Sober 30 years since 11/8/1989, she said,
"I did not have a desire to stop drinking when I got here. There were alot of people in my life that had a desire for me to quit drinking, I just wasn't one of them."
Lillie did not come from an alcoholic home but did have four brotherd that antagonized her.
Her grandmother advised her, :"Don't them know that you are afraid of them and they will stop."
And that became her way of coping with life.
"I knew I was an alcoholic before I got here but the problem was that the only one that I asked for help was myself."
She sould wake in the morning and decided who she wanted to be that day, Jimmy Buffet, Al Jolson, and she would dress up as them and act like them all day. The next day she would be somebogy else but never Lillie.
Her sponsor cured her of that early on.
Lillie truly thought that AA was composed of trained sponsors and spies who reported back all the things you were not doing.
On her Fourth Step, she found it hardest to find things good about herself.
She did not feel any great relief from the Fifth Step but rather that she was a horrible person.
Her sponsor told her, "The first one you learn to forgive is yourself."
(42 min) (7.3 MB) (id#2717)
