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Source: Tom W. (Father) – Fr. Tom W – How To Live Surrounded by Crazy People 1 2010 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-w-father-fr-tom-w-how-to-live-surrounded-by-crazy-people-1-2010-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:57:07
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And I think I don't have a specific date for when I got involved in Al-Anon. There were a couple of encounters with Al-Anon. For the first while, I was really just visiting, and I was looking for some quick solutions for some burning problems, and then everything got much worse, and I became much more interested in Al-Anon because I wanted to survive. And I remember being frantic and overwhelmed and angry and exhausted, two of my favorite flavors, and someone gave me a cassette tape of an Al-Anon speaker from Texas named Blanche.
And Blanche did a lot of speaking for a lot of years, and she died much too soon in the year 2000. Freak accident, she parked her car and ran over herself. It was just gravity and bad luck, and I miss her terribly. But I was very crazy, and you know, my experience is when I'm crazy enough, I'll listen to different people. I would prefer to listen to myself because I have so much to say. But when I'm really frantic, I will hear another voice, and one of my friends, Sally F., who had been in Al-Anon for a thousand years and then got sober, I got sober and then went to Al-Anon.
So the door opens in lots of ways. Anyway, Sally said, listen to Blanche. She's full of interesting things to say, and in the tape that Blanche was talking about, she started by saying that she was not an expert. She was a survivor, and she wasn't going to go around telling anybody else what they should do about their lives because that's the craziness, but rather some stuff she learned to help herself, and I become willing to learn when frantic. I go to a retreat.
I do a lot of retreats, but I go on retreats to sit down and quietly listen to others talk, and we have a retreat every January on the West Coast. I'm from Northern California. We do not even speak to the people in Southern California, just so you know, in case you think we're all from down there. But there's a retreat at the Franciscan Retreat House in Southern California, and it's for priests in recovery, and we have alcoholics and compulsive over-eaters and Al-Anons and people with assorted craziness, and we had a fellow as our retreat director a few years ago, an Episcopal priest, a priest of the Episcopal Church named Jeff, who is as deliciously crazy and wild with a wife and family, so it multiplies, and he said, talking to this room full of clergy in recovery, he said, what I would suggest, just to start with, is that you surrender first, then think.
See, I would prefer to think it all through first. I want the definitions. I want the manuscript. I want to analyze it. I want to come to an understanding. I want feedback. In fact, I would like to study the steps before I ever have to take one so that I will do it properly. And what Jeff said, Jeff is in a parish somewhere in Nevada, which is a terrifying state. Jeff said, surrender first, and then you can start thinking about things and looking at things and seeing what works and what doesn't work, but jump in the pool, and then recovery can begin instead of just watching the pool.
I have a tendency to read about swimming before I ever get in the pool. So it kind of helps if you're thrown in the pool and suddenly you have to swim and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by crazy people, and most of us are. If you go to meetings, if you go to work, if you go to church, you're surrounded by crazy people. So I thought what I'd start with this morning is just some tools. Let me do a thing back on Blanche for a second. I listen to Blanche and I listen to Blanche and I listen to Blanche, and she is from northern Florida and then went to Baylor University in Texas.
She was wonderful with words. Her mother said, be careful when you go to Texas
[00:05:02]
because you're going to meet a Texan and marry him, and if you marry a Texan, you're never going to leave Texas because they don't transplant. And she said, and I went and I did and I have. And she taught English to high school kids in west Texas, which I'm just full of sympathy for her as a teacher. She said a few things that I found life-saving right away. Number one, she talked about God a little bit. Her religious tradition is very different than mine.
When she talked about God, I believed her. She said, as far as the God stuff goes, I was taught when I was a little girl that God helps those who help themselves. And she and I found out that's just not true. God helps those who ask. And I need to remember to ask on a regular basis. And I have a routine in my day where I start the day by asking for help. And sometimes I really mean it. I mean, a lot of times, oh, God, help me, you know.
But sometimes I really mean it. Oh, God, there is no way I can get from here to the end of the day. Help. I was talking to a lady from a crazy family, and we were talking about asking for help, and she really hated asking for help because it meant you were weak and not organized and shameful and you haven't done your homework and you should do it very differently. And I said, no, you can just ask for help. Anyone can ask for help. Anyone can ask for help.
And she said, well, how do I do it right? Because some of us have a little bit of perfectionism, perhaps not in Florida, but in other places. And I said, OK, watch. And we were sitting down next to each other and I closed my eyes and I breathed in ten times in through the nose, out through the mouth. And then I said. And I said, you know, but you don't have to do the ten breaths. I mean, you can just ask for help. And if you're not able to be verbal, what you can do is just take your white handkerchief, which you should always carry with you if you are a member of Al-Anon, and wave it in a public place. Just surrender. Stop the fight. End the chaos.
I won't hit back. I stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Help. Help. So I do that. And I would suspect that a lot of us who are here this morning are survivors. And some of us might be new to this. And some of us have been showing up for a long, long time. And what those of us who've been around a little bit longer than the others of you, we get to share our experience, strength and hope. And then we listen as you share your experience, strength and hope.
And I have found some things are very helpful and some things are not helpful. And the stuff that's not helpful, it's OK. You don't have to do it and you can just let go. I thought we'd start this morning with something useful like the slogans. Because they're very useful. When I first started coming to meetings, I thought the slogans were an insult to my intelligence. Because they're so stupid. And it's clearly for people who don't have a college education.
And I kind of felt sorry for people who would take them seriously. And now I'm of the opinion that they are the summation of all the wisdom of the Western world. And I love it when I get an email from a sponsee that has 26 parts, all of them on fire. If I can respond with a slogan like, keep it simple, send. Now, I have lost some sponsees over that because they want me to participate in the drama. And when I'm in my right mind, I don't. I know some crazy people and wild people.
A lot of us live on the rollercoaster and we live with people who are on the rollercoaster.
[00:10:03]
And when I was new going to meetings, I thought I was the only one on the rollercoaster. Because everyone else was grateful for every golden step and having perfect days. And I felt crazy. And so I went to a meeting and someone talked about being on the rollercoaster. And instantly I knew there were two of us. High, low, around, fast, high, low, around, fast. And I found out in Al-Anon that I can get off the rollercoaster.
And I didn't know I could do that, especially if I loved somebody or liked somebody or was related to somebody. Those are the three different things. If we're close, I have to be sitting right next to this person. And I found out that's just not true. I can get off the rollercoaster. Well, aren't they going to feel abandoned? They already feel abandoned. However, I'm there at the gate and when they go by, I'll wave. Hello.
So they know where I am. I'm right here on the ground, both feet on the ground, breathing quietly, having a hot dog. And when you want to get off the rollercoaster, you'll know where I am. Boy, there's a lot of drama and trauma with crazy. And I was at a meeting and I don't know. I don't repeat this. I don't always like meetings. And I don't always like the people at meetings. And I was explaining that to my sponsor.
And he suggested that at some times for some of us, meetings are like chemotherapy. You don't have to like it and you don't have to like the doctor, but it will save your life. Took me about a month to call him back. Slogans. I live with a lot of adrenaline and excitement, like I say, I do like that. And when I was I've been in the Jesuit community for many years and I was ordained a priest in 1978.
And my first job was in a real crazy parish in downtown Hollywood, California. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunset Boulevard between Highland and Vine. And it's open 24 hours and we have a staff of guys working there. And they're all it's like war in the trenches. 1914, 1918, the place is full of lunacy. There's there's insane people and there's tourists and there's prostitution and there's there's drugs for sale.
And that's just the choir. You know, we're not talking about the people outside. And I and I I'm newly ordained. I'm 31 years old, maybe I guess somewhere around there. And I'm full. I'm young and I'm very energetic. And the phone rings all day long. And sometimes the phone calls are peaceful and sometimes they are full of emergency hospital runs and people who need to see you. And it's like being a doctor in a hospital. You're on 24 hours. You're off 24 hours. You're on 24 hours.
It's a great place for someone from a crazy family. And down the down this down Sunset Boulevard was a hotel, a little motel that had hourly rates and mirrors on the ceiling. And we had housed some families there who were in trouble. And we did that, too. We were we were the social services for a lot of folks. And I got to meet the manager of the hotel. He was a fellow named Buck Love. That's true. That was his name.
A lot of tattoos. And this is before tattoos were really fashionable. Anyway, one more. I was on and the phone rang and it was about, I guess, one in the morning, one thirty in the morning. And one of the girls who worked the neighborhood had been knifed, still alive, but she was knifed and she wanted a priest. And I ran down the street and there was ambulances and cops and handcuffs and mirrors on the ceiling and blood everywhere.
And I did what I could do and prayed with her a little bit. And then, you know, she she felt safer. I hope she lived. I shook with adrenaline for the next three days. Let me tell you, that's high. And I like that. And I like that. Well, it's fine when you're 31. But after a while, you just get exhausted.
[00:15:08]
And the drug adrenaline, you need more of it to keep going. And I found I liked excitement. I like danger. I like drama. I was at an Al-Anon meeting and the fellow there suggested that in some families and some organizations and some groups, drama takes the place of where the love used to be. And as Al-Anon has slowly seeped into me, I have decided I really don't want a dramatic, exciting life. I want an ordinary life. Reading about Dr. Bob and his wife Ann, Dr. Bob was very insistent on wanting a normal life. Normal. He said on my tombstone, I want one word, normal. He was exciting to be with. I'm just not interested in exciting anymore and that's a sign that I'm getting older. Anyway, first going to meetings and what I heard as shocking was the business about don't get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. Watch, halt. Well, the way I was raised, hungry, angry, lonely and tired meant you were a saint. And I thought you were supposed, if you really cared, you should be hungry, angry, lonely, tired and in flames. Then you knew you were in trouble.
And it's just not true. I have to keep an eye on that. I have to remember to eat. I have to remember to watch the anger, watch the lonely and watch the tired. And at this advanced age of 63, these are real crucial to my mental health. When I was in my 30s, I said, well, I can handle hungry. I can handle hungry, angry. I can handle hungry, angry, lonely. But when all four are operating, then I have to take steps. And I discover any one of them throws me off. My perceptions change, my understandings change and a lot of it's your fault. So, watch what I eat. I have regular trouble with that. Angry, I get angry. And I mentioned this at a meeting and someone said, well, if you were really spiritual, you wouldn't. And I said, thank you. That's so helpful. I get angry when I'm surrounded by fools. Enough said. And anger is allergic. It's an allergy for me and it's contagious. There are there's some TV I cannot watch. There are some people I cannot listen to. If you approach me with anger, I have a tendency to respond in exactly the same tone of voice. And occasionally I'm a little sarcastic. And when I'm very off balance, I think ridicule is funny. And I know when I was teaching and I was teaching before I had any Al-Anon and I used sarcasm and ridicule as weapons to control the mob. And I was faster than they were and I was meaner than they were. And I remember I was sober a couple of years, but my behavior was raw and about power and control and manipulation, the favorite Al-Anon dance. And we had class evaluations and one of the students, a bright young man, said the class is interesting. The material is good, but I will never take a class from you again. You have a way of making people feel real small. Now, I knew exactly what he was talking about and I had no idea what to do about it. It took some time and asking God for removing the defects of character that stand in the way of my usefulness. And slowly, slowly, slowly that has changed. I can still do it, but when I do it now, I usually feel nauseated and sick afterwards. There's a bitter taste, but I can still do it. So I have to watch the angry. I'm a gardener. I go outside and garden. I yank things. I pull things. I cut things down. It really helps. I have found that sitting in my room asking God to remove my anger has not worked once. I need action. Lonely. Lonely happens
[00:20:05]
to me too sometimes. I've been going to meetings for so long and no one called. Make some phone calls, send some emails, go to a meeting, say hello to the newcomer, be nice to the cranky old timer. That's some of how I deal with lonely, but it comes and goes. And tired. This is part of crazy family stuff. I don't have any indicator in me that says you're tired. Lie down. I don't have anything like that. Stop now. You're done. I have to look at my calendar and plan tired. You've been busy for six days. Take a day off. Halt.
I also heard this is a slogan I found very helpful. Wait. W.A.I.T. Why am I talking? And this is for those of us who have a tendency to over explain. See, my mother was very good at this. If it's worth saying once, it's worth saying five hundred times in exactly the same cadence. It would make me wild when I was eleven and fourteen. Why am I talking? Let me explain this to you. See, perhaps you don't understand my thinking. If I explain it a little more, you'll agree with. No, no, no, no, no. Stop. One of my friends is Marilyn H. who's from New Jersey and she's been in the program a long, long time. She's been an active member of Al-Anon for a long time because of a daughter and a grandson who sent her right to the edge. But her interpretation was not just wait, but waste. Why am I still talking? And I think that's a different nuance. A slogan that I find really helpful. When I started coming to meetings because I felt in danger. For me, in danger. Act, don't react.
Don't react. I'm a reactor. I'm intuitive. I can sense trouble. I was the youngest in my family and, oh, we had all the drama you could want. I mean, we had Catholics and Lutherans and Masons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Hi. We had Democrats and Republicans and Communists and Fascists. Hi. Let's get together for the holidays. I'm born in 1947 and I'm old enough. I'm a child, but there we're still fighting over Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. And whenever my father had a couple of extra beers, it would go back to Harry S. Truman, that damn hat salesman from Missouri in the campaign of 1948. So I learned to intuit crazy and then I thought my job was to be the peacemaker. Everyone's firing guns. I think I will stand in no man's land and wave the white handkerchief and get them all to cooperate. And then I was wondering why I was being shot at. Act, don't react. If you approach me with anger, I have a tendency to respond in anger. If you approach me full of fear, I have a tendency to respond full of fear. I am not innately peaceful. There are times when it really occurs to me, if you're in my face, I just look to see if there's stairs behind you. A simple little push doesn't leave much of a mark. I want to ask, I want to be centered. I want to be peaceful. I want to be awake and I want to be alert. And as someone told me, the world belongs to the alert. I don't want to be shut down and I
[00:25:03]
don't want to be blind with anger or rage or greed. I want to be awake and alert and centered. And when I can do that for a period of time, the day goes better. But oh boy, there's drama. One of my brothers married into a family where they sue each other. They're getting ready for a Jerry Springer show. And I will confess this to you, but please don't repeat it. I watch Jerry Springer and I get it. I mean, that's where I'm headed if I don't get to a few more meetings this week. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Well, I like complexity.
I like looking for root causes. I love reading books with footnotes, big appendix. And the adrenaline that comes up in my brain and my heart looks for complexity. I was doing a little bit of traveling and I wanted to see everything. Let's go here, let's go there, let's go here, let's go there. Let's see all of Florida tomorrow. And I have to remind myself that I want to keep this very simple. I can just stay in one or two places for several days. If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium. It's not a comedy, it's a nightmare. I want to be able to stay around for a bit. I work that to my advantage. I'm rather fascinated by travel and different places and different people. And over the last 15 years, I've gone to Asia a lot. And I really don't like being a tourist, but I like seeing things. I like meeting people. So what I was able to do was combine some things and I got to go over to Thailand, to Vietnam, to Myanmar one summer and teach English. So I got a chance to spend there, some time there. I got a chance to meet some people. I got a chance to get a little bit under the culture. I taught English in mainland China in 1995 for a whole summer and I did it completely wrong. I didn't meet enough people. I was isolated. It was hot.
I didn't like them. And I found out that I am in my own way again. Say hello. So the second time there, I was a little friendlier and a little more available, not as guarded and protected. And if you're from a crazy family, you know guard and protect. I remember Blanche on one occasion, in that same tape that I listened to 70 or 80 times before I met her, she said, some of us, we want to protect ourselves and so we want to build a safe place and we find out instead of building a fortress, we built a prison and we just can't get out of it. We don't know how to get out of it. We are trapped by our own stuff.
And that's me on a bad day. Anyway, there I was in China and we're leaving soon. I was teaching adults. I don't teach kids anymore because I just don't have the resources. I don't have enough Al-Anon to teach children. But adults are kind of fun and there were a group, these were Chinese English teachers and they read and write English as well as you or I, but they can't talk because they don't know the sounds. In fact, I think the statistic is there are more people who read and write English in mainland China than who speak English in North America. So if you're lost, have a paper and pen. Write stuff down and they can read it, but they don't know what you're saying. Anyway, there we were.
And a couple of my students really looked like pretty rough guys from the north of China. Tough in their 30s and I just was convinced they didn't like me, of course, because that's I just want you to like me, please. I'm the youngest in an alcoholic family. Please like me. We'll get along. But I was able to maintain some boundaries and I was respectful. And anyway, the night before I was leaving China to come back to the United States, this guy said, a group of friends are going to be getting together. Would you come? Well, two years earlier, I would have said no, because I know they're going to kill me. My sense of danger, you know. But I said, OK. So I was waiting and he showed up on a motorcycle back. And what I learned in motorcycles and.
And what I learned in motorcycles, if you're riding on the back of a motorcycle, it means death.
[00:30:01]
That's what it means. And you're going to be killed and it's going to be very sad. And you hope for death because you don't want crippled. Do you see how my mind works as I'm evaluating situations? Anyway, I hopped on the back and I had no idea what to expect and I was sure not in control. And I asked God for help, help, help, help, help him drive, help him get there. We got there and it was a bunch of young Chinese men and women and there were like eight or twelve of them.
And they were all getting, they were planning to migrate from China to Canada. They wanted out of China. They wanted a different future for themselves and their children. And my, this fellow I was a little afraid of who looked like he was such a tough guy, a father and a husband. And he wanted to know if I take my wife and my child to a whole new universe, am I being a good father? Am I being a good husband? Because I, and I was able to say, tell the truth, you know.
If you go to Canada with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work, you can have a good life for your wife and child. It was a wonderful evening and we shared one young woman. She was learning, she learned English and was learning French so the Canadians would take her a little more easily. These were people who were hopeful about the future and they were full of anxiety and fear. And I told them to keep this simple, fill out the form, send it in, go for the interview.
We are not planning the future, we don't know what the future holds, but you can do the footwork. Keep this simple. It was a great evening. But for the grace of God, there go I, is the rest of that slogan. But for the grace of God, that's me, is to deal some with my judgmentalness and my arrogance and I look at some idiot. But for the grace of God helps me realize that change a few things and that's me.
We have a lot in common. Some people are from very difficult places, but for the grace of God, that could be me. It deals some with my uniqueness and my special-hoodness and my arrogance. I was talking somewhere, kind of like this, and this lady came up and she was furious. And she said, you are so arrogant. This is not a secret. And because that day I had a perfect Al-Anon program, what I said to her was, yes.
I didn't have to shove her down the stairs, even though she attacked. When I'm in my right mind, I don't hit back. I want to act rather than react. Oh, arrogance, oh yeah, I got that. Low self-esteem, oh yeah, I got that too. Contempt for others, yes. There's a long list. I have a tendency to think that if you disagree with me, it means you're stupid. I have a tendency to think if you disagree with me, you shouldn't vote.
To think that if you disagree with me, you should be in prison. Perhaps someone in Florida will identify with me, I'm not sure. For the grace of God, I do not believe in destiny and I do not believe in fate. I am not a Calvinist. I do not believe in predestination. But it seems to me that some people have a really tough fate. And some people have a lot of bad luck. And some people don't seem to have much of a chance.
And I just notice that, I don't understand it. But for the grace of God, that's me. Slogan, easy does it. When I first heard that, it made me mad.
[00:35:00]
Easy does what? Well, I think it's for those of us who are a little too tense, a little too clenched, a little too obsessive. A version of it is lighten up. Easy does it. Slogan, first things first. Now what does that mean? If I would know what first things first meant, I wouldn't have to have that written down in my book, you know. But I sometimes don't know first things first. I get very confused by a lot of stuff.
One of my friends is much worse than me on this than I am. And I would recommend having a few friends who are worse than you, so you can compare. It really helps. And my friend Mary, Mary is an alcoholic family, a little chaos for his husband, alcoholic. Mary's brain works like this. Let's see. The kitchen's on fire. The cat box needs cleaning. And I should match all those socks. And she just goes into a kind of zone, unable to make decisions.
And I have to remember that some things are more important than other things. And part of this is just getting older and growing up a little bit. And I remember, I mean, I found it very hard to make decisions until I was forced to make some decisions. And one of the great benefits for me, it was a very painful time, but in the late 80s to the mid-90s when AIDS came through the community, so many women and men were sick and so many women and men were dying, especially in the narcotics anonymous groups and the AA groups.
And I found out when you're dealing with people who are very sick and dying, some things are real important and some things are not important at all. And it really helped me make some decisions. And that helped me with first things first. And I learned through some bad experience there because I learned by making decisions and making mistakes. One of my friends called and she was very ill. And she was a dying person.
And I knew that. And I had seen her once or twice. But this phone call she called and she really was at the end. And this was like a Friday. I said, Peggy, I'll see you Monday. Well, she was dead by Monday. What I've learned to do is when someone calls and says, can I see you when they're sick, go then because that's first things first. That happened more than once before I realized that the relationship with people is more important than other stuff.
Slogan, just for today. Now, I don't see that as an optimistic slogan. I want you to know that. Some slogans are easy and optimistic. I think this is another way of talking about this is I dread one day at a time. I don't have to dread the future. I mean, the sun is burning out and the polar bears are drowning. I'm real aware of that. But I find there is more than enough to dread just for today. And I'm going to focus on that and I'm going to get through that.
And some things are important and some things are not important. And what's helpful and what's not helpful. And I have to make some decisions. And that means saying yes to some things and no to some things. I really find that exhausting. Slogan, let it begin with me. When will the family change? I spent a few years furious at my parents because they wouldn't change. And I would over explain and yell at them and not talk to them and try to manipulate and send them things.
And they would do the same with me. I mean, there was learned craziness here. And I had to come to the realization that if something is going to change, I'm the one that has to change it. I was in Texas, Dallas, at a meeting and a fellow said,
[00:40:04]
there's a serenity prayer and we talk about the things we can change and the things we can't change. He said, what are things I cannot change? I cannot change you. I cannot change the past. And I cannot change the truth. Well, what can I change? I can change my behavior, my thinking, and my attitudes. But not easily. See, I don't change just because I've embarrassed myself again. And I don't change just because I've manhandled something.
It takes a lot of effort and work and grace for me to be willing to change. And I don't want to underestimate the power of disgust. Sometimes I am willing to make a change in my life when I have thoroughly disgusted myself. Let it begin with me. How important is it? I heard that from Blanche. Some things are not important. Some things are. Some things are worth fighting for. Other things aren't worth it.
I have friends and family members who like fighting over dates. It was a Tuesday, May 3rd. No, no, no, it was Friday, May 6th. That can go on for three days. And it's just crazy. Even though they're wrong, I don't fight them. It's not worth it unless I have mental illness that day, and then I'll fight them. I was talking to someone, and this was before. I did not have a perfect Al-Anon program this day.
And I was going to over-explain this. This person told me something that was historically wrong. Now, I taught history, and I'm not good on dates, I'm not good on a lot of things, but I know stuff. And this person came up with something that never happened, and I just could not let go of it. Couldn't let go of it. Some things aren't important. Well, I've proved my point. And you've made everyone crazy.
That's when the white handkerchief comes out. Just stop. Stop. Slogan. Think. Now, this is tricky for us Al-Anons, because it's what we do. Well, we don't think we obsess. There's a difference. I become obsessed with you. What are you eating? What are you wearing? Where are you? Please call. Let me check. Constant vigilance is the price of control. Think. And what I have to pay attention to is I want to be someone who thinks rather than someone who just obsesses.
And a lot of it happens in the head. And I can get completely obsessed with some stuff. And there's no oxygen there. I can't breathe. There's no freedom there. But my head is very, very busy. That doesn't mean I'm thinking. So I stumbled across a teacher from New York named Bill O'Malley, a Jesuit, taught high school kids forever. And Bill wrote an article about education, which can be so abstract.
They make you take education classes. And, boy, that makes the Bataan Death March look good. I'll tell you. It's just endless. And you don't die. You're just miserable. And it just goes and goes and goes. Anyway, in this article on how classes work, Bill said, you know, we need to teach kids how to think. And we don't do that. We teach kids to memorize. We teach kids to pass tests. But we don't teach kids to think.
And so Bill said, how does the brain work? There's five things that happen. Number one, you gather data. Get information. Read stuff. Do tests. Gather data. Number two, sift it to get the best, because some of it's crap. Sift it to get the best. Best, Because Some of It's Crap, Sift It to Get the Best, The Most Reliable, The Most Interesting, The Most Promising, Number Three, Put It in Some Kind of Order, Four, Draw a
[00:45:02]
Conclusion, Five, Put It Out to be Criticized. I'll repeat those five points. It's called the scientific method. It's how the brain works, when it works. Gather data, get some information, learn new things. Well, I'm going to go and look at the same books I've always read and try to come up with a different answer. Maybe not. If I don't put in any new information, the answer will come out the same.
Gather data, sift it to find the best, put it in some kind of order, draw a conclusion and put it out to be criticized. Oh, I don't want to be criticized. Oh, please don't criticize. I'm not criticizing you. We're talking about the process. It's valid or invalid. It works, it doesn't work. Yes, no. When I can do that, I can learn. I can learn. Now I don't watch a lot of Dr. Phil. I mean, I really don't.
But I've watched a couple of moments where he's been talking to someone who's a complete lunatic doing impossible things that don't help. And Dr. Phil will just say, how's that working for you? See, he's asking the person to reflect on the experience. How's that working for you? Not very well. Let's try something new. Let's get some new information. We have a few more slogans. By the way, if you're…
I have just a few more. I'm using the Al-Anon text here, how Al-Anon works for families and friends of alcoholics and it's the chapter that's chapter nine entitled the Al-Anon slogan. So if you want to look this up, you sure are welcome to do this. I have just a few more and I'm going to be very quick on them. Then what I'd like to do is have a bit of a conversation. And we have a lot of people here and we could break up into some groups.
And the topic is, what's your favorite slogan? What slogan do you hate the most? Whichever one works for you is just fine. So we'll do that for maybe an hour, then we'll come back before lunch. One day at a time. Keep an open mind. Boy, that's tough. Live and let live. You get to live and so do I. You get to make mistakes, so do I. You get to have life experiences, so do I. Live and let live. I ran something by my sponsor once and I thought it was an exceptionally cleared new interpretation of the entire program.
So I explained it to him with small words, you know, in a couple of diagrams so he'd understand. And he said, I don't know anybody who's been able to do that and live. Keep me posted. That's kind of a live and let live. You know, let me know. This is all an experiment. And the last slogan listed in the text is, let go and let God. Let go and let God. And that deals with those of us who are trying to manipulate every outcome, which is exhausting.
Exhausting. So that's a bunch of slogans. There's a bunch of us in the room. What if, and I, you know, some people hate small groups. Just go somewhere else and then tonight you'll wonder why you have no friends, but don't let that bother you. What I would like to do is kind of mix things up a little bit so you won't be sitting next to your best friend and you might meet someone a little bit new. And we'll do this for about an hour, 45 minutes.
And what I would suggest is this, maybe six groups. How many, and group number one, those born in January and June. Raise your hands. All right, that's group one. February, July. Group two, March, August, April, September. Perfect. April, May, October. Does that work? Anybody not in the group? Oh, I know. What am I going to do? November and December. Yeah, November, December. Break up those places.
Have a conversation. Be back in an hour.
[00:50:00]
A few more things. What I'd like to propose for the rest of this morning is to talk for about 45 minutes or so and then take a lunch break for an hour and a half. Lunch break. Maybe a little siesta, nap time. It's a sign of civilization if you lie down after lunch, as you know. And then we'll come back here, say, at 1.30 and do another presentation and then take a break and another presentation. Something like that.
But what you need to know, I'm not the most structured person you're ever going to meet. And when people tell my sponsor, oh, the Catholic Church is so uptight, I say, talk to Tom. Tom isn't uptight about anything, you know. So you just relax, easy, does it, welcome. If you need to lie down during the next talk, you just go do it. It's fine with me. Oh, did we do the serenity prayer? Oh, let's try that.
It gets us in the room. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The wisdom to know the difference. I'm Tom and I need 100,000 Al-Anon meetings. In the last section, I talked a little bit about slogans, which I find very helpful. And we learn from experience. And if I'm awake, I can learn from your experience. It's not always true. Sometimes I'm so resistant to a new idea and some people are jerks and I can't learn anything from them.
And then I find there's a moment of openness and I can learn something. And it catches me by surprise sometimes what I can learn. And learning is a long, slow process. The first step talks about powerless and unmanageable. A friend of mine is from the state of Texas. His name is James and we're about the same age. We're very different backgrounds. But James was sober a long time and after he was sober a long time, he started going to Al-Anon.
And he called me and he had a big conversation with his wife. And his wife said, James, you have changed so much. And he said, the only thing I've changed is I've stopped trying to change you. But that's a lot. Freed up his whole day. Powerless, unmanageable. I think in Al-Anon it's very useful for us to learn everything about alcoholism we can learn. And there's lectures and books and stories and movies.
Some are very poignant. Some are fantasy. There's a book written, oh, in the 1930s called Lost Weekend. And they made a movie out of it with Ray Moland and Jane Wyman. Jane Wyman had some interesting husbands. And in the book, it does not have a happy ending. It's about a fellow who's a periodic drunk and he goes on a lost weekend. And there's chaos and grief and misery. And at the end of the book, it's kind of bleak.
But you can't have that in a Hollywood movie. At least you couldn't in 1938, 39, 40 when it was made. So in the movie, the love of Jane Wyman straightens out this drunk. Now, I can't imagine how many miserable marriages that movie fostered, knowing that if you just love the sumbitch enough, he would be Ray Moland. It is a hard truth in Al-Anon for us to learn that in many ways, our love is powerless.
The people we can love the most are the people we can do the least for. It's not fair. But that seems to be true. I notice also in the last 20, 25 years, the face of Al-Anon has changed.
[00:55:05]
Originally, it was mostly wives, the chapter to wives. And then some men started coming into Al-Anon and we were so rare and exotic and fragile. There was a pamphlet written just for us. Al-Anon is for men. It's still, it's hard for men to come into Al-Anon. I think some of that's cultural. We don't like being powerless and we don't like so many things. The long list of things I don't like. And then the group that came in and brought lots of men with it were adult children.
And this is how I come into Al-Anon. Those of us where alcoholism was present in the family and we grow up with it. And for some of us, it's a nightmare family and for some of us, it's a miserable family. But the alcoholism is present and it produces people like me. A lot of us from alcoholic families go into helping professions. We become nurses and social workers and teachers. We become clergy. We become policemen.
We become marines. We like to help and we get involved in lots of those things. Some of us become nurses in intensive care units because it's just like home. And we will also become air traffic controllers because we like running things and saving lives. It's very powerful. And all of those are good things. The problem that many of us have is we do not learn self-care. We don't learn how to take time off.
We don't know how to easy does it. We don't know how to live and not live. We don't know about having a Sabbath observance because we're busy running the world. You know, what would God do without us?