Audio
Transcript
Source: DICOBE-00552 – Willye B – ARKANSAS AL-ANON CONV – 1979-03-17.mp3 File: dicobe-00552-willye-b-arkansas-al-anon-conv-1979-03-17.mp3 Duration: 01:26:25
============================================================
My name is Willie, and I am an alcoholic, and I'm mighty glad to be here. Somebody asked me when I was walking in, Willie, are you nervous, and I said no. Every Saturday night about this time I faint. This is a brand new experience for me. I have never before spoken at an Al-Anon convention, and I consider it indeed a privilege. I am so happy to be here among you beautiful people. It's sort of like being a thorn in a whole bunch of roses, though, I'll tell you.
You gals are beautiful, and you men that are taking part in the program are, too. I was speaking at the Colorado State Convention years ago, and when I got up with my little book here, the chairs were up front like this, and I heard this little stage whisper down here saying, Oh, my Lord, she's going to read or talk, and she doesn't know it, but in this little book I have a piece of paper and it says, Your name is Willie, and you're an alcoholic.
I feel like with all the beautiful family cooperation that I have seen and listened to this weekend, that I always felt for a long time like I was sort of a born loser. A man out in Seattle one time said, You know, Willie, what a born loser is, that it's a fellow that walks along the seashore for hours and hours, and he finally finds this beautiful seashell, and he cleans it all up and polishes it up and holds it up to his ear and gets a busy signal.
So I'm feeling sort of like that tonight. Even though I have two jobs up here, any time I get up in front of a bunch of people who have been so severely hurt by alcohol, I have two jobs. The first is to tell you a little bit about what alcohol did to me, because that's important to me and it's important to a lot of you. And I want to tell you what AA has done for me, and that's important, too. You know, nowadays there's not too much of a stigma on being an alcoholic.
In fact, it's sort of a status symbol now, isn't it? We're having a hard time keeping out the social climbers. You notice gals were even on the soap operas now. And I'm thrilled to death every time I run across an article in a magazine or the newspaper in the Sunday Supplement or on a talk show on TV that they're talking about alcoholism, and they are bringing it out of the closets and the closed rooms, and it's being aired.
And it's good that it's no longer the stigma that it was for many, many years. But you know, and thank God our big book tells us that we never have to reach perfection, we just strive for it, because I can work up a little resentment on some of these articles. Most of them are great. But many of them, have you noticed that they describe us, us alcoholics? They give us definitions and they describe us.
An alcoholic is. Did you ever see anything that an alcoholic is? The only thing really consistent about an alcoholic is his inconsistency. You know, if an old drunk walks by your house nine years, every morning, every morning at nine o'clock, and you decide some morning, I'm going to go out and speak to that dude. He won't come. So many of these articles and everything, they seem like they want to sort of take us and put us in these little holes in an egg carton, and they want us to fit.
[00:05:00]
And we won't fit. There is no way to describe us, because we're all so different. We share two things, basically, and that's pain and loss of control. And from then on, our details, our backgrounds, everything differs. There is no way to say an alcoholic is. And when you meet so many, thousands as I have met in these years, I cannot say and can describe to anyone exactly what are the requirements of an alcoholic, or where do we fit, and do we fit in a pattern or a mold.
You know, they've made up many, many different ones, have made up questions for us, and we're to answer these questions, and if we can answer, you know, three yes, well, then that does it. We have a gorgeous man down in Texas, and his name's Wino. He's from Tyler, and he's made up a set of questions that I think are delightful, and I'll pass them on to y'all that haven't heard them. They make a lot more sense to the alcoholic.
Now I think they'll make a little sense to the alcoholics, too. One of them says, you know, this is a test for alcoholism. Have you ever had the roof of your mouth sunburned? Have you ever been arrested while in jail? Have you ever been run over by your own car while driving it? Now to the alcoholics out there, they make sense, don't they? And to answer all three of those questions, yes, you're too late for us.
But whatever they're doing, and bringing us out from the closets and the locked rooms, that's good, and with all of the research and the trying to find the answers, we can always be helped, can't we? But when I tell my story, I tell a little bit about my background, because when I came to you people, I wanted to find so desperately the reason why I was an alcoholic. This was so terribly important to me.
Why? Because I had heard alcoholics, you know, I had heard the remark, I don't blame them for drinking, because. They described great tragedies or horrors in their lifetime, they described childhoods that were beyond belief, they described broken home situations, and I don't blame them for drinking because. And I didn't have any because, but I searched long and desperately trying to find one. I wanted to know why I had become an alcoholic.
This was very important to me. And therefore, it's because I was looking for something, it's important for me to go back and share with you a little bit of what I consider absolutely the most typical, normal childhood. In later years, when I was talking to a psychologist, I tried to convince him that I was an alcoholic because I had such a boring childhood. I was born and reared in a little town called Spring, Texas.
Now Spring is a little town. It's so little that we don't even have a village, idiot, we start to take turns. It's a little German farming community, 16 miles north of Houston. I grew up in that little town and everything that happened was centered around the school or the church. And that was it. About the biggest thing that ever happened in Spring, Texas was the church picnic once a year. And that's all.
Everything else was quiet. All the people worked the land because we were all of German descent. Most of our fathers, our grandfathers, had come directly from Germany and they were on their way to a little town called New Braunfels, Texas, where their kinfolks had already gone. And they found, coming up from Galveston, good soil there around Spring Creek.
[00:10:03]
And they stopped there and built their homes and worked the land. Good solid people. My mother didn't hate my father. I didn't hate my brothers and he didn't hate me. I didn't have anything traumatic in my childhood that I could look back and say, this is why I was an alcoholic, or to satisfy someone who was trying to help me. The difficulty was not there. I graduated and went off to Denton, Texas, and maybe this was a sign of my first little illness.
I went to the largest all-girls school in the world. That's enough to make you a little sick, isn't it? I went up there and, you know, I think all of us, as we're looking back, we can find signposts along the way. And you know, maybe this is where I begun to see that there were other things going on in the world. I was in school with girls from big towns like Dallas and Fort Worth, and shoot, those girls talked about a lot of things that didn't happen at the church picnic, and they sounded like fun.
And I knew that then there was something more and exciting and good out there, and I wanted to be out there. There was a war going on at that time. I hastened to add World War II. And my brother was in Texas A&M, and so I transferred down to Southwestern University in Georgetown so I'd be a little closer to him. We could visit back and forth before he left A&M to go into the service. I graduated in 1944, and I went back to spring Texas.
Here's another little signpost that I can look back on now that may have cropped up at that time. Maybe this is where the wanting of more and more of everything became a little bit a part of my personality. But I went back to spring, and I told my good German papa that I was going to New York to be a model. Now papa, he didn't know what a model was, but he knew a little bit about New York, and he said, no, that's not what you're going to do.
Now remember, this was 1944, and teenagers didn't argue with papa in 1944. And I said, yes, sir, what did you have in mind? And he said, I want you to go in to Houston and get you a job teaching school. And I thought, oh Lord, I never saw a schoolteacher that looked like she had one minute's fun in her whole life. The ones I had had, there wasn't a swinger among the group. But I went in to Houston, and I got me a job teaching school.
Now as the psychologist and I were looking back, trying to put our finger, you know, this is where the trouble started. And this is where some of the articles will say that, you know, alcoholics are unfulfilled people. They never really got an opportunity to do in life what they really wanted to do. It passed them by. I couldn't use this. I hadn't been in that classroom six weeks till I knew that it was the only way I ever wanted to make a living in my life.
And when I retired from the public schools a couple of years ago, I had finished 27 years with America's Teenagers. Now some of you might think, uh-huh, that's why she drinks. But I want to tell you something. I love these kids, and they're a wonderful group of people. And if you have a teenager, you hang in there. They're going through their trial by fire, but they'll make it. You just love them good enough, and they'll make it.
I love these kids, and I love teaching. My mother became ill a couple of years ago, and I had to quit the public schools, and I'm in college work now, and I like it very much. And I get them that first year. They get out of high school, so I'm not too far away from them and enjoy it. We couldn't put the blame here. We couldn't say, well, Willie was an unfulfilled person and didn't really ever get to do in life what she wanted to do.
Now we have some strange laws in Texas. I don't know whether y'all have any up here in Arkansas or not, but we have some strange laws.
[00:15:14]
So after teaching for four years, I had to go back and take practice teaching. I had heard that San Marcos, Texas, was a nice little town, and besides that, it had an Air Force Base nearby. So I chose San Marcos. See, I wasn't what you'd call a stupid blonde. I was just, you know. I chose San Marcos, and I had worked a little bit on my master's degree at the University of Houston, and I figured, well, I'll add a little more to my master's, and I'll get my practice teaching.
I came home from San Marcos three months later, and I didn't have my M.A. degree, but I had something more important, and that was my M.R.S. I met and married the man that I don't know how, and neither are you in a little while, but I'm still married to that dude. Also, a little stage whisper that went on one time in my talk about this time, a lady said to another lady, I wonder if she ever did any drinking.
You know, it almost sounded like I stayed in one room and they squirted their tummy through the keyhole. Now, all good Germans make homebrew, you know that. Any of you that have any German ancestry, you know that. Papa made good homebrew, and Granddad made good homebrew, and all those crafts made good homebrew, and we were handed a glass at birthings and barn raisings and dances and things like this and the church picnic.
No big deal. Our minister didn't get up on Sunday morning and preach about the evils of drink, because he made good homebrew. It just wasn't a big deal in my growing up and getting me to this stage in my life. Now the plot does thicken up a little bit. I met and married a United States Air Force officer, and he took this little old barefoot gal out of Spring, Texas, and took her up to Scottfield, Illinois, right across the river from St. Louis.
And he introduced me, for the first time in my life, to all these pretty little drinks. And these long stemmed glasses with all that garbage in there, the olives and the onions and the lemon peels, and they're different colors, you know, they're little pink and little bronze, and they're so pretty. And now the only signpost that I can recognize now, I have never been a sipper. When you hand me something to drink, I drink it.
And I usually want something in my hand all the time. And I had never been a sipper of beer when we were stationed in England in later years, you know, to have warm beer over there. And I never did get used to that stuff, because I never had had warm beer. I never did fool around with it long enough for it to get warm. I drank those little bitty tiny, tiny drinks just the way I had that homebrew, and it was down.
We had a lot of fun in those next two years. We did a lot of fun drinking, and I liked everything about it. I liked the taste of everything he handed me. He was just real thrilled to introduce me to this, all of these things that I never had had before, martinis and Manhattans and all these pretty things. And we had a good time. Partied a lot. I liked everything about the cocktail lounges over in St. Louis.
I liked those little combos sitting over in the corner and all that smoke that you just almost had to do the backstroke to get through. All that noise, and I guess the phoniness, too, when we're talking about signposts. But I loved it, and we had a good two years. The Korean War broke out, and they picked my man up and sent him to Korea. When the psychologists and I were looking back, we looked at this portion of my life.
I went back to spring. Got me a job teaching school in spring then. They had more than four teachers by then, so I got me a job there in spring. Lived with my mother and father upstairs in their house. And yes, this is where my lone drinking began. My husband is of the disposition that if he was in Korea and I was in spring, I better be drinking alone. I better be doing everything alone.
[00:20:02]
So yes, this is where my lone drinking began. I would go up at night to write his letter. And first I, you know, went up with two or three beers and then a six-pack. Then it was a lot less trouble and a lot less bottles to take a half-pint and so on. And I would sit there and drink and write letters to him and during the day teach school. But no big problem that I recognized at that time. When he got back from Korea, we tried to pick up right where we had left off.
And for a while it worked great. But then we began to realize that there was something different about Willie. There was something different happening and there was a subtle change in personality. A man told me one time, a very learned man and had been in AA a long time and had done a lot of studying on alcoholism. And he said, you know, Willie, the majority of alcoholics, the personality may bring on the alcoholism.
But there are cases also where the alcoholism brings on the personality. I had never been a liar. I had never been a cheat. I have always been very comfortable with people. I don't have a self-conscious bone in my body. Growing up there in spring, I didn't know I was supposed to be afraid of people. I enjoyed crowds. I've always loved to be in groups. I had done everything in school that I could possibly get into, clubs and cheerleading and all that sort of stuff.
But I was changing. The blackouts had started. They were so subtle at first, so subtle. A little 15-minute period here, 30 minutes here, a conversation on the phone. You know, in our big book, when it says that alcohol is cunning, and all of you AAs, alcohol is cunning, and it's baffling, and it's powerful. I think that word cunning describes us so well. The thing that alcohol does to us, it doesn't, you know, we don't wake up.
Sometimes when we're trying to talk about ourselves to people that really don't know any alcoholics, we didn't wake up some morning and say, well, I'm an alcoholic, you know, and just get to be one. It's a slow, insidious, creeping thing with most of us. And with women, it doesn't take long. It doesn't take long. We don't, you very seldom hear a woman from the podium describe 10, 15, 20 years of drinking.
Our average, as near as they can figure out, is from six to seven years, and we, that's it. We don't have long histories of drinking generally. But something was different about the way Willie was behaving, thinking, reacting, and it was very, very slight at first. But you know, and I know, it got worse in a hurry. And we thought, you know, there's something wrong. And the beautiful man that was up here last night talking, the doctor, you know, here we were.
I had gotten my master's by this time. My husband had a master's degree. We had lots of book learning. We had lots of facts stored in our heads. And with two master's degrees, we thought that, you know, we were so pseudo-intelligent, so much. And we didn't have the remotest idea of what was happening. But when things got a little sticky, and I was so bewildered at what I was doing, and I did not connect it with alcohol.
This is the peculiar, cunning thing about alcohol in our lives. I didn't connect the trouble with alcohol, and neither did he. Not in the beginning. There was just something wrong with Willie. This is the way we described it. There's something wrong. So we started on what I like to call our triangle. It's funny, when I got to you people, that our emblem is a triangle with a circle in it.
[00:25:02]
But we've started on the triangle that maybe many of you alcoholics, and of course you beautiful Al-Anons have gone along with your alcoholic on this triangle. We thought, there must be something wrong with Willie physically. So we take me to a doctor. And now I was in my early 20s. And that doctor gave me every test that he could think of. The normal ones ran me through the clinic. And he called my husband and I in, and after all the test results came in, said, she's healthy as a horse.
There wasn't anything wrong with me physically. But you know, when we doubt that insanity part of the program, I wanted something physically wrong with me. I would have been so relieved if this doctor could have told me that there was something physically wrong with me. And you know now, I don't even like to have a headache. Makes me madder than son of a gun to even have a headache. I don't want to be sick. I don't want anything to go wrong now.
But I wanted that doctor to tell me that, you know, there was something wrong physically with me. Because then that would explain the strange behavior. And I could talk to people about it. And I could explain away some embarrassing situations that I had gotten myself into, small at first. But it would have explained it to me. The doctor did tell me. And God bless him, it wasn't his fault. Because I didn't have, I couldn't, I didn't discuss my drinking with the man because it never occurred to me that my drinking had anything to do with this.
I just thought there was something wrong that was making me feel like I was. But the man told me, I did tell him that I was a little bit nervous. And he said, well maybe if you would drink a glass of wine before dinner. Of course I obliged the good doctor. He didn't tell me to put it in a nice tea glass. That was all my idea. He meant one of the little pretty glasses. And for normal people that would have been great.
Things rocked on a little while. And they got worse. The strange things, and this is what we were calling them by then, the strange things that was happening to Willie. The things that I was doing. The things that I was allowing to happen. So we decided that all right, not anything physically wrong. How about mentally? Now you know, I don't want anything mentally wrong with me. But when I went to that psychologist, I wanted him to put a label on me.
I have always been fascinated with words. This is a school teacher in me I guess. And I loved words. And I wanted him to give me a word. Schizophrenic. Isn't that pretty? Paranoid. It's at least words with a little dignity to them. It's better than drunk. I tried to convince this man. I was frightened by this time. I was frightened, thoroughly frightened and thoroughly bewildered. And I wanted to convince this man that there was something wrong mentally.
That's so ridiculous, isn't it? And you think, you know, this is a crazy way to think. But see, the alcoholism was bringing on the insanity. The lies I was piling up. I'd stand, you know, I'd tell a lie at the drop of a hat. Not only because, you know, we have to become good liars, don't we? You can't, you know, lay off work Monday and Tuesday and go to work Wednesday and tell your principal that, you know, you've been sick and then giggle.
You can't do this. You have to do it with a straight face. And you have to be sick, sick, sick. You have to make a good story out of it. Of course we lie. And not only to protect our drinking, I'd climb a tree to tell a lie when I could have stood flat-footed and told the truth. But I had to start lying about every area of my life to make myself feel better because I was beginning to feel so sick. Because I was beginning to feel so terrible about me.
[00:30:06]
Of course I did not level with this man. I couldn't at this time. I couldn't tell this man the truth. I didn't know the truth. I couldn't be honest. I didn't know how. I was cunning and baffling and powerful. This man couldn't help me. He called my husband in after he got through. You know, he'd be taking notes and I'd be making up these great big lies to explain my behavior. And he'd be writing it all down and I'd go back a week later and we'd start in, you know, where we left off.
And, hell, I'd even, the people in my story had changed, but they hadn't changed on his piece of paper. And he called my husband in. And he said, you sure she's a college graduate? The insanity of it all. We didn't find the answer there. And the actions got stranger and more terrible. You know, there's nothing in this world more disgusting than a woman drunk and degrading and humiliating. I thought that I would never ever be able to stand before women like you and say I am an alcoholic.
Because being a woman alcoholic is not a very pretty thing. We don't, and I'm not saying that we have any rougher time than you men. I know you hurt. I know your men hurt and there was a lot of pain. But you know, the men can get away with so much more in their drinking. And I don't think women's lives are going to change that. A man can get all boiled up and put a lampshade on his head and dance on a table and he's funny.
If you have to go home with him, he's not so funny. He's funny to all the other girls. But you ever see a cartoon about a woman drunk? It's just something so humiliating. And my whole life, my whole personality, my whole world was collapsing. And we went to the only other place we knew to go. You see, we kept looking out, out instead of looking in, where the problem was. We kept looking out. We thought, all right, if there's not anything wrong with Willie physically, nor mentally, that the learned men can find, how about spiritually?
Now I had grown up in this German community. We only had, there was only that one church there, and that was the German Lutheran Church. Our sermons were even preached in German. And we were like a lot of other denominations. We couldn't just walk down the aisle and join. We had to go two long years of catechism, and then on Palm Sunday morning we were stood up in front of the congregation and asked questions about what we had learned in those two years, and then if we answered those questions right, we were allowed to become members and to be confirmed.
So people, when I went to that bass chaplain to talk to him, he and I found out that I knew a lot about God. I knew a lot about God. But it took the people in Alcoholics Anonymous to teach me to know God, and there's a world of difference, a world of difference. We found that I knew right from wrong, and I knew the things I was doing, they weren't right. We didn't know where else to go. At this time, of course, I had begun to get very defensive about my drinking, and it had occurred to these two brilliant people that maybe that was the trouble.
But it had occurred and taken form more with my man than it had with me, because I was getting on the defensive. I was hiding my drinking, I was hiding the things that I was doing to the best of my ability. A full-blown alcoholic, and I wasn't about to talk to him about my drinking. We talk about miracles in this program. You all have some beautiful miracles in Al-Anon. We have them in AA, we have them all together.
And we talk about coincidences in this program. Beautiful AA man passed on to me one time a definition that I love of a coincidence, and I know many of you have heard it, that a coincidence is a small miracle in which
[00:35:05]
God wishes to remain anonymous. We were stationed in Omaha, Nebraska about this time, and they were having a conference or something of this, a gathering of alcoholics. And my husband read a little tiny piece in the Omaha, Nebraska paper, and it gave the preamble of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it told when the meetings were going to be and where they were going to be, and it said if you need any further information, then call this number.
And this man was desperate, just like you were. He would have done anything to help me. He tried to get me to call the number, and I wouldn't do it, so he called. And when he talked to the woman there at the intergroup, he told her a little bit about my behavior and about the things that were happening to me and to him. And I think old Big Mary, she knew pretty well what was in the bushes. And she said, well, she talked to me, and he said, no, I don't think so.
And she said, well, I'll do the only thing I can do, sir, I'll try to help you to understand, and maybe you can help her. I'll send you a copy of our big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Earl LeMay was at Offutt at that time, and he didn't want people tromping on and off his base, anybody, so Mary knew that she couldn't get on the base without signing a piece of paper as to why she was coming, and she knew an officer didn't want that written down there, so she said, I'll mail it to you.
He received his copy of the big book, and another miracle took place. This one big copy of this big book was everywhere. It was in the kitchen, it was in the basement, it was in the bathroom, it was in the living room, everywhere he thought I was going to go, he put the big book, because, see, he read this book, and he closed it up, and he knew he had his answer. He knew that Willie was an alcoholic, and he put the big book everywhere, but, see, it had a word on it I didn't like, and it wasn't anonymous.
The word alcoholic to me spelled despair, it spelled defeat, it spelled weakness, lack of character, all of the things that I didn't want to be wrong with me, and I didn't think they were. Alcohol had so completely engulfed my whole life that I couldn't see what I had become, a tramp. You know, I thought I was a lady that occasionally got drunk, and I was a drunk that was occasionally a lady. I wouldn't read that book, wouldn't even open it up.
But things did get so bad that I knew I had to make a move of some sort. See, I wasn't completely out of the mulberry tree. I knew I had to make a move to hold on to this man that I had worked so hard to get. So I agreed to go to an AA meeting. One. I went down to the hotel there in Omaha to my first meeting. Now, I wanted to impress you people. I got all dressed up, the very best things I had, and I went to my first meeting, and I came home, and oh, dear Lord, the phoniness that had set in to my life from just the plain Jane gal down there in Spring, Texas, the phoniness that had set in, the defense mechanisms that had become a part of me to defend what I was doing, explain it, anything, excuse it.
I came home from that first AA meeting, and I told my husband, I said, Honey, that's the nicest bunch of people you ever saw in your life, but Lord, they got lots of problems. I said, Do you know that some of those people have been in hospitals for drinking, and some of those people have been in jail, and see, none of these things, isn't it funny how any
[00:40:03]
excuse we can grab on to, if there are any new people here, you know, either Al-Anon or alcoholic, look at your excuses, see what you're doing. We can excuse away anything. Beautiful gal in AA told me one time, said, Willie, you know, you remind me of this old fellow that they jerked out, the police jerked him out of this burning building, and they shook him around a couple of times, and they said, George, you know, we have told you again and again, that when you're drinking, don't you, don't you, you know, smoke in bed.
Oh, George, he said, Hell, the bed was on fire when I got in it. That's about as good as the excuse-maker I was getting to be, too. I could excuse away anything, anything. See, I didn't look. When I came to AA, and if you're, you know, new in Al-Anon and new in AA, it's not so out of the ordinary that you're looking every place to find an escape route, an easier, softer way, the book says, and we're looking for it, and we'll go to any lengths to get it.
And I was looking for an easier, softer way, so therefore, when you would talk at meetings, when AA would talk at meetings, I didn't look for the things that were similar to the things that were happening to me. I looked for the differences. We use this word unique over and over and over again, and that's what we're really looking for, is something that in our story that is unique. See, I had the if-onlys and the yes-buts, and I suffered terrible from that disease, too.
If only such-and-so would happen, and when you'd tell me a little bit about your drinking, I would immediately say, yes, but. See, I had hoof-and-mouth disease. There is nothing more smart-aleck than a smart-aleck schoolteacher, nothing, and every time you would try to talk to me, I would try to out-talk you because I didn't want to hear what you were telling me about me, and you weren't really saying this about me.
You were telling me about yourself, but I could not, I could not accept the similarities. I kept looking for the differences. I hadn't been in hospital for drinking. I hadn't been in jail for drinking. I did to you for the next four years what my teenagers do to me sometime in the classroom. I'll come in in the morning, you know, and I'll open up my lesson plan book, and I'm all situated around here, and I'll say on page 68 so-and-so and so-and-so, we're going to do this and that and the other, and when I get all proof, an old boy way back in the back says, what page we on?
I'll say, didn't you hear me? He said, yes, ma'am, I heard you, but I wasn't listening. And that's what I did to you for the next four years of my life. I heard what you said, but I did not listen. The only thing I did right in the next four years was come back to you again and again. If you're in Illinois and sitting out there and your man hadn't had 100 percent victory in this thing, if he hasn't found solid sobriety, please don't give up.
I am firmly convinced that from the first meeting, God took me by the hand and walked the rest of the way with me. Everything that happened to me in those four years were meant to happen. Not one thing that did happen have I not been able to use sitting on the bed of another sick woman alcoholic and saying to her the two most beautiful words that an alcoholic can hear, and that's, I understand. God let everything happen to me to enable me to sit on that bed and say this, and for that sick gal to know.
[00:45:16]
I sat on the side of that cot in that drunk tank, and I swore to God above that I would never take another drink as long as I lived. And you alcoholics sitting out there, and you Al-Anons with your beautiful understanding, you know that I meant that with every fiber of my being, because I was sitting there drunk and dirty and humiliated, and I meant that with everything that I had. But at that time I couldn't carry it out. I promised me and I promised God, but I couldn't fulfill that promise. Because, see, I couldn't live with that. And I had the cab driver stop on the way home and get me a bottle.
I could not live with it, because, see, I had listened to nothing you'd said about how I could live with that, how my past could become a tool, how it could be my past, and that I wouldn't have to drag it with me the rest of my life. I didn't listen when you said that. As the beautiful little lady up here this morning kept saying, all I did was just beat Willie and wouldn't take any of the things that you were giving me free and with love.
I was a spray drinker. I didn't listen to you when you told me that the majority of women are spray drinkers, the vast majority, that we're periodic, we don't stay drunk all the time, we'll go along two or three months sober, and we sincerely think that we're controlling our drinking, and then we're off. Maybe it's a good time, maybe it's a bad time, doesn't matter. My husband never could understand. Because, see, he had always heard that, you know, alcoholics drank when they were down.
Hell, I drank when I was up. And so did you. So did a lot of you. And you know a lot of your spouses did. You know, a broken shoelace, this was enough for, you know, a good drunk. I could make a crisis out of this because, see, by that time I was so dramatic with everything that was happening. It just wasn't going to be ordinary. I couldn't allow it to be ordinary because that put me back in the ordinary bracket.
And that's what you kept telling me, Willie, this has happened to you. It's happened to you. And it's not going to unhappen. See, I figured if I got into it, there's got to be a way to get out. There's got to be a way. And probably your man figured the same way. I had managed a year of dryness out in Seattle. I belly ached and carried on, and I was looking for these excuses, these burning beds. And I would belly ache and carry on at the meetings that I would go to about the fact that how can I stop drinking?
How could I possibly stop drinking when the whole world around me was drinking? You know, when you go to an Air Force officer's, you know, home for dinner, he doesn't give you a glass of buttermilk. It's a drinking world. And, you know, at the time, I thought everybody in the Air Force drank. After I was sober for a little while, I found out there were a lot of folks in the Air Force that didn't drink, but they weren't any friends of ours at that particular time.
But I went on and made a production out of this, see, because it gave me a scapegoat. It gave me a little bit of something to hold on to and something to be different about. And I would tell the men, because back in those days, there weren't a lot of women in AA. And there wasn't a lot of you Al-Anons either. And I would tell the men, you know, it's easy for you, because the men that I did know that were successful on the program, they would come in and their beautiful wives, they were so glad to get their men sober.
They'd get all the, you know, liquor out of the house, even the cooking sherry, and they'd get, you know, get the vanilla extract, everything out. They'd go to Al-Anon meetings, they would support, they would do everything in their power to help their man.
[00:50:12]
But I got news for you. A woman alcoholic is not quite that fortunate, the majority of us. That's why your meetings aren't crowded with men alcoholics, gal. I mean, with men Al-Anons. Y'all don't have to, you know, rope off a special section for them, do you? A lot of our beautiful women come in to AA, and we bury a lot of them, and we put them in sanitariums, and we put them in funny farms, because they don't get the support that you men do.
I'm not going to, I don't even attempt to try to explain this, but it's just the difference between the two. And it happens. And this is one of the reasons I bring it out when I talk, over and over and over. Because I'm living proof that it can be done the other way. See, when my husband read that book, he popped it shut, and he told me, you got a problem, and you solve it. I have not found it necessary to take a drink of alcohol since June the 19th, 1957.
My husband has never attended an AA meeting, and he's never attended an Al-Anon meeting. I don't say this to make you feel sorry for me, because I'm sober. God's given me the greatest gift in the world, and he did it for a reason. He did it for a reason. Because I'm here as proof that I didn't have to divorce my husband in order to stay sober. God, I think, knew me so well. You people were trying to tell me, Willie, you don't have to change people, and you don't have to change circumstances to stay sober.
All you have to do is change Willie. We have a lot of divorces because our gals come in, and their men will not stop drinking. Their men will not go to Al-Anon. And furthermore, there's something else a little bit peculiar. Their men don't want to talk about the drinking, and they don't want to talk about AA. The majority of them. I try not to make any kind of blanket statements because this is not 100% right. Any more than any other statement applies to all of us in the egg carton. No.
But the majority of men that come in are spouses of women alcoholics. They're not going to rush off and get into Al-Anon, and they're not going to quit drinking if they enjoy drinking. Okay, I was bellyaching and carrying on about this out in Seattle, and a man told me, Willie, I'm going to pass on an old story to you. It's been going around in AA for years and years and years. He said, you know, we had a fellow out here that drove a beer truck.
And he went in and out of all these old taverns delivering this beer, and did this all the time. And people were always asking him, you know, George, how in the world do you stay sober and drive that beer truck? He said, hell, man, if I drove a garbage truck, I wouldn't eat the garbage. And that's right, isn't it? Because it was there, I didn't have to drink it. God put every little thing that the AAs were trying to tell me, he put it in my pocket because he knew the day would come when he had Willie on her knees where I could listen better and I could hear better.
And he put everything. If your man's going to AA, if you're going to AA, if you're going to Al-Anon and everything is not just coming up roses for you right away, you keep going. You can go to a meeting and you'll think, you know, that was a bummer of a meeting. I didn't hear a thing in that, you know, I should have stayed home and watched Kojak, you know. God's going to put everything you need right where you can put your hands on it one of these days when you're ready. And when you need it the most, it's going to be right there. Because from that first meeting on, I kept coming back to you and coming back to you.
[00:55:08]
I had managed my year of dryness. I was like a lot of people and you've seen them in AA. They'll be sitting there and a newcomer will come in and they're sitting there and they have, you know, five, six, seven, whatever years of sobriety. And a lot of times more than that, less than that. And they'll be sitting there and they'll tell the newcomer, you're going to love it here. There's so much joy in this program. You're going to like being sober.
This is sort of the dryness I had. I decided, okay, I'm dry of alcohol and I'm not drinking, but I don't have to like it and I don't have to be happy about it. So I was what you call a mad dry drunk. I argued and I fussed and I quarreled with all of you and I expounded on my theories about what was wrong with your whole program. You know, I sort of like this old lion that devoured a bull, you know.
And then when he got through, he climbed up on a rock and he roared and he roared and he roared, you know, and the hunter come along and killed him. And that just proves that if you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut. But I was. But I was loud and quite free with my advice on what you could do with this program and how you could change it to fit my needs. See, but I think at this time, God stepped in my life in more ways than one and took a rather firm position with me.
He knew I was just about right for picking. Please keep going back. I had been told by doctors that it was very, very unlikely if I would ever have a child. And after 10 years of married life, God made me a beautiful, beautiful baby boy out there in Seattle. The greatest gifts beside my sobriety that I have ever been given. I took this little boy down to Montgomery, Alabama, and God gave me people. Just the right people. That's another reason to keep going. You're not going to like and absolutely just love everybody that you meet.
We're people with all our warts and we're people. But you keep coming and you're going to find those special people that will help you turn your life around because God's working through them. He's helping them. He's working through them to get to you because you're a human. The name of this organization is Alcoholics Anonymous of my organization. Not Pamphlets Anonymous, not Books Anonymous. It's the impact of one alcoholic's life on the life of another alcoholic. It is Alcoholics Anonymous. People. God working through them.
We went down to Alabama. And I would sit there and I would moan and groan, but God sort of opened me up to let a little fresh air in. And I began to listen and hear a little more carefully. And I began to get help from many, many people. And one of them was my drinking man. I had prayed and prayed and prayed for this man to quit drinking because it made my job so much harder to stay sober and him drinking every day in front of me. And see, I was firmly convinced that it made my job not only hard but impossible.
And see, I prayed and I was like the little boy that prayed for the bicycle. God kept saying no. He kept saying no. He kept saying no, or else if it was meant to be, it would have been. But see, I wasn't willing to admit that then. It was my will I wanted done. This man would quit drinking, or if he didn't quit messing with me, I'd get drunk at him.
[01:00:05]
Just threats, at that time. But I remember he came in one afternoon, and he'd shake up that pitcher of martinis, usually two, and he'd shake up that pitcher, and he'd drink those martinis, and I could just see that tiredness just rolling off of him. You know, the body just sort of got limp, just beautiful. And I'd tell him, I'd say, you know, here I am, I have this baby, and I don't know anything about babies, and I get so tired, and you're out there, you know, on that flight line driving that airplane, and you're just having all that fun, and you come home, and you are tired, but you have a way to relax.
And I can't take a drink, and those people in AA tell me I can't take pills, and I am so tired, and I get so nervous. And he looked right straight at me, and he said, hell, just be nervous. Now you think about that. Just be nervous. That's one of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given. Now he has lived to regret it, because now I have my nervous days. I get up in the morning, and I announce, this is my nervous day, I'm going to be nervous all day long.
And see, that's all right. You had been telling me, Willie, just be. Just be. Every day's not going to come up like Rosie's. Just be, honey. If it's a down day, you know, everybody's got to have a tan day once in a while. And everybody has to be nervous once in a while. You know, there's no way to live in the world out here and not, you know, get unstrung every now and then and unglued. Well, just be nervous.
You know, I have never known of anybody shaking to death. Have you ever seen anybody so nervous that anything flew off? Uh-uh. We just shake a lot, don't we? I've never had to go to a reducing outfit, because I just shake a lot. I enjoy being nervous now. All right, so we have a bad down day, a depressed day. So big deal. It's the production I was making out of it. Sure, there are going to be days that I don't feel so pretty good.
But I don't have to make a theatrical production out of it. And I found out that when I got up and I just said, you know, hell, I'm nervous today, and I'm going to be nervous all day long. And you know, at my age and state of servitude, I can get so nervous now, I can thread a sewing machine and it's running. But see, that's all right, too. I'll get through this. Because it's all right. You have been telling me it's all right, Willie.
Just be. And expect. You know, you told me, a beautiful man told me, said, Willie, it's going to be the greatest joy in the world when you take your inventory, honey, and find out that you're ordinary and that that's all right. It's okay. And when I did take my inventory, I found out Willie was ordinary and it's all right. God gave me at that time a beautiful man named Charlie there in Alabama, in Montgomery.
And Charlie passed on a beautiful piece of advice to me. See, I kept fighting. I would not accept the fact that I was an alcoholic and I was going to stay an alcoholic. I would not do what you were telling me to do. Willie, accept this thing with approval and you'll be on your way, honey. Accept it with approval. You get the mighty key when you approve of your alcoholism. And this is what you kept telling me.
But it took a very simple man to tell me. He said, Willie, I'm going to pass another old AA story on to you and, honey, I hope you stop and think about it a long time because I don't want you to answer me. I just want you to listen to it. And he told me, he said, you know, when these great big, and I know a lot of you have heard this one and I love it, but maybe there's somebody that'll help. And these great big old diesel trucks came in.
We wanted to see if these men, you know, were fit to drive them and were ready to take on this much weight
[01:05:00]
and this much responsibility. And so we gave them a driving test and then we'd take them into the little rooms and we'd give them a psychological little survey here to see if they were emotionally stable enough to handle this much responsibility and this much weight. And so we got this old boy in here and we gave him the driving test and, man, he could park that thing and turn it around and do everything, back it into these small spaces.
And everything was fine. And with these 18 wheelers, that's not an easy job. And he said we got him in the little room after he passed his driving test to give him his little psych test and said we gave him a hypothetical situation. He said, now, if you were up, you know, going down a hill and it had been raining and it was slick and you got right down to the bottom of that steep, steep hill and you put on your brakes and you didn't have any brakes, what would you do?
The old boy sat there a minute and he said, well, I believe I'd wake up Leroy. And the man thought, all right, that shows compassion. It shows that he's worried about his helper but he wanted him to put it into words and he said, well, why would you wake up your helper? And he said, well, Leroy, he ain't never seen a great big wreck. Accept your alcoholism, Willie, with approval. And that went in my pocket.
God gave me a beautiful gal named Rose there in Montgomery. I had never seen it necessary to have a sponsor. I had never even, you know, talked to you very much about it and sure didn't listen to you about it. I hadn't had a sponsor. Well, I got one in Alabama because Rose said, Willie, and that took about ten minutes, Willie, I'm going to be your sponsor, honey. And she proceeded to sponsor me right into a good, solid, beautiful sobriety that I am still enjoying now.
I went out to lunch with Rose one day and I was a belly achin' and I was a carryin' on, you know, about so I wouldn't stop drinkin' and he drank in front of me every single day. Now, being as I am here in front of you Al-Anons, I want to jump in right now and tell you that my man is not an alcoholic. Now, he's what, yeah, he's what we call a social drinker, a so-called normal drinker because here's the way he drinks.
He'll come in, to this day, we're retired now and he's teaching school in Houston and he'll still come in, but at that time he was coming in from the Air Force piloting the jet around and he'll come in and he'll get him a couple of drinks fixed up or he'll announce that, all right, I'm gonna have three or four beers, whatever, but he'll say, let's eat about 7.30. Now, he'll go ahead and drink his drinks or drink his beer and at 7.30 he wants to eat.
Now, if he's not quite through with his drink or his beer, he brings it over, if it's 7.30, he brings it over to the sink and he pours it out. Isn't that repulsive? You alcoholic men out there, you're with me, aren't you? That hurts me. Even after 21 years, it hurts me. I watch it go all the way down the drain. Lord, how can he? But then he'll eat and then he goes to bed and he stays there. Isn't that terrible?
I don't hear him open, you know, up at 3 o'clock in the morning, opening cabinets and pulling out drawers and all this sort of thing. He stays in bed and he sleeps all night long and he gets up the next morning and the dude goes to work. Now, you think that isn't hard to live with if you just try it for a while. But Rose said to me, said, Willie, you are ruining the most beautiful way of life in the world that you're just missing, honey.
You are dry. You're not drinking alcohol. Big deal. I say a speech like that, took 35 minutes, but the way she talks, slow. And she said, honey, why don't you get your sense of humor back?
[01:10:01]
You are killing yourself. You are making yourself miserable and you're making that baby miserable. Why in the world don't you get your sense of humor back? It may be the most valuable tool that you'll ever have. She said, you know, it will put things back in proportion and you won't make such a big deal out of everything. It will remove you from the center of the universe. It will prove to you that the world does not revolve around you, that you do not have to change other people and circumstances in order for you to stay sober and lead a fulfilled, beautiful, happy life.
And she said, get your sense of humor back. You can't stop this man from drinking because, Alamance, I am with you all the way. I tried every way in the world. That To the Wives, I read that chapter, read that chapter and studied it, trying to pick it up new ways. I tried every way in the world to make that man quit drinking. And you know better than anybody, it didn't happen. Even though he wasn't an alcoholic, he had said, this is your problem, you solve it.
And my drinking, as far as he was concerned, was no business. His drinking was no business of mine. And if I wanted that man, that's the way it was going to have to be. And I wanted that man. That I was sure of. So even these normal drinkers that have that much control, that can say, I'm going to have two drinks and then he has it and that's all. Even a normal drinker like this, you know, his metabolism and everything, it doesn't stay stable all the time.
Every once in a while he gets bombed, you know, out of his skull. And he gets a load on every once in a while. And this is when I would, it usually happened on Saturday night because that was when we would have a party at the club and it would happen on Saturday night, or Sunday, all day, I'd pout. The big silent treatment. Wouldn't talk to him. Wouldn't have anything to do with him. That put him out a little bit.
But you know, that doesn't work either, does it? So on the way home, I got to thinking, now I'm going to give this a shot and see if it works to try to get my sense of humor back. So I waited until the next Saturday night that we went out, that he got a little loaded, drank a few more drinks intentionally because he didn't mind getting bombed because you know what happens when he gets bombed? Passes out.
Doesn't do a thing interesting. Passes plum out. Goes to sleep. Stays asleep. But he was a little extra bombed that night and I knew, you know, even these normal social drinkers, they don't feel so pretty good the next morning. My husband doesn't like fried eggs. So that next morning, I fried them for him. Just barely. And when I put them down, I shook them a little bit. My husband is a quiet man. Very quiet.
He doesn't like country western music. And man, I turned that country western music on loud and I sang a lot that day. I talked a lot and I was so happy it was nauseating. I decided it was time for the baby to learn how to, you know, keep time with the music. So I got him some pans out and some spoons and we kept time with that country western music. At Cotton Eye Joe, we could do that good. When he got used to that, I'd put those eggs down, I'd put a little green food coloring on them.
And isn't it funny how even those normal drinkers, they try to sit there and look so normal. They try to look like it's not bothering them a bit. And of course, with the fact, he doesn't want to be an alcoholic, see. He wants to keep on drinking. But if he does, then I figure, you know, it's not my job to make him, you know, just enjoy it so much. But I have to do this in a way that I can be the winner in it because I'm the one that has the life to lose.
And when my boy got up a little ways, well, he came in one afternoon and he said, Mama, I want a pet like Ricky has. And I said, well, fine. I figured it was about time for him to, you know, get a little dog or a little cat. And I figured, well, fine. You know, get a little dog or a little cat, and I figured, well, fine, and I already said yes. And I said, uh, what does Ricky have? And he said, well, Ricky has a snake.
Now, I already told you, I was a country girl,
[01:15:00]
and my husband is a city boy. And he is scared spitless of snakes. And I'm not. So I said, fine, honey, but let's wait till Saturday to go get it. Because I knew we had a party coming up at the club. So Saturday afternoon, we went down to the pet shop, and we got us a long black king snake. We named him Jack immediately. And we had him in the little glass cage in the back seat, and we got him home.
And as we drove in the driveway, I told my son Jeff, I said, I tell you what, Dad's busy, so let's wait till in the morning to show it to him. I poured his drinks for him that night and ordered him double shots. And that next morning, I waited till it was about time for him to come out of the bedroom, you know, trying to look normal. And I opened that bedroom door, and I put old Jack in there and closed that door.
Now, you young people out there, y'all think you invented streaking. You didn't. He came out of that bedroom like he shot out of a cannon. Trying to look normal. He hated old Jack with a vengeance. And I always kept him in his glass cage unless I needed him. When my boy was about 10, he expressed an interest in the little minibikes that were coming out then, the little 50s. And we had land. We were in a position where we had land, and we could let him, you know, not ride on the street.
We made him trails, and I went out and bought him the bike. And then he went on up to the 70 the next year, and then he went on up to the 90. And when he got up to that 350 Honda, God, that looked like fun, so I went out and bought me one. I told you, my husband is a quiet man, and he's a very careful man. He flew airplanes for 22 years, and he doesn't even have ingrown toenails. Very careful, cautious man. He stands at the door.
Y'all going to kill yourselves on those motorcycles. We rode all over the south end of Texas on those motors. But the most fun is to wait till he gets bombed on a Saturday night. And we keep them in the garage, and the garage is attached to the house. And we get out there and rev those two 350s up. Bam, bam, bam. And the whole house vibrates. Jeff will say, Mama, we're going to wake Daddy up. Let's roll him out, you know.
I say, oh no, let's leave him in here, you know. He doesn't mind. The thing of it is, all of these things that I do to this poor man, he enjoys it really, because, see, I've gotten off his back about drinking. I don't want him to now. It would end all my fun. And he says, you know, it's just like being married to Lucy. He doesn't know what in the world I'm going to turn up with next. And it keeps me thinking, thinking, thinking.
And I listen to you Al-Anons. You have helped me, because I have used some of your things. In the dead of winter, I had heard about this beautiful thing and couldn't wait to try it. He was gone for a weekend. He's a transcendental meditator and loves it. And he'd been gone on a weekend for this. And he goes to swimming every morning at 5 o'clock in the morning. He's out there in the pool. He swims 50 laps every morning.
He's in beautiful physical condition, and even with the drinking. But he swims 50 laps, and he was gone over the weekend. And I knew he'd come home and, you know, on Monday morning, and he always goes off the board. And it had been cold. And when it gets cold in South Texas, it's miserable, miserable. So while I go out there on Friday after he left for the weekend, I turned the heater off. Monday morning at 5 o'clock, there was an explosion in South Texas.
You know, when you hit water and you expect it to be nice and warm, about 98 degrees, and you hit it, and it's about 60, man, there is a loud, loud protest. But it put my life into perspective because it made me realize that my alcoholism didn't have to be a downer.
[01:20:01]
Alcohol is the downer. My alcoholism didn't have to be, and you were telling me, Willie, your recovery can be the most beautiful happening that you'll ever experience. And you'll be experiencing it the rest of your life. You are ruining something so beautiful. And when I got Willie back in proportion and got her down into the ordinary, God gave us minds. And when we get them unsaturated from alcohol, they're all right.
They work pretty good most of the time. And he means for me to use this mind and to take advantage of this beautiful program that the people in Alcoholics Anonymous have handed me free, have given me no strings attached. I don't even have to stay sober for them. But I can pay them back a little bit by being a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and getting all the real gusto that I can get out of life.
That's where the real gusto is, isn't it? In rooms like this all over the world. I work in the prisons and with the hospitals and talk to doctors and nurses and judges and things like this about alcoholism. They're allowing us to do that a lot more now and inviting us to come and talk to them. And many of them say, you know, what is AA? I don't know. I don't have the remotest idea what this beautiful thing is that we have.
I just pray to God that we keep it. And you people in Al-Anon, you have something very beautiful. In fact, the two are intertwined. I envy you. I won't stand behind this podium and tell you that I wouldn't like for my man to be here. I won't tell you that I hurt sometime when I go home from a convention and I have seen couples here together. And if they share something that I can't share. But see, you taught me that my higher power would do for me what was right for me.
And it's normal for me to see you people together and to see what you have and to think, gee, I wish I had it. But see, I don't have to get drunk over it and I don't have to be miserable over it and I don't have to let it turn into a terrible type of envy. I can merely say, gee, I wish I had it. But I have my sobriety. I have you. And when these people say, what is AA? Lord, I don't know. But in a grapevine back in 1957, I ran across this little article and I want to share it with you because I think very easily we could add on this occasion, very easily, that AA and Al-Anon is a spirit.
It cannot be touched nor can it be completely understood. It's as wide as the world and yet small enough to fit snugly into the hearts and the minds of man. It has brought light where only darkness dwelt. It has given hope to the hopeless and help to those who yearned in despair. It has nourished forgiveness in those who knew no pity. It's given strength to the weak and humility to the strong. It has spurred to higher goals those who strove for nothing.
It's taught patience to the hurried and action to the lazy. To youth, it's given vision and to the aged, promise. To the lonely, companions and to the restless, rest. To the sick, it's been a doctor and to the dying, it has revived the desire to live. It has no judgment against the unteachable nor has it praise for those who learn. To the outcast, it's been a family and to the childless, it has given children.
To the ignorant, wisdom and to the wise, tolerance. It is given to all men that which is most precious. It's given a love of truth and a love of life with enough left over to share with each other. Thank you for having me in Arkansas.
[01:25:02]
I want to thank you Willie, isn't she beautiful? Don't forget that we're going to have bingo just as soon as we can get cleared out and get set up. And if all of you would now please rise and hold a hand next to the person with you and we'll do our usual and have a large prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Willie, you were beautiful.