The Pathological Lying That Only the Steps Could Fix – Terry R.

I was much moved by her talk, and I'm kind of partial to this lady too. So it's a great pleasure to introduce Terry S. from Everett. Hi, I'm Terry and I am an alcoholic. And I'm delighted to be here. I'm really, really delighted because I finally met two artisans. When Ellen was talking, she said that, you know, in her home, she saw alcoholism. Well, my father died when I was about five, and I was the only child. and my mother didn't drink, so I never saw live alcoholism. As I said, I was the only child and she was a widow, so I was brought up in a plastic bubble like she watched over me. She sent me to... I'm Irish Catholic origin and I went to Catholic nuns elementary school and Catholic nun's high school and one year of Catholic nuning college and that was about as much as I could stand. So I really not, you know, it wasn't, I didn't know how to relate with men in the house or men at all. So, and it was, you know, you can't say that people get alcoholism because of their environment. I really had a fine home and lots of attention. And I guess you can tell from my accent, I'm not really from Everett, Washington. I'm from Brooklyn, New York. On my street, in Brooklyn, they're very ethnic-minded. On my Street, they were all Irish Catholics. And on Sunday, you would walk down this avenue, and on my Street you would smell corned beef and cabbage cooking and beer. You see the guys going up and down. They used to call it Russian the Growler back in Brooklyn when you run up and get a pitcher of beer and run down. they used to do that and on the next block you could smell spaghetti and garlic and you would hear Tarantella music and red wine and the next you smelled sausage and the Polish people were there so I knew how everybody lived and it was a fine existence I suppose but that time comes when you are 19, 20 and everybody's getting married and making decisions about their life and the people I went to school with they were all married and my mother was insisting I do something her first choice was be a nun and her next choice was marry an Irish Catholic preferably with a job and like I always felt frightened of everything she frowned on me staying out I was like 19, she frowed on me staying out after 10 so I married since I wasn't allowed to cross the street I married the guy that lived next door who was Irish Catholic who was going to police academy and he was going be a cop so we got married And I think of all the ingredients that's supposed to go into a decision like that, you know. Now this is even before I started drinking. I had had Christmas wine or something but I wasn't really drinking so I made that decision to please my mother and he was nice and that's what they were doing. It was a stylish thing to do so I did that. And, you know, I know the importance of such a decision today. But I didn't do that then. Like the grown-ups say, you're supposed to do that. So I did that. After I got married, I still was so weird and immature. After two years, there were no Catholic Irish babies coming. So it was strongly suggested that I quit work and stay home. So I stayed home, and another year went by, and there was none, and another years went by and there wasn't. So like now, staying home and him going to work nights and afternoons and mornings, it was really boring. And I had absolutely no sense of how to relate as an adult. I seemed like I was, like, four years old for 23 years. It just seemed like, ah, sit around, you know. And one day, you Know, I liked beer in the summer. And so I would just sit around and had some beer and a sandwich, and that tasted good. And then he wouldn't come home if he had to work from midnight to late, and I was kind of scared alone. And I found out if I had some gear before I went to sleep, I'd sleep better. So then I found out highballs taste better at night, and I started that. And so, hey, it seemed like all of a sudden there was a great dependency on this, on drink. I would wake up and drink, and i would do some housework and fall asleep and wake up. And it was just a terrible, uninteresting existence. and for the longest time nobody was picking up on this I seemed to be able to stay alert and awake and make sense and converse and the only thing was I was getting yelled at because I wasn't doing any housework but you can't do everything so then he would come home and I wouldn't be alert anymore I was kind of falling off the couch a lot so he would get angry and I would promise you know, that was one of the greatest things that happened when I came to AA I don't have to promise I'll do better anymore I really want to say a special welcome to the new people in the audience the guy and the gal back there there's women and there's men alcoholics and that's the only difference. We all drink the same alcohol, and it does stuff to us mentally and physically that it doesn't do to others. So I started getting in a little trouble, and I would promise everybody I would do better, and I just was powerless, and I didn't know what was going on. So finally they took me to a psychiatrist, my husband and his mother and his aunt and my mother and my aunts so the psychiatrist the psychiatrist said he told me that I should you know he said to me you know just if you're tired all the time and that's what he said I had housewives fatigue he told why don't you have a little can of beer when you iron a little glass of wine I don't like wine just have a little if you insist I went through that then that didn't work so then I finally went to another doctor I went to a priest once and the priest said every morning when you get up now drink some salt water so I did that one day and I threw up and boy was it good to get a shot of whiskey down and get that taste out of my mouth so I went to a doctor who said that I was depressive and he said to me you take one of these pills every morning before 10 and it'll make everyday rosy so I took one of those pills at 10 And I didn't feel, you know, sleepy and I didn' t feel dizzy. But I didn'd tell him anything about booze and he didn't tell me anything about booze so I continued to have a couple of cans of beer and a liverwish and onion sandwich and a shot of whiskey and another sandwich and some more beer. And this went on like about after two weeks. That 10 o'clock pill was really enabling me to do some housework. and my husband was so happy he would come home one time he came home and I had taken all the maps from the National Geographic and I made one whole wall it was just lovely and he was so delighted with me and so I figured if that made him so happy I took another pill at 2 o'clock and another pill at 6 and booze and man, when I would go to sleep at night or lay down at night my heart would go right through my dress I'd just go like this and my eyes were like this all the time and I didn't know that stuff was what it was it's dexedrine, it's speed but it sure did the job for me everyone was telling me how great I was you could eat off I would go wash your windows and your floor just to keep busy, you know. So one day, I remember this so much, one day he was sleeping upstairs. That's another thing. In this time we lived in a house in Flatbush and there was bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen and everything was downstairs and for the longest time I thought I had arthritis. I could hardly get up and down those stairs, you know. I really was convinced of it. My mother said, yeah, it runs in the family, you know. So does falling off the couch. So I was ironing with the can of beer. Now, I was arning fast. And I don't know what happened, but I fainted. and I knocked over the iron and the ironing board and I hit a radiator or radiator I'm being corrected in my English and I split my head up here I still got marks I got stitches he took me to the doctor and in the aid car and everything and the doctor said she must be epileptic and he said no pretty bright doctor right so they didn't know So by now, my husband was so sick and tired of me. He had put me, you know, he'd spent a lot of money with psychiatrists and doctors. So he said she has to go to the hospital, the doctor said. So he put me into the city hospital because being a cop, it didn't cost anything. So they took me in an ambulance from Brooklyn to Coney Island. And just Coney Ireland is exactly like you think, Coney island, you Know, with the Ferris wheels, it's crazy. their hospital was awful they tied me down and they kept me there for 10 days and I went into DTs and I remember knowing that they tied me down and thinking what am I doing in a place like this and a young lady like me from St. Francis Academy why am I tied down like this so I would tell the nurse would you please untie me and she would say no and then I would go into a dream world or something And there was a, I kept calling her to change the channel on that television. And she says, there's no television, that's the fire hose, you know. So that's, that was horrible. But I was in there and for ten days I was there. And when they let me out, oh, they swung by the mental hospital before they let me home. and they asked me some questions from the daily news, you know, the news of the day. I was not into news at that time. They asked me who was the president and I thought I went Kennedy. And they went Wright. And then they asked me to count backwards and boy was I glad I went to St. Francis Xavier that year. So I counted backwards and let me go home. Well, I got home and I decided I figured this all out. I never wanted to go through that again. And I said, I will never take pills again. So after five days, I was all nourished with, you know, that glucose and all those things they put in you, and I felt fine. So I went up to the delicatessen. I went right by that drugstore, and I went in the delis, and I got some beer. And I didn't know anything about AA. You know, even after being tied down there, nobody said anything about AAA. And this was like 1962. They didn't say nothing about it, and I didn't know about the first drink. One can of beer would start me on that again, but I didn' t know that. So I started drinking again to squish it together. I didn''t have DTs the next time, butI kept getting in trouble, stealing the household money, finally took the money away. it was constant paranoia about everything it was just a hell of a way to live I had no friends there was a really neat lady on the block that I really liked and one day she finally said to me I wish you wouldn't come around anymore when you're drinking and that humiliation those were the things that got me to Alcoholics Anonymous it wasn't the DTs and it wasn't the hospitalization. It was something like that that I could still hear saying please don't come around when you're drinking and so I didn't have her and I had nobody and all I had was to lay on the couch and drink and watch television. I was so into soap operas that I really lived in them and there was one on like General Hospital you know, everybody's favorite so I was watching this one time and there was this doctor's wife who she was I identified with her all the time and she used to drink at home and I would look at her well, she looked different than me I mean, she used to drink out of stemware and she had a white beautiful velvet lace penwa and I drank out of a can and I had kind of a flannel bathtub with a little ketchup over here But I identified, and this poor, I thought, no wonder she drinks, you know. He was fooling around with this nurse in the hospital. And this one episode, the doctor and the nurse went to dinner at, I remember, at the Blue Azure Italian restaurant. And it flashed back to Mrs., the doctor's wife, and she's home and she'S crying. And so I went to my phone and I dialed CBS. and I wanted to talk to that the doctor's wife please I said and the operator said what? I want Dr. Malone's wife please so she said would you go sleep it off that was really gross and that's how much I was into that and they were the only people I knew and I kept the blinds closed that two years was hell on earth So one day I was out in the yard in Brooklyn. I was hanging up clothes. That's really when I needed a dryer, you know, but I used to have to go out and carry a biscuit out and hang up clothes, and I just felt unworthy to live, just like worse than the lowest insect, and I started to cry, and I fell down on the ground, and the lady next door said, What's the matter? And I hadn't talked to anybody. I just didn't want to... So she said, What's wrong? matter. And finally I went over to the fence and I said, I said to her right out, I drink a lot and I can't stop. And you know, this while, and I didn't want to mix with people because I just didn't like them, but she insisted. And I went in and at that point she had a visitor, a woman sitting, having coffee with her. And, and this woman was really nice. And she said to me, you know, you don't have to live like that anymore she said my husband was like you and now can you picture this I'm all slobbed up with tears and just just drained and she's given me a ray of hope and she says to me my husband is sober 15 years and the first thing came to my mind who'd want to be sober 15 years God that's a good advertisement so she says we can help you if you come with us to a meeting tonight we'll come by and pick you up and I said don't come tonight because my husband is home and he doesn't know I drink I believe that I don't know if you believe that you didn't look drunk I believed that I didn't look drunk when I was drunk. I also believed that if I put enough lipstick on, that I looked sober. So by 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I looked like Minnie Mouse most days. So I went to that meeting with them that night and when Ellen was talking, she said she sawed the eyes. I saw those eyes. I saw happy eyes. I saw sober men and women talking about making it every day, coping every day. There was a speaker, and she was telling about how she drank, and I was checking off or identified right down the line. She used to hide empties, which is crazy, but I did that. Now, when I didthat, there was no doubt in my mind, butI was home, really. so I went back and I went back and all of a sudden at home it's different I don't know, you're home all the time and you're there no matter how you are but when you start going out every night it was different, sober or drunk and he didn't like that going out everyday so there was a lot more fighting about going AA and our marriage just didn't seem to be too cool anymore I had suggested Al-Anon, but he really felt that because of his position in the police department that it was a reflection on him. There were fights all the time. One night he said, you won't go. I said, I will go, and he socked me. And he never hit me when I was drinking. So I went to my meeting, and I had a black eye. and some old guy there who's sober a thousand years said to me, listen, girl, you keep coming back and you tell him the night that he can keep you sober without AA, then you'll stay home. And you know, I was doing everything they said, so I said, okay. So the next night, he said, you're not going. And I said the night you can keep me so punk, he hit me in the other arm. So that didn't work out too well, so we got divorced. And that's how I made my amends to him. I moved out of town. So I'm after about a year and a half in AA in Brooklyn. but never staying sober but staying sober without any program do you ever know what I mean I didn't read the big book I didn' t incorporate the steps into anything because I didn''t go to those stupid step meetings you know I didn ''t want to have anything to do with closed meetings I wanted to go to open meetings, they are more fun And I met a fellow in AA, and we got married, and we moved out to Spokane. And there was no work there. And in this trip, no AA. And then down to California. And when I got down there, I figured in my head, I'm a year and a half without it. I don't need those stupid meetings. But I had no program. And one day when he went out, I don' t know what happened. Somebody said, Oh, I know. I found out I was pregnant, yeah. And I thought, oh. And I went out and got a six-pack and started that big circus again in this new life in the West Coast. But I had no program. So that craziness went on for another two years, and he started drinking and I started drinking, and another baby came, and he got caught on a DWI and we had to pack everything into a Volkswagen and make this mad dash up the coast out of California into Oregon. And you know, I don't know if they do it anymore but they used to stop you at the California border and ask if you... They come over slow but I really am so immature I thought they were after us. all they wanted you got any fruit I thought sure they're going to ask my name because we skipped out of $80 bail something, I don't know so we got across the border and then we had to go to another border and finally got into Lake Washington in Washington on this side I didn't know there was East Washington, West Washington. I don't know how I even got out of high school. I didn' t know how Washington was, you know. And I got into Lake Washington, and there was these crumpets. All we had was 25 bucks, two babies and one on the way. And we found these. They're not even there anymore, and I think that's a boon for our health. There's something called the Red and White Cabins on Lake Washington. gross I'll tell you there's one toilet in the middle and all these little cabins around and you're drunk and two little babies we spent that 25 and I wrote a big pleading letter to my mother she sent another hundred he was looking for work so finally he found some work again God helped just a couple who probably looked at this menagerie I had said do you want a house up in Marysville and I thought she said free until you get on your feet and I don't know who they were I know the names and I know them now but I didn't know whom they were she just felt sorry for us with the babies so we took this little house in Mariesville I cleaned it up for them and they let us stay there and then we sent back rent and all of a sudden one day the new baby came and he was two months old and I said I can't live like this no more and I was positive just as positive I don't know I thought I can not get back to where I was even if I did ever get sober I would never enjoy it like I did but I went to the Marysville Wednesday night group I went in there and it was all men and this was 1968 in October and they were all steelhead fishermen and they're not used to women coming in and they we're all talking about steelhead and where to go tomorrow and stuff like that but they were kind and good and they had those AAIs that I love and I stayed sober and after six months they trusted me to collect the collection money and pay the rent and buy the coffee and that was a closed meeting and I hadn't been very big on closed meetings and we studied the steps and I said to myself this was all subliminal it was coming to that's what AA is it's trying to do God's will instead of figuring it out myself when I didn't have here for brain drunk or sober trying to give things time give it time, don't make a decision don't try to fix it don't trying to lead you into saying what I want you to say or set you up and those little things I learned day by day in Marysville and they were so good to us just so good and then I made a 12 step call once on a gal named Jeannie and Gen Genie made a 12-step call and so we got three women and all of a sudden it started to get to be a normal group it was men and women it was a fellowship of men and woman like it says in the book instead of just men and me the biggie for me was the service in that group they trusted me with the money I could never be trusted with money and the trust they gave me. You know, my husband back in Brooklyn would send me to the store for, say, for the PI, you know, and I would get this Seattle Times just for spite. I don't know what kind of mind that is. And then we'd say, why didn't you get the right paper? And I would lie automatically. They didn't have it. And that's the kind of life. I just lied, pathologically lied, and tried to put one over on you but didn't have the guts to tell you I was doing it. And those are the things I learned how to try to do better. I stayed as I got to be the GSR, the general service rep of that group. and I'm going to tell you that if you're in AA and you haven't chosen a home group yet please do yourself a favor I know you're staying sober and you love it and you're enjoying it but commit yourself to a home groups and you know no matter what's going on in my life every week on Wednesday night it has to be something special that I don't be at Marysville on Wednesday night. And I wish you'd do that, too. Pick a home group, and you're there. I always say to somebody, if I meet somebody when I'm out of town and I kind of like them, I say, what's your home group? And they tell me, you know, I belong to Bellevue Thursday. And I say well, if ever I'm down there, I'll stop in and see you. And I found that the people that give me a hassle about what do you mean home group. They're all good groups. I belong today. You know, I never can find them, though. And that's cool, too, because then you don't have to commit yourself and if you feel like drinking, you can go drink, you know? But I don't know, there's something about the love of a home group that really keeps you hanging in there. The biggest thing in my life was when Ellen was talking about taking drama lessons. That was one of my dreams when I was a weird teenager. I wanted to be on the stage. They didn't have drama in Brooklyn. The whole street was a big drama then. But, I don't know, I felt very proud in being a GSR and then the Everett groups elected me to be their district committee member and that was an honor. And it's exciting and it's fun and if someone says that service crap is for the birds that's because they haven't tried it please give yourself a break and lend yourself to the group and you know it's more giving and gratitude to give yourself and your time than your money it's easy to throw a buck in but we don't have enough people in service that love AA I had a big gift given me three years ago I was selected and elected to be the delegate from Washington. And that's what I think that this one thing that happened in those two years, and I'll share that with you tonight. I was sent back to the General Service Conference, and the last day there we visited Stepping Stones. That's the home of Bill Wilson. All the delegates from all the states were brought out there in a big bus, And it's upstate New York in Bedford Hills. And they pull up this real quiet, winding, tree-lined country home. And it is like a little New England cottage. And we get out and walk up this gravel pathway. And the floors are just like this, you know, just sparkling. And Lois Wilson, his wife, is sitting in there. Now they had told me, you are going to meet Lois Nelson. But I don't know, because he's so precious in my mind. I thought that Lois Wilson, I really thought this, would be sitting on like a red velvet chair with a red velvet rope and that the delegates would walk in front and say hi and go on, you know? It wasn't like that. She was sitting on the couch and she said hello and she says help yourself to the potato salad and sandwiches and go upstairs and see his room And it was a big deal to be walking on the floor that he walked on, the man that saved my life. I'm telling you, that was a really big gift. I went upstairs and there was his bed and her bed and his dresser and his comb. That may sound corny, but it was so exciting. I had all kinds of goose pimples. And it had the handwritten book that he wrote, as Bill sees it on the front it said to my sweetheart his first manuscript was for her and all pictures they brought us out back where his office was and the desk on the side was all wet wood buckles and the veneer was buckling and I said aren't you going to repair this and they don't to cherish it like I would have they said yeah we'll get to that but we got a lot of other work to do so we got out of there and when we were going back to the bus I picked up some pebbles off that road put them in my pocket and all the way back to New York I kept thinking the nuns would be mad at taking those pebbles if every delegate took pebbles they'd have a bald driveway but that was a highlight I'll tell you life today is comfortable it's exciting I'm married to an AA member which makes, you know, at least when coping with everyday problems come up we have a program to turn to and I don't feel like the whole world is a bunch of grown-ups anymore you know, I can look eye to eye and I try my best anyway to have an open mind on problems I fall short lots of times but by going to regular meetings and I do not care like Halloween will be 13 years but I can feel it when I am off the beam it is like in the aircraft You can feel when you're having personality problems at work or that you better get to a meeting. I do, I really do. I want to thank you so much for letting me come here tonight. It's just a delight being with you. And before I close, I wantto share, I heard this joke. and i you know oral roberts oral robert's this is not true so don't give anybody's devotee i'm only kidding he died he didn't die but he died he goes to heaven and saint peter says are you all roberto and he says yes i am and he said oh i want you to meet my boss so God comes and he says are you Oral Roberts and Oral Robert says yes I am and he said just stay there I want you to meet my father now God the Father comes you know and he goes I hear you're Oral Roberts and he says yeah I've got a little arthritis right up in here and uh i'll tell you so here i was climbing around and trying to find another speaker and i had one right in my own house so i says ma you had it But this lady, really, she over the years, some 31 years we've been married, she's contributed significantly to my insanity. And that's the reason I am like I am today. I go around mumbling to myself sometimes and talking to my cats and dogs. But really, She's been pretty good to me. She got her Al-Anon backbone one hell of a lot longer before I got sober, I'll tell you that. And if it hadn't have been for Al-Anon, I'm quite sure that we wouldn't have the life that we have today. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce my wife, Ellen B. Hi, my name's Ellen and I'm a very grateful member of Al-A-Non. But I was rather surprised this morning when I got told that I was it for tonight. I started earning my dues into Al-Anon many years before I ever found the program or long before the program was ever in being. That I was born into a household where there was alcoholism from, I guess, before I was born. And as I grew up, well, the disease progressed and my father who was the alcoholic and my mother who was non-alcoholic, but her like I, I think we wound up sicker than the spouses. I had, I was surrounded with alcoholism as I was growing up and for a long time I didn't know that the difference between normal drinking and alcoholic type drinking that a lot of kids that I went to school with you know it was the thing to do to go out and have a drink or something well I never really liked it but I would go along with the crowd periodically and as I went along there were only certain friends that I would feel comfortable with inviting into the home because I never knew what my father's condition was going to be if he was home, and I didn't know what my mother's condition would be if it was a pleasant mood or a screaming mood. And I swore to myself, I will never, ever be like this when I grow up and get married and have a family. Little did I know what the years would bring for me. and later on I learned to say leave the word never out of my vocabulary because I found out you certainly eat that word many times over. The girls I did invite home, now looking back on it, I invited them because there was problems in their homes and we taught the same language and we understood where the other person was coming from And we didn't have to say anything to know where the other person was at at that time. And we did not look down on each other because of someone else in the family, and we knew that there were doors that were closed to us. We did not know why, and I figured, well, you know, if I was just really good and excelled at different things, that, you now, I would be more acceptable. Well, I think I was acceptable to other people, but I was not acceptable to myself. But this I didn't realize at the time. And my folks, I wanted piano lessons. That was my one ambition in life when I was growing up. I wantediano lessons. Well, we couldn't afford a piano, let alone the piano lessons, so my parents decided that I could take drama lessons. So I started drama lessons when Iwas in fifth grade. Well, that was great. I could be whoever Iwanted to be. I was a gypsy, I was a southern belle I was Pandora the Greek goddess in one play and many things you know and I was transported into a different world I could leave this miserable existence that I felt that it was behind and the life that I had up there on that stage was just fabulous as i went along in school i went out with many different types of boys and looking back on it now the ones i seemed to gravitate to were those who drank more than the others did i don't know why i guess because this was the pattern that i had seen in my own family and i had known my spouse for quite a number of years in fact since i was three years old his aunt and uncle lived next door to my grandmother and his cousin and him and I used to play. Well, Pat and I would make dollhouses and he would be a tornado and come along and tear them up. So from beginnings like this we gradually started dating and I knew Richard Drank when I married him and when I was going with him before I said yes that I would marry him, but I didn't realize how much. And I figured, well, by this time in my senior year of high school, I was a prime fixer. If I was good enough to somebody and did everything that they wanted done for them, then everything was going to be just fine and dandy and you wouldn't have to worry about it. Well, so I ran from an alcoholic childhood home right into an alcoholic marriage and I had my rude awakening to this less than 30 days after our marriage vows were said and I thought, you know, what's wrong? You know, I'm not doing something right. And so, you Know, I would try and say, well, what is wrong? He would say, Well, you ought to do this. You ought to try that. So I would do that and it still didn't work. And then I thought well, it's those friends of his down there that he works with When we get a transfer, he was in the Navy. He was career Navy man by this time. And so I figured, well, you know, a transfer coming up would take care of it. We would go someplace else and we would have a new set of friends and he wouldn't be running around with these same set of friends that he did before we got married. So we got transferred from Washington DC where he was stationed to Long Beach, California. That's clear across the United States. You know, you wouldn't think you'd find the same friends over there, but he found the same friends, you know, maybe by a different name, but the same type of friends. And so things went along and I found myself getting the screamies more often, sitting up nights wondering where he was and why didn't he come home? You know, what was I doing wrong? And, you know, when he was overseas on the ship, I would sit at home and wonder, What's he doing? You know. Who's he with? What's she doing? You know making myself absolutely miserable. And there was nothing on this girl. You know God's green earth that I could do about it. And all this time I'm going to church thinking, You know I'm being a real good soul only. I'm not thinking about me. I am praying to God. God make him be good. you know let make things change when he comes home well when the ship came back you know it was the same story over and over and as we progressed through the years and i became sicker very rapidly and uh we had two sons and uh in quick succession and then there was a period in there of no more children then we had two daughters and we ended up in japan and that was a very dark period of my life and i was focusing more and more in on the alcoholic i was not paying attention to myself and i Was very busy all the time and i figured if i was involved with the things that the children were doing with scouting and PTA and running here and running there and doing volunteer work at the hospital. And, you know, my mind would become so occupied that I wouldn't have time to think about how miserable I really felt on the inside. But it didn't work that way. My mind was always very busy running on what was the alcohol doing, you now. He could be going through periods of, you know, where he was very happy and I was the most miserable person on the earth. But they say when I finally found Al-Anon that we do, some of us, become much sicker than the alcoholic. After we came back to the States, we were stationed in Stockton, California. And at one time, for some reason or other, my husband was downtown drinking and he wound up at our church. And he talked to Father Barker that night and told him, well, he was interested in going to AA. Well, I didn't know. All I knew was that Father BarkER ended up bringing him home about 1030 this one night. So the next night, he didn't come straight home from work. and about 5.30 our doorbell rang and I went to the door and there's this man standing there and he says, Hi, I'm Denny. I'm from AA. And I said, You know, I looked around and said, Is there any neighbors out? You know what's this guy doing standing on my doorstep? And so I'm sure he could tell by the look on my face I didn't know why he was there or anything. He says, Oh well, let me come on inside. Father Barker sent me. So I says, yeah, come on in. And he said, Richard's not home. And I said, no, he's not at home. Or was he expecting you? And he says, well, I thought maybe he was. He says, as long as he's at home, I'll talk to you. So Denny and I sat down, and we had a nice conversation. He told me something about him. And he gave me the first glimpse of someone outside of my family that was an alcoholic. That I figured, you know, a real alcoholic that belonged to AA was down on Burnside or, you know, Lower Main Street at that time. And this man was completely different. And he tried talking to me about Al-Anon. Well, I made all sorts of excuses. Well, I couldn't go. We only had one car and I never knew when, and, you know, I was going to get to use it. And, you Know, that there wasn't anything wrong with me. If he would quit drinking, then our life would just be fine. But his drinking was the whole problem with our family. So Denny told me, he says, Well, if you ever want to talk to somebody else, he says just contact me or Father Barker and they'll put you in, let you know who to talk too. He says, there's somebody there at church that you know that will talk to you if you want them to. Well, I never wanted to because I figured, you know, there wasn't anything wrong with me. And besides that, he was getting out of the Navy. He was retiring, and we were going to be leaving Stockton. We were goingto take a geographic again thanks to Uncle Sam. Well, we did the geographic, but it was the same. and the disease, of course, was progressing more and more down the line. And I busied myself once again. I worked with the Boy Scouts. I was the only mother in our area there in Artesia that was working with the Boy Scout other than maybe baking stuff for their bake sales, but I was carting them to the mountains and here and there. I was really good. As Ramona said, if any of you have ever heard Ramona talk, And as the alcoholic drank more, she got gooder. Well, I got good. I taught Sunday school. Heaven help those kids now. You know, I don't know what impression I had on them. But I thought, you know, there again, you know, if I could be busy, you know, doing things for, you know, trying to busy myself, doing for other people, I wouldn't have to think about me and how sick I was inside, and I was sick. I was physically sick by this time. The doctors had put me on tranquilizers and on pep pills, but I didn't like the way they made me feel, so I wouldn't take them. Thank God for me that I did not have the tendency towards drug dependence or I would have probably been ten times as bad as the alcoholic spouse I continued to choose to live with. And by this time, I was ashamed of the fact that I love this man. That people would say, well, why do you stay with him? Well, I don't know. You know, we've got four kids and all this. And, you know, I'm not going to stay with this man anymore. I was a shame to say I love him. He does have good points about him. And this made me feel bad. And I couldn't understand why I kept feeling so bad inside myself. He wasn't feeling that bad. You know, he'd get up and I don't know how he went off to work every morning, but he managed to and he didn't seem to be the worst for wear. But I kept feeling worse and worse and I just, you know, was beginning to feel like I was drowning. I was in this pit and there was no way out. And we took another geographic. We moved from Artesia out to Corona, California. and you know things were going to be better again we were going to buy our own home finally and settle down and you know we're going to have a different life well it wasn't it was it got a little different the sickness on both of us got worse and by this time you know I we had been out there for about oh six months six to nine months I guess and And I finally, you know, I said, God, you know, if I can't go on like this, something has got to happen. And while we were in Artesia, someone else he had approached AA again and they couldn't get through to him. So they tried to get through to me on Al-Anon, but no, I still wasn't ready for the message. And I made all sorts of excuses again. Well, finally, I ended up in Corona in our family doctor's office and uh he said ellen he says if you're going to stay in the marriage he says you've got to do something for yourself he says i can give you valium to help you when the going gets so rough you can't take it anymore on your own he says but you've got to be able to do it for yourself and i'm going to tell you that i'm not going to Got to do something for yourself. He says, you're sick physically because your mind, you're emotionally sick. And I says, what can I do? He says. I suggest Al-Anon. And he says it is for the families of alcoholics. And he said even if you choose to not continue in the marriage, he says, I really believe you need it. so I says okay fine you know who do I go to he says if you're really interested in going I'll give you the name of someone to contact so he gave me this lady's name and I already knew her husband he was our family dentist so they took me to my first Al-Anon meeting well I went to a couple with them and you know I walked in there with them I really didn't know what to expect They told me that I was not going to go in and talk about what the alcoholic was doing, but I was going to learn how to cope with my own feelings because I was not coping anymore, no way, shape, or form. And they said, you will learn if you really want the program, you will earn a better way of life. So I went in with open ears, and I saw smiling faces. I didn't see just lips smiling, but I saw the eyes that were smiling. And, you know, that was one of the first things I think I ever saw in Al-Anon is that the eyes of those people who had been around a while, they had some life in them. They weren't dead and lifeless. Like, you Know, I could look in the mirror, and there was absolutely nothing there for me. And there was love in that room. You know, those people cared about each other. And I figured, well, you know, all of their husbands and wives must be sober. They couldn't be this happy if they were still living with practicing alcoholics. Well, I found out that about 50% of those people were still living with practising alcoholics, and I was amazed because I thought, how can they feel so good? And as I sat there and I listened and I kept my mouth shut and I listened and I listened and then when we left the meeting I talked all the way from Riverside to back to Corona asking questions I just couldn't get enough and so later on that week I called this woman up and I says can you take me to a daytime meeting I'm really feeling lousy can you and she says sure I know where there's a daytime meeting today she says where are you and I said I'm at work but I'll leave so i went to my boss and i says i need to take some time off this afternoon i signed out on leave for the rest of the day and we went to a noon meeting and i listened to men who were there on their lunch hours talking and i that helped me get the alanon program through to me i thought because you know in my life i had been so oriented to where the man you know said you know what went on in the house and all. And here I thought, well, if these men can turn emotionally loose of their wives and be happy within themselves, surely I can detach from my spouse and be happy. And this was one of the first things they told me. Don't pin your happiness on someone else. You can be happy no matter what another person is doing, no matter how close you are to them that all you have to do is follow that higher power accept that higher power well I had always believed in God or I thought I had but I wasn't on a close relationship with him that I was selfish I said I want this I want that you do it this way you know you make him stop drinking you make my children do this you know and that's not the way you get God to work. He doesn't bargain. I found out the hard way after many years of trying to bargain, well you do make him stop drinking God and I'll do such and such for you. He just doesn't work that way. And this detachment they talked about, it took a while for that to get through to me but then I started little by little, I'm a slow learner, and little by little it did come through to me and i started detaching and i started feeling better about myself and i stopped i got rid of this hurting in my gut and my ulcer healed over and my children started being happier my spouse started being happy around the house he couldn't figure out what i was doing at these meetings he had went to a couple of AA meetings on the nights that I went with this couple to Al-Anon but he decided well that wasn't for him but I continued going to Al Anon because I knew that it was for me that if I wanted any sanity in this life or happiness I had to go on to Al Al-Anon. Well after the first rosy glow wore off with him he didn't like me going out to these meetings at night or if he could rant and rave at me, and he got no reaction. And so I had been, we'd had a speaker's meeting down there, and this husband and wife team spoke. She was Al-Anon, and she was AA. And she told about how she had started into Al-Anon, and her husband didn't want her to go. And so he had went out this one evening and pulled all the plug wires on her car. And she thought, you know oh god you know how do i go because he had the keys to his car she didn't have a set of to those so she just said god help me get this car running i need to go to that meeting and she managed to get the plug wires back on and her name was ellen too well about two weeks later this one evening i came home from work and hidden my spouse had came home he says you going to that damn Al-Anon meeting tonight? I said, yes, I am. I don't want you to go. Well, I said sorry but I'm going. I don' t want you to go, you're not going. I said well I am going so whether you want me to or not I'm going. I'm not talking about you, I'm going for me. So I said you're not going to the damn meeting and he stomped out of the house. Well I heard him out in the garage so I went and I looked out the living room window. I couldn't see what he was doing but my car was parked in the garage and I thought, what is he doing? So after dinner was over and I got myself ready to go, I went out and before I tried starting the car, I lifted the hood. There lay all the plug wires. And I thought God, I don't know what you're trying to prove to me that you really work or what I says, but you help that other Ellen help me now because I need that meeting or I'll go in and I'll kill them. So, I had never had to put plug wires on a car before. I have changed tires and added oil and did other things but I'd never put plug bars on. I put the plug bars one and they all fit. And I got, shut the hood, got in, started the car and I went off to my meeting and felt very good and I didn't have any resentments I think he had a few resentments from what I heard later but my life continued to be better the more meetings I went to and the more I heard and people shared with me and I began to share with other people my experiences and the strengths that I had gotten out of the program and one of the things I'm the most grateful for is that through this program I found my God and I know that as long as I walk with my hand in his I'll never go wrong and I don't ask for things anymore I say thy will be done not mine I've got to pray every day to keep my self-will out of the program or out of the way or I am definitely in trouble because my self will has gotten me into trouble all of my life but as long as I remember that God upstairs is looking over me and mine then I'm in fine shape and I learned to work this program with my children and if it hadn't been for that I think they would have driven me up a wall but I was able to turn loose of them and say God take care of them whatever you have in mind for them, then they're in your hands because I can't lead them around by the hand 24 hours a day and it wouldn't do any good if I could. And we've had some problems over that in our house because I learned how to let go of somebody. And emotionally, it's been hard and I've shed tears over it but i'm not afraid to cry anymore and i'm not ashamed of the tears because it's a true emotion and i learned in this program not to hide my emotions and for that i'll i'm eternally grateful and i learned not to be ashamed ofthe fact that i loved an alcoholic and that i and i chose to continue living with him and i am very grateful to god that when i finally got myself completely out of the picture that i believe that's when god stepped in and helped my spouse decide that he wanted to get sober but as long as i was still in there working in trying to maneuver and manipulate that i was in god's way and i really believe that in his own good time, everything happens. And I'm just happy now to be able to share what I can with the newcomers to the program and hope that the people who walk through the doors, that me and everyone else here in the program can hold out our arms and say, welcome in, you've got a home. Thank you.