Terry's 38-Year Sobriety Journey: Loss, Commitment, and AA Traditions

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

- Hi Terry.

- Thank you so much Abraham and the group

for asking me to come out tonight.

Karen, thank you for that great talk.

I mean, really, she just told my story.

Big part of it, yeah.

I wanna welcome anybody that's new or coming back

and we're glad you're here.

You know, I believe that if you are here,

you know, your miracle is in motion.

You may not feel like that right now,

but looking back when I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous,

it was a miracle right from the gate.

And I was really desperate

and this may not make any sense or sound.

I don't mean to be offensive, but I hope you're desperate

and I hope you're really ready to do what we do here.

You don't have to go back out and live the way

you were living or feel the way you were feeling

if you don't want to.

You know, I remember the first time I heard this

and my talks are not canned talk, so I don't always share

the same stuff, but this has come up a couple of times

in conversation with people that I'm either working with

or, you know, I heard it at the podium not all that long ago,

but you know, they say Alcoholics Anonymous

is not just for people that need it.

Alcoholics Anonymous is not just for people that want it.

The difference is gonna be, you know,

are you gonna be the person that does it?

You know, because I've seen a lot of people

come into Alcoholics Anonymous that really, really needed

to be here, you know, and my younger brother

who was my Eskimo into these rooms back in 1987,

who went out at 15 years and I can still,

he could never really quite get back into Alcoholics

Anonymous at the level he was those first 15 years.

He had a great program, great sponsorship,

sponsored a lot of guys.

His life had come together beautifully

because of Alcoholics Anonymous and he knew it.

But he went out at 15 years, you know,

he got a little too wrapped up in, you know,

really it was money, property and prestige.

That's what he had found.

And he got away from the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And two weeks before he OD'd, I had a conversation with him

and he said, Terry, you know, I can't, if I use again,

I'm gonna die, you know.

He knew it, you know, and yet he left the rehab

and he went back out and they found him in his car overdosed.

That was August 28th, 2022.

Like Karen said, you know, this is, we find really amazing

lives here, but it doesn't mean that life on life's terms

is always gonna be easy, you know,

and sometimes it can be tragic, but we're promised

the ability to match, you know, tragedy with serenity.

And, you know, well, let me back up a little bit.

I'll give you the stats.

My sobriety date is April 19th, 1987.

It's the only sobriety date I've ever had.

My sponsor's name is Pat Y.

I have home group meetings and Wednesday night Pacific group

is my Wednesday night meeting.

Tuesday morning, I have a Zoom meeting

that I am currently the secretary of,

another home meeting.

Thursday night Rose City speakers meeting in Pasadena.

I live out in Sierra Madre home group meeting

and Sunday morning Sherman Oaks.

I sponsor women.

I have commitments at all of my meetings.

These steps are not a one and done deal for me.

These are things that I live in on a daily basis

as well as the traditions.

I love the traditions, you know, they changed my life.

You know, I got to you guys, April 19th, 1987.

I'd been running the show for a long time.

I too grew up in an alcoholic home.

My parents divorced when I was three.

They were both admitted alcoholics.

I'm not labeling them.

There was a lot of, you know, kind of insane stuff.

They were good people and they loved me, my little brother,

but alcoholism is the rapacious creditor.

It's referenced in the book and it'll take everything

from you that means anything.

And if you think there's anything out there

that it's not going to take, it'll take it

and then it'll take you.

And I also lost my dad to alcoholism six months

before I got sober.

You know, I also came in to alcoholics anonymous

with so many secrets.

You were never gonna, you were never gonna knew this stuff

the way that I had lived and the things that I'd done

and the people I'd hurt and the promises that I had broken

and the hearts that I had broken, you know, and yeah.

And we get free here, you know, we get free here.

You know, I don't have any secrets today.

What a gift that is, you know, you know, my life,

not only for the last 38 years and 10 months,

obviously here in alcoholics anonymous is an open book.

You know, my job is to stay sober and share that, you know,

share what it was like, what happened

and what it's like today, but all that stuff that I did

when I was out there prior to coming in, you know,

they talk about that being possibly my greatest asset

to anybody that's new to let you know, you know,

I looked pretty good.

I mean, I looked better than some when I came in

'cause I'd been working hard to keep it together.

I'm also that girl woman who, you know,

if I can get it going on the outside, looking good,

you know, like chapter three more about alcoholism

talks about things we do to try to maintain the drinking

or revive our lives or, you know,

I taking on more physical exercise the last few years

of my life, my first life as a drunk, that part of my life,

I became a runner, you know,

and then it talks about reading inspirational books.

You know, I was reading a book called "Fit for Life"

'cause I'm running and this is a food combining book

'cause I believe if I look good on the outside,

somehow I'm gonna feel better about that hideous malady

of spirit that I had built drinking for 19 years, you know,

and quite frankly, even before I started drinking,

you know, I'm kind of one of these people

that believes kind of out of the chute

that there was something wrong with me, you know,

because I cannot remember ever really being comfortable

in my own skin.

I started working on the outside stuff, you know,

as soon as I could, you know,

and I wanted people to like me and,

but I was deeply self-consumed,

like I had this intense relationship with myself

and it was really so much of that victim, like, you know,

I mean, I was working on resentments

'cause people didn't treat me right

from about the age of seven.

You know, I'm still surprised that I went as long as I did

before I took that first drink, which was 11,

'cause I needed one at seven,

but it was 11 when I got that first drink

and I too had, you know, it was a supervised drink.

It was a couple I babysat for

and she brought her really cute 14-year-old brother

and her little girl that I babysat, her and her husband

and we went to the beach and we had a fire and a barbecue

and they gave us one glass of a mixed drink

and I drank it down and I tell you, I can still remember it.

I can still remember what it felt like

burning down my throat and intuitively being the great,

you know, budding, developing alcoholic I already was.

You know, I was,

my ism was really getting down early in my head.

I knew that burnt meant something good

and that night I did not black out or take my clothes off

or, you know, cuss anybody out or get in a fight.

That stuff would come later.

I just had a really good time

and when that cute 14-year-old boy was flirting with me

for the first time, I just felt so relaxed

and I could flirt back and we had a great time.

Now, I didn't start drinking every day.

I was going into middle school.

I'd been a good kid up to that point.

You know, I was an athlete.

I did, you know, performing arts.

I got all good grades.

I did what I was told to do

but things kind of started to instantly kind of go awry

as I went into those middle school years

and I made it through.

You know, I think back on my life

and I think about the people in my life

that some of them were really kind of like angelic types,

like my first counselor in middle school, you know,

and I was being thrown out of one more class, you know,

because, you know, I just got wild

after I took that first drink.

Like all of a sudden it was like, you know,

that person that was, you know,

just kind of trying to settle things and do the right things.

I just didn't care so much anymore

and where I wanted to go was I wanted to get loaded

and I wanted to chase boys

and, you know, all of a sudden,

sports didn't mean anything to me, performing arts,

no time for that, you know, and I got a little wild

and I have a funny story, you know,

I got married after I got sober

and I was gonna have a pretty big wedding

and I got this dress and the place that I bought it from

in Pasadena used a seamstress

and she was out in Woodland Hills

and I was living in Monrovia at the time

and I go out there one day, a Saturday afternoon

and I'm getting pinned up on my dress

and I was chit-chattin' with this lady

and it turns out that I was sitting in this sewing room

in this big house in Woodland Hills

and I'm talking to my middle school counselor's wife,

Mr. Hubert's wife.

Mr. Hubert was my middle school counselor.

Mr. Hubert was the room that I went to every time

I'd cuss out the science teacher and get sent to the room

and Mr. Hubert would say to me,

so this was, this is like early on, right?

I'm 12 years old.

Terry, what's going on, hon, how can I help you?

You know, and I didn't have an answer for it.

You know, I didn't have a language.

You know, all I knew is that I was uncomfortable

and I was already thinking I needed to get to the next joint.

So that's a little bit about that.

Now I move it forward.

I made it through that, got to high school,

getting ready to get sent over to continuation school.

I was, you know, academically I was kind of average

but street smarts, I had a lot of it.

You know, growing up in an alcoholic home,

you start to learn stuff pretty quickly on your own.

I was the oldest, I had a younger brother.

And, you know, when I was that age going into high school,

continuation school really had some tough kids.

I think now it's more about like,

just a little out of the box, you know,

they don't want to show up or do their homework.

And I mean, like, it was kind of scary

and I knew I didn't want to go there.

And for whatever reason, you know,

and I was on a first name basis with the Dean of Girls,

Mary Evans, and not because I was academically killing it.

It's because called my mom up and brought my mom in

and sat me down and said, we want Terry to stay,

but if she doesn't do something differently, she's going.

'Cause I couldn't follow the rules.

I don't want anybody to tell me what to do.

I want to call the shots.

I want things how I want them, when I want them,

the way I want them,

which would be a theme for the rest of my life.

Which by the way, I got to keep an eye on,

even today in sobriety.

The traditions have given steps and traditions and recovery

and continued practice and demonstration of the principles

that we find here in Alcoholics Anonymous

has kept me on the toes.

A daily 10 steps just to kind of keep track

on how I'm doing on a daily basis.

Anyway, I didn't want to go there.

So I got through high school.

I got out of high school.

I did pretty good.

I turned it around.

I was feeling bad for my mom.

She was raising me and my younger brother

and we're just like, we're starting to just rip it up.

And so I pulled it together, you know,

and I made it out of high school and I, you guys,

I got out of high school and I got a really good job,

you know, and you know, I like outside stuff.

I like stuff and I wanted to make some money.

So I decided not to move on to the next level of education,

but to start working and back in the days,

you got some training in school and I became a stenographer

in Mayor Bradley's office and I got promotions

and promotions and promotions.

And for a while, I looked like I was on track, you know,

for a little, I had a great boyfriend.

I thought I was going to marry him.

You know, I look good, you know, I'm smart,

but by the time I was 21 years old,

that good stuff that I just described had left.

And I too, when I'm going for the next promotion,

I can't understand why I'm getting passed up.

I got two back to back promotions

and then I start getting passed up promotions

for these promotions

and it could have been a career scenario.

And I can't understand that I go out for lunch for two hours

and come back, you know, after, you know,

a few shots of tequila, no doubt smelling like it too,

you know, and I show up late for work or I don't come at all

and it doesn't make any sense to me.

And I left that job on a resentment

and probably if I would have stayed,

I would have been fired, but I, you know,

I look back on my life and there were times in that journey

where I was trying to just kind of stay ahead of my disease

a little bit or stay out of trouble just a little bit.

And yeah, so I left that job and, you know,

I blamed the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Bradley's office.

I had been engaged for a little while.

That guy was a loser.

I left him, you know, people weren't treating me right.

I was getting bad breaks after bad breaks after bad breaks.

So, you know, I took a geographic.

I thought, you know, I'll go, I'll move up to central coast.

I'll go back to school again.

You know, I'm like starting to stop school

so many times, I can't tell you.

And went back up there and I moved in with my brother

and I was living on a beautiful chunk

of the central coast, Shell Beach, up near Pismo.

And I'm back in school and it looked good

for all of about six or seven months.

And the thing that we talk about around here, you know,

without addressing my alcoholism

and by the way, there's something we talk about around here.

You know, what I did, I grew up in an alcoholic home.

There was a lot of drinking and obviously I had evidence

that too much drinking could be problematic.

You know, there was a lot of violence, bills got unpaid.

You know, we moved a lot.

My parents were great people, musical, artistic, charming,

but alcoholism in their lives, you know,

just broke everything down.

But, you know, I kept thinking that this outside stuff

was gonna somehow fix what was broken inside, you know,

and I kept going for the more, the more, the more.

And, you know, the book talks about me

when it talks about me living in full flight from reality,

unable to differentiate the truth from the false.

The alcoholic life is the only life that we know.

And that really describes me in a nutshell.

A lot of blackout, drunk driving, you know.

You know, I am so grateful that I never hurt anybody

behind the wheel of a car in a blackout, you know.

And I was, I stepped out of arrest three different times.

I totaled two cars, both with cops showing up.

You know, started a fight with a cop one night

when they arrested my boyfriend for a DUI

when he was driving because I was too drunk to drive.

That night, you know, as I pointed at him

and demanded for his badge number, you know,

they sent me home and told me to sleep it off

and go pick my boyfriend up in the morning.

Or standing there after, you know,

failing the field sobriety test with handcuffs on

and, you know, them deciding Tracy was sober enough to drive

and they followed us home and threw us in the house.

You know, I mean, that kind of stuff

went on several times for me.

So I never went to jail behind my drinking.

But you know, as seconds and itches,

and in and around Alcoholics Anonymous,

we have something, the yet's.

And there were plenty of things

that were just waiting to happen for me.

They were just waiting to happen, you know.

And I'm so grateful I never hurt anybody.

But you know, at the end of my drinking,

I was up there on the Central Coast.

Everywhere we go, there we are.

And until I had the spiritual shift

that takes place on the other side of steps,

principles, and traditions,

until I came to you guys beat up and desperate, you know,

nothing was gonna change permanently for me.

Book talks about sometimes there's a brief progress

always followed by a worse relapse.

That sums up what the last few years of my life was like.

You know, time after time,

coming to in strange places with strange people,

coming out of a blackout behind the wheel of a car,

not knowing where I was.

Coming to in the morning, waking up,

certainly somebody had to have dropped me off.

But here I am in my bed,

my car is kind of almost perpendicular in the carport,

and I'm alone.

That meant one more time,

I drive myself home from wherever I came from.

You know, fights behind bars,

sleeping with your boyfriend or your husband,

you know, making out with your girlfriend.

I mean, you know, the list goes on and on.

And I left San Luis Obispo because, you know,

I couldn't hold a job up there.

Living on the beach, one of the most beautiful chunks

of coastline in California.

At that point, it was like, ah, it's overrated.

It's not that great.

Things aren't working.

The boyfriend that I thought I was in love with

just couldn't follow my agenda and my rules.

You know, you can be with me if you do it my way.

You know, there's no room for debate, any other thing.

You know, that's the deal.

So I got a job offer back in LA.

And in January of 1987,

I moved back down to Los Angeles

for a really good paying job.

I thought this is gonna fix me.

I had been doing all the chapter three step

that we talk about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Switching from Scotch to branding,

swearing to quit if ever drunk on the job,

taking a trip, not taking a trip,

never having it in the house, you know,

swearing off with or without a solemn oath,

physical exercise, I was doing yoga

and running all over San Luis Obispo County.

You know, they were great races.

You know, it seems like they all ended up at a winery.

Wineries were really kicking off back then

when I was living in San Luis Obispo.

And at the end, we'd be running up the hill

and there's a big winery and they have a whole bunch of wine

and a whole bunch of bananas and a whole bunch of cute guys.

You know, it was just heavenly.

I was doing all that.

I was reading my inspirational books.

The other book I had was Women Who Love Too Much.

It was a book written by a woman

to blame all the men in her life,

including her father for all the problems she had ever had.

I'd been doing that for a long time

when I got my hands on that book.

It was like, that was my little big book

until I came into AA and got the big, big book, you know?

And so I get this job, you know,

and I think it's gonna be okay.

But where I ended up within two months,

I spiraled so fast from trying to manage

and control in my life.

I'd been doing it all and it was kicking my butt.

And there's a part in the big book

that describes perfectly where I was

those last couple of months

before I walked into you guys, April 19th, 1987.

It says, you know, we're gonna get to that place.

We can't live with or without alcohol.

We're gonna know loneliness like so few do.

We're gonna be at that jumping off place

and we want it all to end.

And honest to God, you know, every time when I came in AA

and I started hearing these things that you guys

were reading out of the book and your stories,

I'm like, that's me, that's me, that's me.

And I was never suicidal.

I tend to lean more into like homicidal personality,

but those last couple of months, it was dark.

It was about as dark as it could have possibly been for me.

I always struggled with depression

and I always struggled with loneliness,

even in a room full of people.

Since coming into alcoholics anonymous, all that has changed.

I have been transformed.

The spiritual awakening has come to be the journey for me.

But then it was dark.

And I remember I called my brother one night and I said,

I wanna kill myself.

And he was sober six months.

And he said, you know, he was up in Northern California,

San Jose area.

He says, before you try killing yourself,

why don't you try meeting up alcoholics anonymous?

It's really working for me.

And that was about two weeks before this last night,

Saturday night, my girlfriends came down

from San Luis Obispo and they were spending

the weekend with me.

I lived in Hollywood, that's where I had landed.

And we went out, we were going for an early, early lunch.

And we were gonna wrap it up early at home,

watching a movie.

They had to get up early in the morning,

go back up to San Luis Obispo.

It was like a 15 hour run of drinking for me.

And I came to that April 19th, 1987,

it was about five o'clock in the morning

and there was booze oozing out of my body.

And I felt like I was dying.

I'd had, you know, that, you know,

coming to an a strange place with a strange person

with alcohol poisoning was very common occurrence for me.

That was not unusual.

But the way I felt that morning was, you know,

if you're here and you're thinking,

God, I wish I would have come sooner.

You know, why did I go back out?

You know, why did I have to go so long?

I absolutely am convinced that there was gonna not,

there wasn't gonna be anything that was gonna intervene

with what I needed to do before I crawled

into you guys, April 19th, 1987.

'Cause if I would have got here a second earlier

with one more good idea, I don't know if I would have stayed.

But when I came to that morning,

I apparently was done and didn't know it.

And I crawled into the bathroom and I was sweating alcohol.

I could smell it.

And I felt like my guts and my brains

were being ripped out of my body simultaneously.

I had never felt that bad.

And I had this moment in this bathroom,

it's my little burning bush story,

where I saw myself looking at myself in the mirror.

And then just like that, no was a prayer,

but it was indeed a prayer.

I came from a very atheist, no religion,

no praying going on there.

You know, I had no God.

I was a seeker, but I had no relationship

with a higher power.

I had been that person running the show since I was seven.

And I said this prayer, which was, "God, please help me.

I can't live like this anymore."

As the tears rolled down my cheeks.

Now I had bargained before like,

"Please, I don't wanna go to jail."

Or, "Please, I don't wanna get hurt."

Or, "Please, I don't wanna OD."

Or, "Please, I can't lose this job."

But this time I believe it was a surrender.

I have a living problem.

You guys taught me that.

Drinking is not my alcoholism.

My living problem is.

My disease centers in my mind with that mental obsession,

the spiritual malady, that big gaping hole

that I spent my whole life with in my gut

trying to fill with outside stuff.

All fleeting comes and goes.

He comes and goes, the job comes and goes,

the car comes and goes, the this comes and goes,

the school comes and goes.

But I said that prayer and I got picked up by my girlfriends

and they took, we went back to Hollywood

and they went up to San Luis Obispo

and that day what I remember about it was how sick I was.

But the miracle was in session.

It was happening.

Because for the first time ever,

the idea that I just needed to have a little drink

is something I can't, I'm too sick to not.

It didn't even cross my mind.

And I was sick and I took a couple of showers.

I don't remember watching television

or listening to music or anything.

And at about 4.30 in the afternoon,

never left my apartment, I heard a voice

and the voice said, "Call alcoholic smells."

Now I don't know if I was revisiting the dialogue

I'd had with my brother two weeks before that.

I don't know, maybe I was.

I like to think it was God talking to me,

but I heard it clear as day.

And I went over to the little bar in my little kitchenette

and back in 1987, we had these big fat books

called telephone books and I opened it up

and started to fan through it.

And then we had these big things called landlines

and I called the number, no cell phones back then.

And I was calling Los Angeles Central Office

and the lady answered the phone and she says,

"Central Office, Los, Alcoholics Anonymous Central Office,

"can I help you?"

And I said, "I need to go to a meeting."

She said, "Honey, you called the right place."

She said, "There's a meeting at 6.30 at Kaiser Sunset.

"Would you like us to come and pick you up?"

And I said, "No, thank you, I have a car."

And I did, I even had insurance at the time.

There were little things, little things about me

that kept telling me, you're not that bad, right?

You got a car and insurance, right?

Although I was carrying the insurance,

it was up in Shell Beach, which cut it in half

from 90021 or wherever my Hollywood zip code was.

But anyway, I took the longest two mile drive

I'd ever taken in my life,

sick as I had ever been down to Kaiser Sunset.

And the miracle was in full swing

because I must have passed 15 to 20 liquor stores and bars.

I only needed one little drink to get the edge off, right?

I was so sick, didn't even occur to me.

And I got to the meeting that night

and it was around Robin Candlelight meeting.

And I sat down and what I remember about that meeting

is that when it came time to say something,

I don't know if I was just like parroting

what you guys were saying, it was very small.

I said, "My name is Terry and I'm an alcoholic."

And I started to cry really hard.

And I remember thinking there's something about that

that just sounded right.

And the guy sitting next to me put his hands on my shoulders

and he kind of tipped me next to him

and he looked me in the eyes and he said,

"Terry, you're gonna be okay now

that you're an alcoholic synonymous."

And then I just started crying even harder, you know?

And I wish I could find that guy to tell him

that for 38 years and 10 months,

no matter what I've had to go through, I have been okay.

He didn't tell me everything's always gonna be okay.

'Cause sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just not.

You know, I had to drink over everything, you guys.

I had to drink when I was happy.

I had to drink when I was sad.

I had to drink when you didn't treat me right.

You know, I had to drink over everything, you know?

And since April 19th, 1987,

I haven't found it necessary to take a drink

or any mind-altering chemicals.

It's not to say that there haven't been things

that possibly might've warranted it.

But for me, I've never even had the thought.

Now, it's not like that for everybody.

And I wanna say that if the obsession is not gone

for somebody that's new in this room, you can stay sober.

There are plenty of people

that have not had the obsession vanish.

It just so happens my story that day was I,

that obsession had been lifted.

It was impossible.

There from the first day that I drank at 11 years old

to the last time, last drink I took April 19th, 1987 at 30,

there wasn't a day that went by

that I wasn't drinking, using something,

or if I, for some reason, was white-knuckling it,

waiting for the nanosecond I was gonna get back to it,

'cause there were times when I could stop,

but I couldn't stay stopped, and it would always get worse.

And I know today very clear, that morning, April 19th,

I am grateful for the desperation that I had.

I am grateful for everything that I had gone through

and all the secrets that I'd accumulated,

which I no longer have as secrets

because the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous before it,

because of that fourth step and the subsequent steps.

It took everything it took, but I was desperate.

And I got to you guys, the obsession was lifted,

and I haven't had to drink or use anything since then.

I don't have very much time.

I went a little long on my drunk-a-lug here.

What can I tell you?

The second meeting, five days later,

I detoxed in my apartment.

There weren't as many rehabs and stuff.

A lot of people were just getting detoxed

in their apartment.

I was one of them, and I was sick.

By the way, my dad that died six months before I got sober,

he was trying to get into a rehab down in San Diego,

a hospital, VA facility.

And before they got to him, he had an alcoholic seizure

and he went into a coma.

And the last time I talked to my dad,

he and I had been at odds for a long time.

I love my dad.

I did not understand that alcoholism

was not a choice that he made.

We don't have a choice with untreated alcoholism,

and it is the rapacious creditor.

It's gonna take everything away from you.

He loved his kids more than anything,

but he could not show up for us because of his alcoholism.

And I'd been pissed off at him for a real long time.

I had that book, right?

He was like the top man on my list to resent.

And two weeks before he had that alcoholic seizure

and went into that coma, I had hung up on him

and told him never to call me again.

And that was gonna be at the top of my list for secrets.

And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous,

try to finish this story anyway.

And right away, one of the first things I heard

was this idea that with our untreated alcoholism,

we don't have choice.

This disease takes us by the throat

and it's gonna strangle us.

It's gonna take everything from us.

And I realized in that moment, very early on,

that my dad loved me more than anything.

And he had told me that over and over again.

He just couldn't be there for us because of his disease.

But because of Alcoholics Anonymous,

because of the steps, because of strong sponsorship,

because of me being in the middle right from the beginning,

I was able to reframe that relationship with my dad

and see things that I had not been able to see about my dad

because of my own alcoholism.

And that relationship came to peace

in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous

through a lot of step work, strong sponsorship,

working with others.

And I have been left with this idea

that he is genuinely in my life as an angel.

I have felt that presence so many times

over the last 38 years.

And I was able, obviously, first thing to forgive my dad,

that was easy, but I was able to forgive myself

because that was a heavy burden for me to carry for a while

about how I had hung up that morning on him

when he called to tell me he loved me.

So that was a big one for me.

These last few years have been interesting.

So anyway, let me tell you real quick,

five days after my first meeting,

I got my first home group was WE Agnostics in Hollywood

and I got my first sponsor.

And I think this is a good story.

She shared for 10 minutes.

I don't remember anything she said.

Then there was participation.

And then this gal, Billianic, came over to me.

She had nine months sober.

She had shared about pitiful

and incomprehensible demoralization.

She was living free because of Alcoholics Anonymous

and she was happy.

And I really wanted in right there.

She came over, she introduced herself.

She walked me over to Jan who was the leader that night.

And she said, Jan, this is Terry and Terry needs a sponsor.

Well, I hadn't said that

and I didn't even have any idea what that meant.

And she said, hi, Terry, nice to meet you.

Is that true?

Do you need a sponsor?

And I said, yes, does this mean I have?

Oh, just one shoot.

I said, yes, and I don't know where that came from.

I'm the kind of person that says, well, maybe,

but I'll get back to you.

I got to think that through, right?

That would have been a bad answer.

And I said, yes.

And she said, that would be great.

I would love to sponsor you.

She said, but I'm gonna tell you something.

What I'm gonna ask you to do is not gonna be negotiable

'cause I only know one way to be sober.

She was about my age now.

She was old, my age now.

She'd been sober five and a half years.

And she'd come out off from dying on her couch

from alcoholism.

And she was now five and a half years right in the middle.

And she said, I'm gonna ask you to do stuff

that's not gonna be negotiable.

Do you think you can do it?

I had no idea what this was all about.

And I said, yes.

She said, great, call me in the morning.

And I called her in the morning.

That was Saturday morning, that meeting was Friday night.

And as soon as she started telling me the things

we were gonna be doing, I knew I'd made a mistake.

And that's not true.

I had the perfect sponsor.

She said, we're gonna work these steps

like your life depends on it 'cause it's true.

It really does.

You're gonna have meetings.

You're gonna have commitments at all of your meetings.

That's gonna teach you how to talk to people sober.

'Cause you know, I'm great with people

as long as I have a cocktail in my hand, right?

She said, you're gonna show up early and stay late.

When you get asked to do step in Alcoholics Anonymous,

you're gonna do it no matter what,

whether you want to or not.

You're gonna thank speakers, whether you like them or not.

She goes, and then she goes, if you stay here

and become a good example and do what we do here

and live and work these steps and practice these principles,

especially your ability and all your affairs,

you're gonna find this God consciousness

because the first 164 pages of the big book

is designed to help us identify that higher power

that I choose to call God also today,

who has presented in my life over and over again,

not always in the way that I think it should look.

It's been assignments.

I get assignments sometimes from God

on how I can work in situations and grow from them,

even if they're not easy.

She says then, she goes, if you do this stuff

and become a good example here,

you're gonna get that greatest gift,

that gift that's really gonna catapult you

into that new dimension, which will be sitting down

like I'm gonna sit with you with another alcoholic,

taking them through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

like we're doing, watching that light come on in their eyes

and watching their lives come back together

or begin for the first time.

And then it's gonna just rock at things for you,

which is what has happened for me.

And I've been in the middle of this place ever since.

Marriage came to an end, 2020, right before the pandemic.

A lot of anger, a lot of work, God presented.

We're all on Zoom.

All the girls I sponsor run out of things to do,

so they all start doing inventories.

I'm the wonderful benefactor of tons of great fifth steps

while I'm doing work with my sponsor on my situation.

Today, that man and I have the best relationship ever.

We didn't reconcile.

He's still my best friend.

Surrender, acceptance, forgiveness.

Two months later, we lost my mother-in-law.

A month later, my brother overdosed.

One of the most tragic things I've had to witness.

The following year, a rollover bad accident

where freedom from bondage, a story in the back of the book

talks about the 14-day prayer and resentment.

Resentment's the number one offender for me.

It's gonna take more people out than anything else, right?

So instead of 14 days, I had to pray for seven months.

And it was about a year to the date from that accident,

and I realized I'd gotten free 'cause of the commitment.

Right when you think it's all over,

you get a cancer diagnosis.

I'm cancer-free now,

but God put newcomers in my life extra commitments.

You know, this life is an amazing journey.

You know, I can walk with my head to help hide today.

I'm comfortable in my own skin most of the time.

I'm sponsored actively.

I need that woman in my life to bounce stuff off of

and once in a while readjust my attitude,

sponsor a lot of women, get to be with you guys.

10, 11, 12, you know, we gotta live this life.

You know, this is not a one and done thing.

And the gifts keep on coming

as long as I keep doing the work.

Thank you so much for having me.