The Burden of the Good Front Face – Betty S.

Thank you so much. If you can't hear me in the back, please raise your hand and let me know. My name is Betty and I'm a grateful alcoholic. I want to start off by thanking Lois and Jeff and Didi, our hosts they've been so wonderful to us the flowers, the beautiful fruit baskets, the cassages all the countless things you've done for us and the mugs, it's all been a wonderful wonderful time and I appreciate it through the grace of God the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous and the loving concern of you people in this fellowship. I've been sober since March the 13th of 1979. For that, my husband and I are truly grateful. I think of March the 13rd, 79 as the day I started to become recycled because that's what happened to me it happened to be the anniversary the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in our little town of Nakona, Texas 3,000 people and through different circumstances I'm the only one who celebrates that anniversary as my birthday also. And there's a reason for that which I'll tell you later I qualified as an Al-Anon before I came in and I could have qualified as an Alateen had I known about such a program and now that I'm in AA I think of myself as a triple winner in my own family group I can have a call meeting whenever I want to but it would be pretty dull Now, I want to say this about Al-Anan It is extremely helpful to me I get a lot out of Al-Anon, and of course AA has to be my primary program because that is a matter of life and death, as we all know. But I get A LOT from Al-A-Nan, and I hasten to say anyone who does not really appreciate Al- Anon is simply not aware of its blessings, and i know that. And having said that though, I want to share with you this joke that an alanine that i know likes me to tell i won't mention his name but anyway this is a joke uh maybe you've already heard it but anyway he said do you know why alanines always close their eyes when they make love and i said well no why would they always close their eyes and he said it's because they can't stand to see an alcoholic having a good time i'm going to check it out i don't know if that's true anyway i was a sort of person like many of you i was never very friendly with myself i was always so vulnerable i was insecure i can blame this on nothing because i had a very happy family life and no nothing traumatic happened to me as I was growing up as a child I have no alibis no excuses but um I like a lot of you I was never I never felt very comfortable around other people so I one time read a quote by E.E. Cummins and as young as I was, I knew exactly what he was talking about when he said, everywhere I go, I go too. And that spoils everything. And that was the way I felt. And you know when Groucho Marx said, wouldn't dream of joining a country club that would have me as a member. I could understand that too. Well, I don't want to stand up here and have you think that I was an alcoholic for 20 years and finally came into the program. I drank many years before I was an alcoholic. My husband and I were drinking partners. We had a lot of fun for a lot of years drinking and partying and so on. Well, the day came when I did cross over the line. But anyway, as I was growing up, I had a lot of honors that came to me. But no matter what happened to me, my self-esteem never varied. Nothing ever made me feel better about myself. And I could blame that on nothing except maybe my jeans. I don't know what, but I want to tell you this. It's a very important point to bring out, I think, in my story. As I got older, I went into a work of love and service for one year, and during that year, I decided not to drink. I was very active in this work of loving service, and I decided on my own not to drank. I didn't mention it to anyone else, and I had no trouble staying with it. And during that year, it was a miraculous time in my life. I had such a time of peace. Maybe you've heard of the book In Tune with the Infinite or it's the same as being in harmony with the universe and I really lived that year in that wonderful, wonderful frame of mind, the spirit of God consciousness and so on. Well, I lost it. And I have, to this day, yet to recover it to that degree. But I was going to press on and hope to recover it completely. Bob and I were dating. He was stationed at an air base in Clovis, New Mexico, where my parents lived. And we started to date. And I wanted to meet his parents before we got married, of course. And so we flew to Akron, Ohio. and his parents met us at the plane and they were wonderful to me from the very beginning. My parents had read a lot of the same books and I had read a lot that they read. We had a lot to talk about. We just hit it off and very shortly had a love affair with each other. I loved those people dearly and they treated me as a beloved daughter to have known them will be a blessing all my life truly well they started talking this very day about a meeting they were going to that night at king's school i had no idea this was in the early 40s and i hadno idea what they had reference to so the first time i had an opportunity i went to bob and i said what are they talking about a meetingschool and he said oh it's an organization that my father helped co-found. So I didn't know any more than when I asked the question. So I went that night to this meeting in school. Now, King School is an historical place, but you know when you're in the midst of history, you don't know it at the time. And so I didn'T know it. And I had never heard the words Alcoholics Anonymous in my life in New Mexico. Well, as I sat down there, A dentist from Cleveland got up to talk, and it was one of the most dramatic moments of my lifetime ever because he is standing up there talking about a solution, a life of sobriety, a happy life of sobriety. Well, you see, my father at this time had turned into an alcoholic, and my mother and I having no idea how to cope with it simply threw the booze away every time we found the bottle, not knowing any better well i didn't know there was a solution and here is a living example of the solution right in front of me i was so thrilled and elated i could hardly stay still and as soon as the meeting was over i rushed up to dr bob and i said oh you must be so proud to have co-founded a fantastic fellowship like this and boy had i ever said the wrong thing he said oh no i have just been used as an instrument i'm just an agent and he didn't want that put upon him and of course all their lives people put dr bob and bill on a pedestal and they were wonderful people but they were human beings anyway he did not want that and we were fortunate enough that bob every when he got out of the air force everybody seemed like in the world got out of the second world war at the same time and it was very hard to find jobs and none of them paid much anything but we found a home in Cleveland Ohio a suburb Bay Village and so we're very close to his parents in Akron and I that was a wonderful blessing too because I got to be around them and their friends anytime they asked mom and dad to dinner they would ask us to dinner and i got to know those first women in aa and a lot of the the first men whose stories were in the big book and it was a wonderful exciting thing and i love those people they were so full of humor we knew people in aa had a lot fun they uh we were very young and dumb and one day well we had no money and dr bob and ann had very little but one day dr bob showed up for this couch that he had bought at an auction. It was very beautiful. It was covered in silk, burgundy and gold. And it was just stunning. Bob and I, we were young and dumb and we'd always wanted some sectional furniture. So Bob got out the saw and he sawed it in two. Well, that meant that he had to build some more legs for it, you know. and it also meant that I had to cover it because the rag and silk was just hanging there and so Bob said I bought some material that looked kind of like mattress ticking but actually it looked to me more like awning material big blue stripes you know about this light and we put that on it and to my amazement to this day neither mom nor dad ever said a word about that you know that is really restrained I'd have killed my kids I really would have killed them if they had done something like that anyway we had so much fun and they were full of humor and laughter and sharing and we played bridge and dad and I would play gin rummy and yell at each other at these lousy discards we got and we just had a lot of fun and I couldn't tell you all the wonderful things they did but this was a time when I got to see mom with these women that she worked with and they would come to the house. She was on the phone all the time and she nurtured these people. She just attracted them just like a magnet and I saw her pray with those women and she could see the need for the spouses and she fulfilled that need in every way that she could. She was fantastic. She really, I've never known a person as much like a saint as she was. So patient. I saw her one day. She had a little grief, a little worry frown in here. Only time I ever thought. And she walked upstairs and she came back down in about 10 or 15 minutes and I looked at her face and I knew just as if she had told me she'd been up there having a quiet time and her face was so serene I knew exactly what she'd be doing and of course dad was a wonderful person too and he had a great sense of humor and he was a very profound person too and very thinking spiritually read a couple of hours every night he had insomnia so he did that well anyway I would never dream of telling his parents that my father had just developed a drinking problem uh I wouldn't have thought of doing that and I didn't tell Bob but he didn't know so I made up my mind I was going to go home with a big book for sure so when we left there why I rushed up to my mother at the house, and I said, Mother, we have the answer. We can help Dad. And we ran excitedly to tell my father this fantastic news. And guess what? He was not nearly as enthusiastic as we were. But it was not too long until he was ready for help. I know one day Mother called me. He had gotten fired from his job, And he did what I thought was a very darn good thing to do. If you get a drink on the job, he got his own business started. So, you know, he could handle it how he wanted to. He had a gift shop. He had Indian jewelry and blankets and a bunch of little junks and precincts in front. Anyway, it was a nice little gift shop, and she called me one day, and she said, Honey, I think you better go down to your dad's shop because I think he's in terrible shape. So I went down there, and there were two Air Force officers in there at the time, and they neither knew nor cared that I was related to this man but one of them looked at the other my father was as in as bad a shape as I had ever seen the worst and he was barely able to stand and one of the men looked at each other and said isn't that just repugnant isn't it just repulsive to see someone in that shape and they talked about that and of course he told me but I want him so badly to say, I see what you see and I understand what you think. But if you knew the inside of this man that I knew, you wouldn't feel quite that way because, see, for all these years my father had been sober. He had a great sense of humor. He had spiritual depth and he had so many great things going for him that when he did become an alcoholic, I think I do not have the scars that an alcoholic person normally has in that type of a family. Anyway, when I went home with that big book, it was not long before he was ready for health and there were no treatment centers at that time, or if there were. We certainly had no $10,000 or $20,000 for him to go to a treatment center. But I heard about a place our family physician told me and I drove him to Denver. And it turned out it was a sanitarium, but I don't know this. And so I left him overnight. I went back the next morning. I said, what kind of a night did you have? And he said, not too good. People running up and down the aisle screaming, et cetera. And he says, Betty, they took my clothes and razor, everything. Well, I got to talking around and found out that I had inadvertently committed him to an insane asylum. And I thought, he will never believe I did this accidentally. I didn't mean to. And so it was 8 o'clock in the morning. and this is why I tell this story I said, Dad you get your things packed and I'll take you out of this place and he said, Betty as early as it is two AAs have already been to see me and talk to me and I'm going to be alright and I am going to stay and if they had not come that early before 8 o'clock to talk to him, out of ignorance I would have taken him on home So, to make a long story short, he and another man started the first group in New Mexico. But those two men that came to visit him at 730 in the morning never knew how that 12-step turned out. And so many times we don't know how our 12-steps turns out until later on. And to this day, I bless those two women because of what they meant in my life. And when my father passed away some years later, people came up to me and said, he's alive today in the hearts of hundreds of people he'd counseled. He's counseled and so, you know, it turned out to be a very happy story. Well it may have occurred to you by this time knowing and loving Dr. Bob as she did knowing and love her father as she had and having seen a little of AA. How did she come to be an AA? It's a good question The only answer I can give you is, for all we know, maybe one of Ben Franklin's kids got electrocuted flying a kite. We don't know. But certainly that was how it ended up. Bob and I were drinking partners, as I said before, and alcohol entered our house a guess. and then over a period of time it became the host and then it became the master well I knew what the night, I found out what the night terrors were and I found out what this doomsday feeling was in the middle of the night knowing something terrible was going to happen but I didn't know what it was well when I met new people and heard you talk about impending doom and everything else i knew exactly i could identify exactly with what you were talking about and you know we get if you have an addiction you get in a cocoon there's nobody but your own self and your addiction and it's like a web that's made out of steel cables that you can't fight yourself out of it it starts out like a spider web and then ends up as a steel table and and and you are helpless under it, even if you want to be out of it. Well, it's total self-concern, total selflessness. At least it was in my case. You know, when you are shackled to the bottle or to any other addiction, you have no freedom. That is one of the things for which I'm most grateful in this program. The addiction told me how to write my check, never to the liquor store. always at the bank or for more than I needed at the grocery store and so on. I was a closet drinker as much as it was possible to be, and it taught me how I withdrew. I had no freedom. I withdreed from society. I stayed in the closet. I had to go on the living room couch, and I've got one of the dullest stories I've ever heard, but that's what it was. I can't add to it. And I just, I tried to keep it as quiet as I possibly could because as my kids, we have two sons and two daughters, and as my children were growing up, I taught Sunday school. I did everything I thought a mother was supposed to do. The PTA business, the room mother for all three of my, three PTAs to go to. And I did all that stuff. And well, when my addiction got going good, one time we went to France and Bob said, we saved our money and finally made it. And one day he said, let's buy a bottle of Perneau. And I said, what's that? And he said it's a liqueur. And I thought, okay, as long as it wasn't beer. I didn't care anything about beer. But anyway, he got this Perneaux. He said it tastes sort of like licorice. And it looked like bourbon, something like that. and we went up to our hotel room, and he set the bottle down on the table, and he went in the bathroom. And as soon as he did, I rushed over to the bottle, which was my custom, got the top off as fast as I possibly could, took about three slugs of four, whatever I thought I possibly had time for, then rushed over to the sink to fill it up with water, and as soon at that did, as soon the water hit it, it turned milky! Well, this was pretty bad, because you know i was trying so hard to keep all this a secret and i thought my lord what am i going to tell him this has never happened before what will i say and he walked out and he looked at me and he said betty did you put water in there in that pair of nose and i looked him right in the eyeballs and i said why no and to this day i have never thought of a better answer and i thought about it but okay now this i'm sure is the beginning of his denial because he didn't say any more about it and i certainly wasn't going to bring it up well anyway uh when i realized that i had crossed over the line that i was an alcoholic i can't imagine really anybody coming in through those doors and surrendering without knowing they're an alcoholic for sure. I tell you there was no doubt in my mind before I walked in and I knew I couldn't go to AA and I'll tell you why. In the first place, I lived in a town of 3,000 people and I would have no anonymity. That scared me. I had moved to a town who had had a big split in the churches. They had built a public swimming pool, and what they had a real fight over was this issue of mixed bathing. I'd never heard of mixed bathing, but mixed bathing is when the men and the women go in the swimming pool at the same time. I never forgot that, and I thought, my lord, if they found out I was an alcoholic and a woman on top of that, there is no telling what they'd do to me you could see how scared i was and why i was so scared and of course i had pride i was supposed to be a respectable lady and uh of course it was just a pure luck that i never got a dwi but anyway pride you know can be a real killer too and i had to totally lose my pride before I walked through those doors. Also, I thought because of Dr. Bob, who, of course, was long gone many years before in 1950, and my father, who was long gone, I felt that made it more difficult for me. Anyway, there were all these reasons why I couldn't possibly go into AA and I did not until I was totally without hope. And I thought, I don't care if they but I wish they would. Just put it on the front page of the newspaper the next day because I knew people would drive by and see whose car was at the AA meeting. I knew all that stuff, see? But first, you see, when I decided that I was an alcoholic beyond backing up, I was only going to get worse. You think the first thing I did was think, okay, I'll give up and go to AA. That was not the first things I did, was think okay, Now, I'll cover this up. I will keep my house as good as I can. I'll keep myself looking as good as I Can. I had a horror of people thinking I was a drunken slob, you know, or emotionally unstable. That was another no-no. And so, okay, I was going to put on this good front face. And do you know that is one of the heaviest burdens I've ever placed on myself in my life? I have had so many spiritual blessings in my life, especially during that one year I told you about. It was like privileged information. So you see, I've gotten built upon guilt with all this stuff. It was a terrible burden and I think that is the total lack of spiritual integrity when you're trying on the outside to deny totally what's going on on the inside. And that's a terrible burden. And that was exactly what I did. And I would say this, when you suppress pain and you abandon reality, you will reap anguish. It's just as clear to me as one and one makes two. It's like the law of gravity. It's going to cost you anguish, and that was what happened to me. well I was at my lowest ebb and I think this was providential one afternoon the phone rang and a man named John called me and said Betty we're going to start a group in the corner for people who have had a problem like you and me and as I say I'd been a closet drinker and I thought first thing I thought was wonder how you knew we never cried as clever as we think we are you know And so I started crying, and I said, yes, John, I'll come. Well, John is a pharmacist. And went to the first meeting that night, and the first thing I saw when I walked in was this old pamphlet that says, so you think you're different? And I thought, oh, what if everybody else thinks they're different just like I think I'm different, and we're all just alike because we think we're different. It was just a revelation to me. And I got about 13 of those pamphlets, and I thought I'm going to have to give these to a lot of people I know. I was already going to try to educate the world, I did. Well, anyway, I went that night and I woke up at 4.30 the next morning and I could not sleep. No, you know, insomnia. Well, I thought, you have really done some dumb things in your life, but this time you have a lot of work to do. You have really ripped your rompers. There is no way in the world you can go 24 hours without a drink because, I don't like to tell it, but it's the truth. By this time, I was drinking at least every couple of hours. I was having to drink day and night. This was with the knowledge that it was not going to make me feel a bit better. This was to satisfy the physical craving, knowing it was nicht going to give me a lift even. And I thought, I can't possibly go 24 hours. Well, I stuck my neck out, and there I was. So I went the first day. You know, and at times during this, I would go into a walk-in closet and close the door and want to beat my head against the wall. But it really helped to save my life besides a lot of praying. I worked in the yard. Physical, hard work, just like snakes were chasing me as hard and as fast as I could go. Moved the front yard into the back yard and the backyard into the frontyard. Had this wheelbarrow full of sand and I mean, I was really putting out the physical work. But anyway, I have to tell you this. There was not a happy Al-Anon waiting for me in the wings. My husband was pretty damn hostile, to tell You the truth. He was not ready for the party to be over. And he would say to me, now Betty, you don't have to stop drinking. He never once asked me to stop drinkin'. He just said, just don't drink so much. And I think, now that sounds reasonable. and I think that's what I'm going to do and golly, you know I always find out where the bottle was in the kitchen at the party and he'd say two drinks and that's all and I'd find out where the bottom was in the chicken and I had a few extras before I went and all this stuff and he couldn't understand why two drinks would make me drunk and he said you know I know you buy this real cheap stuff but it's smooth it really is smooth well it pretty darn well should have been because every time I'd take a drink, I'd put the water back in. The level would always stay the same. And, you know, after I'd done that a few times, it didn't taste very good to me because there wasn't much in it. It was just pretty bland. But that was the kind of way it went along. And anyway, one day, I asked him if he'd go to this open meeting with me and he said, I'll tell you one thing. As far as this program goes, you stand alone. And I thought, I've been stabbed. I'll never live over that. That just really struck me. And, of course, it was an embarrassment to my husband that he wasn't ready to quit drinking. Well, I couldn't ask him to quit drinkin'. I think the only reason that he probably stayed with me when I was drinking is because he was drinking too. If he had been stoned cold sober, I don't think he could have stood it because you know how stupid and silly you get when you're drunk. And I think that helped him stay with me. Anyway, I hasten to tell you that he came into Al-Anon oh, two and a half months or something after I came into AA. And he decided, I could not ask him, But now I have to tell you, in all truth, and he will tell you he was a very enthusiastic drinker. And he kept on. He might have ended up where I was. He was very enthusiastic. But he decided on his own that he would be better off if perhaps he gave up drinking himself. And that also helped save our marriage. So sometimes when he drank he had a bad mouth. And sober, I wouldn't have stood it. Well, it just worked out that we just fit in with each other that way. When I first came in, I knew that it was going to be terribly hard, so I wrote notes to those very near and dear to me that I was going into AA. See, I thought, that way I can't back out so easy. Well, every time I wrote anybody, I'd say, but please don't tell Lois. I meant Lois Wilson, because she may have known other AAs that she loved and saw. But I knew if she found out that I was an alcoholic, that would be the end of our friendship. Now, that shows you my insecurity that I have always had. Very, very vulnerable. Well, I just came across this the other day, and I'll share this for the second time in 16 years. The letter I got from her in April. And it does this couple of lines. Dear Betty, what a surprise. I see when I'm saying, don't tell Lois. Don't tell lois. Finally one day I said to myself, oh my God, I'm going to have to tell Loise. So I wrote her and told her, and she wrote back the next month. Dear Betty, what a surprise to learn of your experience, both tragic and glorious. I am so glad you are NAA. It is another tie to bring us closer together. And that was just the beginning of it. And see, I expected rejection. I guess it was my insecurity. Well, anyway, it worked out. It worked out for the best. A couple of things I wanted to tell you. John that brought me into the program, he could have had, I have 16 years, he would have had about 16 and a half because he'd gone to a treatment center. But I tell you, John was a pharmacist. It was real harder for him, like if I'd been working in a liquor store, you know. And so John has not that many years of sobriety. And he told me, he helped me, he saved my life. He would come by night after night after night and we'd call it his wino wagon. And we'd pick up all these people and we would go to AA meetings all over the place. And he tell me later, he said, Betty, when I was doing that I was not drinking. But he said I was taking some stuff I shouldn't have been in AA. and I got to thinking about that and one time I heard Sister B that we heard referred to this morning and Sister B said, you know, you can use a crooked pencil to draw a straight line and I thought, isn't that true? God doesn't care who he uses when he wants to make a point. We don't have to be worthy to be used and isn't it wonderful because I still, of course, am fighting character defects and will be all my life. I'll just be trying to progress a little as I go along. But anyway, John saved my life and he's been a wonderful, wonderful help in that little town. He's very visible because he's a handsome young man with a wife and three boys and just in the center of town. You know, people have come to John throughout the years Well, you know, one thing I think, AA doesn't just teach us how to handle our drinking. It teaches us howto handle our sobriety, which is what we couldn't handle in the first place. And that's one reason we drank. That's the way it seems to me. You know, we read in the big book that alcohol is cunning, baffling, powerful. And in my own mind, when I hear that, I add, and patient. It is so patient. It will wait for me as long as I live. It is inside me just as much as the color of my eyes. It's a part of me. And we must never, ever get overconfident. I knew this woman who was in MH and MR work for 27 years. I don't know how many people she sponsored. and one day this doctor said you know even though you have such a terrible heart he said probably a glass of wine a day wouldn't hurt you and I don't know if he knew she was in AA or not you know some doctors are not aware of what we can take and what we plant and so that started her and it wasn't any time until that glass of win a day was replaced by a bottle of bourbon in the refrigerator and then it was a very short time until she committed suicide and she had 27 years overconfidence is a real killer now my friend General Custer told me that and he was right I have heard some people say if you have a slip you've probably planned it subconsciously now that may be true sometimes but I can only speak for myself when I tell you what I have to say I don't feel that way about it for myself. To me, I could be walking down the street and it could hit me just like a rattlesnake standing in front of me, just like that, and I would be gone. I think it could sneak up on me just like that. I think I will always be vulnerable to it. And the closer I stay to the program, the less vulnerable I'm going to be. and I need what you people have to tell me and to share with me. Bob and I heard a woman say one time, the person I was will drink again and we thought that was one of the most profound statements we'd ever heard because the person I was will drink again. If I don't stay close to this program, I'm going to gradually become the person I used to be and that person is going to be the same old Betty that used to drink and I will drink again and I know it. Well, also I'd like to share this thought. When we say the Lord's Prayer, we say give us this day our daily bread and you know daily bread is fresh bread. I think we need to keep it fresh every day. my father sent me a poem and the last few lines of it go like this and I always think of the co-founders when I think of this poem it's not what we add to the temple past but only how well we hold it fast how grateful we keep it green and you know gratitude is a marvelous insurance policy and it helps to keep our program green in my opinion if you ever hear somebody say well, I tried AA a couple of times and I didn't like it. To me, that's like hearing someone with terminal cancer say, I tried chemo and I just didn't liked it, so I didn' t go back. It's just as fatal. Well, I think of this sometimes. You know, if Judas had stayed around until the end of his rope, if he hadn' t aborted his life, he would have found that God is there waiting for you at the end of your rope that is where he meets us that is the way I see it I believe that God's goodness is bigger than our badness and I'm so grateful for that and in closing I would say to you a thing that has meant a lot to me this story of fiction there was an imaginary conversation between Christ and Zacchaeus and Christ said Zacchaeas what was it that made you desire this peace and Zacchaeos said why master I saw mirrored in your eyes the Zacchaeous I was meant to be and I think when we look to our disciples and people who have been in the program a while we can see, perhaps, a vision of the person that we might become. And I thank God for sponsors. You see, when I was the only woman, well, there was one other woman who had four months when I came in, and it wasn't long before she had to slip and ask me to be her sponsor, and I just barely knew how to spell Alcoholics Anonymous. But I said, well, okay. I thought, well I can listen, and maybe that will help her. That's all I knew. but i needed so badly some guidance and some help and i didn't have it there was not any now there were friends of ours who lived 50 miles away and they came over every monday night to help us get started in the program the man with the aa and he had about 30 years at the time and he decided he was my sponsor and his wife decided she was bob's answer that they weren't people that we got to communicate with that much and i've always regretted that there were not that many women who had some seniority in sobriety. And now I have a sponsor and she lives about 30 miles away. And that's just about the best I can do in that direction anyway. But I do thank God for sponsors. And I don't know how I would managed without the help of some sponsorship. And I wish I had had more. In closing, I want to share this little thought with you. I believe that God has his own big book and in it he makes a quote and to me it's AA and he says a new life I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you and I think that's what has happened to us and thank you for listening. Thank you.