Carla R. - AA Speaker - The Key to Keeping it Simple - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, everybody. My name is Carla Allan. I'm an alcoholic. Now.
See what I just heard her say was that if
you don't see me, the talk is just worthless, you
know what. I'm so no, no, I'm kidding, you know,
because I got bent ears, you know, I just no,

(00:26):
I'm better than that now. But Hi, sometimes I'm so
glad to be here. I want to thank Carolyn and
Ellen and the committee for asking us to come out
here this year. We've just been looking forward to this.
We hear about it from everybody everywhere. We hear about
this conference and and we took the zip line today
and at the at the bottom of it, the one

(00:48):
of the photographers is the son of one of our
friends who came here for years. He brought his family
here for summer vacation. Now he lives here and and
it's just, uh, it's just amazing. So thank you, thanks
very much for having us. And we've had a host
of hosts and food. I mean, we might not have

(01:08):
to eat for about a month and we'd still be okay.
This it's just been amazing, all the warm welcome and
thank you Debbie and Kim, and just the warm welcome
we got to spend some time with Lee and Hannah today.
And we always see them in passing and we love
them to death. They're like family. They're a family of understanding,
you know. And but today we got to actually sit down.

(01:32):
So I hope that you all are having as good
a time as we are. When Doug and I you
heard of some of the travails of us just trying
to get here, and it wasn't it wasn't unfun. It
was fun for us. We just didn't always know the
right thing to do, you know, at all times. And
you know, of course, once that falls into place, you
can have fun. So we drove down here and we
came in here in the rain, trying to you know,

(01:52):
really hard to make sterlings talk on Monday night. And
we made it over here, found the building and walked
in and we were like, okay, now where we heard
the laughter coming from this room, and we said they're
in there. We didn't even have to skip a beat
in there. There it is, and and so we knew
where to come and oh boy, I'm just really glad
to be here, and had a bunch of things to

(02:13):
say I was going to be So I want to
thank everybody for their talk Sterling and my husband Doug,
you heard and Maria last night just just cut it
to the just cleared it all up. And I just
just really appreciated everybody's talks. And I love the way
you did the countdown tonight. And I'll tell you who

(02:35):
loves it just a little bit better than I loved
is my husband, who is three months longer sober than
I than I am, and so for this three months
during the summer, he gets to stand up longer than
I do. And when they do, when they do the
countdown right, you know, sometimes they lump us in together,
you know, they'll do like twenty five to thirty or

(02:57):
something like that, and then he doesn't like that. But
once in a while we get it right, you know,
you get it right, and he'll he'll be in the
twenty six to thirty category and he'll turn and he'll
go like that to me as I have to sit down,
you know, So I just say, enjoy it, honey, because
in three months I'm coming at you. So anyway, I'm

(03:20):
I'm just thrilled to be here. We've met some nice
people this week, and I just can't can't think of
anything I'd like to do better than carry the message
of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, there are a lot of
ways to get sober, and I for every time that
we say only AA, somebody else will have something else
to say. And that's okay. I found it here. I'm
my sobriety date September twenty fifth, nineteen eighty seven. And

(03:42):
before that, I never did anything for twenty five years
in a row on purpose that was of any value.
I had to come here to get a life, you
know what I mean. And I stand on the foundation
of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's for me, and I'm not
going anywhere, and so to have the previlege of being
able to carry the message in what Alcoholics Anonymous has

(04:02):
done for me is just something I love to do.
I love to do and I hope that you hear it.
I hope that if you're new, that you hear something
in here that'll ask you'll that'll help you to stay
one more day, just one more day, midnight to midnight.
When I got here, I thought it was very important
to try to figure out why I'm an alcoholic. You know,
was it my crazy, dark, dramatic, violent, perverted family. If

(04:25):
you had my family, you drink too, you know, And
I found out that'll give you an inventory. But it
doesn't make me alcoholic. I've been around here long enough
to see people who live charm childhoods. My husband's one
of those. He's got just a real healthy family. You know.
They don't have to go to class to learn how
to love each other. They just do. And yet he

(04:46):
sits right next to me in the meetings of alcoholics Anonymous.
Same thing happens to him when he takes a drink
of alcohol that happens to me. He can't guarantee if
he's going to have two or twenty two, and when
he puts it down for any amount of time, once
that obsession has been developed, then it's all he can
think about. He's just like me. I'm either drinking or
thinking about drinking, drinking or thinking about drinking, drinking or

(05:07):
thinking about drinking. And that's him too. So I don't
know why I'm an alcoholic. I just know that I am,
and I'm glad I am. And besides that, I don't
want you to think my childhood was all bad anyway.
I had a great time in elementary school, fourth, fifth
and sixth grade were just terrific. I was involved, you know,
I was a new kid on the block a lot,

(05:27):
so I'd find out, what are we doing, What are
we doing new school? What are we doing? You know,
If we're running track, I wanted to run track. If
we were doing school politics, I wanted to run for office,
if we were doing academics, I wanted to know the answers.
I wanted to do it. Let's do it, you know,
playing softball, you know. But the trouble with me and
my kind of ego, though, is that I needed to
be first around the track, you know, and I need

(05:47):
to be president, and I needed to be you know,
all the answers, you know, and I needed to I
wanted to be the first woman Major League Baseball player
and the first woman president, and the first woman to
run a four minute mile, and you know, God, by
the time sixth grade was over, I was I needed
a drink, because when you're running the world in your
ten you know, that's a big job. And alcohol started

(06:12):
to work for me. You know. I got my first
social resentment behind a game of spin the bottle. And
I know they don't even play that game these days,
do they do? They just get right down to business,
and uh but we played it back then, you know.
And and it was during that summer right before going
up into seventh grade, between sixth and seventh grade elementary school,

(06:34):
and you're kind of moving up and puberty, you know,
you're pre pubescent and all of that, and boys are
taking a much different role in my life. Boys my
age were anyway. And and uh so we're at my
friend Leonard's house and we're playing Spin the Bottle and
passing around a bottle of his dad's whiskey. And and
now these weren't the first drinks I ever took, but
these were the ones that really really started to let
me know that I made the connection alcohol would do

(06:56):
something for me I couldn't do for myself, you know.
I started to notice that. And and so we spun
the model and the bottle landed on me, and I
went off into the bedroom with one of the boys,
and we were both doing the same thing as far
as I could tell. But when we came back out
of that bedroom, they called him a player and me
a slut. And I did not think that was fair.
I still don't think it's fair, if you want to
know the truth. But every sponsor I've ever had has

(07:18):
told me the fair comes around once a year and
last two weeks. That's all. You get so so much
from fair. And you know, I was of such a
self centered mind at the time, you know. And I
don't know if that's age or what, you know, but
it never occurred to me to ask such pertinent questions
as do you have a boyfriend? I mean, do you
have a girlfriend? You know? I mean, it never occurred

(07:40):
to me to ask those important questions. And so I
got a reputation I didn't understand, nor could I take
responsibility for it. And you know, boys my age were
looking at me funny, and so were the girls in school,
which had been my last bashing of refuge started not
to work for me either, and I started to, you know,
kind of melt into the background. My pride kicked in,
my feelings were hurt, and I did what I do,

(08:01):
you know, I start to back away for my life,
and I started spending more time in the girls room
than I did in the classroom, and hanging out with
the other girls who were doing the same thing. And
we'd bring stuff from our mother's medicine cabinets and from
their liquor cabinets and hang out until after a while.
School just didn't work for me either, and I needed
to find something else because I'm proactive, you know. I
take action. I do, I really do. It's I'm ready

(08:23):
fire aim and I started to leave home. You know,
all it really takes for me, I've got a gypsy soul.
I don't know about you, but I've got that gypsy soul.
I've got that wanderlust. You know. All it really takes
for me is a long, slow train with Selena Willie
Nelson song, you know. And I'm on the road, on
the road again, you know. And I'd get out there
on the on ramps of the ten Freeway coming east

(08:44):
and the one on one going north, and I'd stick
my little thumb out and I'd crawl in the car
or the truck going wherever, with whoever, and I'd be
on my way to somewhere else. And I love that feeling.
Hope is just up the road. It's just up there.
That anticipation. That's where I live is in the anticipation,
the fantasy. It feels like the bottle and the glove
compartment for me, I don't even have to have that
thing open yet. To know that I'm already on my way,

(09:06):
and I love that. Trouble with being young and out
on the road is that I started spending time. I'd
get caught, I'd get picked up, and I'd started spending
some time in the southern California hotspots like Indyojail and
Riverside Juvenile Hall and La Central Juvenile Hall. And we
did that dance for a while. They'd send me home
to Mom and home to Dad, and then I was
the stints inside would get longer and longer. And you know,

(09:28):
my insanity even back then was that I swore, you know,
you know, when you want to do good, you want
to do well, you don't want to mess up that
way that time. But I'd be back on the street
doing the very thing that got me locked up in
the first place. And by the time I was fourteen,
I found myself in a place called North Beach in
the San Francisco area. A friend of mine was with me.
We were sitting in a place called Ila Vista, California,

(09:53):
and we got one ride, one long ride all the
way up into San Francisco, and the guy dropped us
off right in the middle of North Beach and to
my left was the Condor Club with Carol Doda on
the Marquee, and to my right there were hookers and
dealers and pimps, oh my, and you know, it was
a party town. And we weren't on that street for
ten minutes before a couple of guys approached us offered

(10:15):
us money for sex, and we said yes and did
the next indicated thing, and boom, a whole new career
path opened up for us. And I started living a
day at a time, and we have not had to
live in a very very long time. And I don't
want to judge. You know, I'm not the arbiter of
anybody's sex behavior. You know, I know people, I've heard
the stories. I know people and know of people who
did very well in that profession. So I'm not going
to judge that. You know, there are a lot of

(10:36):
people who seem to have done very well. I'm not
one of them. It didn't you know, I read I'd
read about the Mayflower madam who in New York, you know,
helped all these women they got college degrees and did
very well. I mean, she was kind of like the
Bergdorf Goodman of the whole profession, you know, what I mean.
And my trouble was I was just more like the
ninety nine cents store. It was just, you know, so

(11:00):
my book talks about our alcoholic life seeming to be
the only normal one, and it certainly seemed that way
for me, and I caught that early. Any sign of
talent or gifts that I had, I traded away early
for the effect that alcohol would produce early and willingly.
I thought, you know, I didn't under I didn't consciously
understand now this is going to go. If you go there,

(11:21):
this is going to go. But I did it anyway.
That effect was so strong and so powerful, and it
preserved the illusion that I was where I was supposed
to be. When I was fifteen, I was locked up
in a mental hospital. I'd been a little busy. The
court pointed. Psychiatrist said, we want to put you in
there for just a couple of weeks observation. You know,

(11:42):
we just want to we just want to check you out.
And I ended up being there for a year. It
just sort of made myself at home and moved in.
They were not talking to me a lot about alcoholism.
They were talking to me about disorders. I was a
very disordered looking child. By that time, I was alternately
violent and withdrawn and living with the level of frustration
down to my God. I didn't know how to talk
about It. Wasn't until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous fifteen

(12:03):
years later that I heard someone say that they felt
like a scream without a mouth, and I thought, you know,
you know, you know. But back then I looked. This
was not a treatment center. It was a mental hospital.
There weren't a lot of treatment centers out at that time,
and there certainly weren't any for adolescents. So my roommates
were I had some serious illnesses, real schizophrenia, real manic depression,

(12:27):
real stuff, and untreated. I look a lot like them.
So they were giving me daily nutritional supplements authorozine, meloreal, valium,
dalmain sleepers. I suppose I were concerned I wouldn't sleep,
and I had become intimately familiar with five point restraints,
and that's what I looked like at fifteen. I was
I'm so fortunate to you know. It took me a

(12:48):
long time. I had to wear like Chuck c used
to say, I had to burn all the excuses. But
by the time I was twenty nine years old and
I came into Alcoholics Anonymous tired enough and out of
ideas enough to pick up the tools you handed me.
I started to apply them to my life, and to
this day, twenty five plus years later, when I apply
the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to my life, I get better.
I do okay, you know, And that's how I know

(13:09):
I'm alcoholic. It's experiential though. I had to try it,
but I had to be tired enough to try it.
Father Tom Weston always says, gotta be pretty sick and
tired to find us interesting. But when you do, you know,
by THEA when you do so, I'm in this hospital.

(13:31):
And if you don't want to go crazy in the nighthouse,
you got to get busy. And one of my favorite
ways to be busy, I've already told you was boys.
I loved all the boys, but my favorites are those sexy,
smoldering types, you know, the kind they just sit back
there in simmer and you just never really knew when
they were going to blow, did you? You know? You
know who I'm talking about. I know we got some

(13:52):
guys like that in here tonight, because I can see
the smoke curling up from the corners. But the trouble
with guys like that house is that they're usually hiding
from a junior prison sense. They don't want to go
to YA, they don't want to go to California Youth Authority.
They've done something and now they lay low in the
nuthouse long enough, they'll be okay. But they can't. They can't,
can they. They're you know, trying to lay low and

(14:12):
not blow, and they can't. And like my first boyfriend,
he blew and he threw a chair through the big
plate glass window of the boys unit. And then my
next boyfriend, he blew and he threw a nurse through
the big plate glass window the boys unit. And so
that was progressive too. And I don't know about you,
but I've always thought I should have a soundtrack to
my life, you know, music playing in the background of

(14:34):
all this drama going on. Right, Don't you have your
favorite songs that just go to the same, all same all.
You know. We used to play those sentimental jail house
songs like who when will I See you again? You know,
and press our little faces up against the window and
long for what we couldn't have across the way in
the boys unit. You know. And again, you know, there's

(14:57):
that anticipation, isn't that where it is right there in
the lawn. It's in the longing. It's never in the getting.
You get it, you gotta get another one. It's not
good enough, right, you gotta get another one. Oh, but
it's in that as soon as I, as soon as I,
as soon as I right there. Anyway, one afternoon, I

(15:17):
was sitting outside on the smoke break bench watching my
boyfriend Terry being cuffed and escorted off by security. He's
the one who threw the chair through the window. And
he's gone. He's going. I'm never gonna see him again,
you know. And that was a good through a four
week long relationship, you know. And and I was so
I was smoking my tragic cigarettes and channeling Greta Garbo,
and it was almost more than I could take. And

(15:43):
he's gone, he's going. I can see the last of
him going around the corner and just inside the girls unit,
and I could hear Diana Ross singing it top decibel.
Touched me in the morning and then just walk away.
Oh god. It took me a long time to realize.
I was broken hearted and blue before I ever had

(16:04):
a real date, cause it was it was what I
was looking with. I was looking out there and what
I was looking with. And the trouble with U, trouble
that with looking for for what I needed out there,
was that I was always about half a bubble off
what it was I thought I saw anyway. You know,
I'd mistake arrogance for confidence, I'd mistake sex for love,
I'd mistake brute strength for strength the character, and I'd

(16:27):
get it up in my hot little hands and it
would dissolve where I stood because it wasn't it. It
wasn't it. I had to come to AA to learn that.
It's when I'm thinking of you that gaping hole in
my soul gets smaller. When I'm thinking of how I
can help meet your needs. I'm trying to be a service.
But I didn't know that. I had to come here
to learn that. And uh I went from the girls
unit to the co ed unit, to the unit where

(16:47):
they put the kids they just don't know what to
do with anymore. I turned sweet sixteen in the nuthouse,
and by the time I got there, I was a
vision for you, you know, I uh I uh know.
It was no longer bathing or getting dressed, because you
don't have to do that to date in the nuthouse,
and I had casts on both my arms up to
my shoulders because I was cutting, and it had nothing

(17:08):
to do with suicide. It was just a different way
to change my reality. You know, when you're untreated, you
got no steps fellowship God on my understanding, I got
no booze untreated. I'm itchy, I can't fit in my skin.
I met the love of my life there in that unit.
Ended up going over the wall for the last time.
And that's me. You know. I'd walk the walk, talk

(17:29):
the talk, and up the wall over and out, walk
the walk, talk the talk, up the wall, over and out.
And I know that we can do that here in
AA too. Thank god. I was beat up enough to
know to remember that. We lasted about two and a
half weeks, and then my probation officer, oddly enough, learned

(17:49):
exactly where to find me, and it hurt my feelings
to find out he'd called her, she's right here, come
get her. And then most of my adolescence. For the
rest of my adolescence, I was in one lock up
or another, one treatment place or another, sitting in front
of a judge waiting for placement, juvenile Hall, then off
to placement. Juvenile Hall, then off to placement, juvenile Hal,

(18:11):
than off to placement. And I ended up in a
girls home at the end of all of that. And
here's where I just want to tell you that I've
been a seeker. I told you early on. I'm proactive.
I know that there. I have always known that there
is some great power that runs in and around and
through us. I have been in touch with that since
I was a kid, or at least known there that
it existed. Maintaining that relationship is another story, you know.

(18:34):
And as I grew up, and as fear set in
and the worldly clamors and all of those things, you know,
And then when alcohol came into my life, man, it
just seemed like it hooked me back up. Alcohol became
the power. It did the growing up for me, It
did the feeling for me, It did the looking out
for me for me, you know, it just it did
it all and gave me the illusion I was hooked

(18:55):
up to that great power. And the only trouble with
that is that it dumped me at one point, at
some point down the line, it dumped me, and I
had to find a power greater than alcohol. But I
tried a lot of things and it wasn't that those
things don't work for people. I get crazy when I
hear people say, I wish they had what we have
in here. We have great, a great thing in here
for people like me, But out there they've had it

(19:18):
for a long time. Lots of people have had it
for a long time. Out there. We rent from them,
you know. And uh, I know some people don't like that,
but I but I it. It worked for you know.
I was born into a Southern Baptist home and that
worked where very well for my mother till the day
she died four years ago. Now it didn't make her
as she had a lot of other problems, but that

(19:40):
that worked for her, that spiritual practice. I tried being
a Catholic for a couple of weeks in the fourth grade,
and uh, you know, and the trouble with that is,
I'm about as deep as a mud puddle, you know.
I like it was not working right now, I got
to go, you know, and and I was, but I
was just I always saw it from the outside what
it looked like, you know. I love the little pictures
of little girls in white dresses with the missiles and

(20:02):
the candles and the ritual. And I thought, that's got
to do something. And it didn't for me because I
don't stay long enough. I don't know how to presevere.
I don't know anything. Character and Karla do not go
in the same sentence. You know, I have nothing. I
have no stick to itiveness, not there. I burned black
candles for a couple of years and prayed to the
other guy for a while, you know, just hedge in

(20:24):
my bets. Really, just I just want to be on
the side that's winning. I don't care. And over time
I developed that. Really what I developed was a sense
of spirit. I got it from watching TV. I watched
the news. I watched the people of the sixties. People

(20:45):
of the sixties. They didn't take crap, you know, they marched.
They had free love and peace and flowers and they marched.
They said no, We're not going to take it anymore.
They said no. And they had music The Grateful Dead
and Blind Faith and traffic Crosby Stills and Nash and
they had to you know, that spirit. And they had
kung fu. You know. David Carrodine was the star of

(21:06):
that television show and I just you know, I'm still
to this day, some of my best spiritual moments are
watching that show. You know. He's just so some of
you might remember that show, and you know, as a
Buddhist priest who walked the wild West in bare feet.
I mean, this guy was tough. You know. He'd walked
from town to town and sometimes he'd be met because

(21:28):
he looked different, he walked, acted different. You know, he'd
be met by whole groups of guys you know, who
didn't like him just because of the way he looked,
and they'd assault him verbally, you know, bah, and he'd
stand there and just pearls of Buddhist wisdom just rolled
off his tongue, you know, when you'd see the look
come over their face and they'd change and they'd go
off to help people. And I thought, that's power, that's

(21:53):
real power. And then he'd walk to another town just
in his you know, with this little bag of herb.
I don't know what was in that bag, but and
he'd get to another town and he'd meet a whole
another group of people would greet him at the you know,
and this time they'd assault him physically. And when they
did that he'd kick their butts. I wanted what he had,

(22:15):
you know what I mean. I thought he was the
epitome of strength and serenity. So I've got these ideas
swirling around, and I am studying. I'm reading everything on
I can on channeling and and peace and meditation and
and you know, taking a lot of things, trying to
be introduced into that spirit world, and and and all
the while, I can't let go of a drink all out.

(22:37):
All the while, I can't let go of the drink.
But I got so I'm in this girl's home. At
the end of all this. My roommate's on the same page.
You know. I said all that to tell you that
she and I we got the same thing going on.
And man, our friends said, all those people moved to Oregon.
There are people, and they're an organ. We went out
the second story window that girl's home, down the tree

(22:57):
and then to Randy's trucking off to Oregon where God
might be. And we moved up into uh, the Eugene
Springfield area. Or it's a college town and everybody's kind
of groovy and cool and their throwbacks from the sixties anyway,
you know, And I thought, here we are here, we
are my life's gonna change from the outside in. We
rent in a little house and they let me come
with them, and we planted a garden in the front yard.
And that's where I learned that in Oregon, when they

(23:18):
talk about hoe and they met with the tool, you know,
it was a it's a whole different thing. But two
things happened that I certainly couldn't see while it was happening.
I could only see it looking back. And one was
when we we couldn't always drink the way I needed
a drink. I didn't know that. I didn't know it
that much about alcoholism, and uh uh I when I

(23:40):
even when I got here, but certainly not back then,
and when we couldn't drink the way I needed a drink,
And I've got no booze, and I've got no steps
or fellowship or God. Am I understanding nothing that buffers
me from you. I'm restless, irritable, and discontent. You know,
the obsession is already set in, and I don't know it.
And I can't guarantee when I do drink whether I'm
gonna have to. We were twenty two already still and

(24:01):
again at seventeen, so I didn't see it coming. But
I'd become very hard to get along with when I
can't drink the way I need to drink, and when
I can, and I'm over shooting the mark all the time.
My friends had asked me to leave. They had no choice,
you know, lots of people, lots of time said Carla,
we love you, but you gotta go. You gotta go.
And I went. And I ended up back down in

(24:23):
my father's house against his better judgment. And I hadn't
been with him in a very, very long time. We'd
spent my entire childhood or my entire adolescents anyway, you know,
in lock ups and visitations and lockups and trying to
figure out what's wrong with Carla, and how to help you,
and how to help buy you some time. He used
to say, they're just trying to buy you some time, Carla.

(24:45):
But I was at his house for just about six months.
Every morning we'd get up at the same time every day,
and he'd go off for work, and I'd go sit
in his den and I'd drink from his liquor cabinet,
and he'd come home in the afternoon and he'd see
me sitting in the very spot where he left me
that morning, and I'd have nothing to say for myself.
I didn't know how to tell him. I was afraid.
I didn't know, that's what I was. I didn't know
how to tell him. I didn't know where the last

(25:05):
few years of my life had gone. I sat on
his couch and I drank his booze until right before
my eighteenth birthday, he came to me and he said
what I know where the hardest words he ever had
to say to his oldest daughter, and that's I'm not
going to watch you dye and I'm not going to
help you do what you gotta go. And on my
way out the door, all I could remember is that
one of the counselors at the rehab ha told me
I was a great actress, and I know today I
must have misunderstood that. But I ended up on Hollywood Boulevard,

(25:30):
and there's not a lot of auditioning going on out there.
I can promise you that I was eighteen years old,
starting my days off with a pint of Pop Pop vodka,
and I would go wherever the day took me. And
some days it was a party, and some days it
was just surviving, and there was not a lot of
hope about it getting any different. And to this day,
I loved driving through Hollywood. I loved driving down Sunset
Boulevard past that same bus stop near Pointzetia Avenue. I

(25:53):
see a whole new generation of the same girl sitting
out there with very little hope about it getting any different.
And I get to say a prayer hope for her,
a prayer gratitude for myself. Maybe someday she'll get to
find what I found here in alcoholics anonymous of alcoholism
is a problem. A few months into that, I met
a man walking down Hollywood Boulevard and I saw the
light in his eyes and I didn't realize it was

(26:13):
orange sunshine. But we hit it off and I moved
in with him that night, and I didn't even know
his last name. And six weeks later he's asking me
to leave, and I still don't know his last name.
But I like to bring him up because years later
he was on my eighth step list. He was someone
who came to mind doing that four step. But you know,
some of them's people you hardly ever have to get
the writing done. You know, you're almost just barely done,

(26:34):
and you go, oh yeah, ready, willing and able, you know.
And I went everywhere I knew to look to get
to make those amends to him, and I couldn't find him.
I spent the last part of my first year of
sobriety looking for him, and of course I couldn't find him.
And my sponsor finally said, you know, you're gonna have
to leave that alone. You got to let that go
for a while. If you're supposed to find that guy,
you'll find him. But in God's time, not yours. You know.
Right now you're chasing your tail. Now it's just because

(26:56):
of you know, you're not working, so you know. But
in the meantime, there are some things you can do
to begin to change in that area, like try being
a friend to a man in a vertical fashion. Why
don't you start there, simple, you know? And I love
it because all these years later, all these years later,
I have friends of both genders. I know how to

(27:18):
be a friend, I know how to have a friend.
And there is not a room in the world I
can't walk into and look somebody in the eye, everybody
in the eye, and I don't get those looks of
contempt and pity and disdain from men or women, and
I love that. Right up there with that feeling of
being useful is that feeling of self respect. And you

(27:38):
can't take that from me. I can give it away.
Maria talked last night about us selling ourselves out, and
I can certainly do that in sobriety as well as
I did before. But you taught me how to be different.
Right before my thirteenth day, a birthday, I had to
go give a talk on the other side of town.

(27:59):
It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I didn't feel
like going, And thank god, you guys have taught me
it's not how I feel, it's what I do that matters.
And I went out and I gave that talk. You know,
I used to think I could just blow off a
dinner for two and not be missed. Really, you know,
showing up was not my strong suit. What does it matter?
But don't you dare not invite me? You know what
I mean. I don't want to go, I just want

(28:21):
to be invited. So I went out and I gave
that talk, and of course I felt better, of course
I did, And when the talk was over, the thank
you line came through and this man stopped and he said,
where were you in nineteen seventy six? And it was
guy from Hollywood Boulevard standing in front of me with
eight and a half years of sobriety, and I was
almost thirteen. Now, it's just my belief that only a

(28:41):
very well organized, loving God could have made that happen,
when all my efforts to get that done just didn't
make it happen, couldn't get it done on my own accord,
in my own time. And I'd just like to tell
that story because it reminds me and all these times
of uncertainty when I can't see that far ahead of me,
you know, and I can't remember the last time something
came together, you know, and I just and I get impatient.

(29:03):
That's a story that I that's a touchstone. That's a
touchstone for me, one of many now. So I got
to make those direct amends to him. And he said,
oh God, Carla, that's long forgiven, long forgotten. I just
can't believe you're still alive. And he's right, you know,

(29:23):
for all of us, somehow, some way, we've managed to
slip through that window of grace one more day to
come in here and sit together and recharge and regroup
and see what we can go back out there and
pack into the stream of life. I don't know what
that is, because I know a lot of us get
a chance. The only thing I know that happened this

(29:44):
time that made it different was that I did something different.
I didn't feel different when I got here. I felt bad.
I felt like I didn't know if I could trust this,
But I kept coming anyway. You know, I just did
something different. I didn't think something different when I got here.
I did something different until it took all of a sudden.
It took that horrible obsession was relieved about nine months

(30:07):
into sobriety. I learned how to be so happy for
you when you came in with two days and said, oh,
the obsession has been lifted. Yay. But it works. If

(30:28):
it doesn't, you know, you can do it if it
doesn't hurts, but you can do it anyway. That was.
That was that took a while. You know. I left
Hollywood after that year, and I hooked up with another
guy from another rehab, because that's where they keep the boyfriends,
you know, and another and again. And when our book

(30:49):
talks about being having moral and philosophical convictions galore. You know,
I want to be this. There's a certain ideal of
who I want to be. I want to be peace
and love and all of those things. I want to
be that. And I can't. He and I can't stop
knocking the hell out of each other really long enough
to implement the principles fully of peace and love. That's
how we dealt with things. We want to be this,
and we have to be that. I can't get there

(31:11):
from here. So we beat each other up and down
the California coast and pitch a tent in the mountains
in southern Oregon, and we lived there till the rains came.
And then we moved into a roofless cab in just
north of Grant's Pass and about five miles in off
the highway, five miles up a mountain and found an
old burnout log cab and that somebody had used seventy
five years earlier, and we threw a plastic tarp over

(31:32):
the top, called it a skylight. And then the baby
came and we had this little girl. And I thought,
having this little girl, I mean full flight from reality, okay,
because I think we're living off the land and that
I'm meditating and we're drinking moonshine and homemade wine. Because
it's organic, it kind of makes itself if you do
it right. So I've got this little girl, and she's

(31:57):
supposed to be top priority, right, and we all know
that alcohol doesn't care who you love. Quickly the booze
became priority. And then she and she got in the
way of one of our fights when she was about
ten months old, and I had to take her up
to Idaho where it's got to be better, somewhere else,
got to be better, got to be better up the road.
Hope is just up the road, and I took her
up there. And my first legitimate work was working in

(32:17):
the bars. And I loved working in the bars. I mean,
to me, it was just like God was being the
cosmos were being very efficient, you know. I mean, it
never occurred to me not to drink on the job.
Way else would you have those jobs. So I was
tending bar and cocktail waitressing. Any normal person could have
made a great living doing what I was doing. And
I still couldn't bring home enough money to pay rent
for more than a week at a time. So we're
living in the rent by the week motels up there,

(32:38):
and my kid's one of those kids that you see
in her T shirt and underwear, and yesterday's lunch down
the front of it because my mom's not paying attention,
and we just kind of went from pillar to post
up there till after a while. Of course, Idaho's not
working for us either, and we got to come back down.
I'm renting a room from my aunt in la And
in a place called Cavena, and I'm working in a
bar in Hollywood, and that's about thirty five forty between

(33:00):
each other. And every afternoon. She's almost four years old
by then. Every afternoon i'd kiss her goodbye and I'd
take off for the bar in Hollywood, and i'd stop
at the halfway point, which is bar in Arcadia called
the First Cabin, and I'd stop in there and I'd
have my primer drinks. Those drinks had got me ready
to go do my shift, those shots of querbo gold
and bud backs. Every afternoon, like clockwork, stop in there,
shoot them beers, social buy and go off to work.

(33:26):
And one afternoon, I'd kissed my girl goodbye and I
took off and I stopped at that same bar in
Arcadia had those same shots of gold and same bud backs,
And to this day, I don't know what was different
on that day from the day before except for twenty
four hours, because I didn't hate that job in Hollywood,
and I didn't love my daughter any less on that
day than I love her today. But I sat on
that barstool and I drank those drinks and I couldn't stop.

(33:48):
I couldn't stop, no matter how great the necessity or
the wish, I couldn't stop. So I sat on that
bar stool and I lost them both and one fell swoop.
The kid and the job were gone, and I stayed
and I lived the kindness of strangers there in that
little area in Arcadia for about a month until I
fell into another job in another dive bar met the
man I would marry there, because here I'm thinking, no,

(34:09):
if it's just this business, it's this business. If I
could get out of this business now, get married, get
the kid back, get an apartment, make my life look
like I think yours does, do it all, get all
back together. And he and I got married about the
time we should have split up, and we moved into
that apartment and we're looking legit quickly, we became the

(34:30):
neighborhood entertainment. We settled our arguments with a shotgun. Whoever
gets to that gun first wins. My first exposure, real
exposure to alcoholics anonymous, came after one of those fights.
We were fighting over whether or not I should get
off the barstool, and I lost that fight, and I
ended up with some black eyes and broken ribs. Again,

(34:52):
not a lot of people feeling sorry for me in
that bar. Just glad I was leaving. My husband had
to pick me up and take me to the hospital
and get me fixed up. And then we got fixed up,
and then he brought me home and he had to
leave for work that weekend. So before he left, he
set me up with a giant ice chest full of
beer and a bottle of beefeed or gin chilling on top.
And now I'm drinking gin because tequila had been making
me so mean. I mean, you understand, right. So he's gone,

(35:19):
and I'm dialing the phone and I don't know if
we have any other drunk dialers in the room, but
I don't know all of who I called. But I'm
drinking the gin and dialing the phone, and I eventually
called a battered woman shelter because that's what I felt like.
I think I'm a battered woman. And the woman who
answered the phone asked me if i'd ever been to
an AA meeting. I don't know how she made that leap,

(35:41):
but she did. What I heard her say was that
if I went to an AA meeting, she'd fix my life.
It'd be all done, okay. So I found a wonderful
AA meeting. It was a perfectly wonderful meeting, not far
from where I lived. It was there then, it's there now.
And the only thing I went there without was readiness.

(36:03):
And you can't give that to me. You can't make
me ready. Our friend Bill Cleveland says that there's a
when somebody's ready, there's nothing you can say wrong, and
when somebody's not, there's nothing you can say right. And
I went there and I heard a woman talk for
about forty five minutes that night. I sat there and
I listened in all my self pity, and listened thinking
I was looking for an answer, and all of that

(36:25):
all I heard her say during that whole forty five
minutes was it. Somewhere during her drinking career, she switched
to beer so I did, I thought, AA says, switched
to beer. The representative from alcoholics anonymous. So I left
there and I switched to beer. And beer gave me

(36:46):
the great illusion that I was controlling my drinking. Beer's
not really drinking anyway, is it. I didn't think. So
I didn't think it was drinking, you know. I mean,
it's got all those hops and barley and wheat like
a breakfast food, you know. I mean, it's not really
like a whole grain breakfast food. So but I lived

(37:08):
on that illusion for another couple of years. You know.
It was more soothing to my body. It allowed me
to get a little further into my day before it
was all gone, allowed me to put things together a
little bit, to get my daughter back a few years later,
took a few years, got a little job answering phones
for the city. This is my last year, last year drinking.

(37:32):
We had moved into a little apartment across town, me
and my husband and the kid, a little tiny place,
but it felt like a palace. And we're drinking. We
have one more of those fights, one more time, one
more time where the cops are in the driveway, one
more time, neighbors are peeking out the window, wondering what's
going on at Charlie and Carla's house. One more time,
the kids standing now over in the corner in her mismatch,

(37:54):
closing her unkempt hair, and she got that look of
fear in her eyes one more time, and I can't
try to tell her it's going to be any different.
And I see my life falling down around me, and
I can't stop. I'm sitting on the couch with my
twelve pack and I can't stop. My husband left, the
cops left, they took the gun, and everybody's gone. It's

(38:14):
me and the kid and the booze. I was in
a much better financial position by that time than I'd
ever then. I'd been in a very very long time. Anyway,
I was living indoors. I had that little job, even
though that last torturous year, you know, like I had
this little job as answering phones for the city. Great job,
great benefits, all those things that everybody shoots for, right,

(38:34):
and we want to do well. You know, it wasn't
like I wanted to be a loser for all my life.
Once in a while, you know, you want to do well,
get it together. Sometimes I try to get to work
without taking those morning drinks, you know, just so it
didn't smell, just so I could just say I made
it clean today. To stop the shake, So I try
not to drink and to stop the shaking. I'm shaking.

(38:54):
I'm getting there. And when I'm not drinking, it's all
I can think about. I'm either drinking or thinking about drinking.
That whole last year, I'm drinking or thinking about drinking,
drinking or thinking about drinking. So this last day, after
this fight, it's my everybody's gone. It's me and the
kid in the booze. And my first sponsor told me,
if I wanted to affect a conscious contact with the
power greater than myself, I could start by counting the

(39:16):
coincidences that happened in my life. And one of the
first ones I could count was that I had moved
in next door to a woman who had five years
of sobriety and alcoholics anonymous, and she had seen and
heard that whole thing go down that afternoon, that Saturday afternoon.
And she came over a couple days later and she
knocked on my door and she brought me a big
book in a twelve and twelve, and she sat on
my couch and she told me your story. She was

(39:37):
a woman properly armed with the facts about herself. And
she sat down and she talked about her and in
her story I heard me. I heard that she used
to drink like me, and I'd seen with my own
eyes over the last year that she wasn't drinking anymore.
And what impressed me more about that was it didn't
seem to bother her that she wasn't drinking. That got
my attention, because when I'm sober, when I've got no

(39:58):
when I'm not drinking, I've got no steps or fellowship
or God am I understanding? I feel like you've stripped
the coating off my wires. You know, I feel oversensitive
and underloved. I don't know what you meant by that,
or what you looked at me that way, and my
life closes in on me from there. My head closes
in on me from there, so much so that even
though I'm gonna look at that first drink, and even

(40:19):
though i know what's gonna happen, even though I know
I don't even have to know all the what alcoholism is,
but even I know that I can't guarantee if I'm
gonna have two or twenty two. I know that I
don't have to invite trouble anymore. It comes unsolicited. I
know that that window of relief is getting smaller and
smaller and smaller. And knowing all of that, when I'm

(40:42):
in that self centered, panicked, diseased mind, there's gonna be
nothing that stands between me and that first drink. And
once I've taken the first one, I'm off. So I
don't know how her twelve little, thinly veiled Sunday schools
steps are going to have any real effect on me.

(41:03):
In the face of what I'd become, it seemed like
I'd heard it all before. And it was about a
week and a half later that I just didn't go
back and buy any more booze. I just didn't go back.
And I spent the weekend at home. My daughter was
somewhere else and I was at home, and I stayed
in and I shook, and I saw things and heard

(41:26):
things that weren't there, and I shook, and I sweated,
and I and I sat there and I don't know why.
There wasn't a conscious decision. It was just I just
wasn't going anywhere. And I shook into Monday, and I
shook into Tuesday, and my Tuesday afternoon I was stark, raving, sober, terror, bewilderment, frustration, despair,
What do I do now? And I went back to

(41:46):
my neighbor instead of the store, it was another left
turn instead of right. I just did something different. I
went back to my neighbor and I asked her what
to do, and she set me up to a meeting
in Sarah Madre, California, and that became my first home group.
And I went up there and I didn't know what
I was gonna find, but I went in there. I
don't even know if what you call what was on
in me. What was going on to me was willingness,

(42:08):
but I was doing it, so it must have been.
I went up there and I sat way back by
the exit, signed by the open door, just in case.
What I heard that night, the first sign of hope
that I heard that night in that meeting was came
in the form of small talk. You know that sound
of chatter that we hear before the meetings. You know,
everybody's asking each other how you're doing, how you're doing,

(42:29):
do you have a sponsor? Yet. Did you get a
big book? Do you need a cup of coffee? Did
you get a good seat? Didn't your kid have an
interview yesterday? Didn't you start school? How's your lawn? Could
my life ever be so elegant and simple as to

(42:51):
be concerned about a lawn? I mean, except for to
pass out on, you know what I mean? So I
don't know, but something fun's kind of going on. And
I stayed till the end, and the secretary did something
very nice for me. She came to me and she
asked me if i'd read that in Southern California, we
read a portion of chapter eleven, a vision for you

(43:13):
at the end of a lot of meetings. And I
took it from her. I said, yes, that's what I did.
I said yes. And as I as I read a
little bit, I came into the room a little bit,
you know, just like I do every time I say
yes to something you asked me to do. Every time
I'm stacking a chair, or dumping an ashtray, or washing
a coffee cup or shaking somebody's hand, I come into
the room just a little bit more. Making coffee. I'm

(43:34):
in the room, keeps me in a posture of hearing
and delivering the message. I never know when my spirit,
you know what, I'm days like that all the time.
You know when I, twenty five years later, have days
where nothing's quite caught up, and I come to my
meeting and I'm stacking chairs and I'm like, oh yeah, okay,
And then I never know who's going to walk by

(43:55):
me with that one liner. It's gonna set me write again.
Oh yeah, I never know who's walking behind me, who's
looking to see if Carla's doing it? Maybe I can too.
Oh yes, yes, is still the best answer for me.
All these years later, and I started going to meetings
and I was staying sober midnight to midnight, and they
were talking about steps and I didn't know what was

(44:16):
going on. Really, I didn't understand it. But I got
a sponsor. I asked a woman to sponsor me, and
she was an older woman, and I didn't relate to
her in any way really that I knew of, except
that I heard her say that she hadn't had a
drink in twelve years. And that got me. I mean
sixty days, Yeah, that's good, But I mean this thing
had been working in her for twelve years, and that

(44:37):
was serious to me because I didn't know if this
alcoholics anonymous thing wasn't going to be just one more thing,
one more thing where I'm in here. I walked the walk,
talk the talk, up the wall, over and out twelve years.
She didn't drink anything like me, except that she drank
a lot. She drank and stayed where she was. I

(44:57):
drank and ran around. I started taking the steps of
my sponsor, and I made that first round of amends
to my family in about nine months. And it was
right about that time that horrible obsession to drink was lifted.
And I don't know when exactly it was, but it

(45:19):
just right around that time. I knew for a long time,
for a few months into sobriety. You know, I'd get
up in the morning and to be on me. You know,
is it gonna be today? Am I gonna drink today?
Am I gonna drink? I'm not gonna drink. I'm gonna drink.
I'm not gonna drink. I'm gonna drink. I'm not in
my head all day long. You know, Just go do this,
Go into the phones, go do this. You know, it's
very you know, somebody I drank after the first eighty
nine days for a day, you know, because as soon

(45:41):
as I started drinking, I realized that I wanted what
I had had just a few minutes ago, even with
all the discomfort that came with it. But I had
to finish that drunk. And then so the next night,
my sponsor came and picked me up and she brought
me to the big book study that night, and that
was the last night I ever had to have a drink.
And I went up there and I was sitting there.
I was not very pretty. I was not in great condition,
and somebody came over to me, and thank god, nobody

(46:02):
sat in the meeting and went, e is somebody smells
like booze? You know. Some guy came over to me
and he said, hey, you want to come up on
Tuesday and make coffee with me. I thought, dang, somebody
thinks I want to be here on Tuesday. So then
the real deal started, you know, the real deal started,

(46:23):
and I took the steps and I had that coffee
maker commitment, and that guy quit showing up and I
ended up with the coffee maker commitment to myself. And
I got out of work at five o'clock and at
five oh five. I was in the meeting because I
was in the store buying stersticks and coffee creamer and
birthday cards and all that stuff. And I was thinking
about you. I was thinking about what needs to be done.
I was out of me for a few minutes. I

(46:45):
was experiencing the relief of the bondage of self. You know,
I had me off my mind for a change. You know,
I couldn't get my head around what the term self
centeredness was. I didn't get that. I had the nerve
to tell you that I can't be self centered. I'm
a mom, and I just gave you a thumbnail about
what kind of mother I was, so I couldn't get
it in a dictionary definitive kind of way. I had

(47:08):
to experience the lack of self centeredness, and I had
to get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. You know,
everything I live, I have to live out of my
comfort zones today. I have to live where I'm uncertain.
I have to live in the unknown. I have to
be peaceful with the unpeaceful, you know. And now I'm

(47:33):
getting to like it. But I made that first round
of amends to my family, and you know, to this day,
there's not one member of my family will stand in
the doorway and say no, please, don't go to the meeting.
You know, they never did. They never say that. And
I was going to two and three meetings a day,
and I got to tell you, for the first couple
of years, I think I needed every one of those meetings.

(47:53):
You know. I was just always in one at noon
and a couple at night, and I was trying to
raise this kid, and I was paying for more than
a month in a row, and I was going to work,
and other women started asking me to sponsor them. And
I got to tell you, the only fifth step I
like better than mine is yours. And I'll tell you why,
because in your eyes, I see redemption, and I see forgivability,

(48:15):
and I see loveability, and I see hope and growth
where I don't always see it in myself. And when
the light comes on in your eyes, it burns brighter
in me. And I'm one of those big believers that
you got to give it away to get it, and
I hope that you stay long enough to experience that,
because there is no way you can get it off
listening to somebody else doing that you can get hope

(48:37):
from there, but I know I had to experience it.
After a couple of years i'd had you, guys, my
daughter didn't have anybody, and she has started. She was
twelve years old, now coming home at all hours of
the night, beat up and bloody. She'd been jumped into
a gang and starting to find her sense of family
and camaraderie out in the street where I used to
And it was time to get worried. You know, I
was busy being wonderful and alcoholics anonymous, you know, three

(49:00):
meetings a day, and you know on page nineteen, right
up front, it doesn't wait till the end to tell
us that a more important demonstration of our principles happens
in our homes, occupations, and affairs. And if I'm only
doing it in these rooms, I'm only half doing it.
So it was time for me to stop going to
two and three meetings a day, Go to a meeting,
go to work, go home, and be a mom to
that kid. But she needed a little bit bigger help

(49:21):
by that time, and so I had to put her
in a treatment center for a while, and thank god,
there was a place for her, and it was for
me to show up. It was for me to offer
her that relationship if she wanted it. And we went
through a lot of bumps, and we went through a lot.
I had become the very parent I said i'd never be,
and maybe worse. But it was for me to offer

(49:43):
that to her, whether she wanted it from me or not.
And I'd show up when they asked me to, and
sometimes she'd have a letter there that said all the
reasons she hated me. And then sometimes I'd go and
she'd have a letter there that all the reasons she
loved me. And by after that six months was over,
she came home and things were better, but they weren't
per You know, you guys taught me how to live
with life's unresolved problems without having to take a drink

(50:04):
to settle it. You know, I live in the uncertainty.
You guys taught me mountains or moved a spoonful at
a time. And she wanted to go live with her
dad for a while, and I had to step back
and let her go do that. And you know, I
have to tell you that I have discovered in sobriety
the alcoholics anonymous does it teaches me how to live

(50:25):
with my problems, but it doesn't remove them. I mean,
things happen in life. Things happen to people that never drank.
People get sick, people get in wrecks, people have stuff happens.
So about five years into my sobriety, I'm going to
the gym. I'm working. She's living with her dad, and
I come home from the gym one night and I
go to bed as usual, and I woke up in

(50:45):
the middle of the night. There's a man standing over
my bed with a knife to my neck and his
hand over my mouth, and he said, don't say a
word or'll cut your head off. And he took the
telephone cort Andy, tied my hands behind my back, and
he raped me. And he robbed me that night in
my room. And I want to tell you that at
five years of sobriety, I had a much bigger God
than I got here with. And I had a certainty
with a God, a God that I didn't understand, a
God that I didn't have to know or describe or

(51:08):
or or fully define. There's a man on my back
in the middle of the night, in the middle of
my bed, and I'm saying a prayer. If my daughter
asked to hear some bad news about her mom. Please
have someone be there with her. And it wasn't until
later I realized that, you know, it was only alcoholics

(51:30):
anonymous that could fit me to be of the presence
of mind to say a prayer like that at a
time like that. So he was there for a few hours,
and then we got into it. We kind of waited
till a strategic time, and then we got into kind
of a wrestling match, and then my own boat lock

(51:52):
wouldn't un lock on the front door and I couldn't
get out, but it shook him up, but shook him
up enough to wear in a I don't know a
half hour later. So he went out the same window
he came in. He came in through the kitchen window.
And it turned out that I knew him. I'd actually
watched him get sober thirty days before I did. I
watched him get sober. I watched him get his life,
his wife, his kids, and everything back. And then I
watched him join the church and leave AA behind. And

(52:14):
when he went out, he went out like that. And
what I chose to learn from that is that while
the Big Book tells us to be quick to see
where religious people are right. This is where I learned
the terms and conditions of my alcoholism. This is where
I learned that I'm not one of those people who
can go home after a Sunday sermon and have a
glass of wine. I remember that here, and then I
can go anywhere I want to and worship in addition too,

(52:41):
but not instead of Alcoholics Anonymous, not for me. By
that time, I had a man named Lee was sponsoring me,
my first sponsor. Thank God, I didn't have to have
the god she had. You know, she taught me the
principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't like her god
very much. I didn't like a lot of things about

(53:02):
the way she believed, but she said, you don't have
to believe the way I do. You get to have
your own. And so when she left Alcoholics Anonymous a
couple of years later, I got to stay and I
asked Lee to be my sponsor. And he was just
one of those good old boys. He was someone who,
you know, I didn't need to be told to go
to meetings, and I had enough friends where I could
do step work and stuff. If it was so intimate,
I needed a woman. But he was just someone to

(53:23):
be accountable to. When he was a good old boy,
you know, he'd say things like, WHOA, that's gonna feel
a whole lot better as soon as it quits hurting.
And I love him today. He's still sober today. I
watched him bury his son a couple of years ago,
and then I watched him go about the business of

(53:44):
trying to help other alcoholics who were losing their kids.
I love a sermon, I can see. And then I
so he was my sponsor at the time, and this
had happened, and it was clear to us I needed
to ask a woman, and so I asked Marguerite. And
I always say that Joanne and Lee gave me my sobriety,

(54:05):
and Joanne, I mean Marguerite gave me my soul back.
And the first thing she said was that you're gonna
have to forgive this guy. You know, you're gonna have
to forgive this guy. And I know that, I know
she's right. At five years of sobriety, I know that
we're people who can't handle even seemingly justifiable resentments. But
the guy had scared me, God scared me. And man,
you know, at five years of sobriety, fear was fear

(54:27):
still meant for me to be angry. Anger was the
best way for me to guard against fear. Anger made
me feel purposeful and like you can't hurt me. And yet,
at five years of sobriety, anger is like a suit
that doesn't fit anymore. I can't be angry. I can't
not be angry, and it's time to change. And I
don't want to let go. Ego says, if I die,
you die, They're going to walk all over you. And

(54:51):
yet I know I gotta let go. So that seven
step prayer came in very handy. It was a daily
mantra all day every day, because I want to be
that moral on philosophical convictions, Galora want to be that,
and I am this. There was a trial that followed.
They caught the guy a few weeks later, and as
part of the defense, they had a lot of the

(55:12):
guys I'd known years before get up and testify as
to who I used to be, including my ex husband.
And that s mark I'd left on him was the
fact that he was more inclined to testify on behalf
of the rapist than he was for me. He's never
been interested in any of my amends, and so I
have to be okay with that now and unless something
changes in the future. So I had to get a

(55:39):
character witness for me to testify as to who I
was at five years of sobriety. And by that time
I was working at a big, fancy financial firm downtown
Los Angeles place I never even would have walked in
the front doors of years before, and people like Henry
Kissinger walk the halls this place, and I was walking
undetected because I was just showing up doing what they

(56:02):
asked me to do. And the division head, the department
head there, offered to come and testify on my behalf,
and they told him all about who I used to be,
and he said, yeah, but she shows up early and
she stays late, and she was where she said she was.
And see that's alcoholics anonymous speaking for itself. He didn't
have to be coached. She just got up and told
the truth as he'd experienced it through me. And then

(56:24):
it was my turn to testify. And I'm still looking
for this window of forgiveness. I know it just takes
a little chink in the armor for that to start,
but I don't know where it's going. To come from.
And so I get up. I'm sitting in the witness
stand and I look out at the defense table and
I see him sitting there, and that's a place where
I could sit. I've sat before, I could sit again
if I were to take a drink. It occurred to
me that I was just like him. There's a little

(56:48):
recipe for forgiveness on page sixty seven in our book
that says that though we didn't like the their actions
are the way their actions manifest. Got a misquote, You
got to look page sixty seven top. But he like me,
was perhaps spiritually sick. They like ourselves. He like me,

(57:10):
not me from a spiritual mountaintop. That's not where the
forgiveness comes from. The forgiveness comes from the fact that
I could be sitting in his very seat, that I
am like him, maybe not in the same exact way,
but as a human being who could screw somebody's life up,
real good cause damage and be that proverbial tornado. Yeah
that's me. And just like a crack of light into

(57:33):
the doorway, I began to just enough hope, just enough
willingness came in to start to relinquish that fear and
to let it go. And it took about eighteen months
for all the nightmares and stuff attendant to that to
finally dissipate, but they did, they did. And I don't
walk around a victim. I know how valuable that inventory is.
I know how valuable that is. I know how valuable

(57:56):
it is. Not to walk around with the past coloring
my present moment, because this is the moment, this is
the moment for all of us. And this is the
moment I had always always been afraid of, always been
afraid of. I couldn't live in this one. I thought,
when I got sober, I was going to o d
on over awareness this moment. And if I'm full of resentment,

(58:20):
I can't be here with you. I can't. I can't
see you, clearly, I can't love you. And it's when
I'm loving you that I feel it. So that trial
was over and he was sentenced to twenty years, and
he did seventeen. And the detective who worked the case
came to me and he said, I don't know who
you were back then. I'm not even sure I want

(58:41):
to know. But whatever it is you're doing now, you
keep doing it because it seems to be working. And
see that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. Afterwards, we found
out that that trial, that that whole courtroom was sort
of dusted with the twelve step fairy dust, you know.
I mean, the judge we found out had been sober.
The court reporter was the allan on mother of a
woman in my report. I'm so glad I didn't know

(59:06):
any of that. It was just kind of one of
those little bonuses. You know, He's not been able to
stay out of prison, but I know it works in prison.
I know it works. I've had the privilege of going
up there into those prisons and into County and talking
to those people, and the guys up in prison. Some
of those guys are never getting out. They are never
getting out, and yet through the power of Alcoholics Anonymous,

(59:29):
they've found a way to be of service to each
other and to the people they've harmed, and they walk
spiritually free. And I don't know what impresses me more
that or the fact that when I go into County.
I know, I haven't done that in a while, But
when I would go into County and I'd go in
and bring a panel in there, and after the meeting,
someone would come up to me and go. You know,

(59:49):
I used to be secretary of the so and so meeting,
I used to sponsor. I used to that's a powerful
message to me. I wish that that was, you know,
our problems of our own making. And after that was over,

(01:00:10):
you know, you'd think that I don't know what I thought.
But I went back to work and life was in session,
you know. And I just a couple of years later,
my daughter came back to live with me, and a
couple of years later I met the I met a
man that I thought God was being very efficient with
a business partner and a boyfriend. You know, I just

(01:00:31):
I met him in a meeting and and it just
here's where I want to tell you that if you're
going to be in a relationship, it's a good idea
to be in the same relationship therein and and we
got together. In long story short, I went into business
with him, and I ended up bankrupt at ten years
sober and very very depressed. You know, I thought, wait

(01:00:51):
a minute, you know, wait a minute, And I just
want to tell you that I had to start. I
had to move home groups. I got a lady as
I asked reata to be my sponsored because I knew
she had paid back a whole lot of money. She
didn't think she needed to pay back either. And I
paid back the money that I owed and I got
I had to start over an alcoholics anonymous without drinking,

(01:01:16):
and life got better again. You know. I had bigger
and better and same stuff, same solutions, same steps, fellowship.
God am I understanding, just reconnecting, starting over. I didn't
have to drink and say, well, what the hell anyway?
I just you know, got back up and took some
more action, took some different action. My daughter came back
to live with me, and she sat down in front

(01:01:38):
of me with her boyfriend one afternoon and I told
him they were pregnant and they nodded. And this was
she was sixteen years old, and it was my chance
to be able to tell her I'm going to be
there for you no matter what, whatever you decide, I'm there,
you know. So I was there holding her hand when
we were counting off the contractions, and I was there.
I was there when my first little grandson was born.

(01:02:02):
And a little over eighteen years ago, she uh, she know.
She spent her senior year in high school homeschool, most
of it homeschool, but she got to graduate cap and
gown with everybody. And we have a picture of my
little grandson being a month old and and my daughter
and a cap and gown and my father and me.
And then just a couple months ago, my grandson, that
same grandson graduated cap and gown from high school. And

(01:02:23):
so we've come full circle with that. And and I've
got to be a witness. I am a privileged witness
to my life into yours. Now. I have two grandsons,
and they've never seen their grandmother drunk, you know. And
uh I got to sit with them just a couple
of years ago and watched their mother graduate from uh

(01:02:44):
cal poly Pomona with a bachelor's degree, and now she's
working on her master's. I gotta tell you that apple
ransc or Raymond from the tree, you know what I mean.
Just whoo, My dad doesn't have to set up nights
anymore watching the news to make sure his daughter's name
isn't on the list of the victims of the serial

(01:03:05):
killers of the day. He sleeps well and he knows why.
And he had to tell me that story. Up until
the time I was about twelve years sober. He had
to tell me that story about how he'd sit he
couldn't find any comfort any way to go to sleep
at night when he didn't know where I was, except
to watch the news and hope that my name wasn't mentioned.
And I'm so self centered that during that it took

(01:03:26):
many many took a long time for me to think,
when the hell is he going to stop telling that story?
Isn't like a few times enough? And that didn't mean
things weren't getting better as we were going, you know
what five years of sobriety, or now I've learned as
about six or seven years of sobriety, I got to
walk through prostate cancer with him, you know. And as

(01:03:47):
I admitted him in the law into the lobby of
the Ken Norse Cancer Center, I looked out the bay
window there and I saw the rooftops of the juvenile hall,
and we both agreed that we like that view better.
I was about twelve years sober, and I took my
dad to lunch one afternoon and he was gonna start
in on one of those stories again. You know. We

(01:04:07):
were having some spaghetti or something and he and he says,
starts in with, you know, I have no pictures of
you when you were a teenager. And I'm thinking, oh God,
and I'm you know, I'm not showing that. It's like, okay,
he yes, And I just wanna listen. I wanna sit
in the posture of listening. You've taught me that. But
I'm thinking, you know, Jesus, I've got sharp objects here.
You know it wins is enough enough? And so he

(01:04:32):
finished the sentence by saying, but you know, to see
you today, I wouldn't trade I wouldn't trade today for
all the pictures in the world. And see, if i'd
have stabbed him, i'd have missed that. My dad danced

(01:04:56):
at my wedding with me, and he said, all I
want is more of this. He loves Doug. Our families
meshed together. My mom was a little harder, even though
I know I'd broken her heart. Even though I knew
I'd broken her heart over and over and over. After
I did that inventory, even though I knew my side
of the street, it was still very hard. You know,
personalities or mothers and daughters or whatever it was. I

(01:05:16):
don't know, but I had to work harder with her.
And about two years before I got sober, my baby
sister committed suicide at the age of seventeen, and it
took her all weekend to die, and before while she
lay on life support in a West Covina hospital, she was,
you know, she was just on life support. The family
would gather in the in the waiting room, and I'd

(01:05:38):
go out to the parking lot where the booze was,
and I'd drink, and I'd go back into the waiting
room and I'd just rake my mother across the coals
and I'd talk to her in a way a daughter
should never talk to her mother, especially when her baby
lay dying in the next room. And I don't know
how you make amends for that, really, except that I
started by calling her once a week and trying to
find out how I might add to her life instead
of take for a change. And it required listening. It

(01:05:58):
required sitting different skin and listening, sitting back in a
posture and listening and finding out how I might add.
And over time we became very close again. Now she
was very forgiving, and it took a little longer for me,
but we became very close, and so much so that
about thirteen years ago, my baby brother died of this disease.
He was thirty years old, six foot ten, one hundred

(01:06:20):
and sixty pounds when he lay on life support in
a Spokane hospital. His heart was disintegrating literally from all
the crank and he wasn't going to stop drinking, and
mercifully when he died, I got to go and be
the kind of a daughter my mother needed while she
buried at a second child. And I don't know what
kind of pain that is for a parent, but I
know that this time, because of alcoholics anonymous, I got
to be part of the solution rather than part of

(01:06:40):
the problem. And when she died just a few years
ago of end stage liver disease, we were clean and clear.
We were clean and clear, and I called my stepfather,
who was the love of her life. He was her
third try, and they took. They were together for many,
many years, and they were just a wonderful example of
love and devotion, even with all the troubles, you know,
even with all the stuff going on, they were a

(01:07:01):
wonderful example. And so when my stepfather found out that
Doug and I were together, now I met the love
of my life many years ago, but I didn't know
that's who it was. And we met an AA about
thirteen fourteen years ago, and we didn't get together. We
didn't even know we were supposed to be together till
I was twenty one years sober and fifty one years old.

(01:07:23):
So you know, if you're looking, there's hope. Pooh. Yeah,
I'm so glad. I didn't stand around tapping my foot
waiting for that one to happen, you know, saying, oh,
I can't get sober if I don't have a boyfriend.
But we met at a conference, well, we didn't meet,
but we ended up at a conference speaking together and

(01:07:45):
we ended up talking and just about four years ago.
In fact, next week, August eighth, it'll be four years
it'll be our breakfast versary is four years ago we
started talking and he told you the other night that
conversation hasn't stopped. But my stepfather found out after we
had been together a year or so, and he said,

(01:08:07):
I know you and duggerheaded toward matrimony, and what I'd
like to do and he said, I know your mom
left you all her jewelry, and what I'd like to
do is shine my ring up and give it to
Doug so that the rings will be together again and
so the rings that we wear, the rings that we
put on to each other at our wedding, are the
rings that my mom and my stepfather were for years,
and so I think that that's a pretty good sign

(01:08:29):
that my mom and I were clean and clear. I'm
a big prayer. I'm a big prayer and meditator. I
have gone through different versions of different forms of that
over my sobriety, and you know, I just keep doing
the same stuff. I got a sponsor, I got to
be sponsored. I've got to I've had a few sponsors

(01:08:51):
in my sobriety. I'm not one of those people who's
had just one and every sponsor has walked me up
to the next one. I've always had to do something physical,
I believe it. And Bill Wilson used to talk about this.
We don't talk about this much. I love reading those
extra those additional writings he wrote in the Language of
the Heart and all of those where you know, he's
he's growing up, he got sober, and he state sober

(01:09:12):
twenty years and he wrote about that and what it's
like at twenty and what it's like at twenty five,
and you know, but he talked about physical exercise you know,
and that gives us that serotonin, you know, to a degree,
that gives us that stuff we're looking for. You know.
So I've tried that, you know, I've done all kinds
of that in my sobriety. Okay, I mean he had

(01:09:33):
to get way back there and whoa, you know, he's like,
she is too far in that. I've had to you know,
I'd done the gym and that's very repetitive and very
calming and all that. And then I tried rollerblading, you know,
and yeah, rollerblading is a very wonderful form of contemplative meditation.

(01:09:54):
You know, down the sidewalk, you see the curb, you
don't argue with the curb, the curb exists. Lift your foot,
you know. I tried surfing for a while, and my
friend Lisa says that surfing is like being in a
domestically violent relationship without having to have a partner. And

(01:10:20):
so I'm trying everything, you know, I just try it.
Try it. I'm I'm one of those who believes I'd
be more sorry if I didn't try something. So try
it and still believe that. But h forty seven years sober,
I mean forty seven years old, and seventeen years sober,
and you know, I'm getting itchy against time to try
something else, you know. And I don't know about you,
but once in a while I get a little stiff

(01:10:41):
and brittle. You get stiff and brittle, taking yourself a
little too seriously, right, You know that perfectionism steps in.
If I can't be perfect. My sponsor's anna per it,
you know, and they're like, I don't want to call her.
You call her. I want to, I love her, I
don't want to call her. So I got to find
something else, you know, to lighten up the you know,

(01:11:01):
shake off the brittle. And I fell into an Arthur
Murray dance studio and I don't know why it was.
I believe that I know there's a God to this day,
because he answers question still answers questions. I don't ask
out loud, and I don't even know that these questions
need answering, you know, I just don't. And so I
walk into this dance studio and I take a free
rumble lesson. And now you cannot be stiff and brittle
and take a rumble lesson. You just can't. You got

(01:11:23):
to get a wiggle on you know what I mean,
you do. And I'm about halfway through this rumble lesson,
and the teacher stops. He slaps his forehead. He said, oh, Kurla,
do not try to dance like a good girl. I
don't think they will believe you anyway. In the ninth
chapter of our book, it says, in God's hands, our

(01:11:45):
dark past becomes our greatest possession. And my past has
been woven into a huge tapestry that is my life.
It's there for those who need to see it. They
see it. And yet I walk a free woman in
the real world, Awaken alive and look at you in
the eye. My friend don Nukomie, the convict, not the
baseball player, he came up to me one time and
he said, he said, I didn't know about that dancing

(01:12:08):
thing for you. He said, I thought that was going
to take you away from AA. He said, you loved
it so much. I thought it might take you away.
One of those things. And he said, but now what
I see had to happen is that the little girl
who went to North Beach had to step aside so
the lady who dances could come out. And you know
what's true? For me, this moment is the most important
moment all the time. This moment, this moment, and dancing

(01:12:30):
gave that to me. And I'm not saying I'm leaving
AA for dancing. I'm saying, in addition to not, instead
of I didn't know that question needed to be answered. Again,
I didn't know. I didn't know that that gave me
an ability to be intimate in a way I hadn't
been before. I didn't know how. I didn't I didn't
know till it was happening. But when I'm standing in frame,
when I'm standing in frame, and I learned things like

(01:12:52):
the waltz. I mean. I was standing in a dance
line one night and I heard them play moon River
and I started to cry. Me I'm like, and you know,
and they're playing moon River and I'm crying because when
I stand in frame and I'm not worried about the
steps I'm about to take, and I'm not worried about
the steps I just took, I'm not upset about making

(01:13:13):
a mistake, and I'm just standing in frame and I
allow myself to be led. I never know what pattern
I'm executing till i'm done, And in that way, I
get to experience the great moment that is the now,
this now, this moment, this moment where God is this
moment clean and clear, and you gave that to me.
I want to thank you for that. Thank you

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Carla R. - AA Speaker - The Key to Keeping it Simple

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