Why the Brighter You Are the Longer It Takes to Recover – Geraldine D.

Welcome to the Friday afternoon session, scheduled to begin at 2, beginning at about 2.33. My name is Joe Chambers and I'm a Grateful Recovering Alcoholic. This afternoon we have some very old and dear friends who have a great deal to tell us about this program about sanity humility and recovery we're going to start with an old and dear friend of ours who has been here a long time and is particularly known and loved here in the state of New Jersey although she has followers all over the country Geraldine Odellini I'm glad Joe got the honesty part of the program he finally said very old that you'll be here a long time joe if you get drunk new jersey will begin to look good to you you never can tell how good it might look i don't know about you but with dr norris i went down memory lane so fast and so far i hadn't been able to come back and so you're gonna have to put up with my ramblings this afternoon because nobody has told me what to say nor where to go and that is most unusual at a doctor's meeting because there's usually somebody tells me where to and it isn't exactly my choice of direction my name is jerry delaney i'm an alcoholic a drug addict and i have every hat that has ever come across the field of the alcohol everything that i know about myself i have learned in rooms like this i was privileged to come in a long time ago and believe it or not when i came in at 39 i was a very very young person to have come into aa and they looked at me like I had three heads. Now, I did not come willingly, you understand that, because I did now have an alcohol problem. The head neuropsychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, after three solid months, Saturdays and Sundays thrown in, assured the pediatric board that I was outrageously overworked and underpaid. And I was overworkED. was not underpaid I worked hard but for the wrong reason I work hard now for the right reason there is a great difference in that my friends there's nothing wrong with hard work I knew about AA that was for moral lepers who drank too much and and I had one in my family it was my brother brilliant guy no brains moral leper drinking all the time and I availed myself of the services of the only child psychiatrist on the eastern sea border at the time Dr. James Plant to ask him what to do with that moral leper brother of mine and he said I don't know Jerry now wait a minute this shows you what education will do that long ago that was in 1941 he had heard Bill Wilson at the Medical Society in New York City talking about a bunch of men who drank too much now women understand men who drink too much and he'd call him up and he did and Bill went out with two other guys to see my brother in Maplewood thanks be to God he bought what they gave him well you know he had the same questioning as other people and he had the audacity at one time to make an appointment with Bill and go into New York because somebody said that he wasn't going to enough meetings. Have any of you heard that? Why don't you go to more meetings? And so he went to the top. Bill saw him. Bill looked a little bit like Ichabod Crane in those days, skinny, disjointed. And Oscar came in off the road to see him and he presented himself and he had a very important question and Bill was the one who would solve it. I liked what Dr. Norris said that Bill was never allowed to be a member. He was never allowed to be a member and I believe that but he did have a great deal and he had a great dealing humility because he really understood what he was worth and when my brother went to him and asked him he said the boys are criticizing me I'm not going to enough meeting how many meetings do you think I should go to Bell they'll lean back in his chair and put his hand behind his head he said well oscar how many meetings do you want to go to to save your life the lord gave us good forgetters and i'm glad he did because we can forget some of the things that we did and some of those things that happened to us and our families forgive us and the people whom we serve don't believe it but the day we forget ourselves my friends are the day that we are doomed to repeat and I'm seeing too many these days who are repeating I was one of the fortunate ones I said I never had a relapse I had all mine before I came in because I hit 27 hospitals and 27 psychiatrists and fooled them all of course I was unconscious for 10 days from an overdose but it was my nerves you understand that they told me I almost died and I laughed and said you can't kill the Irish the lord didn't want me and the devil couldn't use me that's the only reason i didn't die and there was something else for me to do and i say to you folks in this room you have a tremendous job you have an message that you must carry and if you hide behind your anonymity God forgive you because you're going to need it you'll be shoveling coal along with me not bad company but you know when I came in to AA there weren't many women three others and you boys didn't want women alcoholics and we had to sit on one side and you men sat on the other now fortunately i've always liked men better than women ever since i found out they were different or i wouldn't have forgiven you but i did forgive you and the women the non-alcoholic women were so good to me i shall always be grateful it wasn't and Al-Anon in those days but one came along later and it would save my life at a later date you have to know that I must have been soft in the head after two years sobriety and I urge you to know the brighter you are the longer it takes you to recover you are not nearly as bright as you think you are when you begin to understand how dumb you are then you are ready to recover but I thought I was very very bright and among other things I married an alcoholic when I was sober two years and I married a 49 year old Irish bachelor Roman Catholic that came complete with aged mother i am hard shell baptist career and divorced i fit in that family like a bee in an anthill now i loved that guy the day i married him and i loved him the day he died and i could have stuck a butcher knife in him and turned it around and watched him bleed to death a hundred times in between and laughed in his face and frankly i think he felt the same about me and as I see some wives in here today you know this works both ways folks the day you change your name things are different the day you sober up things are different and I urge you not to tell each other fortunately I learned my lesson well and along the way when my husband got bored and incidentally this is one thing for you folks to look out for is boredom get to a variety of meetings talk to a of people get around know people keep going you say well I'm too tired you weren't too tired to drink my friends You weren't too tired to drink. You better get to some meetings. Try one new in a week. Do you think they'll know who you are? What difference does it make? Yesterday Dr. Canavan pointed out to you that you doctors just happen to be doctors you were alcoholic before and you became doctors. Has that got anything to do with the price of eggs? Most people they either want you or they don't want you. Either they like you or, they don' t like you. When you smell they don''t like you as well of course. I urge you to get to a lot of meetings because you'll get bored if you don't and boredom is one of the things we dare not take a chance on and we get bored easily why because we say I have heard that before if you have been applying it to you you won't be bored dr. Norris talked at noon about the concern for the AA movement in the 40s there's a great deal of concern in my mind in the mid 80s for the AAA movement because they have divided down the middle the fight against drugs is here little kid comes into my office I think most of you know that I'm in rehabilitation for the reluctant to recover. That's why I get so many doctors and they stay longer. There's quite a few in this room that showed up today to keep them from having to get my poor graces, I think probably because they've heard this before. But I'm geared to that and one little kid said to me I'm not an alky I'm a druggie much of really well you do drink don't you my little how much hardly any how often well like every day how much come on tell me three six-packs in a couple of shots. I said, you'll do it when one comes along. You know, one beer and one joint will send these kids right over the moon. I didn't know about that because, you know, Fina Barberta came on the market when I was quite young, like 17. And they would have called me a hyperkinetic kid. They didn't have nice names like that. And he called me an honorary little brat. And I think that was probably about right. They gave me phenobarbital and it carried around your pocket you threw in some case you got nervous. Well along about 18 I wanted to be popular. Didn't we all want to be popular? Booze was illegal. What did we watch? The illegal drug. I carried it in hot water bottles strung between my legs across the canadian border and with two quarts of canadian whiskey in the rock gut era i was popular and i liked that and i added it to the phenobarbital and let me tell you something and in the end of my career as a drinker i was taking eight to ten seeking all a day hand full of phenobarb, a quart of whiskey to start my social drinking. That was to get me ready to go out in the evening. Couldn't go out for less than that. Traveling with 15 internationally known doctors who had no idea that I had a problem and two of them didn't speak to each other before they died because one said I had a problem the other said I didn't. The denial that there is in our lives from everybody, from educators, doctors, children, spouses is a killer my friends. Normal people who are told that something is interfering with their life stop. Abnormal people start to hide make excuses. I had a gentleman come into the rehab the other day a non-alcoholic husband he was carrying his cold medicine in the sock in his shoe everybody carries cold medicine that way don't they? And he says nothing is wrong. You see the alcoholic, the addict is a liar. The thing that I'm most concerned about is in my day when I told them that I was an addict I didn't say that I said my trouble is nerves I just take medicine for my nerves. Bill would say to me because he came out, he and Lois used to come out and spend weekends with the folks, and he'd say don't drink, don't drug, go to meetings. Then he added something that's very important and I recommend it to you all. Shut up! He's the one who told me I had two ears and one mouth so I could hear twice as much as I talked oh boy was I mad I had so much to say you don't know how right I was I was the only one thought so because after a year they were still saying that sister of Oscars may be a nice girl but she's got a screw loose it wasn't tacked down yes I could hold a job but the AAP were recognized that I was not tracking. It takes one to know one and they didn't pay any attention my drugs and they urged me to come to AA and when we had somebody interested in AA whether it was a cop or a lawyer we went out and carried them in. Not say well you can't come in this is a closed meeting it might break your anonymity and wouldn't let me remind you that anonymity has to do with the divulging of names at the level of TV, radio and press. But Dr. Bob made the statement that you're just as wrong not telling another alcoholic your name as you are telling the press what your name is. Stop being so anonymous you guys and get your life was saved in the good Lord means you to carry the message and how are you gonna carry it unless well they say they know who I am well are you that important I had four guys come up to me on Vancouver young men that I'd never seen before line up in front of me and want to talk to me i said what do you want they said we want to thank you for saving our lives and i said i never saw any of you before they said were all four in different rehabs and they threatened to send us to you and we all got well one of the things that i have had trouble with all my life and I think you may have is changing my hat. I was an alcoholic and when I go to AA I'd better act like an alcoholic. By the way if you want to be an old-timer in AA, I've got a new recipe for you. Don't drink, don't take drugs, go to meeting and the last ingredient is most important don't die. That's the only way you're gonna make it the thing is that you want to be very careful in changing your hats if you're married to an alcoholic don't try to tell your spouse how to run their program as a matter of fact don't tell your spouse how to rum their life you've got a full-time job running your own look at yourself take your own inventory and ask yourself how well you're doing it's a really a very difficult thing to find out how you're doing you say well I don't get too many meetings or not many meetings around you know I had to go 10 miles or 15 miles to a meeting you don't say in my day we we had to go 60 almost every time we went to a meeting 50 60 miles and we didn't have cars like we have now but we went again we're seeing among the medical profession the denial of drug addiction I only take a little contact I only take a little antihistamine i only take a little this i only take a little of that a little is too much my friends much too much you're not going to make it do you know what the new definition of of drugs is something you aren't taking I asked a group the other day what they thought of when I said drugs every one of them that had young people in their family thought of cocaine the drug that is popular and getting the most exposure in the paper but for those who cannot take mood and mind-changing drugs the oldest of which is alcohol don't forget that alcohol is a drug my friend you can't take these things and you know with colds particularly the new bug that's going around takes ten days if you do it takes 10 days if you don't and there is water to drink lots of it you can keep warm you can get a little extra rest there's many things that you can do but you don't really want to you know you don' t want to do something the working in the alcohol field right after you get sober I had a very hard time with this my friend I had been in public health all of my life I had to make a living I was going to miss some meals if I didn't and there was nothing I could do and I had the good fortune of running into Marty Mann and she urged me to do certain things for her that sort of eased me into it but I have got to remember that although I've gone on all these 38 years working in the field it doesn't help my sobriety one bit the alcoholic who goes into the alcohol field 85% of them get drunk if they go in before they've been sober five years look out for the swinging doors my friend it is your life not mine and you don't have to work in the theater. Another thing that has troubled me and was taught me very early in the game, was people asking me are you someone to look up to? Are you talking the talk or are you walking the walk? Some of you are and some of you aren't are you doing what you should do are you telling them to go to 90 meetings in 90 days when you haven't been to one for a week well i'm busy poor baby you'll be busy all right will you come see me i take doctors free of charge if necessary you know just to torture them and let me tell you something it's torture there now as I see the smoke curling up for the back of the room I do want you to know that I am the first of March stop the smoking I stopped the staff smoking first and the students and the visitors so if you want to visit me my friend you better stop smoking how has it gone everybody wants to know well you notice my throat isn't cut that's progress when between the staff and the students I have over a hundred people there and they haven't killed me yet the worst trouble I had was one of my staff she's worked for me 19 years. Disposition? Terrible, not smoking at the lodge. Disposition stinking! And I called her in and I said you know you've worked for me 19 year but your termination slip is about to be in the next check. She said you wouldn't do that. I said yes I would. She said why? I said because you've got such a lousy stinking disposition that you're a bad influence on the patients well i can't help it i said oh yes you can you don't smoke during the daytime and you go home and smoke at night and by the next morning your meanest cat must and we have it to do all over again i will want to report that she did quit she is losing weight the disposition cleared up in four days and things are getting better. I'm not having nearly as much trouble with the students sleeping, I'm NOT having nearly as much struggle with the hyperactivity. Somebody says take everything away from them at once! You take alcohol, you take drugs, you take cocaine, you think heroin. Incidentally you know we think some of these drugs are new. They took my mother off a booze with heroin. I am the daughter of an alcoholic. She was a closet drinker. She had gallbladder trouble, my friend. And a nice little guy that my father educated, a doctor, used to come and give her the new drug, heroin. And in an hour she'd be up and at the church and, you know, doing her up. I don't know how many of you have read DuPont's new book, Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs, and he speaks in there about tobacco. Tobacco use is more than a habit. It is a drug addiction. The same brain mechanisms which produce dependents on drugs from alcohol to heroin also work to hook the tobacco user. Connection between tobacco and other dependent producing drugs goes deep. Addicts who are allowed to inject nicotine intravenously often compare the experience to heroin use. Cheer up you smokers, we'll have you before long. You kids that have young people in your family think about this cigarette smoking usually precedes marijuana and other illegal use in adolescent often by introducing the teenager to smoking as a way of getting a drug into the body. That's a good book, my friends. I suggest that you read it. What about recovery? Does it ever come to an end? I hope not. I hope not. Every year that I get older, I need AA more. Why? Because I have different problems now. At 78, I have a whole lot of different problems than when I was 58. I've got news for you. You begin to face something that you never thought would come to you even when you were dead drunk there are many things we face along the way retirement and may I say to every one of you doctors for God's sake don't retire unless you've got something else to do that is sure death get a hobby get do something scrub floors I couldn't care less what you do but for heaven's sake don't just retire you know I often say I belong to the metallic age. I have gold in my teeth, silver in my hair, lead in my can but I still have time to attend AA. You say well you're an AA nut and you work in it all the time why do you go to AA? I go to AAA for me because my AA hat without it I'm dead. What can I teach you if I'm not on a high myself? Took me a long time, you know. Ruth Fox told me it'd take two years to get my brains out of hock and three more to get them unscrambled. I thought she was crazy but she's right. I didn't start to go until I was sober five years and I have never been to a meeting in my life that I haven't gotten something out of. One thought is all you need, my friends. Stop splitting hairs. One of the new boys here has been splitting hairs with me over the serenity prayer and I just have made a reservation for him because it won't be long I told him that too so he won't come as any surprise to him but you know I love you guys I love you gals but I want to see you sober I love you enough to tell you the truth my stepson continued to live with me instead of his father and i said why did you do that your father is so generous with you he gives you all the money and so forth and so on and i'm so tough why did you live with me he said mom you love me enough to make me behave and we have got to do something about teaching our children by walking tall my friend don't talk to them don't say do as i say not as i do ask yourself would i want my son or my daughter to be just like me if you would be my guest but i don't know about you there's some days that i wouldn't like to some of you folks who have children who are taking drugs may I recommend to you Families Anonymous in addition to your Al-Anon you go to your Elanon because of your spouse you go To Families Anonymous where they're talking about what do we do about our young people don't be afraid to go And if you are the adult child of an alcoholic, hunt yourself up a group on adult children of alcoholics. We are having a lot of fun. We're doing a pilot study on having people in residence on scholarship who are spouses or parents or adult children of still drinking alcoholics. Out of the first 24 women who were spouses of still drinking alcoholic we brought eight of them in to AA, one of who had to go to detox when I took her non-prescription drugs away from her she had a little problem I'm not just sure why and she knows now what it is. We need to go to AA to improve our emotional maturity, to be able to deal with reality. You know this M deity is apt to put you in an orbit. Do not allow people to talk to you about medicine at a meeting. Refuse to give at a regular AA meeting, any advice? Tell them that you're there for your sobriety. You better. You better. These are the things... You know every year it's changing. I'm I'm watching the time, too. Every year, AA is changing by my standards. Did I ever stop to think that maybe AA isn't changing as much as I'm changing? Here's where the problem comes in. We need to be sure that we are the ones who are changing oh yes there's a lot of young people one of the things i'm facing and i think some of you'll get a great kick out of it since alcoholism and addiction has become a respectable disease we are getting a lot Jewish people in residence and you will be seeing a lot of Jewish people in AA. And this year I had the great joy of working Hanukkah and Christmas together. And I'm going to be, you know, very learned if you understand this. And I am going to tell them on Christmas Day the story of Mary and Joseph running with baby jesus from herod and how mary was very upset about not being home for passover five young wealthy jewish kids came to me and said i didn't know mary was jewish some place along the line were forgetting to teach our kids basics I later asked for how many knew that Mary was Jewish and there were five people in a room of 80. That's pretty bad! Are we doing our job? Are you doing your job? Do you have belief in a higher power do you talk about your faith you know faith and fear are pretty strange men fellas they don't sleep together ever when I get afraid then I know there's something wrong something very wrong with me with me fear is given to us to make us turn around and look at us faith must be simple remember when you prayed before christmas for a bicycle and you got a pair of roller skates it took you about 30 seconds to make up your mind you wanted roller skaters to begin with and when you pray for something my friend and you don't get it just know that whatever you got is best for you and learn to laugh at yourself you're a funny one I always think I'm funny peculiar isn't it odd that all of us are so much alike that's why going to rooms like this does the good. The argument over the serenity prayer that occurred this morning is this. This is just one of the variations. This is not the original. The original is not even the one that's used today, but I like this particularly and I pass it on to you only if you want to use it. God give me the courage to change the things I can change. You know there's some things we can't change. The strength to wrestle with the things that can't be changed and above all, the wisdom to use everything that happens for something good and we can. And each night I try to remember first that I am the most fortunate person in the world because I am alcoholic and drug addicted. Second, God has given me the honor of talking to people like you of working with people like you of living with people like you and I am more blessed that I could ever expect so each night as I go to bed I ask God to take my hand it's better this way I know because if I take his instead of his taking mine i may get afraid and let go god bless you