East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was brought up on the borders of Essex and East London.  As a child, I was full of fear and wasn’t well. Drinking alcohol was in our culture; I can’t say I had a moment where I picked up a drink, and everything changed. That wasn’t how it was for me. My first real memory of drinking was my dad buying bottles of Baby Sham; it was new. We had a butler’s tray with drinks lined up, and I went down the line, filling the baby sham with spirits and thinking, “This is nice.” We believed it was always a good idea to drink, no matter what the occasion 

My teenage years were chaotic; my friends and I were misfits. I mixed with people who were messed up like me. I left home when I could. My gran left some money, and I bought a car. A few friends and I drove to Devon. A friend in the back played ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ on guitar, and I rolled the car, knocked down a telegraph pole, and cut all communications in the area. I spent three months in a hospital in Wiltshire, with a broken leg and a damaged head. All I ever wanted to do was get away. While in the hospital, my friends and boyfriend would get a train from London and sneak alcohol in. After leaving the hospital, I had to stay with my dad in London.  

My friend and I decided to move to Cornwall. I worked in a pub; she worked in a restaurant. We lived in a room at the end of a farm with no running water. We laughed and drank most of the time. The landlord was a wise drunk; the pub was in the mid country; life went on, and I tried to be a good person, decided to do something good in life, and trained to be a teacher. I was told I was good at it, yet I couldn’t sustain it and left. 

I was hitchhiking and felt free. Currently, I follow the teachings where a wise man arrives, back then, in my case, a heroin addict pulled up in a car. We got married. He would get off heroin by drinking bottles of scotch. We were together for a short time, until he went to find himself on a mountain in Spain. Years later, he came back and had found a solution; he told me I didn’t have to live this way.   

I was now with my partner of 27 years; he had a lust for life. We had two sons. We moved a lot and did various things for a living. Towards the end of my drinking, we owned a charter yacht in the south of France; my sons were crew with my partner and me. There were times I couldn’t get out of bed, and I now know they were panic attacks. I had pervasive fear; I wasn’t afraid of anything particular. There was a feeling that something was coming to an end. I wasn’t coping at all, and I remember walking near the beach with my partner, and I had no idea we had been on a walk. I said to him, “Do you know how bad I am? ” He said, You are pretty bad, but you always pull yourself back,” I said, ” It’s like the elastic is broken, I get to the edge and pull back, but something has broken, and I’m going over the edge. I opened an English magazine; there was an advert for A.A. I rang the number and got an answerphone with members’ names and numbers on it, and I did nothing about it. I struggled to get out of bed, wash, and do normal things. At the time, my sons were in their late teens, studying, while my partner worked.  

Friday Morning, in my lounge, I see bottles on the side and out of the corner of my eye, this book where I wrote the A.A number in, at the bottom of the page, was a woman’s name, so I called; she answered. I know that woman wasn’t meant to be in on a Friday morning, because later on, I joined a tennis club and we played every Friday morning, so it was odd she was home. Anyway, she talked to me, told me where the meetings are, and offered to have someone come pick me up, but I said no. 

There was one meeting in the village. I said I couldn’t go; my sons go to school there. She said, someone is really gonna go home from an A.A. meeting and say, ” Guess who I saw in an AA meeting today. I was so ashamed. I went that night, walked up to a little church hall, saw the word God on the Serenity Prayer, and thought, ” Oh, it’s the God squad. These people were charming; they gave me a coffee and shared their ESH. Something made me go back: those people had done things as I had, things they weren’t proud of, yet they were living okay, with decent lives. They said to keep coming back and not pick up the first drink. I didn’t stop drinking. One day, a guy from Paris came. He said, ” It’s the summer season, the bars will survive without you, Penny. Why don’t you try our way for a few months? If you want to go back out there, the bars will still be open in the Autumn. It was that moment that I decided to try the A.A way. My sobriety date is the 21^st of May 1996. 

It was hard; no one knows when the craving will lift, but for me it took 11 months. I went to meetings; I was angry and in emotional pain. It wasn’t one day at a time; it was one second. The meetings were 1 hour long; there were no chairs, and I needed the people there. I would talk a lot on the phone with other newcomers; it kept us in touch. I didn’t want people telling me what to do, but they had my number; they would ask, ‘ Could you give this woman a lift? ‘ or’ Could you pick up the key to open the meeting? ‘ I remember picking this American woman up from a posh hotel, all she talked about was a big book all the way into the hills and on the way back, she would ask to meet me for coffee. It was a very American recovery, and I loved it.  

I went to a convention, I think it was the first one in Greece. A friend had been put down as a chair. She was furious. When the woman came to get her, she said, “I’m not doing it. Ask her,” and pointed to me. The woman said, ” It’s a step chair, I said, I know nothing about the steps. The woman said, “How long are you around?” I said, “11 months.” She said, “You must know something.” I went up, and there were two of us; the other speaker was Genevieve from London. Genevieve, with her wisdom and humour, said, “I think you should let Penny go first, because she will be sitting there thinking about what she should say and won’t pick up any of my wisdom… it was the best thing I shared, and Genevieve spoke.” I picked up so much from her; she was around a long time, then, and very wise.  

After sharing, people spoke to me, and I felt part of it. An Irish couple said to me, “That was a step one chair, and you’ll know when to move on. Don’t let people pressure you.” That was helpful. I came back to the meeting in France. They said, ‘You’ve changed.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ They said you are looking at us, your head is lifted. I finally spoke to the woman from the meeting, and we talked for three hours. I said I couldn’t do the steps because I don’t believe in God. She said, “We have just done the first three steps in our conversation.” She said, ” What keeps you sober? I said, “The Friday meeting.” She said, “Isn’t that a power greater than you?” So, we started. I would go to see her for 2 hours once a week. The first time I told her my story was while we sat under a waterfall. I couldn’t remember my past, but could recognise the people. My relationship with people, finally, she said. “Penny, this is getting boring. Can’t you see the pattern?” I was grateful for that. She said we should do steps 6 and 7. I said, I can’t, because I don’t know what it means, not the words, but the connection with my reactions and how I feel. We ended up going our separate ways, but we are still friends. My partner and I split, and I moved back to London when I was around two years sober.   

I moved into my sister’s spare room (who is in the fellowship) and began going to East London meetings. Oh my god, it was an hour and a half with a chair and men with shaved heads. Everyone looked cold, grey and miserable. No one spoke to me. I said to my sister that if nobody talks to me, I’m not gonna go anymore. Someone did speak to me, it was (Toothpick) Ray at the Sunday meeting in Walthamstow. People would ask, “If I were new, I’d say no.” They would walk away. Ray turned to me and said, ” If you’re not new, where have you been? I said I was in France, so we chatted. A shaved-headed guy shared he was full of fear; I looked at him, and it broke something in me to share. Ruth came to me, gave me her number and said, ” Don’t turn your pain in on yourself and go, I’ll show you how you’ve destroyed me, use your anger to stay sober and show you can build a new life.

I learnt about anger in England. A guy was doing a chair and showing off about what a gigolo he’d been. I felt this rise in my stomach. Same as on the way to the meeting, I had been crying. I learnt I was angry; he taught me about anger. Ruth was my sponsor for a while. We did part ways after a short time. She was very kind and had my number for a few things. 

I met Joe at the Friday Whipps Cross meeting, my home group. He would say things like, ” What worried you last week, Penny? I would say, Oh, I don’t know…..Then I got it. I was talking to the secretary of the Whipps meeting and said, “I’m stuck. I don’t want to drink, but if this is all there is, then what’s the point?” It was a grey place. I said, “If Joe were a woman, I would ask him to help me.” The secretary said to me, “It wouldn’t be a problem with you or Joe; ask him.” I asked, Do you meditate?  And he’s been helping me ever since. We talk for hours, every time he would leave our meeting, he would turn to me and say, ‘All that is very interesting about God, the Absolute, the Universe, what it all means…Just don’t pick up the first drink, get to meetings, and you’ll be fine’. He would then go. I saw Joe recently and told him I’m not meditating or praying properly. He said, “Have you drunk?” If not, then that’s the most important thing, Penny. 

The service I provided when I came to England was different from what I provided in France. I went to East London Intergroup. Someone mentioned that I take on the secretary position. I said there are a male chair and a vice chair, so, yeah, a woman should be the secretary. I was raging about sexism. I ended up becoming chair of East London and would attend the Cockney Convention during my tenure. I think I took over just after Avi….I’m not sure of the date. I took on the Region rep because I was curious. I wanted to know how it all worked. Avi and I did a lot of work in the region; he made things happen and said what he thought was right. He was very good. When the London Regions split into North and South, I put my hand up to be a conference delegate with Jackie and Miranda. Jackie was in South London, and Miranda did a lot at the London office; both were encouraging. I loved the conference; there was a lot of discussion, and people see things so differently, but the Group Conscience prevails and maintains integrity.  

At the one-year conference, the committee recommended not upgrading a leaflet; it was put to a vote. One woman got up and objected; it was amazing, it was the concept V (5), listen to the voice of the minority. This woman made a heartfelt speech. When she sat down, everyone clapped, ” Would the conference vote on whether we wish to reconsider? We did, and then took another vote to change the decision. So, the leaflet was going to be done. That is how A.A. works at its purest. I then served as a Board Member. The conference and the Board showed me that AA, as a whole, has integrity and compassion; at its heart is the primary purpose of helping the suffering alcoholic. Individuals may stumble, but A.A. will not let me down, and this is what I was told in my early meetings.  

A.A. has given me a different way of looking at life; it’s taught me about myself, how I react to the world, and the possibilities there. Step 11 is Joe and the teaching I follow, but Alcoholics Anonymous is my foundation; without that, there’s nothing. My sobriety improved because the thing I entrusted it to is powerful. If we all lived by the steps, traditions and concepts, it would be a better world. The way I feel about myself and the world, from being hopeless, evil, and a bad person to accepting being human, has given me hope. Suppose I follow this program and stick to A.I can live a better life, and life is not a value to be darkened; it is light.  

I’m not happy and joyous, but I’m free. The promises say we will know a new freedom and a new happiness. I now have something inside, where there once was a space of fear and darkness, that isn’t there anymore. It’s faith in the Absolute and A.A. I am free; I can be Penny, and that is all right.