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Source: Vannoy S – Al-Anon Big Book Study – Part 2 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: vannoy-s-al-anon-big-book-study-part-2-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:56
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They are to recreate their lives. Underline that, scratch the start, do whatever you need to. If they are to recreate their lives, obviously their lives at this point have been destroyed. The last two years I've had to recreate my own life with, uh, I've got 29 years of Al-Anon recovery. I've had to recreate my life. Physically, where I was living, I lost my home. I lost an income that was, you know, given to me freely.
I lost a lot of things, a lot of things. I've had to recreate my life. Greed does a lot of things to you. You have to recreate a whole new spiritual life. Uh, Steve lost his wife due to alcoholism. He went home one night and his wife was dead in her chair. Alcoholic poisoning. I watched him recreate a life. And it's divorce. You have to recreate because of the disease of alcoholism. My brother committed suicide.
We had to create, recreate a family structure because of what happened. So in drunkenness or in sobriety, sometimes we have to recreate. And it has to be that power greater than ourselves. And we cannot, I cannot stress this enough, when we read this stuff, we cannot take alcoholism personally. This is why we study the big books, so we can see what's going on there. If any feels that as a psychiatrist directing a hospital for an alcoholic, we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children.
Let the solving these problems become a part of their daily work, even in their sleeping moments. And the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel after many years' experience that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.
You'll hear this over and over and over in AA meetings. My son, when he was 11 years old, I caught him, excuse me, the school caught him sniffing Pam. You know Pam that you spray to cook with? He and his buddies were hiding in the closet and they got empty paper towel holders, those little paper things, and they were spraying Pam through this thing and sniffing it. I wonder about this kid, this little neighbor.
Yeah, you like that, eh, Lois? Her little heart's just palpitating over there. My little son's buddy kept coming over and saying his mama ran out of Pam because he borrowed some Pam. Man, she must cook a lot and they must be broke if she can't even borrow Pam. And I was constantly doing the Pam. Now I had no idea whatsoever. They called me from school. They caught three of them in a closet doing it.
So of course I go get him. Now at this time, I don't know, I had 10, 11, 12 years, I don't know, something like that in Al-Anon. I am a great Al-Anon member. Now you need to hear this. I'm an outstanding Al-Anon member. I sponsor a lot of people. I go to meetings. I go out and talk at conventions all over the United States telling them, carrying the Al-Anon banner of recovery. And in my own home, my 11-year-old kid is dying, beginning his death sentence with a disease of alcoholism, and I had absolutely no idea it was going on.
I can't tell you what a crushing blow that was to me. That my children's lives were being destroyed right under my feet, and I did not see it, I did not recognize it, or maybe I didn't choose to. It was devastating to me. You know what he said to me when I said, quote, Why did you do this? He said, Mama, I like the way it makes me feel. I did too, Maria. I mean, it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach.
I'd heard this sentence over and over and over. Men and women, children, drink especially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. I knew I was dead in the water right then and there. At 11 years old, I knew my son was an alcoholic. There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I was going to cure him. I might as well tell you the rest of the story. I was going to cure him. He was not going to become an alcoholic, don't you know?
I would fix this. So some friends of mine, some members of AA, helped me, and we were in the process of putting him in a boy's ranch in another city.
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One of the AA members had some parents that he was going to hire me as a nurse to stay. He was going to pay for an apartment for me to go to this other city so I could stay and be close to my son while he was in the boy's ranch. I was going to prevent him from being an alcoholic. My still-drunk ex-husband found out about this and come kidnapped him one night, and my son chose to stay with him at 11 years old.
It was a little ingrate, after all I had done for him. My son has not lived with me since he was 11 years old. It's much of his life I know nothing about. He's always curious to be sitting around listening to my kids talk. I mean, he's a grown man. He's 30-something years now. And I said, we were sitting around talking, and he's talking to his sister. He said, yeah, that thing at the airport, that metal thing goes off every time I go through it, and I finally figured out it's that bullet that's in my leg.
Bullets in your leg? Where'd you get a bullet in your leg? He was walking down the street one night, and somebody shot out of a car and hit his leg. He probably just left it. My kid's got a bullet in his leg. It's been a very deep and a very emotional and a very hard thing for me to work through is my son and his alcoholism, let me tell you. Now listen to this. The sensation is so elusive that they will admit while it's injurious, they cannot, after a time, defrigerate the truth from the false.
You hear that? They can't tell the truth from the false in their life. And we're sitting there demanding, why did you do that, where'd you go, who were you with? Well, they don't know. They will tell you all sorts of enormous things about it, don't they? And we find out they're lying, because I always research. You check the ashtrays, you check the collars, you check the smell on the shirt, you see what's in the back of the car, you see what's in the pickup.
There's a lot of research to be done. You ask around. My favorite story is he came in with Charlie. Him and Charlie was always doing some god awful thing. They went off to take, to go to Amarillo, Texas. They were going to take this trailer up there to bring some horses back to the arena for the guys who were doing the rodeos. So they left early on a Saturday. And they didn't get in until like 4 a.m. Sunday morning.
And they both woke me up to tell me this tremendous story. Because my husband had black eyes. So they had to tell me something about the trip. So they told me they went up there and they got the horses. They had six of them, so it was a real slow drive, number one. For an hour and a half drive. And they'd been gone like 24 hours. So it's a slow drive. But then they stopped in Plainview, Texas. And they stopped at a hamburger stand.
So they were at the hamburger stand and they were getting hamburgers and french fries. Now I could smell the hamburgers cooking. This whole vision was in my head. And a carload of Mexicans pulled up beside them. And they could not understand the language because they were speaking their own language. And so they could not understand their language because they were speaking in English. And somehow there got to be a miscommunication while they were sitting there with their hamburgers and their hamburgers.
So naturally a fight started over miscommunication because they didn't know what each other were saying. Well, the police came. The police came and they had to sort it all out so it took hours and hours. I bet you've heard this a thousand times. Your husband had to be a… couldn't understand that English white gringo or whatever they call him. And it was like, I was listening to every… I felt so sorry for them.
I got up and cooked them breakfast. I mean, what a tremendous night they had had. I just felt so sad. They were tired. They were worn out. They get all this stuff. I got cold compresses for my little alcoholic diet. I just felt so bad for him. Well, two or three days as I was explaining, because I didn't research this because I knew this was true. Two or three days later they said, man, I heard about the fight at the bar down the street that your husband and Charlie were in.
I said, excuse me? They tore up the bar. They were so drunk. Police came. They were locked up for four hours until their buddies got them out. I mean, I was totally shocked. This was such a real story. I smelled the hamburgers and the french fries cooking. And they were telling me this at length. I mean, it took them an hour to tell me this story. They were at the honky-tonk down the street. And the fight broke out over somebody was dancing with a woman on the dance floor and somebody else bumped into them.
Now, when you hear that kind of stuff I didn't mind a lot except I got up and cooked them bacon and eggs. That's what really I mean, I was so gullible that I did that. So from that time forward as many of you know, remember Winnie Eddy. Winnie Eddy said, one of the alums asked me,
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how can you tell if an alcoholic is lying? She said, honey, is his lips moving? So I took that. If my alcoholic's lips were moving, chances are they wasn't no truth in it. Period. To them, their alcoholic life seemed the only normal one. My ex-husband thought that was a normal thing to tell me about the horse. They didn't have no horses. They did not go to Amarillo. There was no horses. They don't even have a trailer.
It never dawned on me they don't have a trailer. It was a normal thing for them to sit there at four o'clock in the morning and it was very normal for me to sit there and listen, feel the compassion, be prepared. They are irritable, restless, and discontented. Unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once. Look at that. At once, by taking a few drinks. Drinks which they see others taking with impurity.
My daughter describes it this way. She said inside her stomach was this little jerk. It jerked. All of her life there was a jerking inside her stomach. Just hurt. Pain shot through there. Emotion would hit. A thought would hit. Jerk. Jerk. Rejection would hit. Scared would hit. Fear would hit. Jerk. Jerk. She took a drink when she was a kid and the jerk stopped. Instantly. There's alcoholics in this room and your heads are shaking.
Yes, yes, yes. Instantly. At once. By taking a few drinks. Now see, you and I don't understand that because we don't have that stomach that's doing this. We don't have the body that the alcohol fixes. So we don't understand that. What we're saying is don't take those few drinks. When you take those few drinks you're loud, you're mean, you're ugly, you destroy me, you destroy the kids. Don't take those few drinks.
We don't understand that because alcohol is the solution. It stops the jerking. We don't understand that so we're telling them put down the solution, put down the solution. Therefore it comes the alcohol and the alanon sickness. Because we do not understand what's going on. They are restless. This is the middle thing. They're irritable. You know how they'll snap at you? Sometimes this is drunk or sober but we're talking mainly right here drunkenness. They snap at you.
I used to know when my husband was going to go out drinking. He'd come in and I'd watch him. First of all I watched how he got out of the truck because he worked out of town a lot. I watched how he got out of the truck because my weekend did not start until I saw how my higher power got out of the truck. If my higher power got out of the truck and the cans banged on the street started falling, the beer cans uh oh.
I have to go into he's drunk defense mode. If he got out of the truck and he didn't stumble or fall, there was no beer cans falling out of the truck, I went into okay, he's not drinking mode we've got to keep him home so he won't drink mode. It depended on how my higher power got out of the truck where I sent the kids. I either sent them to the door to greet their dad if he was sober or I sent them to the back room because I knew the fight was fixing to start.
It's funny I knew fights were going to start. I thought he's going to start a fight. Yeah, alright. Yeah, alright. Discontented. If he was sober and we were in the sober, I was in the sober mood because the higher power was sober. If he was in that mood he would come in, he would take his shower, get cleaned up and I would notice the top button of his Levi's. If the top button was buttoned it means in a minute he's going to start a fight and he's going to go get dressed.
If three or four of them were left unbuttoned that meant he was relaxing and he was going to stay home for the evening. Now all of you have something, you have a button or an unbutton somewhere in your life. You could tell just like this couldn't you? I mean everybody had theirs but this is what I watched. And he would start a fight so that he would have an excuse that he wasn't going to listen to my crap and out the door he was going to go.
It is just as plain as anything as I look back and I understand if I studied this big book and saw what was going on. Plain as anything. Our Al-Anon opening says from time to time we try to force solutions and we become what? Irritable and unreasonable without Unreasonable without even knowing it. So here I am trying to force a solution and I'm unreasonable
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and I don't know it and he's sitting on the couch and he's restless irritable and discontented and he don't know it and boy do we clash. If I want to communicate, if everything's going along pretty good with old Jimbo and I and I'm bored, I try to communicate with him, try to explain to him and I'm unreasonable and I absolutely don't know it. Some of our biggest fights Jim would say to me, you know you're so critical and he said I finally realized you don't know it and I didn't. I absolutely didn't have a clue what he was talking about. I know it's critical. I have a tongue that I have to pray about nearly every day. It sounds critical when in my head, my mind, it's either funny or it's just something to say. I don't know I'm ripping you to shreds. I have no idea. To me it's funny or it's like oh well it's no big deal or it's the truth. It comes out so brutal that I leave blood splatters and I don't know. Something I constantly pray about. It has not been overcome yet. I've made some progress but it's the genes. My mother was that way.
Oh listen, the old-timer they're going oh yeah. After they have succumbed to desire again, as so many do, the phenomenal craving develops. They pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful with a firm resolution not to drink. This is repeated over and over unless the person can experience an entire psychic change. Now, they have remorse. My kids always knew when to go talk to daddy. Did yours?
They knew when they could get what they could get out of him when he was remorseful. It's very and he might be remorseful five minutes, maybe a day, maybe not at all. But you could see it. I would catch him early in the morning to tell him some things he needed to know about. Explain it to him and he would agree to a lot of it because he was very remorseful. Now, I didn't know that's what was going on. This book finally told me. I mean it lays out everything we did in my family. This, just the doctor's opinion laid out everything that was in my household day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. It describes it.
So plainly that it's amazing now that I look at it, how I survived it, how he survived it, how we even did this. And trying to say if you loved me, if you loved the kids, you wouldn't do this. Trying to explain to him he's going to lose his job. Trying to lie to the boss. All the things that you've heard in these rooms over and over and over unless there's an entire psychic change that does not happen. What we need to learn in Al-Anon through studying this big book is that they need the entire psychic change. We're not the psychic and we're not the changer.
What we gloriously learn here is that we do this 12 steps for ourselves. We study this ourselves so we can see this is disease. This doesn't have anything to do with me. I'm taking this personally. Why don't I take this 12 steps and this book, apply it to myself and let him pay the consequences of his own action. Usually when we get this concept, the majority of time the alcoholic, when we leave them alone, they get sober. Isn't that amazing? When we quit trying to tell them when to do, how to do it, when to do it, da-da-da-da-da. And they're left alone to see these things, experience these things because we try to take the experience away from them in our sickness.
Isn't it amazing? You'll hear story after story after story. After I left him alone, he got sober. We can be the catalyst by having sobriety, emotional sobriety. We can be a real example. I've seen it over and over and over and over. Majority of the time if the alanon comes and get some emotional sobriety, a little bit of covery, the alcoholic follows. I've seen it over and over. In my own case it didn't work, but I've seen it in other people's.
I was here seven years working as hard as I could in my living with a practicing alcoholic and after seven years we got divorced because he continued to drink. On the other hand, strange as this may seem to those who did not understand, once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired over solving them, suddenly finds himself able to control his alcohol. The only effort necessary being that he was required to follow a few simple rules. Now the rules of recovery, they are rules, they are directions, are in this big book. There is so much yeah yeah in the fellowship, especially of alanon, not AA,
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but in the alanon fellowship is don't tell me what to do. Don't give me direction. We don't give advice here. Call your sponsor when you need one. Now how do you know when you need a sponsor? You're too goofy to know when you need a sponsor. I mean it's amazing how we're not supposed to have direction here. Well that's BS. Of course you have direction here. Most of us don't like it because it's against what we want to do. We've come here with years and years and years and years of sickness and think if a sponsor tells us what to do, the sponsor's weird.
Right? Some of us don't get a sponsor. Some of us get three sponsors, four sponsors, six sponsors, whatever it takes to keep doing what you want to do and you're certainly aware to do that. Now there's some of you who know that I have, I was given a set of rules that work. There's five of them and I have just hammered them into the people I sponsor that this is the rules. These are directions and yes, we give direction and these are the directions. Yes, we give advice.
This is the advice. Here's the five things that I absolutely insist on that was insisted on me that works. First of all, you go to meetings. You can't have an alanon program unless you go to meetings because the meetings is where it's at. After you go to meetings for a while, you just go to meetings After you go to meetings for a while, you discover you need a sponsor. So you get a sponsor and you turn yourself into that sponsor and that sponsor has the right to get in any area of your life that he or she chooses to because they have some recovery. You don't.
I have 29 years of recovery and I still talk to my sponsor on a weekly basis. I still turn myself into her. She still has a right to rip me and trust me, she does and I don't whine about it. I don't take it personally. She rips me and when I say rip, I don't mean she jumps all over me. I'm telling you when she rips me, she's telling me the truth about some of my actions that is hurting other people or myself and I consider that a rip. Don't consider recovery. Call it a rip.
It hurts. It hurts me when she tells me I'm doing these things. This is a character defect. It hurts. Then when I do the steps on that character defect, the hurt goes away. I have some understanding and then I can replace that with a positive thing in my life which makes y'all rather be around me than when I'm doing the other. She guided me through the big book of Alcoholics Alma. She guided me through 12 Steps. She guided me through this whole solution and it's marvelous. I invite her to do that.
It's only one only sponsor I've had all these years and I've had times when I liked her, loved her, hated her. She didn't understand me. I've outgrown her. I love that one. I worked it through every time. Thank goodness. Now, my sponsor continues to do all the things that she was done. Now, I know there are sponsors who who don't do that who change and there it is necessary to change sponsors. I'm not saying that's not so but for me this is my experience that I try to work it out with my sponsor. If I can't work out a sponsor, how am I going to work it out with God? How am I going to work it out with other people if I can't work it out with the most important person in my life who should be other than God Almighty as my sponsor. Above and now some of you are really not going to understand this so please hear what I'm saying. I put my sponsor above my family members because if I don't have someone outside who works recovery helping me with my family members, I'm not going to have family members. There's always been a struggle about coming to Al-Anon with children, small children and your husband if he's not in the program griping about you coming to Al-Anon. If you don't come to Al-Anon, if you don't have these things in your life, you're not going to have family anyway. If you just sit around watch long enough, you'll find it out. So, I go to meetings. I get a sponsor who helps me with all these things. That sponsor tells me to work the steps. So, I go to meetings. I get a sponsor and then I work the steps. Then she also teaches me that I have to sponsor other people to keep it.
And then I have to have commitments. If I have commitments at my meetings, I'm going to go to the meetings. I'll keep in touch with my sponsor. Then I'll sponsor others. I can't tell you how many times I have not wanted to come to meetings. Thousands, especially the last couple of years. I've really been in one of those downhill struggle recreate my life the last two years. I'll refer to it a lot because that's where I'm at.
I didn't want to come down here. I'm tired. The program doesn't work anyway. I hate all y'all. All y'all hate me. Why go down there? I don't have a friend in the world. God is really pissed off at me. I mean, he's taken everything in my life away. You know how
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you get in that stuff. But you know, people I sponsor are going to be at that meeting. They're going to ask me where I'm at. Steve always puts out that stupid chair down there. If I'm not here, the one chair that's different from all the other chairs in the whole room is going to be empty. I have cussed Steve so many times for being so thoughtful to bring me that chair. Let me tell you about the chair. You've heard a lot about the chair. When I first started coming to this meeting and it got so big, I'd walk in this room and people would start talking to me and I'd stop right there. I couldn't get any further in the room. I prefer this seat or this seat or this seat or this seat in meetings. I never could get here because I'd get here and people stopped me right over there. So that became my seat. Then when I had the car wreck, I have a trashed back. It will always be trashed. So Steve is kind enough to bring the chair and sit there for me so I can sit. Then other people always are constantly bringing the chair into whatever room. I need to thank y'all for that by the way. Whatever room that I'm in, y'all bring the chair for me so I can sit comfortable. Then somebody else will pick it up and take it back. That's a commitment. It's a service. I can't tell you what it does to my heart.
How many times I've cussed that chair and praised that chair. But I know if I have commitments, and I try from time to time to take a commitment at my own home group, I wouldn't die. I'm not one of those who say, well, let the newcomers do it. They need the experience. I have to take commitments. I screwed up a commitment. I had to take it three times before I got it right. It made me so mad. I'd forget it. I didn't do it. I'd be talking to somebody. I was the chairman of the cleanup committee of the Thursday night meeting three times in a row, man, because I kept screwing up. People I sponsor let me know. So five things. Go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps, sponsor others, and take those commitments. That's the advice that we give.
That's the rules. Isn't that tough? I'll tell you, we were talking about last night, the stepped up group, especially Thursday night. We're talking about around the west side here from time to time. We've been called all kinds of things. Step Nazis and controllers and, I mean, we've been called all kinds of things. And it's really a compliment. If we were somewhere doing nothing, if our head wasn't above the ground, we wouldn't get, nobody would say anything about us, would they? Most of the people who are saying that have never stepped in the room.
They have no idea what we do here. It's just that we're active and busy and you see us most places. That's kind of slacked off, by the way. I hope that we can change some of that. At the end of this story, Dr.'s Opinion, I have written, Dr. Silkworth is the only person besides an alcoholic to be in the big book and the only other writer other than Bill in the first 164 pages. So, I think it was very important to the ones who put this book together that a doctor's opinion be in this book, that we understand that this was a disease.
We're not going to read Bill's story because it's naturally of time, but I love what Clancy says. Clancy was my husband's sponsor, so I quote him a lot. Plus, I just admire him. I think he's one of the forerunners of AA in many areas. He's a genius as far as the disease of alcoholism is concerned and I quote him a lot, but he, one of his babies said something about marijuana, smoking marijuana, smoking pot. It's not mentioned in the big book and oh yes, it is. If you will look on page one at the little poem. Here lies a Hampshire grenadier who caught his death drinking cold small beer. A good soldier is never forgot whether he died by musket or by pot.
Okay, chapter two. There is a solution. We read the doctor's opinion. Go home and read Bill's story. He's the co-founder. Dr. Bob's story is in the first of the stories at the back of the book after the 164 pages. Dr. Bob's story is there. You need to read these two stories so you'll know where they come from. You need to buy the book Lois remembers so you'll know where Lois comes from. You need to buy the book, especially the first steps books for the discontinued it because it described the first 35 years of Al-Anon. Now we don't Now, we don't need any more, said the executive director of Al-Anon last week.
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We don't need the first 35 years of history of Al-Anon. I am not judging. I'm just reporting to you what I heard last weekend. We of Alcoholics Anonymous know thousands of men and women who once were as hopeless as Bill was. Nearly all of them have recovered. They have solved the drink problem. Now, we have solved, many of us, the control problem. When it says drink, I have, over and over in my book, in pencil, written above it, control.
So, let's look at this. We have all recovered. They have solved the control problem. It's the majority of ours. Al-Anonism starts with control and everything else falls under that. We're average Americans. All sections of this country, many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful.
The age groups here, some age groups, I mean, we're ageless, aren't we? I mean, you'll see an 18-year-old and my own self, and we're together. And we're having a good time. See somebody 80 years old, we're running around having a great time. We're ageless here because we have this common bond. All kind of religious backgrounds come here. Most of us don't like the religious background we came from, so we have that in common.
It says, unlike the feeling of a ship's captain, like Titanic is very popular at this moment, our joy in escaping the disaster does not subside after we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared a common peril is one element of why we work in Al-Anon and AA. It's one element of the powerful cement which binds us, but that in itself would never hold us together as we are now joined. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution.
So we had the problem, and now we have the solution. We have a way out which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly, sisterly, harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism, which includes us Al-Anon. That's what this book is about, is the recovery, the common solution that we all have. Now you're going to have to pay attention because I'm going to skip around a lot.
If a person has cancer, it's in the middle of the paragraph here, all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt are they? But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there comes an aliation of all the wonderful things in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferers. Now listen to that word again, sufferer. They suffer from the disease alcoholism, and we see it as if you love me you wouldn't do that.
We try to stop the drinking, we try to control it. And when we do that, this is what happens. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentments, not just resentments did Bill write, fierce. Financial insecurity, disgusted friends, disgusted employers. In this line my kids have tried to use against me and I don't take it. Warped lives of blameless children. I tell you it's fun after everybody is in recovery and you throw these things at each other.
But my children's lives were so warped by this disease. They didn't know whether to say hi or to go hide. Not from the alcoholic, from me. They didn't know what kind of action I was going to have because the higher power hadn't told me how to act yet. So I'm nervous, I'm restless. So they are scared to death of me much more than they are of the alcoholic. They don't know when my hand is going to fly through the air and they are going to go sailing because my nerves are crazed.
I'm a rage person. Rage comes up in me like a spiral that I don't even know. I was talking about it the other day, I listened to a step the other day and I think it was the 9th in our Al-Anon book. It says temper tantrums. It says that our anger, our burst of anger is really control.
[00:35:05]
Anybody got the one day time book with them? Would you read that? Let's see if it's not March 9th about anger. I think it's it. Please, bring it up here so, just step right here and read it. This is tremendous of how we Al-Anons, this line fits us right here. Losing my temper, call it an attack of anger, can be a disease too. It afflicts many of us before and even after we come into Al-Anon. We try to cure this disease by applying the Al-Anon program to our thinking.
The symptom of the anger sickness is an uncontrollable impulse to judge and condemn someone else. In this emotional explosion, I am really asserting that everything I think and do is right and everything the other person does is wrong. If I were not sick when I denounce and accuse, I would at least realize that the momentary relief I get from my outburst is poor pay for the consequences I must bear.
Today's reminder, I learn in Al-Anon to be good to myself. Am I not ill when I allow anger to destroy my poise and peace of mind? When I lose control, am I not handing over control to the one I am treating like an adversary? Can anger ever express love? I pray for quietness to help me cure my own emotional instability. Let me use serenity to cushion the impact of whatever happens outside of me. Does that just hit everybody in the face?
Listen to what this says. Thank you, Chris. In just a second, I'll get this back to you. The symptom of the anger sickness. Do you hear this? The symptom of the anger sickness. Anger-sickness. Is an uncontrollable impulse to judge and condemn someone else. An emotional explosion. Because I think I'm doing right and what you're doing is wrong. Let me explain to you. Don't you understand? It's called rage. They call it temper tantrum.
They call it rage. An attack of anger. That's what we do to our children. Thank you very much. This is awesome. It's really been where I'm at. I finally discovered that part of the grief process and I've had three major deaths in the 11 months time that I was covering up one experience of the grief process because another one hit and I had so much to do with that. I discovered that by taking inventory.
I hope I don't lose my place. Every year on my birthday, I take an inventory. That day, I sat down and I take an inventory of what's going on in my life. I suggest you do it. It's absolutely marvelous. I have 29 years of those. A lot of them I can't find because they're packed in storage. And every year, I go back to that little booklet and read where I was the year before. They used to be real long. Now, they've gotten down to, you know.
So, I wrote what was going on with me. It finally appeared to me that I had been so angry and it's the process of grief and how simple it is when you realize what's going on. This is anger. This is self-pity. This is fear. And when our sponsors point this out, it makes it so much easier. Now, grief comes if you've lost a job, if you've lost a car, if you've lost money, if you've lost romance, if you've got a divorce.
I mean, grief, it hits all kinds of places. We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are or who may be afflicted. Wait a minute. I skipped something. Or lives of blameless children, sad wives, and parents. And anyone can increase this list of what disease touches the family of the sufferers. We hope this volume will inform and comfort those of you who have or who may be afflicted by this disease.
Highly competent psychiatrists who have dealt with us have found it sometimes impossible to persuade an alcoholic to discuss his situation without reserve. Have you ever sat down and talked to your alcoholic about his disease? Excuse me, can you come and sit and let's talk about your drinking? Now, isn't that wonderful? First thing he does is sit and tell me how I'm controlling it. I'm not controlling it. What are you talking about?
It's your drinking. No, it's not your drinking. It's you. No, it's not. It's you, you, you, you, you. Strange enough, wives, parents, and intimate friends usually find us more unapproachable than do the psychiatrists or the doctor. Of course they're unapproachable. You're going to go up to your alcoholic, whoever it may be, wife, husband, mother, father, kid, and tell them something? They ain't going to listen to you.
Worst person in the world to talk to them. Now, this is in italics.
[00:40:00]
It must be of somewhat importance if they put it in italics, right? But the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution, who is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished. Those of you who are still living with a practicing alcoholic, only another alcoholic can win the confidence of another alcoholic.
You know what you and I can do? You and I who still have practicing alcoholics in their lives, which I do, what we can do is come into this meeting and set up the chairs. We can put the coffee on. We can turn the lights on. We can turn the lights on. We can set up these spiritual chairs. I call them spiritual chairs because this is where the spirit hits every one of us just sitting in a chair. In an Al-Anon meeting.
We are not smart enough to do it by ourselves or by reading or anything. It's sitting in the chairs. That's how we help the alcoholics who are still drinking in our lives. Because we cannot explain to them. We cannot fix it for them. We cannot help them. The most dangerous place I have found in this whole world to stand is between an alcoholic and his drink. It is the most dangerous place in this world to be.
Because they will roll over you. They will lie to you. They will hurt you. They will crucify you. They will demean you. Everything. Because you are standing between the alcoholic and the drink. So it behooves us to get out of the way. It behooves us to let God take care of that alcoholic. It behooves me to try to come down here and have y'all help me stand some other place. Because what I am doing is standing between the alcoholic and his solution.
Until another alcoholic wins him over. Until another alcoholic wins him over. I cannot. I cannot explain alcoholism to an alcoholic. I am not one. What I have to do is stick real close to my group, my sponsor in these 12 steps and the people I sponsor so that I stay out of the way. Only then can God get in the way. I can't tell you how many times I stood between my children and their drinking daddy trying to explain.
And the kids well the kids, I mean man I stand right smack dab in the middle of solution and they can't feel their own pain and they can't walk their own path. So it says here in italics it might be important enough to stay out of their business. Okay. That the man is making approach who has had the same difficulty he's off he knows what he's talking about. Same thing with us in Illinois. We know what we're talking about when we come in here and talk to each other.
The whole department shouts at the new prospect that he is man with a real answer that he has no holier than thou attitude. Nothing whatever escapes the sincere desire to be helpful. That there are no fees to pay, no access to grind no people to please, no lectures to be endured these are the conditions we have found most effective. After such approach many take up their beds and walk Isn't that a sweet promise?
Just great. We feel that elimination of our drinking is but a beginning. Those of us in Illinois we feel that our forgetting about his drinking is our beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies in our respective homes occupations and affairs. Look on page 20. Our lives as ex-problem drinkers and Illinoisans depend on our constant thought of others how we may help them in their needs.
You may have already asked yourself why is it that all of us become so very ill from drinking? Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why. In the face of an expert expanding on the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it you may already be asking yourself what do I have to do? How many alcoholics have said that? How many Al-Nons say the same thing? What do I have to do?
They come in here whooped. I mean alcoholism has whooped them. That's why they get here. You don't come in here for any other reason. Sometimes Sometimes you come because your husband's are coming, and you want to make sure he does it right. But most of us come in here whoops, don't we?
[00:45:02]
And we say, what do I have to do to feel better? It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. Now when an Al-Anon comes and their husbands are a bad alcoholic, their parents are a bad alcoholic, their wives are a bad alcoholic, their children are a bad alcoholic, stealing from them, living out on skid row, don't know where they're at, and are coming in, you know so many Al-Anon say, I'm so afraid he's going to die.
Let me give you some hope. They ain't going to die. They live and live and live and live. This book tells us what we're dealing with. This book tells us this is a disease. That my alcoholics cannot help what they're doing because they have this disease. I could go have a fit at my dad, my stepdad, my husband, my mom, how dare you die with cancer. Stand there over their face, if you loved me, you would not have this cancer.
If you loved me, you would quit this right now. You would get out of that sick bed. You'd go back to work. You'd love these kids. If you love me, don't have cancer. It sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? It's the same thing when we stand in our alcoholics' faces and say these things. It's a misunderstanding. When we study the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, we see it's disease. We see how they act and how we react to them.
And I want to kill WSO when they say don't study the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in Alamo. Don't explain it to y'all. I can't tell you how many people in this room this morning, tears have come into their eyes. Don't stop those tears. Just let them figure it out. Don't let you know that your alcoholic is a lovable, wonderful person who has a disease. That they are worthy of our love. They are worthy of our compassion.
They are worthy of our understanding. Doesn't mean we have to stay there and stand the disease and let it smear all over us. The disease. The worst thing that's happened in my life is for me to have to separate this thing, the disease of alcoholism, from the alcoholic. I love the alcoholic. I hate, I want you to hear me, I hate the disease of alcoholism. And I have to sit here in these meetings doing the same things over and over, during the same boring meetings, sometimes the most exciting meetings.
I have to stay here constantly, three times a week, to get that in my soul and keep it there. I hate alcoholism, but I love the alcoholic. And I need that information. I need that so I can survive and so the people that I love can survive because I'll kill them if I don't have that information. This is what this book is about. Page 21. Here's a fellow who has been puzzling you, especially in his lack of control.
He does absurd, incredible, tragic things while drinking. He's a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is seldom mildly intoxicated. He is always, more or less, insanely drunk. His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature, but little. He may be one of the finest fellows in the world, yet let him drink for a day and he frequently becomes disgustingly and even dangerously anti-social. I can't tell you how many times we went and moved an Al-Anon out with him clicking a gun in the back room.
I mean, you should have seen them alcoholics run. We had about three trucks this time, going to get this Al-Anon gal out of her drunk husband who'd beat her up. It's a bunch of AA guys and a bunch of Al-Anon gals and guys. We went over there. We were packing all that stuff up. We heard this click of a shotgun in the back room. We heard one of the alcoholics run out the door. Left us Al-Anons there.
And later, as we was telling them, they said, hell, we don't want to drunk or do. We're too smart to stay in there and let him shoot us. But here we are, staying there. Oh, they'll be all right. He's cocking the gun. He didn't shoot us. His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature, but little. He may be one of the finest fellows in the world, and usually they are. I love alcoholic personalities because when the alcohol is arrested and you just have the alcoholic, they're marvelous.
I mean, my husband had such passion, such joy, such fun for life. He was a spiritual man. We had fun. His home was open constantly to people.
[00:50:01]
We had a good time. I just loved him. But let him get that disease where it's in the head, and I hate it, it's good. I mean, same man, same day. He's marvelous. In the middle of the afternoon, I hate him. That night, I love him again. I mean, it's the excitement of the alcoholic that keeps me hanging around, I'll tell you. Let him drink for a day. He frequently becomes disgusted and even antisocial.
He has a positive genius for getting tied to exactly the wrong moment, particularly when some important decision must be made or an engagement kept. There's books that can be written about that one. He is often perfectly sensible and well-balanced, concerning everything except the liquor. But in that respect, he is incredibly dishonest and selfish. He often possesses special abilities, skills, and aptitudes and has a promising career ahead of him.
He uses his gifts to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself, and then he pulls the structure down on his head by a senseless series of sprees. He is the fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated, you ought to sleep around the clock. Yet early the next morning, he searches madly for the bottle he replaced the night before. Have you watched your husband or your parent or your child get up and hunt for that bottle?
Saddest thing I ever saw. It really hit home to me one time when we had an alcoholic lady in our house. She was very drunk, and I made her lay down on the couch and put pillows and all this around her, and she panicked. I mean, I saw the look in her face because she had a half pint and had about this much left in it. She panicked. Where's my bottle? Where's my bottle? Can you set it right here? She wanted the bottle set on the table right by the couch so she could see it.
It was her comfort, and she went to sleep when she had the bottle in place. It ripped my heart out. We gave her a swig the next morning and then took her down to a detox place, this was many years ago. They didn't have treatment centers, but we took her to detox where they kept her for I think a week or so, and she's sober today. This is in Lubbock. Okay, on page 23, in the middle of the first paragraph, therefore the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than in his body.
Once in a while, the next paragraph, once in a while he may tell the truth, I love this. Once in a while he may tell the truth, is that too cute? And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took the first drink than you do. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time, but in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Page 24, in italics, the fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice in drink.
Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. Is that incredible? With that, we're going to stop and have lunch, and we'll get into the solution after lunch. I think it's ten to twelve, I think we can be through and back by one.
Five, there is a solution. It's like studying step one, you're so powerless it's scary until you see that step two and three save our butts. Almost none of us like the self-searching, the leveling of pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation, but we saw that it really worked in others. We had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life that we had been living.
When therefore, we were approached by those whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us to do but pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools and let it our feet. Now listen to this. When we were approached by those who the problem had been solved, so many of us, and it's perfectly all right, I hope you hear what I'm saying, but so many of us keep our anonymity at really close quarters for a variety of reasons.
I have not chosen to be anonymous out there in the world because at the workplace it doesn't take long for me to let everybody know that I'm in this program. I mean it's such a big huge part of my life it's hard for me not to live it at work.
[00:55:05]
And that's my choice. Other people have different choices. One of my daughters keeps her anonymity very close, one of them doesn't. They're both alcoholics so it's like it's their choices for different reasons. I like that to be known so that people who pretty soon, if there's an untreated alcohol in your midst, you know it real soon, it is not hard to spot at all. When we were approached, I was not approached by anybody in the 60s, the late 60s, it was just beginning to get out in the public about Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Aman.
Prior to that it was pretty secretive because it was still a moral issue and not a medical problem. So a lot of people kept it very quiet. I found out about this program through the newspaper and I went. I heard, while I was sitting there, I heard so many people who were approached by people who saw drinking in the family. I love this story. There were some old timers in Lubbock where I came into this program, Texas, that one alcoholic got sober in a little small town, took about 45-50 minutes to get over there, called La Mesa, Texas.
One got sober. So the people in AA would drive over there, they would get the phone book out and this guy would check off all the drunks in town. And then the drunk squad went and visited them all. They racked up the whole town of La Mesa until I got all the drunks. They all knew where the AA meeting was. Some of them stuck, of course some of them didn't. One of my heroes, Bob White, many of you have heard me talk about him over and over and over.
He's one of the first AAs in our part of the country. Just a giant back there. He was drunk and at his parents' house out on a ranch way out in the middle of Texas, West Texas. He had gone there to die. He was in alcoholic poisoning. He had gone in there laying in the back of their bunkhouse, not even in the house, the bunkhouse, laying there dying. And some people in town talked to his brother and the brother said, yeah, he's in bad shape from drinking.
They drove and I can't remember how long it was. I'm going to say this because it sounds good. I'm going to be like Bill Wilson. This sounds good so I'm going to say it. Two to three hours to get out to the ranch because the ranch was way out in the middle of nowhere. They drove that far and sat and talked to him. And he got sober. It was just after that. And he talks about being approached had they not come and talked to him.
A long time ago I worked in, they had a clubhouse and they had house ladies and I took the job once of being house lady for a summer. And they would come, a call would come in and I'd go tell the AA guys that somebody wanted somebody to come out and approach this drunk. And nearly all of them would say, well, who called? If the wife or the mother called, this little bunch wouldn't go. If the drunk called, they would go.
And I was telling this story to Bob once and he threw a fit. He said, it doesn't matter who called. You need to be approached by recovery. And if the alcoholic is so drunk they can't pick up the phone, of course the wife's going to and then be told, well, we can't come help because he didn't call. He can't even dial the phone. It really would break your heart. We approach people by coming to this program and getting this program and changing our lives.
We become an attraction, not a pro, what is it, promotion. We're attraction by the fact that we come here and we change our lives and we are approachable, number one. But always keep your eyes out for someone you know is hurting and if you're at work or if you're at church or if you're at the grocery store and you know somebody has a problem, don't be afraid to take them a newcomer package. There's newcomer packets in the trunk of my car, I keep them with me all the time.
I go to doctor's offices and call and I always, if there's somebody and I figure, I take it in there. I don't mind approaching them at all. All they can do is say thank you very much, but I don't need that. I have it handled. We have found much of heaven. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. What an awesome statement.
[01:00:00]
The great fact is just this and nothing less, that we have had a deep and effective spiritual experiences, which have been revolutionized our whole attitude towards life, towards our fellows, towards God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that a creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could not do by ourselves.
Now you see the asterisk there by the spiritual experiences. Turn to the back of your book, I think it is five something. What is it? 569 about the spiritual experience? Yeah. The term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms.
Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes or religious experiences must be the nature of a sudden and spectacular upheaval. Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous. In the first few chapters, a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described. Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming God consciousness followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.
I call it the burning bush experience. We think we all have to have a burning bush experience. You know what we would have, what we would do if we had a burning bush experience? We would look for a water hose to put it out. It would scare us, it would be unusual. We think it's going to spread and how awful this is. Go hand me a bucket of water, let me get this burning bush put out right now, thank you, please.
That's exactly what we would do. Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics, such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James called the educational variety because they develop slowly over a period of time. Quite often friends of a newcomer are aware of the differences long before he himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in the reaction to life, that such a change could hardly have been brought by himself alone.
What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline. With few exceptions, our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a power greater than ourselves is the essential, excuse me, the essence of a spiritual experience.
Our more religious members call it God-consciousness. Most emphatically, we wish to say that an alcoholic or an alcoholic capable of honestly facing his or her problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts. He can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. We find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of this program.
Willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery. Please underline that if you have your big book, if it's not underlined. They are essential to be willing, to be very honest, and have a great open mind. Now this is the most remarkable paragraph I think in the big book almost. Listen to this very carefully. There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.
That principle is contempt prior to investigation. We say that a lot around here, don't we? Or I do. I hear it a lot. It'll keep us forever dead. And boy us alums do it much more than anybody I know.
[01:05:04]
Okay. We're going to really skip around here and do the time. I get so wound up in the magnificence of my own voice sometimes. I kind of want to skip through the different chapters just to give you a highlight of what's in there and how exciting it is to put this, not only to understanding our calyx, but to ourselves. Look at Chapter 3. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 really discuss Steps 1 and 2 in real detail.
1 and 2 are very, very outlined there so simply that we miss it sometimes. Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics, or most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real controlling alanons. No person likes to think he is bodily or mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our own controlling or drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people.
The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking and our controlling is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it to the gates of insanity or death, whether you be alcoholic or whether you be alanon. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics or alanons. This is the first step in recovery.
The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. Do you hear that? That we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. Smashed. That's like froth. If you be alanon, or if you be an alcoholic, you are not like other people. It's just that simple. Normal people do not chase after someone who is in full flight from reality. Normal people, when you're out to eat, or out dancing, or out having something, and a drunk tips over the table, gets into a fight, pulls you out by the hair, normal people say, man, he's crazy, and they never, ever see that person again.
Now what do we do? We marry them. Because don't you know all they need? So if you think you're in the normal bunch, smash it. You ain't. You are not normal. That just nearly killed me when I figured that out. I ain't normal. I don't want to think I am, but I ain't. I'm weird. Y'all are weird too. The first time that he peed in my clothes closet, and in my shoes, do you know what I did? I started sleeping lighter.
I was on pee control. It never occurred to me to talk to him about it. It never occurred to me to fix the situation in many different ways. When I saw him get up to wake him up, or get something, you know, they used to have bedpans by the bed. It never occurred to me to do that. What it occurred to me to do was I have to sleep real light so I can wake him up. So I can wake up whenever he stirs so I can see that he doesn't pee in the closet or out in the yard like he sometimes does.
I mean, it never occurred to me to do anything except lose my sleep to watch where he was going to pee. I had a girl I sponsored and loved. Her husband did the same thing night after night after night after night. He'd watch TV. He drank. He got drunk.
[01:10:02]
He had a Barker lounger, and he would go to sleep in the Barker lounger. She would leave him there, and he'd pee in the Barker lounger. So she went and bought different things to wash the Barker lounger with. She went and got plastic and put it around the Barker lounger. It wasn't the right plastic, so she went and got another sort of plastic. I mean, she spent almost a year over the Barker lounger and the pee.
When she finally quit doing that, it began to smell so bad he would not sit in the Barker lounger. And then it occurred to him what he was doing, and he went to A&A. And he's sober 15 years now. I mean, isn't that an amazing thing? It all happened over somebody peeing in the Barker lounger. I think they threw it away. It's not normal obsessing over a Barker lounger. I mean, she obsessed over the Barker lounger.
We're not normal. We don't do normal things. So don't kid yourself that you're normal. When you go out in the real world, remember, I'm not normal. I'm not normal. Don't hurt these people. These people may be right. Stay away, y'all. Don't hurt these people. They're normal. I'm not. Because we ain't. I get so many people so mad at me when I go over that, but let me tell you, it's true. Normal people are out there today floating around on a boat in the ocean.
We're in here in this church trying to stay out of other people's way. God's got us down here. I like to say all the time, it's like God made the 12-step program. It's like a little playpen. He's got all of us stuck in here in this playpen with the 12 steps, just working just as hard as we can work, and just playing and trying to figure out why he does life. He just keeps us out of the way in these little playpens.
Because he realizes we're not normal. We alcoholics and alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our controlling or control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. Nor does an Al-Aman. If we try to get into control, I mean, it's terrible the things that we can do. We ruin people's lives around us. I'm probably the queen controller of all queen controllers.
I would not be a bit surprised if I'm not the head honcho. I like to think myself as best always. And it is amazing how I leap into a problem and try to fix it. It's just amazing, no matter what it is, because I have all these brilliant answers. If they would just listen to me, I could get it fixed. And it's terrible to have that gift. It's a real burden to bear, because a lot of people don't want your gift.
They like to do it their own way, even if it's wrong. It would be a privilege to them to screw up and have the dignity to screw up. But you see, I think I'm supposed to be the savior of everybody. It is horrible trying to let go of control. Isn't it, Cindy? She's up here just… All of us felt at times when we were regaining control, but such intervals, usually brief or inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
Do you hear that? Continue Al-Anon's you're controlling. Continue to know best. In time, you'll be led to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I've been there. I don't like it. It's pitiful, it's incomprehensible, and it's very demoralizing. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type and Al-Anon's of our type. You all hear me say that a lot. People say, what do you mean by that? This is where I got it.
Al-Anon's of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period, we get worse, never better. We are like men who have lost their legs. They never grow new ones. Lost Their Legs, They Never Grow New Ones, Neither Does There Appear to Be Any Kind of Treatment Which Will Make Alcoholics or Al-Anons of Our Kind Like Other Men or Women, We've Tried Every Imaginable Remedy, In Some Instances There Has Been Brief Recovery, Always Followed
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by Still Worse Relapse, Have You Heard Of or Have You Done As I Did, I Would Get Rid of One Alcoholic Only To Do What, Yeah, Yeah, I'm Not Going To Put Up With This, And I Mean I'm Drawn To Them Like A Magnet, It Occurred To Me One Time, I Was In This Place, This B.J. Thomas, The Singer, Was Doing A Benefit, And So It Was In Dallas, This Big Honky Tonk, And It Was Over The Radios and Everything, It Was A Benefit, Benefit, Benefit, And It Was For Alcoholics and Al-Anons, And If There Would Be Sober Members, I Mean Sober, It Would Be A Sober Night At This Club, So People Came, And Majority, I Say Three-Fourths In There Were Members Of Alcoholics and Al-Anons, And One-Fourth Was Drunks, And We Were Sitting There Watching Him, And He Was Having A Great Time, And There Was No Dancing, We Were Just Sitting And Listening To B.J., And He Was So Handsome, He Was Such A Good Singer, And I Was Just So Enthralled, And One Of The Little Breaks Over My Shoulder, Came This Drunk, Drunk, I Mean Three-Fourths Of These People Are Sober, One-Fourth Are Drunk, The One Drunk And The Big Drunk In The Room, Guess Where He Went Straight To, My Back Was To Him, There Was Nothing, I Mean We Didn't, Our Eyes Didn't Meet, There Was No Conversation, Nothing, All Of A Sudden My Back Was This Drunk, Drunk, And I Thought How Did That Happen, I Mean I'm Like A Magnet, It Just, We Were In Santa Barbara One Saturday Afternoon, A Whole Bunch Of Us, Up And Down This Sidewalk, A Whole Bunch Of Us, Stirring Around Walking, I Needed A Band-Aid, So I Sat Down On This Little Rock Little Thing There, Sitting There Waiting, Several Of Them Spread Out Trying To Find Me A Band-Aid, When They All Came Back, I Was Sitting On The Little Shelf With A Drunk, Just Drunk As He Could Be, I Mean The Sidewalk Was Full Of People, And This Little Drunk Sitting There Talking To Me, Now How Did That Happen, I Have No Idea, But That Is, That Is The True Fact, And If They Didn't Come Find Me, Guess What, I Go Find Them, I Mean It's Just What I Do, So We Do Have Brief Recoveries From Time To Time, Still A Worse Relapse, Look At The Next To Last Paragraph, You'll Hear This A Lot, This Is What Our Colleagues Have Done, This Is What We Have Tried To Get Our Colleagues To Do, Here Are Some Of The Messes We Have Tried To Stop Drinking, Like Other People, Drinking Beer Only, Have You Asked Your Colleague, Why Don't You Just Drink Beer Only, I Did Because My Colleague When He Got Into Whiskey Was Mean, But Beer He Was Kind Of Okay, Limiting The Number Of Drinks, You've Had Three And A Half, Never Drinking Alone, I Better Go With Him Out That Honky Tonk, If I Don't Drink, You Know Maybe If I Go With Him, Never Drinking In The Morning, Drinking Only At Home, Did Y'All Ever Get Candle Lights And All That Stuff Trying To Keep Them Home, I Got, I Took My Kids And Put Them Over At A Babysitter, This New Book, What's The Name Of That Book, First Sex Book That Ever Come Out, Joy Of Sex, I Got That Book, No The Happy Hooker, The Happy Hooker, Did You Know It, I'm Good At Loisaning It, And It Tells You In There To Get Stuff And Close Your Eyes And Feel It Like Velveteen In A Feather And Chiffon, I Did All That, I Took The Kids And Took Them To A Babysitter, It Talked About Wrapping Yourself In Saran Wrap And Putting A Few Bows In Strategic Places, I Had Candles All Over The House, I Had A Nice Supper Prepared And Ready, I Was In The Scientific Attire, Saran Wrap And Three Bows, You Cannot Sit Down In Saran Wrap After You Get Yourself Wrapped, And It Is Very, Very Hot And Sweaty, Isn't It Lois, And He Never Came Home, Get It Off Is A Trick Also, I Thought If I Do These Little Things, He Will Stay At Home And Drink, And He Won't Be Out There, He Won't Have To Wonder Where He Is At, Okay, Never Have It In The House, Never Drinking During Business Hours, Drinking Only At Parties, Switching From Scotch To Brandy, Drinking Only Natural Wines, Agreeing To Resign If Ever Drunk On The Job, Taking A Trip, Not Taking A Trip, Swearing Off Forever With Or Without A Solomon,