Broken Brain Trying to Fix a Broken Brain — That’s the Family Disease Nobody Warned Me About – Mike S.

Good evening. My name is Mike Simmons. I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon, the worldwide
fellowship of Al-Anon, to include Alateen. It wasn't just the canned food, it was the
entire pantry, first of all. I would wait for her to go to bed, then I would rearrange
the dishwasher, because that was never loaded properly.
And as my disease progressed, I would stand next to the dishwasher while she was loading
it, just waiting for her to finish, so that I could rearrange it right in front of her.
Kind of how that went. So, first of all, where is Linda? Where is Linda W.? Thank you for
inviting me to share tonight.
Linda is the program chair for this year's convention.
Phenomenal job. Thank you. And thank you for the invitation. Thank you to this year's
convention committee. Unbelievable registration. I don't know what the record is, but that
is a lot of registrations. Great job, you guys.
That skit was phenomenal.
Jen, you raised the bar. You're going to have to do it again next year. It's going to be tough to find
someone to take that service commitment next year.
Sounds like you have a job next year already. Great job, you guys.
So, I'm here to share with you a little bit about what it was like, what happened, and what things are like now.
And as you'll hear, I'll identify probably all seven of those.
Well, I want to talk about one them.
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about that in a just a fantastic talk that she gave last night. Unbelievable.
And I'm not very tall but you're right a short person was here. You know I had a
chance today to to hear our Spanish speaker. She did a tremendous job and
then I got to I got to hear our AA speaker this afternoon. She was
tremendous. She did a great job and I could so much relate to her story. The
interesting thing for me about my experience in Al-Anon and being married
to her was that she was a woman. She was a woman. She was a woman. She was a woman.
She was a woman. She was a woman. She was a woman. She was a woman. She was a woman.
And what struck me when I was married to an alcoholic wife, is that our
problems really aren't any different. Our solutions are drastically different. But
we suffer from the same isms. Our problems are the same. You know and and
I had an opportunity to learn through working this program that a lot of those
character defects if you will or character traits that I allowed to just
be blown out of proportion. Really were covered
bring up insecurity and worried about what you what you thought of me and trying to be what I
thought you wanted me to look like and the ego and the pride and the fear all of those things
were were were really good tools that served me well for quite a while you know served me well
for a while and it wasn't until I was introduced to alcoholism that those stopped working you know
um so obviously you know that I'm married to Jennifer here and and that uh we're you know
that kind of ruins the end of the story um thanks for that
but
But Jennifer and I met when we were 14 years old.
We met, she was my first date my freshman year of high school.
And I fell for her almost immediately.
She wasn't so enthralled with me.
We dated on and off through high school.
A little more on than off during college.
Got married pretty young and started having a family right away.
And, you know, I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home.
I didn't, my story doesn't involve parents that were struggling with alcoholism.
And so the closest thing to me was my grandfather on my dad's side who was an alcoholic.
I loved him very much.
He was a lot of fun.
He was a happy drunk.
You know, he just liked to get to his comfort zone.
And I didn't understand when my dad wouldn't allow my brother and I to go visit with him anymore after a point.
And that was really the closest, you know, experience that I had with alcoholism.
And with my wife, you know, we grew up together pretty much.
And drinking and parties and having fun.
And backyard barbecues with kegs.
And going out to happy hours.
You know, that was our story.
That's what we did.
And so for quite a while there, we were in that fun stage.
You know?
And you guys have probably heard about that, right?
That, you know, it starts out fun.
Then we move to fun with problems.
And due to the progressive nature of this disease of alcoholism, it ends up just being problems.
You know?
And so we're moving through this.
And I don't realize what's in store for me.
And we're raising two kids at home.
And I notice that Jennifer's drinking starts to increase.
And it starts to become more frequent.
And the happy hour.
Ended two hours ago.
But she's not done yet type thing.
And what was, you know, my first thought was, we need to, we just need to make some rules here.
You know?
We, you know, we, and she clearly is not able to do that.
Yeah.
So.
So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm the planner, I'm the organizer, I'm the fixer, I'm, you know, and, and we just need to have a few guidelines around the house.
And so it made sense to me to say, hey, sweetheart, how about if we just, let's just drink on the weekends.
How would that be?
How would that be?
And she said, yeah.
That's, that's a really good idea.
I said, yeah, let's do that.
That didn't last 24 hours.
And so I thought, you know, we just need a different rule.
That's all.
I mean, it's, it just wasn't a very good rule.
So I thought to myself, hey, I, you know, I said, honey, I said, what if we went, and I think that, you know, our kids are young.
At this time, like, I don't know, maybe eight and 10 or something.
And I said, what if, what if we didn't drink until after the kids went to bed?
Nine o'clock, you know, can we do that?
And I think she said, well, can we put them to bed at seven?
Didn't dawn on me that that might be a sign, you know.
And so she said, yeah, she goes, yeah, I can do that.
That didn't last 24 hours, you know.
And so as, as my wife's drinking progressed and became more frequent and more often, my frustration was progressing as well.
And there's nothing more true to me than what I hear in our opening, in our welcome.
At most meetings, you know, we hear, and it was mentioned in the skit, that we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
And I didn't realize that I was dealing with something way bigger and more powerful than myself.
I had no idea that I didn't cause it, that I couldn't control it, that I could not cure it.
Yeah, I would have never believed you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You would have told me that I was contributing to it in certain ways.
But I, but I was getting, I was getting irritable and unreasonable.
And I didn't realize what was going on.
And it got to the point where I had stopped doing things that I like to do.
I've always enjoyed the outdoors.
I've always liked to fish.
I've always liked to kayak, hike.
I wasn't doing any of those things anymore.
I was spending more and more of my time monitoring my wife's drinking.
And, and another person's disease was starting to consume my life and my time.
And I was, of course, blaming her for that.
And I was wearing, I was the one wearing a white hat at home.
I was the one being what I consider to be the good guy.
I was blaming her, pointing the finger at her.
I was doing things that I regret today.
I was, I was, I didn't understand the disease of alcoholism.
And I was treating this person that I love more than anybody in the world.
As if she was the reason, you know, for ruining my life.
I understood it so little that.
I didn't realize that she was feeling worse about herself than I could ever make her feel.
And I piled on to that, you know.
And that was my, that was my disease at work.
That was my fear of how is this going to affect me, you know.
And I was so scared all the time.
I woke up scared.
When my phone rang, I was scared of who was going to be on the other end of that.
Because sometimes it was, it was the police department.
Sometimes it was a hospital, you know.
Sometimes it was one of the kids.
Once in a while it was her.
She wasn't calling me very often at that point.
I was the last one she wanted to talk to.
And I don't blame her.
But so I was, I was just filled with fear.
And I had become pretty isolated.
And wasn't hanging out with people.
I wasn't doing the kind of things I like to do.
I slowly was down to no friends.
And that didn't happen quickly.
That happened over a period of several years, you know.
So I didn't really notice it.
I didn't feel that.
I had one problem in the world.
And that was my wife's drinking.
And if that would stop, everything would be fine.
So, have you ever been, I mean, don't tell me I'm the only one that's ever asked a drunk
if they've been drinking and they said no.
Right?
So this is a daily thing at our house.
I mean, multiple times a day, you know.
I come home.
I go to give her a hug so that I can try to smell the breath.
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Ask her, have you been drinking?
She says, no.
And after about a thousand of those, you start to believe it.
You know, I know she's drinking.
But if you lie to someone often enough, I mean, I started to believe that.
So I thought, there's something else wrong.
I mean, clearly, she would have admitted it by now.
.
i mean i've interrogated her every single way i could see possible
and i had cleared the house of all the bottles at this point
and and so she's so i'm starting to think to myself there's something wrong here
this isn't just drinking so i talked to her i said hey i said honey i'm i'm worried about you
i mean i'm worried about is you're you're starting to get you're forgetting things
you're slurring your words i i is there something wrong with your mentally and she said
i don't know i said i really think you should get a cat scan and she said okay
she was very agreeable to that
and i'm such a dunce i don't realize that she would agree to pretty much
anything
as long as it didn't have to do with admitting anything about her drinking.
I heard a story one time about a lady, a friend that she pretended to have,
she took this all the way, she rode this bus all the way to the ditch.
She convinced her husband that she was diabetic and she had nothing to do,
she didn't have diabetes.
She convinced him of that and was actually injecting herself with insulin
and it ended up funny, trust me.
It ended up funny.
It's one of those things like, you know, Megan was talking today
and mentioned, she told a little story about somebody blacked out,
passed out and caught on fire, right?
And we all burst out laughing.
What is wrong with you people?
That is so messed up.
You guys have the sickest sense of humor.
What a sick looking crowd this is.
So, I talked her into getting a CAT scan.
She willingly goes, drives down there with me.
They call her back like about a week later with the results
and they said, hey, Jennifer, we were in the car.
We were in the car.
We were going somewhere.
I don't remember where.
They called her and said, everything looks fine,
except your brain is shrunk a little bit.
And Jennifer gets off the phone and I said, what are they saying?
She told me and I said, doesn't that concern you?
And she said, no, not really.
She said, no, not really.
And at that point, we were, it was, that was like,
towards the end of the day.
That was getting to the time where we were,
Jennifer was actually starting to mention, hey,
I might need some help, you know.
And she found a meeting to go to.
She got to the point where she said, hey,
I need some help with this.
I can't stop.
And I had been just insane.
I was crazy by this point.
I had, when she couldn't go to work,
I would go down there and talk to her boss
and explain to her boss that she was in a really bad car accident.
Not lying.
And she's going to be in the hospital for a few days.
She's going to be okay, but she just needs a few days.
And there's a lady over here going.
And her boss would say, oh, oh,
sweetheart, give her our love.
Tell her to get well soon.
And I said, oh, I will.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, thank you.
And I'm the guy, and I would,
these are the kind of things that I did.
And I would not have believed you if you told me
I was contributing to somebody else's disease.
I wouldn't have known what you were talking about.
Because I had all the answers.
If people would just listen to me, everything will be fine.
My kids were asking me, my son asked me one day,
we were sitting in the truck out in front of the house,
and my son asked me, dad, what are we going to do?
I mean, it was bad.
And he said, what are we going to do?
And I said, don't worry about it.
I got this.
I got big enough shoulders.
I can handle this.
You guys don't need to worry about it.
I didn't realize that that's how ignorant I was
about the disease of alcoholism.
It's a steamroller.
And if I stand in front of it,
it's taking me out and everything else,
everything in its path, you know.
And I thought, I got this, you know.
So Jen starts making some,
some noise about going to a meeting.
And I thought that was a great idea.
And she gets in the book and she finds a meeting
that's like just literally in our neighborhood
around the corner.
And so she decides to, she looks it up.
She finds the night and the time.
And she says, I'm going to go.
And I, of course, said, would you like me to go with you?
And she said, yeah, that would be great.
Great.
And, you know, I just wanted to,
I just wanted to make sure she got there.
That was all I cared about.
I didn't really want to go.
I didn't want to go.
I couldn't think, my perception of Alcoholics Anonymous
was that this place, it's going to be a dimly lit room
in a basement with a bunch of sad sacks sitting around
smoking cigarettes, talking about how crappy their life is.
I don't need to go to that, you know.
But she does.
She does.
And I am her self-appointed life coach at this point.
And I got to make sure she gets there.
So I go and I'm hoping the whole time.
I don't, this is in my, this is in the neighborhood
that we've lived in for 15 years.
And I'm praying to God that I don't see anybody I know.
And you know where I'm going with that, right?
Right.
We walk up to the front door and it's not a dimly lit room.
It's a big room.
There's close to a hundred people there.
The guy standing at the door,
and this is just a regular Wednesday night meeting
in the neighborhood.
The guy standing outside the door is a guy I've known
since high school.
And I'm like, walking in there like.
And he says, Mike, what brings you in?
And I didn't skip a beat.
I said, she does.
Called her out right there on the spot.
That was my first experience with breaking the anonymity
of an alcoholic.
It was a pleasure to do it.
I was glad for myself.
Because I did not want him
to think the problem might be me.
You know, there's that image management
really worried about what you think of me.
Because I just spent the last eight years
keeping the front yard mowed and pristine looking.
Keeping all the bushes trimmed.
Keeping it look like this is the perfect little house
and the perfect little family.
And it had started to spin.
It had started to fill out, you know.
It started to become visible.
You can't hide that forever.
And trying to hide it is exhausting.
Exhausting.
It really had ground me down.
By the time Jen decided to go to a meeting, I was tired.
I was not a good employee.
I was a partner in a business at the time.
I was not a good partner.
I was not a good son.
I had stopped visiting with my parents
because I didn't want them to see what was going on.
I was ashamed.
I was embarrassed.
We didn't have friends over to the house anymore.
You know, I was isolated and alone.
And, you know, I wasn't able to maintain
that image anymore of this perfect little family.
And when I came home from work, and my wife had been drinking,
and I'd walk in around 5.30 or so, my kids, our kids, our children,
our two kids, they were never afraid of their mom.
Mom just wanted to get to her comfort zone.
She just wanted to get to her happy place, you know.
All hell didn't break loose until daybreak.
Dad walked in the house.
Yeah.
And it was, and it all depended.
How that night went had everything to do with how I perceived,
you know, the condition that I perceived my wife to be in.
And every night was the same.
Hi, have you been drinking?
No.
And then I would just rage.
It got to the point where, you know, I just threw tantrums.
I yelled.
I screamed.
My kids heard things in the house that I just wish they didn't have to hear.
But that's the disease of, that's my disease.
That's allowing alcoholism, something I don't understand,
to take me right down with it, you know,
and to participate in that and be a part of that.
So we go to this first meeting, and I go with her, and I love it.
I'm like, we get out of the meeting.
Oh, and they,
one thing I'll say is when we walked up to that meeting,
and I pointed her out to my friend Jim,
he immediately put her in the hands of about five women.
She had a book in her hands and was surrounded by people in two minutes.
And I couldn't believe it.
I was amazed.
I was like, wow.
And so I sat there, and I just, I was in awe.
I remember being in awe.
I've never been to an A.
A.
Meeting before, saw a bunch of people smiling, laughing, having a good time.
It wasn't anything what I expected, you know.
And I'm thinking, what is wrong with these people?
I hadn't, you know, I mean, I hadn't laughed for years, and I see all these people happy.
But I immediately, you know, it gave me a little bit of hope immediately.
So my job for the next three, four months was to chaperone her to her,
and I went to AA meetings.
And again, I, you know, self-appointed life coach was my job.
And business was good.
She wasn't ready to quit drinking just yet.
She kind of wished she wanted to get sober, and things got a little bit worse
in our house before they got better.
And I just kept monitoring her meeting attendance.
And she kept drinking.
She'd drink before meetings.
She'd drink after meetings.
She's probably drinking during a meeting.
I don't really know.
But she just wasn't ready to stop drinking yet.
She just hadn't, you know, she wasn't there yet.
And I really, I started thinking about it, and when I started thinking,
bad stuff happens at this point, you know.
And I started thinking, and she had found a sponsor.
She had a sponsor.
Rick, is April here?
No, she's not.
Oh, dang it.
She had found a sponsor, and it dawned on me
that she probably wasn't communicating very well with her sponsor.
So I thought, you know, I mean, really, I think the right thing to do,
would be just to wait for her to fall asleep, and then go get in the purse and find the cell phone.
And since I got the cell phone, I might as well look up her sponsor's phone number.
I mean, it's right there.
All I got to do is push send.
And I do.
And I let, I call April, and I said, April.
I said, this is Mike, Jennifer's husband.
She goes, like, yeah.
I said, do you know what's going on over here?
And she says, no, Mike, I don't.
I'm not, I'm not there.
I said, well, she's drunk.
And she keeps drinking.
She goes, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
You mean to tell me, Mike, that an alcoholic got drunk?
And if I was allowed to say certain words up here from the podium,
I would tell you what was going on in my head.
Because at this stage in my life, nothing is funny.
This shit ain't funny.
This shit ain't funny.
And just like we were talking about with the blackout, pass out,
caught on fire thing, these things are always funny when they're in a rearview mirror.
You know?
But at the time in my life, nothing was funny.
And I was mad at her for making that little wisecrack.
And I said, you know what, April?
I said, if you would simply do your job.
I said, no.
If you would simply do your job, she will stop drinking.
Everything will be fine.
And April says, Mike, have you ever heard of Al-Anon?
Not only did I not care about what Al-Anon was, I didn't want to hear it.
Because I had one problem, and it was somebody else's drinking.
So when I called April again the next night,
I said, Mike.
And it ended the same way.
Mike, have you heard of Al-Anon?
And after about seven phone calls, I finally said, April,
what is this Al-Anon thing you keep talking about?
And it took a while.
I'm a quick study, as you'll learn.
I pick things up real sharp.
.
And I said, well, you know, I don't drink.
I don't drink.
I don't drink.
I don't drink.
I don't drink.
I don't drink.
And finally I asked, you know, and I was desperate.
I mean, I was beat.
I was like, wow, AA's not even helping this lady, you know.
I'm screwed.
And I said, so, April, what is Al-Anon?
And she said, well, Mike, it's a program for families, you know,
family members and friends of alcoholics.
And I really think you would benefit from that.
I think that would be good for you to look into.
And she gave me a guy's phone number.
And I sat on that for a couple weeks.
And finally decided to give him a call.
And I called him on July 22nd of 2008,
which I consider to be my...
my Al-Anon birthday.
So if I'm lucky enough,
if my wife doesn't kill me in my sleep tonight,
I'll be 10 years old tomorrow.
And so I called this man.
And I said, hey, I said, this is, you know, my name's Mike.
And April gave me her phone number.
And I don't know.
I would, you know, I, can you tell me about Al-Anon?
And he told me in about 10, 15 minutes his story,
living with a, an alcoholic wife who's sober today.
And he said a couple things that really hit me.
I mean, I don't remember a whole lot from that conversation,
but he did say a couple things.
He said, Mike, if you, if you find a meeting tonight,
I'll go with you.
And I thought, and later I realized,
there's a brilliance of that.
He wasn't going to do it for me.
He wanted, he, he wasn't going to waste his time
with someone who wasn't ready,
with someone who wasn't desperate.
He said, if you find a meeting, I'll go with you.
And he said, today, Mike,
I am grateful to be married to an alcoholic.
And that was the farthest thing.
I mean, I could never, I don't even know why he said that to me.
And I got off the phone and I thought,
I definitely need to find a meeting
because there's something wrong with this guy.
And I got in the, you know, I called, I called the,
I called Salt River AIS.
And someone answered the phone, you know.
And I said, I'm looking for a meeting tonight.
They pulled up a meeting.
They directed, they gave me directions.
They gave me the directions.
They gave me the address.
And they talked to me for a little while.
And I'm amazed at that today.
That our, you know, our service centers
and people volunteer to cover the phones
and order literature and all the stuff that we get to do,
you know, I always have a soft spot in my heart for SRV AIS,
you know, and all the other AISs that are out there.
And they're doing a great job.
And they're answering the phone and picking up.
So we go to a meeting.
And I go, I go with him like a couple times a week.
We're going to meetings while, I mean kind of in between me
monitoring her attendance, you know,
because I still got a full time job here.
And he keeps, this guy keeps asking me, you know,
you might want to think about getting a sponsor.
And I said, I think I've got a full-time job here.
And he goes, I'm just going to check in real quick.
If I don't have a full-time job, I'm just going to go to a meeting.
And I said, I'm going to do some research.
And I said, eh, you know, I'm not going to be here long.
Just need to find out how you guys get women to quit drinking.
And I'll get back to my life.
And he said, okay.
And so he kept asking me, like, over the next four months if I had a sponsor.
And I just didn't, you know, I was scared to death of that.
I did not want anyone telling me what to do.
I had started to learn some things from you guys in terms of minding my own business, getting out of the way, let go, let God, live and let live.
All these really sappy slogans that seemed perfectly appropriate for you guys.
And they just didn't, I just couldn't relate to them, you know.
And I didn't want someone telling me, you know, what to do.
But I finally, you know, I finally broke down and asked him to sponsor me.
And we got started immediately.
And he gave me a little bit of direction in terms of read this, do that.
As soon as you do, we'll get started in the step work.
And.
But we were kind of, I was off and running.
And I said to him, he said, so how's your, you know, he gave me some, gave me some direction on how many meetings a week to go to.
What time to call him.
And I got this kind of sponsor and I'm so grateful for it.
My call time's at 545 every day after work.
And I call him at 530.
And then at 552.
And then at 5.
You know, 48.
And, and, and one day I called him and he said, you know, he goes, what time's your call time?
And I said, 545.
He said, what time is it?
And I said, it's 547.
And he said, let's try it again tomorrow.
Click.
And I love that.
That is exactly what an egomaniac with a massive inferiority complex like me needs.
I need someone to say enough of your BS.
Start taking some responsibility for your own life.
Quit pouting, quit whining, quit moping about it.
We don't care about your problems.
We care about solution.
Stop vomiting on meetings.
Stop wasting people's time.
Start getting busy and start being a man of your word.
What are you talking about?
I'm not a man of my word.
Well, did you not tell me that you would call me at 545 every day?
Well, yeah, I did.
But 545.
547, give me a break.
545 is 545.
And that's when I started to learn some accountability.
That's when I started to understand that somebody else's time is more important than mine.
And then if I'm going to ask somebody else for help, I need to show up.
He wasn't going to carry this load for me.
But he was going to meet me halfway.
He was not going to let me.
I can guarantee you that.
And he was willing to meet me halfway.
And I continued to monitor things at home.
And one day, I remember I was asking Jennifer.
I said, hey, did you go to a meeting yet today?
And she said no.
And I said, are you going to go?
And she said, I don't know.
I said, when are you going to go?
When's your next meeting?
Have you called your sponsor?
Did you read your literature today?
Hey, did you hit your knees?
Did you ask God?
Did you invite your higher power into your life today?
And this poor lady.
I mean, this is like a daily routine.
Can you imagine living with that?
And so I made her so mad that she said, fine, I'll go to a meeting.
And she grabbed her stuff.
And she got in her car.
And she took off.
And I just had my doubts.
I thought, she's not really going to a meeting.
And so I went and started hitting the meetings in the neighborhood.
And I called her.
And I said, where are you?
She goes, I'm at such and such a meeting.
And I said, okay.
And I drove over to such and such a meeting.
And her car wasn't in the parking lot.
And I called my sponsor.
Because he told me I couldn't call her sponsor anymore.
Which I thought was a lot of BS.
And I said, hey.
I said, she said she was going to a meeting.
And she's not there.
And he said, how do you know?
And I said, because I'm in the parking lot.
And her car's not here.
And he said, I'm in the parking lot.
And he said.
Go home, you dummy.
That's not what he called me.
He said, go home.
Hit your knees.
Ask God to show you how to be the type of husband that she deserves.
Ask God to show you how to show up in that relationship.
And bring some grace and some dignity.
And start minding your own business.
Start minding your own business.
Start minding your own business.
Ask him to show you how to be the type of dad that those kids deserve to be.
And quit worrying about what she's doing.
What makes you think she's not at another meeting somewhere?
Things like that.
Just hold me accountable.
Minding my own business.
Learning how to mind my own business.
Oh, there's a funny joke about minding my own business.
There's a guy walking down the street.
And he's walking past this mental hospital.
And he hears all these people in the backyard.
And they're all in there yelling, 13, 13, 13.
And he's like, what the hell is going on in there?
So he finds a knot hole in the fence.
And he kneels down.
And he looks in there.
And he gets poked in the eye with a stick.
And they all start yelling, 14, 14, 14.
14.
And that's kind of how.
That's kind of how I learned to mind my own business.
I got to get poked in the eye with a stick lots and lots of times.
Because alcoholism is just this gift that just keeps giving.
And so we're working steps.
Oh, we started working steps.
I said, hey, I got to let you know.
When I first asked him to sponsor me, he said, okay, let's get to work.
I said, well, I'm already, just so you know, I'm on step four.
Don't tell me you guys didn't go to your first meeting and start reading the steps on the wall
and saying, yeah, done that, did that.
Yeah, I'll knock that one out tomorrow afternoon.
And he said, well, why don't you humor me and we'll start with one.
And I was pissed at him.
He's the first one on my resentment list when I did.
I did redid step four.
I'm not kidding.
He was, no, he's second.
Jennifer was first.
He was up there, though, because I was stubborn and I was strong-willed
and I didn't like to be told what to do and I was self-reliant.
And I grew up, you know, I was, I grew up being taught that if something wasn't going your way,
put some more elbow grease to it.
Work harder at it.
You don't quit.
You don't give up.
You just work harder at it.
And so I've spent years now trying to force solutions.
I've been trying to pound this square pavement.
I've been trying to peg into this round hole and it exhausted me.
How much time do I have, by the way?
Where's Linda?
Am I on a timer?
I don't know.
How much I got?
I got 20 minutes?
Okay.
I don't want to run over because, man, I'll tell you what, now and on, if you run over,
I don't care if it's Jesus up here.
People are going.
I don't care.
I don't care.
What are you doing?
Oh, my God.
I wanted to go get cake.
You got a problem?
Call your sponsor.
So, so we're, you know, so we, we, we started at the beginning and we're working through
the steps and, and, you know, this is just not a place that I, you know, I, I, I, I, I,
I planned on coming and, and staying for very long.
This, you guys are my family.
You guys were there when I was walking through the saddest, darkest times of my life.
And I had a sponsor that did not listen to any of my BS.
He wasn't, he wasn't going to debate with me.
He wasn't, he wasn't here to, you know, play quid pro quo.
It was just like...
It was just like, here it is.
Either do it or don't.
You don't like it?
Find someone else.
You know?
And I thank God for the gift of desperation.
And if you're new or newer here, I wish you the gifts of desperation.
Because it took, it, this, it took me hitting a bottom that I never saw coming.
And this was the last house on the block for me.
I literally, I really didn't like this guy.
But I was afraid to leave him.
And today, I love that man.
I love him.
I would be there in an instant if there was anything he ever needed.
So we get through the steps and I start having the opportunity to sponsor some guys.
And what a tremendous gift that was.
He kept telling me, you know, this isn't really going to sink in until you start,
giving it back.
You know?
You can't keep it if you're not giving it away.
And I didn't understand that.
I didn't believe that.
You know?
You have to experience that.
And what we do here is we share our experience.
You know?
That's what we do.
In all the meetings today, I've heard tremendous things at meetings today.
I've heard great speakers.
I always try to remember,
you know, my favorite slogan we were talking about before the meeting is,
keep it simple.
My sponsor said, your personal slogan is keep it simple, stupid.
And I said, well, I don't see that in our Al-Anon literature.
He said, well, your special needs.
So, but that is my absolute favorite slogan.
Because, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Because this is a, this is a very simple program.
We are the ones, I am the one who complicates it.
You know?
I'm the one that can read too much into it.
You know?
I'm writing my first step and I'm thinking about what is it he wants to see.
You know?
And we sit down and he gives it back to me and he said, now go, go, go write down the truth.
You know?
Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about what I want to see.
I want you to get honest.
And I wasn't used to being honest with another man.
We don't do that.
You know?
No way.
I just volunteered for a 62-year-old white woman program and you want me to be honest with another man?
What the hell?
No.
I think that is the average demographic of an Al-Anon member.
Just so you know.
Is it 62?
Three?
Okay.
We've gotten older.
That is the average demographic of an Al-Anon member.
So, I'm, Gene's shaking his head going, dude, that's going to cost you.
You're either brave or stupid.
I love this program.
I love, I love.
I love it.
I love it.
I love my brothers and sisters in Al-Anon.
One of my first meetings, I walked in and there were 20 women in the room.
And it was maybe my fourth or fifth meeting.
And I said, I'm sorry, is this a women's meeting?
And it wasn't, I mean, when I first started, it wasn't that abnormal for that, you know,
that was kind of how a lot of the meetings looked, really.
You know?
I mean, my sponsor thinks he's something.
I mean, it's not special that I picked him.
There just weren't any other guys.
And if you send him a copy of this, I'll be so pissed at you.
You know what?
They said it is.
But we'd love to have you have a seat, you know.
And when I was at my worst, you guys were at your best.
And you showed me how to love.
And you showed me how to care.
You showed me how to show up and participate.
You let me vomit on your meetings for a while.
You let me whine and complain without any solution.
One of the character defects tonight, I'm trying to remember which one he was now.
Anger. Where's Patrick?
Did me a great favor.
He didn't realize he was doing it at the time.
But I was so arrogant and egotistical.
And I was a know-it-all.
And I'm at my second or third meeting down at the White House group.
And I start questioning everybody who's sharing.
You guys and your rules.
And he said,
Hey, we don't crosstalk here.
That's what I heard.
I think what he said was,
Hey, we don't crosstalk here.
I'm like, I really hate that guy.
And he kept me coming back.
Because I'm like, yeah, I don't want that guy thinking that I'm not coming back here because he scolded me.
And then it dawned on me that I may have a disease of perception.
And I do.
You know, I didn't learn that until much later.
And that's one of those things.
That's one of those lessons that I've been able to learn here.
Is that things are not always as they look.
Matter of fact, when you've got a broken brain trying to fix a broken brain,
they rarely are as they look.
And I took everything personal.
Everything was about me.
Everything was a personal affront on me.
And, you know, he told me exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.
You know, I learned to be grateful for that.
It took me a couple of years, Patrick.
And don't.
Don't get all big headed about being on my four step list.
Everybody.
Everybody's on it, dude.
Everybody I've met is on that list.
And, you know, but I started to learn that what I do have is a disease of perception.
You know, reality is not my problem.
It's the way I look at things.
And it's all of those character traits that get blown out of proportion.
You know, because I don't have a better recipe for living.
I'm I'm I was running on self-reliance.
And fear and ego and pride were driving the bus.
You know.
And that's my best thinking, my best solutions, my best ideas.
I had to admit to myself that those are what got me here.
You know.
Nobody else did this to me.
The disease of alcoholism didn't do this to me.
My lack of understanding and my lack of a spiritual solution.
And this God sized hole in me that I was trying to fill with everything except God is what got me here.
And I didn't know that I was spiritually sick.
Until my sponsor started to walk me through this.
And I learned that.
You know, that I was not, I was not going to enjoy, you know, this spiritual experience until I was ready, until I worked these steps and it would be as a result of working these steps.
And along that step 12 theme, I love the theme of our convention, carry the message.
I was in a meeting today and that was being discussed quite a bit.
And you know, again, keep it simple.
What we do here is we share our experience.
You know, I don't have to, you know, I used to think that somebody shut that dog up.
Squirrel.
Squirrel.
Easily distracted.
You know, it's, we don't, I always felt that I needed to come up with something profound and revelatious to share with people, you know.
And again, that's my ego.
You know, I just need to suit up, show up, sometimes shut up.
And hear a message.
And share my.
Experience.
Because at the heart of what we do, that's it.
We share our experience.
One hour on working with another.
And I don't need to try to figure out what that message is going to look like or needs to look like.
Because he's got it.
And all I need to do is share my experience and that message will, it'll come through in whatever form.
You know, my higher power sees fit or your higher, higher power decides to receive that.
I grew up in an organized religion.
I grew up with a great set of parents.
I didn't grow up with an out in an alcoholic home.
My dad made sure my brother and I got to church every weekend, but I did not have a God that I trusted.
I did not have a God that I wanted to, to, to be honest with.
I was scared.
God was judgmental.
God was critical.
God didn't want me to have any fun.
You know, and I didn't want to be honest with that God.
And that's not the church's fault that I belong to.
You know, I'm not going to stand up here and say, I'm a recovering so-and-so.
There's a lot of good people that hear a lot that do a lot of good things.
I didn't.
I just happened to find my God here.
I just had this just this happened to be become, you know, my church.
You know, this happened to become where I found spirituality.
And I know that it's a struggle sometimes, and it has been for me.
I don't need to figure it out anymore.
I don't need to ask those questions anymore.
God is either everything or he's nothing.
And my God, I trust with absolutely anything.
I don't trust him with everything in my life, but I trust him with everything in my sponsee's
lives.
Thank God my sponsor trusts him with everything in my life.
And thank God for sponsors.
I'd like to thank the guys that allow me to work with them.
The guys that have invited me into their lives have no idea why they would do that.
Either bravery or stupidity, right, Jean?
But thank you guys.
You are a huge part of my program of recovery.
It's a pleasure and an honor to work with you guys.
You know, it's such an honor.
You know, I'd like to thank the program of Al-Anon, obviously.
You guys have given me the opportunity to live a life that's worth living today.
You know, I don't know that I would have died from this.
I don't know that the consequences of my disease are as grave as the consequences of my wife's.
But I'm not here to compare anymore.
I don't care.
You know, um...
I get to live a life today that's worth living.
I have more friends than I ever imagined.
I am busy all the time.
I'm surrounded by people that I know love me.
And I hope that they know I love them.
And I hope that they know that if they ever needed anything, I would be there.
And it just was not the kind of place I was going to stick around.
It's amazing, you know.
Part of my recovery, part of the direction that I received from my sponsor when I first started is
you're going to go to at least one open AA meeting a week.
And I thought, yeah, that's easy.
That's at least one that I can monitor her at.
Not a problem.
So I've gone to at least one.
I've gone to an open AA meeting a week for the past 10 years.
I've been to a few AA meetings.
And in addition to roundups and conventions and things like that.
And I'm so grateful for that direction.
Because I struggled.
I could not separate my wife from her disease.
And Al-Anon really honestly wasn't helping me do that.
It was Al-Anon.
He was teaching me how to focus on me.
How to work my steps.
How to start taking accountability for myself.
How to start behaving like the man that God would want me to behave like.
But I was still struggling with the understanding of this disease that my wife had.
And why this was happening to me.
And I hated the disease.
But I loved my wife.
Sometimes I loved, you know, sometimes I hated my wife.
I couldn't separate her from her disease.
AA is where I learned the compassion to be able to do that.
Listening to speaker after speaker after speaker.
And understanding that my wife's drinking wasn't a choice.
Which I treated her like it was.
Starting to understand that this is a disease.
I could start to back off.
I could start to...
I could start to show some compassion and thank God for that.
It got to be, oh, maybe five, seven years ago, our son's enjoyment of alcohol started to show up a little bit.
Apparently he had a happy place too.
Similar to my wife's.
And I just didn't understand that.
And, you know, I wondered when I got here, is it tougher for people whose spouses are alcoholics?
Or is it tougher for people who are here with children that are alcoholics?
And don't ask those questions.
Don't.
Don't ask questions.
You don't want to ask questions you don't want answers to, you know?
That's been a tough one.
I am so proud to say that today he is a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He's 25.
He went to a meeting about a month ago and picked up a one-year chip.
And he gave it to me.
And I keep it in my pocket every day.
And I didn't fix him, and I didn't cure him.
There was absolutely nothing I could do.
I was absolutely powerless and scared to death.
I still am scared now and then.
But I get to be honest about that today.
I get to say, hey, you know, I'm afraid.
And sometimes that's going to come out sideways.
And I'll do the best I can to treat you with dignity and respect and kindness and love.
You know?
My job today is to be the best extension I can be of what God's love looks like.
And thank God I've got a...
My sponsor moved back to Montana about, I don't know,
maybe five years ago.
Thank God.
I've got a service sponsor today.
She's wonderful.
I get upset with people, and she asks me really stupid questions like,
how do you think they look in God's eyes?
How do you think God sees them?
She was the mirror.
I don't want to say too much, but her initials are Carrie K.
What a blessing she is and has been in my life.
She's helped me smooth out some pretty rough edges, you know.
And walked through some stuff with me again
when I was going through some of the things that I was going through.
I was going through some of the things that I was going through.
I was going through some of the things that I was going through.
I was going through some of my worst days.
By all rights, my son should not be here today.
The disease of alcoholism is seconds and inches.
And there was some really, really close calls.
And if you're an image management expert like me,
and the fire department shows up at your house at two in the morning
with the horns and the sirens and the lights going,
that's like your worst nightmare.
You know?
And they couldn't just bring like the medic truck.
They had to bring the ladder.
You know?
They had to bring the whole department with them.
And that's what I mean when it's just, there's not,
my days of trying to contain this were over.
You know?
It just had to come down to complete surrender.
And not worrying about what's going on.
And not worrying about what's going on.
And not worrying about what anybody thought anymore.
You know?
And that's when I could start walking out of the forest.
You know?
Sponsor said, hey, it's not going to, you know,
you're not going to get better overnight.
And he said, you are living proof that God works really, really slow.
He's so kind.
That's what I need though, you know?
So, you know, today it's a good life.
It's a life worth living.
You know?
My wife and my son are here.
And I've got a, we have a daughter that, she's married.
She lives in the West Valley.
She's, I think she's, I think she's one of me.
But she's not ready to be here yet.
So, we'll see, you know?
But I'm not, I've learned to not try to force solutions anymore.
She may be here when she gets here.
But it's just a privilege and a pleasure
to have friends like you guys.
And to have a life that's worth living today.
And I will try to do my part to carry the message
to the best of my ability for as long as I'm here.
And I know you guys will be doing the same.
And I love you all.
And thank you for letting me share.