Birthday Reflections: From Chicago Roots to 17 Years of Sobriety

- Hello, my name is Elizabeth and I'm an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is March 9th, 2006.

And on March 9th of this year,

I was in Mexico where I've been gone every winter

for last seven or eight years.

And I actually have a little home group

and a little Mexican town there of about 2000 people.

And we meet in what is called the Chicken Shack

because it is a shack and it has chicken wire

for the front door and it has a dirt floor

and the dirtiest plastic chairs you can imagine.

And it's a great meeting.

And I was there on my birthday and they said,

"Oh, good, it's your birthday.

We'll change the format and you get to be the leader."

And so I got to share on my birthday and lead the meeting.

And it was a great way to celebrate my birthday,

except for the fact that in 17 years,

I've been celebrating my birthday by taking a cake

given to me by my sponsor with my home group.

And I missed my home group on my birthday this year.

So tonight I'm taking a cake, my sponsor and I had dinner.

Actually, we had dessert.

It's a sneaky way to get two pieces of cake tonight

and on Zoom 'cause she lives out of state

and dress up like we do here to celebrate our birthdays.

And I walked in, the secretary said,

"Would you mind being the leader tonight?"

Because my speaker didn't show up.

I'm wearing a dress, a requirement, so here I am.

My higher power has a funny sense of humor

because now I enjoy speaking on my birthday so much

that I get to do it again.

So thank you for asking me.

It's an honor and privilege.

And I owe everything, everything that I have experienced

in the last 17 years to the people in this room.

This quality of life is my home group.

It's been my only home group and I love it

with a loyalty and a commitment that means the world to me.

So this actually is the best birthday present I can have.

So I'm not gonna say what year I was born.

It was way before you, Monty, and thank you for your share.

But I grew up the youngest and the only girl.

I have two older brothers on the south side of Chicago,

let's just say in the fifties.

And my dad got up every day and put on a suit

and went downtown to work.

And my mother literally was a housewife

and vacuumed with a string of pearls,

just like Lea Vichabever.

I always had clothes, a warm home, plenty of food,

a great education, a stable family life.

And I should have felt like a princess of the world.

I know my two older brothers thought I was gonna go

to the world, but I didn't feel that at all.

I always felt, even from being the littlest girl,

that my two older brothers and my parents

had something going on.

And I was like the fifth wheel,

that I was just like the ornaments or something.

But they knew what was going on.

They were the family and I was like the baby doll

or something, you know?

And to me that shows me that I just felt different

and a part of, not connected and clueless

right from the get go.

And I think that's alcoholism because I've heard that

over and over and over in these rooms.

And I felt that my whole life.

Remember we had a city block park two blocks away

from my house and we had to walk through this park

to get to the school.

And in those days, kids just, you just lived

in your neighborhood outside.

And so we would always go to the park

and I must have been in kindergarten.

And I remember being in a bush and watching all the kids

playing in the park and a voice came to me and said,

it's always gonna be like this for you.

You're always gonna be looking out into,

and you're, but it's okay, just don't tell anybody.

And so this was what I was telling myself from the get go

that I was different, that life was gonna go on

and I somehow was always gonna be separated.

And that's kind of how I lived my childhood

and my early years is that I was okay in school.

I was above average.

I did my best not to make any waves.

I was a good little girl

and I was a good Catholic little girl.

And I just didn't make waves

so that no one would notice me.

So I wouldn't have to do much of anything.

So people wouldn't expect much out of me.

I was just kind of the add on, the baby doll.

And so I didn't, we had groups, gangs of kids

that just played together.

And I always had one best friend

because I only felt safe really one-on-one with one person.

And I had a best friend in high school.

She's still my best friend to this day.

And my brother used to call us the shy,

the two shyest girls on the South side of Chicago.

But we were Mutt and Jeff all through high school,

all through our college days.

And we were nerds, that's what we were, we were nerds.

And always wanted to be part of the popular kids

and just never quite could do it, you know,

just did not know how to be cool.

Never got that instruction booklet.

And so I wanted to be popular.

I wanted to go to the carjes and stuff, but I never did.

And so I never got into drinking.

There was alcohol in my house.

My father being full-blooded Irish,

he would think he'd be a big drinker,

but it was actually my German French mother

who was a periodic.

I can say she, in her later years,

went to Alcoholics Anonymous.

She went to three meetings and the God thing got her,

you know, being a good lapsed Catholic.

She didn't feel she deserved to be

a part of Alcoholics Anonymous.

So she was a periodic.

And as her drinking progressed in my life,

I didn't want to be like her.

And so I stayed away from alcohol.

Of course, I wasn't really involved with people who had it,

so it was kind of easy.

When I got to college, I smoked a little pot.

I loved psychedelics, so I was, you know, I loved that.

I loved getting out of my head.

But again, it was mostly on my own.

You know, I was a solo flyer kind of.

And so what happened?

I got married when I was 19.

I got like a, what a good Catholic girl does

when she wants to get out of the house, she gets married.

But I got divorced when I was 23.

That's not what a good Catholic girl does.

After I got divorced, I joined a spiritual community,

what you would call a cult.

And again, not what a good Catholic girl would do.

And interestingly enough, I've always had a love

for the God topic, you know.

And I was born and raised and grew up in the 60s and 70s.

And Eastern gurus were a big thing.

And Transcendental Meditation was just being introduced.

And I gravitated a lot to that.

And hence my spiritual community, I found a guru.

And the first few years that I was there, I loved.

You know, we'd get up very early in the morning

and meditate and we would go out and do a service.

And we lived in a group setting.

And then after a few years,

kind of some hinky things started happening.

And actually that's when I got introduced to daily drinking

and other party favors.

And so by the time that I left that community,

I was a daily drinker and I sure liked coke.

So it's funny, I went so long until my late 20s

before I started drinking and using drugs.

And as soon as I started,

I became a daily drinker immediately, immediately.

And after I left the group,

I started drinking not only at night after work,

I was always a waitress at work night.

And that's when I first started is I'd have a couple drinks

in the bar after, you know,

after doing all your side work or,

and then I started drinking before I went to work, you know,

just having a couple beers in the afternoon

before I went to work.

And then I started drinking in work

'cause it's really easy when you're working at a restaurant

that has a bar to get.

And so, but right away, it just,

I started drinking every day right from the get-go.

It took 10 to 20 years for me to progress.

You know, I didn't get drunk every day,

but I needed some alcohol every single day.

And when I realized what was going on,

like the big book says was no longer a mere habit.

It was, I needed, I needed to have a drink every day.

It got to the point where a six pack of Heineken was normal

for me, five foot tall, you know,

and a six pack of Heineken,

I would have two beers before work and four beers after,

and that became my basis for the rest of my life.

I started drinking when I was in my mid 20s

and I stopped drinking at 53 and I drank every single day.

It doesn't matter if I, how sick I was or whatever,

I had alcohol every day.

In 1981, 10 years before you were even born,

I walked into a music store.

I bought a keyboard from the salesman

and I married him to the day, you know,

and he, you know, he, we got married in '87

and by the time we got married,

he knew that I drank a six pack of Heineken a day.

He didn't know that I was also drinking

vodka tonics at work all through my shift, you know,

but he knew that I was a drinker,

but he enjoyed smoking marijuana.

So we each had our thing and I think it was, it was okay.

I was controlling, I was enjoying

and controlling my alcohol then, you know,

and we got married.

He was a comic and we went on the road

and I'm telling this because this is when I realized

I had a problem.

We were in the South and did you know

that there are dates and counties in the South

where you cannot buy alcohol on Sundays?

Now I had been drinking every day for about, you know,

seven, eight years now and this was a problem.

This was a problem.

I had no alcohol.

I had to go 24 hours without,

this was not only a problem for me,

it is now a problem for the husband

because he needs to get me some alcohol, right?

And that was the first time I went, oh my God,

I can't go a date without it.

But did I fess up to it, you know?

Did I realize, Elizabeth, you have a problem.

No, it took me what, 20 more years.

But that was the first time, you know,

we realized that I had a problem.

I had more than a habit with my own ethnicity.

We moved to LA.

My husband traveled a lot because he was a comic

and I got a job as a banquet waitress

at a hotel, charity universal hotel.

And being a banquet waitress is the best job for a drink

because I opened probably 40 bottles of wine a night, right?

You open it up in the kitchen, right?

And then you bring the bottles out into the dining area

and you put four bottles each on each of your five tables.

In the hotel, there is a doorway at the kitchen

and then a little hallway

and then a doorway into the banquet room.

And you know how many swigs of wine you can take

from an open bottle of wine from one door,

glug, glug, glug, before you get to the next door,

before you put it in the bottle,

you just chug from down on the table

for your guests who are at a nice wedding

and they have no idea the waitress

that's serving their wine and their food is drunk, right?

That was, that was, there were,

I did not drive home sober from that job.

I worked there 12 years.

I did not drive home sober from that job one night, you know.

I passively accepted that the banquet staff

would have a cocktail or two after, you know,

after serving the dinner.

But you know, the bosses had no idea

how much alcohol I was drinking.

I had to make amends to the Sheraton Universal Hotel

for drinking, I must have drank, you know,

gallons of liquor in the 12 years that I,

if you had asked me back then if I thought,

you know, I was doing something wrong

or weird, you know, I would just,

I lived, I built this like little land

of self-justification, you know,

where my actions, well, they, you know,

I wasn't hurting anybody, I wasn't hurting anybody,

except that if it's your wedding day

and I'm waiting on the bride

and I've been drinking your champagne, you know,

or you're having your mother's memorial luncheon

and your weight, you can smell liquor

on your waitress's breath, you know,

at 11 in the morning, you know, it's alcoholic.

It warps, it warps the person you are.

It certainly warped the person I was.

And you know, it goes on.

So I got married and you know,

you'd have to ask my husband what he thought

during all these times because I tried to hide it

after I could no longer get off just with beer.

I had to supplant it at home with vodka.

And so I started hiding my liquor, right?

I had, he'd come home from work.

He had now changed his career and he'd come home from work

and go upstairs into the office and work.

And I'd stay downstairs in the kitchen

and clean the kitchen because it would take me all night

to clean the kitchen because my vodka

was in the pantry hidden here and there.

And then in the morning, he'd go off to work

and I'd have to collect the empty bottles.

And then I would have to get them into a bag

and then I would have to drive somebody else's garbage can,

right, so that he would never discover,

you know, what I was doing.

At that point, I got to quit the waitressing job

and I started my own business of pet care.

And yes, I would take the keys to your apartment

and go into your apartment and get your dog

and take your dog for a walk

and then bring your dog back and lock up.

But all the while, I would have, you know,

a nice little water bottle that didn't have water in it,

was filled with vodka.

And if I happened to be low,

I'd be going through your cabinets to see what you had,

right, so this was your dog water.

Finally, my husband, you know, did the ultimatum.

He thought I was unhappy, you know.

He's not an alcoholic and just doesn't get it, right.

He thinks I'm unhappy.

He says, "You've always wanted a house.

I'm gonna buy you a house,

but please don't bring the alcohol into it."

And by this time, I was 50 years old

and I knew I had a problem and I knew I couldn't stop.

And so I said, "Okay," and I called central office

and they sent me over to a meeting

and it was licensed session,

which is the precursor of quality of life.

And I walked in and like everybody says,

there's all these happy people

and they're so happy to see you

and they're shaking your hands and they want to hug you.

And I'm, oh, no, no, no, no.

I stayed for 17 days and I said,

"No, no, no, I just, you guys were just too much."

And I said, "Thank you very much.

Now that I know, I know I can control this on my own.

So thanks, but no thanks."

And after 17 days, I left.

I did control it for about three weeks

and then we were on.

And two more years, it just got worse and worse and worse.

And now I'm drinking with my morning coffee

and now I'm drinking all day long, can't stop.

And something happens with my vision.

I go and I find out

that I have an inoperable brain tumor.

So this is the first dramatic thing

that really has ever happened to me.

And I have absolutely no tools

but vodka to handle the fear that comes with this.

It affected my eyesight, so I couldn't watch TV much.

I couldn't read much.

I couldn't drive at all,

but I could still walk to the liquor store.

And my drinking just skyrocketed.

My mother had passed away the previous six months

before I went to take care of her

in her last three weeks of life.

And I was drunk the whole time.

And when she passed away, it finally hit me

that my mother was not that alcoholic in my life.

Like I had always thought that I was the alcoholic

in my life.

But it took that, the fear of the brain tumor

to really bottom me out.

And so I was blessed with a moment of clarity.

I knew I had a problem.

I felt like I was down the hole

and I just could not climb out.

Fear, I was just panic stricken every day.

I just didn't know how I was going to live.

And I was drunk all the time.

My husband would come home.

He'd opened the door and his face,

in fact, I just remember his face every night

would kind of look around like,

what am I going to get tonight?

Is she going to be passed out on the couch?

Is dinner going to be on the stove?

Is she going to be happy?

Is she going to be a royal bitch?

What ends coming?

I'll never forget that face

that I don't get to have to see anymore.

So anyway, I had this moment of clarity

in Ralph's parking lot.

It was 12 noon.

I had gone in to buy birthday cards.

I had been controlling my drinking for three days.

I hadn't had any vodka.

I just had about a 12 pack of beer every night.

I was feeling pretty good about this control

and my vodka was on sale.

So I had to buy it.

So, well, maybe I'll have one after dinner

and maybe now, what am I kidding myself?

You know, I'm going to have three.

And there I am, a middle-aged little white lady

at noon in Ralph's parking lot,

opening up a warm bottle of vodka

and not being able to stop myself.

And I don't want to do this.

I do not want to do this,

but there was nothing in me that could stop me.

And I had this, as I drank it,

I had this moment of clarity that I was on the brink

of losing, a psychotic brink, you know,

of losing complete self volition.

Now, I wish I could say that I, you know,

put the hat back on and went to a meeting.

No, I went home and I finished the bottle.

The next day, I went back to that meeting

of license session that I had walked out of two years ago.

And I walked in and some of the same people were there.

And some of those people even remembered me

and they were still happy and they were still alive.

And they weren't,

they didn't seem scared out of their board like I was.

And so that's when I stayed.

I stayed and I got a sponsor.

I got a sponsor right away.

And I did what the people at license session do.

And I did the steps and I got honest with myself

for the first time and somehow it wasn't easy.

Somehow I didn't have to drink day by day,

one day and then the next day and then the next day.

And all of a sudden it was 30 days.

And it had been 25 years that I could say

that I had one day, let alone 30 days.

How does that happen?

How does that happen?

You know, that is the, that's the miracle

and the promise of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And then all of a sudden it's a year.

And in this group, you get together at midnight

on the eve of your first birthday.

And all of these people you've been hanging out with

just about every night for a whole year

are there to celebrate you not drinking for a year.

And me, I had isolated.

I'd been a loner.

I'd flown solo with one best friend.

My whole life had this world full of people

that actually knew me because they made me

tell them about me, you know.

It's just the most fantastic thing in the world

this gets over, you know.

And so now I've had 17 years of 365 days of that.

And it's a great life.

It's a great life.

I don't know how I was blessed.

That man stuck with me through all my shenanigans.

He's a great guy.

And, you know, I'm not saying that it happened overnight

'cause, you know, it takes a lot of work.

It's not easy, especially the first year or two.

Gradually you get comfortable in your own skin

and gradually you start relaxing

and being able to enjoy life, simple things, you know.

And gradually you get to get friends

and you can laugh with these people

and you can start living, you know, having fun.

So I got sober when I was 53.

And, you know, I tell you that first year I said,

this is too hard.

I'm 53 years old.

I'm old.

My life is over.

Why should I go to all this trouble, you know, to get sober?

And now I'm 70.

And in 17 years, the people in my home group know

I get to travel all over the world.

I have done things I never thought I would do, you know.

I have petted a tiger.

I've ridden an elephant.

I've snorkeled the great barrier reef.

You know, I've been on a boat down the Mekong Delta.

You know, I've just done crazy stuff.

Gorgeous, lovely stuff.

Met tons of people.

I've been to meetings, AE meetings all around the world.

And there's a lot of us.

And it's fun to meet each other

'cause you can go anywhere.

And when you walk into an AA room, you've got a friend,

you know, somebody who knows you,

somebody you can share your birthday with, you know.

I think doing the steps

and finally taking responsibility for my life,

not only the things that I did, but responsibility now.

Getting to know myself, making amends,

working to have good relationships

and just being a responsible person,

keeping commitment, trying to be of service,

and then delving into the steps and trying to get to know

what I'll just call this power source inside of you.

You know, that it's not only outside, it's inside.

And I'm connected to it.

And when I got sober,

the barriers between this thing inside me and me

started falling down and I got connected

to what I call God.

And it's, you know, I've always been searching.

I've always sought this and being sober

and working the AA program has allowed me to get in touch

and prosper from a connection to a higher power.

I see how my life has a purpose

and that if I try to align myself

to the principles of this program,

things tend to work out real well.

It's, you can use this program to get sober

and your life will get immeasurably better.

You can use this program and go deeper

and have a very fulfilling spiritual life.

And that, when I say fulfilling,

I mean to have that peace inside and that serenity

and a confidence that comes with being your real self.

So if you're new and you're in this room,

I just urge you to go for it.

It's not easy, but sure damn worth it, you know,

and you're worth it.

So thank you so much for giving me this gift

of letting me speak on my first day night.

And with that, I'd like to thank my sponsor.

I'd like to thank my home group, the program of AA

and my higher power who's been with me

every step of the way, thanks.

Hi, my name's Elizabeth and I'm an alcoholic.

- Hi, good to see you.

- And I wanna thank Karen for letting me take the cake,

Robin for bringing that cake

and I wanna thank my sponsor, Lori.

Lori lives in Arizona and we are very close

and keep connected, but she can't be here in person,

but we did share a cake tonight.

So that's great.

The life I have today, if it wasn't for Lori,

she is a remarkable woman.

And I truly believe that God has gifted her to me

for this period of time.

I value our relationship immensely.

And I just wanna thank you so very much

for all that you so freely give to me.

Thank you so much.

And again, I wanna thank this home group

and everybody in here.

I love you and thanks for celebrating my birthday.