Penny's 21-Year Journey: Hope, Relapse, and Friendship in Recovery

- Hi everybody, I'm Penny and I'm an alcoholic.

I wanna thank Sophie for your 10 minutes,

well, your whatever minutes.

Wasn't quite 10, but it packed a powerful punch anyway

and I'm personally glad you're here.

And I wanna, I think I'll get the stuff I have to do

out of the way.

First, I'll thank my friend Debbie for coming with me.

She's a really great friend.

We're in the dreaded Pacific group together.

And so, but Debbie's the kind of friend

that everybody should have, you know,

and the things that I've gotten from being sober,

besides the main thing is that I'm sober, right?

That's all I'm guaranteed by coming to AA

is that I'll be sober.

I'm not guaranteed cars or boyfriends or girlfriends

or any of that, but I have found from being sober

that you also get friends here and real friends.

And Debbie's one of those real friends.

My sponsor Veronica's on Zoom.

She's another person that's a complete gift to me

of this program.

And she thinks that I help her so much.

And I swear to you guys, honestly, I'm being honest.

I don't really do anything.

I feel like she helps me more than I help her.

I have taken her through the steps

and we're getting ready to go through them again.

But you know, what started as a sponsor relationship

has become a really deep friendship.

And Veronica's always there for me.

And I'm really grateful to Veronica.

She's a joy in my life.

And I think that's all the people.

I invited a few other friends here that live in the Valley.

I live in Encino.

I go to a lot of meetings on the West Side

only 'cause I'm in the Pacific group.

And so my stats are, and first of all,

I'm your booby prize or whatever you call it

because my roommate was supposed to speak here

and she wasn't able to, and she suggested me.

And so I thank Ben for letting me pinch hit for her.

You guys should have had Cindy,

but I'm gonna do the best I can

and hopefully we'll all get through the night.

And maybe the only thing I ever,

well, the main, main, main thing

is I wanna welcome the newcomers in the room.

And I think I saw like about three hands.

And I think one of our newcomers read chapter five

and did a great job.

And I don't know when I was new and people would say,

"Well, we have the meetings for the newcomers."

I didn't really, meaning me, I didn't believe it.

But then I've come to find out

that that is the reason we have the meetings

because when I got sober, if there hadn't been meetings,

I don't know that I would have stayed sober.

And so I feel like I'm so grateful to be sober

that I feel like it is my responsibility to pay it back.

And one of the ways that we pay it back

is that we have meetings

so the newcomers have somewhere to go

and hopefully hear a message of hope

from one of the speakers.

The very first time I tried to get sober,

I really did not think that you could have life

without drugs or alcohol.

I mean, I really, really believed that you could not.

And when somebody told me that you could or something,

or maybe I went to an AA meeting, I don't remember,

but I remember that I had hope for the first time.

Like I figured if a bunch of people like you guys

who were probably as crazy as I was are sitting here sober,

maybe there was a chance for me.

And I even didn't believe it 100%,

but I thought maybe there was a chance

and that little bit of hope turned into,

well, I've had a few sobriety.

So I'm sober now a little over 21 years.

When I first came into AA,

I stayed sober for eight years.

And then I was working in the film industry

and I was on the job in Italy

and everybody was drinking wine

and they kept telling me how great these bottles of wine.

Oh, it's $400, you should try this wine.

And for like two or three days, I said, no, thank you.

I don't think I said, I don't drink,

but I just said, no, thank you.

And then like around the fourth day,

I thought, well, I'm in a foreign country.

Why would it matter if I had a glass of wine

and who's even gonna know?

'Cause I could come back to LA

or yeah, I think I was living in LA at the time,

I know I was.

And I wouldn't necessarily have to tell anybody.

I could just have a glass of wine.

And that led to me trying to control my drinking for a year

and then not being able to,

and then trying to get back to AA.

So I had those, let's say it was seven or eight years.

I don't even know exactly, but I couldn't get sober again.

And I would come to meetings and I would get a month

or maybe a few months

or maybe more than a few months or some days

and I would drink and use again.

And what that told me was that,

that God gives you one chance to get sober.

And I had my chance and I stayed sober for a while

and I blew it and I wasn't gonna get sober again.

And I really didn't believe I could get sober again.

So what I'm gonna say also, it's not,

I hope it doesn't sound like advice

'cause I don't give advice,

but for people that are in their sobriety

and they have had the same sobriety date,

I recommend you keep it

because I know for myself,

it was just really hard to get back.

And what ended up happening for me is,

and while I was talking to another friend on the way here

and she was telling me, I should tell this story

and I'm probably not gonna tell the whole story,

but the gist of it is,

I've been married five times to four guys and one girl

and the girl I'm still friends with.

But the problem with that relationship is I'm not gay

and I was in a gay marriage

and it didn't really work if you're not gay.

I tried, believe me, I gave it the college try,

but I was living with that woman

who was sober quite a long time in Northern California.

And she was sober many, many, many years and I was drinking

and she didn't really see me drinking,

but she would smell my breath and she would go,

oh, your breath smells so sweet.

It was 'cause I was like drinking wine, right?

And I would tell her, well, I just brushed my teeth

and I would make up these stories.

And she was a little naive.

So she didn't get it until she,

I told her she should go to Al-Anon

and then she went to Al-Anon

and I thought that was stupid of me

to tell her to go to Al-Anon

'cause then she like put the brakes on

with help with enabling me.

But anyway, so I was living in this small town

in Northern California and I, again,

I wasn't able to stay sober,

but I went to a meeting there and I told this one woman

who happens to be sponsored by Sharon, who's in PG,

here in LA, even though this woman lived up

in Northern California where I live.

And I said to her, I said, look, Linda,

I can't get sober and I can't stay sober.

I'll do whatever you tell me to do

if you help me get sober and stay sober.

And again, I'm not believing that this is gonna happen,

but I did start doing what she told me

and I started going to meetings.

And all I did is I would get up in the morning

and pray to God to keep me sober for the day.

And that was like the extent of my prayer and meditation.

And then at the end of the day, I would thank God

for keeping me sober.

And I still do that to this day

because when I had that seven or eight years of sobriety,

I, everybody, and especially me would have said,

I'm gonna be sober forever.

I love this.

I'm the AA cheerleader, I'm sponsoring bunches of girls.

Now I don't feel that way.

I feel like I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go to bed

tonight sober and I negotiate every day

because I didn't stay sober.

And I know that I'm just one drink away

from not being sober.

And I love being sober.

It's probably, I'm gonna say, I was thinking about it today

and it's the best thing in my life

because if I wasn't sober,

I wouldn't have the other stuff I do have in my life.

And anyway, so I'm still only speaking for,

okay, 'cause I don't wanna bore you guys into like,

I don't wanna be up here for five hours.

I'm wearing heels, so you can't do that anyway.

But I will go a little bit back in my story

and then hopefully I'll get to get sober.

And because I think when I share,

I like to share the most about sobriety

because I think we can all tell our drunk loves

and we all drank and used and did crazy things.

What we did might be different,

but the way we felt I think was the same.

But what I love about talking about sobriety

is so that I can share the tools that I use

in order to keep this good life I've gotten

because of these rooms.

And I loved walking in here and seeing the steps

like each one framed like that.

I think that, I don't know why that's really cool to me,

but I wanna also thank you guys

because as soon as I got here, I felt very welcomed.

And that's kind of been my experience with AA.

I was working in, I think I was in Paris

and I went to an AA meeting there.

They have American or English speaking meetings

and it's the same thing.

And even if they weren't speaking English,

when I walk in a room of Alcoholics Anonymous,

it's the language of the heart.

I feel connected to all the people in Alcoholics Anonymous,

whether we're alike or not alike.

I think our disease makes us like connected.

Anyway, so I was up in Northern California.

I got sober there finally.

After I had about a year of sobriety,

I moved back to LA because my kids are in LA

and my friends were all in LA.

And I came to LA and my one son was behaving

the way I always tried to manipulate him to behave.

And I found out he was going to the Pacific group.

So I went to the Pacific group

to see who were these crazy people that got my son

to do everything that I couldn't get him to do all his life,

like cut his hair and not show off his tattoos

and all the stuff I cared about.

But he was also really had become a kind responsible person.

And I went to the Pacific group

and I stayed on the outskirts for the first year

because I wasn't sure I wanted to join.

They have, I'm not gonna call them rules,

but we have some traditions in PG

that I didn't care about

'cause I don't mind wearing a dress

but a lot of the women don't.

You have to wear a dress if you're speaking

or taking a cake.

The man can't, I don't know if it's different now

since Clancy died,

but the man couldn't wear baseball caps in the meeting.

And obviously nobody could use their cell phones,

but I still believe that nobody should take their cell phone

out when they're in an AA meeting

'cause we're saving our lives for maybe one hour.

So what's it gonna hurt if we don't get a text for that hour

but I wasn't sure about joining PG

and then I went to a roundup thing,

a convention in Palm Springs with a bunch of the PG people.

And I went with a girl that I didn't really know

and she was kind of crazy.

And so some other girls told me

to come stay with them at their condo.

And one of them was very, very, very active in PG

and sponsored a lot of girls

and we became really good friends

and she then gently suggested to me,

I kept that sponsor from Northern California,

but my friend, her name's Debbie also,

she recommended that I get a local sponsor

because it's really good to see the person

that you're working with.

So I got a PG sponsor and I'm gonna say

I came in and sat all the way down in PG after that.

And it's interesting 'cause the girl that brought me into PG

and who let me stay at her condo

at that thing in Palm Springs,

we became really, really good friends.

And then she lived in LA, but she was never legal here.

She was Canadian.

So she went to visit her family once in Canada

and they didn't let her come back over to the border.

She's still not.

So she's been back in Canada for, I don't know,

10 or 12 years.

And the cool thing is she's still my best friend

and I still talk to her on the phone

like probably three times a week.

She works such a great AA program.

And next month I have to go to Toronto for work.

I have a celebrity PR firm and one of my celebrities

is gonna be a keynote speaker at a thing in Toronto.

So I'm going also.

And I don't care about the work part of it,

but the good news is I get to see my friend Debbie

and spend a week with her and catch up.

And she finally got herself really involved

in the AAF there.

She fought it for a while because she wanted

to still be part of the Pacific group,

but again, and this is again my opinion,

but if you're gonna have a home group,

it should be maybe a home group where people can see you.

I have a sponsor named Quincy.

I don't know if some of you might know Quincy,

Karen shaking her head.

She's a great speaker and she sponsors a lot of people.

And anyway, so my background story is I was born in Michigan

and I was the third of four daughters

and my parents wanted boys the whole time.

So my name was Penny because there was a song

on the radio in those days.

I'm really old and the song was Penny's from heaven.

And so I thought, wow, they put a lot into naming me.

They just picked a song from the radio,

but my mother was an alcoholic, a practicing alcoholic.

And my father chose to be a traveling salesman,

which I don't really blame him

'cause they had four daughters.

So it was my mom and four girls,

and then my poor dad, right?

So my dad would travel and then my mom would drink all week

when he was gone and she would forget to feed us.

Most of the time she would forget to feed us.

So as a child, I remember my sisters and I would open up

like a can of chicken noodle soup that was cold

and we would drink it out of a cigar because we were hungry.

I also remember that my mom would drink in the kitchen

when she was supposed to be making dinner

and I would try to go in the kitchen

so that she wouldn't drink 'cause I knew she was drinking.

Even when I was little, I knew it wasn't good.

And she would tell me to get out of the kitchen.

Children in the kitchen make me nervous

and I would go out of the kitchen

and I would peek around the corner

and I would see her getting her bottle of,

she drank this awful beer called Stroh's beer.

And I would see her get her bottle of Stroh's beer

out of the cupboard and drink it.

And she caught our house on fire a lot 'cause she smoked.

And then when my dad would come home,

she wouldn't get as drunk,

but they would fight all the time.

But I liked my dad being home 'cause we got fed.

So the trade-off was I was either hungry

or I was dealing with my parents fighting.

And I don't consider myself a victim

because of the way I was raised and I'm not an alcoholic

because my mother was an alcoholic

or because of my childhood.

I like who I am today and I think I had to live through

everything I lived through in order to be who I am today.

But I always say to myself, I don't wanna live,

I don't wanna go through that again.

So when I was, so I had a scholarship to a college

and all I could think about was getting out of the house

when I was like in high school, right?

Just get away from these crazy people,

this alcoholic mother, this father who's fighting

with the alcoholic mother.

And what I ended up doing is I had a hippie boyfriend,

had really long hair and the first time I slept with him,

I got pregnant.

So I got pregnant when I was 17.

And so as soon as I graduated from high school,

we got married.

I'm Jewish and he was Jewish

and so we even had a Jewish wedding.

He just had to wear a wig because my dad wouldn't let him go

with his long hair for the wedding.

But anyway, so we got married, I turned 18,

I had my baby Andy and then my husband died in an accident.

One year later when Andy was a year old.

So I became a model and I went on the road modeling

and I took my son with me and I ended up in San Francisco.

And in those days, like my solution to life

was like to find somebody to take care of me.

In those days, it was always a guy

and it was usually get married

and have them take care of you.

And so I moved in with this artist.

My son was then about three years old.

And then when I was living with the artists,

we were kind of poor.

We lived in a canning factory in San Francisco.

Before it was really cool to live in a factory.

It was, anyway, I lived there and one day I woke up

and I decided, I don't know if it was one day I woke up,

but I decided I should marry a doctor.

That if I married a doctor, it would solve all my problems.

He would have money and he would take care of me.

Those two things.

So I lived in San Francisco and I thought,

well, where can you meet a doctor?

And I thought Palm Springs, Las Vegas, or Lake Tahoe.

I'd never been to any of those places before.

And I ended up going to Lake Tahoe.

And four days later, I married a doctor

that I met there at the gambling tables.

Which I always say,

don't doubt the will of an alcoholic woman, right?

He said what attracted him to me, he thought I was pretty.

And he liked the way I drank tequila

at two o'clock in the afternoon.

So we got married by Reverend Love

at the Lake Tahoe Wedding Chapel four days after we met.

Then I had to go back and tell the artist

that not only was I not marrying him,

but I was moving out and taking my son.

I had to introduce my son to his new father.

I called my sister who was very Jewish.

Her name was Pam Horwitz and I called her and I said,

oh, guess what, you're gonna be so proud of me.

I did it, I married a doctor.

She said, so what's your new last name?

And I said, Biscarin.

She said, what kind of name is Biscarin?

I said, I think we're Italian.

And to tell you the truth, he was Mexican,

but I didn't know it 'cause we had known each other

really well after four days.

So I said, oh, she said, what kind of name is that?

I said, I think we're Italian.

And she says, I told you to marry a Jewish doctor

and she hung up the phone.

Anyway, we were, it's a weird story,

but I was married to him for 47 years,

not with him all that time.

He just passed away a year ago, but after we,

so we had, so he adopted my son Andy

because my son Andy's father had died.

And then we had a son, Michael, who is also a doctor.

And my ex-husband died like about a year ago now.

And he was still the head of our family.

Like he took care of all of us.

So it's been a bit of a hard year for all of,

for my sons and myself.

My one son that's a doctor, it was really close to his dad.

And my other son used to be sober.

He's the one that I followed into PG, into Pacific group.

But he, I don't think he's sober now.

I can't tell, but he doesn't go to AA meetings.

And frankly, I'm really worried about him

because there's weird drugs out there now.

And I think he's not sober,

but I also have gone enough myself to Al-Anon

to know that I can't get him sober.

I mean, I did get him to go to our Saturday night meeting

and give me a cake for 21 years recently.

And he did that and everybody was so glad to see him

because everybody in our group loved him

and they wish he was back.

But I just have to keep praying that he doesn't die.

He also has a son who's gonna turn 14 tomorrow.

And my son Andy is divorced,

so he doesn't have his son a lot.

But so in all of this, I don't know if it sounds like,

"Oh my God, she's had a horrible life."

Or, "Oh my God, she's had an exciting life."

What I will tell you is that since I've been sober

and even in my old sobriety,

but definitely for the past 21 years,

the most important thing to me is to stay sober

because again, I know that I can't have my sons in my life.

I can't take care of my grandson.

My life, I mean, I still work.

I have a really good job and I wouldn't have any of this.

I wouldn't have friends like Debbie.

And obviously I wouldn't be sponsoring Little Veronica there

but I'm so grateful.

And all I did was I did when she's very, very,

very thorough about doing the steps.

And I think that what I've heard

from the years I've been here was that,

we can go to AA meetings and we can do all this stuff,

but unless we work the steps,

we don't get to be exactly happy, joyous and free.

And I don't know if I can even use those words.

I'll describe myself.

I don't know if I'd ever say I'm happy, joyous and free.

I am free.

I love my life.

I love my friends.

I love that I go to work and I love the meetings in LA.

I was gonna move away from here at one time.

And I realized that for me, the meetings are so important

because again, because I struggled so much with being sober

that it's really important to me to go to meetings a lot

and wanna go to meetings.

And I love the meetings here.

All of them, not just the PG meetings.

I, for some reason, not 'cause of Sydney, I don't think,

but I'm speaking a lot.

So I'm speaking in San Pedro coming up

and then I'm speaking in Big Bear

and I'm speaking at the 502 Club in Covina.

And speaking's not my favorite thing,

but I'll tell you what I love about it.

I love that I can come in this room

and hope that I said something that one of the newcomers

that makes them wanna keep coming back

and that you guys were so lovely

to spend your Saturday night with me.

I normally go to a meeting on Saturday night in Santa Monica

where I had a big commitment for the past year.

And then now there's a new secretary

and I didn't take a commitment

'cause it's kinda hard to never be able to,

always have to wear a dress on Saturday

and never be able to go out of town on the weekend.

Not that I really go out of town that much,

but I didn't take the commitment,

but I still go to that meeting when I can.

I go to a meeting that Debbie goes to

on Monday and Wednesday and every day,

and I heard this, somebody shared this

at my woman's stash that I go to last night,

that the most important,

one of the most important things for me to do too

is focus on not what's going wrong in my life

or what I don't have, but gratitude.

And I do believe that whatever we focus on gets bigger.

So, and even somebody said,

the girl that was sharing said it doesn't matter

when she does a gratitude list every day,

whether it's one thing or 10 things,

but let's look at what we have to be grateful for.

And the truth is that when I'm not sober,

I'm physically dying.

And so if I got nothing else from being sober,

but being somewhat healthy and alive

and able to participate in life and continue

on this beautiful path that I've been given

and that I watch a lot of other people in AA,

and I try to be like the people

that I see that are of service.

I know a lot of people that are very much of service.

They're the people that are at the meeting,

setting up the chairs.

They're not always the secretary or having the big jobs.

They're just being of service.

And the one thing that I also believe is I believe that

in the principle that of, I don't know how to say it,

but one of my ways of being of service

is to be kind to everybody.

So not just AA people.

So be kind to the people in the store where you're shopping.

And I'm the person that lets cars cut in front of me.

If they need to get over, I just go, come on.

That's been, I think we all have gifts in life.

Like we're born with gifts.

And I think one, I guess I'm gonna call it a gift

is that I wanna be of service to people

and I wanna help people.

And it doesn't matter who it is.

The other night I was at my meeting

and I was sitting next to a guy and I said,

I wish I was more of service.

And he said, well, Penny, I think you're really of service.

Like he's known me a long time.

And he says, you sponsor girls, et cetera.

And I said, yeah.

But in our reading, it was already said tonight

that this is just about one alcoholic talking to another.

And tonight I had the pleasure of coming in here

and talking to you.

And I love you guys.

And I would love to hear your story sometime

because I think our stories are fascinating.

Anyway, I didn't see any lights,

but it seems like it's only been an hour and a half.

I've been on (indistinct)

- Seven minutes.

- Oh, well, I'll probably end early,

but I'm thinking if there's anything else I can share.

I think I already said that one of the joys is sponsoring

and working with Veronica, having friends like Debbie.

And for the people that are new,

I promise you on both of my son and my grandson's life

that it's gonna get better.

And I know in the beginning for me,

it was all I could do to just hang on.

But every day that I've stayed sober,

my life has gotten richer and richer

and I hope it continues that way.

And I hope it does that for all of you too.

and thank you for paying a 12 step call on me.