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Source: Tom W. (Father) – Fr. Tom W – How To Live Surrounded by Crazy People 3 2010 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-w-father-fr-tom-w-how-to-live-surrounded-by-crazy-people-3-2010-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 03:06:31
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And I'll take a, I will take a hug. Hugs are given. They're given? Thank you. You're welcome. Hello, my name is Tom and I'm in great need of a hundred thousand Al-Anon meetings and I think I, I don't have a specific date for when I got involved in Al-Anon. There were a couple of, of encounters with Al-Anon. The first, for the first while I was really just visiting and I was looking for some quick solutions for some burning problems and, and then everything got much worse and I, 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, it was just gravity and bad luck and, and I, 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 there's, 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 once a, I go to, 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 we have, 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. So if you go to meetings, if you go to work, if
[00:05:06]
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 listened to Blanche and I listened to Blanche and I listened to Blanche. And she is from Northern Florida and then went to Baylor University in Texas and her, she was wonderful with words. Her mother said, be careful when you go to Texas 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, you know, 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, okay, watch. And we were sitting down next to each other and I closed my eyes and I breathed in 10 times, in through the nose, out through the mouth. And then I said, help. And I said, you don't need, but you don't have to do the 10 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 okay. 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
[00:10:02]
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, you know. I know some crazy people and wild people. A lot of us live on the roller coaster and we live with people who are on the roller coaster. And when I was new going to meetings, I thought I was the only one on the roller coaster 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 roller coaster 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 roller coaster. And I didn't know I could do that especially if I loved somebody or liked somebody or was related to somebody. Those are three different things. Who was on the roller coaster? If we're close, I have to be sitting right next to this person. And I found out that just not true. I can get off the roller coaster. 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 roller coaster, 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 sometimes 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. It 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 a—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 insane people and there's tourists and there's prostitution and there's drugs for sale. And that's just the choir. We're not talking about the people outside.
And 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 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 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. That's true, that was his name.
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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 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. Well, it's fine when you're thirty-one, but after a while, you just get exhausted, and the drug adrenaline, you need more of it to keep going, and I found I liked excitement, I liked danger, I liked 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, Anne, Dr. Bob was very insistent on wanting a normal life, normal. He said on my tombstone, I want one word, normal. Not he was exciting to be with, I'm just not interested in exciting anymore, and that's a sign that I'm getting older. 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 okay. 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. 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 an allergy for me, and it's contagious. 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
[00:20:00]
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. 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 happens 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. I'm tired. I don't have, I mean, 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 500 times in exactly the same cadence. It would make me wild when I was 11 and 14. 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. 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, you know. 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. Act 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. We had Catholics and Lutherans and Masons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Hi. We had Democrats and Republicans and Communists and Fascists. 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.
[00:25:01]
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 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 I, 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.
I don't, if it's Tuesday it must be Belgium is 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 and 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.
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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 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 okay, so I was waiting and he showed up on a motorcycle back and what I learned in motorcycles, if you're riding on the back of a motorcycle, it means death. 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 and I, you know, 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 8 or 12 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 learn, 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. Slogan, 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. To deal some with my uniqueness and my special-hoodness and my arrogance. I was talking somewhere and 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 I, 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.
[00:35:02]
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. Can I attempt 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. I have a tendency to think that if you disagree with me, you should be in prison.
I mean, I have all those tendencies. Don't you? You know, don't. I mean, perhaps someone in Florida will identify with me, I'm not sure. For the grace of God, some, I do not believe in destiny and I do not believe in fate. I am not a Calvinist. I do not believe in predestination. I don't believe in luck. 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. 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, first 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, I 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.
[00:40:01]
Next 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. 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, 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 3. No, no, no, it was Friday, May 6. That can go on for three days.
And it's just crazy. So 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. And 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. 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.
[00:45:08]
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. 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. If you're a teacher, 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, the most reliable, the most interesting, the most promising.
Number three, put it in some kind of order. Four, draw a 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. We're 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. When I go to meetings, a lot of times I get some new information. When I read the literature regularly, I get some new information. It's not always fun 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.
[00:50:05]
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 clear new interpretation of the entire program. And so I explained it to him with small words, you know, and 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, 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 or 45 minutes. And what I would suggest is this, maybe six groups. How many, 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. May, October. Does that work? Anybody not in the group? Oh, I know. What am I going to do? How about November and December? Yeah, November, December. Break up those places, have a conversation, be back in an hour. 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 at 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.
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 courage to change the things I can. And 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. 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.
[00:55:08]
A friend of mine is from the state of Texas. His name is James. 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. Notice also in the last 20, 25 years, the face of Al-Anon has changed. 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.
Observance, because we're busy running the world, you know, what would God do without us? And the new group coming into Al-Anon are parents. And their parents, grandparents
[01:00:05]
who are raising their grandchildren because their parents are, their kids are out there. And it's a new thing. Now, I used to think that anyone in Al-Anon could sponsor anyone in Al-Anon. And this is an opinion, but I'm right. In some ways, that may be true, but I have found I don't sponsor people married to alcoholics well because I've never been married. I've seen the movie and I've read the book and I get the theory, but I don't have the experience. And I've tried sponsoring some married people and it just didn't work out at all. So, I don't do that anymore. I can sponsor adult children because I know that crazy. I'm going to talk about that a little bit in the next few minutes. And then people who have kids. I don't have kids. I taught kids. That's different. I sponsor a fellow in, who has adolescent sons. And when he's having stuff with his kids, I tell him to go talk to another dad because dads know. Moms know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, can't you just flunk the little guy? No, you can't do that. He's not your student. He's your child. Oh, okay. Well, that's different. And I find what I need to do when I'm practicing a Perfect Al-Anon program is I talk from my experience. And if I don't have the experience, I refer them to someone else who does. I was in priest school in Berkeley in 1994 to 97.
It was a wonderful learning experience. The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley has nine different denominations and 12 different schools. So, you could take, each school had its own requirements, but you could take classes from any school. So, you could study with Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits and all kinds of people in between. It was a great place to learn. And one of my mentors was an older priest named Robert Daly who was very familiar with the world of recovery and was an Al-Anon person. And Robert Daly had a rough life. Went into the seminary and went to China to be a missionary. And after he was there a year or two, the Japanese came in and he spent some time in a Japanese camp, like three years. And then the war ended and civil war broke out and he spent some time in a communist camp. And then they let him out and he went to the Philippines and they put him in a place where they starved him in school for a while.
And a few more things happened. Anyway, he had a nervous breakdown and crisis and we would say low self-esteem. I think prison does that to you. Even in our nice prisons here, it does it to you that Japanese were a little tougher. And he had to rebuild his life. Out of his suffering came much wisdom. And that happens with grace and community, as you know. Anyway, when he was teaching us the class on how to hear confessions, which is how you listen to people who are doing a fifth step or a tenth step. People are coming and they're being very vulnerable. And people sometimes talk about officially what might be sin. That's a great big conversation. I usually don't go there. But breaking laws or breaking commandments or doing something against your conscience. People also come talking a lot about their sorrow and their pain. So it is a great privilege to listen to this and make some kind of response. And Robert Daly said this, when you're in that position and someone is talking to you about their deep insides, pray for the grace to know when you're in over your head. Now, see, I didn't think I could be in over my head because I was 35 years old and I've read a lot of books. And again, the arrogance shows up there. But his words stayed with me and I have been in those situations where someone talks about something and I don't know what to do or say. And what I've learned to do
[01:05:00]
is refer them to someone who's had the experience. I had a sponsee for a while who was a delicate cutter. She would cut herself. And this is a sign of deep trouble. And she'd been doing it for a while and I'd been her sponsor for a while. And in Al-Anon we say people sponsor people, you know. And so I was people, she was people. And she came to see me with this big secret and she pulled back her arm and she just said, I do this. Now, I had the wisdom and the grace to know I have no idea how to handle this. And I referred her to someone who had much more life experience. And it was a good thing. I, there are so many things I'm not good at. There are some things I'm good at. But I need to know what that is.
And I need to know when I am, what is the phrase, out of my pay grade. So referring, I think, is a good experience. Alcoholism, allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. Dr. Silkworth. Dr. Silkworth loved alcoholics. Now, I hope this doesn't shock you but a lot of medical people don't. It's because alcoholics lie. They refuse to follow directions and then they blame the doctor. Well, Dr. Silkworth loved us and the literature says he had an affection for and a knack for working with alcoholics. We didn't burn him out. We didn't exhaust him. Although, in the AA text, in the letter from the physician, it says, let me see, always read. I don't memorize stuff because it's written down. Let me see. He says this. This is on page XXVII. He's talking about meeting Bill and many years ago, one of the leading contributors of his book hooked up and we did stuff and things. The unselfishness of these men as we've come to know them, the entire absence of profit motive, Americans are amazed when things aren't for sale. We don't know what to do. And their community spirit is indeed inspiring to one who has labored long and wearily in this alcoholic field. And that's an awful lot of the folks who work in treatment and work in homes and work in rehab. They just become exhausted and I have done that a couple of times. You give and give and give and give and give and they want more. And I have to learn how to turn off my phone, go for a walk, know when it's none of my business and stop giving advice to everybody especially when I know nothing about the subject. That's a lot of Al-Anon.
Energy of the body, obsession of the mind. I also heard this presented at a meeting and I found it very useful. I like thinking in pictures. I like pictures and I like picture books. And this person said, alcoholism is a lot like dancing with a gorilla. You're not done dancing until the gorilla is done dancing. Now, I'll admit, a lot of gorillas are cute and you can have a good time with a gorilla and I have on a couple of occasions.
But once the gorilla gets his arms around us, the gorilla is in charge. We worry, we see the people we love sick with alcoholism and we say, I'm so worried. And they'll say, listen, if I ever get to be as bad as you, I'll just stop. They think they can. But when the gorilla has us in his arms, the gorilla is calling all the shots. And a lot of alcoholics and addicts are killed by the gorilla. It's a deadly disease. In my home group, in the
[01:10:02]
other program, we lost two women last year. And it's not a big group. One was an older lady who kept relapsing and they found her dead in her apartment, dead. And the other was a young woman who was found, she jumped off a bridge drunk. We have bridges. It's a deadly disease. So, if you're clean and sober this morning, it means the gorilla let go. See, it doesn't mean you outsmarted the gorilla, the gorilla let go. If the gorilla has let go, get out of the cage. And don't go back into the cage even when the gorilla starts humming your song, which it does. See, and then, oh, no, I'll never go back. I'll never do it again with that awful mess last time with the police and the goats. Oh, I'll never go back. No, no, no. And then you hear music and you go back. How did this happen?
One of my pals is in Las Vegas, which is its own little special world. Bob, are you here this morning? It's terrifying there in Vegas. One of my friends said, I don't want to dance with the gorilla, Tom. I just want to pet it a little bit. Well, we who love alcoholics visit the zoo a lot. We walk around, we see lions, tigers, bears, giraffes. I'm very pro-giraffe. What a wonderful place to visit. And then we walk by the gorilla cage and we see the person we love dancing with the gorilla. It might be our mom or dad. It might be our spouse. It might be our brother or sister. It might be one of our kids. And we go crazy.
And we want to do something. Do something. And so we get into the cage and start vacuuming. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. We hang curtains. We do stained glass. If we just do the stained glass right, they'll stop. We make nice nutritious meals. We hum songs. None of that works. So we try to get between the gorilla and the person we love. And that's when the gorilla can turn and yank our arms and legs off. And one of the truths is those of us who love alcoholics have a big casualty rate too. Mortality rates real high. Mental illness real high. Misery real deep. So we have a program, true, and it is called Al-Anon. And a lot of the Al-Anon program, maybe 70, 74% of the Al-Anon program comes down to this. Stay out of the cage. But I only want to vacuum. We know. And it really doesn't help all that much. It can get the gorilla mad. Just stay out of the cage. We're meeting over by the giraffes. Why don't you come and we'll have a conversation about our craziness, not theirs, ours? Because trust me, we're nuts. We worry. We obsess.
We try to control everything. Control is our drug. Control is our heroin. If I could just control everything, it'd be fine. I was talking to God the other day about a few things I would like, a few powers that I would like. I thought this was modest. I said, okay, one day a month, one day a month, I want to be in charge of all the weather. So if places need rain, I could bring rain. If places need dry, I could bring dry. You know, I think I'd be good at that and I'd be happy to do that. I would like to be the weather czar.
One day a month, one day a month, is that too much to ask for? Number two, why Number two, one day a month I'd like to be able to heal anyone who needs healing, not just one of them, but bring thousands into a room, I'll be happy to heal them one day a month. And one day a month I'd like the power to kill anyone that needs killing. Is
[01:15:08]
that too much to ask for? Strike them down. And I wouldn't do it to scare them or, you know, I just want them dead. There was a trial in Texas a few years ago and Molly Ivins would say, you know, if you want interesting psychological studies just wander around Texas. There was a murder and the defense for the guy accused of the murder was the guy who was killed needed killing. And he was acquitted. And I understand that. As an Al-Anon, I understand. Some people need killing. I'm not in charge. I'm not in charge. And I want to talk about my own craziness, my sense of my need for power, my need for control, my need for worry, all that stuff.
That for me is a regular Al-Anon conversation. There's a lot of subtlety in Al-Anon, a lot about being human beings and learning how to be present and learning how to be alive. The first, I heard of Al-Anon and it's before I knew that I needed 100,000 Al-Anon meetings. I was somewhere in the East Bay. I was in Tampa last month and they refer to that as the Bay Area. I was just shocked. I said, no, no, no, I live in the Bay Area. You people, I don't know what you have but it's not a bay. Anyway, it was in Oakland, I guess, and there were people and they were having a conference like this and they had entertainment and musicals. I mean, people like that kind of thing, you know, and good for them. Anyway, it was the Al-Anon musical and they had a bunch of young women and men dancing and singing and someone wrote clever lyrics and I attended, you know, wanting to support them in some way. And this group of people were standing up and the song was, D-E-N-I-A-L, life goes on, la-la-la-la, life goes on. I thought that was clever. I smiled. And then this young woman got up and sang, it's 1130 and the cops are here. I could use the rent to bail him out. Then he'll be so happy, he'll give up his beer. But just in case, I think I'll pour it down the spout. D-E-N-I-A-L, life goes on, la-la-la-la, life goes on. Well, I laughed. I thought that was very amusing. Not having yet paid anybody's rent, I thought that was really amusing. That will happen to me. I, quickly, pay your rent. You need this. Then the next, this guy got up and sang, Daddy's in the kitchen with a drunken face.
Maybe it was something that I did. Brother Billy touched me in a funny place. It must be me. I'll try to be a better kid. And I burst into tears. Now, even then, I knew, something's going on here. But it was a few more years before I started coming to Alamo because I'm fine, thank you. I was at a conference in Southern California out in Riverside, Carmelite Retreat House, and I was giving talks and things and stuff. And they had a meeting that evening of AA and Al-Anon meeting together. And anyone could talk. The AAs allowed the Al-Anons to talk, you know, which is such a generous thing on their part. And the wife was the alcoholic and the husband was an Al-Anon and I heard a man talk about Al-Anon.
And he said, in Al-Anon, I learned how to live with a crazy person without going crazy. And I had never heard anybody talk about that before. And I knew I needed something because I was crazy. I was reacting and I was responding and I was exhausted, roller-coastering left
[01:20:00]
and right. So I started making some meetings and I found it to be useful. I heard my sponsor talk, Salvation Army, and he talked about the five rules of the world, how our society runs itself, how it governs itself. It's cruel. It's hard. We're not an easy place. We're a difficult species and we live on a dangerous planet. And he said, the five rules of the world. Rule number one, you cannot have anything wrong with you. Look good, fit in, don't be weird, don't be different, don't be abnormal. You cannot have anything wrong with you. What will people say? Rule two, if you have something wrong with you, get over it fast, which is where we think we're open-minded and generous. Get over it, go home, take the day off, come back tomorrow, everything will be fine. We like a short, we like brief. We don't like chronic. If things are chronic or go on for a long, long time, we get very unhappy. I mean, can you imagine a national politician standing up and saying, we're in such trouble that it's going to take all of us 20 years of hard work to solve anything. No, next election is tomorrow, quick vote, you know. But long term, we just don't. The Chinese think in long terms, 300 years, 500 years. I know when Mao Zedong was running things or he was stoned actually, he was on heroin, but the guy running things was Zhou Enlai. And Zhou Enlai lived in France, spoke French, spoke excellent English, and he was the practical politician running communist China in the bad old days. But they were asking him a question once, this is somewhere in the, when Mr. Nixon went to China, I think in 74, somewhere around then, they were talking to Zhou Enlai who was a very educated, civilized tyrant. And they said, Prime Minister Zhou, the French Revolution, do you think it was a good idea or a bad idea? And he said, oh, it's much too soon to tell. See, that's not how an American thinks, you know, but the Chinese think. Anyway, who cares? So, if you have something wrong with you, get over it fast. Rule three, if you can't get over it fast, pretend you did, which is where some of us become experts. How are things? Fine, just great, glad to be here. Love the steps, love my sponsor, love the literature. So wonderful to have a place to come to. I'm going to have to leave a little early because I'm going to hang myself, but things are really going well for the whole family. You can't have anything wrong with you. If you have something wrong with you, get over it fast. If you won't get over it fast, pretend you did. If you won't pretend, drop out. I was somewhere, I was tired, I was overwhelmed, there was too much going on. I was much too busy. I was way overstimulated. And I thought if I just had a nervous breakdown, they'd take care of me for a while. Well, is that the only alternative? Can't I make some choices there? Most of us in Al-Anon, we don't drop out. We're not the kind that drop out. We're the kind that take over. And so we follow rule number five, which says, if you won't drop out, at least have the decency to look ashamed when you're around the rest of us. So we come to groups like this and we're just so ashamed. I'm not as good as you. My fifth step isn't as big as yours. My meditation isn't as ornate as yours. If you just let me sit in the back and not take up much space, can I stay? If you love an alcoholic, if you love an addict, it's real easy to live with a lot of shame. If only I tried harder. If only I knew. If only I… We play that if
[01:25:07]
only game over and over and over again. And I've done it. One of my sponsees suicided. Oh, if only. I should have known. I should have picked up on. I should have done this. It took me about 18 months to walk through the worst of that. 1994, August, shot herself. I should have known. I should have the insight and the understanding of God in my own head. There's lots I don't know and there's lots I don't understand, but I sure got to feel grief. I felt like I was hit by a truck. What Al-Anon lets us know is those five rules are killers. And if you're going to stay in the world of recovery, you have to break the five rules. I mean, you have to break them. Rule number one, you can't have anything wrong with you. Listen, if you don't have something seriously wrong with you, we're not interested.
You're a whiny little perfectionistic control freak nonsense. We want to hear about it. You're obsessive cleaning. You vacuum the carpet off the floor. Good. Keep doing that. Crazy family stuff, religious craziness, political craziness. Oh, my. Yes, indeed. We're glad to see you. You got to have something wrong with you. Number two, you don't have to get over this fast. We know you are deeply disturbed. In fact, I was talking to someone who was an alcoholic in recovery seven years and they said, well, I'm having a lot of trouble with my family and all my friends and all my sponsees. Do you think I might help in Al-Anon? And I said to this guy, you hold out as long as you can. Al-Anon will look really good if you are thoroughly miserable. Otherwise, you're going to notice they read too many things and they're boring. That's what you're going to notice. But if you're wild with crazy, you will find oxygen in the rooms. And healing for a lot of us takes a long time. I like quick. I like rapid. There's a, Theo Desjardins is one of the people I've read on occasion and in one of his writings, he's talking to a younger person. He's an old guy. And he says, above all, trust in the slow work of God. God is at work and sometimes very slowly. Above all, trust the slow work of God. Higher power is such a big topic for so many of us. I'll get to that in a moment. But you don't have to get over things fast.
Rule three, you don't have to pretend. You don't have to pretend you're better than you are, smarter than you are. If one of your coping mechanisms is a little bit of larceny, you can say that at meetings. We won't be surprised. If you have some difficulties with funny little obsessive compulsive disorders, we get that. Yeah, us too. Hi. Nice to see you. If you're full of rage, oh, hi. I got a call from a young man, Asian background, alcoholism, drug addiction has blown his family to pieces. And he found his twin brother drunk, overdosed and hanging. And then he cut him down and the brother was dead and he just got real busy for the next four years.
for the Next Four Years, and then called me. Somehow he got my name. I could use a meeting. So I brought him to this meeting, and nice kid, but very shut down and full of secrets.
[01:30:03]
And I said, well, this is a small group. It's a men's tag. We use as our format, we read Paths to Recovery, and we comment on recovery. I said, there's half a dozen guys there, and you don't need to talk if you don't want to, but if you want to talk, it's a safe group to talk to. And he mentioned not having had a breath since he found his brother's body. And we went around the room like we do, and one of the guys there named Chris said, my brother suicided and my father suicided. Would you like to have a talk?
We can talk about things here that there's nowhere else to talk about. You don't have to pretend. Come on in. Yeah, oh yeah, broken heart, broken head, broken spirit. Nice to see you. Rule four about dropping out, you don't have to drop out. And rule five about being ashamed, you don't have to be ashamed. Changes our whole lives. The second step, coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
I cannot fix me, but I think the grace of God working through people can help me heal and get restored to this thing called sanity. And if you're from crazy families, you don't know what they're talking about. Sometimes when you're dealing with alcoholic families, the word that is used is dysfunctional, D-Y-S-F-U-N-C-T-O-N-L. And when I first heard dysfunctional, I thought it was D-I-S, meaning not functioning, not working. It's not working, it's dysfunctional.
That's not what the word means. It's not D-I-S, the Latin. It's D-Y-S, the Greek. And D-Y-S means it works, but it hurts. Dysfunctional families hurt. If it hurts when you pee, you have dysuria. Medical education, very simple. It's the pain that brings us in, and that being restored, it can heal slowly over time. God as we understand God. I want to talk just a little bit about this, and then I'll buy you all lunch. Actually, Lee will buy you all lunch. He said he'd be happy to do it.
God as we understand God. We get to come to our own understanding. I think that's one of the strengths of the program. And God as I understand God talks through our experiences. That's where a lot of it begins. And reflecting on that, getting some sense of where I've been and who I am, I find very helpful. I notice in the AA Big Book, it talks about we agnostics. It doesn't say you agnostics. We agnostics. A lot of us come into recovery with questions and doubts and problems and lack of faith. Lots of us do.
For me, I find that some days I believe more than other days. Some days I'm cooperating, and some days I'm not cooperating. Father Dowling, who was one of the great friends of the program, although he was not an alcoholic himself, Father Dowling said that practically speaking, he has lots of agnostic stuff, just doesn't trust God, just feels he has to take care of everything himself, doesn't know how to ask for help.
God. I think God is big. I think God is bigger than we think. I think God is bigger than we imagine. Some of us want a definition we can understand and control. I think God's bigger than all that.
[01:35:00]
I think God is bigger than the United States. I think God is bigger than the English language. I think God is bigger than the Bible. I think God is bigger than the Vatican. I think God is bigger than anything we can imagine. What we do so regularly as people is when we try to figure God out, we think that God is bigger but a lot like us. Who would God vote for? That kind of stuff? If your God hates all the same people you do, your God is too small. And we turn our will in our lives over to the care of this power greater than us.
There's books written on this. There's movies on this. There are so many ways of understanding it and thinking about it and we get to come to our own understanding. And there will be questions. I don't think questions are bad. You will have doubts. I don't think doubts are bad. I think you're paying attention if questions come up and you wonder why and how and why and how, although frequently why is not a very useful question.
One of my sisters-in-law has a way of meditating that I find very helpful for me. I'm a worrier and a control freak. Not as much a control freak as you are, but I'm a control freak. She'll visualize, it's an imagination, God as light. If you like the New Testament, that's in John. If you like the Old Testament, we had the Hanukkah services at my house twice one Christmas. Christmas and Hanukkah are on the same day and we had a fellow come and he did it in Hebrew and another fellow came and did it in English. It was quite splendid.
And the opening prayer for Hanukkah is, Oh God, your first commandment was let there be light. What a great insight. Light. And then I take the person or situation I'm worried, sick about, upset about, broken hearted about, I hold them in the palms of my hand and then I hold it up so they're being bathed in the light. I want the light to touch them. I want the light to soak through them. I want the light to saturate them. I don't tell the light how to do it.
Sometimes when I pray, when I don't have my perfect Al-Anon program, I will say, Oh God, George is in trouble and would you please take care of it this way? And then I tell God what to do. And I give God a time schedule. And by the way, I'd like this done by Tuesday because Wednesday we're all going out and I'd like them to be in good shape by then. I've learned in my Al-Anon program to let God be God. Ask for help. I think when I ask for help in any way, it helps the energy flow. We talk like that in California.
And step two, slowly being restored to sanity. Sanity, human life, emotionally and psychologically healthy. How do you know you're healthy? Big topic. Healthy people can work. Healthy people can love. And healthy people can play. If you know someone who can work, love and play, you know someone who's doing really well. I used to think I was a workaholic. I'm not. Workaholics get things done. I like the busy. I like the busy, busy, busy, busy. And that's not the same thing. I just want them to think I'm busy and then they'll leave me alone.
To start a project, to stick with the project, to finish the project, to clean up after. That's very adult. Now I'm distracted so easily. I'm bored so easily. I start a project and it's boring and I put it down and I start something else and get it done. I'm better at that now, but it's still an effort.
[01:40:10]
Loving, loving, loving, which is what a lot of this is. Out on the West Coast, I have to tell people when I'm talking about loving, I'm not talking about having sex. Some of us have been sexual with people we would not have coffee with. It's talking about the quality of relationships of human beings. Friends, family, learning how to love with the powerlessness that's involved in that. There's just so much I can't do for people I love. Love is not control. Love is wishing well for someone else, but it's not control.
When I was growing up, love meant control. I love you, therefore you must do the following nine things. And when I was a young adult, whenever anyone said, I love you, I felt all the oxygen leave the room. Time to run for your life. Loving. Grandparents do this better than parents. This is generic now, not in every circumstance. You notice grandparents and grandchildren get along real well? It's because they have a common enemy.
Learning how to love. Learning how to be helpful. Learning how to let go. Learning how to detach. Learning how to not control stuff. Loving. And playing. Learning how to play. And this is my last point and then I'm done. We'll get back together at 1.30 so you have some time for lunch and maybe a nap. If you fall asleep on these chairs, no one will bother you, I promise you. If we don't learn how to have fun in recovery, we don't recover. And for some of us, we have so much loss and so much grief and so much trauma that it's really hard to learn how to enjoy anything.
So start small. Find something fun. I remember I was in therapy and the therapist asked me, so what are you doing for fun? I said, I go to meetings. He said, that's really good, but what are you doing for fun? Oh, we laugh very hard at meetings sometimes. And he just said, Tom, if you don't learn how to enjoy your life, you're not going to stay in recovery. So I had to find there are things that give me pleasure, there are things I enjoy doing and we learn that through trial and error.
Some stuff that works for me is not going to work for you. But there are some things I really like to do. I like gardening. I like cooking. I'm not a professional gardener that has to do it seven days a week for money so I can still enjoy it. And I haven't cooked meals for an unhappy family three times a day for 20 years. So I can cook pleasantly. I like doing that. And I like other things. I like music. One of my friends is a musician and he also is a critic, a musical critic, like he writes reviews.
Their mental experience is completely different from mine. But he would get tickets anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, two tickets, for anything musical happening. And so he could choose every night anything to do from five or ten choices. And he picked me up once and he came over to the East Bay. I was his date. And we went to hear jazz. Some Cuban jazz musicians. Now I like jazz but I really don't know much about it. I don't know anything about Cuban musicians.
This guy played at a jazz club in Oakland called Yoshi's. And people come from all over the world to go to Yoshi's. I didn't even know that. I lived in the same town but I've been busy thinking about myself. So… be thinking about myself. So we went. And this guy, he was a pianist. He played away and there was a guy on a horn and there may have been someone on a bass fiddle and they played. Now, I liked it. I liked it. But I looked around for the people who were real jazz people and they loved it. Okay. Now, I can enjoy their enjoyment, you know, and
[01:45:09]
I learned stuff and it was out of my comfort zone and now I could go again and maybe have a better time because I'm very guarded when I do new things. But the whole world of live music is life-giving for a lot of people. Going to the beach, doing a, finding inexpensive things that give joy, I would highly recommend it. So work on that this afternoon. We're going to come back. Before you come back, do something fun. It doesn't have to be long.
Only two or three minutes will qualify, but I know some of you need assignments, you know, so you can check it off. I had fun for four minutes doing something. There's a little pool to stick your feet in. There's a shop to wander through and gawk. There are people to have conversations with. If it's fun, it qualifies. Telling your sponsor you can't get back to them, that could be fun. Find different ways of enjoying yourself, you know, that don't hurt anybody. Oh, well. Let's end with the serenity prayer. We'll be back at 1.30. God, grant me the serenity to accept the courage and the wisdom. Hooray, hooray.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I'm Tom and I'm in great need of a hundred thousand Al-Anon meetings. Oh, let's see. I've had some good contact with physicians in recovery and physicians who have helped people recover. And one of my mentors is a physician named Dr. Gil Ayotte. Gil's been gone about two years now, from French Canada, got sober when General Eisenhower was president and then relapsed under Mr. Kennedy and got sober again under Lyndon Johnson. And Gil, as a sober physician, helped a lot of people get well. And he sure worked a lot with families. And he would go around giving talks on alcoholism and recovery because there are so many questions. People don't understand alcoholism. People don't understand the family dynamics of alcoholism. People don't understand how truly crazy you can be even if you're not drinking. When I was fairly new in recovery, I met a fellow who was a bad drunk. He was a bad drunk and he'd been a bad drunk for years and hospitalized lots of times and on the street lots of times. And his mouth was ulcerated and his esophagus was ulcerated. His stomach was ulcerated. He was very damaged from years of alcohol abuse. And, but he wanted to drink. He had no interest in getting sober. So how to deal with this? Because if you take alcohol and put it on an open sore, it burns terribly.
So he went looking for an appropriate lady and he found a nurse, of course, who just wants to help. And she would give him wine enemas. Now, perhaps you haven't thought of wine enemas. This could be a step up or a step down for some of you. I'm not sure. There's no ulcers down there, at least there weren't yet. And wine in the bowel is absorbed instantly and you're very, very drunk and that's what he wanted. So you could imagine their conversations about room temperature or chilled or, you know, red or white. I can just, I do wonder about things like that. Now, we haven't gotten to the crazy part yet. So far, it's just another day at work as far as a lot of us are concerned. But the crazy part was he was a violent alcoholic.
And she would give him his little enema and then he would get very, very drunk and very, very violent and beat her unconscious. And she was hospitalized three times in five years,
[01:50:02]
something like that. Broken bones and broken jaws. So the question that I would present to the community for discussion is, which one's crazier? Which one's crazier? And I think she wins. She's just trying to help. She just wants to be nice and she is very clearly enabling someone not just be sick himself but endanger her life. And so recovery, there's a discipline to recovery and to help, to get out of people's way, to stay out of the cage. There are things we in Al-Anon need to learn how to do, one of which, of course, is learning about how the disease works. Dr. Gill would phrase it like this when he would talk to groups. He said, alcoholism is a disease that has three distinct phases to it. Phase one is the fun phase. This is when it's fun. Now, a lot of people don't think alcohol is fun. They don't know. They don't know that it's the best time you can have if you're an alcoholic. Fun, fun. Stage two alcoholism is called fun plus problems.
That's still fun but you start to have problems. And stage three alcoholism is just called problems. The fun's gone. But you keep doing it. You're in the gorilla cage. You don't know what else to do. You're trapped and you're trapped on many, many levels. You're trapped in being very immature and manipulative and charming and immature. I don't know if I mentioned this this morning but there was a fellow who was talking to his father and he said to his father, Dad, when I grow up, I want to be an alcoholic. And his father said, Son, you can't do both. Who wants to grow up? Who wants to experience all the experiences of being a grown-up? Who wants to go through the losses of being a grown-up? Who wants to figure out that actions have consequences? And that's how people learn and I need to let people have the consequences of their actions. This takes a long time and it's important to know that for a lot of people we love, pain can be their best friend because otherwise they'll never reach out for help. Pain and disgust and humiliation and, you know, being on Jerry Springer, I mean, that could bring you to your knees, you know, and you reach out for help and ask for God's help. Help, help, help. Those of us who love alcoholics, we manipulate and we get manipulated. There are dynamics of stuff we go on. In the Jesuit community over in San Francisco, there's a couple of communities there. There's one with the University of San Francisco and that has 20 guys or so. There's a high school, there's a parish. And a couple of my friends over there are active members of Al-Anon and they have alcoholism in their families. And they said it's interesting when if there's active alcoholism in the community, you don't notice it by seeing the alcoholic, you notice it by seeing the adult children because they start acting out. They start acting like kids.
They start acting like nine-year-olds. And you don't, you might not know who the alcoholic is but he's somewhere, you know, pay attention. People are getting involved in stuff. And the family dynamics kind of work like this. There's your alcoholic, then there's your person who's obsessed with the alcoholic, and then you have kids. And frequently, it breaks down where the oldest child plays the role of hero. Mom and dad are busy. Someone has to raise the family. This is the child who raises the other children, feeds the other children, makes sure the other children do their homework. This is the kid who's a very, very good kid. If you're a teacher, this is the kid who's 14 going on 35. And if there's
[01:55:05]
an emergency, you can trust this kid to do it. Help please, we need help. This kid fits in. This kid edits the newspaper. This kid is captain of the football team, would be the head cheerleader if he could arrange it. This kid is a public figure and takes care of everything. Great future marine, great future cop, great future social worker, great future nurse in intensive care unit, great pastor or archbishop. This is the person that takes care of a lot of things. Well, frequently, not always, frequently, the second child reacts and the second child plays the role of scapegoat, the kid in trouble, the kid who also wants attention but there can only be one hero per drama. So, this kid will be the bad kid. This kid smokes. This kid gets in fights. This kid might end up in juvenile hall. If a girl pregnant at 14, how did it happen? I don't know. It was so quick. And the problems of the family can focus on this kid. Why aren't you more like your sister? Why aren't you more like your brother? But you're getting attention. The third child in the family doesn't want any attention. This kid just wants to be left alone. In the family photo album, the oldest child, there are 10,000 photographs. Second child, 5,000 photographs. Third child, no photographs. Even in the family group photo, there's no photo. This kid escaped. This kid is gone. This kid doesn't want to get noticed. This kid never volunteers for an answer in the school. This kid is invisible, also called the adjuster. Like a chameleon, you blend in, you blend in. You don't want to be noticed. This kid runs away from home. This kid goes to Alaska. This kid goes to San Francisco. This kid does not come back home for the holidays.
It's a lost child. The youngest child can play the role of the clown or the mascot. This is the funny kid. This is the kid everybody likes. There's tension at home. There's fury at home. Something happened. A fight. Someone got suspended at school. Dinner table. In crazy families, dinner is not really fun. Oh, let's sit down together and talk. I can remember I developed an irrational affection for the Huntley Brinkley News Hour because someone thought of turning it on at six o'clock at the start of dinner. Dinner was over at 6.30. We watched the news. The only dangerous time was commercials. But I loved Huntley and Brinkley beyond anything you could imagination. It's how I kind of learned about the world and learned more things. Oh, well, that's not the point. But say there's a lot of tension.
Say that one of the parents is ready to blow. Now, it doesn't always have to be the alcoholic. Sometimes the alcoholic is the nice one. Dad's passed out in the kitchen. Who's the crazy woman in the kitchen cutting things? See? Sometimes kids in the family are much kinder to the alcoholic than they are to the person who held the family together. That's not fair, but it happens a lot. So what the mascot, what the clown will do is something silly to break the tension. Pull the cat's tail. Spill the milk. Do something comical.
Get everybody laughing. Everyone laughs. The day is saved and you are a hero one more time. You're a very useful member of the family crazy system. Now, that was me. That was me. And I found even as I carried these survival skills with me into adulthood, if there's tension in the room, I really pick it up fast. If there's tension in the room, I really pick it up fast. I'm terrified of people fighting. I don't want people arguing. I don't want voices raised. It makes me stop breathing. I get sweaty and panicky. I was working in West Oakland for the early 1980s. We were doing social work there and we had a staff and people, adults, disagree and discuss things and sometimes argue fairly. You know, you're not saying pigs, swine, war criminal, but you discuss things. Yes,
[02:00:06]
I like this. Ideas are talked about, presentations, tension in the room. I would become so aware of the tension in the room, I would just start acting out and I was 35 years old. I would start being funny, making comments, make side comments, get people laughing and break the tension. Now, I saw myself as charming. They were furious at me because if I was present in the room, there could be no honest discussion about anything. I'd interfere.
I was rescuing the family one more time and what I had to learn is this and this took, oh, I'd say five years of Al-Anon. If I'm in a group, if I'm at a meeting and something hilarious occurs to me to say, it's because there's tension in the room and I should keep my big, fat mouth shut and let people have their feelings. Instead of trying to perk everyone up because I was interfering in honest conversation. Now, I can do that, but it doesn't feel good. I want you to know this doesn't feel good. I'd much rather be funny at a meeting or make some interesting remark and I sometimes only know how uncomfortable I am by how amusing my brain gets.
By the way, of the four children in the family, say there are four, that youngest child is the most likely to commit suicide, just statistically. The second child, the scapegoat, is the most likely to get help because that kid might end up in juvenile hall before anyone else does. One kid moves, everyone else adjusts. Scapegoats become heroes, lost children become scapegoats. What will happen to you? You were such a nice kid when your oldest brother was in town, now you're a jerk. There is a dynamic thing in the family and here's a way of understanding that.
These are survival skills, not living skills, but survival skills. And what we have to learn as we grow up is to learn other skills besides the one that got us through when we were six or ten or twelve years old. For instance, the child who is the hero has to learn how to ask for help, has to learn how to let someone else help. The scapegoat has to learn how to not act out all the time. I have been scapegoat too. I was at a church event and everyone was wearing church clothes and everything was very, very solemn and I felt a huge need not to be funny but to start using the F word.
Just to see what people would do. Well, this is behaving badly. But see, I was anxious, so I'm going to be verbal. Anyway, I think I did that for a while and now I do that less. That's good. The lost child who learns how to make himself or herself present to get found. And the mascot learning how to let other people be. Claudia Black has done a lot of work on Crazy Families. She was the middle child, the observant child of both parents, alcoholic.
And what she'll put together is that Crazy Families run by three rules. Rule number one, don't talk. Rule number two, don't trust. And rule number three, don't feel. Don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, you'll survive. So as recovery begins, we have to learn how to talk about things directly and that was not a skill I had. My family was not violent and we didn't go to jail and we didn't beat each other. We used avoidance and denial and circumlocution.
We talked around things. We indicated problems without ever really pointing to them. I have a suspicion that Agatha Christie was an adult child. The way she thinks and the way there are clues and you have to guess the clues to find out what's going on. I get that very much. Also probably Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes running around solving crimes. It's Byzantine. If you're a Star Trek person and I am, it's Vulcan chess, three dimensional chess. Something moves over here and there's going to be a reaction over here. It's very complicated in the Crazy Family because you have to communicate without communicating.
[02:05:15]
And we get really good at it. What I liked about meetings for the most part is that at meetings, people focus on speaking simply and directly about real things. That's not what happens in Crazy Families. Simply and directly about real things. Don't talk. We're not going to talk about the alcoholism. No, no, no, no. We're not going to talk about the mental illness. We're not going to talk about the suicides. We're not going to talk about the crazy people. We're not going to talk about the runaways. We talk about the weather and everyone's health. And from that, you figure out what's going on.
In my family also, we had Irish Catholic Democrats on one side and Swedish Lutheran Republicans on the other. Those were the two big groupings and then there were the minor groups in between who would go back and forth. In the Swedish Lutheran Republican group, we never talked about the alcoholics. We talked about the nervous people. My mom called me once. She was concerned about one of the neighbors and she said, I don't know what to make of it. He parks his car on the lawn in front of his house and then falls asleep next to it.
And what did I think? As a college graduate, I said, does he drink? And she said, well, of course not, but he's very nervous. Now, if my mom thought you were nervous, it means it's time to get sober because that's how she sees it. On the Irish Catholic Democratic side, we didn't have alcoholics either. We had characters. And what that really meant was don't let him drive. That's what it meant. So part of recovery is learning how to talk about real things. Alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, manic depression, the things that make up our lives. My tendencies and inclinations, my defects of character and my obsessions. I need to keep an eye on these things because they're there.
Don't talk. Don't trust. You don't trust anybody. People betray each other. People manipulate each other. People are selfish. Today's confidence becomes tomorrow's ammunition. And you don't have to be a real slow kid to figure that out. And you do get to a place where you just shut down, close down, and how are things just fine, thanks. You don't trust anybody. Don't talk. Don't trust. Don't feel. Because if you feel anything, you feel lousy. When I began going to meetings and asking God for help and listening to other people do things, slowly, slowly, slowly, I started learning how to feel.
And it was not comfortable at all. This was not nice. This was not polite. My first feelings were catastrophic to me. I had to learn a new language, which is the language of feelings. And I thought I was losing my mind because I was having emotions. It took a long time. I found out what anger felt like, what fear felt like, what makes me angry, what makes me afraid. Inventories are helpful on this.
And after I was in recovery for a while, I had to start paying attention to that whole process of grief. Grief is part of recovery in Al-Anon. There's even a book out on this now that talks about the grief process. One of the reasons that grief is such an important part of our recovery is because there have been such tremendous losses if there's alcoholism in the family. Alcoholism, addiction, compulsive, wacko, crazy takes its toll.
[02:10:05]
I talked to a physician in Berkeley who worked at the methadone clinic. This is not an optimistic place, the methadone clinic. And she was not an optimistic person. And she said in her work with heroin addicts, what she noticed was that if someone gets off heroin for a while and then other things and becomes a clean and sober person, part of their healing process is to visit a lot of empty places. Well, I think that's very true for those of us who love alcoholics. There's a lot of loss, there's a lot of empty places. The grief for some things that never will be. All the losses.
And part of loss is to feel sad and part of loss for me is to feel numb and part of loss for me is to be mad and then I have an experience of acceptance and then it starts all over again. Lots of losses. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who is someone I studied with a little bit, I liked her a lot. She, Swiss, German speaking Swiss, came to the United States and physician, psychiatrist. She worked for a while with the parents of murdered children. That's a pretty special group of people to experience grief and horror with.
When she was a little girl, it was the end of the Second World War and she went with the United Nations as they went through Europe and her first job, I think she was 17 years old, was to go into the concentration camps and find the children who were still alive. That was her first job. So she had a knack for working with real hurt people and people who'd been through great trauma and she's the first physician who says out loud that dying is a normal part of living and that we all get to die and there are stages of grief and loss.
There's denial and acceptance and bargaining and anger and then acceptance finally and I just found it very helpful to start to learn some of that language. It was very helpful in my head but I also had to have the experience of feeling the feelings and I'm better at this now. I'm really better at this now but sometimes when I'm having a real feeling, it freaks me out. I'd much rather it just pass. If I had no feelings, I think I'd be more efficient but some days are really long and some things really hurt and what I choose to believe is this does not mean I'm doing it wrong. This means I'm doing it, walking through this stuff.
If you love alcoholics and addicts, there's going to be a lot of loss and a lot of wreckage and we get to learn to grieve together and we get to learn to grieve and I get to let you grieve instead of saying, oh, you're having a feeling, quick, let's do something. You get to grieve sometimes. I do too. Spiritually, when we're talking about this spiritual program, one of the images that gets used over and over and over again for the work that we do and the changes we go through, it's called you are on the journey or we're on the path or we're on the road to recovery.
I like all of those images. I think they're dynamic and I think it indicates we're going somewhere, trudging the road of happy destiny, I think ultimately happy. But journeys, they're uphill and downhill and I don't frequently want to leave any place that's comfortable. There's a retreat leader and a teacher named Anthony DeMello and he talks about people being asleep and he says most of us are asleep.
Asleep, and he says most of us are asleep. We live in our sleep, we marry in our sleep, we have children in our sleep, and we die in our sleep, and we never know that we were alive because we've been so sedated, so unplugged, so shut down, so shut down, and that happens to a lot of us from crazy backgrounds. We shut down. In fact, if I'm caught by surprise, I still shut down, but I don't stay shut down for months. It might be a couple of hours
[02:15:05]
or a couple of days, and then I have feelings again, and sometimes they're red and sometimes they're black. I remember when 9-11 happened, living on the West Coast, I was waking up just when the first plane hit the towers, and I went downstairs. It made no sense at all. I went downstairs, and I had no understanding for this, and then the second plane hit the towers in New York, and I remember being confused and baffled, and the towers collapsed, and I just shut down completely. I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know what I'm thinking.
I don't know what just happened. I went to a meeting that night, and a young woman was talking whom I've never seen before or since. She said, there are really big things happening in our world. There are big issues and big events, but in meetings, we focus on our recovery and our experience and what it was like and what happened and what it's like now, and she said, so I'm just going to tell my story even though I know compared to anything going on outside, my story is very insignificant, but that's what we do here, and she shared her story, and the topic was, it's a great Al-Anon topic, when the world blows up and falls down, what do you do? What action do you take? Well, people could talk on that, and what most of us said was, we want to seek out safe places, and we want to seek out safe people, make that connection, and then we see what happens, but I'm not, I can't stay isolated, and the room was full of people that night looking for safe places and safe people. So the next day, I knew I was, we had a little more information, and I was starting to loosen up, and I was getting mad. By the way, I like mad. It makes me feel directed and purposeful. If I'm mad enough, I can even vacuum. I mean, I'm, it's energy, and I want to make use of it because it's not frequently there. Well, I did yard work. I had a yard overgrown with weeds and things and crap and stuff, and I needed to be physical, and I went out and I started digging and pulling and digging and pulling and digging and pulling, and there was a rose bush, a tree rose, that had not, never, it had never thrived. It had never thriven. What's the word? Thrived? Thriven? It had never really done very well, and there it was being, in Texas, we'd say puny, you know, puny and pathetic, and I had talked to it before, and I, by the way, to help my anger, I turned on one of the talk radio shows, Who's Always Mad?, and if I'm listening to someone angry, it helps me get angry, so I was listening to this fellow blow his hard and just got madder and madder, and I remember walking by the stupid little rose and yanking it out by its roots, and then I left it there as a warning to the others. Well, it took a while to work through some of that anger, because there was a lot of it, but I found it comes and goes. It's like grief. It comes and goes. It comes in waves. It comes and goes, but I have to find something to do with it, because I don't want to live in that place, and I sure don't want to do anything that hurts me, and I sure don't want to do anything that hurts you. The journey. There's an American poet named Mary Oliver. We, as Americans, don't value poets, and we don't know anything about them. We like other forms of entertainment. In Russia, poets are considered national treasures and in Japan, you're considered respectable if you're a poet. Here, we want to know what your day job is. We don't respect poets. Mary Oliver, she's been writing a long time. She's still alive. She is a real American voice, and she is in love with the great outdoors, and a lot of her stuff is about the trees and the plants and the animals and the this and that. I just find her captivating, but in one of her poems, she writes about the
[02:20:02]
journey, the journey of being alive, and I don't know if she is connected with the program or not, but here's what she writes. One day you finally knew what you had to do. One day you finally knew what you had to do. I go through periods when I don't know anything. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Everything's vague. There's so much to do, you know, the cat box and the socks and the kitchen on fire, but one day you finally knew what you had to do. There became clarity, and there became purpose, and there became focus. You knew what you had to do and began.
You took steps. You took action. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, did you ever notice how frequently bad advice is shouted? Shouted their bad advice. Though the whole house began to tremble, earthquake country, tornado country, the whole house began to tremble, and you felt the old tug at your ankles. You're trying to get out the door and they're just going to hold on. They're not going to let you go. Mend my life, each voice cried. Mend my life. Take care of me, me, me. It's my turn, me. Mend my life, each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already a wild night. It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones. When there's crisis, it's never really lovely weather in the middle of the day. It's hurricane time and 4 a.m. It's time to run for your life.
But little by little, poco a poco, day by day, slow work of God, little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own. It takes a while. I almost remember that day. I heard a voice and it wasn't my dad and it wasn't my mom and it wasn't my third grade teacher who was nuts and it wasn't the pastor who was crazy. It was me, my voice.
You slowly recognized as your own that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, not away from the world but into it. My craziness and my isolation keeps me from making friends, companions, and allies. It keeps me from being someone who can work, love, and play. I'm isolated. Strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save. Poems should be read twice and the second time without editorial comment. I heard Mary Oliver speak.
It was a sign of civilization. It was Dominican College of San Rafael in Northern California. An American poet came to read her poetry and there were 500 people to hear her. I took that as a little flicker of evolution and hope in an otherwise dark year. The Journey by Mary Oliver. One day you finally knew what you had to do and began. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life, each voice cried, but you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the
[02:25:00]
very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save. I think she's been there. And I think she made some decisions that weren't easy. And sometimes what I notice with the families really crazy, if the system is really crazy, if you're the only one getting well, they will blame you and they'll think you're crazy and it's your fault. And sometimes the only thing you can do is run for your life. We had a home group meeting which has flaws.
Let me tell you, there are things I wish we could change there and make it better. We were talking one night about stuff. We had read some things from the literature and somehow the topic of running away comes up. And running away is not the same as being on the journey, just so you know. And the first fellow who shared talked about when he was 11, he ran away from home. The other fellow, when he was six, he ran away from home. Some of them were regular runners away from homes. And I listened to these men share and things were impossible, things were difficult, things were, things were. And I did not run away from home. I discovered books. I did not have to leave the house. I could open a book and go anywhere. And I loved biographies. And with the craziness at home, I became a voracious reader. And I still am. I still like it a lot. I like to read and I like to learn things.
And I like novels and I like serial killer novels. And I like horrible disembowelings. Lost me sleep. But what I need to learn how to do is be present in my own life with friends, companions, and allies today. I have one more thing to read and then we can take a break and break for 15 minutes and come back for a final half hour, then we're done. Okay, how's that? Because it's a long day and I know you need naps. I should say this or I'll forget. Some of us are worriers. My mom was a great worrier and I always thought that if I worried enough, I was doing something. And if I liked you, I was supposed to worry about you. So rather than say, gee, I like you so much, I would say, I'm worried sick about you, you know. It's a little Al-Anon crazy right there, so. Most of us, this is from How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics, page 33. Most of us want the very best for those we love. And the best we can offer may be our Best We Can Offer, Maybe Our Refusal to Contribute Any Further to Their Path of Destruction, It's Called Letting Go, We Cannot Make Choices for Other People, Boy I'd Like to, and I have, I was working with another priest, we were working together doing some talks and I liked him but I thought he was a little socially retarded, I didn't tell him that of course,
[02:30:04]
but alcoholic family worse than mine and his dad was a drunk and a gambler which makes it much more complicated and we were going somewhere and I'm trying to make nice to this guy because he needs some friends, notice the patronizing, controlling thing here, and we were in Northern California, we were driving by Marin County which is its own little part of the world, I don't like it very much but it's there and they had those sheep and cows and goats and horsies on the hillside and it was very pretty, it was springtime and I said to my friend, look at those horsies on the hillside and he said, I hate horses.
This is un-American, this is un-American, I mean this is our national bird, you know, how can you hate horses? But I didn't ask right away, although inquiring minds want to know, I figured let's wait a while and a day or two later I just said, what's the deal with the horses? And he said, my father was a gambler and there were a number of times that the rent money went to the track. He hates horses, oh my. Well, we were doing something and I did feel more evolved than he, more mature and even though he was my age, I was treating him like a child. And we were in Los Angeles doing something, we were doing something together and a situation came up. If two adults had been involved in this situation, they would have had a conversation. But I did not have a conversation with him because I was making the decisions because he's socially retarded. So, I, in his presence mind you, made up our minds for both of us and it was by far the better choice. Well, he was the lost child in his family and didn't talk and didn't fight. Anyway, two or three weeks later, we were supposed to work together six months. Two or three weeks later, he just said, I'm leaving and I'm going home. And I said, what happened? He said, well, it's clear you think, it's clear to me you think I'm an idiot and I don't want to waste your time. I had no idea what he was talking about. I really did not remember when I took over, made the decisions, did not consult, did not ask. I was doing it for his good, what's the problem?
And what I found out, we had known each other for a long time that adults talk about things like that. I needed to engage him and I had to tell him that I do not think he's an idiot and I really don't. He's very, very bright. I did not think he was, but I thought out of the purest of motives, I was protecting him from an uncomfortable situation, but I was treating him like a four-year-old. And I haven't done that with him since. And he has helped me ask for feedback and ask for input when I'm dealing with other adults.
And I will sometimes just say, what would an adult do in a circumstance like this? Because I don't always know. In fact, rarely do I know. And then we can have a conversation. But I was busy making decisions for other people for their own good. I'm better at that. I still have problems with that. We are not gods. Someone gave me a three-by-five card. I like three-by-five cards. I use three-by-five cards. This one's right by my phone and it simply says, avoid playing God. Judging, knowing, learning, punishing, you know, God.
We are not gods and we can't truly know what is best for anyone else no matter how obvious a particular course of action may seem to us at the time. Most of us had to hit a bottom, a point of personal agony, before we were ready to make real choices in our lives. Alcoholics and others suffering from the effects of this family disease deserve the same chance to hit a bottom of their own. Along the way, there may be many awful, painful lessons for them to learn. And it can be excruciating to have to stand by and watch a loved one suffer through those experiences. And this is where I'm at the gate of the roller coaster
[02:35:03]
waving hello as they go by. I'm not going to get on the roller coaster. It's no longer fun. It used to be fun. It's no longer fun. We cannot, some never learn it all, but we are powerless over alcoholism. We cannot hasten the process nor can we spare a loved one from it. All we can do is serve as an example of the joy and serenity that recovery can provide and respect the rights of our loved ones to make the choices they need to make even if we despise the nature of those choices. Boy, that's hard information for me and it's crucial to my understanding of my reactions with other people. Let's take a break. Let's come back in 15 minutes, one more half hour then we're done. I'm in great need of Al-Anon. It kind of takes the edge off, you know, 100,000 meetings kind of takes the edge off. I still want to correct or fix or punish especially fools. But with Al-Anon, I get a daily reprieve from the harshest of my attitudes and also a sense that I'm hopeless and can't go anywhere. They do talk in the program about looking at things realistically, not in fantasy but realistically what's going on. And I found that very helpful. That was part of doing a fourth step for me, part of sharing with my fifth step with my sponsor.
I got a chance to talk candidly about some real things that had been going on that I'd never talked to anybody about before and I just didn't have very much perspective on it and perspective really helps. And I have found it very useful to have some older people to talk to, especially when I was younger and especially when I was in great crisis to have someone who was safe and awake and attentive to help me walk through some difficult times I have felt invaluable. And I think it's what happens in Al-Anon. We who have been there help others who are there. We help people walk through stuff. In the How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics, page 25, it says, coming to Al-Anon, we begin to look realistically at our situations. Some of us are forced to face facts when circumstances demand our attention as when a loved one is arrested or files for divorce. Having our world shattered can leave us feeling disoriented and panicky. I don't like disoriented and I don't like panicky and I get it sometimes. At such times, Al-Anon can be a lifesaver.
When our sense of reality proves unreliable, we need help to regain our footing. Al-Anon provides a simple step-by-step approach to rebuilding our lives and our self-confidence in an atmosphere of unconditional love. Now, I just want to say one thing about unconditional love. I do not love unconditionally. I mean, I don't. I know I should. But I run out of steam and I run out of goodwill. And that's why I tell people I sponsor, you just can't rely on me. God is unconditionally loving. The program is usually much more tolerant than I. And then I have good days and bad days. But I don't pretend unconditional love.
It makes me lie when I pretend unconditional love and that's not good for me. Others are free to come to terms with reality more gradually. Many of us discover that we no longer need the same survival tactics now that we have the support of a fellowship that truly understands and the tools of the program that help us to deal with the problems that once overwhelmed us. We learn new skills. Oh, I've learned some new skills. I used to think I needed
[02:40:00]
to verbally respond to everything right away, that act, reacting verbally. And I've learned in Al-Anon that sometimes the sign of a perfect Al-Anon program is when I keep my big fat mouth shut. Because I have a tendency to analyze or probe or interrogate or give advice, you know, how can I help you. We've just met, let me run your life. I have that tendency. But I've been going to Al-Anon for a while and I learned there's an Al-Anon response we make on the West Coast. I don't know if you do it out here. We call it the Al-Anon O. You learn something and you just go, oh. Which is neutral tone, neutral tone, not probing, not nasty, not sarcastic. Oh, you have to work on the neutral tone. One of my nieces, the oldest daughter of my oldest brother, she hasn't had an easy life. And she's tough.
Like a lot of us who haven't had easy lives are tough. And I've always liked her and we've been friends. And when, although I'm her uncle, the priest, it's really hard to get past that, by the way, because you play roles. Anyway, when she was about 14, I was at her family for Christmas and my family too, but it was her family. And I was in recovery and everyone else was just nuts. They were screaming about this and that and religious stuff and political stuff and the TV was on and the radio was on and they were, it was awful.
It was awful. And I, for her Christmas present, I gave her a $20 bill and I said, Mary, this is bus fare if you have to get out of town. Well, she doesn't remember that. But I, a lot of us don't remember crazy stuff, but I vividly remember it. She was busy trying to survive. And over the years, we stayed in touch and we were friends and friendly. And there was a rumor that she drank a lot and badly, like other members of the family.
But it's none of my business. It's none of my business. So she called me once and I went over. We were going to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco on 16th Street called Pancho Villa Numero Dos. It's in the Mission District. It's a great place. Tourists don't go there. It's great. So there we were having something to eat. And she said, and she's 35 years old at this time. She says, Tom, I've started seeing a therapist. Oh.
She said, I decided to do that after the third married man I was dating left me. Oh. It's a little too much information, but. And all three of them had kids and all three of them weren't good to their kids. And there was some rhythm there, but I don't know. And so there I am remembering to breathe. Breathe, one, two, three. Breathe, one, two, three. And she said, so I saw this therapist and I saw her a couple of times. And the therapist finally told me, Mary, we've talked about everybody's drinking in the family but yours.
Oh. So the therapist thought I should try an AA meeting and I went to an AA meeting last week. And I hated it. I hated it. And I was going to leave. They were doing the Lord's Prayer. I hate that. I walked out. I was going to go back to my apartment and drink myself silly. And then I realized I was going back to my apartment to drink myself silly. And so I went to another meeting and I have seven days.
have to have an opinion on everything, that a lot of things are none of my business, that I can be supportive without being controlling. Well, who are, what therapist are you seeing and what are you talking about and where are you going and where are you going to meetings and do you have a sponsor? All that stuff that she does not need to hear from me. But she's alive today and life is going on. My parents I found very complicated. I think
[02:45:00]
lots of people find their parents complicated. And I, of course, see this as the youngest. And I think it's all about me. And I was, I had some friends come home for the holidays. I did that because it was easier on me if I had friends come home for the holidays. And one of my friends is a therapist and she looked around and she said to me afterwards, you make your mother very nervous. I said, I make her nervous? She makes me nervous.
But I was, at this time, like 40. And so I got a chance to, well, maybe so. And I tried to change them and argue with them and I didn't like their politics and I didn't like this and I didn't like that. And I thought insult and humiliation was an effective tool for dealing with my parents. And it really isn't. And I learned to say less and less and less and less, which is a great help. And then I'm grateful to Al-Anon. I could work through resentments and fears and resentments and fears and complexity. And my dad got sick.
He was an old man, 92, but he got sick with cancer. And I got to spend the nights with him for the last month of his life. Both of my brothers have families. I was free. It was in the Bay Area. I would drive down and spend the night. And if he needed help, I could get a nurse or I could help him out a little bit. And I remember, fathers are very complicated. And this is someone we didn't talk a lot about stuff. He wasn't a chatty guy. And one of the, he used to be, but alcoholism eats you out inside. You become a shell over time. Like Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, but he'd been drunk for 40 years. So there wasn't a lot of resources left to be President of Russia with. The bounce, the insight, the charism was gone. And you just kind of have a shell. And I do see that in a lot of chronic alcoholics, even if they haven't gone to jail a lot. So my dad was a lot like that. You could have a conversation with him, but it took a lot of work. And I stopped doing that.
I started letting him be. Anyway, there he was dying. And he got the terminal diagnosis and my mom came. My mom would come about 11 o'clock in the morning and have lunch. Lunch would be served and then I would leave. I'd go back and do stuff. So that was important. And I was glad I had the physical and emotional freedom to do that. So terminal, next morning my mom comes. Next afternoon my mom comes. Lunch is served and it's soup and something protein related and ice cream. And my dad reached for the ice cream and my mother said to him, soup first. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, he's dying. Can't you let him have the ice cream first? Once! But I'm grateful for the 100,000 Al-Anon meetings I'd been to and what was clear to me was this is none of my business. This is their deal.
It is not my deal. And they worked this out before I was born, this funny little dance that I've always found a lot to criticize about. And what I did is instead of doing the Al-Anon O, I did another Al-Anon phrase we use on the West Coast in a complicated situation. I said, I'll be right back. And I went outside and I was furious, just furious. If I had had a cigar, I would have eaten it. And it was clear to me, I mean I'm growing up by now, I'm in my 50s. And I said, the last thing my dad needs is me yelling, the last thing my mom needs is me yelling, defending the underdog one more time. Gee Tom, that's helpful. And no one in the hospital needs this either and let them do what they do.
And I let off steam and I walked back and forth and I came back and I just said, I'll see you, I'll be back tonight. And I was able to leave. I didn't have to sit her down and give her a little lecture. What a relief. Ten years earlier, I would have done something
[02:50:01]
that stupid and arrogant, but I didn't have to do it this time. And then when he died, I was able to preside at his funeral, which was an honor. And I was able to pay him some respect. It was an honor. I didn't preach because I didn't know what I'd say. Father and sons are sometimes complicated. And I asked a friend of his to do it and it went just fine. And then as my mom got older, she got, I mean, she could have used a hundred thousand al-Anon meetings, control and worry and fear. And we got her into independent living and she was falling and we're all concerned. And we took care of her as best we could. And I found that my mom could make me furious in a second. And this is, I'm like 55 now, you know, and she's 90 or 94 and I'm still reacting like, oh, please, this is just pathetic. Act, don't react. Act, don't react. Act, don't react. Keep your big fat mouth shut. And it was Christmas and she was in an independent living place and I went to bring, with a couple of friends, we were going to go to her independent living place and have midnight mass on Christmas like at 6 p.m., midnight mass. And then pray a little bit with her friends and communion service and then pick her up and take her to my brother's, the nice brother, and then bring her back. And it was going to be fine. We did that the year before and it all worked. And I called her Christmas Eve morning and she's getting more frail and more frightened and anxious about everything. So I called her and I just said, I'll be there about 5.30 tonight. We'll have a good time. And she said, I'm living in Oakland. She's in Redwood City. It's about 40 minutes away, 45 minutes away. She said, what are you going to be wearing? This conversation started when I was about six. And it never went well. And she always thought I would come without socks, looking like a hippie.
And there was about 20 years when I did. But, you know, I didn't want to get involved in this old thing, this tug of war. And I, so with my perfect Al-Anon program, I said, don't worry about that. It's going to be fine. I'll see you at 5.30. And then she said, don't embarrass me in front of my friends. And my perfect Al-Anon program disappeared. And in its place came a furious 11-year-old. And I just, I may have said something. I don't remember that right now. But I do know I hung up with all, and I was 11 years old and mad.
And she had a voice that could do that, only on the phone. But it was, so there I was. Perfect Al-Anon program gone. And she called back two seconds later, you know, that rapid dial thing, bloop. And she said, don't hang up on your mother on Christmas Eve. Now, one of my Al-Anon decisions is to not have guns in the house. I have a baseball bat, but not a gun. I was furious. And I went for a walk. I walked outside. I made a couple of phone calls, kind of got through it, you know, realized. Now, objectively speaking, this is my craziness.
It's not hers. It's my craziness. My Al-Anon stuff has to do with my craziness. And, you know, old ladies and stuff and things. And I could get along with a lot of old ladies, but not my mom. So, I think there's a rule there somewhere. When I knew she'd be out of her little apartment, I called back and I just said, I'll see you tonight. And I'm sorry for hanging up. You know, went wrong, promptly admitting it. But I had to wait till I was not shaking with rage to call her back. And I'll see you tonight. And things went
[02:55:05]
fine. I didn't have to explain my issues. You know, when I saw a therapist for five years just dealing with the clothing issue, and I just ran on and bring it back now. And I brought some friends. We picked her up. We had a good time. And we moved on. We moved on from it. And I was able to operate from a centered place that was friendly. And I wanted to be respectful. And I wanted to be useful. And I wanted to be dutiful. But that wasn't always easy. I think we practiced the program with strangers. I mean, even people outside. And we practiced the program with people at meetings. But it's really graduate level work to practice with your own family. And it's very difficult for me. My oldest brother, he's wrong so much. And his opinions are so awful. And the last time I was with him was on his birthday, his 70th birthday. And there was a golden opportunity that opened, presented to us by God for me to prove my side right and his song not only wrong but stupid. And my perfect Al-Anon program was operating that day. And I let the opportunity pass. I didn't have to say anything. And I want you to know it didn't feel good. It didn't feel, oh, you're so evolved. I'd much rather shove him down the stairs on this one. I'll tell you because it's so, it's just perfect. Who could, but I, let it pass. Let it pass.
Developing an ability to see things as they really are and to find healthier, more appropriate ways of dealing with the people and circumstances we encounter is not always easy or comfortable. Most of us have had good reasons for hiding certain information from ourselves. It hurt. It probably still does. It isn't easy to see suffering of a loved one, to admit even to ourselves that a close relative has sexually or physically abused us, to come to grips with the fact that the people we have turned to for love and acknowledgement are incapable of giving it, or to recognize that we ourselves have become narrow-minded, vindictive, pessimistic, submissive, fearful, despondent, petty, shrewish, nagging, controlling, or overbearing. I'll read that list one more time and you can just raise your hands when you hear yourself. Narrow-minded, vindictive, pessimistic, submissive, fearful, despondent, petty, shrewish, nagging, controlling, or overbearing. We may be dismayed to find that the negative thinking and behavior that we developed to protect us from the painful experiences of our lives have in fact seeped into every corner of our world. It's as if we've allowed our defense mechanisms to protect us from all of life rather than risking adventuresome participation in it. And in trying to avoid the unpleasant aspects of our lives, we have also missed out on many of the joys. In recovery, we get to have ups and downs and pluses and minuses and sorrow and joy. It's called having a real life. Last story. Years ago, I had the privilege of studying under an orthodontist Rabbis are smart.
Not all priests are smart. But rabbis are smart and they're educated and they're educated in a long tradition of questioning and teaching and I have great admiration for the rabbis and I have read them and studied them off and on for 40 years.
[03:00:02]
This was a class in Berkeley on Judaism and the rabbi was, it was like adult education. It was like RCIA for those of you who are familiar with the religious education for adults. Oh, who cares? Anyway, it's, he would talk about theology. He talked about Moses and Noah and these things and the people who came to this class were kind of generically Jewish but had never really done anything about being Jewish so they were learning their roots and others were converting and you go to an Orthodox rabbi and gee, I liked him so much and he knew I was a priest and he knew that we would occasionally talk a little shop, you know, about something and I was, I'm a priest and a teacher and I, teachers spot good teachers, you know, who's prepared, you know, who's organized, you know, how's doing, he was wonderful and so well read and occasionally something about Christianity would come up, someone would ask a question.
He would defer to me although frequently he knew more than I did about the subject. He was a courteous and humble man. So he's talking about stuff and someone asks a question and the question is, rabbi, what is a blessing? What's a blessing? Because you bless this, bless that, curse this, curse that. And I would have said something quick and simple minded like God's good housekeeping seal of approval, you know, move on.
But see, rabbis don't do that. The rabbinical tradition is to take questions very seriously, kind of chew on it and whenever you can, you answer a question by asking a question. This is infuriating but it's a good way of teaching, Socratic method. Oh, what's a blessing? And the rabbinical tradition goes like this, you know, rabbi, what is the greatest commandment? You're a lawyer, you tell me. Love God with your heart, strength, mind and soul and your neighbor is yourself.
That's it. That's the whole point of the entire text. Well, who's my neighbor? And if you can't answer with a question, you tell a story. That's how the rabbi's man was going on the road, Jericho and it's an old tradition. So there are words in Berkeley watching this and what's a blessing? And the rabbi fooled with his beard, which is why we have beards. The rabbi fooled with his beard and he said, when God created.
God created in six days and at the end of each day of creation, God looked at what God had made and said, this is good. This is good. This is good. Sun, moon, stars, cows, goats, avocados, good. And on the sixth day, God creates human beings and doesn't say they're good. Any conclusions? Someone said, well, people are no good, right? And the rabbi said, well, it's a possible conclusion, but it's a bad translation.
He said, you know, in good, you have good days and a good book and the good book and for a good time call. Good means a lot of funny things in English. Then he said in Hebrew and he looked at me and said, which is what God spoke. God looked at what God had made and said, this is Tov, T-O-V, Tov. What does Tov mean? Tov means something is complete. Tov means it's entire. Tov means it's exactly the way it's supposed to be.
It's Tov. So, sun, moon, stars, Tov. Dry land, Tov. Cows, goats, avocados, Tov. But people were not created complete. We're not created entire. We're created with a lot of empty places. We're created with holes and broken things and we're born male. It takes a lifetime of experience to become a man. We're born female. It takes a lifetime of experience to become a woman. We're born male, female. It takes a lifetime of experience to be a human being.
Now, as you're living your life, as you're making decisions, as you're experiencing the experience, anything that pushes you ahead, anything that drags you forward, anything
[03:05:08]
that gets down deep inside of you where it's brittle and dark and cold and kicks and shoves until suddenly there's a lot more room and light and air, anything that does that, said the rabbi, is a blessing. And sometimes blessings don't feel very good. And sometimes you don't know they're blessings until years later when a situation that you thought would kill you opened up doors you never knew were there.
And that was the first time I came to understand alcoholism as a blessing. It opened up doors I never knew were there. And it brings us into this community of women and men who teach us how to be real human beings. And this is a good thing. So there. Oh, let's end with a serenity prayer. God. God. God. God.