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Source: DICOBE-00269 – Sallye C – SOUTHEASTERN CONF – 1978-08-11.mp3 File: dicobe-00269-sallye-c-southeastern-conf-1978-08-11.mp3 Duration: 01:00:56
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And we're both married to alcoholics that are sober, and we have a common bond, and I got to say her, Taon, I can't say it good, Tarzana, I'm real happy to give you Sally C. from Tarzana, California. Thank you, Mel. My name is Sally, and I am a member of Al-Anon, and I want to thank Mel for the nice words, and I want to thank the committee for asking Keith and I to come and share at this convention, and for the beautiful flower Mel gave me, and thank my program of Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous for giving us the opportunity to be here.
We've spent the last two weekends at conventions. We were in Odessa, Texas last weekend, and for all of you Al-Anon members, I bring you love and greetings from all our friends, Blanche, and I'm happy to be here at this meeting. I'm happy to be anywhere that's a gathering of Al-Anons or Alcoholics Anonymous, because it is an intricate part of my life today. Sometimes, when I'm asked to share at meetings, whether they're conventions or just my home meetings, which is in Tarzana, California, and like a lot of people, Mel had problems pronouncing Tarzana.
I'll fill you in on that. It was named for Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote the Tarzan books, and I always say it's better than I could have lived in Boy or Jane or Cheetah, but it is within the city limits of Los Angeles, and I hope all of you will be fortunate enough to come there someday and share with us. But as I say, when the committee asked me to come, I had that little flash that I have sometimes. You know, am I really supposed to go? Why are they asking me? Will they like me?
And I always share this when I talk, because it was the one time that I really was confronted with that, and it made me believe why I'm here. I had been asked to go to Arizona, and at that particular convention, they asked the Al-Anon speaker to share at the Saturday night, and I was speaking on the same podium with a man that I love and respect in Alcoholics Anonymous, Joe L. from Tyler, Texas. And I stood in awe of Joe and Mary, and I was sitting in the lobby of that hotel that afternoon, and I was looking at the program, and in all honesty, I was admiring my name right there in print.
And there were two old men sitting, one on each side of me, and I think that they must have had a hundred years of sobriety between them, and from the looks on their face, I don't think they'd enjoy the day of it. And one said to the other one, this is an AA convention, what do they got that Al-Anon up there for? And I begin to think, why was I there? The same reason that I'm here, that my life has been affected by the disease of alcoholism.
I was obsessed with alcohol. I was more obsessed with alcohol than my husband Keith, because to him it was a very ordinary thing to drink. He knew he was going to, he did, and things happened. But for me, I thought about it 24 hours a day. Where will he drink, when will he drink, who will he drink with, how can I keep him from drinking, where can I go to find him, what can I do? So I was more obsessed with alcohol than my husband was, and my life was deeply affected.
Yesterday, when Stu spoke, after he talked, I told him that we could just run his tape by again today, because I identified with Stu more, I think, than I have identified with any alcoholic speaker, and I do identify with a lot of alcoholic speakers, I identify with the feelings, and to me, that's what this program is about, feelings. But the things that he talked about, his family, and the things with Nancy and him, they hit home with me, because it parallels Keith and my life very, very much.
And I look at Nancy and Stu today, and I think they're a good example of co-programs. But I was not familiar with alcohol. I was raised in Oklahoma, which was a dry state at that time. My folks were divorced when I was very, very young. I don't remember my mother and father living together at all, however, I spent a lot of time with both of them. And when Stu gave you a rundown of his life, I can tell you that I think I qualify for Al-Anon.
I'm the mother of two admitted alcoholics and the wife of a sober alcoholic, and I have, I'm sure, alcoholism in other areas of my family,
[00:04:59]
which I was not aware of until I became acquainted with the disease aspect.
[00:05:04]
Keith and I will be married 30 years next January. We have a daughter 28, a son 27, and a son 21. So if you figure that out, you'll know I'm somewhere between estrogen and death. So I was born into this family that no one ever drank, that I saw. I think I had one uncle, Uncle Ferris. And I'm of Indian descent, and you know they're the worst kind. I thought until I married a Swede. And I know Uncle Ferris drank, and I think probably the family talked about it.
But whenever that subject came up as children, we were told to go to our room and tidy it up or something, because you just didn't talk about things like that in front of little ones. So I knew nothing about drinking. I knew nothing about alcoholism. I knew nothing about the path that it would lead me. And I did not know that my husband was an alcoholic when I married him. Considering the fact that I had never been exposed to it, to me it looked like fun.
He had fun when he drank, and I had fun when he drank. I drank with him sometimes, and sometimes I didn't. But it didn't bother me when he did. I met him when I was in high school. I moved to California, like all good Okies do. And I met him when I was in high school, and he was in junior college, and he was a heavy drinker. And he was exciting, and he was big, and he was popular, and he was just everything that I never thought I'd be fortunate enough to have.
And so he was exciting. And our life got more exciting as time went on. So we were married. I was 16, he was 19. And we went away to San Jose, and he was going to go to school up there. And we found a little apartment, and it was over a Greyhound bus garage. And it wasn't much, but it was everything that I wanted. It was three big rooms, and I could do what I wanted to do. I could do the thing that I like to do today. I could play house.
Women's Lib left me behind, because that's what I like to do today. I like to cook and clean and take care of people, like any good Al-Anon. And Keith was in school, and we had our first child, a beautiful little girl. And so that just added to the pleasures that I was having in this little apartment. He was not home a lot, because he was on a scholarship, and he ate at school a lot. So I wasn't tied to that 8 to 5 type life. To me, it was fun.
I just did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and played with this little baby. And cooked what I wanted to cook, and I thought that that was the zenith of my life. And I knew that as soon as he got out of school, that we were going to go away somewhere. And we were going to have that proverbial little white house with the picket fence with the roses. And we were going to have these children, and everything was going to be perfect.
And things were perfect a lot of times. Keith Sponsor talks a lot about the valleys and the mountains of the drinking periods. And I don't remember the valleys a lot today. I remember the mountains in those times, and they were good. And I go to Al-Anon meetings so that I can remember what the valleys were like. Because as Stu said yesterday, you know, he who forgets the past is doomed to relive it.
So by going to Al-Anon meetings and talking to new people, I remember what it was like. And I know that's where I came from. And I know in my thinking that's where I could go back if I don't make that commitment to myself for my meetings. And thinking was always a great vehicle for me to get me where I needed to be. Because when I was in those valleys of the drinking years, no matter how bad things were, I could always think, tomorrow it will be different.
When he gets out of school, it's going to be different. We're going to live in that picture that I had in my mind. And that picture was always the same to me. That picture consisted always of him sitting in a big overstuffed chair smoking a pipe. He didn't even smoke. But that didn't make any difference to me. There was always a big red Irish setter beside his chair. And I was always in the kitchen in a crisp white apron cooking.
And my children were always little. In my mind, they never grew up. And that was the picture that I had. And when I would think, tomorrow it's going to be different. It's not going to be like this forever. That's what got me through a lot of bad times. And today, when I go to Al-Anon meetings or AA meetings, and I see those little slogans around the room, first things first there, but for the grace of God, they all apply to me except that think, think, think.
Because that one is not meant for me. Because if I get to thinking too much and not working my program enough, then I can think myself right back into the way that I used to be. I can pull out that little piece of me that says, I want more. You know, what's going to be next? Is this going to be our life forever? And I can tell you that I hope that it is. I hope that these two programs are our lives forever.
So we were married and Keith was in school. And I had this little girl, and 15 months later, we had a beautiful little curly-headed boy.
[00:10:01]
And he graduated from college. And the drinking was progressing, but not where it interfered with my plans. And I know that today, that's when I began to worry about the drinking, when it began to interfere with what I wanted. And that was my first insight that drinking was a problem. He was in school, and we had these two little children, and he graduated. He had been asked to go up to Canada to play professional football up there.
And when Keith started playing professional football, he had a coach that told him one time that it took three things to succeed in that game. And what that man told him pretty well capsuled the life that we led in those drinking years. And the coach told him that it took the three Ds to succeed in football. It took desire, determination, and drive. And that's a good outline of what happened. He had the desire to drink, I had the determination that he wasn't going to, and it almost drove us both crazy.
But he continued to drink, and the drinking naturally got worse. Now, by now, our two children are old enough to start school. The children and I go back to the States to wait until the end of the season, and then he comes back. And we move up to a desert area of California, Ridgecrest. And we had that little house, and I thought, now it's going to start. Now we've given up this nomadic life, and we're going to settle down, and we're going to start living that life that I just knew was somewhere waiting for me.
Our daughter was in first grade, and I started on a path of doing the things that I thought were the right thing to do, and they were, and they didn't hurt me, and I think they behooved my children in a lot of good ways. And I did them, I know now, looking for that thing that was going to give me the comfort that I wasn't finding within myself. So I joined everything. I joined the PTA and the Cub Scouts and the Bluebirds and the church, and I did all those things.
And there was always a piece of me that hoped if I go and volunteer and I become active, he will come too. And in doing that, I put myself on that merry-go-round that sometimes we do. You know, will he come? And if he does, will he be drunk? And will he embarrass me? Always on that merry-go-round of what will he do? If I tell him early in the morning, he might not come home. If I tell him early in the morning that we're going to do something that night, he might get too festive of a mood and show up, and that was worse.
And everyone would know that it would be my fault and my husband that was drinking. And it was a great shock to me when Keith got drunk, I mean, when Keith got sober. It was always a shock to me when he got drunk. You'd think in 18 years I would have gotten used to it, but every day I was shocked when he came home drunk. But it was a shock to me when he got sober that a lot of people didn't even know he drank.
And it wasn't any shortcoming on my part because I told everybody he drank too much. So now we're living in Ridgecrest, and I start on this path of what I think is going to make the perfect life. But I also started on a path of the things that I think probably for me, I believe, someone asked me yesterday in the coffee shop or in the coffee room, did I really think alcoholism was a family disease? Yes, I do. I firmly believe that because my program tells me that.
And I believe everything my program tells me. And I believe everything the program of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me. I don't believe that anything that Keith or I did made our two children, who are, one is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, be alcoholics. I think maybe that I swayed the emotional stability in their lives by my erratic actions. And that's why I believe for me that I spread the disease aspect of alcoholism more through our family than Keith did.
Because our children knew what he was going to do. They knew he was going to drink and come home drunk, and I was going to scream and yell. And that's exactly what happened. And so in my fluctuating in this personality changes, I think is probably what led to the instability in our family unit. Because I would change daily. My personality changed daily. One morning I would get up and I would be warm and loving and have blueberry muffins for everybody and be smiling.
And the next morning I would be silent and giving everybody the silent treatment. And the next morning I would be screaming and yelling. It was all gauged on what he had done the night before, how bad I thought it had been the night before. So my children grew up in a home never knowing what personality mother was going to have. And I believe for me that's how I spread this ism part of the disease throughout our family.
But, you know, children have a big bounce back. And throughout those years of the drinking, they seemed like happy children as I look back on it. I think that they had a lot of happy times. I look back on it. I think that they had a lot of happy times to remember in their childhood, because when Keith drank, he was like the little girl with the curl.
[00:15:04]
When he was good, he was very, very good. And when he was bad, he was really tacky. So he is drinking, and I set upon to do the things to keep him from drinking, because that became my job, to keep him from drinking. I never really felt, even though he told me a lot of times, I made him drink. I never really felt that I was responsible for his drinking, but I had a big feeling that I was responsible to make him quit drinking.
I felt that was my responsibility, and I gave it all I had. And I don't think that I did anything that anybody else married to a practicing alcoholic didn't do. I bought the liquor, and I wouldn't buy the liquor, and I wrote checks, and I picked up checks, and I called people to report him ill, and I lied for him, and I did all those things. And like Ramona says, the alcoholic tries to hide the bottle. I tried to hide a whole alcoholic, and I didn't do a very good job of that.
That came home to me one time when we had a very rainy season in California, and it does rain in California. And a friend that we had owned a liquor store, and his store had flooded. And at that time, we were in the pool service business, and he asked Keith to come over and pump out the store with his submergible pump. And I thought, well, he'll pay him a few dollars, and that was always handy to have around. But he came one night to pay him, and he gave me, because Keith wasn't home, he gave me a pint of liquor to give him.
And I thought, my secret is out, because this man knew that that pint of liquor meant more to him than the money would to the family. And at that point, I think I realized that I did not have a big secret anymore. I think I realized that most people knew that my husband drank excessively. And that hurt, because you could tell me anything about my husband, but don't tell me he's an alcoholic. There were two reasons for that. One, because I knew in the deepest part of my body that I had no, there was nothing I could do to confront alcohol.
And the other part was, is I like to save that word alcoholic, when I was talking to him when he would come home after having been drinking all day. And I could put a contentation on the word alcoholic to make it sound like a four-letter word, and that was what I always said to him after I told him everything that I wanted to tell him. And then I would say, and you're also an alcoholic. And I thought that that was the most gut-level thing that I could say to hurt him.
And that's what I did for many, many years. I set out to verbally lash out at him, because it was the only defense I had against this thing that I knew that was destroying something. I didn't know what was happening, but I knew that if he quit drinking, at that time I knew that everything would be all right if he would just quit drinking. So I would do all the things that all of us do. And sometimes I would do things that I thought would make me feel better.
And it's a strange thing. Sometimes the very worst things that I could say to my husband made me feel good. So you know, it tells us in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, some are sicker than others. I definitely fell under the sum, because that was how sick I was. The more I could hurt him, the better I felt. I would go to the market, and if there was a magazine on the rack that had one of those quizzes, like, are you compatible with your spouse, or is your family a happy unit, forget buying the milk, if I only had enough money for that. I would buy that magazine, and I would take it home, and I would answer those quizzes, and I would answer them honestly.
And you know what happened. I always came up short. I always came up knowing that I was unhappy, and that quiz only confirmed it. I remember once I bought one in a family circle, and one of the questions was, do you look crisp in the mornings? And I had to look at that question honestly, and I remembered how I was in the morning sometimes, very caustic and hateful. And I had to think to myself, I might not look crisp in the morning, but I'm sure brittle, because that's the way that I felt.
And I would answer those quizzes, and I would confirm in my mind, yes, there is something wrong, but I didn't know really what it was. I just knew if he quit drinking, he'd be all right. Everything would be all right. He continued to drink, as practicing alcoholics do, and when I go to Al-Anon meetings to this day, and I hear people talk about the practicing alcoholic, I still don't identify with that, because in my estimation, when Keith was drinking, he did not have to practice.
He knew where he could drink, and how much, and when, and where he could go to hide from me. And for a long time, after we moved from Ridgecrest, we moved to Bakersfield, and we both had grown up and gone to school there, so I knew all the haunts in Bakersfield, and it wasn't hard for me to find him. It was just a process of elimination, which bar would he be in?
[00:20:00]
And you know, I would do those things. I would go charging down to that bar, and the bartenders liked him drunk better than they liked me sober, because his actions were predictable, but mine weren't. I might come in, and I might be very nice about it, but most of the time, I was not nice to the bartenders, to Keith, or to anybody that was in there. And if he wasn't in there, I didn't let the trip be a total loss.
I told everybody else in there what I thought about drinking, and the fact that they should be home. And I'm sure that I embarrassed a lot of people, for me, a lot of times in bars. But I would keep track of where he drank, and in California, for a long time, they used to close the liquor stores and the bars on election days, and that was one of my things that I did in January. I would get the new calendar, and I would go through it, and I would circle the days of any election time, because I knew that day he wouldn't drink. Those were at least days that I had to look forward to.
And then they changed that, and they're open now on election days. But those are the kind of things that I did. And then I found that tremendous thing that we can find, or I found anyway, for me. I found that if I could make him feel guilty, that I felt better. I found that if I could make him think that I was superior to him, I would feel better. And I did that in a lot of ways. After we come to Al-Anon, we call it taking up their responsibilities.
But I did those things so that I could feel superior to him. And you know it doesn't take much to be or feel superior to someone who's falling down drunk, but that's all I had to work with, so I was content with that. And I would do that in a lot of ways. Bakersfield is a very, very hot town. It gets 110 and 120 there in the summers. And so I would, one of my favorite tricks was I would go out in the noonday sun to mow the lawn.
And I would mow and clip and rake and manicure, and I would do it for two reasons. So that when he came home, he could see that I had been working all day and doing his job. And I must tell you that July 20th, Keith was 11 years sober, and he still does not mow the lawn. But then the neighbors could look out the window, and they could say, poor little thing, look at that. She's out there working, and he's out drinking.
Now they could say it to themselves, but don't ever say it to me. Don't ever tell me that my husband is an alcoholic. I only permitted one person to tell me that, and that was a friend that I had from high school on. And the only reason that I did that, I think, was there was someone else that I could feel superior to. She had had four husbands and six kids between all of them, and she always had problems.
So her problems were always bigger to me than my own were, and they could take my mind off of my own. So she would tell me because her father had been an alcoholic. But Keith was an alcoholic, and I would accept it from her because she was really the only person that I could talk to. She was really the only person that understood because she almost lived with us for a lot of years, in and out, but always nearby.
And she would come over in the morning, and we would dump our garbage on each other, and then we'd go on about our business. And today, I think that she's found a measure of happiness, and I've been fortunate enough to be in areas where she is. And we talk about those times and how sick we both really were. Then my next favorite trick, and it had two reasons. One, I'm not a nocturnal person, so it kept me busy in order that I could stay awake.
But what I would do is I would get out the TV guide in the morning, and if I was really in luck that day, there would be a movie on in the evening, and it would have to do with drinking. And you've all seen those movies, Lost Weekend, Too Much Too Soon, Come Fill the Cup. And they would rerun those movies most, about one a week they'd have on, and I would watch those movies. And while I was watching those movies, if they said anything in there about drinking or alcohol, I would write it down.
And I had a little scrapbook that I started long before Keith got sober, long before. And I would copy down whatever I heard them say in the movie, and I would copy it out of books. I would write away for information. I wrote to the health and welfare department for a pill that I had read about that was going to permit someone who drank too much to drink right. And I went to the library, and I got information, and I made this scrapbook, and I worked on it.
And one thing that fascinated me was I read an article one time, and it talked about the ethnic heritages and how drastic alcoholism ran through them. And this confirmed all my thoughts. Swedes were right up there with the Indians. So I knew that my husband was an alcoholic in a sense of the dirty word. I didn't know that he was sick. And I was a long time to accept that. So I would watch these movies, and I would iron.
I always iron. And I would hang the clothes in strategic areas where he couldn't help but see them, the door where he had to come in, the door into the bedroom.
[00:25:00]
And you know, it was the same thing every night. When he came in, I'm sure that he saw the ironing. He had to part it to get through the door. And I would know then that he knew that I had been working and doing my job while he had been out having all that fun. And he would walk in, and I would always meet him with a profound statement. My intelligence in those years absolutely astounds me because he would come to the door, and I would say, You've been drinking.
He would stagger in, and he would give me his standard answer. Yes, I've had a couple. So what? Well, so what was my cue? The next line was mine. The stage was mine. And he would sit over there in a listening chair, and I would stand in my talking position, and I would tell him everything he did wrong that day, the day before, and so did his mother, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I got all through, he would part the ironing and go in and go to bed and go to sleep.
And so there I was. You know, that's when my mind started working. That's when I really, when I think back, suicidal I never was. Homicidal I was. Because I used to think if I could just kill him, that everybody that he's hurting would be better off. But see, I'm too selfish. I knew that I couldn't get away with it. Once, I decided that I really was going to kill my husband. I was in Kernville, a town in the mountains with this friend of mine, and I decided that the best thing to do was to just run over him.
And he was staggering in the driveway of this friend's house, and I took perfect aim at him with a brand new station wagon, and I came, I guess, I don't know how close, awfully close. But you know, the practical end of my mind sprung up again, and I thought, God, he's got on the only good pair of slacks that he has. Shifted the car in reverse over a big ditch and ripped out the whole rear end. But I showed him.
And you know, he continued to drink. Keith got sober when he was ready to get sober. None of the things that I did helped. And Keith had been sober about two years before I realized that. And I had heard the fifth chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous read hundreds and hundreds of times. But in this meeting, I was listening that night, and I heard them read the B part. A, B, Cs, and the B says no human power can relieve the alcoholics drinking.
And I heard that for the first time, and I realized that's what I had tried to do for 18 years. And I did it in all the ways that I could think of. If there had been anything else that I could have done, I would have done them. He just got sober. But I think the thing that I did that may have speeded up his recovery, or road to recovery, was I gave up. I did all these things. I said all these hateful things.
And I lived with those two things that we talk about. I lived, even at that time, although I wouldn't admit it, I lived with a lot of guilt and remorse about that. And I used to go to AA meetings, and I would hear alcoholics talk about feeling guilty. And as Johnny H. said, our friend remorse, visiting us in the morning. And I thought perhaps because they made it sound so wonderful that they thought they were the only ones that had those feelings of guilt and remorse.
But for this non-alcoholic, I'll tell you, I had them. And I did a lot of work on them in the early parts of my program. Because I knew that the things that I had said could never be taken back. He was not a physical drunk. He never hit me. If he had, you'd have a different Alan on speaker today. But I would have hit me a hundred times if I'd have been that man. But you know, we know just how far we can push people.
And I used to stand with my nose in my chest, and I used to say, Hit me. I dare you. Just hit me. Are you watching, kid? Watch. Hit me, praying that he would, so that one more time I could come out looking good. But he never laid a hand on me. He drank, continuing, at the speed in which alcoholism goes. And I progressed at the speed in which alanonism goes. And I left a lot, never to go more than a two-hour bus ride away.
To get there, to call him up, to tell him I was gone, and I was never ever coming back. But what I did it for was so I could hear those magic words, I'll never do it again. And that's all I wanted to hear. And I believed him when he told me that. And I know today that he believed it when he told me that. And I would go back, and times would be good for a day, a week, or whatever. But whatever it was, I was willing to pay that price to hear him say, I'll never do it again.
And go back and have a measure of good times. And those good times were based solely on the fact that he didn't drink for a few days. And I laughed a lot, and he laughed a lot at my invitation. I would throw his clothes on the lawn. The neighbors would say, why were those clothes on the lawn the night before? And I always had an answer. Well, I was going to give them to the Salvation Army, but I changed my mind.
Well, I was going to give them to the Salvation Army, but I changed my mind. And I had this thing, I guess, that I thought my neighbors were either deaf or extremely nice,
[00:30:03]
because no one ever said anything to me, and I know that they must have heard those horrendous arguments the night before. I know that they must have known what was going on. I knew what was going on behind my neighbor's door, and it's funny what values we put on things. I had a neighbor once, and this neighbor became, well, I guess, in a sense, she became my higher power. I didn't know her. I never talked to her.
But she had one of those genie garage door openers. And I gauged my day on going to watch her come in from work at 4.30 and drive up that driveway and press that genie garage door open and have that door go open. And I thought, anybody that has a life so organized that they can have that, that's what I wanted. And that was one of the pleasures that I had in life, to watch her in the afternoon and know that that's the kind of life that I wanted, and still hoping that someday it would be different, someday it would be like that.
But it didn't get like that in an easy way. What happened was I did all the things that I could think of to do, and the drinking progressed. And I heard Father Fred say not long ago, if we would only realize the power that we have in the word powerlessness. And when I conceded that I was powerless, I believed that I began to have a certain amount of power, at least in my own life. And he also said that he believes that members of Al-Anon, other than Alcoholics Anonymous members, are the only people who truly love alcoholics.
And I believe that. I believe that anyone who would give as much of their lives to the program of Al-Anon as we do, truly love alcoholics, and I do. And that's one of the things in my prayers at night, that other alcoholics can find what my husband has found. This morning I got up and I decided that I couldn't do anything else for him. And that was a strange thing, because I had gone to the National Council on Alcoholism and asked him to go with me, and I had talked to a lady about Al-Anon, and she told me about a meeting near my house, and I didn't go.
And I didn't go there for the same reason the AA that told him about his AA meeting, that he didn't go there. I wasn't ready. You know, we come when we want it, not when we need it. And I wasn't ready and I didn't want to go where people might know that I was married to an alcoholic, never thinking, you know, that they'd be there for the same reason that I was there. But I didn't go. And I woke up one morning and I thought, I just don't think I can put up with it anymore.
But I had it in a different sense in my mind. What was happening was I was watching this man turn into something that I didn't understand anymore. We talk about depression a lot. I firmly believe that what I was suffering from was not depression due to these things that alcoholism caused. I think I was in a deep, deep state of grief. I was grieving for that man that I married. I was grieving for the father of my children.
I looked at this man and he was literally decaying away in front of my eyes, and I really knew that I couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't think that I couldn't stand it for me anymore. That was one of my favorite phrases. I can't stand it anymore. But the way that I looked at him that morning was I could not stand to see what was happening to him. And if it was going to happen, I didn't want to be there to watch it.
So I went out and I got myself a job because all the other times that I had run away from home, I had no money, gas, or cigarettes. So I thought the best thing to do, and I believe it was a sincere decision to leave because I didn't do it that minute. I went out and I got this job, and I was going to get enough money together, and I was going to leave. Now the reason that I had always stayed, I would tell you, was because I loved him.
And I did love the man that I married. I did not love the man that was in the throes of alcoholism at this time. But one of the reasons that I stayed was I was so familiar with my problems. I knew exactly what my life was. I knew that he would drink and there would be bad times and then it would get better, and I was unfamiliar with what was going to be out there for me if I was alone. And that's the fear that kept me in that relationship.
And all the times that I went to the lawyer's office and was going to divorce him, even to the point of when the lawyer told me that he would serve him with the papers, I said, don't do that. Let me go down and tell him. I wanted to soften the blow. I didn't want to hurt him, but I just wanted him out of my life. And so all of those things that I did in order to remove him from my life, I'm glad that they didn't succeed because I would have divorced the wrong man.
That's not the man that I'm married to today. So I got this job and it was, you know, it tells us in our programs that we get just what we can handle. It was a table about like this and there were 20, 30 women sitting there and they were putting little pieces in little pieces for our electronics firm. And that's the job that I got and that's exactly what I could handle because I couldn't talk to anyone.
You know, I couldn't tell anybody what was going on in my life. And I would put those little pieces together and I would think, you know, will he be home today when I get home? Will he drink? What will happen?
[00:35:00]
My children now, we have three children and our youngest son is nine and our oldest son is just graduating from high school and our daughter is out of high school. And what I really realized was that I didn't have any sounding boards anymore because the two older children had lives of their own going now. And they would say to me, Mom, if you don't like it, don't tell me about it. I don't want to hear about it anymore.
I don't want to hear what you're going to do. When you do it, tell me. So I now had nobody to talk to. I couldn't tell my mother. She would say, you poor little thing, you come live with me. I couldn't tell his mother because she would say, well, he didn't drink like that when you married him. And, you know, you can't tell a checker in the market. You can't tell anybody that you live the life that you live.
And so you go through these mental gymnastics of trying to remember who you're supposed to be. Are you supposed to be the good employee? Are you supposed to be the pillar of the neighborhood? You know, who are you supposed to be? Never anything real in your life. And I got this job, and I would sit there and I would think about, you know, what I was going to do. What was going to happen? And it was only a matter of about three weeks that I had been at that job.
And because, as I say, I'm not a nocturnal person, I would go home and I would go to bed. And if you're new to Al-Anon, and you wonder if that word release works, I can tell you that it did. I didn't know that's what I was doing then. All I was doing was, I thought, self-preservation. But I would go home at night and I would go to bed, and he would come in after having been drinking all day. And it was only about three nights later, he came in and turned on the light, and he said to me, aren't you going to ask me where I've been?
Because for 18 years I had always said to him, where have you been? You know, knowing that I was not going to believe him when he told me, and telling him that he was lying to me. But something was missing. I wasn't up waiting anymore. And it was just a matter of that I had just given up. I had just thought that morning when I got up, instead of the good morning God, it was good God morning. And I didn't know if I could face another day.
So I stayed at that job. And about three weeks after I had had that job, Keith called me one day at work. And he told me that he had called AA. Now I had laid across the bed the night before, and I had cried and I had said, God, if you'll let him quit drinking, I'll do anything. Just let him quit drinking. And when he told me that he called AA, do you know that my first thought was, AA. Now, I know that he drinks too much and I don't want him to drink, but I really didn't mean for him to go that far.
Because my concept of AA was old men in woolly overcoats and a bare yellow light bulb with fly specks. And, you know, here I was, constantly dressed as pitiful pearl, always with that body language of poor me. But I thought, I don't want to be married to an alcoholic. I would have rather believed, I think, that he was all the things that I accused him of being, rather than believe that he was an alcoholic.
And I am so grateful today that that's what he is. Because for those 18 years, I just thought he was crazy. And I was going crazy and the world was crazy. So today we know what the problem was. And we know where we can go to have help today. But he called me and I thought, well, I'll go home. And he told me a man was going to come out and see him. And this man came. And right away, to confirm my convictions, that AA was not the place for him, when the man came, I knew that AA had made a mistake.
AA had sent a bartender. Now, you didn't have bartenders in my home. And the man told him a story that to this day, I have never heard anything to parallel. The man was everything that Keith isn't during the drinking years. He was physical. He was all the things that I knew that my husband wasn't. And do you know that Keith sat there and just gobbled up that story hook, line, and sinker? And I thought, well, and the man said, I'll come back and get you for a meeting tonight.
And I thought, rather than have this poor man go out and spread these terrible, terrible things that he's doing, I will help him. And so I went over and I got my scrapbook. And I showed him right there in the scrapbook. I mean, they were authentic articles from Reader's Digest. You know, talking about alcohol. And the man was very nice and read my book. Kind of stiff-armed me. And told Keith that he would come back and pick him up for a meeting.
And that's what he did. And the next night, I got a call from a member of Al-Anon. Now, I didn't want to go to Al-Anon, but she told me probably it would be the best thing for me to do. And I thought any little bit of help that I can give him, I would be more than willing to. But I really didn't see any point in it. He had been sober a whole day in a row. And I knew that next weekend we would mow the lawn and clean out the garage and all those things.
So I conceded to go to this Al-Anon meeting with this lady. But I made up my mind before I left the house
[00:40:01]
that in order to avoid any more of these harassing calls about my having to go to Al-Anon, that I must establish out front that I do not need to go to Al-Anon. And I succeeded. I walked into that meeting, determined to find everything that was not like me, determined to identify with everything that I couldn't identify with, and I found it. This lady had on the wrong colors, coordinated, whatever. This lady had nine children.
This man was not even married to an alcoholic anymore. And so I found all the things that made me different. And then the one thing that capped it all. I looked over on their literature table, and they had, of all things, a comic book. Now, I didn't read comic books when I was little, and I didn't think there was anything humorous about drinking, and I didn't intend to start now. But I did. I'm an all-time window stander.
And again, that little feeling of guilt came in. You know, those sins of omission. Because I remember the times I stood at the window and my children would say something to me, and I would say, don't bother me, I'm busy. And I was busy. I remembered I was busy doing the thing that got me in touch with the second step, the insanity. Because I began at the window to play those games that made me feel better.
You know, if a red Volkswagen passes before five American-made cars, he won't come home drunk. And if you don't win the first game, you play two out of three. If you can stick your hand in the dishwasher and come up with a fork instead of a spoon, he won't drink that day. And those are the kind of games that I played. Those are the things that I did to make me feel better, to get me through those 24-hour periods when he was drinking.
So I went to that meeting and I found these things that were not like me, and I thought just as I thought. Al-Anon is not for me. I would concede to go to a couple of AA meetings with him, in the beginning, to make sure that that's where he went and that's what he was doing and that's when he came home. And my plans again began to fall apart because I had known that the day he quit drinking, the next day would be in a higher income bracket and he would do all those things around the house.
And Keith had always worked when he was drinking. Always worked. Was never without a job. He got sober, he quit working. And that was not in my plan. Now I'm working and he's not. He has gotten into this AA thing with such… He was in AA like he was into drinking. It was a 24-hour thing. Day in, day out. Meetings morning, noon, and night, and midnight. So I couldn't go to a lot of those meetings with him because I had to get up and go to work.
And when I would get up the next morning and leave for work, I told him that's where I was going. I was going to do a man's job and he could stay home and do a woman's job. And those were the kind of words that I left that house in the morning with. And he would go to these meetings and I couldn't understand why he wasn't working. Why our life was not shaping up. Totally forgetting that just a few weeks ago all I wanted was for him to be sober.
Just quit drinking. Sober, forget. I knew nothing about sobriety. All I wanted was for him to quit drinking. And now he had quit. And how easily we forget. I had forgotten that I had had my prayer answered and didn't even know it because I wanted more. I wanted everything right then. And determined to get it and having only the tools to work with that I had worked with in the past and that was to make him feel guilty.
I went right on through the early stages of Keith's sobriety with those same personalities. Telling him that I was going out to support the family on my $1.40 an hour. And telling him that he was not all the things that I thought he should be. And telling him that he didn't have to go to all those meetings. And having him answer me with those phrases that just drove me up the wall. One was, I'm sober, aren't I?
And I thought, big deal, you know. I've been sober for, you know, all these years. I drink iced tea, but I don't, you know, drink it all day. You know, I'm sober, aren't I? Or I'm doing the best I can do. But the one thing that he said that just infuriated me and I was sure that he said it at every opportune moment. And that was those three little words. My sponsor says. Now I had given him 18 years of my life.
I had given him everything that I had to give to help him to quit drinking. A perfect stranger walks in, tells him about his drinking. And then this other man comes into our life and I don't care what I wanted, when I wanted it. This man always had something else for Keith to do. Like go to a meeting or go on a 12-step call. Or go to a prison on a panel. Do those things. And so I'm still the way that I was.
I'm still this person with that body language of poor little me. I'm still traipsing around in my it wasn't chenille, but it could have been robe. With my rubber go-ahead shoes. Stringing around. And he's saying. Streaming around and he's saying I'm going to a meeting and I'm going here I'm going I'm so happy and talking about these people that I thought that I would throw up if I heard their name again and talking about how funny it was that somebody got thrown in jail last night for a
[00:45:06]
traffic ticket and talking about things that you just didn't talk about. They were not funny. And so he's into this program with great enthusiasm and I'm still working very hard to do the things that I think should be done around the house. And he came home to me one Saturday when I was home, planning his day when he informed me that he was going to Tehachapi, which is a men's prison and that his ride would be there very shortly. So I'm plumbing around the house, you know, begrudging every minute that I have to spend working. And he says, oh, there she is. And there she was, folks. I don't know whether any of you non-alcoholics and members of Al-Anon will identify with this, but I looked out the window and I thought, hey, if that's what drinking does to you, I think I'll start. She had the big car and she had the long flowing hair and she was dressed impeccably with good taste and she did not have a mink coat, but I could have sworn that she was dragging it along the driveway. Came into the house and opened the door and says, oh, Kate. And then she said, what was her name? Oh, yes, Sally. Oh, yes. Well, we're off. And away they went to Tehachapi. And you know what I was doing? I was looking out the window, wondering when he would come home. And I thought that's a familiar thing to me. So the next week he had to go to Malibu and it was raining again. And we were in his, what he likes to call his alcoholic truck. And we started back and he said, I think I'll take a shortcut. And he got up on this mountain and it was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The passenger side, the door, due to whatever reason, would not open from the inside. You had to roll the window down and open it from the outside. It's raining and it's foggy and I have that window down and I have my hand on the outside and I am freezing and I am cold, but more than that, I was scared. I had an unfounded fear that was as real as all of you people are out there to me today. Now, as I told you, Keith was not physical and never laid a hand on me.
But because I realized this day that I was living with someone that I didn't even know. I didn't know him and I had no idea what he was going to do. But I had decided in my mind, and there's that think, think, think again, that he had taken me up there and he had purposely taken this route, probably had laid it out methodically the night before on his map. And what he was going to do, since I was on the sheer side of the cliff, because he didn't need me anymore, obviously, he didn't drink, so my function in the relationship was gone. I didn't have to tell him not to drink anymore.
I couldn't accuse him of being guilty. He wasn't doing anything to be guilty about. So, obviously, he had taken me up on this mountain in this cold, rainy day where nobody ever drove. He just pushed me out of the truck and I knew that every AA in the whole world would believe that Sally just fell out of the truck and no one would ever question him because that's the way it seemed to me. These people were swarming around him, telling him what a marvelous job that he was doing and nothing was happening in my life.
Just the same old thing. So, I got down off that mountain and I went to an Al-Anon meeting that night and there began the road that Keith and I have certainly found an adventure. Sometimes when I hear them say, trudge the road of happy destiny and Alcoholics Anonymous, I used to say, why do they have to say trudge the road of happy destiny? Why can't they say, you know, tiptoe down this, you know, roses of ashes road? Why do they have to say trudge? And I know why.
Because to get from that point where we were that day to where we are today, it has been a trudge, but it's been slow and I think that's why our rewards have been so great. Nothing was ever given to us without a little bit of work on our part. So, I'm going to Al-Anon and I begin to listen to what the people say and I begin to want to do the things that they tell me in Al-Anon and I want to do them right. And I questioned somebody about the phrase, work the steps. And someone told me, when I walked into the doors of Al-Anon, I had worked the first half of the first step. And that's true. I had admitted that I was powerless, but I did not accept it for a long, long time.
So, I got into the program of Al-Anon and I started talking to people and I started calling people and I started having people talk to me and call me. And I started to get those feelings that we get when we remember that our life is not the worst thing on the earth and takes our mind off of ourselves. I began to talk to people and I began to share things with them that had happened to me. I began to see people that were exactly where Keith and I were in the early stages of sobriety. And you know, I could not understand why she wouldn't go to Al-Anon. I just couldn't understand why she wouldn't go. And I would go to meetings and today I have two total commitments for Al-Anon, Monday and Thursday nights and I go on Wednesdays and Saturday nights to AA meetings with Keith. Because it is a part of our life that without that we wouldn't have anything else.
[00:50:18]
So, the rewards that we've had from these programs, I couldn't list them all. Because if you had asked me 11 years ago to tell you the things that I wanted, the things that I have today would not have been on that list because I didn't even know they existed. I didn't know that peace of mind had a name. I didn't know that the feeling it is going to be alright really had a name. So, I was very concerned about what a good student of Al-Anon I was going to be. And I worked on that first step and I began to accept that it is a disease and I began to accept the fact that I was powerless. And then as I was raised in the Midwest, I had a good, thorough Midwestern upbringing as far as religion was concerned. I didn't have any quarrel with God.
But I thought perhaps there's something I should be doing that I'm not doing. And when Keith was about 5 years sober, Clancy gave him a copy of the 12 steps the way they were originally written. And the 7th step originally said humbly on our knees. And I thought that's what I'll do. I'll get on my knees. And so I started early, early in the days of Al-Anon for me to get on my knees at night. And what I said then is what I say today. You know, I'm grateful for everything that I have and everything I don't have and everything that you've left me. But of the three, I'm more grateful for the things that I don't have today. I don't have that AA thing of, you know, the sense of impending doom. And I don't have that feeling that it's all bad and it was bad yesterday and it's going to be bad tomorrow. I have a feeling that everything's going to be alright. Because there have been times in sobriety when it was proven to me everything is going to be alright.
There have been times in Keith's and my program when the most I could come up with was thank God he's sober. Things were not all that good, but I did remember to remember to say thank God he's sober. This daughter that we had is now 19 and she came to Keith and I and she described this life that she was going to take up which was totally unacceptable to us to say the least. And we let her know this and we told her she couldn't do it. And by the laws of California at 19 you can do what you want to do. And she did. She moved and she moved in with someone that was, she didn't even know him much less us. And so that was unacceptable to us.
But you know God works in strange ways. Because she had only been in that situation a little less than 10 days. And we got that call. That call I guess that we wait for from the moment our children are born. And it was a hospital inquiring if we had a daughter of such and such height and weight. And Keith and I went to that hospital and they met us at the door and they told us that Kim would not live. And that was one time that I could say thank God he's sober.
Because had I been alone and I would have been alone without the program of Al-Anon or Alcoholics Anonymous I don't know what I would have done. Clancy was with us and we prayed together that she would be helped and helped she was. And I went to Clancy and I again I said why is it? Why is it? Do people just think I'm some kind of broodmare? Don't they think that I care and I feel for my daughter? Why are they all hovering over Keith? Why are they making over him?
Don't they think that I feel as badly about this as he does? And he explained to me again he said don't you understand that maybe his guilt is felt a little stronger and maybe these people know it and maybe he needs their strength a little more than you do. So again I had to realize that I didn't understand a lot of the aspects of the disease of alcoholism. And this young lady did get out of the hospital. But for the next seven years she chose a life of self-destruction. She chose it in a way that was unfamiliar to Keith and I through a lot of drugs and a lot of drinking. She chose to buy a gun and put it in her stomach and shoot herself. But her higher power chose that she should live through that too.
To find the program of Alcoholics Anonymous which was my prayer if only she would go to Alcoholics Anonymous. If only she would do this. One night we got a call and I heard Keith take the call and it was the usual answer okay I'll be right there what jail? And he went down and he picked her up at the Hollywood police station and when they came home I heard her say oh daddy I am so sorry that you of all people had to see me in that condition.
And Keith works a beautiful Al-Anon program. He said don't worry honey I'd do it for any drunk. So seven years she was determined to destroy her life because she became something that she couldn't stand to look at. She became an obese person. She became scarred for life on her face. She went through seven plastic surgeries which have done tremendous things today. And then one day she became willing to change her life.
And she went to AA and she was a good member of AA and she stayed for a while. And then she decided that perhaps she could do it on her own. And a marvelous thing again happened to me. I couldn't say if only she knew because now she knew. I knew that the seed had been planted and whatever she chose to do she knew where she could go. She chose not to go to AA but she didn't choose to go back to the chemicals and the drinking. She's a good constructive person today and a good contributor to society and has a good job and she's a friend.
[00:55:29]
She's the kind of little girl that a teacher told me about once when he said to me and I thought at the time it was corny but it's true. He said having Kim in my room is like having a ray of sunshine and that's what she's like. She walks into our home today and it's full of love because she's there. When our oldest son, you know one out of three is not bad odds because he never gave us a moment's trouble ever. And he went away to Washington to pursue a life of a professional fisherman and today he's succeeded at that like he's succeeded in everything that he's ever tried.
And he called us one day and he told us that he was going to get married and I really wanted that for my children and he embellished all about this marriage and this girl that he was going to marry and you know then it flashed through my mind well I wonder if they'll invite Keith and I to their wedding. You know when your son marries you lose a son and that was my idea that's what I thought. And about two days later he called us and he said we were just wondering could we have our wedding at our house and Keith and I were thrilled because you know I could remember the times my children didn't even want to bring anyone home from school. And here they were going to take the most important day in their life and they were going to have their wedding in our backyard.
And they said you can invite anybody you want and we invited a few very very very special members of AA in Al-Anon. They had an AA minister do their ceremony. She wore it looked like a gunny sack to me but it matched his tennis shoes. Someone played the guitar and they sang and it was a wedding that was filled with love and her folks had this traditional white cake and silver reception the next day at their home. And that thrilled Keith and I to think that they would take that day and share it with us because it is an important day in their life and they're happy today and she's an addition to our family.
Like Stu talked about his daughter-in-law. It's amazing what this program brings to us. So now we have the 21 year old and it was a saying when he was very very little he is so cute why don't you just have him stuffed. And that's kind of the way he was but he grew up and when I thought he was so cute I didn't know they grew up to smoke dope and play loud music. But he did he grew up and he started doing these things and Keith and I knew what was going on but we just told him it's your life that's what you choose to do this is your home as long as you adhere to our rules and that's what he did. And he must have suffered a lot because he couldn't talk to Keith and I. Keith and I went to Palm Springs and here was the you know he was the one that saw the most of the sobriety through his childhood he was only 9 when Keith got sober.
And he was the kind that would stand and look down to me because he's big like Keith and he'd say that was a good meal mom you're a good cook you got $5. And you know mom I always had that $5. So Keith and I were in Palm Springs and we got a call and he came back to the pool and he said well that was Kyle and I said what did he want and he said well he wanted to go to a meeting and I thought well aren't we going to go and take him you know give up our vacation to go and he said I gave him the number if he wants to go he'll go and when we got home the next day Sunday he was sitting on the couch and he was all dressed up clean and ready to go to a meeting and that's where he's been almost every night since June 5th.
And at every turn in the hallway when I would see him in those first weeks of his sobriety he would say now and listen mom I want to tell you remember the time you thought so and so and I told him the other day I said Kyle you know our programs tell us that more will be revealed and could you just take this a little at a time I don't know how much more I can stand. And he says to Keith and I it's really great talking to you just like real human beings and so that's where our life is today.
Our three beautiful beautiful children and then the most beautiful thing for me is my friend my husband who I love and respect and I think that he loves and respects me and it's only possible through Al-Anon and through AA because had I known years ago that this is where we would end up. Years ago, that this is where we would end up, just by reading some simple, worded steps, just by going to some hot, smoky meetings, just by taking people into our home on Christmas,
[01:00:00]
who never made sobriety, but they spent one good day, by opening our home, as Stu said, that he and Nancy does, to people, by having our phone on the hook, by listening to those calls in the middle of the night. If you had told me that I would be led to where I am today, in here, I wouldn't have believed you. I don't even think that I would have known I wanted to be here, because I wouldn't have known what it was like. And I owe it to my program of Al-Anon, and to my higher power.
And if you're new, and you have your doubts about the higher power, I want to tell you that I know he's there, because I spoke to him just before I came up here. Thank you. Applause Please remain standing. Let's close this meeting with the Lord's Prayer.