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Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – 12 Step Study Part 1 1998 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-12-step-study-part-1-1998-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:18:03
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Okay, so this is really a special treat. When I picked up Mary Pearl today, I said, Mary Pearl, is there anything you want me to say in introduction? She said, well, Charlene, she said, introducers introduce, and speakers speak. So this is going to be short and to the point. Mary Pearl is a legend in our own time. Really special. Really special. See? It's been a trip listening to her comments the whole night, believe me. She's straightened us out. But anyway, we're really proud to have Mary Pearl here. And you guys, let's give her a special round of applause. How many people here asked for the air conditioning?
Okay, y'all comfortable now? Very good. She said, you know, we did these hot air balloons and just for you, and I said, are you insinuating I'm full of hot air? When I heard the weather forecast last night, and they said, there may be delays in Atlanta. Has anybody here fly through Atlanta? That's a given, you know. That is a given, but at least I didn't have to freak out in Atlanta today. I'm very glad to be here. I got here and I don't know where Charlene was, but I was here. And so I looked all over the airport. I think she was asleep or reading somewhere. And I teased her about it. And then we got outside and the joke was on me. Now I have not gotten into a car that size in 25 years, and there's a reason. So I had to come here and get therapy first thing to get my body unwound. I couldn't even get in on the first attempt because my legs are longer than the seat space was, you know.
I was like a grasshopper in heat or something up there. I don't know. And I just told her she says, is there anything I can do? I said, yeah, I can give you another damn car to go back to the airport. I can tell you that. I've never known anybody that would go pick anybody up in the airport in a mosquito. Some of us are sicker than others. But I do want to thank Charlene in all seriousness, Charlene and Debbie and Terry for the warm welcome that I received and for the wonderful meal a while ago. I was getting faint. But it's nice. It's nice. And it's nice to be invited back here because I did a step study in Augusta years ago. Or is anybody here that was in the program then? You're still here and you came back. See, it just proves some are sicker than others, you know. I mean, I'm here to Now, I remember it fondly, my last trip here. And I thank you very much for having me. And I hope that we're going to have some fun this weekend, you know, because when I tell you I'm Mary Pearl and I'm an Al-Anon who's happy, joyous and free, I mean it. Thank you, Don.
I'm so glad that you've got the format back. It's a custom in the rooms of AA and Al-Anon that when someone introduces himself, you say hi. So now that we all know, let's try it again. I'm Mary Pearl. I'm an Al-Anon who's happy, joyous and free. Well, by God, there's an audience there. I see. It's getting a runner for me. Now you're getting in with it now. See, now you're getting with it. This is going to be sort of an informal weekend. I don't know how to do formal. But I want you to know that I'm here and I am a member of Al-Anon.
And I am a member of the Rose City Big Book Black Belt Al-Anon family group. And the only requirement for membership is to be able to say it three times real quick and not stumble over it. And it's hard. I'll tell you. All them bees in there. One of the things I've learned around these rooms is I take my program very seriously, but I don't take myself so seriously. And that's just the opposite of how I came in. Because when I came in the rooms of Al-Anon, it was all about me. It was all about me. I can remember I had been in and maybe to my third meeting and I went to a speaker meeting. And it just so happened the lady who had become my sponsor, her husband, was speaking. And, you know, every once in a while an alcoholic will bite the bullet and talk in front of a group of Al-Anons.
Terrorizes them, you know. But he had come over to talk to the Al-Anon group. And I'm
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sitting there listening. And I didn't know what the format was for a speaker meeting or anything of that nature. And so he made a statement. Now, he is a black man and he's bald headed. And he made the statement, though, that, you know, we try to hide out and we do denial in these rooms like a fat woman wears a tent dress hoping nobody will know she's fat. And I said, you mean like a bald headed man wears a hat? You see, it was all about me. He hurt my feelings, you know, right off the bat. I'd had enough of those darn alcoholics. But I want you to know I'm not here as an authority on Al-Anon or the steps or the big book or any of that. I'm just here to share with you my experience, strength and hope and how I've come to recover from the family disease of alcoholism. You know, it's a family disease. And I'm not going to share any theories with you this weekend.
I'm not going to share any ideas and thoughts and opinions. I'm going to share experience because you can't argue with my experience. You can argue with my thoughts and my ideas and my opinions, but you cannot argue with experience because that's what I did. You know, I've been here, did that and got the T-shirt. That's the way it works, you know. Now, I qualify for the Al-Anon program. I qualified for the Al-Anon program when I arrived.
I'm talking about when I arrived on earth. I qualified because my mother's father was an alcoholic who died in the state hospital with wet brain. My mother's mother was an alcoholic. She died of cirrhosis of the liver. My mother's oldest brother was an alcoholic. Only we didn't call them alcoholics. We called them drunks, you know. Alcoholic wasn't a very popular word back in the 40s. But we called them the drunks. And she had two sisters.
And it just seemed like my mother was the only non-alcoholic in her family. And I think the reason is that she didn't drink. I've always felt like if mother had had a drink, she would have been easier to get along with. You know, I had always felt that. Because, you know, the non-drinker is the more neurotic. The non-drinker. Because the alcoholic gets some relief. You know, they get some relief for their misery. And the non-alcoholic doesn't have that little escape, you know. We don't just pass out and go away. Now, I've been known to have brownouts, you know. But never blackouts, you know. Brownouts is just when you're just so full of it that you just brown out, you know. You know, but you're still functioning, but you're just browned out. Now, like I say, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous will tell you that only an alcoholic can diagnose themselves as an alcoholic. And so today, you know, I know they look like drunks. They quack like ducks. They look like ducks. They quack like ducks. They sounded like ducks. And they acted like ducks. So, I think they probably had that problem. The doctors seem to think so. But my main thing was none of those people's alcoholism bothered me. You know, when you grow up and that's the way it is, that's the way it is. It doesn't, it's not abnormal. Now, what is embarrassing and humiliating about it would be when I would go and I would be standing at the bus stop waiting for the school bus and this unshaven, bad-smelling, creepy old man in an overcoat in the middle of the summertime would come up and say, that's my grandbaby. And I would say, I've never seen that son-of-a-bitch before in my life. You know, and I was in the 7th and 8th grade. You know, I can remember that and I can remember telling my mama, don't let him do that, you know. And mama going, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. You know, like don't let him do anything. But now, other than that, I really didn't have to deal with the alcoholism because there wasn't any alcohol in our home. There wasn't anything in my home except my mother that was, that was weird. And I really didn't think that mother was weird. I just thought mother was mean. That was how I perceived it. Mother was mean. Now, my spouse is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and Good Standing. He just celebrated 21 years of continued sobriety.
And that's neat for him. And I don't get any credit for any of that, you know. None whatsoever. That's his deal. But I'm very qualified for the program. I also have an ex-spouse that was an alcoholic. And I have several other people in my life. You know, I'm the kind of person that you can say, well, what is it? Well, her vet's an alcoholic and her doctor's an alcoholic. Because it's like I seem to be a carrier because everywhere I go, there they are, you know. And I think what it amounts to is I am attracted to the alcoholic for
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whatever reason, you know. The sick attracts sick type syndrome, you know. And I have a tendency to ferret these people out. Now, I tell you I'm an al-anon. And I don't know what that means to you when I say that. But, you know, like I say, I was eligible or qualified for al-anon the day I was born because there was alcoholism in our family. But now I like to use my home group's definition of what an al-anon is. And that's someone who not just qualifies for the program by having a loved one or friend who has a disease of alcoholism, but it's someone who attends al-anon meetings on a regular basis. To me, that's three or four times a week. And who works the 12 steps and works the 12 traditions in their personal life and actively helps other al-anons. To me, that's what an al-anon is. And, you know, it really, I'm one of those, you know, I really get irritated when I hear an alcoholic who has a spouse who is not in the fellowship say, that's my little al-anon. And I want to look at him and say, oh, I just want to hurt you when you say it. Because that doesn't make any more sense than for an al-anon who's in the program who has a husband who's still practicing drinking, says they're my AA. It's the same kind of difference, you know, because when I tell you that, it's something special to me to be an al-anon. I feel very privileged to be an al-anon. And the thing about it is, I qualified, but I had to do something myself.
I had to make a decision to work the program and to make that part of my life serious. Because it might, whether you know it or not, your life depends upon how well you're going to work that. Your life depends upon it. And if you don't believe it, I have seen people die in al-anon from the disease of alcoholism. I have seen that. Now, in general, I want to tell you some things that I think are must before you're going to get started very well in the steps. And the first thing is a sponsor. You're going to have to have a sponsor. Now, if you notice, the steps are all written in plural. It says we. Nowhere in the step does it say I. It doesn't say I admitted. It doesn't say I came.
It says we, meaning that you don't do it by yourself, because isn't that how we got here? You know, leave me alone. I can handle this. You know, OK. And you know, it's like I like to go and travel across the country. And when I'm on vacation and that kind of thing and I want to go on a tour, I want a tour guide. I want somebody who's been there, done it and knows the best stuff to see. And don't waste my time on this fiddly stuff. You know, I don't want to go three thousand miles to see a ball of string.
I don't want to do that. You know, I want to I want to see, you know, this Royal Gorge over here. And I want to I want to do the biggies, you know, and I want to know the best way to spend my time and my energy. And the same thing's true in this program. I want somebody who's been there, who's done it, who knows what not to spend your time on and to tell you what works and they can tell you what works because it's what they did.
And, you know, you're here in these rooms, you know, if you want what we have and you're willing to go to any length to get it, if you want what we have, you're going to have to do what we do. Duh. You know, I've got people I sponsor that don't seem to understand that fact. You know, it's real frustrating. It's like I'm more committed to their recovery than they are. You know, that irritates me. You know, the thing about it is you've got to be you've got to make a commitment to your own recovery. When you get a sponsor, that's your first step in admitting that you are going to work on your recovery is to get somebody to do the deal with. So you're not out there floundering. And you see people that come in the meetings and everything. And they just they just want to empty their whole soul right out in the meeting, you know, and we just stop them and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who's your sponsor? And they'll say, oh, I don't have one. We'll get you one before you leave. And and we do. We get one. We give them a temporary spot. We give them somebody that they can start talking to because our meetings are the greatest good for the greatest number. And that's where recovery is shared, not sickness. You know, it's so important to go into your meetings and have something to take home besides a resentment because somebody else took up the meeting describing their sickness of the day. And you know, we're Illinoisans. And that means, you know, that we have this idea that we can fix people. And so when someone shares a problem, we all the whole group now has determined we'll fix her tonight, you know. So then we need that regular attendance at step meetings.
If you don't have a step meeting, start a step meeting, focus on the steps, what the steps are telling you to do, work them together as a group. I mean, there's a lot of things that you can do with that. And then you're going to have to bring an open mind. If your mind is closed, it's all just going to wave in your hair as it goes by. You know, I mean, there it goes right over your head, you know, because your mind's closed, you know. And then you've got to learn a little self-honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself, whether you're honest with other people or not, is not near as important as when you lie to yourself.
Because when you lie to yourself, you lie to yourself.
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Got to Be Willing to Do Something Different, In Other Words, You're Going to Have to Be Willing to Change, Now Those are the Little Five Ingredients It's Going to Take, If You're Going to Be Very Successful in Working the Steps, Now You Might Not Come In with All Five of Them, But You're Going to Have to Develop Them as You Go Along, Until You Get That, If You're Going to Get the Maximum Benefit, Now, You're Going to Have to Be Willing to Make Changes, And It's Like My Sponsor Told Me, She Said, You've Got to Make Some Changes, And I Said, Like What?
And She Said, Well, We'll Start with Everything, And I Said, You Mean There's Nothing Good Here? And She Said, I Don't Know, We'll Find Out, My Sponsor Is a Wonderful Woman, And She Knew Exactly How to Do Me, Because I Am an Aggressive, Overbearing, I Believe We Talked About It in Al-Anon, Understanding Ourselves, It Says, Smug, Arrogant, Self-Righteous, Dominating, That's the Kind of Person, See, That's What You're Going to Have to Deal With, There's a Lot of Those in This Program, And She Would Say Things to Me, Like, Why Are You Here?
When I Would Be Telling Her What I Thought I Ought to Be Doing, And She'd Say, Why Are You Here? And I'd Say, Well, I'm Trying to Learn How, And She Said, Your Best Thinking Got You Here, Now We'll Forget About That, And Here's What You're Going to Do, You Know, It Makes a Difference, You Need Someone That Can Give You Some Directions, That Can Get You, And You Know, People Say, Well, It's a Suggested Program, No, It's a Darn Well Better Program, You Better Well Do It, If You're Going to Get Any Better, You Know, And Suggestions Wouldn't Do It with Someone Like Me, Suggestions, But I Had to Have Some Definite Things to Do, She Gave Me Things to Do that Made My Life Different, And, You Know, I Would Come to Her with the Question of the Day, and the Dilemma of the Day, and I Would Call Her, and I Would Say, Now, Here's What He's Doing, because that was the Problem, of Course, You Know How it Is when You're a Newcomer, and She'd Say, Is Your Bed Made?
Hello? Now, I Cannot Understand What That Has Anything to Do with the Problem over Here, and I'd Say, Well, No, and She'd Say, Well, Go Make It, and Call Me Back, so I'd go in there, and I'd be, What is the Matter with Her? She's Supposed to be Helping, Did She Understand This Stuff? And so, then I would go, and I'd call her back, and she'd say, Well, the Kitchen Cleaned, Well, What Does That Have to Do with my Problem Here?
And so, but what she did was, at the end of the day, she hadn't answered my question at all, but I'm going to tell you what, I was living in a nice place. So what she did, she got my focus off of what the Problem was, because, see, as long as you're focused on the Problem, you're in the Problem. And so, she gave me constructive things to do, so that at the end of the day, no, I may not have solved the Problem, because the Problem usually didn't have my name on it, it had somebody else's name on it.
You know, I learned a long time ago, you know, people on Weight Watchers, they'll tell you, if you've got sugar in the first five ingredients on a label, then you don't eat it, or if you've got salt within the first, they'll tell you to read labels on things. Well, you know, my system in the program is, well, I adapted that, and I said, You know, if somebody else's name is in the first five words of the sentence, it's not mine.
You know, leave it alone, put it back on the shelf. And that's what my sponsor was teaching me to do here. That's what she was doing with all that. Because she told me, she said, You know, your best thinking got you here. The very best you could do got you here. And she says, Now, you know, you want to do something that works, well, remember, nothing changes until something changes. Now, isn't that profound?
Nothing changes until something changes. She said, You have to be the person to change. When you change, something will change. And, you know, the amazing thing about this is, it was happening, but it was happening in reverse. J.D. had come into the program of AA, and he was getting better, which made my life more unmanageable than it had ever been before. You see, he was changing, and therefore, the situation was changing.
And that's what forced me to have to do something different, was him changing. Isn't that amazing? You know, we have in our preamble, it says, Changed attitudes can aid recovery for a long time. I said in meetings, and what I heard was, If you change your attitude, he'll recover. You know, that's how sick you know you can be. Now, the reason I got this lady as my sponsor, she was not the person I would have picked for a sponsor, because she was black.
Now, I was raised in Little Rock, back during the 50s, when we had the problem. And so, I was a racist. And so, she would be the last person in the whole world that I would ask to be my sponsor. However, when I would walk in the room, she always came over. She has this glow about her. And she would come in, and she would smile, and she'd say, How are you doing?
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And I'd say, Fine, thank you. And then she'd, you know, I'd just say, Huh. She'd sit next to me in the meeting, and she'd hand me a book, or she'd show me something, and she'd say, If you ever need to talk, and she'd give me her number. She was living the program of Al-Anon, and it crossed the barrier. I didn't realize it at the time, but you see, she was giving unconditional love. And she could sense how I felt, and she didn't let that bother her.
And so, finally, one day, I just decided, see, my thing has always been, face whatever it is out there. Just meet it head on. You know, go for it. And so, I just went up to her, and I explained to her that I was from the 50s, and I didn't like people like her, but I seemed to think I wanted her to be my sponsor. What'd she think about that? And she said, Well, I told her, and I used the N-word, I said, I don't like the N-word.
And she said, I don't either. And I said, What are you talking about? And she said, Well, it's not a color, honey. That's an attitude. See, she was a smart woman, and she said, But you know, in here, all of that doesn't make any difference, because we're hearts that hurt. And a heart that hurts doesn't have a race, doesn't have a color, doesn't have a creed, doesn't have a sex. A heart that hurts is a heart that hurts.
And so, we've been bonded for life. I think if she'd known that, she would have changed her mind that day, but she sends her best wishes. I talked to her just the other night. You see, my sponsorship is still working for me, still working for me. Now, I don't do casual sponsorship, and that's that suggestions and call me when you have a chance and what have you. I do very structured sponsorship, because I want people to get in and work the steps, so we have assignments and things to do on this.
Now, I like to say, what I'm going to tell you this weekend is not conference approved. The steps are, but I'm not. And yeah, you'll hear me mention the unmentionable, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, it's so funny, you know, we took their steps and we do everything else, but God, don't read that book. I'm going to share with you out of Al-Anon books and stuff like everything. You know, that's just my experience, because I was raised on that book.
When I came in, we didn't have all the books that we have today. How did I get to Al-Anon in the first place? You know, that's sort of an interesting thing to me. You know, I think it starts back when I took my sick little boy, that was my husband, but we had this mother-child relationship, and he had this unacceptable behavior, and he did things that I didn't like, and so I would punish him when he would do these things.
And so one night, he was sitting there, and I just told him, I said, this is it, you're out of here, you're out of my life, I don't want you anymore, I'm tired, it's like, I have failed, I have failed. And you know, any time you enter the ring with alcoholism, you will fail, you will fail. And I didn't know that's what I was in there with. And I knew he drank too much, I knew he was a damn drunk, but I did not know he was an alcoholic, because I didn't have a clue about alcoholism.
I had seen this alcoholic, and I had seen my mother's people, but he didn't drink like my mother's people. He didn't act like my mother's people. My mother's people, every time they'd go out and get drunk, they'd get into fights, they'd try to hurt one another, shoot one another, do whatever. And it was really exciting to watch, but, you know, and see the disease, without me knowing it, I had it. And what would happen when mine would go out and drink, all he wanted to do was come home and go to bed, and I was the one to fight him, one to shoot him, one to hurt him, one to kill him.
You know, but there's nothing wrong with me, you understand. And so I took him to the family physician, because he told me, he said, I'm sick. And I said, that's right, you are, sick, sick, sick. You know, our online book talks about how sarcasm, sarcasm tears flesh, you know. And they were telling me that Joyce gave you a little thing to go by here. Well, see, mine is this. This is an elanon sharpening her tongue.
I had perfected sarcasm, you know, it was a work of art, you know. So I took him to our family doctor, and he told the doctor he had a slight drinking problem. It's like saying the Titanic had somewhat of a bad day. And the doctor suggested Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, you know, you really should go to Alcoholics Anonymous, because they seem to know what to do with a drinking problem. And J.D. was very offended, and he said, I'm not an alcoholic.
And I said, that's right, he's not. Because I couldn't identify his alcoholism. It didn't resemble what I knew alcoholism was, or what I knew the drinking life was.
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And so we were going to go home, and he was going to have a prescription that he had asked for. And the prescription he asked for was Antabuse, and it's a drug that supposedly, what I heard was, if you give him this pill every morning, he can't drink. That's not what the doctor said. But you know, I'm at a point in my life where I hear what I want to hear, and I see what I want to see. And what happened here was, he told him, there's a pill that if you take it and drink when you take it, it can cause you convulsions, it can cause you a lot of problems.
And I can't imagine an alcoholic wanting to do that, but he was trying to stay in the house. And he really wanted to quit drinking, but he didn't know how to quit drinking, because he had tried. You know, he said, I can quit, that's no big deal, I just can't stay quit. And the key to it was, he couldn't have one drink that it didn't trigger the obsession for him to drink more. And my thing was, I didn't mind if he had a couple, I liked him better with a couple.
You know, he wasn't near so tense and uptight and all this kind of thing, but I never had him very long. It was like having a harem that you live with, he just changed all night long, going from personality, it's sort of like, you know, you say, well, is he a paranoid schizophrenic? No, I could have dealt with two, you know, two personalities. But you know, he had a multiple personality disorder, you know, it's like having a whole group of people over the night.
And so he went home ironed with this little prescription, which I got filled, and I became the administrator of the pill, because I don't trust him, and what I'm thinking is, if I give him the pill, he can't drink. So I started giving him the pill, while this time I have an epileptic dog, I have high blood pressure, and he's on the pill. Now, in a hurry, I can't tell you who got what every morning, but everybody got a pill.
Worst year of my life. I'm serious to tell you, because you see, I had this idea, you know, how we have the, you know, the worst thing you can hear an Al-Anon say is, I've been thinking, oh, see, my thought was, if he'll quit drinking, I'll be okay. You know, that's like, I have a headache, would you take an aspirin? You know, it's so crazy now, and looking back at it, but that was my thought process, if he'd just quit drinking, that was the only problem we had.
And so, he quit drinking. My life was not okay. My life was not okay. And so then, you know, it's very difficult when you have these belief systems, because see, I'm a boxer, I put people in boxes, and things in boxes, and I can't move them from a box to another box, because then that means you made a mistake when you put them in this box, so you've got to die in that box, that's the way it is. You can't take them out.
So, I couldn't admit, so I decided, well, the problem is, it's him, it's still him, and it's just him, it's not drinking, I don't even like him sober, you know, and it's like, well, get a divorce. Well, I can't get a divorce. Well, why can't you get a divorce? See, this is the little committee that comes in your head, you know, and I said, well, I can't get a divorce, well, why can't you get a divorce?
Well, if you got a divorce, and what if he found somebody else and didn't drink? Oh, couldn't take that chance. Because he told me every time it was something I did or didn't do was the reason he got drunk, and not only that, if he, you know, you think I've spent all these years with him and I'm going to give him somebody and him not drink, ha, I'll kill him first, you know, no, no. And then they said, oh, that's all right, what do you mean?
Well, if you were a widow, oh, what was that? Well, if you were a widow, you know, it's an honorable thing, it's not like me and divorce say, and, well, he's not dying quick enough, well, we can handle that, well, what do you want to do? Well, let's see, my personal favorite is let's take an ice pick, stab him in the neck and watch him drip. Oh, I like it. Well, I've always thought about that back in Elburn with a car, okay, buy new tires.
And that would be how my thinking process would go, and that's how it was going for me for much, you know. And then, I mean, violence, it was a normal thing in our home during the drinking, during the active drinking. I didn't feel as justified beating him up when he wasn't drunk, you know. He didn't know how to mind, you know, he had a real discipline problem. And I remember it was around the holidays and I did porcelains and ceramics and taught painting and stuff to supplement the income, it kept him out of jail a lot of times, wish I had my stuff back.
Anyway, you know, it's different now, you know, but I came in, or rather he came in one night and he'd been out drinking and he was coming down the hall and it was around Christmas and I had all these orders that I was working on for thousands of dollars of stuff and all of a sudden, you know, he was walking like Rick Rack, you know, bouncing off the wall. He was coming down the hall, you could hear him, and I told the dog, I said, he better not come in here.
[00:30:03]
And, um, well, let me tell you, my dog minded, that dog minded, and J.D. wouldn't. And so, anyhow, he came in the door, and he's standing there, you know, just sort of, and I said, don't come in this room. And he said, what do you mean don't come in this room? You know, all you have to do is just tell him, don't do something, you know. And that's the insanity on my part, you know, because, I mean, if I'd have thought about that for a second or two, with a sane mind, it would have said, don't cause a confrontation.
But I didn't, and I told him, don't come in here, and he said, I can come in here, it's my house, I can come in any room in the house I want to come in to. You know, it's just like, it's my car, keys, I'll drive, give me the damn keys, my car, I'll drive. You know, and so, anyway, he walked in the room, and I said, don't touch anything. And see, when I talk between my teeth, this is serious stuff now.
Got TMJ doing that. Anyway, so I'm over there, and I'm looking at him, and I said, don't you break anything in this room, I'll kill you. And he said, oh, really? And with that, he took his arm, and he knocked the shelves down. The whole row of shelves, thousands of dollars of stuff, just went crashing into bits, little dusty bits across the room. And I lost it, I lost it. And I grabbed him, and I got him by the collar, and he went, bit, bit, bit.
And, and then, you know, okay, so I've knocked him out now. And it's like, I don't even want to look at him. So I drug his body over, and I threw him in the closet, and shut the door, and went back to cleaning up the room. Now, his, he, one of his horrors is being buried alive. So when he came to, in the closet, an hour or so later, and he felt the clothing that was laying across him, you know, the coat, he thought it was the lining of his coffin.
And he began to scream, and go through all this madness. And I went in there, and I kicked, opened the door, and kicked him, and said, you're in a closet, shut up. And, shut the door back, and went on about my way. So, like I say, violence was a very known commodity in our home. So, sooner or later, we all know what was going to happen to J.D. You know, even though he was on anti-abuse, even all those things, sooner or later, the alcoholic is going to drink again, without any treatment.
And that's what he did, he got drunk. And the, the thing about it was, during all this period of time, the thought had come to me, when there was an item in the paper about a woman who had killed her husband, and they put her in jail, that that was a real unfair thing. And that, if I'd have been on that jury, that would never have happened. But I also had to call another meeting of the committee, because, you see, now we had to come up with the perfect way to do this.
And so, finally, one night, it occurred to us, in a little group session there, that if an alcoholic were to pass out in the bathtub and drown, who would know? It was a group conscience. Now, once you come up with the plan, when you put it into effect, it's not that big a deal, but you see, the decision's been made. So, when J.D. would come in that next year, and he would be drunk, well, the plan just sort of unfolded there.
You know, I mean, we had ice and snow on the ground, and I heard the truck coming through the yard, weird. You know, the sound of the truck, when it's not going in the garage, it sounds different than when it's going across the yard. And, you know, he clipped off our, we have a cast iron hitching post horse at the end of the yard, and he clipped that off, and he went across, and he hit a tree, and then he bounced into the side of the house.
And when I looked out the front window and saw him open the door and pour out of the truck, I knew, and I said, I'll kill S.O.B. if it's the last thing I ever do. So, that's what happened. When he opened the door, I didn't say anything to him, I just hit him. And when he fell, he hit the coffee table, and he hit his head on the coffee table, and it knocked him out. And so I drug him across the floor and down the hall into the bathroom, and I ran the bathtub full of warm water, because I was concerned, don't let him get cold.
Took his clothes off of him and put him in the bathtub and held him under. Now, there was a voice that came to me, and it says, you can't do this. And I said, what do you mean I can't do this? And the voice says, you can't do this. And I picked J.D. up by the hair of the head, and I said, the hell I can't. And I put him back down again. Now, there might be something wrong with you if you're having conversations like that, but the voice came back again.
It wasn't one of the group, and it was a different voice. And it says, do you realize you're committing murder here? No. You see, it had been justifiable homicide.
[00:35:01]
It was not murder. You know, that's premeditated murder when you think about it a long time like that. And it scared me. It scared me really bad because it's like all of a sudden you see the whole picture. And you see the truth. You see the clarity. You know, when you see yourself for what you've become, you've become an animal to fight any illness here. And so I snatched him out of the bathtub, and I dried him off, drug him into the bedroom, and got him in bed.
And then I got the hairdryer and dried his hair because I didn't want him to catch a cold. There's nothing wrong with me. You know? Well, it was different. You know, J.D. nearly died in that room because he had alcoholic poisoning. And like I say, in a period of time, I came home from work one day, and he was sitting there, and he wanted to know if I'd call Alcoholics Anonymous for him because he'd been trying all day long, and he was shaking so hard he couldn't get the phone number right.
So I called Alcoholics Anonymous, and I took him to his first meeting, and it was in one hour's time. And I took him over there, and a couple of Al-Anons came over to me, and they said, you know, we have Al-Anon, and it's for you. And I had no clue what they were talking about. I just said, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm here with him. Now, the A.A.s thought I was the alcoholic. I was not in great shape.
Well, you know, the thing about it is, now, having all that history, you can say to yourself, well, why didn't you know there was something wrong with you when you just tried to commit murder? Why did justification and rationalization come in? If he hadn't have got drunk, I wouldn't have had to do that. Therefore, it was his fault. Can't y'all see that? I mean, surely y'all can see that. So the problem for me when I got here and was talking with my sponsor was I had to be convinced I needed to change.
That's the reason sponsorship's so important. Because when I had read the steps, I did not want a step that had God in it. I can tell you that right off. So therefore, I could take the first step and the first half of the 12th step. You know, that's the only steps I could work. And I had to have sponsors to show me that blaming was all I was doing. Blaming. I blamed everything and everybody. Nothing was ever my fault.
You see, my self-esteem was so low, I couldn't afford to make mistakes. I felt that when I made a mistake, I was a mistake. And I felt less about me. I couldn't make a mistake and say, I made a mistake. Sorry. Now let's do what we can to correct it. You know, that's so simple. But when you don't have any self-esteem, that's the hardest thing in the world to do. And I couldn't do that, you know. And my sponsor told me, she says, there's no victims here, just volunteers.
Sorry about that. And, you know, I heard things all my life that might work for normal folks, but didn't work for me. Like, if you set your mind to it, there's nothing you can do. Well, I got a newsflash. There's lots of stuff I can do, no matter how hard I set my mind to it. I can't do it. And then God helps those who helps themselves. Doesn't that tell you you got to do it? And see, today I know that God helps those who ask for help and do his will.
Now there's the thing, you know. But nobody gave me that information, you know. And so I started out without any spiritual connection from the age of 12. Now, up to the age of 12, I was taken to Sunday school and church by my mom and dad. You know, they weren't the kind that every time the doors opened, they were there. But they were regular attenders, you know. They might not have made the Wednesday night thing.
And I was taught about a loving, kind God. I was taught that Jesus loves me. I was taught that I was a child of God. And that I was special and that I was precious to God. But when I was 12 years old, on November the 30th of 1954, I watched my daddy die of a heart attack. And I said, see, that message I got must be a lie. Because if God loved me, why would he take away my daddy? Because I only felt loved by my daddy.
I didn't feel loved by my mother. My mother, like I say, was very neurotic. She had an idea that if she wasn't working 24 hours a day, she was not worth anything. And so therefore, mother couldn't go and have fun and do stuff. And daddy was retired right after I was born. I'm a change of life baby. And I was raised as an only child, even though I had two brothers and a sister. Because they were all married and gone or dead by the time that I was six years old.
So, you know, there I was. And daddy would take me and do anything with me and listen to me. And my mother, when I would go to her, she would say, shut up. Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm busy? Because she had to work, work, work, she felt like all the time. And because daddy was retired and he was enjoying himself, she felt like she had to work that much more to make up for that.
[00:40:01]
And so, you know, I became a victim right there at the age of 12. And I said, there is no God that loves me. Because if God loved me, that wouldn't have happened. And so therefore, you see, I was at step one. I was at that first step. Pain is my motivator. And to me, step one is basically this. When I got to that point, it's when the fear of the known was greater than the fear of the unknown. To know that ever I was going to have to live the rest of my life the way I'd been living it.
That was more fearful to me than doing something different. And then I was ready to make those changes. So we'll start with step one. Now, how's that for a preamble? We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Now, I'm big on words. I'm a person that likes to look up stuff in the dictionary and think about it and do words. And because, see, understanding leads to knowledge.
And knowledge, when you can learn to use it wisely, becomes wisdom. You know, I need to know what the words mean and what they understand. And I don't know about you, but when I'd read the ODET, sometimes even the big book or any of the other books, sometimes they use words in there that are not familiar words in my everyday vocabulary. And so I would take a dictionary and I would keep that by theirs.
I'd read the stuff and I would write it in my book. You know, I was reading the ODET one time and it talked about animosity. Well, I've heard the word animosity all my life, but what does it really mean? What do you think it really means? And I said, well, that you're angry or that you don't like something and it means more than it means. It's a very, very vile form of anger. Animosity means that you want to do damage to someone else.
I mean, it's a real heavy word. It had a lot more meaning than what I had given it. So I looked up powerless. Powerless. Powerless says having no control over. Having no control over. And one of the definitions was unable to produce a positive effect upon. Now, that was the one that got to me because no matter what I tried to do, I was not able to affect something positive in the situation. Every time I tried to change it or make it different or whatever, I wasn't getting a positive response.
So, therefore, I was powerless. I was powerless over it. I couldn't get it to do. And that blew my whole theory of life as I knew it. Because I thought I had the power. Because I'm the kind of person that I have a plan. You know, we're dangerous with a plan. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. First goes the thinking. Down comes the plan, you know. You're on the way. You're on the way. You know, it's like I would get this plan in my mind and it would be…
And the thing about the plan is it's in your mind. It's not reality. Because in your mind, everything works perfectly. I'd be willing to bet you the girls that are planning this deal for today, things that happened you didn't think were going to happen or things you thought would happen didn't happen because there's always that little element out there that you have no control over, you know. And what I would do if I got one shred of what I had looked for, if I got some idea of maybe…
There was 96 points here I had to make and I got two. That was a success. You know, I would discount all the other 94 because I had made success on two. And I lied to myself. See, that's the horrible part. I believe the lie. I would lie to myself and then believe the lie. And what you believe is true to you whether it's the truth or not. And then you go ahead and act on what you think is true, which isn't.
And that was how I was doing my whole life. I never had anything solid and substantial because I kept coming back with the same problems all along. The names and the places were changed to protect the innocent. But the bottom line was I'm the common denominator. And guess what? It keeps happening. You have problems in this relationship and then you have problems in the next relationship and you have problems in this.
And it's like can you… Is it that your picker's broken? No. It's not those people out there. The broken is on the inside of you. And if you don't learn how to deal with things, you'll continue to take those same defects and those same shortcomings and you'll use them over and over and over in all the areas of your life. You know, we say practice the principles in all our affairs. And you think, well, gosh, that's hard.
No, you do the defects that way because, I mean, that's exactly the way we do it. You know, now I say, well, I'm just going to lie in this one spot. You know, I'll just lie in school, but I won't lie anywhere else. You don't do that. You don't practice a defect in one spot. You don't do that. You don't practice a defect in one spot. So see, I had to learn honesty, you know, and I didn't have a clue, you know.
It's because I lived in denial. I saw things the way I wanted to see them.
[00:45:03]
I heard things the way I wanted to hear them. Because if it wasn't the way I wanted to hear it or the way I wanted to see it, it did not exist. And I have a little illustration there. There was a rabbi and a priest and an al-anon. They all died and went to hell. And they're down there and they're discussing the problem, you know. And the priest turns to the rabbi and he says, why in the world do you get sent to hell?
And the rabbi said, well, it was pork. He said, what do you mean? He said, well, when I was a kid, I went over and had dinner next door neighbor, and they served pork chops. I got the taste of pork. And I just kept eating pork, and it's unclean, and we're not supposed to eat pork. He said, why are you here? And the priest said, oh, it was sort of the same thing, only it was the next door neighbor's daughter.
Um, never could quite get that celibacy thing down. He said, that's why I'm here. And they turned to the little al-anon, and she's sitting there. And they said, well, why are you here? And she said, excuse me? They said, well, why are you in hell? She said, it's not hot. I'm not here. See, that's how we are. We can be sitting in the middle of the disaster going, this is not happening. This is not happening.
How many times have you had that feeling? Haven't you been out with an alcoholic someplace, maybe in a bar, or someplace you didn't really want to go, but you felt like you had to go to sort of keep an eye on what was going on, and like you were going to be able to stop something from happening, and then all of a sudden what you feared hits happening, and you're going, I can't believe this is happening.
I was powerless over all of my family members, and all of their diseases, including my own. I was powerless not to do things. Haven't you said to yourself, I'm not going to do that again? Now, I'm telling you, this is not going to happen. And then when it happens, not if it happens, when it happens, you're going, I can't believe that happened again. That's denial, you know, that's denial, you know, it's not a big deal here.
You see, lack of power is the problem. If we could have the power to make people mind, would we be here? I wouldn't, you know. You know, I was powerless not over alcohol, but the alcoholic, people, places, things, circumstances, situations. You know, it never occurred to me that I didn't have the right to ask people to mind me. Somehow or another, I had the divine right to do that. And I also thought that in order to accept something, you had to like it or approve of it.
And that's not true either. There's a lot of things that happen that I don't like or don't approve of, but I have not the power to keep it from being, you know. But I have to accept that that's the way it is. That's just the way it is. And I don't know where I got that idea that God was going to do that. That idea that God gave me the ability to know what's best. I always know what's best for you. Now, if I can know what's best for you, why can't I know what's best for me?
You know, and then, you know, I don't know what's best for you. And it's like that was the thing. Everybody always came to me and asked me what to do. And it gave me the idea that I had the ability to do that. Why does everybody come to me asking how to do this deal? Why do they do that? Because I act like I know what I'm talking about. And that's the key. Act. Act. You know, I had a civic teacher in high school, and she said, if you act like you know what you're doing, you can get away with anything.
And later, she had a test. And on that test was something that she wanted us to put into practice, one of the things that we had heard in her class. And being a very creative person that I was, I got a pickup truck and a couple of guys, and we went to a local diner. And I had a clipboard, and I had them look under the tables. And I was reading off numbers. And one of them said, this is it. We picked up the table, put it in the pickup and drove off.
Now, what I was proving to her was you can do anything if you set your mind to it and act like you know what you're doing. So we stole the table. The police were not amused. You know, but that's what I'm saying. It's that idea that I looked like I had it all together. But that was an illusion. That was an illusion. And that was also the wall that protected me. So that since I have it together and it doesn't work for you, you did something wrong.
That's the deal there. You see, I was a control freak. And a control freak is the most fearful person in the world. That's the reason you have to control everything.
[00:50:00]
So that you don't have to deal with your fear. If you can control it and get the illusion that you have control, then it doesn't scare you so badly. You know, if you just have that, just a little bit of an idea that it's not as bad, then you can do the deal. You know, and I didn't know there were times in my life, you know, you'd say, well, she doesn't have a fearful bone in her body. She didn't have a brain.
You know, I've always, like I say, got the plan. And the plan always looks good on the drawing board. When I was in Newfoundland, I lived up there for five years. And I'd always wanted the perfect anything. And I read that in a perfect Christmas situation, you go out and you cut down your tree and you bring it home and you decorate it with cranberries and popcorn. And you just have this one. Well, of course, I don't know if y'all have a lot of Christmas trees here in Arkansas.
We didn't have Christmas trees. You had to buy them at the lot and you didn't get to go cut them off. No, they just were in the whole Christmas thing, you know. And so here I am in the land of Christmas trees because there's not a tree in Newfoundland that has a leaf on it. They're all little needles. And so I decided that what I'd do is I'd get the help of my landlady's son. She had two sons. They live next door and they had a toboggan.
Now, y'all are from the south. The toboggan is a long board that's a curve on one end. That's it. That's it. That's a toboggan. And so I'm going to get the boys and my husband and we're going to go up the mountain. See, we had about 18 or 20 steps cutting the ice up to the road from where our apartment was. And you parked up on the road because if you ever came down the hill, you were there for the rest of the winter.
And then across there was the mountain. And so there were all these Christmas trees. So we took out and we're going to go cut down a Christmas tree. We're going to tie it on the toboggan and we're going to bring it home. And fellow Newfoundlander over there. Anyway, so here I am. And we go up there and we cut down tree and we cut down several trees because, see, when they fall over, they don't look as good as they did when they were standing up.
And it's got to be the perfect tree. So then you get the top of the big tree. Now you got all these trees. And so, you know, we get them all tied on the toboggan. And now, see, there was the plan. But I've never been able to leave the plan alone. I always have to modify and make the plan better as we go along. And I said, you know what would really be fun if we wrote down on top of the trees? Now, I don't know why, but see, because I act like I know what I'm talking about.
These idiots will follow directions. And it's just it's been amazing to me. There's always been a wealth of idiots that would follow those directions. And so here they are. You know, what I did is I got on and tied me on what was what's left of the rope. This was not my finest hour. And they got on behind me. And so we start down the hill. Now, the thing about that is you gain some information that you can't do anything with.
Information that you can't do anything with. And that is going downhill. You gain lots of speed. There's no brakes on a toboggan and there's no steering mechanism. It's not like a sled. You're just only the way you go. So we're coming down and we go over some smaller trees and hit a few gullies and they go flinging off, you know, but not me because I'm tied on. And so as I'm coming down the hill and getting faster and faster, all of a sudden it becomes apparent to me there's the road and there's cars going back and forth on the road.
And it's like, you know, and I shot between the cars, went down the steps and through the bottom of my house. Now, it broke the toboggan. I had needles that were driven into my flesh like nails and it hurt. It hurt. And I'm laying down there with my head sticking out from under the house. And my landlady, it's her house. She comes running out and she didn't know if it was a sonic boom, a plane had crashed, whatever.
I mean, you can imagine knocking a hole in through the bottom next to the foundation. And she came out and she looked at me and she said, what are you after doing, you crazy Yankee bitch? And I looked up and I said, don't call me no Yankee. I was powerless over that once it got started there. Now, I have other things that are, I'm just powerless to do things. And that's those obsessions. When I get an obsession or when I get into, I deserve, you know, those kinds of things or how could they, you know, those can be obsessions.
I had a next door neighbor that he had a bunch of barking little dogs. Now, the thing about this man was I'm a night person and he would want to till his garden in the morning and that just irritated me no end because it woke me up. You know, if you're going to bed at seven o'clock, you don't want somebody tilling at eight. And it never occurred to me that my lifestyle might've been a little out, but it was him over there with that damn tiller.
And so I went out there and I told him about this and he told me to shut my mouth and go
[00:55:04]
back in the house. Well, he shouldn't have said that to me. So I decided, okay, we'll get, we'll take care of him. And so what I did, uh, all those little dogs out there, I waited till the wee hours of the morning and I went out and run a broom handle up and down the dog yard fence. And then I'd go run, jump on my porch. And of course those dogs, there were six beagles and they were out there just barking and screaming and yelping.
And he'd come out in his underwear and he'd hose them down, cuss them out. And he'd go back in the house. I'd wait about an hour. And then I'd go back in the house and I'd go back in the yard and I'd go back in the house. I'd wait about an hour. One more time. I mowed my grass at 1130 at night. I used a little frog gigging headlight, you know, the craziness, the craziness there, you know, because I couldn't accept what he said.
He hurt my feelings, you know, and I have a really, uh, an acceptance story. You know, my life goes on. I still have to practice these principles and the principle acceptance here. I've had a problem, uh, up until, uh, this past summer. I had a three-year ongoing dilemma with a cat. Now, when I was about eight years old, my sister's Siamese cat jumped on me and, uh, he ripped my leg open. I had to have 16 stitches taken.
I don't like cats. I don't trust cats. I know where it comes from, doesn't change it, but that's it. You know, people say, well, if you can figure out where that happened, that won't bother you. Well, I know where it happened. I know exactly what happened. It bothers me. They like to coil around you and, and wander in between your legs and stuff like that, you know, not like that. Well, my husband and I got out there and I decided I was going to make this beautiful, beautiful flower bed in my front yard.
It was, and I went out to the stone quarry and I got all of these New Mexico, white, polished river rocks, and I got, I picked them up one at a time and had them going down the road to the quarry. And JD said, what are you doing? And I said, well, I got to make sure they're all the same size. And I said, and then you have to get them in a certain thing so they can measure them. You know, it was an all day project, but I got my rocks.
And so my, my flower bed goes the entire length of the house. And it's about maybe say 10, 12 foot wide anyway. And it's this beautiful free form, free form flower bed. Now I got 17 flats of impatience, all different colors. And I put out there and then I got my miracle growth. Now, you know, the commercials, here's my 300 pound miter, got it with miracle growth. You know, I said, that's what I'm going to have here.
I'm going to have impatience that are just going to be so magnificent, you know, because you know how we are. Everything's got to be a production. I had this little concrete bench out there and then I had almost four foot tall impatience. Now it was gorgeous. People driving by were taking pictures. You know, have you ever seen impatience like that? No, they're my impatience. Do it with miracle growth.
You know, I'm out there. It says water them once a month. I'm out there every week. Miracle growth, miracle growth, you know. And then all of a sudden one night I came in and I looked over as I walked over on my porch, I'm admiring my flower bed and there's a hole in my flower bed, about the size of one of these tables. I just nearly stroked right there. I mean, the perfection was marred, you know.
It's like my little flowers were just broken off, even with the ground. And I'm going, what, what, what happened? What happened? There was this calico cat that was lurking in the impatience because there's a bird feeder out there and he was stalking the bird feeder plus my squirrels. We've got pecan trees all over the yard. So here we are, he's eating the squirrels and the thing, but he's tearing up my flower bed, my perfect.
And then see, if you fill it in and put more impatience, they're going to be a little short impatience next to the big total impatience. It's just not going to be the same. He just ruined it, just ruined it. And so I began to, people began to give me home remedies on how to get rid of the cat. I said, I don't want the cat in my yard. My dogs do not bother anybody. I don't want anybody's animals bothering me.
Is this live and let live? Come and die. You know, I mean, you know, I can't stand this damn cat. And so he would lay out there and one day I'm coming up on the porch and he's out there. He's got one of my squirrels in his mouth and I screamed at him in the head. He bit the head off right in front of me. And I said, it's war, it's war. And so I was told if you take and put moth balls out there, they don't like the smell of moth balls.
Well, I fumigated the entire of our area. I put, you know, we don't do anything a little bit. So I got about five boxes of moth balls and it was so bad. You could smell it in the house. Cat doesn't bother him. And so then. It Doesn't Bother Him, and so then somebody said, well now, red pepper, that red cayenne pepper, I went to Sam's, got two of them gallon jugs of red pepper, put it all out over there on the ground, you know, when you water the ground, I can't walk out there barefooted,
[01:00:01]
but it doesn't bother the cat, there were all these other, and then finally I got this pellet gun with a scope on it, now, I pumped it up about three times and I saw him and I popped him and he goes, like that, and he goes over the fence and, you know, he's an ala cat, he came back, you know, he's going to do the same thing, expect him different I guess, and so I pumped it up to about six, you know, and I got him again, you know, right over the fence he went, and so then he came back, so I'm out there pumping, I'm going to beat it in, and just as I shot, he jumped and I shot a hole in my neighbor's house.
So I decided I would write this company, they said they had something that would repel animals and what have you, but they said it would bother the dogs in the house, so I didn't want them crazed, I mean, it was bad enough me being crazed without the dogs going crazy, and I kept telling the cat, go in the backyard, go in the backyard, because if he'd go in the backyard, my dog would eat him, go in the backyard, go in the backyard, he wouldn't go, so I tried all these other things and then finally last spring, about this, a little later in this time of the year, I was up in Oregon and a friend of mine up there said, plastic forks, plastic forks, she said, yeah, the little cheapy ones that are real pricky on the ends, put them in the ground, handle first, and then the cat can't walk on them.
I can't either. You can't get in and weed it with these damn little plastic forks, you know, so we had to get the forks out of the ground and I just finally, I mean, I was sitting there one day, I was just in tears, and all of a sudden, you know, I talked to my sponsor about it and she'd just laugh at me, you know, she'd just laugh at me, and then all of a sudden it occurred to me, accept the cat, just accept the cat, and my sponsor says, accept it to the point you wouldn't change it if you could, blah.
So I go outside, the cat's like this, you know, he takes a look at me and I said, welcome to the yard, and I had named him over the year, his name is F.C., and I said, welcome to the yard, I embrace you, you are welcome, you're my yard cat, eat the birds, eat the squirrels, make yourself at home, I love you, I went in the house and went, oh, blah, but you see, my sponsor says, act as if until it becomes.
The next morning I get up, I'm doing my reading and my meditation, I walk over and I look out my big picture window and I'm looking out there, and one of my squirrels has got a hold of my bonsai tree, and he's got the limb, and he's gnawing the limb off of an old bonsai tree, and I'm going, what is he doing? And I ran out the front door, I went screaming, stomping my feet, going, get away from my tree, get away, where is that cat, where is that cat, eat the squirrel, where is my cat, when you want him, eat the squirrel, where the hell is he, where is the cat, and I'm looking all around and this guy's driving down the street going, and I'm thinking, what's it to you, and I happen to look and I'm in my panties and bra.
I was a little obsessed, and you want me to tell you the really funny part, I've never seen the cat again, once you accept it, it goes away, I've looked, I even drive down the road telling JD, I hope my cat ain't smushed somewhere, I've even prayed for that cat. So many times, those of us who are controllers, we wear this little disguise, it's called fixers, you know, we're the fixers, you know, and it seems second nature to me, you know, we want things to be normal, what is normal, you know, Webster says normal is something that's natural, well-adjusted to the outside world, the usual accepted rule, and my life was anything but normal, because you see, I justified and rationalized everything, nothing could be normal, and that's, you know, when you're doing that, just giving explanations
[01:05:02]
for bad behavior, you're not accepting responsibility for it, you're just trying to explain it away, and my life was unmanageable, because I lost control of my emotions, and if you don't control your emotions, they will most assuredly control you, they will control you, and I had to accept that alcoholism was a disease, for God's sake, and it's a family disease, it infects not only the drinker, it infects anybody who comes in contact with it, you know, it's very contagious, it's very contagious, and I didn't know that it was a disease, you know, it looked like to me, if he wanted to quit, he could, and it's like, you have to go and get it, and open it, and pour it down, for God's sake, you have a choice, it never occurred to me he didn't have a choice, and so, I was sitting there one day at my office, and I was fretting about something, and I called this girl that was in our group, and I said, Kathy, I've just got to talk about this, and I began to go, and she said, why don't you just come over to the house, and we'll talk, come over and have a cup of tea or something, and I said, okay, so I left the office, and got in my car, and zipped over to her house, she didn't live that far away from where I work, and when I got to the door, well, I knew that her husband was drinking, and he had been in and out of AA for 17 years, and had never had a year's sobriety, he just couldn't seem to get the deal, but I had never been around him that much, I mean, I'd see him occasionally at meetings, but I just didn't know, and so, when she came to the door, and opened the door, he was laying on the threshold, passed out, she said, just step over him, and come on in, and he didn't look good, and he didn't smell good, because Bobby had been there for several days, drinking to pass out, coming to drinking to pass out, and he had relieved himself in his clothing, he didn't smell good, he didn't look good, and we stepped over him, and we went back to her kitchen table, and it was like you could look through into the living room, and I'm looking at him laying there on the floor, she said, now, what was the problem, and I said, damn if I know, because that took, you know what I mean, that just changed my whole focus right there, and I looked at her, and I said, how can you do that, and she said, you know what, I said, how could you invite somebody into your home, knowing that was laying across the door, I would have been so embarrassed, I mean, you know, have you no shame, you know, and she looked at me, and she said, honey, he's sick, she said, he has a disease, can't you see that no one in their right mind would want to live like that, and she says, but I'm powerless over that, she says, but that's what the disease of alcoholism is all about, right there, and she says, that's his deal, and she says, I'm going ahead and living my life to the best of my ability, regardless of what condition he's in, because she said, used to, if I would have not invited you here, I would have been saying that he's something to be embarrassed about, and she says, if he had cancer, I wouldn't be embarrassed about him laying there, and she says, it's a disease, so I don't know what my problem was to this day, I've never remembered what the problem was, but I knew that day I accepted alcoholism was a disease, because, see, I had to see that, I had to see that, and I had to reason that out, that truly no one in their right mind would want to live like that, and you have to remember that for an alcoholic, there's three choices, abstinence, insanity, or death, for an Al-Anon, you have three choices also, and that's acceptance, insanity, or death, because if you don't accept the disease, if you don't accept, it'll drive you crazy. There was a lady that used to come to our Monday night meeting, and for years, and after the meeting, she would say, now, how do you get them sober? She just couldn't, you know, she couldn't hear, and so I was over, the doctor at the hospital had called me over there one day to twist up a lady in the psych ward, and he said, I don't think she's nuts, I think she's one of y'all, I said, she's nuts, but anyway, after I talked to her, before I left, I noticed there was a lady sitting over in the corner that was tied in a little wheelchair who was drooling, she was in a catatonic trance, and it was that lady that had been coming to our meetings, and she had to be institutionalized, and she died there. The disease of alcoholism for the non-drinker can kill, too.
You know, and you have to remember, too, that alcohol, it's alcoholism, it never becomes alcohol-wasm. You're always going to know it's there. It's always there. The ability to be crazy is always going to be within you, just like the ability to drink is always
[01:10:01]
going to be within the alcoholic, and we are granted a part and contingent on our spiritual condition on a daily basis. Same for us as it is for them. You need to remember that. The most common tools that we use in management and control are questions. Who, what, when, how, where, you know, I mean, the adverbs. We go into adverb crazy, you know, and J.D. says that, you know, he hated Y sessions, but it's like we have an insatiable need to get information you just can't do nothing with once you got it, just like me going down the hill on the thing, you know. I had information, couldn't do a darn thing with it, and it's the same thing. I might as well be on a runaway toboggan when I'm trying to outfox it, you know. And those questions and stuff, we want to know, so we tell them we want to understand.
That's the only part of it. We want to understand so we can get inside your head, figure out how you think, and so we can hit you off at the pass. Make no mistake about it. That's the plotting we do, you know, and a lot of us have this snoopism. You know, we become the nosy nails. Those are the ones that are going through the chest of drawers, going through the billfolds, going through the glove compartment in the car. Of course, I know none of y'all have ever done that. You know, the inquisitors, you know, we become that, you know, and what you need to know will come to you without any action on your part. Your old Aunt May 10th tells you that. You don't have to be suspicious. You don't have to go around lurking. You don't have to ask all these questions. What you're supposed to know will come to you without any action on your part, what you need to know, and it's like, you know, I had this insatiable need to know, but the thing of it is, sometimes knowing is worse than not knowing, you know, so be careful, you know, and then I used a lot of fast talking and bitching. Oh, I love to bitch at him, you know. That just, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. My theory of life is, why say 25 words which you can harp on for six weeks? You wear them down, you know, you wear them down. Because, see, I learned that over the years. If you just do it long enough, they'll say, good, do it, do it, do it, just shut up. Thank you. That's how you get your way. You just wear them down, wear them down. And then some people use crying and threats and, you know, violence was also a good thing, you know. I tried to control him through the purse strings. You know, if I keep all the money, he can't get drunk. Guess what? My husband can get drunk without money. I gave him a dime to carry for emergency phone calls, and he got drunk. I'm, you know, just like Houdini. You could tie him up, put him in a straight jacket, handcuff him, chain him, shut the door, lock him in the closet, come back 30 minutes, they're drunk.
How do they do that? How do they do that? You know. And I bitched about, you know, his drinking cost me so much money. Well, when he quit drinking, guess what? That changed. We paid off my charge cards for 10 years. You know, because every time he got drunk, it'd make me mad and make myself feel good. I'd go to the mall. Spending money made me feel good. I bought things I didn't want, didn't like, didn't even care for. And you know, I didn't even, the silly part of that is, I'd bring them home, throw them away, give them away or whatever, instead of taking them back and getting the money back. You know. What in the world's the matter with this up here? You know, some people try to manipulate with silence. That's not my way. J.D. said he used to pray for the silent treatment.
You know, some people manipulate with guilt, using their kids, you know, using their kids to whip guilt on them, you know. But, you know, my thing, my drug of choice, if I have one, is adrenaline. God, I love excitement. That's the reason I like alcoholics. You never know what the hell they're going to do. But I tell you what, when you're living with someone like me, you don't know what I'm going to do either, because I don't know. See, I'm Captain Spontaneity. Didn't you see that? You know, I can have the plan, and I change the plan, so we never know. You know, I can remember my mother's next-door neighbor. Now, we had at home, we had a bunch of fig trees, and we had pear trees, and we had plum trees and apple trees out in the back. Now, the next-door neighbor had one pear tree in her yard, in her backyard. And her yard was fenced, and she had gates on either side of the yard to go into that. And she had a little dog that was a little terrier, and it would just bite the fool out of you. Now, where were the best pears in the neighborhood? Now, we've got several pear trees exactly like that pear tree, same pears, but it wasn't exciting.
The challenge is to get through the gate, get the pear, and get out the other gate before the dog bites you. I cried when the tree died. I mean, and I was in high school. I did it every year, you know. And Miss Lyons would say, I don't know why she does that. Mother says, I don't know either, because we have…
[01:15:15]
Age, I've Loved That All My Life, That Excitement, You Know, and Living in Alcoholism Keeps Excitement Going and It Keeps You Busy Too, Boy, I Tell You, That's a Busy Disease, You're Always Doing Something, The Plotting, The Planning, You're Going to Hit Them Off at the Pass, You Know, You Know, You Out Think Them, You Know, If I Can Do This, If I Can Get Home Before He Gets Home, Then He Can't Get Drunk, Because See, Then, You Know, If He, What He Would Do, He'd Sneak Home and Get His Stuff and Then Be Gone for a Week or Two, See, If I Can Get Him Before He Does That, Then, You Know, He Can't Go Do That, and Then He Would Be There, But He'd Be So Angry, That He'd Do Something That Made Me Mad, So I'd Cut Him Out, So He'd Pack His Clothes and Leave Anyway, Really Helped A Lot, See, I Confused Activity for Action, You Know, I Was Always in That, and People Can Do That in the Program, You Know, Going to Meetings, Going to Meetings, Going to Meetings, But Never Once Taking Anything Out of the Meeting and Putting It to Work in Your Life, You Think Just Because Going to a Meeting Is Going to Give It to You, It Won't Do It Anymore Than Sitting in a Garage or Make You a Car, You're Going to Have to Do Something Different, You Have to Do, Now, I Made a Lot of Comparisons, I Was Always in That Comparison, You Know, My Situation Compared to Yours or Somebody Else's, See, Judging My Insides by How You Look on the Outside, It Doesn't Work, But How Much Time Do You Spend Doing That, You Know, and I'd See Other People, I'd Think, God, Doesn't It Look Good Over There, You Know, They Love One Another, and You Can Tell, and Their Grass is So, It's Just Greener on the Other Side of the Street, That's Because They Mow the Lawn, You Know, and Then I Was Real Worried Because There Was This Girl Down the Street, You Know, She Was the Kind That She Could Get Up, You Know, at Five O'Clock in the Morning, by Nine O'Clock, She Had the House Cleaned, the Laundry Done, You Know, Cooked the Breakfast, Sent Her Kids Off to School, and I'm Thinking, She's on Dope, How Can That Be, You Know, Maybe She Was on Amphetamines, I Did Some of Them One Time, That's Where You Can Go 150 Miles an Hour with Your Feet Nailed to the Floor, It's Real Fun, Give You a Little Dexedrine, That'll Get You Going, and Then I Was Embarrassed Because I Couldn't Make J.D. Mind Me, My Mother Would Say to Me, Can't You Make Him, Whatever, and I Got the Idea Because She Said That, That's How I Should Be Able to Do That, So I'd Go Home and Try to Do That, You Know, Crazy, and See the Obsession for me was, where is he, where's he at, who's he with, what are they doing, what is that going on, you see, I had this need within me, I had to be needed, and then, you know, I'd create need, so that I could be needed, because I felt like, you know, they'll keep you longer, love can come and go, but if they need you, they might have to stay, and so I'd create those needs, and then the very need that I'd created, after a while would become such a burden to me, I'd hate him for needing me and put all that burden on me, yet it would be something that I had put in line.