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Source: DICOBE-00633 – Lois W – 28TH TEXAS STATE CONF – 1973-06-29.mp3 File: dicobe-00633-lois-w-28th-texas-state-conf-1973-06-29.mp3 Duration: 00:57:20
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Particular reason for wanting Lois to be with us, it is so important to me and to all of us, I believe, that we have an insight. I talk to so many new people who say, how did this begin? How could Lois put up with all these things? How did this hold together and gel and make it what it is today? And I have to believe that if it hadn't been for my wife, I'd have never made it. I know I would. And I have to believe if it hadn't been for Lois, Bill would have never made it.
Because at that little coffee table is Dr. Bob, Bill, and Lois pouring the coffee. If those things hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here today sober. That's my belief. So I ask my beautiful wife, Denise, to introduce Lois. Will you, honey? This is a dividend of Al-Anon. We hear about the dividends today. This is truly a pleasure. Lois does not need an introduction to this group, but it's my very happy privilege to present her to you.
We all know her and love her as the wife of a late beloved co-founder of AA. Not only that, she is an illustrious person in her own right. And we are singularly honored that she will join us in our convention here. Lois has given so much of herself, of her time and her wisdom to the families of AA. And for that, we all are so deeply appreciative. And it's with great respect and admiration, and I consider it a great, great privilege to present her to you at this time, Lois W.
Please be seated. My cheeks and ears are red. I don't know how to begin after all those wonderful words. But I do know that I'm extremely, extremely grateful to having been invited here. And to Cersei's very persuasive arguments, which I resisted for quite a while, but finally couldn't. And I'm so glad that I couldn't. And I want to thank you all for your tremendous hospitality. There's nothing like, I think, Dallas hospitality and joviality and happiness.
There's a glow about you all that is most warming. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your kindness. And I thank you for your great enthusiasm for carrying on AA and Alamo. People can start a thing, but it can have a still birth. If it isn't nourished and carried on with devotion and enthusiasm. And those that do that are really just as important to the movement as the first ones that started it.
And speaking of the first ones, I thought maybe I'd tell you a little bit about Ebi. The man who came to build. You folks here in Dallas were so very, very good to Ebi. And I know many of you remember him. And I thought maybe you'd be interested to hear a little bit about his background and his early life. When I was a young girl, we used to go through Vermont. In fact, all my childhood we went through a place called Manchester, Vermont.
For the summertime. My father was a doctor. And we used to go up there for half the year, practically. The children did. And Ebi's family did the same thing. It was a summer resort. Very beautiful place. Ebi's family had been coming there for years and years. They were an old Albany family. Ebi's grandfather was the mayor of Albany.
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Ebi's uncle was the mayor of Albany. Ebi's brother was the mayor of Albany. It was a tradition to have a Thatcher, a mayor. But Mrs. Thatcher had, I can't really say whether they were alcoholics or not, but had a very heavily drinking husband and five very heavily drinking boys. And she must have had a gay old time. Okay. I have a picture of Ebi when he was about three feet tall, I guess. He was a friend of my brother's, my younger brother's.
And they used to do all kinds of mischievous things together. And then one year, the Thatcher family thought it would be good for Ebi if he went to Manchester to the school that was there. There was a boarding school in Manchester. And Ebi spent the winter and went to school. And it was there that he met Bill. Because Bill had been brought up in Vermont in a very small town just a few miles away from Manchester.
And he went to this high school, boarding school, too. And they became quite chummy. The town of Manchester has, oh, I can't tell you how many stories about Ebi's escapade. He was always doing something. As I say, all the brothers drank, but Ebi was the youngest. And he was certainly a real alcoholic. And he was always into some kind of a big mess of some sort. I remember one time he was driving along, and this was way back in the early days of automobiles.
He was driving along and just casually went into somebody's window, through the window. The front wheels of the automobile sat on the kitchen floor. And Ebi got out of the automobile very nonchalantly and said, How about a cup of coffee? When I was thinking what I'd say here today, it occurred to me, Well, maybe that's why all AA's like coffee so much. It started way back then. And Bill and Ebi did a lot of drinking together later.
I remember one time Bill stopped over in Albany to see Ebi. And at that time the Manchester had just started to open. It wasn't quite ready yet. An airport. They thought it would be nice to have the wealthy people with planes of their own have a place to land. So a small airplane, airfield was being opened. And Ebi, of course, knew all about this. So when Bill stopped in Albany to see him, he said, Let's go to Manchester and let's hire an airplane.
And we'll be the first people to land on that new airfield in Manchester. Maybe I'll stop and go back and tell you a little bit more about Ebi's background. To say that his family were quite a well-to-do family. And they were in the stove building, making foundry. Stove foundry, I think they called it. And Ebi had gone through that from top to bottom, as all the brothers had, for the experience so they could manage it.
But he hadn't any other business experience or any other business training. He'd just gone through high school, but he had read a lot. And he had been left, really, unfortunately, he had been left a lot of money.
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And that can do really, I think, a very great deal of harm. Anyway, Ebi hadn't ever had to work. So he didn't know how really to work. He didn't know where to start or how to begin. So the chartering of a plane wasn't anything too much in those days for Ebi to do. So they chartered this plane and called up the people in Manchester and told them that they would arrive. Well, this was a very great excitement for the town.
So they got out the band and they got out a welcoming committee. And Dylan Ebi, of course, had a bottle or maybe two or three with him on the plane. So when they arrived, they were completely out and just fell out of the plane. So that was their arrival. To music, to the band. And speaking of music, I've enjoyed the organ that I've been hearing being played here all the time. Both last night and today during this luncheon.
Well, Bill and Ebi had a lot of other experiences together. Ebi used to come to New York and see us. But he never arrived unless he was drunk. But then one day, Ebi called up Bill. And Bill was sitting in the kitchen with a pitcher. Somehow or other, he thought he put pineapple juice with gin. But I wouldn't object to it so much. And he put it in the kitchen. Anyway, Ebi called up Bill and said he wanted to come over and see him.
So when Ebi arrived, Bill was flabbergasted to see him. Because Ebi's eye was clear. He wasn't drinking. He hadn't been drinking, apparently. And his thinking was straightforward. And so Bill asked him about how come, Ebi, you're not drinking. And Ebi said no. He'd come especially over to see Bill to tell him about this new experience that he'd had. And that he'd got religion. Well, Bill didn't have religion, at least so-called religion at that time.
And he just, well, he rebelled at the thought of it. Ebi, religion. Well, then Ebi told him about the Oxford group. The members of which had saved him from going to jail. He had done some thing or other, I don't know what, and he was about to be committed when a couple of friends of his who belonged to the Oxford group had pleaded with the judge and asked him to please let them have Ebi. That they thought they could help him.
And so Ebi had come to New York with these friends. And he was living then in what was called Calvary Mission. The Calvary Church in New York on 21st Street was the head of the Oxford group movement in America. And this mission was run by the church and by the Oxford group. And after Bill and Ebi's talk together, Bill, of course, was tremendously impressed. And I came home and I saw Ebi, we talked together for quite a while, the three of us.
And as I said, he was very impressed. And, as I say, it made a tremendous impression upon Bill.
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But he kept on drinking. And, after a day or so, he thought, Well, I've got to find out more about this. And so he started off for the Calgary Mission. But, of course, he had to be reinforced before he could go. And, along 23rd Street, the Mission was down on the east side, east end of 23rd Street, in New York, there were many, many bars. And he stopped in most of them on the way down to the Mission.
And in one, he was standing next to somebody, and he asked him about it, and he said, he asked him, this man, what he did for a living. And he said, I'm a fisherman. And somehow or other, the word fisherman struck a chord in Bill's mind. And he said, that's it, I'm on my way to the Mission, fishers and men. Come with me, we'll go down to this Calgary Mission. So, Alec, was also a tent maker, I believe, hitched on to Bill, and they went down to the Mission.
And, of course, everybody saw them coming, quite flab-gasted, and didn't know just what he'd do with them. And they were having a meeting, I guess they had a meeting every night at the Mission, where people got up and went to the altar and gave themselves to Christ. And the leader of the meeting asked if there was anybody that wanted to come up, and Bill started up. Well, Ebby and anybody, somebody else that was on the other side, both grabbed Bill's coattails, because, or maybe shirt tails, maybe it was shirt tail hanging, because his shirt tail almost always was hanging out.
Anyway, they grabbed on to him, but they couldn't keep him. And he went up to the front, and really, in very great sincerity, did hand over his life to Christ. And then went home, but he brought Alec home with him. And Alec lived with us for many months. But Bill still kept on drinking. But he kept thinking this thing over in his mind, and realizing, he had enough sense to realize that he couldn't really think it out, what had happened to Ebby, while he still drank.
So he went to the hospital to get the alcohol out of his system, so he'd be able to think clearly. And as you probably all know, because I'm sure you've all heard about his spiritual experience in the book, in the big book. Bill's life really was changed from that moment. And he had this tremendous, moving experience. And when I went to see Bill, I knew something much bigger than he had gotten a hold of it.
And I never had a doubt about his taking another drink. I was sure that he was through with liquor forever. Well, that brings me up, really, to about the first days of AA, but not really. But I think I'll go back now and tell you maybe a little bit of my own side of the experience, side of the drinking experience. When Bill and I were first married, we, of course, were terribly happy. But before that, when we were engaged, he never took a drop to drink.
His father had too much to drink most of his life,
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and his grandfather before him. And he'd been warned. His mother and father were separated, mostly because of alcohol. And he had been warned that he should never take a drink because something awful might happen. And somehow or other, he believed them. And I was very proud when we were engaged of telling people about how wonderful he was because he'd go to the saloons, as they called them in those days, with the boys, and take ginger ale.
Or Sarsaparilla, root beer, or some soft drink of the town. But then the war came along, and Bill had gone to a military school, and so he was a young officer in the war, and stationed in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Now, New Bedford was a cotton town, and there was a lot of money there, and a lot of society, and the society ladies used to like to invite the officers from the post to cocktail parties.
And I always liked to kid Bill about, he could resist the boys, but when the girls offered him drinks, that was too much. So Bill started drinking. And after we were married, when I moved up there, Bill rented a small apartment, a furnished apartment, and I moved up there. And of course we continued to go to some of these cocktail parties. And the first time I ever saw Bill drunk, or the first time I ever saw him drinking, and the first time I ever did that, he got drunk, terribly drunk.
And the boys had to take him home. And they came for me afterwards, to take me home, because they wanted to look after him. They put him in bed, and they got a big bucket and put it by his head. So when I came home, that was what greeted me. But he didn't drink too much in those days. But he always got drunk. He never had any social drinking. It was never any fun to drink with Bill at all. I know that, as I say, I wasn't too worried about it.
For one thing, I thought I'd be able to fix him. It never occurred to me that living with me would give him enough real purpose in life because he wouldn't need any artificial stimulant. But as time went on, he got worse and worse. And as time went on, we had no children. Things began to look very, very desperate. And I realized my whole purpose in life, and so one of the children to bring up would be to help Bill try to get over this terrific, what I thought was a habit.
And he thought, of course, that he could stop anytime he wanted to. And he wanted to only halfway for quite a long time. But finally, after he lost job after job, he knew that he wanted really to stop. And I think there's nothing sadder in this world than to see a person with such wonderful potential so beaten down. Bill got so he wanted more than anything in this world to stop. He was so sincere, so anxious about it, he'd write in the Bible.
My dear wife, I promise never to take another drink. He did this, I can't tell you how many times. He'd write me letters. How he never, never wanted to take another drink.
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But he was drunk in a few hours, perhaps, after that. And he was just terrifically confused and oh, so despairing. And we decided that we'd try to fight this thing together. But I didn't know anything about it, I didn't know how. I just knew I loved him and that I believed that he could get well. I didn't call it an illness, but it seemed as if it must be something himself. Well, then this wonderful experience at the hospital happened.
And Bill thought, well, goodness gracious, if this has happened to me, why can't it happen to others? I must go out and help all these old friends that I've been drinking with. They must be famous stuff, too. And so he went out on the highways and the byways and he brought everybody to our house. We were living in Brooklyn. He brought everybody to our house. My father had lived in one of those old brick houses in the city.
It has four stories. And my father, the mortgage company had gotten the house and the mortgage company let us live there for $20 a month after my father had left. So we came in Brooklyn and he filled the house with drunks. I, of course, by this time had had to make all these decisions. I had to be nursemaid, mother, and financier. I had to support Bill, of course. He wasn't able to do anything at the time that they had come to him except sit in the kitchen and drink.
He was afraid to go out because he was afraid the police would get him. So I was still working, of course, after he sobered up and after he filled the house with drunks. So we really had quite a household. There were so many inspiring stories about those days. There were so many ridiculous, so many tragic things that happened. One man committed suicide in our house. Another man chased still another one around the whole house with a carving knife.
We had innumerable adventures of one sort or another. But a few of those people, very few of them, really stayed sober. We were trying to do it the wrong way, really. We were trying to give them these things, give them them. Then Roman bored, not always bored, but often bored. And Bill was preaching to them, really, as he said himself. A little too much. This wonderful spiritual experience that he had set him apart, he felt.
And so he was talking a little bit down to these people. And there are one or two of them around now who are still alive, that live there on 10th Street. But most of them stayed sober for a little while. Alec lived there a long time and then left and came back drunk and wanted money. And I wouldn't give it to him. And I've always felt very badly about that some way or other. And we never saw him after that.
And Ebi lived with us for a long time. One of the saddest days was after about two years of Ebi's being in the Oxford group. Ebi got home. And that, of course, was a terrific calamity to us. And oh, so many really wonderful things happened, too. But then Bill began to feel that it was time that he got back into the business world and did something. It was time that he got back into the business world and did something, brought in some cash to the household.
[00:30:03]
So he got a job as an investigator. I'm a little vague about this even now. He went to Akron, where there was a… Oh, dear. Well, several of the stockholders were stockholder fighting about who should own the company. And I can't think of the legal term of it now, but Bill was trying to get the stockholders to vote one way. And he didn't have any luck, and he spent all his money, and he only had $10 left.
And the meeting went, of course, against him. So he was very blue. And he was walking around the lobby of the hotel there, the Mayflower Hotel, wondering whether to go and get a drink. The bar was at one end of the lobby, and there was a church directory at the other end. And he looked at the church directory, and he thought, well, maybe if I call some of the old Oxford people, maybe I can get in touch with them.
And maybe they can help me. So instead of taking a drink, he called up… He looked down the name of the ministers, and he picked one out because it had a funny name. The Reverend Tunks. So he called… Bill always liked names. He loved funny names. So he called up the Reverend Tunks just because it was a funny name. He chose that one because it was… Well, the Reverend Tunks turned out to be a very wonderful person, and he knew quite a lot of Oxford group people, and he put him in touch.
Gave him 10 names. Well, Ebby, Bill, when he called these people, said, I'm a drunk from New York, and I want to talk with another drunk. It wasn't really too much of an introduction. So most people were very busy this afternoon, or the weather wasn't suitable, or something or other. Somebody was sick. So he didn't get any of these 10 names until finally he came to the name of Seibling. Henrietta Seibling.
But he knew that Seibling was a big name in Akron. It was a tire company. And he couldn't imagine what Mrs. Seibling would… How she'd be interested in a drunk from New York wanting to talk to another drunk. But he called up Henrietta. And strangely enough, Henrietta was interested, and she understood exactly what he meant when he said that he wanted to talk to another drunk. And she said, I think I have just the person for you.
And she said she'd call him. So she called up Dr. Bob. And this was Mother's Day, and of course Bob wasn't in any fit condition to go to Henrietta's. So Anne, Annie Smith, Bob's wife, said they were sorry but they couldn't come. As it was Mother's Day, Bob had brought her a plant and put it on the table. But Bob himself was not on the table. So, that they'd try and come tomorrow. So they did. And Bill and Bob had a long, long, long, long talk there.
Bob, very impatiently in the beginning, because he wanted to get back and things. But finally, became most absorbed. So, that's really where the two AA founders met. And AA, of course, had its ups and downs. It took quite a long time, the early days, to get started. There wasn't any literature. There wasn't any means of communication from one group to another, unless you went there yourself.
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So there was a lot of traveling in the old days, between the groups. I'll get back to my own reactions. Of course, I was terribly happy that this wonderful thing had happened to Bill. And I didn't realize that, as time went along, that I was getting all kinds of queer reactions. It took me quite a long time to rebound from that cloud nine in the beginning. But I did, and I realized I wasn't anywhere near as happy.
Why wasn't I happy? I couldn't understand it. Here, this wonderful thing had happened, that I'd been working for my whole married life. This was 17 years afterwards, by the way. And why wasn't I happier? So, one day, Bill said to me, let's get ready and go to the meeting. These were the Oxford group meetings that we used to go to. And I had a shoe in my hand, and I took it and threw it at him just as hard as I could.
And I said, damn your old meetings. Well, I think I was more surprised at myself than he was. And I couldn't understand why I reacted so violently to such a simple remark, as he said, let's hurry up and go to the meeting. Well, it took me a long, long time to figure it out and to realize it, but this was the start of my thinking a little bit about myself in relation to Bill, in relation to other people, and in relation to God.
I'd taken myself for granted. I thought I was tops. I had both a negative and positive result of trying to help him. I mean, I'd worked so hard, but I felt I was a failure, and I hadn't done, Bill, what a wife with love should have done. In my family, when I was brought up as a child, we were a most loving family, and we felt that love was the ruler of the world. Love could do anything. My father and mother were a wonderful example, and lived the life they preached, so that I believed thoroughly that the love between two people could do miracles.
So that was why, one reason why, this was such a devastating experience for me that I hadn't been able to do it, and yet I knew at the same time that I had tried my best, and everybody told me how wonderful I was. Of course, my family didn't know very much about it because they only knew he was drunk on occasion. They didn't know how much because I didn't want to tell them, and I kept him away from that.
I was very, very confused and didn't understand what it was all about, really. But I did begin to think about myself and wonder if I was this wonderful person that I had taken myself for granted to be. And I thought, yes, I had taken myself for granted to be. And going to these Oxford group meetings also helped me to analyze myself. Of course, I'd gone with Bill just for his sake, not for mine at all.
So, after Bill had been in Akron, I went out there, and Bob had also tried the Oxford group. Bob and Annie were in the Oxford group, but it hadn't really of itself done anything for Bob.
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So, Annie understood these things, and Annie and I used to talk. Annie was really a very wonderful person. She was a very wise, understanding woman. She was not a very active person. She wasn't very well, but AAs and Alamons later used to come to her for advice. Many AAs would come and talk to her because Annie seemed to be able to put a finger on them on what was the matter. So, as I said earlier, there was no way of communication except going places when AA was first started.
We used to go everywhere. When Bill would be downstairs talking with the AAs, which were mostly at that time men, there were very few AA women in the early days, the wives upstairs would meet with me when we'd be playing bridge or doing something or other. But I'd tell them a little bit about my experience, and how I'd come to realize that I, too, had to live by the Twelve Steps, that when I did realize that, everything became so much easier and happier at home.
You see, my nose was broken because Bill and I had been so very companionable. We had lost all our friends. We had nobody but each other. And then, all of a sudden, the house was full of drunks. And Bill had little time for me. I mean, he had so many other things to do. And I missed his companionship terribly. So I had to live within myself more. I mean, I had to know myself. I had to make my own decisions and not depend upon Bill for my whole life, as I had before.
And I would tell these groups when we traveled around about this. And then, of course, A.A. began to really grow, and literature was written, and it wasn't quite so necessary for us to travel around, although we loved to do it still and did a lot of it for many years. But the literature was a tremendous help, and places like California could start on the literature alone, without any personal contact.
And then Cersei was telling you about the traditions, about how Bill was so anxious to have them passed. And then Bill got another idea. He thought that A.A. should have a conference of delegates, that the management of A.A.'s affairs should be in A.A.'s hands. So he took a trip around the country by himself, and this must have been in 49. By himself, I mean I didn't go with him, to sense the feeling of the country, the groups in the country, about having a conference of delegates.
And he traveled all through the United States and Canada. And to his surprise, he found several groups of the wives of A.A.'s, and they'd invited him to their meetings. And this was quite a surprise. He hadn't realized there were so many. And these had developed spontaneously. They had developed the way I had developed, to realize that I needed the Twelve Steps. And they had developed, perhaps some, because Annie and I had told them about it, about our experience.
And some of them were just what we later called coffee and cake groups, that were just their organization, if you want to call it that. They just helped A.A. hang a pregnancy in the club, and make the coffee and things. Club, and do, make the coffee and things of that sort, they didn't have any spiritual problem of their own. So when he came back from this trip, he, um, took me aside and told me that he thought that, that the families of alcoholics
[00:45:15]
needed a fellowship similar to AA that could, a central office where people could write in and find out about it, where desperate wives could write, where groups could find out about other groups, a central office that would bring these groups into some sort of unity. So, he asked me if I would start such a thing. So, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't want to. I, I had been with Bill through so much in the early days of AA and we had just recently moved to the country to a house of our own, which we hadn't ever had before, and I wanted to work in my garden and make slipcovers for them.
So, I didn't want to take the time. I mean, I, I felt I'd done the job, I think, but I was really only starting. But when he, um, convinced me of it and I started, I became wholly absorbed and did the very best I could. So, Anne Bingham, another Anne, started the Al-Anon office with me, Al-Anon Central Office. We called it the Clearinghouse Anne. We wrote to AA and to our surprise, quite a number of wives had written to AA office wanting to be registered.
Well, the AA office, of course, is a place that registers only alcoholics. They didn't have any facilities for registering families. So, when we said that we would like to have those names and we would register them, that was, that was just fine with them. So, they gave us 87 names of people that had written into the AA office about help for the families. So, we wrote to these 87 names and 50 of them said yes, they'd like to join a fellowship of the families of alcoholics.
So, that really was the beginning of Al-Anon, but it was really Bill's idea to begin with. And I think if AA's, more AA's can realize that it was, they'd be more enthusiastic in the beginning about Al-Anon. Because Al-Anon, somebody really does, does for the homes what Bill and I were so, so very concerned about in the early days. Because when the AA was sober and had joined AA, the family wasn't always happy and we couldn't understand why this wasn't.
We would think with this wonderful program that the family should be happy. But it was a one-sided affair. It needed both partners working together. And of course, that's what Al-Anon has done. And I hope these two fellowships will go along hand in hand for as long as God shall need them. Thank you. Thank you. Personal recovery for each member is the real aim of Al-Anon. But it is not usually what the members come to Al-Anon to find.
Our mates' recovery is what most of us are seeking. And it is often quite a shock to members when they realize that Al-Anon can do nothing about that except indirectly. My own case was only slightly different. There was no Al-Anon to go to. But nonetheless, I was just as ignorant of the fact that I needed any change in attitude. After Bill's spiritual awakening, he and I went regularly to meetings of the Oxford group movement, now called Moral Rearmament.
[00:50:02]
This was a highly dedicated group of people who believed that by changing key individuals, the whole world could be changed for the better. Not many groupers had had the same kind of dramatic, re-motivating experience that Bill had had. But they all were trying to lead God-centered lives and to help each other to do the same. Working in teams, each one listened quietly for God's guidance for himself or for another member who needed help.
They weren't particularly interested in me, as I considered all my problems solved now that Bill was sober. But they continually had guidance for Bill, telling him what to do and what not to do. This didn't sit very well with him, as most of the team knew little about alcoholism. He wanted to concentrate on working with alcoholics. So, as well as going to the Oxford group meetings on Sundays at Calvary Church, we held our own meetings in our home.
Alcoholics were already living with us. Since from the moment Bill recognized his release from alcohol, he had sought out every available alcoholic and had invited many of them, seeking sobriety, to stay at our home. The mortgage company had taken over my father's house in Brooklyn, where we were living. They let us stay there for $20 a month. This was better business for them than letting the house stand empty.
For four years, our home was overflowing with alcoholics. Bill and I had an apartment on the second floor. Each of the other three floors was occupied by one, two, or three borders, question mark, borders, in various stages of recovery from alcoholism, mostly temporary recovery at best. I continued working in the furniture and decorating sections of Loser's department store for about two years after Bill's sobriety and was a bit overpowered by all the frantic activity at home.
One day Bill said, let's hurry and go to the Oxford group meeting. Instead of putting on the shoe in my hand, I threw it at him as hard as I could and said, damn your old meetings. I believe I was more shocked and surprised at myself than Bill was. I couldn't understand why I had reacted so violently to his simple remark. This started me thinking about my own attitudes and actions. Previously, I had just taken them for granted because I knew that my intentions were good.
It never occurred to me that that was not enough. Besides, relatives and friends had continually told me I deserved great credit for putting up with so much, both during the drinking and afterwards. Sometimes I believed them and sometimes the knowledge that I had failed in my life's undertaking of sobering up Bill made me very remorseful. Bill had started drinking just before we were married and unfortunately, as we then felt, we had no children.
My whole life effort for 17 years was to help Bill overcome his destructive habit. Regardless of the difference in temperament and upbringing, our standards and interests were similar. We were very close in spite of alcohol's disruptive effects. We were very close in spite of alcohol's disrupting influence. He tried very hard to stop during the last few years of his drinking and together we did everything we could think of that might help him.
When we were first married, I had no doubt that life with me would soon straighten Bill out. As the years of drinking stretched on and on, I'm sure my so-called patience with him contained large parts of pride and stubbornness as well as the deep love I had for him. After the shoe-throwing episode, I took the Oxford group precepts of self-analysis more seriously and began to change my smug attitude about being such a good influence on my husband.
As AA evolved, I applied its principles to myself,
[00:55:01]
but it took me many years and continued soul-searching to fully realize how much harm my self-righteousness had done both Bill and myself. Self-righteousness, unlike alcoholism, which cannot be covered up, is most insidious and continually creeps back when you're not looking. Personal recovery is not a one-time thing. It has to be worked on constantly. One can't just say, now I've taken all the steps, so that's that.
I have to keep asking whether I'm fooling myself, as I did when I thought I was doing the best I could to help Bill stop drinking. True, I know much more about myself now, but it is so easy to rationalize where one's ego is concerned. I have to be constantly on the alert. Sometimes seemingly unselfish acts have deep self-serving motivation, which is hard to detect. On the other hand, feeling remorseful and guilty for doing the best one can is not only useless, but harmful.
So I try to hit a happy medium, not to either fool myself about my motives or blame myself for the past. Length of time in Al-Aman teaches much, but it never bestows a diploma. A few of us long-time members may feel we have achieved personal recovery from the damage suffered from living with an alcoholic, but even if this were so, for most of us, that would not be enough. The underlying character defects that made it possible for our thinking to become so distorted are a challenge that life in Al-Aman has taught us to accept.
So, for us, as for the alcoholic, there is no absolute cure, just a continued progression in personal recovery. Thank you.