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Source: Al-Anon Participation Meeting – Retreat Meeting with Alateen (1962) – 1962-09-15.mp3 File: al-anon-participation-meeting-retreat-meeting-with-alateen-1962-1962-09-15.mp3 Duration: 01:05:32
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I hope in this meeting, like we do all of our Al-Anon meetings, with a moment of silent prayer or meditation, Amen. My name is Celia, and I am the wife of an alcoholic, and by the grace of God, which has been extended to us principally and primarily through the AA program, we have had continuous sobriety in our homes since the 10th of February, 1949. That amounts to 5 days, 7 months, and 13 years at 10 o'clock this morning.
And for that, I am grateful. I am also privileged to be a member of the Al-Anon group in Texas City, and it was through the AA members of the Texas City group and the Al-Anon, which was started about a year after my alcoholic came to AA, that I have been able to regain my sanity. At the time that my husband came to AA, I knew that there wasn't anything wrong with me. After all, I wasn't one that went out, drank, stayed on one of these running drunks like he did quite frequently along at the last.
However, through Al-Anon, which meets with regularity in our home group, we have a purpose there. We have a preamble, and we have a program that we try to follow. We try to study the 12 steps and the 12 traditions and apply them to ourselves. And the purpose of Al-Anon is to help solve problems due to alcoholism in the home, to share the experiences, strength, and hope of others in similar circumstances, to improve our own emotional health and spiritual growth, to provide a more wholesome environment for the whole family, including the alcoholic, drunk, or sober.
We urge you to try our program. We have learned to become individuals. We try to accept the fact that alcoholism is a disease. In the studying of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, we accept the fact that we're powerless over alcohol and that we can develop the ability to detach ourselves emotionally from our problems and yet retain our love for our alcoholic. Our changed attitude might possibly inspire the alcoholic to seek help, which may eventually lead him to AA.
So there is no need for discouragement, even though the alcoholic may still be drinking. We try at all times to assure our alcoholics that we do not discuss them at the meetings. Our sole topic is the solution of our own problems. We will always be grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous for giving us a way of life and a wonderful, healthy program to live by and to enjoy. We only ask that you give each speaker the right to their own opinion.
We're real fortunate here today because we have people that are living the program. Some of them haven't been in too long, and some of them have been in for a long time. We have a member of Alateen from the state of New York, and a lot of us haven't had an opportunity to hear the Alateens. We have two men who are members of the Al-Anon groups from Hereford and from Midland, and I know that we're going to enjoy their talk immensely.
At this time, I'd like to call on Bessie May, and I'm sure that she has some real good words for you. This is the first time for me, and I am Bessie May, and I'm the wife of an alcoholic. I can't give you our dry date. It never occurred to me before. I remember it when it's time, but it is in March. But I think the reason that I don't worry about that anymore is because I worried about it so many years, and I finally found Al-Anon, and now then, that's Walter's worry, and he's doing an awfully good job with it.
[00:05:04]
I think I loved the AA program before Walter ever had a drinking problem. I had an older brother that I loved very dearly, and the year we moved to San Angelo was, I believe, the first time that they had a large meeting, and the paper gave him a great deal of coverage. And my brother had died the year before, and I was just very interested in knowing something about what had been wrong with him. He was a young man, but he realized that he couldn't drink, but he had never heard about AA because he had told me just about a year before he died when he was on leave and came to our house that he was just a person that couldn't drink, and when he got out of the service, he was going to go someplace where they didn't even sell it, and he was just going to get as far away as he could.
So I read everything in the world that was in the paper, and I'm real thankful, and I think like Bish said this morning, I think God knew already that Walter was going to be an alcoholic too, and that meant all the world to us, both of us. I may have pushed Walter too much as time went on, but it was because he would say, we've got to do something, and it was always we, and that's the reason that I think I did push Walter into AA, and I'm not saying, he's already told you that I don't have to, but I don't think Walter even realized that I was reading everything at that time about it.
Also, one of their main speakers was a personal friend of ours who had been our family doctor in Seminole, not too long before that, and I'm sure a group of you knew Dr. Andrew S. T., and he was a very dear friend of ours, and we didn't know that he even had a drinking problem, and certainly he didn't know that we ever would have, but when Walter did realize that he had a problem, we had another very good friend that we both knew was in AA, and he had worked with him in business, and we'd been in their home, and they'd been in ours, and I didn't go to Emma until Walter had more or less asked me to, and he's helped us so much, and this sponsorship business, I tell you, I know it's wonderful for the AA, but it's the most wonderful thing in the world for the family.
They helped our children so much that our little boy, who's 14 now, said one day, when Walter hadn't been in AA too long, but he was helping somebody else, and he brought this lady and two children by the house, and he took her husband someplace else, and Larry looked up at me, he was about 11 then, and he said, Mother, are you going to try to help this lady and that little boy like Emma and Olga did us?
And it is a family program for us. We have a 21-year-old whose mother-in-law told me not long ago that if Jimmy ever hears of anybody, and especially if it's somebody that we've known and that he knows, that they've had some trouble, you can just see him scoot out the door and just nearly read his face. If my daddy can see him, I think he can help him. And it's the most wonderful thing in the world to us, and I'm glad to say thank you.
I had an opportunity yesterday to visit with Bessie Mae for a little while, and I enjoyed her thoroughly. And to me, all you have to do is look in a woman's face or a man's face that has lived and worked with the program of alcoholism, and you see the serenity there after they have had an opportunity to become associated with this program. Now, the next person that I'm going to introduce is an old friend.
Possibly she and her husband don't know how much that they've meant to us. They were in AA when we came into AA. And I was born and reared in East Texas, a little town by the name of Crockett. They come from a town a little farther up, Tyler. And the first time that I met them, Morris talked, and he wound his talk up with the touch of the master's hand. And the first time that I met them, Morris talked, and he wound his talk up with the touch of the master's hand.
[00:10:10]
So to me, when Tyler's mentioned, I always think of the M. and the touch of the master's hand, because as they bring it out so aptly in their life every day, the master touched their life, and they're still walking in that path. So I give you Aisham. Thank you. My name is Aisham, and I am the wife of an alcoholic. And I'm grateful to be here today, and I want you to know how much I've enjoyed this retreat.
And I'm not like Bessie Mae. She said she pushed her husband in a little. Well, I think pushing or shoving or anything you do to get him in is good. But I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't even know the word alcoholic. And I suppose when I came into AA, it was a little different than now, and for that I'm grateful. But Mac went to Dallas to AA, and he had been to Dallas for a cure.
Of course, I thought that was going to take, but it didn't. So then he goes to Dallas to AA. Well, I knew nothing about AA, but I thought, well, anything that will help him will be good. He had stayed sober six months before. And we have two sons, and they were real happy about it, because they had gotten to the point to where they wouldn't have company come over because Daddy acts so silly. And I didn't encourage them to.
I tried to keep them away from their Daddy. And many of the nights, if Mac didn't come in at a set time, say around 630 to 7, the boys and I would have time to get off. Because I didn't want the scene, and I didn't want them to see how Mac came in. He didn't always come in drunk. But I had a lot rather sometimes he would come in drunk than come in arguing and fussing. So we would leave. And one night we came in, though, I remember, we couldn't get in.
So we have across our porch, across the front house, there's a porch. So we climbed in the window, and I thought, well, I wonder if the neighbors see us. But still I didn't care. We hadn't lived there too long anyhow, and I thought, well, they don't really know why we're climbing in. But ever after that, we left that screen open to where we could get in. But a lot of good things have happened to us since we've been in AA.
In fact, everything has been good to us. And I think it would just be terrible if I didn't get up here and express my gratitude for AA and for what has happened to us since we've been in. And I try to make all the meetings. I don't know whether I help anybody or not. Down here last night when I was in with all those alcoholics, and I don't know who's alcoholic out there and who's not. You know, they say you can't tell if you can't smell.
So I sure, I can't tell, but you know, they told me that, well, I sound just like them. And that I kept them awake all night and all that stuff. Well, I understand now that we got to sleep pretty early. But I think that anything that I can do or anything I might say to help the new wife, and I feel that the wives are just as sick as the husbands, it's in a little different way. And we've had a few words over neurotics in Tyler, and most men get up and say their wife is neurotic.
Well, I can't go along with them. There might have been a little something wrong with me. Of course, I didn't think anything was wrong with me, but I found out now there was a little something wrong with me, and I am working on it. But it's pretty slow. But I don't think that I was neurotic. But I am grateful for AA, and there's two things that I am especially thankful for. I'm most proud of Mac coming into Alcoholics Anonymous, and that he has stayed sober these over 14 years, and for a selfish reason.
And it's real selfish, but I'm glad I wasn't the alcoholic. Thank you. Thank you. To talk to our minister in Texas City, for the first time in the eight years that we had been married, when he came in off of his last drunk, we sat down and talked about his drinking.
[00:15:15]
That night was the first time when he would be off drinking that I had gone to bed and had gone to sleep. The realization came to me that there wasn't a thing in the world that I could do about it. I know now that I was letting go and letting God, because I can truthfully say that I was not upset and I was not mad on the morning of February the 10th when he came home. I felt something. I would like to help him, yet I had a detached feeling. The best way that I can describe it is that I cared, but I didn't care.
He went to talk to our minister in Texas City. We are of Presbyterian faith. As he tells in his story, when he walked in and started telling Henry his troubles, Henry told him that that was a prayer that was answered. That he knew that he had a drinking problem, but he couldn't very well come up and knock at the door and say, you've got a drinking problem, bud, let's do something about it. However, when he went down there that morning and talked to Henry, Henry told him that he would like for him to go talk to a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had read what I could find about alcoholism, because I can qualify myself in this respect. Not only am I the wife of an alcoholic, I am the daughter of an alcoholic, I was the daughter of an alcoholic, and I am the sister of a practicing alcoholic. So I had been reared in an alcoholic family. We had the necessities of life at home. I had good clothes. We had a nice home, but still the problem of alcoholism was there.
Many a time have I said I would never live under those conditions, the same conditions that my mother did, and I married an alcoholic. There was a time that I was awfully sorry for myself. Now I can say that I am grateful, because I have had an opportunity through the AA program, which I didn't feel like at the time applied to me. To learn to know myself, because at the time that he came to AA, when he went to talk to his sponsor, he picked up some literature, and he brought it home, and on the dining room table there was a scarf. He read the literature, and I knew that he was talking to somebody, and that Henry was going to try to help him with his drinking problem.
He read the literature very carefully, moved the tray off the table, moved the scarf, placed the literature under it, put the scarf back, and the tray on top of it, because you see, this was something that Sam wasn't sure was going to work, and after all, he didn't want me to have any part of it. Well, it was almost a week later when I was cleaning house. I worked, and I cleaned house on Saturday, and I found the literature. He was gone. I sat down and read it, and I thought, well, that's wonderful. It certainly does apply to him. He certainly is powerless over alcohol, and I know that he's crazy, so he shouldn't have any trouble taking that second step.
And if he can come to believe that a power greater than himself can restore him to sanity, we'll never have another problem, because you see, alcoholism was the only thing that was wrong with us, and it was only wrong with him. There wasn't anything wrong with me. I was so pious and so self-righteous. After he made a couple of meetings in Texas City, he went down to Victoria to work, and I didn't make the meetings with him. I wasn't invited. And Texas City only had four members at that time, and two of those men would call me at least once a week, because they were real proud to get a new baby.
And they'd say, how's he doing? And I'd say, fine. And they were getting ready to have their first anniversary in Texas City, and I was invited to go. I said I would, but at the time that I hung up the telephone, I knew I wasn't going. That if he wanted to go associate with a bunch of drunks, that was fine. But there was nothing wrong with me, and there was no reason for me to go.
[00:20:12]
So I made my excuse. It was feeble, and we've laughed about it since then. Sam made this job. He was working on construction, and he came back to Texas City, and he was a little lax for a while going to meetings. And again, through the guiding hand of this minister, he made several meetings with him, and I don't know what happened one night, but Sam heard something that he thought would apply to me.
So he came home and decided that I should go to AA with him. The first night that I walked in, you see, I hadn't talked to any of the wives, and curiosity was eating me up about the men that were there. They sounded real nice over the phone, but I knew they were just a bunch of drunks. And the first night that I walked in this little meeting place, which actually wasn't a whole lot bigger than this stand here, I just assumed to have walked into a bunch of rattlesnakes, because I was wondering who was going to see me going in, who was going to see me coming out, and wondering what kind of people they were.
And I thought if he went to AA, he'd never have any more problems. One woman sat down by me, and she told me her husband had been sober for six months, and that he had had a slip. And I said, what do you mean, slip? She said he got drunk, but he came back. Well, my heart jumped up in my throat. I said, well, here again is something that I know won't work. But it was through the help of the members of the Texas City Group and their wives and people all over the state of Texas that it made me change my mind and realize that those 12 steps not only apply to my alcoholic, but they apply to me.
It isn't hard for me to tell you now that I am powerless over an alcoholic and that my life is unmanageable. And I can't say came to believe. I have to say I come to believe, because I have to take that second step every day. I have to say that I come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. And I can't say that I made a decision. I have to say I make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, because sometimes I have to make that decision three and four times a day. I'm prone to get back into the driver's seat.
And I think I've talked enough right now, and we do have a treating story. We have Buck from Midland. What did they say? Heavy, heavy hangs over thy head? My name is Buck N., and I'm an Al-Anon, 710 Group, Midland, Texas, and I hope in good standing. I have had some experience in making talks in various portions of the United States, but in all those cases previously, I have been talking about something that I knew something about and something that I understood.
So please bear with me if I make any comments that you do not agree with. If you don't agree with it, then please grant me the privilege that this is my humble opinion. If I say anything that hurts anybody's feelings, please forgive me. I am a geologist by profession. I work for an oil company engaged in the science of exploration. In talking on various subjects in the oil business, as I said before, I'm talking about something that I know something about and something that I do understand.
I do not understand alcoholism, even though I am the son, the husband, the brother-in-law, and the brother of alcoholics in that order.
[00:25:14]
There are a lot of things that I don't understand, but I've learned to accept them. I like to attempt to convey my thoughts to other people by utilizing some of the coded thought that has been encoded into language by some of the greats of the past, and perhaps this little poem will best convey my thoughts to you. My poetry is one of the things that drove my wife to drink, so bear with me. I wish that I could understand the moving marvel of my hand. I watch my fingers turn and twist the supple bending of my wrist. A tool of exquisite design with pride, I think it's mine. It's mine.
Then there's the wonder of my eyes, where houses, hills, and seas, and skies, and waves of light converge and pass and print themselves as on a glass. Line, form, and color live within me. I am the beauty that I see. I could write a book of sighs about the wonder of my eyes. Then there's the wondrous wonder of my heart that plays so faithfully its part. I hear it running, sound and sweet. It never seems to miss a beat. Between the cradle and the grave, it never falters, staunch and brave.
I have not the art to tell the wonders of my heart. Then there's the wondrous wonder of my brain, that marvelous machine that brings all consciousness and wondering. It lets me from myself leap out and watch my body walk about. It's hopeless, all my words are vain to tell the wonders of my brain. But do you think, oh patient friends who hear these stanzas to the end, that I myself would glorify? You're just as marvelous as I, and all creation in our view is quite as marvelous as you.
Then come, let us on the seashore stand and wonder at a grain of sand. Or into the meadow pass and marvel at a blade of grass. Or cast our visions high and far and thrill with wonder at a star. A host of stars, night's holy tent, huge and glittering with wonderment. If wonder being great and small, then what of him who made it all? In eyes and brain and heart and limb, let's see the wondrous work of him.
In everything from sun to sod, the wonder and the awe of God. Anything that I might add to this is certainly, in my humble opinion, anticlimactic. My father, in my opinion, was an alcoholic. Unfortunately, he was a practicing alcoholic before the days of AA. He graduated from Galveston Medical College in 1897, 96 or 97, I forget the exact date. And I don't remember too much about it when I was a kid. But they say as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
I was pretty damn well bent before we got into this group. Uh, my wife. Wife is an alcoholic. By the grace of God and the help of a lot of wonderful people, many of them whom I see here today, we have had a lot of happiness brought into our lives in the past,
[00:30:22]
and today, and I have faith in the future. There is no happiness but today's happiness. The past has gone back to God. The future belongs to Him. It's been a great relief and a great burden taken off of my shoulders to come to realize that I am powerless over an alcoholic. Let go and let God. This is, believe me, a great burden off my shoulders. Inasmuch as my wife is on the program, and I hope I'm on the program, and I have every reason to believe that my sister in Sonora, Texas, whom some of you here have already contacted, I feel reasonably sure that some of you here and others that are not here will contact her in the future and get her on to the program. I know she will find happiness because she was very close, she and I were very close until a few years ago.
When we seemed to draw apart, this was, I feel, because of a misunderstanding. My sister practically raised me, and since she saw what it did to Dad, and what it did to Frances, and what it did to her husband, what really drove the lesson home to me that this is a disease is when my sis was snakebit also. And realization of this fact has given me a lot of serenity. I believe that, in my opinion, God cuts us down to size before he utilizes us, which can be best explained by another point, with which I will conclude.
Not until the last loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly will God reveal the pattern and explain the reasons why. The dark threads are his needful, and the weaver's skillful hand is the threads of gold and silver for the pattern which he planned. Thank you. Thank you, Buck. I think that you gave us all something to take home with us. Now, this is a treat for me. I have never heard an Alateen speak. We don't have an Alateen group in Texas City, and they do have one in Houston, but I have never had an opportunity to sit in an Alateen meeting.
And when I qualified myself a while ago saying that I was the daughter of an alcoholic, I have heard members of AA say, my children were small. They didn't see me drunk. It really didn't affect their life. Well, I don't agree, because there were some things that happened in my childhood that I think that I will carry to my grave with me. I know that had I not had an opportunity to ride on the shirttail of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, and I would like to clarify that right now, you see, we know that we are not AA.
We are grateful for the fact that you have given to us 12 steps and 12 traditions so that we can better understand ourselves. By doing so, we are in a position to cope with the disease of alcoholism.
[00:35:08]
And since happiness comes from within, and no individual can give it to us, even though before Sam came to AA, I knew that I could control his drinking and that I would take care of the situation. It didn't work that way. I was a miserable, frustrated individual. I didn't know myself. I doubted my faith. I doubted everything, and I withdrew in a shell. Now, Kit didn't have to go as long as I did before I found a way of life to understand myself, because I understand that she has been associated with AA, Al-Anon, and the Alateen group for some time, so I'm sure that she has something real good for us. Kit?
Hi, my name's Kit P., and I'm the daughter of an alcoholic, and I can't remember my father's drinking because he got sober in AA when I was only a few years old, so in some of the Alateen meetings, I've had to sit back and learn some of the hard times that I've been spared because of this wonderful program. But to me, AA has become a way of life. I actively became a part of the AA program when I was about 11 years old. My brother had been going to meetings since he was about that age, and he's three and a half years older than I am.
And all that time, I'd been wanting to go to meetings, mainly because my brother was going and my father was going, and I was more curious than anything else, I suppose. But once I got in those meetings and began to hear the people talking and learned some of the real way of life that AA is, it suddenly became my way of life, and I've loved these meetings ever since and gotten to them as often as I can.
I went to AA open meetings for a number of years, and then in our area, an Al-A-Nine group was opened up. My grandmother went, and I also attended meetings with her. And then later on in our area, they tried to start an Alateen group, and my brother and I both took part in this group. Since then, we've moved up to the country, and our nearest AA meeting is about 30 miles away, and we travel once a week that distance, as often as we're home on the Friday night when we meet, to attend this meeting. Now, in the country, they don't have Al-A-Nine, and they don't have Alateen, but they have open meetings, and it's a real family program there. So if I'm not officially a member of Alateen, I'm a member of an AA group, and I think that's what all of us are.
The AA way of life has become my way of life because you don't have to be 40 or 50 to become powerless over things, and you don't start having problems when you get older. They start very young. Some people wondered, particularly when I was younger, if it was advisable to put a person my age in the influence of hearing a lot of unhappy and sad things. They wondered if it might be a rather morbid influence. And I feel that this is wrong, that what I have learned through AA, the hearing of these people's stories and the troubles that they have had, has only increased my faith and hope in the goodness of man.
The best people I've met have been through AA, I think, and the stories that I have heard have only helped to give me a stronger belief in God and in a decent way of life, and they certainly haven't made me morbid. Because AA, although the stories before they get into AA are very sad and very serious, the end makes it a real, a true comedy, which is the happy ending in AA. It's hard to know what to start to talk about. AA has become so close to me, the steps. I think I can start this way. When a person is younger, their parents are God to them in a certain sense. I mean, the parents are always right, and the child can look to the parents when he gets in trouble.
And when you get to be a so-called teenager, when you begin to grow up, you discover suddenly that your parents aren't God, and perhaps you discover it sooner when there is an active alcoholic in the family, because you can't look up to that kind of a parent. And there is a tendency in young people at that point to despise their parents because they aren't God, they're just human beings, and somehow that makes them worse because they've dropped so far down in the child's estimation.
[00:40:13]
And at this point, kids are at quite a loss. I remember what a shock it was to me when I realized that my parents were human, that they had faults, that I couldn't look up to them, and I didn't know quite where to turn, although at this point I had been going to AA meetings, and I knew something about the AA program. But then I found that God is the parent, the person to whom you can always look up. And I didn't have to go through a period of rebellion against my parents. I simply had to realize they were human, and my father increasingly, instead of being a father, becomes more and more a friend, but not an enemy and not someone to look down upon.
Because when I learn my father's human, I have to learn something else, that I'm human too, and that I can make the same mistakes, and I certainly can't look down on one who's so much like me. And so I have learned to respect my parents and respect their parenthood and look up to them in that way, but also to realize their humanity and my humanity, and to help through the AA program to work with this.
The inventory has meant an awful lot to me. I think most people have trouble admitting they're wrong. I always have. At home, when I get corrected, once again, when you get to be my age, you figure, what right do your parents have to correct you if they have sometimes the same faults? For example, anger. Well, if I'm corrected for being angry, I can say, well, he gets angry too. What right does he have to correct me? But then I learned that you don't take anybody else's inventory in this program. You take your own inventory and work with that.
And so, in a way, my father's my sponsor in AA and my father and my friend, and I thank this AA program and all the groups I've been with for the wonderful way of life that I've been led into. No matter where I go, I'll always try to keep in touch with AA and try to live this program to the best of my ability. Thank you. That was wonderful, Kit. And needless to say, you can tell by the expressions on your faces, you got the same thing out of it that I did. Herb, since you almost got wrapped up a while ago, we'll let you finish wrapping right now.
This had been a meeting of AA, I would have known that was rigged. They'll do anything to improve the looks of the scenery. Some of the things that you said certainly strike home, because I have a daughter about her age and three right on down the line. And thank God that you have shown me that I am hopeless over this problem of teenage. It's wonderful to me, though, what a fine job a loving father is doing, one in the words of a person I heard speak not long ago, when we kept our sticky fingers out of the deal. We have asked his guidance, we have put our children in his hands, and the results are as astounding as the results we have seen around us all week.
A few months ago I was in Midland, and I was real fortunate I was able to attend an Al-Anon meeting in which they had a panel. There were members of AA, also members of Al-Anon. One of the members said something about, well, this is the Al-Anon program. If you come in here and you don't belong, you can always go in there. But if you go in there and belong, you can't ever come back in here. Well, they've talked about some of you folks being mixed up. I guess I'm in worse shape than you are. I came into this relationship through AA, and now I'm back over here. But it was through work with alcoholics that I found the faith for which I had been searching and which had escaped me.
I found the faith for which I had been searching and which had escaped me, even though four years of college and three years of seminary, but actually Al-Anon is where I belong. I
[00:45:07]
had a brother who was an alcoholic. He died before I ever knew what was wrong with him. And I had the wonderful privilege of serving as a field representative with our Texas Commission on Alcoholism for 15 months, and for this I will eternally be grateful. It was a wonderful experience to me. And I think as the months went on, I became more and more impressed and I am becoming more impressed every day with the tremendous potential of our Al-Anon program. For instance, about a year ago, a man in Hereford called me. He's an older man. He's been very close to me and to my family for years, and he said, you know my son is living in Phoenix. He said, he must be an alcoholic. He's sure having a lot of trouble. But he said, you know his poor wife, said she's here now, or no, has been here.
She's gone back, and said she is on the verge of complete, a complete breakdown. Well, I went down to the clubhouse that night and got a world directory and looked at Phoenix. There were 15 or 20 clubs. I didn't know, but I asked for guidance. And I know I received that guidance because out of all of those clubs, when I called, the lady that answered the telephone, I found out later, has been a member of Al-Anon for years, was working in a rehabilitation hospital, and certainly knew the need for urgency. I called her one night and asked her if she could call me the next night and report. And when this man came to me concerning his son and his daughter-in-law, he said, is there anything that I can do?
And I said, there certainly is. Beginning right now, pray that God's will may be done in this situation. And we both prayed for that. And you know the next night when that woman called me from Phoenix, she said, well this has been a wonderful day. She said, yesterday, about three hours after you called, the young man in question turned himself in to an AA-12 step house. He's sobering up. I went to see his wife. She was on the verge of insanity, but said, we're real fortunate. We have a group that meets here during the daytime, so if the husband objects to the wife going to the meetings, they can come at that time.
And said she made a meeting today, and said we were able to get through to her that there is hope. And to make a long story shorter, a few months later, she was back in Hereford, and I went to see her. And I said, well, how is your husband, and how are you? But she said, he's still drinking. But she said, you know, Herb, it's wonderful. I have begun to find the way in which I have sanity, the beginning of peace of mind and security. I am taking steps to go to dental technician school, so that whether he sobers up or not, I can give more or less a stable home to these wonderful children of mine. And there was a look of hope in her eyes.
I've seen this, and of course I have, I'm in a unique position in many ways. I hear what the church has to say about you, I hear what you have to say about the church. I have made 12-step calls, and a couple of years ago I thought there was nothing in the world any worse than making a 12-step call and trying to sell a drunk a bill of goods that he wasn't ready to buy yet. Well, there is something worse, something harder. That's calling on the wife, or the mother, or the sister, or the brother of an alcoholic, and trying to sell them a bill of goods that they're sick to, that they need help. Well, if that SOB had sobered up, my troubles would all be over tomorrow. I haven't got any troubles. Of course, this depends more or less on which side of the family you're speaking to. But I heard Jean A. from Fort Worth tell that she went to Al-Anon when she found a way in which she could live a happy, normal life with serenity and peace, and as her husband, from more or less a drunken stupor, kept looking at her and seeing the change.
[00:50:02]
And I think it went something like this, it wouldn't be verbatim, but this is generally it. After about a year, she'd made so much improvement. One night he said, I just wonder, they've done so darn much for you, do you suppose they could do anything for me? And she said, well, I just don't know. They say they can help anybody. It's possible they could. And he said, well, do you suppose they'd let me in? Well, I don't know. She said, it doesn't cost a thing, and if you don't like it, you don't have to go back. If you think there's any possibility they might have something to offer, I'd suggest you go, but that's up to you.
And she walked out to her meeting. And the last time I saw him, about a year ago in Brownwood, I think he'd been sober seven or eight years. And this, I believe, is a potential that we're missing. There's two or three things that I want to bring out. One, Marty M. made a terrific impression on me, because this thing, after we have realized it in our own mind, then when someone puts a name to it, it makes an impression. Two years ago at the Institute, she said, one, you know, some of you alcoholics have admitted that first step, and then you, I've heard this distinction made, and then later you become to accept it as a, as a truth.
We all have this same thing, admitting and accepting. But we just are not going to give up to this business that we are helpless over alcohol, whether we're drinking it or whether someone else is. Last January, I was extremely fortunate. I attended a minister's workshop in Abilene, Dr. Kleinbell, author of the book, Guide to Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic, and this was his doctor's thesis. He's a Methodist minister, bless him. And I'm going to get, the word Presbyterian has only been mentioned here once, and right now I'm going to get my plug in, I am right with you. And if we can find two more, things ought to develop. I've always heard any time you get four Presbyterians together, it's always a fifth. So if we can find two more, we'll be all right. I've had a situation in our own home group there, where two women, I know both of them and I love them, both of their husbands are in AA and both are relatively young.
And I heard these two women discussing about six months ago, they were talking to me, and they said, the Al-Anon program, yes I'm going to, but I'll tell you this, I just couldn't stand it if that husband of mine started back drinking again. And I got to talking to them about it. I said, I'm just afraid you girls maybe have missed the prime objective here. The Al-Anon program is not to keep your husband sober. I said, it's to teach you a way in which you can live regardless of what he does. Well, that's all right. I still don't think I could stand it if he started drinking.
Well, one of them had to about two months ago. It's a tragic thing. And the thing that made it so bad, he was with me in Oklahoma City when it started. And I brought him home. But it was, really it was an experience to me, because I, this thing that I mentioned a minute ago about Marty M. and it skipped, and so I just had to wait till it came back. I'll go on with it now. This emotional acceptance of the disease concept. I accepted this intellectually about three or four years ago. But one day, the first time that it ever came to me, when I saw a drunk stumbling along, that I didn't go through this method and say, all right, he's drunk. Therefore, he may be an alcoholic. And if he is, he's sick, and he needs compassion. I used, that used to be the route I took. But one day a change came in my thinking, and anytime I see a man or a woman that's had too much to drink now, the first thoughts are just an empty spot in my heart. Because, a tremendous feeling of compassion, because here is a man or woman that's had too much to drink, and maybe they didn't want to. Now, this, I think, is the emotional acceptance of this thing that Marty M. talked about. It makes all the difference in the world, and the way we feel. And until we accept this. Now, at this time that this man went to Oklahoma City with me, at the time he sobered up, I did not have that emotional acceptance. It would have upset me terribly had he gotten drunk within the first six months. He
[00:55:00]
didn't do it. But you know, in Oklahoma City, we were there. We'd gone to attend the sales meeting, and I'll tell you, it's stunk. I thought about getting drunk myself. I really, you convinced me, I don't think it would have helped. But he came in the room about five o'clock that afternoon. He said, Herb, I had a couple of drinks with a couple of the boys this afternoon. I said, well, I could tell it by your eyes. Well, in a couple of minutes, he hadn't lied to me, or in a couple of years, but within two minutes, he said, you know, I need, could you loan me a couple of bucks? I want to get a bite to eat. Well, we were signing tickets and leaving them down at the desk. He didn't need money to get them things to drink on, I mean, to eat. And I said, well, you borrowed, you loaned me $20, and I've never repaid it. Will you, you wouldn't take it. Will you take it now? Boy, he said, I sure am. I'm real hungry, so I'll take it now. And typically, he came back in a few minutes with a half pint. Of course, the next trip, it was a pint, and the next day, it was a fifth. But you know, my feelings were altogether different. There was a one, I knew that I could not control that drinking one way or the other. I knew I was not responsible for it. The next day, as we drove to Enid, he wanted to stop and get a fifth, and then he wanted a seven up, and then we made a mistake. I got seven up, and he wanted a Coke, so I stopped and got that. And he kept waiting for me, and finally, along late in the afternoon, he said, you make me so damn mad. If I stay with you, I'm going to sober up. He said, there's just no point in this. He said, here, I'm drinking, and said, you just, anything I want, all right. He said, you haven't condemned me, you haven't criticized me, but I'm just afraid if I stay around you long, I just have to stay sober. Well, I loved him, and I still do, and that there's nothing I can do about his drinking. This I've learned. Only God can do that. And the one thing that sobered him up when we got back was a call from Lubbock, a man that had committed suicide, and he took the responsibility for this man's death, because the last time he was in Hereford, he'd been drinking and couldn't talk to him. But it was a crisis, and it sobered him up.
These things are so essential to an understanding of this. These girls in Hereford that have attended Al-Anon for two years, and still think that if their husband got drunk, their life would collapse. Any time this, we have this, this feeling, we are missing the program. And I, I think sometimes, and I, I don't know, I have never heard this designation of a sobriety date for Al-Anon. I think maybe if you, if, if we as members of Al-Anon had a date for our last slip, we'd be a little more humble. And I guarantee you the problems that I have, and that I use the AA program to handle, my period of sobriety is pretty short in all those problems. Because now with me, the reaction on the part of an Al-Anon that he's drunk again, therefore this program is no good. Can you say, call that anything in the world except a slip? We're denying everything we have claimed to believe. But I still say that here, I believe, is one of the greatest potentials that we have. Because with the alcoholic, now Dr. Bell and others that I have read, said there are two stages in which that alcoholic can be reached with any degree of success. The very early stages, and the final stages. Once he gets into this second stage, the middle stage, you know the going's pretty rough. All right, through our Al-Anon effort, we can educate the people to recognize these early symptoms. And going back in January, Tom Shipp was at this same workshop in Abilene.
He brought out a thing that is almost unbelievable. But he said that in their church, the Lovers Lane Church, of course they have a man there that know the symptoms and know the early symptoms. They can kick them out like that. But they, 66 people in that church, that they called in and said, we as your ministers have noticed certain things. We know that you are having trouble because of these things. We feel possible that alcohol could be involved. Would you accept any kind of help?
Now you know we've always heard that there's no bottom, but the unbelievable thing out of this, and he said at that time, this is not ready for publication, these are preliminary reports, and I forgot to ask him about this,
[01:00:04]
but you know he said out of those sixty-six, sixty-four, thirty-three had definitely said yes, we are on the verge or have just crossed over, thirty-three had taken definite steps for help, twenty-nine they were still working with, and only one had slammed the door in their face and said it's none of your business. Now isn't this revolutionary to what we've been taught? But I believe this is possible with an understanding on the part of the Al-Anon, the non-alcoholic. I believe this with all my heart. And then from one other viewpoint, especially if they get into this second stage, we have one individual involved, and in most cases if it's a young family, there's a wife and two to three children. Until we can reach this man, certainly there's only one thing that we can do, and that is start the family getting well. And I'm tremendously grateful to my church, for from the general assembly level it has been made clear that the responsibility of no minister is in any way lessened because of the drinking of any member of that church. Whether they drink for whatever reason or how much, you are responsible to serve them, to go and show them that God loves them. And like Tom says, if the minister continues going into this home where there is a drinking problem, the neighbors certainly can't say, well, the church has turned their back on them. The church in the eyes of many people is the only representation of God that they see. And what of the minister that withdraws? I'm sold completely on the Al-Anon program, and I'm thoroughly convinced that if we can take the twelve steps of the AA program and apply them in our lives, you old boys that used to make twelve-step calls and have to bone up on a lot of these pitches that you've made, some of you are going to be begging and looking for people to talk to. Because you know and I know when a situation in the home straightens out, take the ideal, understanding and love and all of these things, in an ideal situation is it going to be much of a job to sell the alcoholic on these twelve steps that he knows he needs. I believe in it with all my heart, and I pray that as it has been my good fortune in the past, that some way in his wisdom and in his love, he sees fit to let me continue to have a close association with both of these wonderful groups. Because it's such a wonderful thing to be able to work and talk to people and labor in a field that is your really and truly first love. And this has been my privilege even months before I went to work for the Texas Commission on Alcoholism. It has been my privilege since I have left the commission, and as I say I pray that it will be his will that it is my privilege to work with you wonderful people on both sides of the fence until he calls me on over like Bish said and says, come on home, you've done the work that you were sent there to do, come on home and be with me. This is a tremendous challenge that all of us have. And in the words of that wonderful man that was here last year and is not back, all of you know this little thing, that Tex N. wrote, why you were chosen from this work, no case too pitiful, and all of this beautiful way that he expressed it. I was just thinking, it's been on my heart because I met Tex in Wisconsin, our relationship was very, very dear to both of us. And I have several letters at home from Tex that show that no situation, no situation was too pitiful, no sacrifice was too great. Nothing that he could do was too great a thing to give to bring a little love into one of these God-suffering children. This is a privilege that we have.
And may all of us not go off blindly by ourselves, but humbly seek his guidance that he will
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lead us to those and to the method, that is his method, and the method that will be effective. Thank you. I don't know about you all, but I have thoroughly enjoyed all of these speakers, and I think we ought to give them another big round of applause.