Brenda's 37-Year Journey: From Guatemalan Roots to Lasting Sobriety

- Okay, hi everybody, my name is Brenda Watson,

I'm an alcoholic, and hi everybody on Zoom.

Over here, I forgot.

And thank you, Ben, for asking me to do this.

It's always an honor and a privilege to do something,

to be asked to do anything in alcohol,

so I'm very grateful, and thank you, Sue,

Susan, for your talk, it's good to hear you.

And nice to meet, thank you, Karen,

for being the hostess, and thank you,

the freeways of 101 and 405 that were really clear tonight.

So I could get here, and I'll get into my story.

It always takes me a little bit to just kind of relax,

'cause it's an opportunity to go to,

to visit the scene of the crime, right?

And so it's not always, it's not always something

that I wanna jump in, right in, but then eventually I do.

Welcome to the person or whoever's new here.

We're glad you're here, and I'll tell you a little bit

some things that I was told when I was new,

which is if you don't hear something tonight,

go to another meeting, there's more than 3,000 meetings

in the Los Angeles area, and now with Zoom,

we have so many options, so go to another meeting.

You know, you're bound to hear something

that you might be able to relate to.

My sobriety date is December 14th of 1986.

I just celebrated 37 years back December,

and I can assure you, I had absolutely no intention

of staying this long in a, or being this active,

as active as I am in AA.

I didn't even know I was an alcoholic

when I came here the first time, I had no idea.

But I'm grateful for that date, you know, and I've never,

I didn't know that you could go out and come back,

you know, at the time, I just, I had no idea,

so I've stayed sober ever since, it's a miracle.

I have two home groups, because some of us

are sicker than others, and my, always my home group,

wherever and ever, my family is the Pacific group,

I was raised in the Pacific group,

and my other home group is the best of all time,

AA in West Hollywood, it's a one-hour meeting,

Friday nights, seven to eight, questions and answers,

and whoever's got more than 15 years sober in this room,

I'm gonna be getting your number,

and we're gonna get you over there,

and I love my, I love my home groups,

you know, they're fantastic, I just feel right at home.

My sponsor is Beverly M., and she's been my sponsor

for a little over a year, before that,

my sponsor was Suzy Nesbitt Altman,

and she passed away about a year ago.

She was my sponsor for 32 and a half years,

and that was a tough relationship to, you know,

to transition, you know, I still can hear her in my head,

and I can hear her a lot of times,

when I feel like, you know, I can't hear anybody else,

her voice resonates in my head,

and I think that's all my stuff,

so you can start judging me now.

(laughing)

'Cause that's what I do.

So I was born in, I was born in a banana plantation

in Guatemala, Central America,

and that was the nature of my first resentment,

because I didn't look like other people that I lived around,

you know, I felt out of place, I felt like the ship,

you know, the Star Trek ship, or whatever ship,

had dropped me off at the wrong place.

I just never identify, I didn't feel like I fit in,

I was born into a wild family, full of alcoholics,

drug addicts, gamblers, sex addicts, untreated alanones,

you name it, they were in my family.

It made for a very exciting family, very exciting,

a lot of chaos, a lot of catastrophes,

and you know, to this day, I'm the kind of person

that if there's a natural disaster, I'm the person to call,

because I know how to handle, I get very focused

and very central when something like that happens.

And you know, things happen to us kids

that shouldn't happen to us kids, you know,

my monsters were real when I was little,

and that made me very scared,

it didn't make me an alcoholic,

but it made me be a very scared child, I was always scared.

And to this day, I mentioned it before,

I still live with a certain amount of fear.

You know, it's not, if it wasn't for the tools

that the program has given me,

I think I would still be afraid.

It mostly is my head that creates the scenarios

and these things, that's why I don't watch the news,

because my head is very good at doing that kind of stuff.

But anyway, it didn't make me an alcoholic,

but it did make me very apprehensive and scared

and all of that, and a nervous kid, you know,

I always had a nervous stomach, headaches,

et cetera, et cetera.

And I had my first drunk when I was 14.

I didn't know, I didn't know what alcohol

was gonna come into my life, what it was gonna do to me.

I'm sure it tasted alcohol, because I come from a culture

that I'm sure alcohol was around, I'm sure I tasted it.

But this one particular day, I don't know about you,

but better than the drunk that night,

leading up to the drunk that day.

You know, the romancing of the drunk was so exciting.

You know, it was like, I was 14, and we were like,

you know, what lie are you gonna say to your grandma

so you can spend the night, you know?

And who's gonna get the booze, you know?

Who's gonna get the, and what clubs are we gonna go on?

Who's gonna drive in?

You know, this whole pageantry.

I love the pageantry of the drunk.

And that was, the rest of my drinking career was very much

like that, it was like the day leading up to the drunk.

It was just very exciting.

And I remember we were in a group of kids,

and there was a bottle of Bacardi right in front of me,

a big, tall bottle of Bacardi.

And I don't know where this thought came from,

but I had this thought that when that bottle gets to me,

there's not gonna be enough.

We were in a circle, I was in the middle,

and when that bottle came my way,

I remember grabbing that bottle and just chugging it down

as fast as I could, as much as I could.

And as soon as I let go of that bottle,

you know, fear set in, fear of running out.

You know, and fear of like when that bottle gets back to me,

there's not gonna be enough again.

And it's funny because I remember the rest of the kids

were just taking like little sips, you know,

and it was burning and they were like,

and they're passing around.

So when the bottle got to me again,

it was almost at the same level, you know?

And I went again and chugged it down.

And I had a lot of fun that night.

I had a great time and I didn't start drinking every day

from then on because I was under my grandmother's thumb,

which was Tuesday and Tuesday night.

And it wasn't until 1976,

I came to the United States with my family.

All my family moved here, my mother, my sisters,

my brothers, my grandmother, cousins, everybody moved here.

It wasn't until then that I was in high school

and I had a boyfriend and soon I get familiar with this,

but my boyfriend had a car and a job.

That was the criteria for the boyfriend at the time.

And he made the mistake to take me to Hollywood.

Hollyweird, like I like to call it, you know?

And he took me to this club on Santa Monica and Vine.

It's not there any longer.

And it was a teenage club.

And I remember going to the front of the club

and standing there and having this feeling like,

my people, these are my people, you know?

Men were dancing with men, girls with girls,

dogs with dogs, you know?

And it was the height of the disco era, you know?

It was a Saturday night fever

and I had a fever that needed to calm down.

And I don't know about you,

but I loved mirrors when I was drinking, you know?

I loved it.

This club had wall to wall mirrors

and a pole in the middle of it.

And I could check myself out

from every angle of that little thing.

Selfish, self-centered, vain, et cetera, et cetera.

And I loved, I fell in love.

This was a Friday night and I thought,

I cannot wait to get back here Friday night, you know?

And of course then I found out

I could come Friday and Saturday night, you know?

And then it was Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.

And pretty soon the only night I had off

was like Monday and Tuesday, you know?

And then we found another club

that was open on Monday and Tuesday

and then it was on every day, right?

And there was a liquor store across the street

from this club and I had a fake ID

because every good teenager has a fake ID.

And my fake ID was a Native American woman.

She was 5'11" on 5'1".

And she had short dark hair and she was 32 years old.

And I used that fake ID

until a week before my 21st birthday.

And I remember a bouncer looking at him

and going, "Really, seriously?"

And I said, "Yep, I used it up until now."

And we would go get tall cans of English 800.

And we drank, I drank with a purpose.

And my purpose was to get drunk, oblivious,

free from self, free from my mind.

Because you see, a lot of demons and a lot of,

I'm the type of person to this day,

type of alcoholic, that my head is out to get me.

It is nonstop thinking.

And most of the time it's negative

and most of the time it's how it's gonna affect me,

whatever I'm thinking.

And so if it wasn't for the tools, I don't know.

I don't know where I would be locked up someplace.

No doubt, no doubt that that's where I would be.

But I drank to free myself of all this.

And I had a ball.

I had a great time.

I'm a party girl.

To this day, I'm still a party girl.

I just party sober now.

But I love to party.

You know, and I always, I have to tell you,

I always felt great when I was drunk

and when I was drinking.

And at the time, I didn't speak a lot of English

and they were passing around a whole lot of stuff.

And I didn't know how to say no.

And if it was yours, I was gonna take it, whatever it was.

And we did a lot of stuff that we shouldn't be doing

that I'm sure killed a lot of brain cells.

I am not one of those people that has memorized the big book

because I can barely memorize the first step

or, you know, the serenity pair.

But we had a great time, great time.

And I suffer from another disease,

which is if it's good over here, it's better over there.

And we would jump in my car.

I bought this car for $300.

I wish I had it today.

It was a '67 Pontiac Le Mans, yellow.

Fabulous car.

I love all cars.

And I really wish I had it today,

but I didn't know you put oil in the car.

I mean, I was barely putting like $2 of gas, $3 of gas

when gas, when $2, $3 would have got us something, you know?

And we would be in the heart of Hollyweird

and then somebody would say, "There's a great party

in Pico Rivera."

And if you know what Pico Rivera is, it's quite a ways east.

And we would go to Pico Rivera and we would be at some party.

And then somebody goes, "Oh, let's go to City of Terrace.

There's another party over there."

And we'd hop around, you know, we'd hop around.

And then somebody would have the bright idea

that we're so close to Tijuana,

why don't we just head on to Tijuana, right?

Now, at this point, I'm the only person,

well, I'm the one with the car,

and I am not a legal alien at the time.

Now, do you think that stopped me from crossing that border?

Didn't even cross my mind.

I went and we went to the serious, most filthiest,

I mean, we saw things in those clubs in Tijuana

that you can just imagine.

And I loved it, I loved it.

And then we were piled back in my car.

There were like eight to 12 kids in my car.

I'm an alcoholic, so I do have a tendency to exaggerate.

No, but the car was packed.

And we would get, we would go through the officers, right?

And like six in the morning, five, six in the morning,

seven, you know, the sun coming up in your life.

And he would just go, "Citizens, U.S. citizens?"

And we would go, "Yep, and where we went, there we went."

I mean, how, and that happened a couple of times.

How did we not get thrown in jail or done something?

I just think the grace of God was so incredible

at the time, you know, watching out for us.

I mean, many a times when my car didn't have any gas,

I would walk down, you know, from Hollywood

at four in the morning with my brother.

My brother was my dancing partner and my drinking partner.

And you know, we were kids.

And then all of a sudden a car would drive by

and we would hitchhike and somebody would pick us up.

How did something awful didn't happen to us?

I, to this day, I really think

that there was definitely an angel watching over us.

But anyway, then I moved to Venice,

which is another fabulous place for an alcoholic like me.

And I lived right on the boardwalk, you know?

And it was like, when the freaks come out at night,

that's when I came out, you know?

I didn't really, I saw the sun some

because I lived right on the beach.

But it was, I didn't get up until like midday

or two in the afternoon, you know?

'Cause I was a night person.

I always told myself, "I'm a night person, you know?

You're a morning person, I'm a night person."

And I had a great time in Venice too.

You know, just a wonderful time.

Never thought I would leave Venice

because I felt like home.

I felt like home with all these, you know, strange people.

You know, I feel like it.

Anyway, the Santa Monica Highway Police

didn't think it was so cute

that I was drinking and driving.

I had come out of a club in Santa Monica

and I had drank a lot of tequila that night.

As a matter of fact,

my friends took away my keys that night.

But you know how we are.

We're charming.

I mean, you know, my first sponsor said to me,

"It's not acute alcoholism, Brenda.

It's acute and you will die."

But she knew that up until that point,

I had used cuteness to get my way, right?

So this night I got the keys away from my friends.

And I said, "You know, I'm just gonna go home.

Just a couple of blocks down."

And I jumped on the freeway heading on to Hollywood

with no lights on.

And I'm a hundred percent sure that night

I probably would have killed somebody.

I just heard a speaker the other day

who killed a little boy, 14-year-old boy.

And for the grace of God, that would have been me, right?

There's no doubt.

And they threw me in the tank

and the next morning they took me in front of a judge

and the judge sentenced me to six AA meetings.

And I remember raising my hand quickly and saying,

"But your honor, I'm not an alcoholic."

And I meant it.

And then the public defender said,

"If you don't shut up, he's gonna give you 60 meetings."

And I thought, 60 meetings?

That was horrifying.

I was horrified.

And so I went to my first meeting of alcoholics and armors

in the Alamo Club in the west side of Pico Boulevard.

And I sat up front and I did not identify with these people.

You know, they looked like the, Susan talked,

the trench coats, you know, with, you know,

they looked like they had just come out of jail, no job.

I had a job, I had a car, I had a place to live.

So I looked for all the differences.

And if you're new here in this room, you know,

I urge you to try to listen to the similarities

because I looked for all the differences.

And I just, you know, I'm not like these people.

So I left.

In the next eight months,

I did everything that is described

in the big book in chapter three.

I joined a gym for $500 and I went to a sauna twice,

never exercised.

I switched drinks, you know, I try to control,

I try to enjoy my driving and not drinking.

And then somebody said, you know,

if you smoke hashish, it's organic and it's not addictive.

And then after staring at a trash bag for three hours

with that stuff, I thought, I gotta start drinking.

You know, this stuff is gonna kill me.

And my last drunk started on Thanksgiving of 1986.

You know, I love that, you know, some people think,

well, my last drunk was one day or two days.

My drunk began on Thanksgiving of 1986.

And I was drinking with a force that I,

because I was trying so hard to get out of my brain,

to get out of self and I wasn't able to anymore.

And I remember, you know, the last weekend

before I got sober, I had drank a lot of tequila

and I love tequila 'cause it makes you hallucinate

and it makes you see things that are not there.

I also love chartreuse, which, oh, you know,

you ooze green stuff out of coming out of your body.

And those were my last drunks.

And I remember getting on my knees in front of the toilet

because that was one of my favorite places to pray at.

You know, you feel the coolness of the toilet

right next to your cheek, you know,

and you're just praying to a God that,

I was praying to a God that I did not believe in.

'Cause I knew I was in his naughty list, you know.

Somebody had said, you know, I mean,

good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

And I was gonna take the ladder.

You know, I was gonna go everywhere.

And I prayed and I said the alcoholic prayer.

I said, "God, please help me."

Not believing in God.

And the next morning I went back to that Alano Club

and somebody recognized me, you know,

which I don't, you know how we recognize newcomers.

And this guy's name was Luis.

And I will never forget Luis.

And I've never seen him since.

37 years later, I've never seen Luis since.

But Luis told me by far the most powerful words

that I will utter tonight.

He said, "Get up to the podium, say your name,

"say that you're an alcoholic and that you need help."

And I don't know why I listened to Luis.

He was a stranger.

I don't listen to anyone.

I'm a rebel.

I break rules.

Rules were to be broken.

Laws were to be broken.

And for some reason, I listened to Luis

and I got up to the podium and I said,

"My name is Bryn.

"I'm an alcoholic and I need help."

And my journey in alcoholics anonymous began.

And they started giving me all this commitment.

And I thought, what were these poor people doing

before I got here?

(all laughing)

I got the coffee commitment, the literature commitment,

the secretary commitment.

I had a commitment every day.

I had no idea they were trying to save my life.

I was arrogant.

And then I kept hearing about get a sponsor, get a sponsor.

And so I had run across this little meeting directory

that somebody had given me at drunk driving school.

And I went to the Santa Monica Way of Life,

Saturday night meeting of the Pacific group.

And I walked in, I had two weeks sober.

I walked in and there were like 400 young people

at this meeting.

10, a lot of teeth all coming all at once at me.

And here's my number, call me.

And of course, I was like overwhelmed.

And I met my first sponsor there.

And I learned how to stay sober for my first sponsor.

She only sponsored me for three months.

And I'll tell you in a minute why.

But she told me to get to a meeting an hour

before the meeting starts.

She told me to get a commitment

at every meeting that I go to.

She told me to shake hands,

ask people for their phone numbers, call them.

I didn't call them.

I just got their phone.

And she told me to call her every day.

She told me to call her every day at 7.30 in the morning.

But I had never gotten up.

That's 7.30 in the morning, not until that morning.

So I called her at 11.

And she kept hanging up on me, like five times.

And then the sixth time she goes,

"What time did I tell you to call me?"

You remember, I don't like this type of people.

I said, "7.30."

He goes, "Talk to you tomorrow, click."

Kind of rough, but I need it.

She could see right through all my baloney,

all my BSing.

She could see,

I hope you have somebody like that in your life,

'cause I need something like that in my life.

Or otherwise I'll do a Mexican hat dance around you.

I'll just pull it from someplace.

Anyway, I did everything she asked me to do,

except for don't get into a relationship.

I had met him in drunk driving school,

because that's where I go

to pick from the elite of the insane.

And he was really cute, blonde, blue eyes,

my type, tall.

And I thought, "He's got a lot of potential."

And he wasn't sober.

He had a bunch of chips dangling.

And apparently he was,

like every week he was raising his hand.

That's like he was collecting all these chips.

But then when I came into the Santa Monica way of life,

I got glued to him.

And what made him more exciting

is that he had another girl pregnant,

another newcomer pregnant in our group.

It made for a really fun first year of sobriety, really fun.

Sometimes you think people are talking about you,

but in this case they were talking about us.

And my home group at the time was pretty big.

I mean, my home group was about 1,200 people,

and they were all talking about us.

And anyway, at the end of that year,

I remember that in our home group,

when you turn one,

they have this thing called a watch.

And people come to watch you turn one.

And we start at 10 o'clock at night,

and then right at midnight,

they go 10, nine, eight, seven,

and they go happy birthday.

And I remember thinking, did I smoke something?

Did I drink something?

It was so overwhelming to think

that I was sober for a year,

because it was not possible for me to stop drinking.

I love drinking.

I thought, how am I ever gonna go to a Dodger game

and not have a beer and a hot dog?

Now, I had never been to a Dodger game.

But I did think about it.

So it was not possible, but God made it,

God did the impossible.

And I did not believe in God,

but God did the impossible for me.

Anyway, my husband went to get our marriage license,

and he came back and yelling,

"Honey, we can't get married."

And I said, "Why, honey?

Why can't we get married?"

And he goes, "Because apparently you already are."

And I guess in my drunken stupor,

for some years before, I had married somebody,

and I had no recollection, no recollection.

So it took me two and a half years to find his name,

find out who he was.

It was a friend of mine's friend

who was gonna be deported, and when I was drunk,

I said, "I'll marry him."

You know that, that.

We're such generous people, right?

I mean, I was one of those people,

ah, pick up the tab, right?

Little did I know I was hurting me.

I was trying to get validation.

I was trying to get value from your approval.

But anyway, at the end of, we got married,

and at the end of my first year,

I mean, life happens that has a lot of ups and downs,

a lot of good and bad.

Alcoholics Anonymous never promised me jobs,

and I've had many.

It never promised me a house, and I've had several.

It never promised me a man, and I've had one.

And you know, it promises me 24 hours sober.

It promises me freedom from the bondage of self

for 24 hours, right?

And I'm way overpaid if I get that.

I'm shooting for midnight tonight.

If I get that, I'm overpaid, you know?

That's why, you know, the extras,

the blessings that have come into my life,

I mean, they could never,

never repaid what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me.

But anyway, I had, I became an instant mom.

I had this little redhead boy with blue eyes

who was just, it's the light of my life.

He just made me a grandma again, has two kids.

And Mondays, he had another little baby girl.

And I remember, you know,

because of the tools of the program,

the steps and making amends,

his mother has had a very hard time staying sober

continuously.

And, you know, she thanked me

when he graduated from law school.

You know, she said, you know,

thank you for being the mother

that I couldn't be at that time.

And you know, I was not mother material, you know?

I was in the gutter and the alleys.

You know, I was, I was a wild thing.

And, but for some reason,

God gave me that gift of being a mother.

And I have been a great mother.

My three kids have grown up in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I used to bring my kids.

All, they all have been through AA.

And as a matter of fact,

one of them started to quack like a duck

and walk like a duck.

And sure enough, he's a duck.

And he's celebrating five years of sobriety in May,

Cinco de Mayo, Cinco de Drinko.

And I tell him, I said,

every mother's dream is for their son to come in through AA.

But luckily, you know, he has found his truck.

He has found his people.

He's very involved in Lockie Pie.

And today I went to a little event that they had.

And it's all these young people that are on fire

for AA, enthusiastic.

I feel like a dinosaur when I'm around them.

But they are, I love their contagious enthusiasm for AA.

It's really wonderful.

And like I told you, you know,

life has good, it has bad, it has ugly, it has wonderful.

And I was a year and a half sober

when my little sister was 16.

And as a result of drugs and alcohol,

not her, she wasn't doing it,

but she was at the wrong time at the wrong place.

And she was, she was killed.

She was shot right in the head and died instantly.

And you know, the call that they made was to me.

Because by that time I had a year and a half sobriety.

And I was able to take care of the whole family.

My whole family fell apart at the time.

My siblings, my mother.

My mother was wailing like a wild animal

because she had lost her baby.

And I went to my meetings and I go to a lot of meetings.

Thank God for that.

Because I went to the meetings to get the strength

to bring back to my family.

And I remember I was asked to make the decision

to take my sister off that life support machine.

And that was a tough decision to make.

And it wasn't, you know,

I remember going to my meeting that night

and meditating on it.

And not really knowing what to do.

But then I talked to the doctors the next morning

and I made the decision, you know.

And my mom was devastated.

And that was a very rough time,

tough time in my family's life.

And I handle all businesses.

Because up until that point I had become

a good member of society, a good member of my family

that I could handle those type of businesses.

And then, you know, all kinds of things happened.

My husband and I have been separated now for 14 years.

He's a very active member of AA.

And, you know, I learned through the steps as well

and through, you know, the 11 steps especially

is that true love never dies, you know.

The love that I've had through all of these years

doesn't have to be killed in order for me

to surpass the emotional pain.

You know, it can be transformed.

And I think that's probably, by far,

one of the most wonderful gifts

that I've been giving in AA is this amount of love

that I have for my fellows, for my fellow humans.

You know, the amount of patience and generosity

and kindness that I have because it's been given to me.

You know, in the last 15 years I took care of my mother

and I took care of my grandmother

and I took care of my mother-in-law

even though I was not with my husband anymore.

She had lost her only daughter to a drunk driving person.

And I knew that the humane thing to do

was to take care of my mother-in-law.

And she had full dementia.

She didn't recognize her kids, but she knew who I was.

She didn't know my name,

but she knew I was the most important person in her life

in the last three years of her life

because I cared for her

like I would have cared for one of my children.

And I took care of my grandmother.

And my grandmother was my master when I was little.

You know, and because of the steps,

because of the gifts that I was given

through the traditions as well,

I got to learn where my grandmother came from,

what a warrior she was, what she sacrificed.

You know, she was born in 1923.

She lived that, you know,

repercussions of the wars, the world wars.

And she was a warrior.

She was an incredible woman.

And I was able to give my grandmother the blessing

when she passed away.

She passed away in my home

and my mother-in-law passed away in my home.

And I was able to help them bless them

and take them into the transition into,

you know, beyond the veil.

And it was a beautiful experience

to watch these two women, you know,

take their last breath.

And my mother has alcoholic dementia

because my mother, after my sister died,

she drank with a vengeance, you know,

and she has alcoholic dementia.

And I go see my mother once a week.

And, you know, it's a blessing.

She has a great connection to her higher power.

She always talks about God.

She says the most beautiful prayers before we eat.

And every day is a new day to her.

You know, she doesn't know where she's at.

She doesn't know she's been there for a long time.

And every day is like, "When am I gonna leave?"

And, you know, every day I say, "Soon."

And she's lovely.

She's just a beautiful being.

And I get to give that back.

You know, I get to see what alcohol would do to me,

thank you, if I kept drinking.

And I hope if you're sitting here tonight

that you know where your movie will end

if you keep on drinking.

You know, my movie will end in a federal prison in Mexico

because I've killed somebody.

And I don't know why that is the vision that I have,

but I know that's the vision.

I love going to Mexico.

And I love drinking and driving.

And I know that I would get mixed up with lower companions

because that's where I feel at home.

And that's where I would end up.

So I hope that you know where your movie would end up

if you pick up a drink again.

I know where my movie would end.

And then, you know, what else can I tell you?

Just that I am forever grateful

for what has been given to me.

I really know, you know, there's been cash and prices

because I've worked hard for them.

But also I think that the biggest gift that I get to have

is, like I said, freedom from all this thinking.

And I do it one day at a time.

I go to a meeting every day.

Every day I go to a meeting.

And sometimes, like yesterday, I went to three meetings.

Not because I wanted to, but a couple of them

were kind of snuck in there.

And somebody called me and they needed me

to cover a commitment.

But I love meetings of AA

because every time I walk into a meeting of AA,

I walk out with hope every single time.

It doesn't matter where my head is out to get me.

And believe me, I have not always been the greatest

of examples of AA.

When I was about 10 years, between 10 and 12 years sober,

I chipped away on my integrity.

And I did things that I wasn't proud of.

And believe me, it's easier to make amends

for when you were drunk,

but harder to make amends when you were sober.

And I did do that.

I cleaned house, I came honest,

and I started making amends.

And I plugged back into my home group, you know,

and I plugged in back into AA,

has always saved my life.

You know, I'm giving commitments and they saved my life.

You know, my home group has been like wheeling me back in

a little bit by little,

like a couple of years ago with the pandemic.

They asked me to be secretary of a Zoom meeting.

Then they asked me to be hostess at this conference

in Mountain High.

And pretty soon I'm like committed, you know,

saving my life, saving my life.

And so anyway, you know,

I'm gonna thank you for saving my life tonight

because I know that by listening to Susan,

by watching your eyes, you know,

because your eyes were clear and sober,

and I can feel the hope vibrations and the love vibrations.

And it might be hokey if you want it to be corny or hokey,

but I do feel that.

I feel, I felt the love when I walked into this hall,

because I know for a fact,

a lot of people have walked through this hall

and have wanted to stay sober and maybe they couldn't.

And we get to do that this tonight.

So thank you very much for your rifle.

(indistinct)