August 17, 2025 • 46 mins
In this special episode of Voices of Recovery, we continue our August series, “Our Predecessors”, with the remarkable story of Fern—a woman who has devoted more than four decades of her life to Narcotics Anonymous in selfless service.
Growing up in a Jewish household where alcohol was always on the table, Fern discovered early on that she loved the feeling it gave her—and she always wanted more. That desire grew into a disease that took her deeper into drugs, woven into the counterculture spirit of the 1960s and 70s. Couch surfing, restless, and dreaming of stability, Fern’s life became a battle between her spirit for freedom and the chains of addiction.
Her using strained her family and broke her ability to show up as a mother, until one Christmas in 1983. Kicked out of yet another family gathering, lost in her disease, she stumbled back into the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous. Her predecessors had kept a seat open for her, and one night, she finally took a suggestion—she picked up the phone and called someone. That single act of surrender became the first true page in her recovery story.
From that day forward, Fern never turned back. She became part of the early fabric of Narcotics Anonymous in New York, helping to build meetings where none existed and laying the groundwork for a fellowship that now thrives with hundreds of meetings.
Her devotion to service—whether in person, online, or carrying the message into jails—has touched countless lives. Always thinking of the newcomer, Fern has made it her mission to plant seeds of hope in hearts and minds that desperately need it.
As a sponsor, a sponsee, and a servant of the NA fellowship, Fern has shown what is possible when one woman surrenders to a program, works the steps, and lives a life in selfless dedication. For over 41 years, she has walked the path of recovery one day at a time, proving that even the darkest beginnings can give way to a new way of life—lit hope, guided by service, with the promise of freedom every step of the way.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
You're listening to the Voices of Recovery podcast.
This is a special episode featuring a recovering addict.
Hi, my name is Sophie X. I'm the host and producer of the
(00:27):
Voices of Recovery podcast. I'm joined here today by Fern.
Hi, Fern. I love there.
Hi, welcome. Thank you, Fern, so much for
being on the podcast and for doing our readings for the Just
for Today and for the SPAD. It's been quite an honor.
I am so grateful to have you. You brought me into the rooms of
recovery. Without you, this podcast
wouldn't even exist. Everybody is placed in front of
(00:50):
us for exactly the reason eitherto pay attention or not to pay
attention. And what happened was I heard a
message from someone that neededto be guided and I took it upon
myself. And I guess that's where your
gratitude comes in, to be able to say, hey, I can relate to you
(01:10):
and I can help you come in. And at that point it worked.
You were the catalyst. You were the catalyst.
The reaction went within me and you brought me in.
And I'm so grateful to be in this recovery space with you
and. I can take credit for your first
year. Recovery for.
Being the person, yeah. Sponsor, I love you so much.
So you're on this special seriesof August about our
(01:33):
predecessors, and you have 41 years, Queen.
And 1/2. 41 1/2. 41 1/2. This is my half anniversary.
That's awesome. That's awesome.
So you have 41 1/2 years clean. So tell me a little bit about
what it's been like to be in recovery through 4 decades,
right. You've seen the AIDS epidemic,
(01:55):
you've seen the crack epidemic, the heroin epidemic, you've seen
the opioid crisis, you've seen COVID.
You've seen all of these different ebbs and flows of this
program through many different evolutions throughout time in
the New York area and also outside of New York.
So you have a unique perspectiveand I would love for our
listeners to get to hear, you know, from Fern, from behind
(02:17):
Fern's eyes, you know how how itall progressed.
So take it away. I'm, I'm so grateful that though
it sounds like a whole lot of clean time, it's still many
Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etcetera, etcetera,
day at a time. And I still feel excited for
(02:40):
recovery, excited for what everyday brings and not planning or
knowing what's going to happen in the future.
I'm prepared to stay 100% both feet grounded in this day today
and it just. I've been doing it every single
morning. The time has been
(03:01):
inconsequential in the general picture because events, I guess
it would be successes and learning experiences and
learning experiences that becamesuccess by just being spiritual.
So I came into recovery not because I wanted to.
(03:22):
I had no idea about the disease of addiction.
I had no idea where life would bring me.
But I went into a detox finally after trying on my own for many
years to stop using. I just wanted to stop putting
needles in my arm. I mean, I just, you know, I, I
(03:45):
ended up in that, you know, St. junkie life.
I didn't like it, but I was so used to it that it just became
another day. Every day was a struggle and it
was just another day. How long were you using for?
When I came into recovery, I waswhen I got clean.
(04:09):
When I came into recovery, I wasin my late 20s.
When I got clean, I was 31. I'm 72 now.
And so when do you remember everfirst using?
Oh, when I was child, we, I'm Jewish.
We had satyrs at grandma's houseand everybody got this little
(04:30):
cup of wine in front of them, including the children.
And with each Kaddish prayer, you'd take a sip of the wine
from the cup and I would drink all the wine in the cup.
I like the flavor. I like the effect, the euphoric
effect that it gave me. I like the warmth.
(04:51):
And I knew at an early age that I would look forward to going to
grandma's for the holidays. And they would end up
inadvertently every year, putting well, every time we were
there a few holidays during the year, but every time I'd end up
on one of their beds to sleep itoff.
(05:12):
And, you know, and and I loved it.
So the signs were there from when you were a kid that you
might be an addict. Yeah, but.
You probably didn't recognize itas a problem then.
Right. No, I just wanted more.
More. If I had if I had something and
I wanted more, I'd steal it. You know, I'm, I don't feel the
(05:33):
shame the way. The Ways and Means to get more
right. And that was stealing, lying,
cheating at a very early age just because I wanted what I
wanted, and I wanted it now. And if I liked it, I wanted in
five colors. And I want to get it when I'm
ready, not when you say I have to wait for it.
(05:56):
So I became capable of doing subversive acts to get what I
wanted right. So talk about the progression of
the disease then. If you were showing signs as a
child, how did it progress as you aged?
Well, I, I had good friends thatwere not addicts.
So it didn't come out with drugsspecifically until I was in my
(06:21):
teens. I guess it started with alcohol
as a child. And yes, it was alcohol.
And then pot came in, you know, and Vietnam was going on and,
you know, Woodstock. I was in Woodstock.
I barely remember that whole entire two weeks.
(06:42):
What was a weekend took me two weeks to get home.
How did you get there? Hitched like the rest of us from
New York, from New York City, ofcourse.
Yeah, why not? I mean, there was this steady
line of hippies hitching up the quick way, you know, 17 W, you
know, to, to go upstate and, youknow, it was a lot of fun.
(07:03):
I was with a lot of good people.And then Vietnam was going on.
So there was this whole resurgence of, you know, of
burning your bra and and not conforming to the conformists.
The resistance. There became a division between
(07:24):
those that followed the pathway to living legally and and
playing by the rules and those of us that said up against the
wall, motherfucker. Now that was a song by David
Peel in the Lower East Side, where I was in the Lower East
Side. And I took great credit in being
(07:46):
subversive, you know, in, in, inprotesting for, for all the
right reasons. You know, I believed in the
power of free speech and the power of, of free thought.
And I, I unfortunately had very little guidance though, because
(08:06):
the people that guided us were those extremists, you know, and
I had already ran away from homeat 15 and three quarter years
old. My dad had just passed the year
before put my poor mother couldn't handle me.
I don't know how hard she lookedfor me, but she kind of let me
(08:28):
go because she had other children at home and and they
were all conforming to her rules.
I was the one that that said I Idon't have to listen to you.
And unfortunately, it left this big gaping hole inside of me as
a person, this loneliness. And even though I was with all
(08:50):
those people I'm talking about and, and all those like, you
know, the, the, the crowded Woodstock was not overwhelming
to me. I'm, I'm very comfortable in a,
in, in a crowd of people. So, you know, even though
cramped and crowded in, in, in the place where I lived each
night where I I'd crash and it'ssomebody's pad each night, you
(09:13):
know, and have to sleep with people just to have that
mattress to go to sleep at night, we'd have to have sex.
And you know what? I never considered it, you know,
an affront to my character or rape or, you know, at that time
because it was just what I had to do to go to bed.
(09:35):
And all I want to do is go to sleep.
And then there were then there was all these acid trips and
hitchhiking across the country, I mean, you know, and only
making it as far as Chicago, youknow, And then it's turning
around. And someone said, oh, well,
well, we're going back to New York.
And I said, you know, what? Can I come with you and went
(09:56):
back to New York? It was a lot of experiences that
could fill a comedy show, you know, quite frankly.
But the paradoxes that inside inside me, inside my psyche,
inside my heart was this, this loneliness, this unabided
(10:17):
feeling of just aloneness, you know, with no one to depend on
really, no one to really trust. And so I felt like just as a one
person, you know, and I came into recovery that way, just one
person thinking for my own, not capable really of listening to
(10:39):
other people. If they agreed with me, fine.
If they, if I didn't agree with the theory or what you were
saying, I, I couldn't listen. I because I didn't trust you,
you might ask me for something Idon't want to give.
(11:00):
And thank God for Narcotics anonymous.
No one ever said, Oh, you're high at this meeting.
You know, I came to NA for yearsusing.
No one told me get lost. No one said, you know, you
shared that yesterday and the day before and the day before.
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Could you think of something new?
No one ever said that. No one ever asked me if my car
was stolen. No one ever asked me if I had a
driver's license. You know, they just cared about
why I was in the room. What are you doing here in this
room? And how can we help?
And how can we help, right? And New York at the time, there
(11:44):
were very few women that were clean.
It was mostly men. And, you know, which worked for
me because I didn't trust women anyway, you know, you know, I
didn't really trust women. I came into recovery.
My name is Fern, which sets me apart.
(12:04):
I have fuzzy brown hair, glasses, freckles, always the
kid at the front of the line because I was the shortest and
you know, my arrogance and my sarcasm set me apart.
I, I looked like Vogue on the outside because I stole
everything I wore and it was Madmagazine on the inside because I
(12:28):
could. I thought in at such I with such
obscurity, you know, nothing wasreally succinct and to the
point. You know, I if you ask me how do
you feel today? I didn't know.
I had no idea how I felt. I felt anger, I felt frustration
or I felt elated. There was that was within where
(12:52):
I lived. So you talked about coming to
recovery but not yet getting clean.
Tell me about your life when youwere getting to the end of your
rope. I believe you had children then.
Yeah, OK. So my daughter was 4 when I
started coming. When I went to my first meeting,
she was four years old and she was 7 when I got clean.
(13:16):
So it took three years and my first year of recovery I did not
take the suggestion about not being in a relationship.
And at four months clean I got pregnant with my son.
So my first year of recovery when they brought me my cake to
Surf City in Long Beach, there it was with my big belly out.
(13:37):
But for the end of my using. That's when I finally I was
driving into the city with my stolen car without a license.
Typical crying because this songcame on that said Love's got a
(14:02):
line on you and in my mind I heard Dope's got a line on you.
Dope is telling me what to do next.
Dope the the little things that I was hearing in the rooms were
starting to get into my head. You know, when I wasn't in a
meeting, remember we only had one meeting, no cell phones.
You know, everything was done picking up a receiver.
(14:25):
And so there was a lot of alone time I had, I'm crying because I
don't want to go in to clap. I didn't want to go, but I had
no choice. And it was Christmas time.
I was working in a salon, a hairdresser working in a salon
(14:47):
where everybody is so happy. Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun.
You know, music is playing and there's these wine containers up
front, you know, for people to come and have a little glass and
celebrate, you know, the holidayand get their hair done.
And I am miserable. I'm miserable.
(15:08):
I have no dope. I have to go cop.
It's Christmas Eve day, we're going to my mother's that night
for Christmas to for the first time my daughter was was going
to see Santa. You know, growing up Jewish we
didn't do this, but now we have Catholics in our family and
(15:33):
Santa Claus shows up. Well, I ended up getting into a
fight with my brother, who's less than a year younger than
me, but an actual fistfight at my mother's house in front of my
family. I mean, it was horrible.
My mother sent me back to my home in a taxi and said don't
worry, you'll pick up the baby tomorrow.
(15:55):
And which is what happened a lot.
And it, it was getting to the point where I couldn't, it was
hard to go and cop every day. It wasn't that easy anymore.
People were like just not trusting me enough to lend me
money, thinking they were not going to get it back.
So I, I was losing my credentials now what I thought I
(16:19):
was inside my head was totally different than what I was in
reality outside of my mind. You know, people didn't love me
as much or trust me as much or want me around them as much as I
thought they did because time was irrelevant.
You know, it's just I was just living my junky life, you know,
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not feeding my daughter as she should have been fed, not doing
the things that are morally right to do in life and not
realizing the impact of all thatand not seeing myself in anyone
else's eyes. So what brought you to that
(17:04):
point of surrender? It was that Christmas at my
mother's the fight. I got home and I was glad to be
home because I had a little bit of dope left at the house.
I did the rest of what I had andnow I'm out of it and the next
day is Christmas Day. No one's going to be out on the
(17:24):
street selling drugs because everybody's home for Christmas.
There's very little gas in the car to go back in.
I thought I had gotten enough toget through the holidays, but
there was never enough. And I thought, what am I doing?
Could it be the drugs? I wonder for the first time in
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all the years I had been coming,it became apparent to me that
it, well, it became questionablethat it could be the drugs, it
could be that I just can't. It could be the drugs could be
the reason why I can't get past,you know, 5 to go into a 10 on
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the scale of zero to 10, I was 0to at best five.
You know, I couldn't get past five.
So it just became apparent to methat Christmas I started to come
to Narcotics Anonymous hearing it differently.
The last night I used was January 4th.
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It was a Thursday evening. I was at Merrick Sunrise, which
was then in Merrick. I went to Merrick Sunrise.
My friend John who, and Conrad, the two people of many, many,
many people that I knew that wasstill talking to me, came and
sat with me. I sat in the back of the room
all the time. They came and sat with me, asked
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me, are you done yet? You know, I didn't know if I was
done or not. My girlfriend Robin, who's not
here anymore, gave me a birthdaycard.
My birthday was in November, butshe hadn't seen me since then in
meetings. She gave me a birthday card that
had the art Connie and Jackie Gleason and the two wives up
(19:10):
with their heads outside the busand their thumbs up, all four of
them in a row. And it said happy birthday in
the front. But then the inside of the card
said to one of our gang. And I started to realize that
that's where I belonged. I belonged in Narcotics
Anonymous, the place I had been searching for to fill that hole
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that was slowly getting filled unbeknownst to me because I
didn't know what happiness felt like.
So I mean, I knew what it felt like theoretically, but I didn't
feel it. You know, I wasn't really happy.
I just acted as if everyday I kept coming to meetings.
That's my story. I just kept coming.
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And that night when she gave me that card and I didn't open it
in the meeting. I left the meeting early, as I
did all the time to get home because I still had something at
home. All right, January 4th, I got
home, I opened the card, I looked in the card.
I felt like horrible because that's it.
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That's where I belong. And then I went to do the rest
of what I had, and the works clogged, and it took me a long
time to unclog it. And it was hours later.
And I did something I had never done in recovery because that
card opened my heart enough. I made a phone call and called
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somebody. I finally called somebody.
In the front of every meeting list, there's lines where people
put their phone numbers and theywait for you to call them.
And I had, oh, I don't know, half a dozen.
I had 19 white, white, white chips, and we used poker chips.
Then there were no key tags yet.White was the sign of surrender.
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Red for 90 days and blue for sixmonths.
Those are the only three we had.I had all these these poker
chips at because I kept coming, but I didn't have what it took
inside of me to stay. And finally I made a phone call
and I got my friend's roommate who I didn't really know, but
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she was in the other fellowship,you know, now to make a 90 and
90. At that time, Narcotics
Anonymous didn't have 7 meetingsfor every week.
You know, some days there were no meetings unless you went up
to Westchester County or to New Jersey or to Connecticut.
And I wasn't that tight into recovery to actually do that.
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So first I called my friend Conrad, who I was sitting in the
meeting with me and he goes those wax, you know, and I can
help you if you have wax around the house.
I'm like I I can't. He said, throw those fucking
things away. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't
do it. I just and I said, OK, I'm going
(22:11):
to try. And I hung up the phone.
Then I called somebody else. I called my girlfriend Debbie,
and I got her roommate and her roommate said just she just
talked to me. She talked to me about what I
was feeling. She listened to me when I said
when I was going through, I had one of those long Princess
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phones that were up on the wall.The cord was 14 feet, but it was
shriveled up to a, to a foot anda half 'cause it was all up at
the wall like spaghetti. And I'm walking around the
apartment back and forth like something out of, you know, a
movie scene saying I can't get this.
I just, I can't get any clean time.
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I just, I can't get any clean time.
And she said to me, what time isit now?
And it was 10 minutes after 12 midnight.
And she said to me, Fern, you have 10 minutes clean.
And that's when my recovery started because in my mind, it
(23:14):
was a marquee at Times Square saying 10 minutes, 10 minutes,
10 minutes. I had something and I was in
recovery. And I'm talking to someone on
the phone. And she said you're not going to
be able to keep it if you still have those works around.
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And I said, OK, let's do this together.
And I tied up the garbage bag and told her hold on because you
couldn't, there were no cell phones.
Had to have her hold on. Ran downstairs through my bag of
garbage into my next door neighbor's garbage can because I
(23:54):
would never have the nerve to goback in their garbage can to
retrieve it. Ran back up the stairs and said
OK I did it. And I just cried for the entire
rest of the night. And the next day was January
5th. I went to my first meeting on a
Friday and we read who is an addict, what is the NA program,
(24:21):
why are we here, how it works. And everything sounded
different. I started to relate to
everything I was listening to. I thought to myself, yes, that's
me. Yes, I feel that way.
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Yes, I've done those things. Yes, it doesn't matter if I'm
gay or straight or my hair's fuzzy or my name is Fern or, and
I had no idea really still what was going to happen next.
But I felt different. I felt like I belonged in the
(25:02):
fellowship and now I was there. So tell me a little bit about
the early days of recovery and what that was like to have
another fellowship around, but to have NAB in its infancy and
juxtapose that a little bit withtoday and the availability of
recovery. You know, I met you on on Zoom
(25:22):
and what that's been like being in a completely different space
in recovery. Well, you know, in my beginning
in Narcotics Anonymous, let's start from the time I'm clean.
By that time, my work started tohire me from noon to night
because I worked better when I didn't have to come in early.
(25:43):
They did want me there. I was a money maker, which is
the only reason why I was able to keep a job.
So I started going to a a meetings in the morning when
there was no NA meeting that day.
And then after work, I would go to an NA meeting.
A bunch of us would pile in a car and we'd go to the Star
(26:03):
Group in Brooklyn because that was the only meeting, you know,
that was that night. Or we get into a car and go out
to Long Island to to Bayshore, 'cause there was a meeting that
night. As a matter of fact, it was the
same night. There was Monday night was
Bayshore, Jamaica, Queens or Brooklyn.
(26:24):
That was it. Can you imagine, you know, if
you talked about people, you heard about it the next day
because everybody went to the same meetings, saw each other.
And, and the beauty of that is the closeness and the tightness
that came with actually having respect for the person that you
(26:45):
sat next to, even if you really didn't like them.
It seemed like a much more closeknit community for sure.
We had no choice and there was pre cell phone so everyone
called everybody up by putting adime in the payphone which then
became 1/4. Let me see what else?
Oh boy. AIDS people did not understand
(27:07):
the virus. They didn't understand.
None of us really understood it.We just knew that people were
dying. Somebody would get up and go to
the bathroom and come back into the meeting and nobody else
would use that toilet thinking that that person has AIDS or
could have AIDS or they have that look, you know, their face
(27:27):
was pop marked. Their eyes were becoming sunken.
They didn't want to say anythingin the rooms because there was
such a stigma of being sick in the rooms of someone else
catching it. They wouldn't kiss you or hug
you. So then we had meetings, Illness
and recovery meeting started. The first illness and recovery
(27:47):
meeting here started in Mercy Hospital and illness and
recovery meeting started in the the 10th World Convention was at
the Vista Hotel. It was in September of 1983.
Couple months before you got clean.
Couple of months before I got clean and I was afraid to go
(28:09):
into the city, even the convention, because remember, I
hadn't, I was on my own. I hadn't relied on people to go
into meetings with, I hadn't been making phone calls or
talking to people outside of going to meetings.
So I had friends in the rooms when I was in the room, but
nothing when I was not in an NA meeting.
(28:31):
So when that meeting opened up and in 83 we started to grow.
The next week there were 75 meetings in New York.
The next month there were hundreds of meetings in New
York. Six months there were 1000
meetings in New York now and every day new meetings are
starting. So it was 83 where we had the
(28:52):
convention and just a few monthslater I got clean and I'm really
happy to say I became a part of people that started meetings all
over the place. Let's say there's no women's
meeting around this area. OK, let's say there's no men's
meeting around this area. There's not enough step
meetings. Nobody really wanted to work the
steps. There wasn't really any
(29:14):
literature on working the steps.There were pamphlets by Hazleton
working Step 4IN Narcotics Anonymous.
I remember that in my first meetings there were 5 or 6 IPS.
One of them was another. Look, that was my first one I
remember and it was my favorite.Always has always been my
favorite. But meetings started growing
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like like a bloomin onion. You know, we just started
growing everywhere and we were making a lot of mistakes, you
know, I mean, people were bringing things into the room.
There were drug addicts selling drugs outside the building.
You know, there were, there werelike 25 motorcycles that would
pull up into this, you know, suburban area to go to the
(29:58):
church and they'd be. Goodness.
And we beg them, please don't dothat.
Don't do that outside the church.
We're going to lose our meeting and we'd lose.
We'd lose the meeting because wewere too rowdy.
Bunch of drug addicts. Well, what society perceived a
bunch of drugs? Exactly.
(30:19):
They perceived us as using. They didn't perceive us as
recovering because we didn't actthat way yet.
It took a while in New York because we're so strong willed
and so hard headed and elitist too.
Like nothing's as good as New York.
Of course, no one you know, you got clean in New York.
You can get clean anywhere, You know.
(30:39):
Well, if you got clean in Boise,ID, you can get clean anywhere,
you know. But we didn't consider that.
We only considered ourselves. People would drop literature.
They wouldn't want to read certain things.
They changed the meaning of the steps.
You got someone who was the chairperson and he'd be doing
all the readings. I mean, you know, it was just,
(31:01):
it was a little bit nutso. But you know, as time went on
and different people from outside communities came in, and
people within the New York area started to stay clean and
flourish and want to do the nextright thing, want the fellowship
to grow in the way that it should.
And we became our own meeting list.
(31:22):
I remember when our area was SNAZ, Suffolk, NASA area
Service. I was the GSR for Surf City and
we had 75 meetings between Suffolk and Nassau.
And so they wanted to split the region and have a Suffolk area
and a Nassau area. And I'm like, no, no, wait a
minute, no, you can't make thesechanges.
(31:44):
We're doing perfect. Well, we weren't.
Not everybody was heard. Nobody wanted to sit in an area
service meeting for five hours while everybody got heard.
And my sponsor, thank God for Rosie, she said to me.
Fern, you want to split the areayou want to grow.
That means that now there's two magnificent areas, not just one.
(32:04):
And out of those two areas grew four more areas.
And that's what you want. You want it to grow because now
we have steps, we have traditions, we have more
literature to follow. We, we have more people that are
following the literature that weare following.
So that we, we're, we're learning to listen and listening
(32:25):
to learn now, you know. And multiple meetings in
multiple locations available for.
Every night of the week, right, Every night of the week.
And we had meetings where we'd watch the babies so that new
mothers can recover. You know, we were conscious of
the fact that, you know, sometimes I, I breastfed my son,
(32:47):
you know, while I was in a meeting all the way in the back
in the corner with a towel over me, mind you, but I'm in a big
under a blanket. But you know, I had to be in the
room that night. If I wasn't in the room that
night, I didn't know where I wasgoing to be right that night.
So thank God you came in at a time when NA was actually
(33:08):
flourishing, growing. Growing in the process of
growing, in the process of expanding, and I'm so grateful I
was a part of that at that point.
I have to say it affected my ego.
It affected everyone's ego that had, you know, a year or more
clean because we weren't humble yet.
(33:29):
To have been around from the beginning, right from before all
these meetings popped up, I. Came in just after the
beginning. I came in when we had a few
meetings in New York. I came in when my predecessors
were there saying, are you done yet?
Are you done yet? Are you ready?
And it wasn't until that Thursday night that I became
(33:49):
ready. And you do a whole lot of
service in many different facets, right?
I mean, you sponsor women, you host book studies on your free
time, you host meetings online, you do in person meetings, you
do service at the area level. So talk to me a little bit about
service in your life and as partof your recovery.
(34:12):
Service keeps me grounded to really what's most important,
and that's to serve. You know, the newcomer is the
most important person. And some mornings I wake up
because of life on life's terms.I might have fear for the health
of my wife, or two years ago it was my health.
(34:33):
So you can wake up feeling like a newcomer, not knowing what to
do next. But now I remember that there is
a guide. And when I brush my teeth with
my spiritual toothpaste every morning, it looks like Colgate.
But it feels like, you know, recovery.
And that that minty feeling opens up my senses, and I become
(34:55):
a spiritual woman in a human world.
Before I walk out of the bathroom in the morning, You
know, I'm aware that everything's going to be OK as
long as I don't use. I do that because I talk about
it enough. And I do service just like
you're doing here. I mean, you know, we each find
our own niches, you know, like, what kind of service works for
(35:16):
you? I'm not a good secretary in a
meeting. I don't like taking notes.
And I, I'm, I take too many notes.
I I I take notes verbatim. Same, you know.
Yeah. So I mean, you know, it's like
when I go to transfer those to to correspondence, it's like, Oh
my God, I have way too much information. 15 pages for a 5
(35:37):
minute conversation. Right, exactly.
You've seen me do it in action. But I am good as a leader, and
not because I lead, but because I create an atmosphere of
longing for people who want to be there.
I stand back and let other people come forward.
(35:57):
I am a product of that. I'm a product of that.
So grateful. You told me, you know, take a
commitment and help set up the meeting and do this and do that.
And I just, you know, I just, I just took your suggestions.
And in your usual fashion, you took 10 commitments and anytime
someone said we need, you said, I'm here, I can do it, which is
(36:18):
why you're staying clean. I mean, but it's not just being
clean. I mean, it's the richness that
we offered, you know, by following direction.
Like, you know how we always say, oh, I wish I had a
guidebook for that, you know, raising children.
Guess what? There's a guidebook, you know,
it's called the steps. You know, I wish I had a road
(36:40):
map. Well, guess what?
Get out of the driver's seat, get into the passenger side,
open up the glove box and pull out your step work.
You know, there's steps, steps, steps, steps.
You know, well, not everybody's everything, you know, but I'm
placed at certain times for certain reasons and it's all
(37:03):
fulfilling to me. So talk a little bit about what
it was like to be clean during the crack epidemic opiate
crisis. Well, I came in before crack.
I have a feeling that if I were on crack, I would have come in a
little bit sooner. And I believe my insanity was
insane, believe me. But I'm glad I got clean when I
did. You know, we had to learn not to
(37:24):
judge. I'll tell you, there was a
meeting that started on a Sundaymorning in the Rockaways.
And I started to go to that meeting every Sunday.
And some guy was in there sharing.
And he had tears in his eyes when he was speaking saying that
he woke up and he had to take Tylenol.
(37:45):
Not because he had a headache, but because he had to take some
kind of a pill. And what if he had a headache?
And I thought to myself, wow, same disease, different seat on
the Titanic. And so when it came to like,
crackheads, whether you got clean because you were smoking
(38:07):
pot or you smoke pot every Saturday, but try not to smoke
this Saturday. Can't happen.
You know, I have to smoke this Saturday.
It's so much easier to focus on the reason why we're here then
what seat we sat in when we got here.
It doesn't matter if you're a crazy crackhead, a crazy dope
(38:30):
fiend and a crazy pothead. Whether you've taken too much
acid, whether you have to take Tylenol every day just in case
you get a headache even when youdon't need it.
That man taught me so much. And let me tell you, I judged
the hell out of him when he was sharing.
(38:51):
I said to my sponsor later on, Can you believe that this guy
was saying this? And she said you've missed it.
You missed the concept here. You missed it honey.
That guy had to use. Had to.
Had to. Different manifestation of the
same disease. Had no choice, had to.
I stay clean today because I listen to other people.
(39:13):
You know, I'm on meetings where there are people with white hair
that have been cleaned 30405060 years because I need those
messages. And I serve on meetings on Zoom
where there's a of the 167 people that are on there, a
(39:34):
hundred of them are newcomers. And I do that because I take
what I get and then I give it away.
And you also serve in the jails.So I've been to jail twice.
I will never forget, never forget the feeling of being
patted down and having to strip in front of the guards just to
(39:58):
check me out. When I first got there and they
said, one woman said to me, oh honey, they're going to love
you. I'll never forget that.
I will never. I still have the poetry that I
wrote, the aloneness, the hurt. I just wanted to go home.
I missed my family. I missed my mother, I missed my
(40:21):
brothers and my sister. I just really wanted to go home.
I didn't want to be there. I didn't want that anymore.
I just had no way to get out because I only spoke to myself.
So I go to the jail because somebody's sitting in there that
feels that way. I have to tell you, there's a
(40:42):
girl who's 2nd and 3rd anniversary I was, I've been at
and I spoke at her second anniversary from the jail.
You know, you know that story about the guy that's walking
down the beach and somebody seeshim from a distance and it looks
like he's picking rocks up and throwing them into the water.
(41:02):
And he gets up closer and he sees that he's picking up
starfish and he's just throwing them back into the water.
And he said to him, what are youdoing?
And he said, well, you know, they're going to die if I don't
throw them back in the water. And he goes, how can you do
that? There's like thousands of
starfish here. And he picks up a starfish and
he throws it into the water. And he said, well, it made a
(41:24):
difference to that one, right? To that one.
I mean, so that's what it is. It's about helping one person.
Now I know there's more than oneperson being helped, and I know
that because I'm constantly receiving messages saying thank
you or just want to tell you I love you or, you know, I
(41:45):
celebrated 90 days. Thank you for being a part of my
recovery. And so I'm in.
I'm in. I got in, I stayed in and
there's no reason to leave. The day I opened my business and
I'm cleaning around the countertops, waiting for the
doors to open. I'm there really early.
(42:06):
Of course, now I'm come in on time and stay late.
You know, I'm opening the doors and I'm thinking this is pretty
good for a junkie. The day my husband and I were on
our honeymoon and the day I gavebirth to my son, my clean baby
(42:28):
and the day I married my wife. Many many years after my husband
passed. I thought to myself, this is
pretty good for a junkie. I see myself as I used to be
when I didn't know better. I remember how far down one
could go. OK, so no one can see me but
(42:49):
look at all my beautiful teeth. Perfect.
I got them in my 7th year clean.It took years to actually get
clean. It took years to focus on it and
stay clean, and it took years tofigure out that I had what I
needed all along. It was always inside of me.
(43:10):
I just had to be willing to utilize every single thing.
But I have to go to meetings, I have to call my sponsor.
When you do step work with sponsees and when you go to step
meetings and host meetings wherewe're reading the steps, I'm
working my step all over again and not by myself because I'm
(43:31):
actually working my steps with my sponsor.
We do it over the phone now. We started on step one just
actually two months ago. Amazing.
We said, you know what, it's time to do this.
Let's do this together. Just let's do it the.
Fact that you're working steps at 41 years clean is enough of
an example of itself, right? The fact that you can go back
(43:53):
and say it's time to start rightback from the beginning.
Why not? I mean I I start not from the
beginning now. I start with today now and today
is so good that it's a differentstep one.
It's a different Step 2. There's so much more self worth
(44:16):
and self esteem in my everyday life that every step sounds
different. But I know the worthiness.
And with that, I want to thank you so much for giving your
time, your energy, and your passion to this program and to
people like me who are so eager to hear the message and all the
(44:37):
love that you pour into everything that you do.
I am personally so grateful for you.
I know that there are hundreds and thousands of people because,
you know, being clean for 40 years, you've touched a lot of
people. And I think it's important for
you to recognize how many peopleyou've touched and how many
people you continue to to influence.
And I love you so much, friend. Thank you so much.
(44:57):
I'm very, very, very grateful toa power far greater than
ourselves that brought us together.
That has me sitting here and Sophie, baby I'm so proud of.
You. I love you.
Thank you. Thanks.
Be well, friend. We have to hug.
Now, of course, I love you. The Voices of Recovery podcast
(45:23):
is an independent production of the works of Wisdom.
We welcome your questions and donations via PayPal at
voicesofrecoverypod@gmail.com. This podcast is an independent
production and is not affiliatedwith, associated with,
authorized by, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected
with Narcotics Anonymous or any of its subsidiaries or
(45:45):
affiliates. While any literature may be read
during episodes for the purpose of supporting recovery, such use
does not constitute an official endorsement or representation by
Narcotics Anonymous. In accordance with NA tradition,
the NA name is not to be used toendorse or be affiliated with
any outside enterprise, and no such endorsement or affiliation
is implied. Music is by Sage.
(46:08):
Thanks for listening to the Voices of Recovery podcast.
You're listening to the Voices of Recovery podcast.
This is a special episode featuring a recovering addict.
Hi, my name is Sophie X. I'm the host and producer of the
(00:27):
Voices of Recovery podcast. I'm joined here today by Fern.
Hi, Fern. I love there.
Hi, welcome. Thank you, Fern, so much for
being on the podcast and for doing our readings for the Just
for Today and for the SPAD. It's been quite an honor.
I am so grateful to have you. You brought me into the rooms of
recovery. Without you, this podcast
wouldn't even exist. Everybody is placed in front of
(00:50):
us for exactly the reason eitherto pay attention or not to pay
attention. And what happened was I heard a
message from someone that neededto be guided and I took it upon
myself. And I guess that's where your
gratitude comes in, to be able to say, hey, I can relate to you
(01:10):
and I can help you come in. And at that point it worked.
You were the catalyst. You were the catalyst.
The reaction went within me and you brought me in.
And I'm so grateful to be in this recovery space with you
and. I can take credit for your first
year. Recovery for.
Being the person, yeah. Sponsor, I love you so much.
So you're on this special seriesof August about our
(01:33):
predecessors, and you have 41 years, Queen.
And 1/2. 41 1/2. 41 1/2. This is my half anniversary.
That's awesome. That's awesome.
So you have 41 1/2 years clean. So tell me a little bit about
what it's been like to be in recovery through 4 decades,
right. You've seen the AIDS epidemic,
(01:55):
you've seen the crack epidemic, the heroin epidemic, you've seen
the opioid crisis, you've seen COVID.
You've seen all of these different ebbs and flows of this
program through many different evolutions throughout time in
the New York area and also outside of New York.
So you have a unique perspectiveand I would love for our
listeners to get to hear, you know, from Fern, from behind
(02:17):
Fern's eyes, you know how how itall progressed.
So take it away. I'm, I'm so grateful that though
it sounds like a whole lot of clean time, it's still many
Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etcetera, etcetera,
day at a time. And I still feel excited for
(02:40):
recovery, excited for what everyday brings and not planning or
knowing what's going to happen in the future.
I'm prepared to stay 100% both feet grounded in this day today
and it just. I've been doing it every single
morning. The time has been
(03:01):
inconsequential in the general picture because events, I guess
it would be successes and learning experiences and
learning experiences that becamesuccess by just being spiritual.
So I came into recovery not because I wanted to.
(03:22):
I had no idea about the disease of addiction.
I had no idea where life would bring me.
But I went into a detox finally after trying on my own for many
years to stop using. I just wanted to stop putting
needles in my arm. I mean, I just, you know, I, I
(03:45):
ended up in that, you know, St. junkie life.
I didn't like it, but I was so used to it that it just became
another day. Every day was a struggle and it
was just another day. How long were you using for?
When I came into recovery, I waswhen I got clean.
(04:09):
When I came into recovery, I wasin my late 20s.
When I got clean, I was 31. I'm 72 now.
And so when do you remember everfirst using?
Oh, when I was child, we, I'm Jewish.
We had satyrs at grandma's houseand everybody got this little
(04:30):
cup of wine in front of them, including the children.
And with each Kaddish prayer, you'd take a sip of the wine
from the cup and I would drink all the wine in the cup.
I like the flavor. I like the effect, the euphoric
effect that it gave me. I like the warmth.
(04:51):
And I knew at an early age that I would look forward to going to
grandma's for the holidays. And they would end up
inadvertently every year, putting well, every time we were
there a few holidays during the year, but every time I'd end up
on one of their beds to sleep itoff.
(05:12):
And, you know, and and I loved it.
So the signs were there from when you were a kid that you
might be an addict. Yeah, but.
You probably didn't recognize itas a problem then.
Right. No, I just wanted more.
More. If I had if I had something and
I wanted more, I'd steal it. You know, I'm, I don't feel the
(05:33):
shame the way. The Ways and Means to get more
right. And that was stealing, lying,
cheating at a very early age just because I wanted what I
wanted, and I wanted it now. And if I liked it, I wanted in
five colors. And I want to get it when I'm
ready, not when you say I have to wait for it.
(05:56):
So I became capable of doing subversive acts to get what I
wanted right. So talk about the progression of
the disease then. If you were showing signs as a
child, how did it progress as you aged?
Well, I, I had good friends thatwere not addicts.
So it didn't come out with drugsspecifically until I was in my
(06:21):
teens. I guess it started with alcohol
as a child. And yes, it was alcohol.
And then pot came in, you know, and Vietnam was going on and,
you know, Woodstock. I was in Woodstock.
I barely remember that whole entire two weeks.
(06:42):
What was a weekend took me two weeks to get home.
How did you get there? Hitched like the rest of us from
New York, from New York City, ofcourse.
Yeah, why not? I mean, there was this steady
line of hippies hitching up the quick way, you know, 17 W, you
know, to, to go upstate and, youknow, it was a lot of fun.
(07:03):
I was with a lot of good people.And then Vietnam was going on.
So there was this whole resurgence of, you know, of
burning your bra and and not conforming to the conformists.
The resistance. There became a division between
(07:24):
those that followed the pathway to living legally and and
playing by the rules and those of us that said up against the
wall, motherfucker. Now that was a song by David
Peel in the Lower East Side, where I was in the Lower East
Side. And I took great credit in being
(07:46):
subversive, you know, in, in, inprotesting for, for all the
right reasons. You know, I believed in the
power of free speech and the power of, of free thought.
And I, I unfortunately had very little guidance though, because
(08:06):
the people that guided us were those extremists, you know, and
I had already ran away from homeat 15 and three quarter years
old. My dad had just passed the year
before put my poor mother couldn't handle me.
I don't know how hard she lookedfor me, but she kind of let me
(08:28):
go because she had other children at home and and they
were all conforming to her rules.
I was the one that that said I Idon't have to listen to you.
And unfortunately, it left this big gaping hole inside of me as
a person, this loneliness. And even though I was with all
(08:50):
those people I'm talking about and, and all those like, you
know, the, the, the crowded Woodstock was not overwhelming
to me. I'm, I'm very comfortable in a,
in, in a crowd of people. So, you know, even though
cramped and crowded in, in, in the place where I lived each
night where I I'd crash and it'ssomebody's pad each night, you
(09:13):
know, and have to sleep with people just to have that
mattress to go to sleep at night, we'd have to have sex.
And you know what? I never considered it, you know,
an affront to my character or rape or, you know, at that time
because it was just what I had to do to go to bed.
(09:35):
And all I want to do is go to sleep.
And then there were then there was all these acid trips and
hitchhiking across the country, I mean, you know, and only
making it as far as Chicago, youknow, And then it's turning
around. And someone said, oh, well,
well, we're going back to New York.
And I said, you know, what? Can I come with you and went
(09:56):
back to New York? It was a lot of experiences that
could fill a comedy show, you know, quite frankly.
But the paradoxes that inside inside me, inside my psyche,
inside my heart was this, this loneliness, this unabided
(10:17):
feeling of just aloneness, you know, with no one to depend on
really, no one to really trust. And so I felt like just as a one
person, you know, and I came into recovery that way, just one
person thinking for my own, not capable really of listening to
(10:39):
other people. If they agreed with me, fine.
If they, if I didn't agree with the theory or what you were
saying, I, I couldn't listen. I because I didn't trust you,
you might ask me for something Idon't want to give.
(11:00):
And thank God for Narcotics anonymous.
No one ever said, Oh, you're high at this meeting.
You know, I came to NA for yearsusing.
No one told me get lost. No one said, you know, you
shared that yesterday and the day before and the day before.
(11:21):
Could you think of something new?
No one ever said that. No one ever asked me if my car
was stolen. No one ever asked me if I had a
driver's license. You know, they just cared about
why I was in the room. What are you doing here in this
room? And how can we help?
And how can we help, right? And New York at the time, there
(11:44):
were very few women that were clean.
It was mostly men. And, you know, which worked for
me because I didn't trust women anyway, you know, you know, I
didn't really trust women. I came into recovery.
My name is Fern, which sets me apart.
(12:04):
I have fuzzy brown hair, glasses, freckles, always the
kid at the front of the line because I was the shortest and
you know, my arrogance and my sarcasm set me apart.
I, I looked like Vogue on the outside because I stole
everything I wore and it was Madmagazine on the inside because I
(12:28):
could. I thought in at such I with such
obscurity, you know, nothing wasreally succinct and to the
point. You know, I if you ask me how do
you feel today? I didn't know.
I had no idea how I felt. I felt anger, I felt frustration
or I felt elated. There was that was within where
(12:52):
I lived. So you talked about coming to
recovery but not yet getting clean.
Tell me about your life when youwere getting to the end of your
rope. I believe you had children then.
Yeah, OK. So my daughter was 4 when I
started coming. When I went to my first meeting,
she was four years old and she was 7 when I got clean.
(13:16):
So it took three years and my first year of recovery I did not
take the suggestion about not being in a relationship.
And at four months clean I got pregnant with my son.
So my first year of recovery when they brought me my cake to
Surf City in Long Beach, there it was with my big belly out.
(13:37):
But for the end of my using. That's when I finally I was
driving into the city with my stolen car without a license.
Typical crying because this songcame on that said Love's got a
(14:02):
line on you and in my mind I heard Dope's got a line on you.
Dope is telling me what to do next.
Dope the the little things that I was hearing in the rooms were
starting to get into my head. You know, when I wasn't in a
meeting, remember we only had one meeting, no cell phones.
You know, everything was done picking up a receiver.
(14:25):
And so there was a lot of alone time I had, I'm crying because I
don't want to go in to clap. I didn't want to go, but I had
no choice. And it was Christmas time.
I was working in a salon, a hairdresser working in a salon
(14:47):
where everybody is so happy. Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun.
You know, music is playing and there's these wine containers up
front, you know, for people to come and have a little glass and
celebrate, you know, the holidayand get their hair done.
And I am miserable. I'm miserable.
(15:08):
I have no dope. I have to go cop.
It's Christmas Eve day, we're going to my mother's that night
for Christmas to for the first time my daughter was was going
to see Santa. You know, growing up Jewish we
didn't do this, but now we have Catholics in our family and
(15:33):
Santa Claus shows up. Well, I ended up getting into a
fight with my brother, who's less than a year younger than
me, but an actual fistfight at my mother's house in front of my
family. I mean, it was horrible.
My mother sent me back to my home in a taxi and said don't
worry, you'll pick up the baby tomorrow.
(15:55):
And which is what happened a lot.
And it, it was getting to the point where I couldn't, it was
hard to go and cop every day. It wasn't that easy anymore.
People were like just not trusting me enough to lend me
money, thinking they were not going to get it back.
So I, I was losing my credentials now what I thought I
(16:19):
was inside my head was totally different than what I was in
reality outside of my mind. You know, people didn't love me
as much or trust me as much or want me around them as much as I
thought they did because time was irrelevant.
You know, it's just I was just living my junky life, you know,
(16:42):
not feeding my daughter as she should have been fed, not doing
the things that are morally right to do in life and not
realizing the impact of all thatand not seeing myself in anyone
else's eyes. So what brought you to that
(17:04):
point of surrender? It was that Christmas at my
mother's the fight. I got home and I was glad to be
home because I had a little bit of dope left at the house.
I did the rest of what I had andnow I'm out of it and the next
day is Christmas Day. No one's going to be out on the
(17:24):
street selling drugs because everybody's home for Christmas.
There's very little gas in the car to go back in.
I thought I had gotten enough toget through the holidays, but
there was never enough. And I thought, what am I doing?
Could it be the drugs? I wonder for the first time in
(17:46):
all the years I had been coming,it became apparent to me that
it, well, it became questionablethat it could be the drugs, it
could be that I just can't. It could be the drugs could be
the reason why I can't get past,you know, 5 to go into a 10 on
(18:06):
the scale of zero to 10, I was 0to at best five.
You know, I couldn't get past five.
So it just became apparent to methat Christmas I started to come
to Narcotics Anonymous hearing it differently.
The last night I used was January 4th.
(18:28):
It was a Thursday evening. I was at Merrick Sunrise, which
was then in Merrick. I went to Merrick Sunrise.
My friend John who, and Conrad, the two people of many, many,
many people that I knew that wasstill talking to me, came and
sat with me. I sat in the back of the room
all the time. They came and sat with me, asked
(18:50):
me, are you done yet? You know, I didn't know if I was
done or not. My girlfriend Robin, who's not
here anymore, gave me a birthdaycard.
My birthday was in November, butshe hadn't seen me since then in
meetings. She gave me a birthday card that
had the art Connie and Jackie Gleason and the two wives up
(19:10):
with their heads outside the busand their thumbs up, all four of
them in a row. And it said happy birthday in
the front. But then the inside of the card
said to one of our gang. And I started to realize that
that's where I belonged. I belonged in Narcotics
Anonymous, the place I had been searching for to fill that hole
(19:33):
that was slowly getting filled unbeknownst to me because I
didn't know what happiness felt like.
So I mean, I knew what it felt like theoretically, but I didn't
feel it. You know, I wasn't really happy.
I just acted as if everyday I kept coming to meetings.
That's my story. I just kept coming.
(19:55):
And that night when she gave me that card and I didn't open it
in the meeting. I left the meeting early, as I
did all the time to get home because I still had something at
home. All right, January 4th, I got
home, I opened the card, I looked in the card.
I felt like horrible because that's it.
(20:17):
That's where I belong. And then I went to do the rest
of what I had, and the works clogged, and it took me a long
time to unclog it. And it was hours later.
And I did something I had never done in recovery because that
card opened my heart enough. I made a phone call and called
(20:40):
somebody. I finally called somebody.
In the front of every meeting list, there's lines where people
put their phone numbers and theywait for you to call them.
And I had, oh, I don't know, half a dozen.
I had 19 white, white, white chips, and we used poker chips.
Then there were no key tags yet.White was the sign of surrender.
(21:04):
Red for 90 days and blue for sixmonths.
Those are the only three we had.I had all these these poker
chips at because I kept coming, but I didn't have what it took
inside of me to stay. And finally I made a phone call
and I got my friend's roommate who I didn't really know, but
(21:29):
she was in the other fellowship,you know, now to make a 90 and
90. At that time, Narcotics
Anonymous didn't have 7 meetingsfor every week.
You know, some days there were no meetings unless you went up
to Westchester County or to New Jersey or to Connecticut.
And I wasn't that tight into recovery to actually do that.
(21:51):
So first I called my friend Conrad, who I was sitting in the
meeting with me and he goes those wax, you know, and I can
help you if you have wax around the house.
I'm like I I can't. He said, throw those fucking
things away. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't
do it. I just and I said, OK, I'm going
(22:11):
to try. And I hung up the phone.
Then I called somebody else. I called my girlfriend Debbie,
and I got her roommate and her roommate said just she just
talked to me. She talked to me about what I
was feeling. She listened to me when I said
when I was going through, I had one of those long Princess
(22:32):
phones that were up on the wall.The cord was 14 feet, but it was
shriveled up to a, to a foot anda half 'cause it was all up at
the wall like spaghetti. And I'm walking around the
apartment back and forth like something out of, you know, a
movie scene saying I can't get this.
I just, I can't get any clean time.
(22:53):
I just, I can't get any clean time.
And she said to me, what time isit now?
And it was 10 minutes after 12 midnight.
And she said to me, Fern, you have 10 minutes clean.
And that's when my recovery started because in my mind, it
(23:14):
was a marquee at Times Square saying 10 minutes, 10 minutes,
10 minutes. I had something and I was in
recovery. And I'm talking to someone on
the phone. And she said you're not going to
be able to keep it if you still have those works around.
(23:34):
And I said, OK, let's do this together.
And I tied up the garbage bag and told her hold on because you
couldn't, there were no cell phones.
Had to have her hold on. Ran downstairs through my bag of
garbage into my next door neighbor's garbage can because I
(23:54):
would never have the nerve to goback in their garbage can to
retrieve it. Ran back up the stairs and said
OK I did it. And I just cried for the entire
rest of the night. And the next day was January
5th. I went to my first meeting on a
Friday and we read who is an addict, what is the NA program,
(24:21):
why are we here, how it works. And everything sounded
different. I started to relate to
everything I was listening to. I thought to myself, yes, that's
me. Yes, I feel that way.
(24:41):
Yes, I've done those things. Yes, it doesn't matter if I'm
gay or straight or my hair's fuzzy or my name is Fern or, and
I had no idea really still what was going to happen next.
But I felt different. I felt like I belonged in the
(25:02):
fellowship and now I was there. So tell me a little bit about
the early days of recovery and what that was like to have
another fellowship around, but to have NAB in its infancy and
juxtapose that a little bit withtoday and the availability of
recovery. You know, I met you on on Zoom
(25:22):
and what that's been like being in a completely different space
in recovery. Well, you know, in my beginning
in Narcotics Anonymous, let's start from the time I'm clean.
By that time, my work started tohire me from noon to night
because I worked better when I didn't have to come in early.
(25:43):
They did want me there. I was a money maker, which is
the only reason why I was able to keep a job.
So I started going to a a meetings in the morning when
there was no NA meeting that day.
And then after work, I would go to an NA meeting.
A bunch of us would pile in a car and we'd go to the Star
(26:03):
Group in Brooklyn because that was the only meeting, you know,
that was that night. Or we get into a car and go out
to Long Island to to Bayshore, 'cause there was a meeting that
night. As a matter of fact, it was the
same night. There was Monday night was
Bayshore, Jamaica, Queens or Brooklyn.
(26:24):
That was it. Can you imagine, you know, if
you talked about people, you heard about it the next day
because everybody went to the same meetings, saw each other.
And, and the beauty of that is the closeness and the tightness
that came with actually having respect for the person that you
(26:45):
sat next to, even if you really didn't like them.
It seemed like a much more closeknit community for sure.
We had no choice and there was pre cell phone so everyone
called everybody up by putting adime in the payphone which then
became 1/4. Let me see what else?
Oh boy. AIDS people did not understand
(27:07):
the virus. They didn't understand.
None of us really understood it.We just knew that people were
dying. Somebody would get up and go to
the bathroom and come back into the meeting and nobody else
would use that toilet thinking that that person has AIDS or
could have AIDS or they have that look, you know, their face
(27:27):
was pop marked. Their eyes were becoming sunken.
They didn't want to say anythingin the rooms because there was
such a stigma of being sick in the rooms of someone else
catching it. They wouldn't kiss you or hug
you. So then we had meetings, Illness
and recovery meeting started. The first illness and recovery
(27:47):
meeting here started in Mercy Hospital and illness and
recovery meeting started in the the 10th World Convention was at
the Vista Hotel. It was in September of 1983.
Couple months before you got clean.
Couple of months before I got clean and I was afraid to go
(28:09):
into the city, even the convention, because remember, I
hadn't, I was on my own. I hadn't relied on people to go
into meetings with, I hadn't been making phone calls or
talking to people outside of going to meetings.
So I had friends in the rooms when I was in the room, but
nothing when I was not in an NA meeting.
(28:31):
So when that meeting opened up and in 83 we started to grow.
The next week there were 75 meetings in New York.
The next month there were hundreds of meetings in New
York. Six months there were 1000
meetings in New York now and every day new meetings are
starting. So it was 83 where we had the
(28:52):
convention and just a few monthslater I got clean and I'm really
happy to say I became a part of people that started meetings all
over the place. Let's say there's no women's
meeting around this area. OK, let's say there's no men's
meeting around this area. There's not enough step
meetings. Nobody really wanted to work the
steps. There wasn't really any
(29:14):
literature on working the steps.There were pamphlets by Hazleton
working Step 4IN Narcotics Anonymous.
I remember that in my first meetings there were 5 or 6 IPS.
One of them was another. Look, that was my first one I
remember and it was my favorite.Always has always been my
favorite. But meetings started growing
(29:36):
like like a bloomin onion. You know, we just started
growing everywhere and we were making a lot of mistakes, you
know, I mean, people were bringing things into the room.
There were drug addicts selling drugs outside the building.
You know, there were, there werelike 25 motorcycles that would
pull up into this, you know, suburban area to go to the
(29:58):
church and they'd be. Goodness.
And we beg them, please don't dothat.
Don't do that outside the church.
We're going to lose our meeting and we'd lose.
We'd lose the meeting because wewere too rowdy.
Bunch of drug addicts. Well, what society perceived a
bunch of drugs? Exactly.
(30:19):
They perceived us as using. They didn't perceive us as
recovering because we didn't actthat way yet.
It took a while in New York because we're so strong willed
and so hard headed and elitist too.
Like nothing's as good as New York.
Of course, no one you know, you got clean in New York.
You can get clean anywhere, You know.
(30:39):
Well, if you got clean in Boise,ID, you can get clean anywhere,
you know. But we didn't consider that.
We only considered ourselves. People would drop literature.
They wouldn't want to read certain things.
They changed the meaning of the steps.
You got someone who was the chairperson and he'd be doing
all the readings. I mean, you know, it was just,
(31:01):
it was a little bit nutso. But you know, as time went on
and different people from outside communities came in, and
people within the New York area started to stay clean and
flourish and want to do the nextright thing, want the fellowship
to grow in the way that it should.
And we became our own meeting list.
(31:22):
I remember when our area was SNAZ, Suffolk, NASA area
Service. I was the GSR for Surf City and
we had 75 meetings between Suffolk and Nassau.
And so they wanted to split the region and have a Suffolk area
and a Nassau area. And I'm like, no, no, wait a
minute, no, you can't make thesechanges.
(31:44):
We're doing perfect. Well, we weren't.
Not everybody was heard. Nobody wanted to sit in an area
service meeting for five hours while everybody got heard.
And my sponsor, thank God for Rosie, she said to me.
Fern, you want to split the areayou want to grow.
That means that now there's two magnificent areas, not just one.
(32:04):
And out of those two areas grew four more areas.
And that's what you want. You want it to grow because now
we have steps, we have traditions, we have more
literature to follow. We, we have more people that are
following the literature that weare following.
So that we, we're, we're learning to listen and listening
(32:25):
to learn now, you know. And multiple meetings in
multiple locations available for.
Every night of the week, right, Every night of the week.
And we had meetings where we'd watch the babies so that new
mothers can recover. You know, we were conscious of
the fact that, you know, sometimes I, I breastfed my son,
(32:47):
you know, while I was in a meeting all the way in the back
in the corner with a towel over me, mind you, but I'm in a big
under a blanket. But you know, I had to be in the
room that night. If I wasn't in the room that
night, I didn't know where I wasgoing to be right that night.
So thank God you came in at a time when NA was actually
(33:08):
flourishing, growing. Growing in the process of
growing, in the process of expanding, and I'm so grateful I
was a part of that at that point.
I have to say it affected my ego.
It affected everyone's ego that had, you know, a year or more
clean because we weren't humble yet.
(33:29):
To have been around from the beginning, right from before all
these meetings popped up, I. Came in just after the
beginning. I came in when we had a few
meetings in New York. I came in when my predecessors
were there saying, are you done yet?
Are you done yet? Are you ready?
And it wasn't until that Thursday night that I became
(33:49):
ready. And you do a whole lot of
service in many different facets, right?
I mean, you sponsor women, you host book studies on your free
time, you host meetings online, you do in person meetings, you
do service at the area level. So talk to me a little bit about
service in your life and as partof your recovery.
(34:12):
Service keeps me grounded to really what's most important,
and that's to serve. You know, the newcomer is the
most important person. And some mornings I wake up
because of life on life's terms.I might have fear for the health
of my wife, or two years ago it was my health.
(34:33):
So you can wake up feeling like a newcomer, not knowing what to
do next. But now I remember that there is
a guide. And when I brush my teeth with
my spiritual toothpaste every morning, it looks like Colgate.
But it feels like, you know, recovery.
And that that minty feeling opens up my senses, and I become
(34:55):
a spiritual woman in a human world.
Before I walk out of the bathroom in the morning, You
know, I'm aware that everything's going to be OK as
long as I don't use. I do that because I talk about
it enough. And I do service just like
you're doing here. I mean, you know, we each find
our own niches, you know, like, what kind of service works for
(35:16):
you? I'm not a good secretary in a
meeting. I don't like taking notes.
And I, I'm, I take too many notes.
I I I take notes verbatim. Same, you know.
Yeah. So I mean, you know, it's like
when I go to transfer those to to correspondence, it's like, Oh
my God, I have way too much information. 15 pages for a 5
(35:37):
minute conversation. Right, exactly.
You've seen me do it in action. But I am good as a leader, and
not because I lead, but because I create an atmosphere of
longing for people who want to be there.
I stand back and let other people come forward.
(35:57):
I am a product of that. I'm a product of that.
So grateful. You told me, you know, take a
commitment and help set up the meeting and do this and do that.
And I just, you know, I just, I just took your suggestions.
And in your usual fashion, you took 10 commitments and anytime
someone said we need, you said, I'm here, I can do it, which is
(36:18):
why you're staying clean. I mean, but it's not just being
clean. I mean, it's the richness that
we offered, you know, by following direction.
Like, you know how we always say, oh, I wish I had a
guidebook for that, you know, raising children.
Guess what? There's a guidebook, you know,
it's called the steps. You know, I wish I had a road
(36:40):
map. Well, guess what?
Get out of the driver's seat, get into the passenger side,
open up the glove box and pull out your step work.
You know, there's steps, steps, steps, steps.
You know, well, not everybody's everything, you know, but I'm
placed at certain times for certain reasons and it's all
(37:03):
fulfilling to me. So talk a little bit about what
it was like to be clean during the crack epidemic opiate
crisis. Well, I came in before crack.
I have a feeling that if I were on crack, I would have come in a
little bit sooner. And I believe my insanity was
insane, believe me. But I'm glad I got clean when I
did. You know, we had to learn not to
(37:24):
judge. I'll tell you, there was a
meeting that started on a Sundaymorning in the Rockaways.
And I started to go to that meeting every Sunday.
And some guy was in there sharing.
And he had tears in his eyes when he was speaking saying that
he woke up and he had to take Tylenol.
(37:45):
Not because he had a headache, but because he had to take some
kind of a pill. And what if he had a headache?
And I thought to myself, wow, same disease, different seat on
the Titanic. And so when it came to like,
crackheads, whether you got clean because you were smoking
(38:07):
pot or you smoke pot every Saturday, but try not to smoke
this Saturday. Can't happen.
You know, I have to smoke this Saturday.
It's so much easier to focus on the reason why we're here then
what seat we sat in when we got here.
It doesn't matter if you're a crazy crackhead, a crazy dope
(38:30):
fiend and a crazy pothead. Whether you've taken too much
acid, whether you have to take Tylenol every day just in case
you get a headache even when youdon't need it.
That man taught me so much. And let me tell you, I judged
the hell out of him when he was sharing.
(38:51):
I said to my sponsor later on, Can you believe that this guy
was saying this? And she said you've missed it.
You missed the concept here. You missed it honey.
That guy had to use. Had to.
Had to. Different manifestation of the
same disease. Had no choice, had to.
I stay clean today because I listen to other people.
(39:13):
You know, I'm on meetings where there are people with white hair
that have been cleaned 30405060 years because I need those
messages. And I serve on meetings on Zoom
where there's a of the 167 people that are on there, a
(39:34):
hundred of them are newcomers. And I do that because I take
what I get and then I give it away.
And you also serve in the jails.So I've been to jail twice.
I will never forget, never forget the feeling of being
patted down and having to strip in front of the guards just to
(39:58):
check me out. When I first got there and they
said, one woman said to me, oh honey, they're going to love
you. I'll never forget that.
I will never. I still have the poetry that I
wrote, the aloneness, the hurt. I just wanted to go home.
I missed my family. I missed my mother, I missed my
(40:21):
brothers and my sister. I just really wanted to go home.
I didn't want to be there. I didn't want that anymore.
I just had no way to get out because I only spoke to myself.
So I go to the jail because somebody's sitting in there that
feels that way. I have to tell you, there's a
(40:42):
girl who's 2nd and 3rd anniversary I was, I've been at
and I spoke at her second anniversary from the jail.
You know, you know that story about the guy that's walking
down the beach and somebody seeshim from a distance and it looks
like he's picking rocks up and throwing them into the water.
(41:02):
And he gets up closer and he sees that he's picking up
starfish and he's just throwing them back into the water.
And he said to him, what are youdoing?
And he said, well, you know, they're going to die if I don't
throw them back in the water. And he goes, how can you do
that? There's like thousands of
starfish here. And he picks up a starfish and
he throws it into the water. And he said, well, it made a
(41:24):
difference to that one, right? To that one.
I mean, so that's what it is. It's about helping one person.
Now I know there's more than oneperson being helped, and I know
that because I'm constantly receiving messages saying thank
you or just want to tell you I love you or, you know, I
(41:45):
celebrated 90 days. Thank you for being a part of my
recovery. And so I'm in.
I'm in. I got in, I stayed in and
there's no reason to leave. The day I opened my business and
I'm cleaning around the countertops, waiting for the
doors to open. I'm there really early.
(42:06):
Of course, now I'm come in on time and stay late.
You know, I'm opening the doors and I'm thinking this is pretty
good for a junkie. The day my husband and I were on
our honeymoon and the day I gavebirth to my son, my clean baby
(42:28):
and the day I married my wife. Many many years after my husband
passed. I thought to myself, this is
pretty good for a junkie. I see myself as I used to be
when I didn't know better. I remember how far down one
could go. OK, so no one can see me but
(42:49):
look at all my beautiful teeth. Perfect.
I got them in my 7th year clean.It took years to actually get
clean. It took years to focus on it and
stay clean, and it took years tofigure out that I had what I
needed all along. It was always inside of me.
(43:10):
I just had to be willing to utilize every single thing.
But I have to go to meetings, I have to call my sponsor.
When you do step work with sponsees and when you go to step
meetings and host meetings wherewe're reading the steps, I'm
working my step all over again and not by myself because I'm
(43:31):
actually working my steps with my sponsor.
We do it over the phone now. We started on step one just
actually two months ago. Amazing.
We said, you know what, it's time to do this.
Let's do this together. Just let's do it the.
Fact that you're working steps at 41 years clean is enough of
an example of itself, right? The fact that you can go back
(43:53):
and say it's time to start rightback from the beginning.
Why not? I mean I I start not from the
beginning now. I start with today now and today
is so good that it's a differentstep one.
It's a different Step 2. There's so much more self worth
(44:16):
and self esteem in my everyday life that every step sounds
different. But I know the worthiness.
And with that, I want to thank you so much for giving your
time, your energy, and your passion to this program and to
people like me who are so eager to hear the message and all the
(44:37):
love that you pour into everything that you do.
I am personally so grateful for you.
I know that there are hundreds and thousands of people because,
you know, being clean for 40 years, you've touched a lot of
people. And I think it's important for
you to recognize how many peopleyou've touched and how many
people you continue to to influence.
And I love you so much, friend. Thank you so much.
(44:57):
I'm very, very, very grateful toa power far greater than
ourselves that brought us together.
That has me sitting here and Sophie, baby I'm so proud of.
You. I love you.
Thank you. Thanks.
Be well, friend. We have to hug.
Now, of course, I love you. The Voices of Recovery podcast
(45:23):
is an independent production of the works of Wisdom.
We welcome your questions and donations via PayPal at
voicesofrecoverypod@gmail.com. This podcast is an independent
production and is not affiliatedwith, associated with,
authorized by, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected
with Narcotics Anonymous or any of its subsidiaries or
(45:45):
affiliates. While any literature may be read
during episodes for the purpose of supporting recovery, such use
does not constitute an official endorsement or representation by
Narcotics Anonymous. In accordance with NA tradition,
the NA name is not to be used toendorse or be affiliated with
any outside enterprise, and no such endorsement or affiliation
is implied. Music is by Sage.
(46:08):
Thanks for listening to the Voices of Recovery podcast.
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