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(Text transcribed, redacted and edited by Cameron F. from an audio recording of the History of CA Florida with Susan D. At the Florida Area Convention: Diversity…Strength Not Weakness January 2-4 2004)
Susan D.
Good morning, my name is Susan, I’m an addict.
This workshop is on the history of CA in Florida. And as I look out among the crowd it’s very emotional for me because when I got clean there was no CA in Florida that I knew of that essentially existed.
I got clean in another fellowship while I was in treatment in February of 1985. And I continued to go to those meetings avidly and I continued to go to aftercare at the treatment center where I got clean.
I had about 80 days or so when the counsellor handed me a big brown envelope. Well there’s some of these meetings all over the country in about 16 states. I remembered that. I don’t know why, but I remembered that number. About 16 states, Chicago, New York, California. And he says, we want you to start this meeting.
Just to give you some background; I was a school teacher and one of those perfectionist people who had to have everything my way—controlling, not that I’m not like that now. I was very verbal and very accurately verbal. I make it a point to speak correctly most of the time. And I don’t know why they chose me, but that’s probably part of it. So he handed me this starter kit and I had never heard of this. I had heard of the other fellowship that starts with an N and I had heard about AA and I wasn’t all too comfortable going to AA because I had never been much of a drinker. I hadn’t yet associated the alcohol slash addict togetherness thing there. And I said that those are different people than I am. But if I absolutely have to, I’ll go to an AA meeting. But what is this? It was called Cocaine Anonymous. I had never heard of Cocaine Anonymous. And I figured that if there was a fellowship before I got clean that said Cocaine Anonymous, I probably would have gone for the cocaine because that’s what I would have thought they were giving away. I knew better and I was learning.
So I took it home and I looked at the stuff and I read the formats and everything. I thought this can’t be too difficult. I’ve been to meetings and I had not ever chaired one before, but it didn’t seem difficult. It was actually easier to chair it than to speak at it because all you have to do is everything they tell you to do.
My sponsor was a nurse in the treatment center and there were several other people, I think there were about 12 of us on that Tuesday night in May, the middle of May, May 15th or so in 1985 at this treatment center.
We went into the back room where during the day patients and clients sit in their groups and we met in that room. There were 12 of us in that circle and we started our first CA meeting. And we had to have a business meeting afterward.
We had to decide on a name. I love meeting names. It just that they’re so clever. So we couldn’t think of a name. We just couldn’t think of one. Then this one guy named Jeff who sat there and said, well, you know, there’s really a need for this meeting. And that became the name. There’s a need.
Of course I was very, very controlling about how that had to be. It’s a contraction. It has to be “There Is A Need” and that’s the meeting and that meeting went on for a while. And sometime after that we discovered happily so, that there were meetings going on in Fort Myers all the while. Apparently meetings had begun in Fort Myers. I think he said when he spoke in 1984 in October somewhere in 1984. It was prior to February or May of 1985. So those were going on fir We didn’t know about it. But because we affiliated with C.A. World first they credited South Florida where I was as starting CA in Florida.
That title doesn’t matter here, except that the meeting’s got started. Next to me is Randy and next to him is Bob. And after the meeting’s got started I guess I sort of took a back seat or I was involved in other things or for a while. I was still going to the other fellowship and making the transition. But they came in and got just as involved in service as I was. And while I’ll probably be back later I’m going to let them jump in because they’ve got chronology written down here. And so they can probably fill in some of those gaps. And after we finish if anybody else who’s here from some of the districts of Florida wishes to share you would be quite welcome to contribute whatever you can to fill in the service gaps about CA in Florida because we’ll want to listen to this again later to learn about ourselves. So Randy, Bob, Bob.
BOB:
I’m an addict and my name is Bob. We’ll go in order of sequence. I got to tell you that I have been thinking about the history as I can remember it and that’s the problem. I don’t remember a lot of the details so I’m going to try to tell you what I do remember and I might have to make some of it up.
I went to the same treatment center in December of 1985 and when I shopped around, I called around and I went to that treatment center because they had Cocaine Anonymous and I never heard of it. I had been to a treatment center a few years earlier and I was exposed to the other fellowships. So I picked it because it had a CA meeting there. Little did I know what was in store for.
I spent the next year nicknamed White Chip, Bob, Orange Chip, Bob back then for those who remember that. I struggled real hard and it wasn’t until February of 87 and I finally got clean. I wanted to be a part of at that point. I wanted to be involved and at 60 days they nominated me to be the secretary of the meeting. I really wanted it. At the time the secretary treasurer was an option and they weren’t willing to give me the treasurer for obvious reasons. But they gave me the secretary and that was kind of a key ingredient because it was from that meeting that flourished our district.
And I don’t remember how much time I had but I do remember the business meeting we had after one of our meetings and we were struggling with getting supplies out of California. We had had some discussions amongst us about trying to get some kind of a hotline started so people could find us. And at one of our business meetings we said well let’s try and organize. And there was one of our mentors, a girl named Lori who kind of ran the show, so to speak, and wasn’t there that night. We came to her with our idea and she rejected it and we opted to go forward and do it anyway. And so I don’t remember the time frame. I think it was May or April of 1987. May have been June but we had our first district meeting in this little back room behind the treatment center. And there was about six or seven of us and we had no contact with the world. We had no guidelines to follow. All we had were those of us that had attended business meetings and some of the other fellowships with which to try to build from.
And oh my God those first four or five meetings and we met every month, we had bottles of aspirin on the table. It was a struggle to try to accomplish the things we wanted to accomplish. That tradition of principles before personalities it was very obvious why they put that in there. And we had some very very strong personalities. And I remember we tried to establish some clean time requirements for positions. We made them up. No one told us what they should be. And I was voted in, we made up a position for me, it was called World Liaison.
My job was, after our meeting was to call up C.A. World and say, hey this is what we did, what do you think? You would say, okay here’s what you should have done. And my job would then be go back next month and say here’s what they said. It was an interesting experience. It was our first contact with something outside of our local group. I can’t remember the guy’s name. What was his name though? David. He was like a godsend with information. And guided us along the way. And we had a, chairperson, Carol was our first chairperson. And we had a secretary and we had an alternate chair. And things started to roll.
We decided we started a hotline. It was a little goofy. We had a page of people. We had an answering service that would page us. We’d have to call in and get the message. And then hopefully the people would still be there. But it was the best we could do under the circumstances. And it worked. And it was a way to get the word out.
We started an activity. Our first activity was phenomenal. We put on a picnic. We had everybody get involved. And at that time, we had support of the other fellowships. We were like little brother on the block. And everybody thought it was kind of cool. They’re C.A. let’s help them out. So we put on a picnic. We probably sold 150—200 tickets to this picnic. We had live music. We made a lot of money on the picnic, which eventually was squandered by personalities. The sad part about it was the activities was going along real well. And we put on a dance. And we had to gain the support. And Randy was just talking about this. We had a dance where the DJ didn’t make it. We had halfway houses busing in people. We had 100 to 150 people sitting there with no music. And people started leaving. And after that, it wouldn’t come back. So our activities eventually began to fall.
We started having little picnics and things just to keep it going. And I don’t even know if we have activities anymore. Randy will pick the pieces up as I get done with my set.
At some point, I got word from David. We had like four weeks notice. Oh yeah, there’s this, what do they call it, September? The World Service Conference. They had the World Service Conference. And we were a bunch of struggling workers. But Randy was doing pretty good. And he had just come up to where we got. He’d come in through one of the new meetings. He started up in Boca. And he’d gotten involved. And we kind of said, well, who wants to go? Who can go? And Randy said, well, I’ll go. So we voted Randy World Delegate. And we had no money to send him. But I think eventually we paid you back on that. I don’t remember. So Randy went to World. And that’s really where we began to organize.
He came back with books of information and stuff. And we started siphoning through it, found out that there was really approved literature and not approved literature. The things we can and can’t read or should or shouldn’t read. And how meetings are supposed to be run with. You got a second, then you vote on it, pros and cons, all these things that helped us to take our five hour bottle of aspirin meeting down to what was in an hour, maybe an hour and a half.
And we started to really organize it. And having Randy go up to the World and come back with all this information just really helped us. I think at that was the point when we got a list of the other meetings that had started around the state. And we decided that we were going to try to reach out to the other areas and the other districts. That’s why we wanted to be an area they wouldn’t let us. I think Randall tied up our story. And so we sent letters out to all the other meetings to try to organize as a state. And I think this would have probably been around 1989-1990. I can’t remember the time frame. And I got fortunate to be nominated. At that point I was a District Chair. And I don’t know if I had just finished my term as District Chair. I was still in the middle of it. But they nominated me to be the Area chair. So I was the first Area Chair from Florida, which really wasn’t an exclusive position because it was only two groups coming.
I think we had Fort Myers and ours initially. And for the first three or four meetings, I was there. I’d show up. I’d bring a little notes and I’d write stuff down. And I’ll remember this for a long time. And then we had a meeting scheduled in Orlando. And I did the same thing. I always did. I drove up. I brought my little notepad. And I walk in. And there’s 25 to 30 people in this room. I’m an hour late. I got lost on the way to the meeting. It was here where I learned about the concept of agenda. And it was actually voted on that the chairperson should bring an agenda. And so from that point forward, the chairperson created an agenda.
So we actually knew what we were going to talk about before we all drove to this location. And I served my turn as Area Chair. I don’t remember who followed behind me. I think Randy had actually. I don’t remember who. So it was just an interesting process to see how it all came together. And it was really through the connection we had to the World Office in California that kind of guided us step by step as we needed it. It blows me away to look back to where we were. And the reason I’m going to show this is two things occurred that really kind of motivated me.
I went to another fellowship world convention. And I sat and I listened to a speaker who came out of AA. And she said that her sponsor sat down and said, look, this fellowship is new. And they need people to make a commitment so that it can flourish. And she said, at that point, I made a commitment to that fellowship. And I said to myself, you know what? I feel that same way about C.A. I feel more comfortable in a C.A. meeting when I was struggling going in and out. And I couldn’t figure out how to stay clean. It was the people in C.A. who reached out to me and understood. And the other fellowships that turned their back on me, because they didn’t understand. And I wanted to see C.A. become more than it was. And so I decided at that point I was going to make my commitment to that. It was still small, and there wasn’t a lot of meetings. And I went to another convention they had in Miami, a regional convention for that same fellowship. And they actually had a workshop called O-D-O-P. I don’t know if anyone knows what that means. And I’ll tell you later, I’m not going to say it on tape here. But after I heard that, I was so turned off by the concept of this other fellowship that I was energized to move forward and really wanted to see C.A. flourish in our area. And a bunch of us started new meetings. And at one point, we had a lot of meetings. And we lost a lot of good meetings. And that was kind of sad. But we’re still chugging along in our area.
And my brain turned off. So I said, I think I said everything I’m supposed to say. And I’ll turn it over to Randy, who really picked up the pieces at that point and ran with it. Where we are today is really a result of where he did back then.
Randy D.
Thanks, man. Thank you, Bob. I’m an alcoholic and addict. My name is Randy. I ran out of candy. And in 1988, I was court-ordered into a treatment program. And that was my first introduction to Cocaine Anonymous.
And Karen and Bob brought a meeting into that treatment center. And after one of the meetings, Bob made an announcement that some of the suggestions of the program were to get involved and that they were going to have a business meeting after that meeting. And I stuck around. Not to be involved, but because the pretty women I saw were at the meeting were going to the business meeting. So I actually had ulterior motives. And so I went to that business meeting. And at that business meeting, they talked about a public information committee. So they had to schedule the meeting. And I went to that meeting when I got out of treatment. And Bob and Karen were there and a few other people. But like Bob said, the bottle of aspirin in the lack of organization and the stuff that they talked about, which really had nothing to do with public information, kind of freaked me out a little bit. I didn’t stick around, I wasn’t ready. I’d come in on somebody else’s bottom. And six months later, when I did get sober, I went back to C.A. and I got involved. We were going along and we started some meetings in 1988. And then in 1989, after one of our meetings, Bob says, we have to have an emergency business meeting, World in California is having some kind of a business conference and they want us to send a representative. But who here is willing to go and maybe not get reimbursed? I was the only one that raised my hand, so I became the first World Delegate, not by merit, but by for financial reasons, because I was the only one that could afford a plane ticket.
I went to California in September of 1989 my first World Service Conference. It’s funny because I didn’t really know what an Area was. I didn’t know what a District was. I just went there because I wanted Fort Lauderdale to be an Area. As it turned out, there was a guy from Fort Myers, Pete W., who was their first Delegate and we were both there at the first time.
The first order of business was to approve new Areas. So Pete and I got up. Pete wanted Fort Myers to be an Area. II wanted Fort Lauderdale to be an Area. They have a map of the country and an Area is in a geographic region, usually a state. So I’m drawing a little circle around this big map. I want this little area here. And Pete said, well, I got Fort Myers over here. And they rejected us. They said, you two need to go back to your Districts and get together. And you need to come back next year and petition to become an area.
So being the addict that I am, Pete and I got together. And we had the five day business conference. And the last day of the conference, they revisited, I guess it was old business at that point then. So we got up and we said that we were unified and we wanted the state of Florida to become an area. We lied and said that we spoke with our Districts and they had emergency meetings and this was OK, because I wasn’t going home and not be an Area. So we became an Area.
When we came back to our respective Districts with the information that we brought back, World Service manuals and literature and the different things. I didn’t realize that Bob and Karen and soon all the people before me were faking it. That they really didn’t know what they were doing. They were making the rules up as they went along. And we actually did have guidelines and rules. And it gave us structure for the first time and it gave us a direction. So we knew what we were doing. And we had contacted Fort Myers and Jack P. our regional Trustee at the time. He didn’t even live in our region. He lived in Connecticut, but he had a sick mother in Florida.
So the Atlantic South didn’t have a trustee that lived in our region. So he was there every couple weeks. So they made him the Trustee. Jack, Karen and I and a few other people from our District got in the car one day and we drove over to Fort Myers to a plumbing shop iin Cape Coral. We met with some people there in Fort Myers and we decided to have our first Area meeting, which was going to be that December of 1989. We decided that we were going to have our first Area meeting in Orlando. I believe it was just Fort Myers and Fort Lauderdale. The office manager for the World Service Office, his name was David, we become friends. He would fax me every time because it was fun—there were not a lot of fax machines in 1989. I happened to have a fax machine and they happened to have one. So we used to fax each other because we really didn’t know anybody else that had a fax machine. And he would fax me the orders from anybody in Florida that was placing an order for chips and literature. And that’s really how we started the network. Anybody that would place an order for chips and literature, I would send them a letter and I would tell them about our next meeting.
That was again in Orlando, I believe. We met Jimmy from Tampa, and people from Pensacola came down, Ira and John T. It was so neat to see that we were a part of something else. We had our small little world in our District, our little town. To see that we were part of something bigger was unbelievable. Then later in 1989 we also a bunch of us from Fort Myers and from Fort Lauderdale and we went to New York to the 1989 World Convention.
To go there and see 800 or 1,000 people at that convention, just like I said, to see that you’re a part of something else when your world was so small and you have a couple meetings in our town was really neat.
The following year, Lenny became a Trustee and I became a Delegate from Fort Myers. As we got organized, all of a sudden being a Delegate wasn’t who could afford it, but a thing of merit. In the beginning I believe it was a two year commitment. It went to a three year commitment, and now I believe it’s a four year commitment. To see the Area grow and the more people that get involved. In the beginning you had to tell everybody that there were rules. Here they are. You have to try to educate people. And then we needed to donate money to World and people didn’t understand why. But now that we have more delegates, and the more delegates that go, bringing back more information to our Area, it benefits everybody because we grow. When you feel a part of that big picture, you learn what we’re all about. I had a lot of other stuff scribbled on my sheet here, but that’s about it.
Susan D.
Thank you, Randy. Let me insert something that Randy was just talking about that struck a chord of memory with me. In 1988, there was a guy from Chicago named Art who was visiting Florida. He would come down every year. And he would come to our meeting at the treatment center. And it was every Tuesday night. And he would show up a few times. And he told us about this world convention. It was going to be in Chicago in 1988. I was the only person from Florida who went. For whatever circumstances no one else went, I went. The following year when we went to New York, that there were so many more of us, which is just very emotional for me, because when they had the roll call in 1988, and they called Florida because they call every state to identify, I stood up, and I looked around, and there was no one else there from Florida. First of all, no one could believe it because of all the cocaine is in Florida. That there wasn’t any other Cocaine Anonymous meeting, that they only sent me or that I was the only person to go. And the other thing I wanted to say was that after Randy, I was a Delegate for a couple of years, because you didn’t go in 1992 because of Hurricane Andrew. In 1993, I was elected as a Delegate. And so was John, I think, at the same time both of us. That has changed my life. So much has come from that. If either of you think of something else to add, you can just insert it chronologically. But I’d like to hear from Karen if you want to contribute anything to the history.
Karen
You guys pretty much said it all. I mean, everything I remember has already been set by the way I did. I just, I’m flashing back now on the things that actually took place because the older you get the worse your memory gets. I just remember the first District meeting that we had and it was in San Antonio. People were throwing chairs. It was just addict behavior because all of us had less than a year. It’s like Bob said, we had no guidelines, no format, nnothing. So we just sat around this table aimlessly trying to figure out what we needed to do next. There were some people, whose brain cells have been restored more than others. So they came in with some good ideas at the end of their high. Remember that picnic? And it’s the first, my first CA convention in New York (1989), Johnny S. (CALA) was speaking—one of the highlights in my life. It was probably one of the best conventions I’ve ever been to. It’s an honor actually to be a part of Cocaine Anonymous today because there were so many frustrations and so many times I just said, you know what, I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. It’s not working. And it was very frustrating to try to keep people involved. And so it’s so nice to come to conventions because you get to see all the different Areas and Districts that are a part of the big picture. And that’s what it’s all about. I have to say something else, Sean’s message (Sean was a speaker at the 2004 Florida Area Convention) last night is one of the best messages I’ve heard in a long time.
Susan D.
Thank you. Thank you Sean. Jimmy. Jimmy is from Tampa.
Jimmy
I remember when I first got involved with the Area, I started out with my first relationship with C.A. while I was in the treatment center. And I had been going to the A.A. and the N.A. meetings. All of a sudden, I met this young lady in treatment, but I was real sick. She said on Sunday night, there was only a C.A .meeting in Tampa. And it would be a huge meeting. But I go to the A.A. meeting because it would end early, and then I can get out and get in trouble or watch TV or whatever. She said she was going to the C.A. meeting. So I followed her up to C.A. And I found the love. There was something about that meeting that really touched me. It was a little different in the spirituality with different people reaching out.
People came from St. Pete (St. Petersburg) and other places all over the Tampa area for that treatment center. And I found the love. There was a young lady running that meeting and she was on probation. She had a lot of time. I had about five or six months clean time. She changed probation officers and they refused to let her come out at night when they saw her record. So there wasn’t nobody to do the C.A. meeting. And somehow it got handed to me and I was scared. They said, well, you’re the only one that’s comes every night. People come from St. Pete. So we need somebody who can be here. And I got involved in the C.A. I’ve been involved since that day.
I remember ordering literature a few weeks or months later. I got a letter from Area and invited me to come down to a little paint job or whatever it was that they had been needing. We went down and I tell you what, I was quite an experienced. I met people from all over Florida that were involved in the C.A. and I felt real proud to be a part of that. I remember because we struggled for a long time with that meeting. It was a big meeting, but we didn’t have real literature. We didn’t have no chips. We went about poker chips and stuff like that to keep it going. But it kept going.
I remember when that meeting closed up after the treatment centre closed up, and there were no C.A. in Tampa. I was crying about it to my sponsor, and he said, what are you going to do about it? I said, what should I do?
We started our first meeting, one that was outside that treatment center. And all the other fellowships, because we were the new kids on the block, talked about it, like there was no sobriety over there. Well, I picked up women and took them to meeting and whoever else called me. I was the biggest 13 stepper in the program. First, it bothered me. Then I decided, well, I’m doing this for me and I’m helping people.
Getting involved with Area was one of the greatest things that happened to me. And from convention to convention to convention to World conventions, I watched C.A. grow and it’s been such a pleasure being a part of this. When I first got involved with C.A., I decided I was going to put C.A. where I know it’s going to survive. And so I called all the treatment centers, I took the literature that I had got from Area and I remember going in and laying it out and to meet right away. I had five of the biggest meetings you ever want to see. And they all were in big treatments centers. Eventually, over the years, they all failed. We were left a halfway house. Any room we could find at somebody’s house. We hung in there. We’re still surviving. II still go to Area and I’m still involved. I’m so proud, so proud to be a part of C.A. because here I found a home. I found real people in the program that were not just talking to talk, but were walking the walk. And it’s always been a pleasure to meet Randy, because he is the one of the first first I met and Susan when I first came to the Area. They made me feel welcome. Every time I see Randy, I get that same feeling. So yeah, it’s just the most amazing thing ever happened in the Tampa Bay area. And we’re just glad to be a part of this. Thank you guys for everybody. Thank you.
Susan D.
Back in those early 90s, when we would have our area meetings, Florida was such a ‘long’ state. Florida is such a long state that we wanted to have the meetings in a central location. And so we flip-flopped them. It would be either being Ocala or Orlando, Ocala, Orlando. And then about maybe four or five years ago, someone in one of the Districts said, why don’t we have it in our city? And then someone else said, why don’t we have it in our city? And now it’s wonderful because that’s helped promote growth as well because every time we have a Area meeting, it’s in a different District. And we have it at conventions if it works into the schedule. And people travel to it. And it’s helped with the expansion. I mean, it was easy for us to only have to go six hours to one meeting rather than all the way up the state, out to the panhandle. But it’s only fair. And so it’s in a different place each time. And that works a lot. That’s a good thing. Are there any gaps that Fort Myers can fit in? We’d love to have you share. I’m sure Tom could give me some info.
Tom
My name is Tom Tom. Hey, Tom. I’ve got a clean July 15th, 1989, and that was my plumbing shop. The first world convention I went to was in 1991 in California. And Lenny told me, Lenny and Stephanie told me that if you give me $20 a week for the next year, you’ll have enough money to go to that convention. Come on man. You know what you’re talking about. Come on man, get the mother-fucking dope, man. You know what you’re talking about. You know what I mean? And that was Lenny. He’s really ill right now. And we go visit him from time to time. But he hasn’t changed that much. But was it. And for whatever reason, and I don’t know, and it’s my fault, I was a taker, not a giver. I didn’t get involved like you guys did. I raised my kids. And I kept in contact with the original group, Lenny and Pete and Beverly and Jan and all those. I kept in contact with them. And I didn’t do a lot of meetings for about five years for, I guess, about 1993 to 1998. I was raising my kids. And they’re doing great. But I was crazy. I got crazy. I came back in 1998. I didn’t drink. I didn’t drug. I came back in 1998. And I still don’t get involved as much as I need to. But those meetings at the plumbing shop, they were an hour and a half long. When I came back, they were an hour long, I said, what happened? It’s OK. It’s the people like Sean and Dennis that have really gone by the rules and done the things that they need to do, and kept it structured and kept it going. And I know it’s about it. I hear them talking about it all the time. I know it’s about it. Keep it going. And they do a great job. And sometimes I hear the old timers that are still around moaning a little bit about it. And I said, you know, they’re there and you’re not. And that’s the bottom line. They’re holding it together and you’re not. I can’t say no. It is. And C.A. hasn’t changed that much over there since the early days because it still goes—50 people at a meeting. And all of a sudden, a few months later, there’s 10 people at a meeting. And then it goes up and then it goes down. But you know, it’s the same group that keeps coming. You know, it’s the same group that are still clean. You know, they come and go and they go to other fellowships. And I would say 95% of the meetings I’ve ever done have been Cocaine Anonymous and that must mean it because I know that I drank before I did cocaine, but cocaine kicked my ass. And they told me what I needed to hear. You know, Lenny, you can get up on my face with that coffee cigarette breath. You ain’t done using. Go back out and I didn’t go back out. But that was the way Lenny was and I needed that. You know, and Pete and Harold and those guys go there. And they saved my life. Cocaine Anonymous and them saved my life. There’s no doubt about it. I would have died. And so I think I’m going to get more involved. My kids are growing now. They’re gone. And you know, who the hell knows? I need to get involved like you got. You know, because I took. There’s no doubt about it. I took and I did not give back for the longest time. I guess that’s why I’m there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for letting me share.
Participant: I was wondering if you could tell me about the, wasn’t there actually another first thing convention?
Bob: Actually, there were two.
Susan D: There were a whole lot of shirts for it.
Participant: Fort Myers was going to put on the first convention. I was like 1991, 1992, I think. They ran with it. They did things without following a book. They bought 500 T-shirts for a convention which probably would have had 20 people. So they had an extravagant hotel that nobody ever made a reservation to. And in the end, they canceled it in the area with 500 T-shirts. Actually, it’s sad at that point. Fort Myers stopped being a part of the Area for a while. And they kind of went back. I think they had a regroup from that. There was an actual convention that came off. And I was going to say something. I hated to burst someone’s bubble talking about this being the first. But the first Florida convention was actually in Stuart.
Bob: The Florida convention was in 1996 or 1997. And we were supposed to try to do it every year after that. But obviously, that didn’t work out. So hopefully, this is the new ball rolling. And we can see a nice convention every year from now. But that was a good little convention. I think we had about 40 people show up to that one.
That first convention was quite a challenge. The one that didn’t have.
Participant: And I’m from Sarasota. I was just wondering, I just called the District and they said that we’ve been around 15 years. I mean, do you remember us before then?
Bob: It was 1989 or 1990. They had meetings after treatment. It wasn’t a treatment center, it was actually a community center that held meetings for all the fellowships.
Freedom was first then? I don’t think it was called First Step then. Yeah, but it wasn’t called first step then. It was called something else. I would send out announcements for the area meetings. You know, and looking back in hindsight, you know, the growth, we just went to a Del Rey as a young part of our fellowship and they went from having one meeting to seven meetings and you know, a few months…Stuart was like that. And the problem is you get a core of people. You know, it takes some strong willed people to start a fellowship in a city. And then to turn that power over is the hard part. To watch, you know, Fort Myers was a perfect example. It was Lenny and Steph. They were C.A. in Fort Myers in the, late 1980s. When they split up and went their separate ways, that fellowship went through some hard times. We didn’t hear from them for years. Then some new people got involved and picked up the ball and they’re back stronger than ever. But it shows history teaches us things if we’re willing to learn and that we need to get everybody involved.
I missed the last year of Area meetings. In the beginning, I was like the Area cop, you know, oh, no, no, that’s not the way they do it in World, you know. And then when Susan became a Delegate and everybody else, we had more Delegates and then the Delegates stuck around and kept coming to the Areas, and they’d pass on their things that they learned. And it’s neat to see that growth. I’ve seen on the other side where we’re control freaks. It takes strong will personalities to start a fellowship in a city, but it also takes that growth to be able to turn it over and let other people take some control because the more people we have involved; we’ve seen it happen in cities where you get one or two people involved and they have good intentions, but sometimes we have lousy follow through. We’re good starters and sometimes we’re not good finishers.
Sometimes we just take on too much with good intentions we get burned out. The lesson in hindsight that I see is that we just need to get more people involved and they say that the newcomers are the lifeblood of the fellowship, and it’s so true. To get people involved, make positions, do whatever you had to get the people involved, you can never have too many people involved because you have to have a group to have a group conscience. In hindsight, that’s the lesson I’ve learned over the years, is that, we just need to get more and more people involved. And that’s ultimately how our fellowship grows.
When I quit hearing from her for a couple of years, to answer your original question, and then all of a sudden Sarasota caught back on the map.We had meetings in Rockledge and Orlando. Then the meeting in Orlando folded, we still had our area meeting there for years at the treatment center where the meeting was just because it was kind of a central location.
Then Rockledge folded. A lot of times meetings, you don’t hear from them, it doesn’t mean that they folded, it just means they don’t participate in the Area. Sometimes you have to have people that have the financial resources. Some meetings struggle, some meetings have money and sometimes you can pay for people to go to the Area and sometimes you can’t. So just because we don’t see people at the Area level doesn’t mean they went away. It’s just sometimes it’s for whatever reason they can’t participate.
Susan D.
I want you to know that there are two CA meetings in Miami now, finally. The history of C.A. in Miami has been very, very rocky. When I first got that I involved with C.A. in Fort Lauderdale, there I was in Miami going to other fellowship meetings in this huge warehouse, which was called the warehouse, but anybody’s ever been to Miami. And it was run by two gentlemen, one very active in AA and one very active in NA. And they had two bulletin boards. One of them was for their news on that bulletin board and they had a common bulletin board that was for everything. So they let me start a meeting in there Saturday afternoons at four. And I got about that much support and about that much attendance, but it lasted a few weeks and it was very difficult because the people from the other fellowship said, what do you need that for? And it didn’t get a whole lot of support. There were people who came in curious and then they didn’t come back. So that folded and then we tried to start one in Miami in Spanish in Hialeah and that lasted a few weeks until that folded. But now there’s a young lady named Anna who started a meeting down in South Beach and it was first on Friday nights, which was getting very poor attendance and she couldn’t even attend because then she got a singing job. But now it’s moved to Mondays and it seems to be surviving. And then there’s one in a three quarter house in a not so nice part of town, which is keeping that meeting alive. So there are those two and I was sharing with somebody yesterday, it’s so nice to be able to go to a C.A. meeting in my own city because I’ve been going to Fort Lauderdale for 15, 16 years, 19 years. So that’s part of our growth. Tonderick, can you fill in any of the St. Pete gaps?
Tonderick
I was hoping that Linda would do that. Okay. She’s not here. All I know is when I came around my initial exposure to the fellowship was in 1991 and Melrose and Rosie were here. They were C.A. Any information that was ever passed on, it was whatever Melrose and Rosie gave us. And I know that Linda came on somewhere around 1991, 1992. And it was her wanting everyone else to see what was outside of the Freedom House and what she was getting at the Area level. What she got at World Convention in Georgia 1996, that we needed to see that C.A. was bigger than those personalities that we knew about it in the frontiers. And what happened was when I was allowed to make it back in just a short time ago in 1996, is that there was some structure in place that had been fought. She had fought through some of that rigidity. And there was a District. I’ll bet there was not a whole lot of other officers except, I mean, there was groups. Her task was to get the groups involved in the District level and to get the 7th Tradition going and start to get participation. It was a big fight from the beginning. But she somehow made it to where we were there again and we existed. C.A. had died. They were having meetings. They were taking up money, but they didn’t know what they were doing with it. There was no World contribution. There was no Area contribution. They were buying chips as groups or chips from the World and basically that was it. But all I know is that when I came back, I came back into something that had a semblance of structure. My first Area meeting was in Orlando at the treatment center. We’ve had the spirit of rotation somehow come about and we’ve gotten into that World Service Manual and we’ve tried to do this the best way that we could. The fact that we get out to other Areas and we see structure like Atlanta, it gives us a mark. It gives us something to reach for. I’m just so happy to be a part of this thing. In my personal recovery, and it’s something that’s almost unheard of, I was able to attend the World Conference on the dime of my District. And that’s something that was almost unheard of as an alternate. So I’ve had the opportunity to visit this thing and to see Cocaine Anonymous and to want to pass that on.
Somehow, right here in Florida, we’re going to get there. It’s going to happen. I look at Randy, I look at Susan. I’ve heard of every one of these guys. I’ve heard of you guys and I’ve heard of you guys from people like Melrose and Rosie. And I’ve heard of you guys from people like Linda. And I’ve heard of Jimmy and I’ve gone over to Jimmy’s meeting, the meetings that Jimmy’s does. Because we want to see this. We’ve got meetings now in Plant City. We’ve got a meeting that just started last week in Tarpon Springs, right here in Pinellas County.
We’ve got an Area webmaster that can get online and give us information now about where we need to get these starter kits to. And that’s what I’m falling into. I’m falling into something that’s already in place. Yeah, I got a grand sponsor. Matter of fact, he’s doing these tapes. And it’d be so easy to just hide out over there. But there’s so many service hogs over there that I might as well come over here. So I get that from Terry. But I just love this thing and the relationships. And even at the regional level, I hate to say this, but I’m in constant contact with people from Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana. These are my email buddies. And we meet each other somewhere in the country that’s going to be somewhere for us to meet at least three or four times a year. And that’s what we do. And we try to bring this back. I don’t know the particulars as far as what it took to get it back to where it is now. But all I know is there was something in place and we whipped out that manual and we tried to interpret the best that we could. And we went over there and we saw what they were doing and we tried to bring that back to because that’s what we needed to get it in place. And I’m just happy to be a part of this. I think this is in the spirit that it was brought about, something new. It’s going to be the new CA of Florida. That’s where we’re going to go. I got guys like Sean, guys like Dennis, people like Susan and Randy the mentors and Jimmy. And we got people out there that need us and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to be here for them. So that’s all I got.
Susan D.
Thank you. Well, I’ll let you get settled, Stephanie. And then I’m going to ask you to continue something from Daytona. I wanted to jump on a point that Tondrick made back there. Raise your hand. That’s our web chink. That’s Linda. And for the benefit of anyone listening to this tape, www.fla-ca.org. That’s our website. And that’s been up about a year. And that was just heart moving. That we’re there now. We have our website and she does a fine, wonderful job. It’s beautiful. Go there. Now we have Daytona in the house. We’re talking about how you jumped into the historical chronology.
Stephanie
My name is Stephanie and I’m an addict. C.A. started in Daytona January the 5th, 1999. Prior to that, of course, there were the other two fellowships. And what prompted the beginning of that meeting is that for one, I moved there. And I was going to the other fellowships. But I just need to go to a place where, if I said I was on the floor looking, then people knew what I was talking about. So I started feeling isolated there. And even though I was belonged to other two fellowships and I had a sponsor in the mother fellowship, which is A.A., I still felt isolated. And I knew that there were other people who used cocaine in Daytona Beach, Florida. So there was my sponsor, was a longtime A.A. person and she was a club stewart where our meetings are at to this day. And she was a real liberal. And so they had an opening that just happened to come up one of those coincidences that we know really aren’t coincidences. And she said, well, you want to start a meeting? And I had my starter kit that had been kind of thrown at me from some friends back in Kansaswith a good friend, Ellen. And she said that she can’t come today telling unless it was a meeting there, C.A. meeting. So I said, OK, sure. And we were met with a lot of controversy. In fact, a lot of people left that club house. People kind of picketed our meeting. They would stand outside. Don’t go in there. Don’t go that meeting. You may feel like you want to get high afterwards. And just a lot of, and these are people that had not attended the meeting. We started with one night on Monday nights at 7:30. And we were like that for three years. And then we were blessed to have a crop of people come out of treatment. The treatment centers had started coming to our meetings. And they brought them in. And they said, this is going to be our home room. We get out. And I heard that before. And I was like, OK, yeah. But they came out. And it was about five of them. And with the exception of one, they’re all still clean and sober to this day. And they are the ones who really did get the enthusiasm up. They took trusted service positions. They’re very active. And now we’re three meetings a week. And we are having our official anniversary. January 23, 2004. We’re celebrating our five year anniversary. Thank you for letting me share.
Susan D.
Floor is open. Anyone else have a question or comment, a contribution? Did we get all from every District that’s represented here?
Linda
I’m Linda. I’m an addict. I’m Linda. I’ll lead up to the website. I went online to find out how to get my husband to quit using cocaine. And ran across Cocaine Anonymous and they told me the first thing I needed to do was quit doing it myself. So I got involved with CA Online. That was my only contact with Cocaine Anonymous. And I met Susan Online. So it was like, they were the only two people from Florida in Cocaine Anonymous. And I stayed in those online meetings for a while. And I got a sponsor online. And he said, well, why don’t you start a meeting where you live? And so I did. In Zephyrhills, that’s the drinking water place. And that meeting lasted a year. I had to take maternity leave and no one would step up and keep that meeting going. But I had started attending Area when I started that meeting and even after that meeting ended, I kept going to Area. From the very beginning, when I got sober, I was told to stay involved, and stay in the middle of the herd. So I kept going to Area and I kept trying for service positions and they wouldn’t give me one. I ran for secretary. I ran for treasurer. But I kept going, and someone said, you know, make a position. So I at home, and I’m thinking, you know, on the C.A. website, there’s all these area websites and I’m going to school for this. So in a next Area meeting, I go with a position of webmaster. And I almost didn’t get that one. But I did. So officially, the Florida website went up March of 2003. And it’s changed along the way. And it’s been really good for me. I get emails wanting starter kits. If they’re close to a District, I can send them to Tondrick or Dennis who are great at helping these people. The Plant City meeting, I get an email from Tony and I’m a half an hour from Plant City. And I didn’t have any starter kits yet. But I had that old meeting stuff from Zephyrhills. So I packed it in my car, and I went to Plant City. And I gave it to Tony. And I believe that’s where the Tarpon Springs meeting is coming from. Tony moved down here from Georgia. And he’s getting a lot going in his Area. I get all kinds of questions about, I’ve had college students email me, could you tell me the effects of cocaine on the body? And it’s just all kinds of different things. But it keeps me involved. And that’s what I need to be. That’s it on Zephyrhills.
Linda from St. Pete
We had no District for a while. And I went to a regional convention in Pensacola where we all sat in the room and they inspired me to go back to St. Pete. They said, you’re a newcomer, you have go there. And you go back to St. Pete and start your history and you do something. And I was like, yeah. I was ready. It was one year before the work was mentioned in Atlanta, Georgia. And I had a dream since then about the book. I said, I’m going to St. Pete. I’m going to start into not knowing who or what I would encounter. I went back to St. Pete. I went to each meeting. I said to everybody, whoever the Chair of this meeting is, whoever the GSR is, we want to start a meeting in this location on this day in St. Pete. We want our District back in St. Pete. And three people showed up. That was in 1995. And as we met every month, two to three more people showed up. And we had a District. When the World convention came in Atlanta in 1996, we showed up with about 50 people or more. But we showed up from St. Pete and it was an inspiring thing. I heard somebody, this is too much for me. For one person to go to conventions and meetings. I couldn’t do all the workshops or couldn’t afford all the tapes. And I want everybody to have some of this. So my dream was we do Districts. Twice a year we started taking people to the conventions. Twice a year, St. Pete voted to take people to a convention somewhere. We traveled 12 to 14 hour drive radius. And we take people that was our goal. So our biggest thing we did is let people go to the World convention in Atlanta. And I’ve been around since February of 6, 1990. Right now we have quite a few meetings in St. Pete. And no matter what goes on, we can put some stuff together. So I had a dream. And I had a desire that this program is bigger than me. And I needed to get as many people involved. I’ve been in GSR and DSR. I’ve been off the Alternate World Delegate, the Group secretary, the treasurer. My car is nothing but the group stuff. I got everybody’s money. I got that. Who money is that? That money is that group. That’s the group. And the people in the World, I call out there. They knew me by name. What you want? We’ll send it to you. You send us to check. You go ahead and send it. It’s just been something like that. And I got connected. When I didn’t know something and somebody said you’re going against a Tradition, let me call World. I didn’t know the Area so much. So I had the knowledge of World. That’s what I did. That’s how I came in here on somebody else’s foot. They told me to get me 12 and 12. And I came in through the big book. They said, you read this stuff. And you’ll have the bylaws down pat. So when you’re doing this thing, you’ll know what you’re doing. And I’ve been here for a long time for a lot of stuff. But Catrina, who is doing our workshop on women today. She’s been around longer than I have. So she can tell you a little bit more about the meetings and how they got started here in the state.
Catrina
I’m an addict and my name is Catrina. I found hope at least that’s why I keep coming back. I think I was about 11 months clean and sober when I attended my first Cocaine Anonymous meeting. There were about three of them in the Area. There was a group of male rooms in Rosie. And Jim, they were going around. They were starting the meeting. And then they were moving on to another location. They had one going over at St. Anthony’s hospital in St. Keith. And then they had one going over at Southside Tabernacle. And then they had one going over at Ena Davis. And what was happening was that group that was starting the meetings. Everybody started one. Everybody would move to the next location. So they kept that happening. They did have one on Mustard Seed in St. Pete on Thursday nights. So I really got involved in the one at Enoch Davis Center. And my first couple of meetings, which I was just coming to, to see what you all were doing wrong. I went back and told my sponsor, you should see them down there. They doing it wrong. And she kept saying, why don’t you go down there and show them how to do it. So that kept me going for a long time. Just thought I thought I knew what I was doing. And they were doing it right, here. So I started going to that meeting. A couple of sisters and I, two of my sisters and I, decided that that was going to be our own group. And we were going to support that meeting with no matter what. And we started the meeting every Saturday at 3.30. I’ve been involved for about 15, 15 years ago. I know it’s been at least 15 years ago. And every Saturday at 3 o’clock, I would show up at that meeting no matter what. And I did that for nine years. There was a lot of times when I was the only woman who showed up. And I just kept moving. I attempted to hold a position as a treasurer one time. And my sponsor and I were talking and I was telling her I didn’t have any money, but that was okay. I was going to borrow a little bit from the C.A. fund. And my sponsor told me to take that money back to y’all and tell y’all to tell them I don’t no nothing about finances. And I’m a thief and I need to get y’all back y’all money. And so that’s what I did. And she told me not to judge anybody until I’ve learned something about finances. It took me a while. But I’m C.A. in St. Pete. It’s just booming. I’m just amazed that, you know, what was being put together now and what’s happening here. I think I used to tell my sponsor, I want to see people more like me instead of just, you know, people with alcohol addiction or heroin addiction. I want to see people more like me. And I want to come out and get people that had cocaine addiction. I want to bring them in and give them what I got. And my sponsor told me, hey, I’ve didn’t have anything to give. First I need to get something. I was determined that I wouldn’t see the people that I was out there using with it. Get clean. So, you know, I’m pretty amazed at how this fellowship has just grown up around us. I watch people come and go. I watch Rose do this thing, with all she may have is her till the very end. And I’m just really great to be a part of it and see how much is booming here. I’m excited about this convention and being a part of it.
Participant: Right now I think we have seven districts. And we have meetings in Dave Broward in Palm Beach County is the Treasure Coast, which is Stewart, Daytona, Orlando, Fort Myers, St. Pete, Tampa, Sarasota, Ocala, Tallahassee, Pensacola. Probably a few I forgot.
Susan D.
Probably something we may not know about. So we’re growing. We’re growing. And I’m just thrilled to have been asked to do this workshop and thankful to everybody who’s contributed. Anyone else have anything to share?
“Side Show Bob”
I’m “Side Show Bob. I’m from the Treasure Coast and we’re grateful to be back. When I first got involved in CA, I’d been released from the Crossbar motel to a halfway house. Actually, I went to a treatment center before that. And when I got to the halfway house, they had a C.A. meeting there, but it was down to a membership of about four people. Treasure Coast went through some growing pains, a little controversy, resentment, finances, and almost destroyed us. We’re back to two regular meetings now, which is pretty good. We’ve got an attendance at one, which is about 35 and the other one is about 60 now. And we have just as many H&I meetings. The treatment center that I went through, I maintained a personal friendship with my counsellor there this day. And there’s other fellowship there, which is where I first became involved in service work and in a step program. But what you’d seen when it done for me and a couple of my friends, she wanted us to come in there. So now we have two H&I meetings in that same treatment center. We’re working on a third open meeting right now. We’re growing. We’re persevering. You just got to stick with it. The other fellowship I belonged to, I was involved in service. But when I found C.A., I needed C.A. and they needed me. And that was a great feeling. There was room for me at C.A. I have a need to serve. And that’s really been satisfied here. That’s what keeps me going back, thanks. All right.
Susan D.
I want to thank everybody who has contributed to this meeting. I’d still like to close as we open with the Serenity Prayer.
All Participants: God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.