Alcoholics Anonymous doing good work for 70 years

Patrick Evans ~ The London Free Press ~ 2005-07-05 01:57:58

TORONTO -- At 14, Mary W. started drinking. By 19 she was divorced, with two kids. She worked in a restaurant because she liked being near the booze. And for years she drank at least a gallon of wine a day.

That was in the 1940s.

Last weekend, Mary came to Toronto from her home in Palo Alto, Calif., for the 2005 International Alcoholics Anonymous Convention.

Organizers said more than 40,000 people from around the world attended the conference, which celebrated the 70th birthday of AA. The conventions for the two million recovering alcoholics worldwide are held every five years.

All weekend they held giant AA meetings in the Rogers Centre. At Saturday night's meeting, Mary and her kind -- alcoholics who have been sober for more than 40 years -- were the guests of honour.

The crowd filled the stands in horseshoe formation around the stage.

The guests of honour took up the front rows, a wash of grey hair you could see from the bleachers. The audience called them "old-timers" and applauded them adoringly.

Old-timers?

Stand-up comedians would be more like it. Twelve were chosen at random to talk about AA. From the first speaker to the last, they had thousands of sober men and women doubled over with laughter.

Lou P. from Pittsburgh, sober since 1964, told the audience he'd never been to an AA international conference before, but the organizers had put an irresistible package together.

"It was cheaper to come here than it was to stay at home," he said.

Ray K., also sober since 1964, told about trying to buy a bottle in a Calgary liquor store in 1962. The guy at the counter asked him what nationality he was. "Oh, I'm Indian," Ray told him.

The guy said natives can't buy alcohol in Calgary.

Ray skipped a beat, making the audience wait for the punch line and then delivered it with a perfect deadpan: "That's the day I became Croatian."

Mary told the crowd that when she first arrived at AA in 1960, she couldn't believe how funny everybody was. "When I was drinking, nothing was funny."

Mary wanted to turn her life around, but she never dreamed laughter would be a weapon in her fight against alcohol.

Today she's doing her part to keep the laughter going. She delivers her best lines with a prim, grandmotherly restraint. "I haven't had a fist fight in 40 years," she said.

Mary divorced her first husband before she turned 20 and did something she'd always wanted to do: She got a job. "I became the gay divorcee," she said.

But those weren't gay years for Mary. She'd been a heavy drinker since her early teens. "I drank after work . . . I'd drive home with one hand over my eye to see the white line," she said.

She married again and had two more kids.

"He was an alcoholic, too. We had a fist fight every weekend."

Mary saw her drinking as a personal flaw that was destroying her.

"I thought it was a moral issue. I was so afraid they were going to put me in . . . the mental hospital."

That's when a friend introduced her to AA.

"I found out I was sick, I wasn't crazy," she said.

Mary now regards alcoholism as a genetic disease. "I have hardly known any alcoholic who didn't have it in their family."

In 1960, she took her last drink.

She's had some good years since. "It's just been wonderful. I've never had it so good."

She's retired from her phone company job, but still works as a drug and alcohol counsellor.

Mary spent 40 minutes after the meeting talking to admirers before leaving. Her legs shook a little as she tucked them into the back seat of a cab. She suddenly looked like a 78-year-old woman and not a rock star.

"I'm not humble," she had told the crowd. "I'm just trying to become the kind of woman my cat thinks I am."