by that time, I was experiencing blackout quite frequently. I was pretty much guaranteed blackout at two shots. I'm 21 years old, I'm no longer employable. I'm covered in speed bumps, I'm peeing on myself and I can't complete sentences. And I'm wondering what the hell happened to me. I don't understand what happened. I'm baffled. My family doesn't intervention and they bring me back to Vegas and they try to get me in treatment.

That detox that Bob was talking about and they it was full. And then my, my family is financially challenged and they tried to, they tried to put a second mortgage on their house. And I was praying. I was sitting on my hands and I was praying that it wouldn't go through. Because you see, I always pulled it together for about this long. I'd, I'd be able to pull that life back together again, some type of manageability. You know, this time I'm going to, I'm going to be all right, I'm going to put it down. It'll be OK and I'd be able to pull it together for

and then I'd rip it down and then I pull it together and I'd rip it down. Well, the periods of time that that I was capable of doing that was getting shorter and shorter. And at the end, I just didn't have it in me anymore. And I sat there and, and I hoped that it didn't go through and, and luckily it didn't go through. And in the meantime, you know, today, I know it was through divine intervention. At the time, it never occurred to me some my mom took me to a hospital. I was having a reaction to the all the stuff leaving my system and I was helping her clean a house.

You know, this is this will tell you a little bit of what about where my brain was. I was using easy off to clean stuff off of a wall in the kitchen and I was standing like this close to it. You know, I think maybe I was really, really, really trying to alter how I felt even then, but wasn't really aware of it. Anyway, I was on top of a counter and I ended up falling off, passing out, and my mom's dragging me to this hospital and my mom's frantic and

she gets me in a wheelchair and she gets me inside and she's like, you got to help my daughter, you got it. Something's wrong. You don't understand. You got to help my daughter.

And the lady said, why don't you take her to a A? And I was insulted. I didn't know what a A was, but it sounded bad with the tone of her voice, you know. And so in the next couple of days, what happened was my mom took me to a meeting and she dropped me off on the outside. And I'd like to tell you that there were pockets of people standing outside, and it was cold. It was November, and they were laughing, and they looked young. You know, a lot of times I hear people saying here, you know, everybody was old when they got here. That wasn't my case.

My case was there were, there were a lot of people around my age, 20/21/22 at this particular meeting. And it turns out that it was the same place that I was at when I was 16. And I remember being terrified but curious all at the same time. And I, I walked up the stairs and this lady was sitting on a bench up at the top of the stairs. And she said, my name is Susie. Are you new? And I just said yes. And she said you can sit next to me in the meeting.

She was, she was definitely a God shot to me because I was terrified. I had no idea what to expect when I got inside of that meeting.

There were people in there that were taken at that meeting. You counted the number of days that you had, if you had under 30 days. And then they were doing 306090 chips all the way up to a year. And there was a lady at the front of the room who was taken six years. Now he's thinking, wow, six years without drugs and alcohol. How do you do that? Why would you do that? You know, and you know, I, I didn't know they were speaking a different language. And the only thing I knew is that I had hope for the first time in a long time. And I really didn't even know what you guys had. All I knew was that there was a level of enthusiasm there and these people

be happy. And I hadn't been happy in a long time. I knew that I had, that I had burnt out any relationship, whether it be family or otherwise. I know it was no longer employable and I was so prideful that I always believe that I would be capable of getting a job and keeping it. And I had big old dreams for myself, you know. But I am the real alcoholic. I have a problem. Whereas if I ingest alcohol or or the like in any form at all in my system, I can't stop.

I just go until it's done. Until I'm done

and they said keep coming back and don't pick up no matter what. And some people made some, you know, pretty bold suggestions to me. They said, you know what, once you get down on your, your knees and, and ask God to keep you clean and sober today. And, and if you don't believe, believe that we believe. And you know, I did that and I did a lot of sitting on my hands and I was afraid, but I, I didn't have anywhere else to go. And

in that first year and, and for the years following,

I've been taught things like how to go to meetings, I've been taught how to take the steps in my life. I've been taught how to be sponsored and be a sponsor. I've taught, I've been taught how to be a part of a Home group. I've been taught how to be of service to people. I am incapable of and by myself to do those things because I'm self-centered to the extreme. I'm all I think about. So I can't, I don't have the ability to do that stuff by myself. So I go with a group of people. Now, you know, my sponsor can attest to the fact that

sometimes, you know, I'm not real pleasant to be around, especially if I'm having an emotional moment. But, you know, when I settle down, I get through it because they taught me this process and they continue to remind me of this process when that alcoholism is kicking my tail. I'm like Bob, I, you know, I didn't start experiencing the effects of alcoholism until the treatment, which was the alcohol and the like

stop working for me. I did not. I didn't start to experience that. The fear again,

the inability to fit again, all that was all the stuff that used to make me feel OK was gone.

And I couldn't live with it and I couldn't live without it and I needed to be shown away. And it was five days after my 22nd birthday. And,

you know, I'm amazed that I have an awesome life today. I have an active Home group. I have a very active sponsor that I'm amazed at every time I listen to him. I just, you know, I learned something new and I need that. I need it to be fresh all the time. I when I teach in sponsorship, I learn. That's how I get it. There's no way that I can sit down with the book and, you know,

read it and and digest really what's there. But when I sit down with someone else and I read it to them and I try and explain it to them, I learn,

I learned a little bit more about me. And when I listen to you, I learn a little bit more about me because I identify and I'm not capable of pulling this off on my own. So, you know, I'm eternally grateful that I, I live in an era where Alcoholics Anonymous, all that stuff that Bob talked about earlier was already put in place. Man, it must have been really, really hard. Can you imagine? I mean, they had to sit down the rules. You know, I'm not into trailblazing. I can't do it. It's too rough. You know, I just, I'm a wimp when it comes to that night. I'd rather have it laid out for me. And there's one thing I absolutely believe in, you know,

I have the hand of the person in front of me and I have the hand out. So the person that's behind me. And that's how we do this deal. You know, one day at a time, that's how we do this deal. Thanks for having me. And

I guess, and

this is a great opportunity for me because I'm going to introduce the speaker tonight. He's my sponsor and he's made a great impression in my life. He's taught me a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous and I can safely say that

that I'm really grateful that

people with time in this program still do the deal and watch their feet because his feet moves. Bob, Darryl, come share with us.

I wonder what? But you wonder what it cost me to get her to say that.