From Childhood Foams to AA: A Lifelong Journey with Alcohol

for inviting me to come up and share.

I know his commitment is over and he came tonight anyway.

He probably does that for everybody, right?

Yeah, he's one of those regulars.

I appreciate the people in the room

and hi to the Zoomers as well.

And thank you, Jennifer, for accompanying me tonight.

I appreciate that.

It's been a long day for us.

We have our, I'm from the Santa Clarita area.

And so we had our annual convention this weekend.

And so we've been partying hard all weekend

and it's been really good, but it's been a long day.

And so I appreciate her coming and being here with me.

And next week we're gonna go to Covina.

So this is the thing about AA that I've found

is that if my calendar's free, it belongs to AA.

I learned that very early in sobriety

by the examples that were in front of me, the old timers.

They were in the meetings all the time.

We didn't have Zoom then.

Matter of fact, we had two meetings a day.

We had maybe one at noon and maybe one at 8.30 at night.

And when we were done with the 8.30 at night,

it was an hour and a half meeting.

We'd go to the coffee shop until one in the morning.

You know, that's how we rolled in those days.

My sobriety date is September 23rd, 1977,

which I'll be eternally grateful.

And you know, the reason that I'm sober today

is because, like Marianna said, and thank you, Marianna.

I don't know if she's still there.

Maybe she had those shifts.

She's somewhere in there.

She gave a great talk, you know,

about the passion that she has for this program.

You know, and I think that's why I keep coming back

because it never bores me.

I've never been to a bad meeting.

You know, I've been to some meetings

where I got a lot out of it

and I had that spiritual awakening.

And I've had meetings where they're just maintenance meetings.

You know, I'm there because I am treating my disease

every day, you know, but they're all good meetings.

And I still love Alcoholics Anonymous, you know,

like the first day I did when I came into my first meeting.

My story is, first time I remember alcohol in my life,

I was three years old when Dad was a United States Marine.

And I remember his buddies would come over

on Saturday nights and these guys had survived

the Great Depression, World War II.

They had been through it.

You know, that great generation they called them,

they had really been through it.

And so they were just loving on each other

and telling their war stories, you know,

and having a can of beer, that social elixir.

For them, it was just a social elixir.

For me, it was an obsession at three years old

'cause my dad would let me drink the foam

off the can of beer, you know.

And I would do anything I could to get in that room

with those Marines.

I would get in there, I would giggle, I would laugh.

I would do anything they wanted.

They'd blow me up in the air, you know.

I'd do anything so I could get that foam on that can of beer.

It was real cute until I was about five

and then they had to pry my hand away, you know,

'cause I was a little bit obnoxious

'cause I was in that obsession.

I loved everything about alcohol right from the start.

I loved the feeling in that room especially.

You know, that camaraderie, that excitement,

that feeling that they were connected somehow, you know.

And I just loved it.

I loved the taste of alcohol.

I loved everything about it right from the start.

Time went on, we moved every two years.

I went to 10 schools in 10 years.

So I started gathering resentments,

which is part of our disease, you know.

We can't wrap our brains around reality of our situation.

We want to change it.

I don't care what kind of an alcoholic

from any walk of life.

You talk to people that, you know, are highly educated,

some that have no education.

We all have that in common

that we're not comfortable in our own skin, you know,

and we want to be someplace else.

I think we're seeking, you know, from the very start.

I know I was an alcoholic right from the very start.

There's no doubt in my mind.

I know some people drink pretty normally

and eventually they cross over that invisible line.

If I cross over an invisible line, I don't know.

I may have put it up my nose, you know.

There was no visible line for me.

You know, I've just always felt different,

always felt a part of, you know,

it was always that new kid on the block, you know,

having to go up in the middle of the year

and introduce myself to the class.

And, you know, I'd go to these neighborhoods

where there were kids there

that they were raised in the same house.

They had the same grandma on one side of town

and the other grandma was on the other side of town

and they had all their cousins and relatives

and aunts and uncles.

And all of mine were 3,000 miles away.

You know, we were always transferred.

I had a grandmother in Washington.

I had one in Texas.

And I saw them a few times in my life.

And I knew that my cousins were there with my grandmas.

And I had a resentment about that.

And I had a loneliness deep inside, you know,

that I think only an alcoholic can relate to.

You know, much later on in my life,

I married a man who was raised

in a little village in New Mexico.

And he told the story of being able

to walk into anybody's house, you know,

and have breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

You know, he was one of the kids in this little village.

And he had the same grandma and grandpa.

You know, he had everything right there

his whole entire life.

And he described the same inside feelings

that I had, you know.

So, you know, alcoholism was definitely there.

And time went on.

We ended up moving to sunny Southern California

when I was 15 years old.

And let me tell you,

I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Everybody looked like a movie star.

They had convertibles.

They had their sunglasses and their tans.

And they were just, you know,

it was fabulous, the sun was out all the time.

The palm trees were swaying.

It was just like, wow.

And, you know, I had lived in places like Bristol, Tennessee,

New Orleans, Louisiana, Arlington, Virginia,

Lubbock, Texas.

And I lived there, you know, I was born in 1946.

So I lived there in the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

And let me tell you, in the South in those days,

you saw some stuff.

It was right in your face all the time.

And being a little alcoholic on search,

I couldn't wrap my brain around it.

You know, why is it that some people are okay

and other people aren't?

Why are some people rich and other people are poor?

Why are some people sick and other people are healthy?

I just couldn't understand why.

And so, you know, I started seeking real early

and I would have my parents drop me off at church

because I was a seeker.

And I believe that every alcoholic I've ever met

is seeking.

You know, even if you look at a bottle of alcohol,

it says the word spirits on there.

So I think that's what we're looking for,

you know, in the bottle.

And we find it, we find it in the bottle.

And so what ended up happening was

I was sitting in those churches, they talk about God,

but they talk about that punishing God.

You know, if you don't do it right,

you're going to hell, you know?

And that just didn't seem right to me either.

And so, you know, there I was, and like the book says,

you know, I was so caught up in the ugliness

of some of the trees.

'Cause I started to see the hypocrisy with everybody.

Like, you know, they say they're Christians

and they love people, but they're not acting like that.

You know, and they're not accepting me

and they're not accepting my family.

Now maybe they were, but that's how it felt.

Because see, the one thing about being an alcoholic

is we have a perception problem.

You know, we just think differently

and we're paranoid, we feel less than, you know,

we just don't fit.

And so when I finally moved to sunny Southern California,

I started going to Birmingham High School

and I fell in with some crazy California kids

who knew how to party.

And they asked me to go to a place called Zuma Beach

one Saturday night.

And we crammed a bunch of kids in our old 60s Chevy

and we pooled our resources, our little nickels and dimes.

And we stopped and had some adult go in to get us

a keg of beer and some ripple wine.

Now I don't know, there's maybe one or two people in here

that remember ripple wine.

Whatever the equivalent is they've been drinking right now,

it, believe me, the only thing that's changed is the label.

You know, the disease is exactly the same.

Whatever you're ingesting is the same as my ripple wine.

It's funny because I spoke at a meeting last year

at the rafters and this newcomer came up to me

after the meeting, he said, "You share about ripple wine."

He says, "I Googled it while you were talking."

He says, "I hate to tell you, but," he says,

"they stopped making it in 1982."

(laughing)

To a depressive, what, there's no ripple wine out there?

And so, you know, that was the beginning for me

of a really good time.

You know, Mariana said it, it was fun.

I can't stand up here and say that.

I didn't have any fun drinking.

It was a lot of fun.

It was so much fun, it damn near killed me, you know?

Because I was willing to go to any lengths

for that alcohol, for that vibe, you know?

It's a progressive disease.

It started stealing from me right away.

I couldn't sit in those rooms anymore.

In high school, I was coming out of my skin.

I was obsessing about that ripple wine.

And so I quit high school, you know?

First thing I did is stole my high school education.

My parents didn't know what to do with me.

My dad put me in beauty school and paid for it.

And I did go through beauty school and I did get my license.

You know, I got the skateboard done the first time,

got my license, and at 18, moved out,

got my first apartment and I started working

and I was doing pretty good.

I really was.

I had a job at a shop in North Hollywood

and, you know, things were okay.

I was making good money.

I was able to afford an apartment and a car.

Of course, these days, you know, my grandson's 26.

He lives with me because he can't afford to move out.

You know, times are different, very different.

But, you know, what ended up happening

is that I took my first geographic.

You know, I had a friend who was working

as a topless dancer up in a place called San Francisco.

And San Francisco's in the 60s and for the young people,

it's everything you've heard it was.

It's everything we see on the Discovery Channel.

It was sex, drugs, rock and roll.

And we, you know, were the generation

that turned the world upside down.

The great generation honestly didn't know what to do with us.

And my disease took off.

It's a progressive disease.

I stopped working, of course.

I started hanging out with the petty criminals

and the hookers and the fences and all the exciting people,

you know, down on North Beach.

And, you know, they decided to train me,

you know, in their trades and I wasn't good at it.

You know, I was this innocent kid

and I didn't realize until I did my inventory years later,

you know, that hard as nails Marine that I resented so much,

it was at the top of every resentment list I ever had,

had really protected me, you know, from life.

And there I was in this group of people that, you know,

were really good people to be honest with you,

but their priorities were all screwed up.

You know, they had, you know, a rap sheet

as long as their arms and they took me out there

and tried to train this little airhead,

you know, 18 year old.

And I started going to those jails and institutions

as a result of my actions.

You know, I was getting arrested left and right.

I know what it's like to wake up in the drunk tank

of the San Francisco City Jail.

I knew what it's like to drink,

to wake up in the Oakland City Jail,

Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center for Women.

I know what it's like to be strapped down in a psych unit,

hallucinating and seeing people that aren't there.

I know what it's like to, you know,

live one day at a time looking for that fix.

My story is my alcoholism led me to drug addiction.

I became a heroin addict out there, not prostitution.

You know, anything that I had to do

to get the money to get high and institutions.

And that's when my disease took me.

And I'd like to tell you I was 40 years old

when these things were happening.

I wasn't, I was 19.

And so by the time I was 21, almost 22,

my parents had to step in.

I had had hepatitis four times,

almost many near death experiences.

I had a near death experience.

And my sponsor explained to me that during my fourth step,

that I had had a spiritual experience out there.

And I said, what do you mean?

And I had told her the story about this man

that was trying to strangle me to death.

And my head shut off.

And the only thing that I heard

was the sound of my own voice.

And it said, you better get the son of a bitch out of here

or you're gonna die.

And I got that super human power.

That's why I say, you know,

and I know that there are people in this room

and on Zoom that have had those near death experiences,

whether it's car accidents or, you know,

some other kind of tragedy.

You know, if there was no God there,

we wouldn't be here, you know?

So I believe that God was with me every step of the way.

Otherwise I wouldn't be here.

She said, you had a spiritual experience.

She said, you know, in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous,

it says deep down within every man, woman and child

is that basic concept of God.

She said, that's where God is.

That's where we teach you in the steps

to seek God in that 11 step.

You know, through prayer and meditation,

we sought God and his will for us.

She said, you know,

you said that you heard the sound of your own voice.

And I said, yeah.

And she said, that's because God is so close to you

that you can't be separated

unless you take that first drink,

the biggest pill or anything mind altering.

Other than that, you're that close to God.

He's deep within you.

And that didn't make sense to me

for a lot of years in sobriety.

You know, I thought that was one of those things

that old timers told you, you know, I don't know,

to make you feel better, you know,

to walk you in or whatever, you know.

But I have started to experience that.

I started to experience that pretty early in sobriety

because I saw things happening in my life that were good

and I couldn't have done those things by myself.

But before I could get to sobriety,

I ended up in a program called Synonon,

which was a program on the beach in Santa Monica

started by a guy who got a resentment

in Alcoholics Anonymous and started his own program.

And he was a very charismatic cult leader.

You know, that's what those guys are.

He's very convincing.

And he put a program together.

It was a commune and we called it a social movement.

We did a lot of very innovative things in Synonon.

We had our own language really.

And a lot of good things did happen.

We helped a lot of causes out there.

The Black Panthers would come and get food from us,

from our pantry situation.

We had a lot of normies who would come

to play the Synonon game,

which was like confrontation therapy.

And it was a very stimulating, interesting place,

especially for a 22 year old who was, you know,

lost in every single way.

When I got there in my 20s, it was a fellowship,

just like Alcoholics Anonymous in that way.

It's like being in rehab.

You know, you make those friends

and you're shipwrecked in the same vessel together.

And I think that's why a lot of people have problems

when they leave rehab because they feel that closeness.

You know, you're all on an even plane.

Well, the same thing is true here.

We're all on an even plane right here in these rooms.

And so my 20s were good.

I was there for six years playing in sober.

I learned to trade there that I still do today

at sales of a small business owner.

And I learned that way back then, you know,

I had my daughter, I got married.

Things were good.

I would go to bed at night and put my head on the pillow

'cause I wasn't practicing my disease.

No, it wasn't a spiritual program.

It wasn't AA, but it was good

because I wasn't practicing my disease.

And I was in a fellowship of people, friends every day,

every day in every way.

And so when I was there six years,

my ex-husband and I decided we could do it on our own.

You know, we're doing so good.

Let's go out there.

And, you know, he immediately got into his disease.

He was gone every night

and here I am now at home with a three-year-old.

You know, now I'm in a whole different category.

I'm not free to go out there to those bars.

Now I've got a responsibility.

And that lasted for a little while.

And then I took that first drink, you know.

And once I took that first drink, you know,

I still had that responsibility.

But, you know, I made a decision and it went like this.

I'm not gonna use drugs anymore

because I've got this little girl.

I can't go to jails and institutions anymore.

I've gotta be responsible.

So I'm just gonna drink alcohol.

I mean, what could happen?

You know, it's like, it's socially acceptable.

It's legal.

It's like a Slurpee for God's sakes.

I mean, what could it possibly do to me?

And I gotta tell you, that was a different stage

of my alcoholism.

For the next four years, me and that little girl,

'cause the husband went this way after about six months,

I dragged her through things

that little girls should never see.

And it took a long time and sobriety to get to the place

where I started to realize, you know,

when I take that first drink,

alcohol takes me where it wants me to go.

I'm truly powerless and my life becomes unmanageable.

And that's what happened.

And, you know, after four years,

God stepped into my life again.

Through a set of circumstances, I can only call God.

God sent an ex-boyfriend.

I was living up in San Jose at the terrible bottom

with my little girl who is now five years old.

And he offered me a job in LA.

And so I moved down here and moved into an apartment

in Van Nuys and began having an affair

with the boss, of course.

And, you know, I still couldn't function.

I thought that geographic was gonna change everything.

Sure, I'll work now and everything will be okay.

I couldn't function.

I was that alcoholic who, it took me all the way down.

And, you know, we ended up in that apartment

with an addiction notice on the door.

You know, I had an alcoholic car.

You could, you know,

you had to get in through the passenger window.

You know, it was all, it was the true alcoholic car.

And I'd have to put blankets on my legs

and because the rain would come in out and, you know,

and I got sober in 1977, the fall of 1977.

It rained for three months, I think.

So I was always wet in that car.

You know, I had no skills left.

I couldn't rub two nickels together.

And, you know, I was scraped the bottom of my purse

and go down to the 7-Eleven and get a can of raviolios

or a box of mac and cheese.

And I remember in my inventory,

I told my sponsor how guilty I felt

that I was giving her mac and cheese all the time.

And she said, honey, she said,

they don't want anything but mac and cheese, you know.

Kids want to eat mac and cheese.

And she did what sponsors do.

She lifted some of that shame and remorse, you know,

that I had in my heart.

What ended up happening, thank God, in September of 1977,

the boyfriend said to me, Fran,

it's not normal for someone to order four drinks at once.

And I have to tell you, it wasn't normal for me

'cause we were going to these big discotheques

like the Tennessee Gin and Cotton Mill

up on Ventura Boulevard, you know,

with the big disco balls and Donna Summer and disco ducks.

And, you know, it was a big place.

And I was afraid the waitress

wasn't gonna get back to me in time.

So I'd say, I'll have four screwdrivers.

And they'd all look at me like I was crazy, which I was,

but I'd get my four screwdrivers.

That's all I cared about.

And so he said, look, he said,

I checked out an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for you.

It's at a place called The Hole in the Sky.

And I'd like you to check it out.

You need to get some kind of change in your life.

This guy didn't drink

'cause he was highly allergic to alcohol,

but he smoked weed from the time he woke up in the morning

to the time he went to bed at night.

But he could function.

He did just fine.

He became a big philanthropist in Beverly Hills

and all kinds of stuff, never stopped smoking weed.

And I guess that's the difference

between the heavy drinker and the alcoholic,

you know, so to speak.

But anyway, I took his suggestion

because I thought the relationship was over if I didn't.

That's the only reason I went to that meeting

on that Wednesday night in September of 1977.

And I've walked up those stairs.

It was on Sherman Way and Topanga at that time.

And I walked in that room

and I felt exactly what I felt when I came here tonight.

People out there greeting you, making you feel welcome,

walking in, smelling the coffee.

I hadn't had a cup of coffee in years.

You know, hadn't even thought about a cup of coffee.

You know, I felt in that meeting that night

the hope that we hope to transmit

to the newcomer who comes to us.

You know, I wanna welcome our newcomer.

You know, I'm glad that you're here.

And, you know, what I got that night was hope.

And I hope I can transmit hope to somebody else.

That's been, you know, the path that God put me on.

And I would never, ever, like Mariama said,

I would never have dreamed the life that I was given.

I think I'd stop at 25 after, right?

So about a few minutes.

Okay, so let me tell you about 48 years and seven minutes.

Here's a couple of really important things

that happened to me in my first year.

I met my husband, so I'm not the speaker

that can stand up here and discourage newcomers

from getting together.

The lucky thing for me was he had 13 years

of quality sobriety.

He loved everything about Alcoholics Anonymous.

He was second generation.

His dad had died with 11 years of sobriety.

And everything that he wanted to do was attached

to an AA meeting or a convention.

He rode a motorcycle.

I'd get on the back of that motorcycle.

I was 31 years old, pretty hot, at least in my own mind.

And we would just go off into the sunset together

with other AAs and go to Beaver Camp Vensions

and go to New Mexico and see his family

and just do a lot of really wonderful, exciting things.

Life came back in a way that I had never experienced it.

It was just a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I met my home group, which is the Pacoima group.

And I met the Pacoima group

when I was about nine months sober.

It's still my home group today.

We're a very diverse group.

We're almost 71 years old.

A lot of people there, we've lost them the last few years.

A lot of old timers passed away.

But we still have a very solid group of people.

And Sunday morning at 11 is our big meeting.

So I'd love to invite you guys

if it doesn't conflict with your home group schedule.

I met my sponsor when I was about,

oh, I had had a sponsor when I was brand new,

but she really didn't, taking people through the steps,

it wasn't her long suit, I'll put it that way.

She was a circuit speaker, beautiful lady.

But when I went into my inventory

and I told you a little bit about my story,

it was a real nightmare story.

There were a lot of things in that story

that I was ashamed of,

that I was gonna go to my death with.

I was never gonna reveal those things to anybody.

And so she had her husband walking back and forth.

He was the maintenance man in their apartment building.

So he kept coming back and forth to get different tools.

And she had the TV on the entire time.

So, you know, I didn't tell her much.

It wasn't a safe environment for me.

I couldn't tell her those deep dark secrets.

I was inhibited in that environment.

And so I cut her loose.

I loved her.

She helped me a lot in my early days with my family.

But, you know, as far as going through the steps,

I knew I had to go through those steps.

And so in my second year of sobriety,

I asked a lady from my home group and that was Rosalie,

if she would listen to my sister.

And so we made an appointment.

She said, yes.

She said, we're gonna make an appointment.

She said, I want you to have something to eat

and gas in your car before you come

and make sure that you're free for the entire day.

And she said, make sure that there's absolutely

nothing else that you have on the agenda that day.

This has to come first.

This is a life and death errand.

If you don't do this fifth step,

you can die with those secrets.

You've got to tell one person everything.

And so I went over there that day and, you know,

my picture of her was that she had this big house

in Northridge.

I always saw her with this man.

And I thought they were a couple

and they were rich.

And she said, here's my address.

I kept driving and it was the projects in Pacoima.

And I drove up and she opened the door

and she lived there alone with her brother

who had Down syndrome.

She had had the house in Northridge,

but she had to give it up because she had to qualify

for the schooling that he needed every day.

And she couldn't do it if she had money.

And I remember asking her, you know, Rosalie,

why don't you just put him on,

there's places where you can send him,

where they'll take care of him.

You can go there and check on him all the time.

And she said to me, no,

that wouldn't be the right thing to do.

I'm the one in the family who's available to do this.

And that's the right thing to do.

She taught me about responsibility early on.

You know, when Mariana was talking about helping,

taking care of her dad, many years later,

when I was sober quite a while,

my mother got Alzheimer's and I had to help my mother,

you know, and let me tell you,

there were times when I would drive up there,

park in the parking lot and I'd say to God,

God, I just don't think I can do this another minute.

It was taking a lot out of me.

And at the same time that was going on,

my husband that I told you about had been sick

for about 30 years with one thing or another.

Very mobile, we still went to meetings.

He was super active, spoke all over the place,

but he was sick.

So our life was a lot of doctor's appointments.

And so it was with my mother.

So I had both of them at the same time

and I was trained physically and mentally and emotionally.

And I remember sitting in the parking lot and saying,

God, I don't know if I can do this another minute.

And the voice would say, you can do this.

You can do more than you think you can do.

Just put a smile on your face

and go in there and be of service.

And that's what I did, you know,

and that was for about six years.

And I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful.

I was able to do that for my mother.

What an honor.

What an honor it was for me to take care of my husband.

You know, my husband had to stop working at 52 years of age.

You know, when I met my husband,

he worked in television for 30 years.

He had three inmates.

I have two in my living.

He worked on General Hospital.

He worked on Tom Jones show.

He worked on all the big shows

and he had a heart attack when he was 52.

And so, you know, that career was over.

And yet I have to tell you,

for the next 25 years until he passed away six years ago,

God took care of us.

Our lifestyle really didn't change much.

He provided some way, somehow.

And I've heard those stories, you know,

in Alcoholics Anonymous so many times

where you think that, you know, God, you know, I'm screwed.

You know, there's, I don't have any money.

I've been going bankrupt, whatever, you know,

you can walk through anything.

Page 112 in the 12 and 12 talks about, you know,

can you stay sober in spite of everything?

You know, with bereavement and all of those things.

And I think my story is that I have experienced many things

in 48 years of sobriety.

You know, I was 31 when I got here.

I'll be 80 in April.

And I have to tell you,

not only have I had a fabulous life,

lots of excitement, lots of wonderful things.

I've also had many challenges, you know,

the challenge with my husband, the challenge with my mom.

We did go bankrupt.

We lived in Vegas for five years.

Vegas didn't make us go bankrupt.

It was my bad judgment.

We had three houses and we had two in California

and the earthquake happened in '94.

We had already bought the house in Vegas.

And when we moved there, we had A1 credit

and I didn't want to screw up my credit.

So I kept borrowing from one credit line to pay another

so that I could pay three mortgages.

That's not really good financial sense, you know.

We should have walked away from them.

We came back to California and we went bankrupt.

And I remember walking in the bank report

and feeling lower than you know what.

And I remember looking around at the other people there

and I thought, you know,

they're all here for the same reason.

They made bad decisions or something happened.

And I remember the clerk saying to us when we were done,

she said, "Mr. and Mrs. Summers, good luck to you."

And I thought, wow, you know,

she just made me feel so much better.

And from there, I had a few lessons

to learn about finances.

I went to DA, Debtors Anonymous, to get some tools.

They said the first thing you do is cut up the credit cards.

Like, oh God, you know, let it work, you know.

And I learned to do that.

I learned how to live within my needs.

And I've always been taken care of, you know.

When I came in, I told you I had a daughter

when she was six when I got sober

and she was bouncing off walls due to my alcoholism.

And I had a lot of shame and remorse

and things to make up with her.

My husband had two kids.

And when I did that night step with my sponsor,

she said, listen, she said there were a few kids

that you had in your inventory

that were the result of other relationships.

And you said you weren't that nice to them.

I wasn't horrible.

I wasn't mean to them, but I was aloof.

I was unavailable.

I wasn't present.

And they were little kids.

And so she said, you have an opportunity

with your stepkids to make amends to those children.

And so I began to do that.

She said, you know, they didn't ask for you.

She said, you know, they have their mom and dad

and you're just like somebody that appeared in their lives.

And so she said, they don't owe you anything.

She said, you owe them something.

So she said, you be the one to be friends with those kids.

And that's the way that I have always treated them.

And today they're in their 50s and 60s and we're friends,

you know, and there's no wreckage, none whatsoever.

My daughter is different.

She's always gonna be right at the top

of that eight step list, always at the top.

She's the one that went into the cave with me.

And so, you know, there are challenges

that we have in our relationship.

I definitely see the result of my alcoholism

and some of her attitudes and actions.

And yet she's an amazing person.

You know, she functions just great.

She loves to smoke her weed and that's none of my business.

You know, that is none of my business.

I don't particularly like being with her when she's stoned

because she's not there.

You know, she thinks she's there.

She thinks she's just fine.

But you know, I kind of time it just right, you know,

and I just act like her mom.

And I'm so grateful, you know, for the last 48 years,

she has always been able to count on me.

You know, if you're new and you look ahead and you say,

oh my God, you know, I'll never get there.

My family will never come back.

They won't ever trust me again.

It's just not true.

It's just not true.

Some families don't come back,

but you make a new family here, you know.

And most families after a while, it takes, you know,

that it says in the big book, you know, 20 years of drinking

will make a skeptic out of anybody.

Well, it's true.

We got a lot to prove and we do it a day at a time

and a vent at a time,

but we can get those relationships in order.

I am so grateful to this program.

I think I have one, oh no, I have, yeah, one minute.

I like the light system up here.

I want to thank the quality of life.

- Wow. - Thank you.

I know that was missing in my pitch.

I meant to do it earlier.

I love the court tradition.

We state that each group is autonomous.

And as long as whatever you're doing

doesn't affect Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole,

as long as you're not inviting somebody from the outside

to ruin your meeting, you're good.

So the qua thing with quality of life is just fine with me.

Thanks so much for inviting us.

I really appreciate it.

I love you guys.

Keep coming back.

does work. Thank you.