The Family Disease That Put Her in a Nut Factory – Geraldine D.

I can hardly wait to hear me. P.U. She forgot the most important thing. My name is Jerry. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict, and I've been sober all day. Thank you. I want to thank Chris and sis and Kate and particularly one of my boys Steve I had four boys pick me up yesterday with their shoes all shined and that is an honor my friend because they don't shine their shoes, except right now my life is about as unmanageable as it was when I started in AA, because I get terribly, terribly nervous. How I manage it, I don't know, but we'll start at the beginning and I'll tell you about me, because I want you to know that I was not an alcoholic when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I had problems in my life, a lot of problems, but I was NOT alcoholic. It was my nerves. I had had a brother who was a moral leper he drank too much and I had a terrible time with him so much so that I had to call a child psychiatrist as you heard in my resume I have been in children's work for 20 years before I changed to alcohol, and let me tell you something. I called the only child psychiatrist on the eastern seaboard to find out what I did with a moral leper brother who drank too much. And he said, Jerry, I don't know. He said, now wait a minute. I was at a medical meeting in New York the other night, and there was some guy there talking about something peculiar he was doing with men who drank too much. Didn't say anything about women. Men who drank Too Much. His name was Bill Wilson, and he gave me his card. I'll call him up. And it was our beloved Bill that he called, and I'm glad to say that nearly 47 years ago he came out with two men to Maplewood, New Jersey to see my brother who stayed sober until his death a few years ago. I want you to know that everything I know about myself that is honest and true I found out about after I finally laid down the cudgels and joined AA. Now, I went to AA meetings with my brother and a lot of the real old-timers, and Bill and Lois spent the weekends in my brother's home while I was still drinking. And let me tell you something. if Bill hadn't accepted me and my taking of drugs, I would not be here tonight. So when some of the people have such a fit about the young people taking drugs, he never turned his back on me. And when I was still drinking and said, Bill, how do you... One night out of my brother's, I said, Bill, how do you work this thing, you know? This thing. He looked at me. Bill was a very simple man. He said, Jerry, don't drink. Don't take those pills. go to meetings, and he hesitated a minute and made the most important statement, shut up. That was to be my password. It's a good thing my initials spell God, but I notice on the program they have an O period D period And that, too, is correct because I came close to ODing, overdosing, a good many times. At one time, I was unconscious for 10 days in a hospital in San Francisco from an accidental overdose. And when I came to, they told me I almost died. and in typical alcoholic Irish fashion I looked them straight in the eye and laughed and said you can't kill the Irish and I was drunk in three hours after I left the hospital but when I came to AA and somebody said something about me being insane I said insane, I'm perfectly normal everybody does that don't they no they don't but I certainly did and so I have learned to share ever since and I was delighted when Steve and the boys asked me to come down here and talk to you because I was fortunate to come into AA when I did because it was a wonderful era And although you boys didn't like the females who drank too much and you made it very plain to us, I want to tell you tonight how grateful I am to the non-alcoholic women because they let me sit with them and they didn't make me feel like a moral leper. I was number four woman in New Jersey who was alcoholic and there were only three in my area of which I was one and the women let me sit with them and they took me out when the men went out the women went along and there wasn't a lot of hanky panky on the 12th step calls the husbands and wives went together and the non-alcoholic talked to the non alcoholic and vice versa and it was a family disease and that's why I'm glad to see the family so active here in Missouri you are an active group and I am very happy because this is a very definite family disease I said when I came to AA that there was no alcoholism in my family well my mother was a closet drinker but Verna had a bad gallbladder and Verna threw up periodically and the doctor came and gave her the new drug on the market oh it did wonders for guess what it was heroin just come on the market but now down at the a local store, in the tobacco store you could get cocaine in snuff but the farmhands used that and who wanted to be a farmhand? And then the Indians were in trouble at that time and they smoked weeds and nobody wanted to become an Indian but let me tell you what was illegal. You know how the kids want to be in doing the in thing? The illegal drug was alcohol. And alcohol is the oldest known drug of addiction any way you slice it. And all these little pills are simply dehydrated alcohol, and they don't smell. like all kids I wanted to be popular at 18 I didn't drink a lot of people did but a couple of my boyfriends taught me to carry alcohol from Canada so we could get back with two quarts each woman in the car brought two quarks We had a very novel way of carrying it. We put it in the old rubber hot water bottles. You practiced before you left, so you'd be sure and get it up to the top so it didn't slosh. And you'd take one hot water bottle and strap it on the inside of one leg and the other one on the side of the other. And you put a pair of cotton pants between them so it wouldn't squeak. And if you had to get out at the border, you could get out without making a, you know, and they weren't allowed to search women in those days. Let me tell you something. If you want to be popular in that area, you come to a party with two quarts of Canadian whiskey when you've been drinking rot gut. that's what we called what we brewed, home brew we called it rot gut and it was just about that because you put the garbage in it anything that you could that would ferment you did and when you come back with two quarts of whiskey honey you're popular wasn't very long after I started to drink that I went back to working with the doctors, and at that time you got alcohol in tin cans, a gallon of 180-proof alcohol for about $1.50. Now, I didn't get one every week, but there was some redheaded old hag that used to come around, and I know now that she was a rummy, and she'd come around and for a slight fee she would give me an extra gallon and I would take the gallon to the party and let me tell you something 180 proof alcohol is not bad not bad and you cut it with a little hard cider and throw in a handful of phenobarbital and you'll fly right over the moon Some people say they didn't have any fun getting drunk. I did I traveled a fast track all over the country and I had fun There wasn't any doubt about that but you know things do get tough and as I say I there came a time they say there is a level below which God will not let us go but you'd have thought when I was unconscious that would have been it no that wasn't it But one morning, one morning I awakened in a strange room. Now I don't know about you but I checked out the ceiling every time I waked up just to be sure I knew where I was and most of the time I did but some of the time I didn't. And I looked up at the ceiling and there was a long cord hanging down with a light bulb on the end that was the only light looked over at the window on the right and there were bars on the window and my house didn't have bars on and I look to the left and there was a peephole in the door and you know I'm an intellectual at that time I'm sorry to report. And I knew right where I was, I was in a nut factory. But there was only one problem here. Now I had been in repeated hospitals but I always knew where I was and I awakened in the psychiatric division in a private room with nurses around the clock and my clothes were draped over the chair and nobody was caring about what I did and things were not quite like they usually were. And let me tell you something I had a change of heart almost immediately you talk about instant cures of seeing the light, honey, I saw it right then. And I had called my brother a moral leper for six and a half years both to his face and behind his back. But that morning I said if I ever get out of here I'm going to ask my brother if he'll help me. And the miracles started to come then. I had been enabled all along the way I saw I'm ashamed to tell you 27 psychiatrists I didn't have to pay them they saw me for free and not very happily, I don't think most times but I convinced them all and they all, 26 of them had wonderful diagnosis I was outrageously overworked and I worked hard, there isn't any doubt about that because I was afraid you'd find out what I was doing the 27th one was at the Mayo Clinic and he saw me every day for three months Saturdays and Sundays included and he came up with a wonderful diagnosis that I was outrageously overworked and underpaid. And I was a best-paid woman in the United States and the most spoiled. And I thought he was pretty fine, but there was one problem. He did not tell me that he was recommending that they put me on leave of absence for a year with full pay, all benefits, benefits, and I had too many benefits for me to even tell you about, but that I should be put on for a year. And when they told me I was so incensed that they didn't consult me, that that doctor did not ask me, I told them what they could do with their job, and they did it. And you know something? It's the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm sorry to report that they gave me a bonus in five figures that would be staggering today and in six months I spent it all and went $5,000 in debt where did I do I don't know I was in a continuous blackout why I didn't get in more trouble i don't know that but it took me 20 years to tell people why i got in that nut house locked up i was doing a striptease in a nightclub in chicago with a bunch of doctors and they didn't think it was wise to have it on the front page of the tribune never mind it i thought of them but But here I am, down and out, saying, my brother, I'm going to ask my brother. And I didn't call him a moral leper that day, if he'll help me. And 20 minutes later, the first miracle of the day came to me. He showed up in that nuthouse in Chicago. he had gotten worried he'd been called many times over the years to come and get me and he never would come because the doctors assured him that I was being taken care of but it was out of character for me to be in a strange place locked up in a nut board and he borrowed money from his AA friends because he still wasn't out of debt at six and a half years and he flew out to Chicago and 20 minutes after I said I'm going to ask my brother if he'll help me he showed up and he started to talk to me and he said honey you've made a pretty lousy mess out of your life do you want to do something about it well I wanted to do something about him but I didn't want to go out with that bunch of holy rollers that he was going out with praying all the time saying a serenity prayer and a large prayer who wants to be with that after all i am an important personage here i am locked up no clothes i'm important still the same old garbage you know um but what i said to him when he said do you want to do something about it i crossed my fingers and went back to the old lying and said yes i do I thought let me get out of here and I don't care what he says and the next thing he said put my heart clear down in my shoes he said I love you too much to be objective I can't help you well there went my last hope and I'm devastated and it seemed like a long time before he answered me he said but I'll get someone and we flew back to the east and I'll never forget that flight as long as I live because I was coming off of 20 years of pills and 19 years of booze because while I was running that booze they convinced me to taste some and my dear I will remember to my dying day I was tall I was beautiful I didn't have buck teeth I didn never crooked nose my ears matched and I danced divinely I I have a birth defect, and one foot slides out to the side and frequently doesn't come back. It's a little bit awkward at times. But that stuff just did it. And for the next 19 years, I proceeded to try to get that feeling, and once in a while I did, but many times I did not. but I will never forget what the first drink did for me and I will never forget what the last drink did for me. The first one picked me up, the last one put me in a nut factory and we flew back east and he let me sit in a hotel lobby while he taught a class he was a professor at Rutgers and here I am sitting there no money, no pills and there had not been a day that I hadn't had medication we had a standing joke in the office we had an example room, a great big sample room and the people that were manufacturing these pills put them in there and they said we'll try the new medicine on Jerry and if it doesn't kill her it won't hurt the patients that may have killed me too I went around with a pocket full of phenobarbital all the time just threw in a handful in case I got nervous and I was nervous I never did anything in moderation and still don't, I haven't brains enough so we went back and here I am sitting there shaking from all these pills and all this booze and I made a decision now remember I had been spoiled unfortunately the doctors are the ones who spoiled me I would convince first one and then the other and they protected me they were enablers if you will don't blame your doctor if they're enabllers they never had any education and these boys didn't know what was happening and I don't think I did either I couldn't have told him if I did nor would I have told him but I had never had to ask for anything but here I am no pills no booze sitting in a hotel waiting for my brother to finish three hours of classes nothing the night before and let me tell you something I was in a mess and I made a very important decision I went in the ladies room and going to fix myself up now this is the days before permanence girls and my hair leaves something to be desired with the best of care and I look, I'm going to fix up and then I'm gonna go in the bar and get one of the men to buy me a drink never happened before in my whole life I took one look at me and gave it up it was the most awful sight I ever want to remember in my whole life no makeup nothing it was terrible and so I suffered it out and I went back and my sister-in-law didn't want to take me in but she did and let me tell you something when you see men walking through the wall that aren't there and things coming out from under the door and you're afraid to tell anybody what you're seeing because you know they'll lock you up I had DTs I don't know whether I had a convulsion or not but I had an awful time and in those days you boys weren't happy to have women in the AA group. And they didn't say, now the girls say, dear, would you like to go to a meeting? They said, come on, we're going to a meeting. I don't feel like it. Who asked you if you felt like it? I've got my clothes up. We'll put them on for you. I said, never mind, I'll put them on myself. And off we'd go to our meeting, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut because when I hear people say why I have to drive 30 minutes to a meeting, I say well you poor dear. It was never less than 60 minutes but we had the best meetings we had five or six to a car and we talked all the way there and then heard a meeting and talked alltheway home about the meeting and let me tell you something and I still think it's a good technique. the boys would not let me talk for a solid nine months every time I opened my mouth they said shut up shut up and they would yell at me they didn't know who I was yes they did, I was a drunk and they knew right who they were talking to and I wanted to talk so bad because I was so smart you just don't understand. A couple of women tried to help me out but I don't know whether any of you have run into Little Kitty Little Kitty had the worst mouth in town but she'd help people that nobody else would go down on the Bowery to help and Kitty came in about the same time I did and we had Monsignor McNally between us and that poor guy, I think he died an early death from running around kidding me. My tongue got almost as bad as Kitty's. I've tried to clean it up a little bit but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I kept going to AA and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get out from under that. They didn't let me alone. They drove me to work and they picked me up and brought me home. I had as much, I'd have been, had more freedom in prison and took me to meetings every night and talk, talk, talked, talked. talk, talk. And then after the meetings they'd all come back to your house. Oh. I was seeing it in my dreams. I never knew how awful I looked until one night I got ready to go out to a meeting and I had a dress on that I thought was pretty jazzy and I went in my niece's room to look at the long mirror. She said, turn the light on Aunt Jerry, I want to see what you're wearing. Turned the light on. She said, take that thing off! Lord, oh my God. She said I saw you drunk in that in Chicago and we think we don't hurt anybody? I thought she'd never seen me drunk. And I began to hear little things like this. One night at a meeting the chairman was a little sawed-off soldier from Fort Monmouth. He'd fit right under my arm, and I'm not that tall. And that little snip, he's one of the ones who kept telling me to shut up, and one night I said, I thought you could do AA any way you wanted to. And he looked down his nose at me, that little sawed-off squirt, and said, you don't have a way. and you know something i didn't my way got me drunk um the all during all of this time i was seeing a lot of laws and bill who came out for the weekend but bill never had anything to say unless you asked him a question and if you did it was so simple I remember one good story that I think you'd like my brother was asking Bill how many meetings he should go to and he went into New York to see Bell made a big deal out of and he said now bill the boys are complaining that I don't go to or enough meetings, how many meetings do you think I should go to? Bill leaned back in his chair and he was skinny a little bit like my vision of Ichabod Crane and put his hands behind his head and he said well Oscar, how much how many meeting do you want to go to to save your life? You might ask yourself if you're cutting back on your meeting this is your life I wouldn't be alive tonight I wouldn' have all that it sounds like an obituary to me and at 80 years old you begin to wonder what you want just say I'm a drunk and I was a mean one at that but we went to meetings and I went to meetings and I could see I wasn't going to get away from them. So I decided I'll memorize everything. And I was given the AA book on my 40th birthday, a very poorly written book. Any idiot could write a book better than that, but this idiot hasn't been able to. but I threw it out the window in a snow bank and it came back on the night table and I threw it in the dirty laundry going out to the laundry and it became back on the night stable and I drew it in the garbage and it came back onto the night stable, a little bit greasy, but it was back there I don't know whether you have a book that has legs or not, but this did and finally I decide well what I'll do is I'll memorize those steps and I'll summarize some of this stuff and when I get it all memorized then I'll go back to Chicago and join my friends and drink like a lady now this I'm sober by this time about 7 months by 8 months I had it all down pat I was working of course they drove me to work and picked me up they didn't trust me they didn' t have any driver's license but I had bought an airline ticket I'm all set up got all arrangements made but I went to the South Orange group the first group in New Jersey and one of the first groups in the country on a Sunday night and I could not tell you who spoke or what they said but I was all set up to leave and that night when I came home I sat down on the edge of the bed and why I picked up that book I hadn't picked it up for a long time and it fell open in that particular book page 57, the chapter on how it works and I began to read rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path and I knew I was following the path of destruction and I skimmed down through the paragraph and you know the word honest is there a couple of times and it was an inch high obnoxious word and I didn't want to see it and I got down to the steps and did something that I had never been told to do By the way, I should mention that I did not believe in God. That was for the, you know, the uneducated. One of the AA boys said, how about good orderly direction? And that seemed all right. But I had never been told how to read the 12 steps except as they were written. and this had to be God working and it was my first awakening to the fact that there is a power greater than I am that I choose to call God for I read those steps in the first person you know they're written in the third person but I read them I admit that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable I wasn't aware that I was doing this until later and read on through and closed the book when I finished step 12 and laid down and went to sleep and I had the first decent night's sleep I'd had in eight months you talk about the miracles that god gives us i wakened in the morning that's the morning i'm leaving i awakened in the mornin and the miracle happened the second miracle of aa the first one when my brother came the second one was that morning because my desire to drink and drug and my desire leave had left me and it has never returned from that day to this I have never again been tempted to drink and I went after the AA program then with a different attitude I wish I could tell you that I got so bright I had no major problems but I met an Irishman at the meeting a tall handsome 50 year old bachelor Roman Catholic never been married came complete with aged mother as a package I'm hard-shell Baptist career and divorced I fit in that family like a bee in an anthill but I loved that guy the day I laid my eyes on him and I loved him today died and I still love him and i could have taken a butcher knife and stuck it through him and grounded around and watched him bleed to death and laughed in his face a hundred times and I'm sure he felt the same about me. We lived together and some of you people say well if I was married to an alcoholic it would be different. It would be, it would have been worse. Let me tell you something that men and women do not think alike and don't think they do because they're not and thanks be to God for the little difference wouldn't I be bored to death if they thought like me and we lived together and we went to AA together and we fought and the problem you see is us I had to learn to get around him if I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it but time went on and I finally about eight years I'm going to throw him out and one of his AA friends said well do you want him if he never changes you might ask yourself about your spouse or your friend do you know him if they never change if you don't get rid of them today but let me tell you something the only person who's going to change is you and finally after doing an inventory of the good things and the bad things I decided I did still want him he said okay we're ready to work are you smart enough to get around him and get some things done without him knowing it why certainly I'm smart how dare you hit me and I had a good time getting around him it wasn't big things kids that upset us it's not great big things we had two Lincoln Continentals sitting outside and he wouldn't buy carpeting for the hallway and I fell down the stairs so I went out and bought carpeting for the hallways and the stairs and the bedrooms came home and told him said you didn't buy it for my bedroom did you I said yes I did who do you think is going to pay for it who asked you to pay for it and there was dead silence in typical Irish alcoholic fashion he said well I guess I can pay for it if I want to Let me tell you something. That was a marriage that you won't... Before you get married, you just be ready for the roughest ride you've had, even if you love them to death. I began to find out who I was and began to really look honestly at my life. I had been in town's hospital at the same time Bill Wilson was there several times I was there eight times, he only made it twice but Dr. Silkworth came to see him and he believed Dr. Silkworth but I threw Dr. silkworth out of the room because I expected him as a psychiatrist to come in and talk about my feelings he came in to talk about alcohol and I put him out arrogance that we have. I began to find out who I was, but my growth in AA has been slow but steady. And let me tell you something, if you think working as a professional helps you any, I've got news for you. You've got to work twice as hard if you are because you think you're smart and you don't know what you're doing. You know everything about everybody else and nothing about yourself. And don't... Don't think that you, because you're a professional, you don'T need to go to AA. And don'T think, because you'RE a professional or that you've been sober a long time and not a professional, that you don't have to go to AA. The Lord gave us good forgetters, and I'm glad he did, but the day we forget what alcohol and drugs will do for us, we're doomed to repeat. And I talked a lot about the drugs and the mood changers and so forth with a lot of support from the medical people, and everything seemed to be going pretty well, and my husband was Mr. AA and Mr. Intergroup and Mr., Banquet Chairman and Mr.-God-knows-what and everything was going fine but after he'd been sober 20 years he had a bad back and one of his friends gave him some muscle relaxants I'd gotten a good deal criticism for talking about the medication they gave him some muscle relaxants for a bad back and they helped his back the guy said don't tell Jerry she's a nut and the same man gave him cough medicine and said the same thing don't tell Jerry. And three days later, after 20 years of good sobriety in which he'd helped hundreds of people, he was drunk again. And the sad part about it is he was never to recover. 17 months later after being in 14 detoxes he bled to death of an esophageal hemorrhage I shall never stop talking about drugs triggering your desire to drink which is the drug of my choice Over and above drugs and relationship with the opposite sex, there are a few things that kept me from having comfortable sobriety. And one of them was the word alcohol ick. Now, alcohol is all right, but that ick on the end is dirty. if we'd have called it Jelinek's disease and I had the good fortune of going up to Yale when Dr. Jelineks was still talking up there and being with him they wanted to name alcoholism JelineK's disease, wouldn't it be lovely to go to Jelinex therapy we wouldn't have learned what we've learned from saying I am an alcoholic there is something about this that is good for our ego deflation in depth and that's what Bill says is necessary and I believe it so many of you say well I drink or I take some drugs but I'm not addicted when we use all these words we better know what they mean to us. Do you know what addiction is? Pain plus a learned relief. And we got a lot of relief, and we learned that all of these things were doing it, and it didn't make any difference whether it was liquid or solid, legal or illegal, prescribed or over-the-counter. Your body could care less where you get it from. It's looking for the change of mood. And I say to you non-alcoholics in the room, if you got the same high that I get from these things, you'd be a rummy too because you're not one bit stronger than I am. I come from a good family, good education, and I'm strong as an ox. As a matter of fact, the boys at the lodge now call me Grambo. I'm not sure whether that's a female counterpart of Rambo or whether it's Graham has a bow and arrow, but I go on a strafing mission, they say. And then they have one other thing. They say gray alert, and that means I'm coming. But what I'm saying to you, we learn to laugh at ourselves. We learned to laugh with people, not at them. We learned that we did use this to relieve not so much physical pain but emotional pain and spiritual pain and I had so much spiritual pain. I had an awful lot of trouble with my higher power but as time went on I realized that there must be a God that was looking after me because during Tom's drunkenness he took a shotgun after me that I knew was loaded and it was nothing short of a miracle of God that kept me with my mouth closed because if I'd have opened it, he'd have blown my brains out. But I kept still and pretty soon he laid down the gun and left. I was never to see him alive again. He called one night, said he was at the corner, had a gun that was going to get me this time. At two o'clock in the morning I sat on the side of the bed and another miracle came to me. A friend had sent me a letter with a little card in it, a prayer of St. Francis de Sales. Be not afraid. The self-same Father that took care of you yesterday will take care of your life. He will take good care of today and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering, and this is the important part, or he will give you ample courage to face it. be not afraid and I read and re-read this and he never came back and you know something I've used this so many times when I have been in tough spots oh I had to get rid of an awful lot of old learning for instance the thing that things are moral i wasn't immoral you know that but you see i didn't say that moral is what's right and what's wrong and i was doing many things that were wrong by my standards not by yours but by mine and i've had to get a new set of standards a new sort of spiritual values standards that the god of my understanding, might possibly accept. I have so many young people come and tell me that they've been diagnosed paranoid, and I said, you sure ought to be. I'm watching you every minute. And the other diagnosis that they love so much is manic-depressive. And I said that's right, that's a correct diagnosis. I can't get you with a skyhook and I can dig you up with a spade. so it doesn't really make that much difference the things I had to do was to get definitions I got thousands of pills and hospitalizations on depression oh honey, I'm depressed and then somebody told me what depression was for folks like us it's unresolved discontent and we're too lazy to get off our butt and do something about it so now my depression is gone I can't even have depression anymore resentment oh I've got a resentment somebody said if you want to keep scratching old wounds and tearing them open be my guest well no I don't want any more resentments either I lost all the words and you know we try to communicate. I want to tell you something about communication I wanted to communicate with that Irishman I was married to and I had to write it out, I couldn't talk to him because he yelled and all you have to do is raise your voice and I'm all through don't tell any of the boys that kids but I could never stand him yelling so I decided I'd write him a letter and I wrote this stuff I had to tell him out on a letter and I left it in his desk when he was out and he came in and he picked up the letter and he ran up the stairs hooping and hollering all the way up why don't you learn to talk any of you ever hear anything like that from your spouses sure you didn't and I said read the letter, first line said I'm writing this because you'll yell, and so I grabbed the letter. He started to cry, and I grabbed the letter and tore it up, and this man, by the way, is about six, four and a half and tough as they come, and a big man standing there crying just dissolves me right down to the bootstraps, so I decided I had to write him that letter, so I rewrote it, but I put it on his desk when I was going out and he could yell all he wanted to. What it's all really about is helping each other. I couldn't, I must again say thank you to this young lady that's been doing the interpretation to the deaf. I watched her yesterday working like a dog to get this message through to somebody else. Thank you for being what you are. I appreciate it. you know this is a disease of denial and you can deny all you want to but you know there's seldom a talk that I hear that I don't identify with I went to a meeting not long ago around my area I sort of have to slip in late because most of the people either work for me or are graduates and I don't exactly enhance their ability to talk. And so I sneak in in the back of the meeting after it starts and the lights are down one thing or another and there's a young man talking and if you think you don't get much out of meetings listen with a listening ear and I was listening and I thought well I've been praying for some tolerance maybe that's what I'm supposed to get out of this all of a sudden he said something that was particularly for me he said I have always loved God I have always revered God but in AA I have learned to like God like my friend and that is about the nicest thing that I could think of for anyone to say I have changed from making my spiritual rules from complex to simple in my day they used to say kiss, keep it simple, stupid but now I hear them saying keep it simple spiritually. Keep it down to a place where you can understand it. Not them, but us. Can we understand it? We say we want to be happy. What do we mean by happy? You know, I've discovered that happiness for me is simply being able to live in reality today like an adult instead of a stomping child and I find that such happiness equates with positive thinking and I need to think positively now it isn't so hard when you get to be over 80 you see when you wake up in the morning you've got one thing to be thankful for you can put your feet on the floor you've gotta be thankful you've two if you can stand on them honey, you got it made there are many things that I use to make me laugh I use one liners I try to be realistic when I'm troubled they say well read a whole book or read this you know something I've been reading lately that's real simple one day at a time for allotine any of you seen this if you haven't get it if you're afraid you're going to fail what do you mean by failure are you projecting failure not reaching your goal let me tell you something, that you've already reached your goal. The tools are very simple. It's just living today. Fellowship with people and the God of your understanding and keep doing it. You know alcoholics aren't the only people in the world that we can help. Did you ever try being decent in the grocery store? They open up a new lane for me every time I come in because they say, how are you today, Mrs. D? And I said, I'm always good. Some days I'm better than others. That's true. Any day I'm sober, I am better. Depression, the unresolved discontent is sometimes boredom. If you're bored, you're forgetting to look around yourself. And don't forget to take your own inventory. We are so good at taking everybody's inventory except ours. Ask yourself regularly, like every day, have I grown? In what ways? How's my disposition today? How's my patience? How's my tolerance for other people's ideas, not mine? Have I done better in deciding when to say yes and when to say no? You know it's hard to say, well, I can't be the chairman but I'll be the runner. And I make a better runner than I do a chairman. I don't like the chairmanship. What about compliments? I had the worst trouble having people say, oh, you've made a wonderful talk. And I would go into nine reasons why it wasn't. You know the hardest word in the English dictionary to say is thank you. And also the next one is no. No, I won't collect for the Cancer Society, but I'll type something for you. These are hard things to do. One of the things I did when I had a hard time with compliments, I said, don't be telling me that stuff. I might begin to believe it. And then there's flexibility. You know, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and you don't have to do it your way. And maybe you never skinned a cat. Neither did I. But that's what they tell me. Am I able to recognize that things are starting to be unpleasant? Can I name them? Can I do anything about them? Did I play a part in what happened? So often the English language is not a good language. how often have you said something to your spouse or your friend or somebody and they have answered you back and you said that isn't what I meant and it wasn't but you didn't stop to think you didn' t keep it simple what about your standards you know if you are going to measure your height you got a yardstick I don' t know about you but my standards are the 12 steps. They're my spiritual values but I better look to see whether I'm following them every day and every hour and take a little mini inventory at night. You know, that's a hard thing to do. I think one of the things I have to do is to avoid people that are always bitching because every once in a while I'll take their heads off and it doesn't do any good. If you can't avoid them, try to change the topic of conversation. Say, oh, I forgot to tell you. Don't project failure in anything unless you want to fail. If you want to fail, you just project yourself. Sometimes you say, well, I'm going to go to the wedding and I don't know whether they'll have booze there and I don't know whether I can say no or not go to the wedding and say I'll have diet cola there are other things to drink rather than booze maybe surprise you but it's true and I'm going to I don' t serve booze in my house say well they may not come back then don't come back I don''t care don't exist live to the fullest do more than touch feel deeply and sincerely do more than just look observe and see the reality in everything that's happening do more than read not only absorb but see with a seeing eye what the page has to say do more than hear listen with a listening ear what are people trying to say to you do more than think be sure that what comes out are positive thoughts and do more than talk or say something that might help someone or keep your mouth shut. That is one of the things that you can do. You know, old-timers have nothing special. We're sober today, and if it weren't for you young people, you new people, do you know how far we'd be? Not across the street unless there was a bar over there. We need you. The old timers need meetings, and they need you very badly, and I need AA as long as I live. I can give to people. What can I give? If I live the AA way of life, I can give the gift of example and I can give the gift of time I've got time to sit down and listen to you or listen to you on the telephone or whatever I've got the gift of patience not react too rapidly on what happens and I've got the gift of understanding really knowing who I am helps me to understand you and I have the gift of experience as an old timer but I could lose it in a heartbeat with one drink do you realize that God gives this to us to hold one day at a time and we have the gift of love to give when love is understanding whether we approve or not and while it isn't spring and it isn' t really time to plant gardens I want you to know what I like to see you put in your garden and what I put in mine in every garden I put five rows of peas preparedness promptness perseverance politeness and prayer five very important peas and then I put three rows of squash squash gossip squash unreasonable criticism and squash indifference particularly to this program and indifrence in ourselves and then we better have five rows of lettuce let us be faithful to AA, to God and to the people we love. And let us be unselfish, give expecting no reward. And let unselfish Let us be loyal to whatever we believe in every area of our life. And let us be truthful first with ourselves because you cannot be truthful with others unless you're truthful with yourself. And let's love each other even though we don't like each other we can love each other and no garden is complete without turnips oh goodness I usually hate turnips but these are very important turn up at meetings what if nobody had been there when you came you say well the young ones can go the newer ones can do it the younger ones can come you get to meetings and be there to say, how are you? It's good to see you. And turn up with a smile. Be sure you're laughing at yourself, not at others. Turn up with a new idea, just one. Hey, I can stay sober. That was new for me. And turnup with determination to do the very best you can each hour of each day and turn up living a day at a time comfortably. This is the kind of a garden that I would like you to see. And our friend, Father Fred, who made such a wonderful talk today, and you know I've heard him dozens and dozens of times, and I never heard him any better than he was today if it's good and I think maybe you stimulated and gave him what he needed just as you've been a wonderful audience to me and I've got to finish this thing right almost now but he gave me this poem and I want you to know that I said this prayer for you today. I said a prayer for you today, and no God must have heard. I felt the answer in my heart, although he spoke no word. I didn't ask for wealth or fame, and I knew you wouldn't mind. I asked him to send treasures of a far more lasting kind. I ask that he'd be near each one of you at the start of every new day to grant you help and all his blessings and friends to share it on the way. I ask for happiness for you in all things greater than small, but it was for his loving care that I prayed for most of all. And each night, perhaps you'd like to do what I do. Each night, I ask God to hold my hand. It's better that way, I know, because if I take his instead of his taking mine, I might get afraid and let go. God bless you and thank Thank you so much, you're a wonderful group.