Chuck L. from Superior, WI speaking in Houston, Texas at the 21st All Texas Al-Anon/Alateen Conference

I think Al forgot when it is announcements here. I gotta make an announcement. I don't know if this is last year, last year, this year, but I think it belongs to a woman though because it's got lipstick on it. So I'm going to move this right now.

Somebody snot rag.

Hi, my name is Chuck O'Neill and I'm a grateful member of Al Anon.

I'm really I really appreciate being here. I've got a lot of people are saying, but first I have to tell you this and I'm serious when I say this. I've got the mother of all head colds this year is completely plugged. I feel like I'm talking in a pillow and and if I stand like this

that's OK. Just look just up. But I don't think you can hear me if I stood like that.

So if I'm talking too loud, make some kind of non obscene gesture and I'll know that. Sandy's already told me that she's going to let me know. But I've seen gestures beside. I don't want to get into that. I want to introduce my wife, Sandy's

don't stand up yet because I want to thank Sam and Shirley for hauling us around, picked us up at the airport, drove us all around Houston, took us out to eat at some wonderful places and have really befriended us and and feel like I've known them forever. What I'd like to do is I'd like to have Sandy and Shirley stand up. But you could stand up, ladies,

Danny. Sure.

The reason I asked both of them to stand up is because those are two of my higher powers.

Sandy noticed they had a red spot on my sleeves. You corrected my collars, told me to pull my shirt. The what do they call these things out of my pockets? Surely asked me if my fly was up. I don't know what I do without him. Yeah,

fire left my mom's superior, but I guess she's here in Shirley. It's been a lot of fun. We really enjoyed ourselves

and I brought coal down here with me. I can't even blame you Houstonians for giving me a cold. I had it when I got here. When we last superior, it was about four above 0. And when we got off the airplane here, while you all know what it was,

I like saying Julie and and the committee for asking us to be here today. It was a pleasure when I heard that I was coming to Houston and coming to Texas and I thought, wow, that's something I've always wanted to do.

Show me your hands. Have any of you ran into this situation where where you've got a little bit of music come into your mind and you can't get rid of it? Have any of you ever had that happen? All right, well, Julie called me up. I don't know how many months go six months go eight months ago sometime and asked if we'd come down here. And naturally this piece of music went through my mind and I don't know, the Texas Tourism Bureau had this thing on TV and it was Lyle Lovett singing into a phone. He's going, that's right, you're not in Texas. That's

not protect this. That's right, they're not protected. Texas loves you anyway.

I love a fan. I think he's a great guy. And that song just stuck. And every time that somebody will call me from Texas to see how I was doing or Sam would call and give me some information, here we go. That's right, you're not from Texas. Great ad I'm sure worked for me.

Like to thank Julie again for the bag of goodies in the room. That was great. I mean it was a big bag of stuff. There was some crackers and bananas,

fruit and a thing of coffee when it looks like chocolate milk when it's coffee. And there was there was some candy. When I bring Sandy with me to a conference, I never get to see the candy, so I don't know what kind of candy was in it. She just grabs that stuff out of there like crazy, you know? The Alcoholics don't understand that, I'm sure.

And, and again, Julie and Mary Lou took us all to breakfast this morning. We went to Le Peeps or something like that. Le Peeps? Yeah. It must be Texas talk or something. Lepee,

we went there in Julie's Mercedes and I got the feeling she thinks she's Janis Joplin. You know, just see me another 80s band

and George and Bev. I want to thank you guys. It's nice to see you guys again. We see George and Bev every once in a while. They're doing the taping. And I, I mentioned this to somebody here this week and I don't remember who it was. There's only been a couple conferences that I've gone to where I haven't known somebody. It seems like I've always known somebody at a conference that really makes it feel good. And I know quite a few people, well, half a dozen of them anyway, at this conference. So I appreciate that. Pat English

Betty, I've seen someplace before. She was up here and I I know I've seen her someplace. Marty seen Marty seen Marty before

and it's just cool and I've got written down here because I, this is what I, I scratch these down so I don't forget to say my thing is actually this is the revised version. This is the little thing that they give you for your key. That's why I wrote my notes on. How about you get up there, You ain't going to see nothing. I mean, you're deaf, you're blind. You're just

like an old Labrador retriever, you know, Getting old here.

OK, I've got all that stuff done. I thank everybody. Got old Harrow someone else. I saw somebody yesterday that I knew and I didn't know their name and haven't seen them since. So I know somebody else here, too. I thought it's kind of cool

kind of way my life goes

and I'm not. I just noticed this knowledge is just coming into my mind. My mind works like a clothes dryer. I don't know if you know that or not, but you know, you put the wet clothes in the clothes drying and turn it on and the clothes start drying and they start fluffing up and getting bigger and bigger and bigger until they're done. That's the way my mind works because the stuff comes in

and Lord what comes out and I don't where it comes from. I don't know what's going to happen with it and I just pray that it's going to workout. OK. I don't know about this raffle and when Al first said raffle, I didn't know if he was talking about rifle rifle raffle. I don't speak Texas so I don't know if this thing is fixed or an option. Tickets up here already. Here are already some tickets. Keep that in mind when you don't win the

Gilded early.

I gotta say to that

Blanche, I've known blast for quite a number of years and I was like enjoy lifting the Blanche. I have a resentment towards her today at all. I don't know where she is. I can't see her right now, but believe me, I'm resenting you wherever you are. I stood up here. I gave her a good al Anon hug after she got done with the story and and she says y'all sound like it come off the set of Fargo.

Yeah, sure. Eh, I scored.

It's not my fault I talk like a dork.

It's 836. I better get going. We got a clock up here that's pretty cool. It's either fast or slow. Yeah, it's a little bit fast. So you guys are lucky.

Yeah. Tom, I've, I've been in Alabama for about 20 years. I really don't remember my first meeting. And why should I wasn't in a total blackout, in denial and everything else. How could I remember what day I went to Al Anon Couldn't remember what day I changed my shorts. You know, that's the way it was. But I just that's was my life.

I was constantly in a state of constant turmoil and I'm sorry if I'm talking kind of slow, but that's just the way I do things. I just realized that as I was trying to say 2 words at once

hurts my tongue. Already got an earache and a sore throat, might go bite my tongue off.

But anyway, I was always in the state of turmoil and I grew up, you know, I was tall, skinny kid. I was all sick last for a second to the last for for team sports all the time. And if I was picked second to the last, I felt a lot better because there was somebody below me that I could say, how is that guy crummy? You know, he hasn't got picked yet and I have,

and I really remember feeling that way. Wore glasses ever since I was like 6 years old. I got an 8 year old granddaughter. She just got glasses and she feels proud as punch. I picked her up at school one day last week and she sported with sporting her new rim. Boy was she cool. She's wearing them glasses. You know, I remember when I got glasses. That's all. An idiot.

She feels great. Isn't that wonderful that she can do that and she wouldn't take mom. She went to bed with all I'm going to other than that, she don't want to take those glasses off. She was really proud and I'm glad of that. Cutest kid. I'm telling you, the only granddaughter I have. I'll tell her Tosh, you're my favorite granddaughter. She says. Grandpa, I'm your only granddaughter so that's OK.

But I grew up, I grew up in a drinking family. I live in Superior, WI. It's that's the western tip of Lake Superior.

I watched The Weather Channel today in the federal 15 below 0 in Duluth. So, you know, it's kind of a cool climate up there and it's cold and it's makes the cold, makes people drink.

Well, I was heard you guys down Texas must, must not drink.

But we lived in a working class town. It's about 24,000 people. Sandy and I grew up within six blocks of one another. And when we were growing up, we didn't know one another. We lived on the wrong side of the track.

We're in a the poorest part of the poorest part of town. And and I don't know about Sandy. I shouldn't say I don't know about it. I know she had a ball growing up. So did I. It was a good, good part of town to grow up and we had a fierce sense of pride. And now that part of town's been revitalized into things like beer warehouses and stuff like that. And so now it's an industrial park where it used to be a a a homes for low income families.

Sandy's parents didn't drink. Her dad had the plug on the drug for 40 years.

My parents did drink and every Friday night when it was payday, my dad. And while we always go to the neighborhood bar now we got 24,000 people in town approximately. We had 89 bars

fire to go to a bar and the bars were family bars. You know, people bring their kids and and my brother Jim and I have one brother, he's younger than me. We'd go to the bar and

my dad stood at the bar and drink beer and Taco Ray Rd. because he works for a railroad. Superior is a shipping town. Lots of railroads, lots of ocean going freighters coming in. The Superior, it's like, I don't know, a couple 1000 miles from the ocean, but they, they've come up the Great Lakes and they can go as far as Superior and Duluth. That's the end of the Great Lakes.

So anyway, my dad was off railroad with the railroad guys and they always wore the bib overalls and they had they had like green dust on their faces and they smell good. They smell like green, you know, and sweat and all that. And I always wanted to be a grain door man. When I got older, I wanted my dad's job. And he would tell me no, if you don't want that job. And I could never understand that. He used to say, I hate my job. And I was wondering why I stayed. You know, I didn't realize that sometimes you get into something you can't get out of. But

we go in that bar, he'd sit at the bar and my my ma would sit in the booth

with the other women. And because in Superior WI that time was against the law for women to sit at the bar

so you wouldn't think you got rough now just went back in, you could instead ever get the law. Wasn't the your old man telling you couldn't do it was the mayor and the City Council telling you you couldn't do it. And my brother and I played pool and and eat chocolate bars and drink grape soda and that that was our Friday and Saturday. Go over and watch the wrestling on TV. Back when wrestling was there was not conducted by these

testosterone driven things that go by Goldberg and faith and kill and stuff. It was these smaller guys that just tore each other apart.

And that would really, I mean, back then the, the wrestling back then was kind of like Sesame Street is right now. You know, it was that mild. But that's what we do. That was our nights out and we enjoyed it. Was your alcoholism in my family? I can't say that I, I don't know. I know my life was affected by drinking.

I know that the arguments that were happened in our home are usually came after drinking.

Either one or both were drinking. Sometimes it was funny you know I don't remember. I remember 1 traumatic thing happened when my mom and dad were arguing

and we were out of the cabin and they were re arguing seriously

and I got in between the tools and I just screened out of the socket that you don't give a damn about Jim or myself. All you think about is yourself. And they stopped arguing right then. So and I don't remember how old I was. I was probably around 12. And, and I looked back at that now on my al Anon life. Now I look back at that and think, man, even back then you were getting in the middle and trying to stop things and it worked.

So is that reinforcement or what? You know, if it works, just keep doing it. I I remember getting in the middle of fights and my buddies are getting a fight in the bar, you know, and, and one day I woke up and thought I had this big, huge black and blue mark on my arm. Well, my arm, my shoulder got in the way of some guy was going to hit another guy in the face and they were best friends and totally drunk out of their minds. I was just totally drunk. I wasn't out of my mind yet. So I stopped the fight

and I do. I want to say right now that I did drink. I drank a lot.

I'll tell you what, with Sandy and I met, I was, I had been in the service, gotten all the service. I was about 20-3 years old back in in Superior back in the early 60s, there was what was called a 21 year old law. You had to be 21 years old to drink hard liquor or any kind of liquor in town. However, the the

bars out in the county could serve beer only if they only served beer,

they could serve 18 year olds. So, and that was all of the city limits. There was so many miles out of the city limits, it had to be that way. So we would, we would drive out into the county because there would be younger people out there and we would sit in these beer bars. There was nothing to put on 100 and 5200 miles on a Friday night or maybe a Tuesday night. Just go out in these bars and drinks. And a lot of lot of kids aren't around today because of that, because of those trips out into those bars and coming back home just totally snocking, killing themselves and a few other people

of them. It was a very common occurrence. Sandy. Sandy was born with a guy that three of them got killed in a car accident that very she had an argument with us. So she didn't go with and he never came back.

And it was very common. But anyway, the reason I bring that up is because my friend Dale invites me to go out to the bar with him out in the county. And this was a Wednesday night. I didn't have nothing going on. I didn't have a girlfriend or anything like that, you know, and I just thought, well, sure, we'll go out and have a couple of beers, forget off to the bar and and we order our beers and we're sitting in the booth, which is kind of odd because usually the guys didn't sit in the booth. I didn't give it a second thought though. And

at some point in time, the door opens up and as Dale's girlfriend, Nancy, and, and she comes in with this, this beautiful girl as she was really stunning, you know, and me, I, I, I'm not, I'm not a man of the world. I was over in France for 2 1/2 years. But when I came home, I was almost as innocent as when I left. Almost not totally, almost. I got to brag about a little bit, you know,

I wasn't quite as pure as the driven snow. But anyway, I when Nancy walked in, I thought, she's bringing that

girl over here and they're going to sit with us. And it was like, you ever want something but not want it? You know, you kind of think like, man, I wish I had that, but I quit. Don't think I can handle it. Well, that's what I did when I saw Sandy. Man, I wish I had that. But oh God, I have to talk to her. I have to.

You got to do stuff you just can't look at. I couldn't put her on a shelf or anything at all.

Yeah. So anyway,

they sat down. They sat down across from us. I don't think I know they'll slit in next to me. I'll think, well, this is something

bummer. You know, I got a slip, right? And it was Sandy, by the way. I had looked right across from it and I, I remember to this day what she was wearing. It was a tight black sweater

and it's the sweater I remember, you know,

right.

I said I was almost totally innocent. But fantasy is a big part of my I was a big part of my life. So today. And she had this, this head of hair on her that, that if you were growing up in the 60s,

you probably remember that I went way, way up and it was curling like that fountain over here. You know that fountain. Yeah. We saw a fountain today. That's what it looks like.

It looked like a rip your float because you had a faucet. Yeah,

pretty cool.

And she's and she's looking at me and we're we're trying to make small talk and she says my name is Chuck and I'm Sandy and I I didn't remember her name because I'm thinking about me, not about her. What's she going to think of me? Not what I think about her. And and she asked me where I worked and I was I was at that time I was working on auto parts store and I started work at blah blah auto parts. She kind of went Oh, and naturally I took that old for

I thought, well there goes another one. I didn't even get to to talk to her hardly and she's already gone

like me. Well then she did something that that I don't know, it was an accident or not. Frankly I don't want to say it was because if it's not then I guess it's fantasy.

Her foot went up my pants leg and touched my leg right above the ankle. G spot.

Cool. I didn't. I didn't know nothing about G spots and Rogers and his drones or any of that stuff. I didn't know any of that. But

I sure have a lot of dreams of that fulfilled my fantasy and it took me into other fantasies for weeks afterwards,

right up until consummation.

I ain't gonna say when I have. But anyway, it was like, no, we doubled a couple times. We doubled at it a couple times. And and then we started going out with our just Sandy and I. And it was like our friends just they were still around. But it was Sandy and I, we, we took rides together, we went to movies together. We were just together all the time, and we were telling one another,

and I don't know if we were telling ourselves that this wasn't going to be serious, you know, we're just going to be friends.

She's saying I'm much too young, and I'm saying, well, I've got a lot of life to live, you know, and all those platitudes and all that garbage and crap that you throw on the whole kind of thing. God. Well, I like to be with her.

Well, eventually I was and but anyway, where were, oh, we were together all the time. And you ever see this commercial for I don't even remember what's for anymore, but it's these two blonde haired, flaxen haired beauties running towards one another through this open and weak field, this vast Prairie. And it's in slow motion and an evangelist theme is playing in the background

and they're trucking towards one another in slow motion and they just fall into each other's arms and collapse. That's why I thought about the echo. Sandy. And I did just like 2-6 people just sitting like a hand in a glove. 26 people just made for one another and we were an item and that was it.

We got engaged, we got married, we started having kids and we were drinking

sand. Sandy was 19 when we got married. I was 23 and neither one of us were mature. Neither one of us knew anything about anything. Her idea of of love was coming from her family. My idea of love was coming from my family and I thought mine was normal and hers was not. She thought hers was nuts, but mine was nuts too.

So we, you know, we had a struggle right from the start

and we drank a lot, we played a lot, we fought a lot. And Sandy turned 21 years old and it was just like the

the world can crashing down. That's why when I first remember it anyway as as stuff starting to go really bad where she was drinking in Tylenol

and I was getting mad and I we started having kids. We had my son was born

ten months after we were married. Thank you. And I know you guys think about that stuff, You know, let's see. They got married in January, had a kid in November.

Anyway, Chuck was born and 13 months later Chris was born. So we had these two little babies and

life wasn't very good. We had some good times where we had a lot of bad times as well. We were it seemed like we were in constant turmoil. I was working midnight. I always worried about what was going on at home. I worked in a grocery warehouse and I go to work and I worry is she home? When she going to get home? What did she do with the kids or somebody watching the kids that she going to be home? When I get home, all these things will go through my mind and my stomach every day. And 99% of the time when I got home, things are OK.

You know, an alcoholic goes out and gets drunk.

Us not yet, Eleanor. We we just worry, just constantly worry. And thank you, Blanche, for bringing up the thing about the Eleanor that that just gives me a pain, right? Not in my ear, but elsewhere. When people talk about their Al Anon,

there's some nut out there going crazy and they say I'm all my Al anon's going crazy. Well, that person doesn't even know what Al Anon is. How could they be Al Anon? I mean, they can be nuts,

and if they're not an AL Anon, they're just nuts. However, if you're an Al Anon and not

you're an elegant who's not

straight.

I like saying that when there's a lot of Alcoholics wrong because that ticks them off. I got to get rid of things. As you can see, I don't move around very much when I talk. So it's kind of like, you know, I feel like I'm going to go through the floor here. Just before we came downstairs, we were watching those goofy video things on TV. My ear hurt, my throat hurt, my eyes are watering, my stomach upset because I'm nervous. I'm sitting there watching some stupid video thing on TV about crazy marriages and or crazy weddings. Insane this on TV

stuff you do way that don't mean anything at all. God it's weird. Why did I say that? I don't know

what called cold.

Hey, if if they had a commercial outlet for snot, that'd be a millionaire.

Anyway, we're married. We're having kids. Danny's going out One day. I'm home with the kids. It's 3:00 in the morning. I haven't been to sleep. I've been up waiting for her to come home. Because you got to wait for her to come home, you know? You got to make sure she comes home OK? So I'm setting up to drinking coffee, Make sure she's home. OK.

Then I'm thinking, I think I know where she is. Not only do I think, you know, I know where she is. So our kids are in bed. I mean, you know, there are a couple years old. They're sleeping. They sleep all night long. 3:00 in the morning and they probably won't wake up. Jump in the car, drive over to where I think she is. And lights around the cars were there. And I sat out there and fantasized with a boat what I'd like to do. Started the car up, came back home. Yeah, I proved a lot, didn't it? Helped out.

You know what happened the next morning when I politely brought it up to her? She didn't remember where the hell she was anyway, so I knew where she was. She didn't know. She still doesn't know.

Hello.

And I'm not telling her.

But who's crazy?

Is it the alcoholic who's sitting in somebody's apartment drinking, you know, blasted other mine, smoking cigarettes and eating potato chips? Whereas me, facing the floor at home with two little kids, drinking coffee, 3:00 in the morning, driving down the street, leaving the kids home alone, coming back home. And they have not done it, haven't accomplished anything except to excite myself even more.

Who's lunch, the alcoholic or the non alcoholic? One night Sandy came home.

Well, it was dark when she got home, I'll put it that way. She came in the door and I had seen her get dropped off because that was my job. I had to stay up and watch her come home.

She came through the door and I saw her coming and I was mad because I saw who she came home with.

So we have some words and she said something to me

and I slapped her right across her face with my wedding ring, hit her in the eye. Now, I'm not a violent person. I'm a big guy. I haven't been in a lot of fights, probably because I'm a big guy and I'm also a big chicken. But anyway, Sandy said something to me and before I knew it, I had my hand right across her face and her her eyelids swelled up like a, like a pee was under it, you know, and turned black.

And

it stopped the argument and we went to bed naturally. OK, let's go to bed now. And then the next morning was the next day was Sunday. We went over to my mom's for Sunday dinner. Now, it's a family disease, isn't it? I mean, I'm married to Sandy. We're family. So I'm affected by this. My kids are affected by this. We go to my mom's. My mom's not married to Sandy. My dad's not married to Sandy. My brother and his kids aren't married to Sandy. We go over to the house, we're having, well, my mom's a Norwegian Swede,

you know, I said Norwegian, she'd kill me. My mom, sweet. So we had roast beef and mashed potatoes and overcooked carrots and that kind of stuff. And we're sitting there eating and we're talking about football, and the whole time my stomach is just in a knot. Nobody said a word about Sandy's black eye, and there was no way you couldn't see it.

Who's affected by alcoholism? How deep does the denial go?

Is the alcoholic blind and in denial? Is the non alcoholic blind and in denial? You know, she drinks, she got drunk, she's an alcoholic. I had all those things, except I'm not alcoholic.

One night we were at a dance and we're at a wedding dance room about this size, like a stone floor on this thing. Real beautiful ballroom and the music's playing. Now, you alcohols aren't going to understand that. And I know there's at least two alcohols in this room because I had lunch with them this evening, so I noticed two of them here. You probably won't understand this because by the time this happens, you're so damn drunk you never saw it anyway. So

when you when you're with an alcoholic and you're looking across at them and they come to a certain point in their life when they take that drink of beer and they look at you and their eyelids crash about halfway down

like this. And just like broken window shades in the window. And they just kind of hang there. And then that's not so bad. But then they start putting the head back.

My ears just cleared up when I did that. I think I'll stand like I'll stand like this

anyway, and that's what happened. Spanish them islands came halfway down. She started looking at me like just so I could see her nose hairs and I thought it's time to get her out of here because I knowing all Anon

no recovery program. No, I knew nothing about alcoholism. But I knew when she got that way things were going to get nuts.

So I told one of our friends grabbed it first. We're getting out of here. I got Sandy up on the dance floor. Now Sandy's about 5 foot six. She fits right about here when we dance. And we talked about dancing last night and I said I'm not a dancer. We were talking. I think Sam and Shirley were talking to us. Sandy always LED when we danced.

Now you guys, you guys have tugs and barges up here. River barges. Well, Sandy was like a tug pushing a load of barges up the river.

She pushed me around that floor and we never, we never stepped on anybody.

We ever bumped into anybody. We floor off so gracefully in that floor. Well, this time I got her up in the floor and I'm saying I'm going to lead this time. And I let her right straight across that floor and it probably looked like one of them old Wild West trains with the cow catcher on it because I was just going

get out of my way. I'm blowing a horn. I'm coming through dance right to the back of the room. And I danced her down the stairs

and into the car and drove home. And then I did something that this is just what happened. This is just the way it was. It's all over my shoulder. Carry her into the house. Walk past the babysitter, who by this time expected this to be normal stands. Hi. Hi, Chuck. Hi, Sandy. How you doing?

Carry it upstairs and put her to bed. And then I take the babysitter home, leaving the two and then later on three kids with a passed out body, essentially leaving them home alone. Sometimes going back to the party, sometimes going somewhere else, sometimes coming home and really being ticked off.

And that's the way it was, you know, that was our life. And

what I'm about to say now is just because I have to say this, I hope none of you thinks that I'm trying to do anything else to share my story here. Sometimes I'd come home and and Sandy be passed out in bed and I'd I'd get next to that passed out body and figure this body's mind, I'm going to take advantage of it

to pass. The horse

ain't got a clue in the world what's going on.

And here I am

stone cold, silver, stone cold crazy taking advantage of a pastile bodies. And I'm not proud of that and I don't I don't particularly even like telling that. But that's part of life. Blanche talked about our old Alabama literature and Al Anon faces alcoholism. The 1st edition. There's a man who writes the story about just that thing in in in that book. The whole story is about, but he talks about that in there. When I read that, I got chill

'cause God, I did the same thing.

And when I tell my story now, invariably there's somebody that comes up to me and said I did that same thing. So I don't feel alone anymore. I don't feel the guilt I felt then. I don't feel good about it. It's something that happened and I can't change it. But if I can share my experience with somebody else, that's that

has done that. That's what it's all for

sharing my past to me, it's like it's like liabilities and and assets. You know, my past was a liability at one time, the things that I did that I wasn't proud of, that was a liability. Now when I sponsor guys and I sponsor a lot of guys, some of them I really, really sponsor them. Some of them have I think probably a rubber stamp stand chucks the sponsor. You know, I ever hear from them, but they stay on their sponsor. But

what I can share things or they can share things with me, you know, and they're telling me something that, hey, I really feel guilty about this. This is something that I did. And I say, OK,

Jerry. Yeah, I did that too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I hear that stuff a lot. Because didn't you feel alone? Didn't you feel like you were the only one that was crazy? Didn't you feel like you were the only one that slapped your wife in the face? Didn't you feel like you were the only one that felt felt like you were unable to put together a a marriage that would work? It tried so hard to be a good husband, tried so hard to be a husband that said you're going to do this and you're not going to do that.

And it always fails.

And I was a failure. And that's the way I thought

again, love and hate, you know, I loved her and I hated her and I thought I was nuts. Talking to love and hate somebody. How can that be possible?

Umm, I'm sure a little bit about my children. I've got three kids. I've got a son that's 32A, daughter that's 31, and another son is 28.

They've all been affected by alcohol, very, very much affected by alcohol, both in their mother and their father and their mother and father's reaction to and because of that drug and by their own reaction and action to that drug.

At least one of them is chemically dependent, having sniff, snorted, poke, thrown in, poured down, whatever you could do with whatever drug he could find to get whatever he could. My youngest one almost died because of alcohol, because of drugs.

He has a serious illness, a chronic illness which you'll have for the rest of his life and probably die for him when he does die.

Quick goal using drugs. We put them out in the street, took them home. If you started using. We met them at the door with a

blanket, our sleeping bag and a tall Sandy wasn't 88 for many years at this time. I was in Al Anon many years at this time. And we said, we're sorry, but we can't live with you this way because this is our house and we live here. And you choose the way that you choose to live. You cannot live in our house. Choose to live to live differently. You can choose to live home. And he took the sleeping bags and the pillow, and he left.

He called us the next day. He was 150 miles from home, sleeping at somebody's house,

and for the next year or so, we see him wandering the streets. He lived in a closet.

He lived in a hallway. He lived underneath stairs

and he looked terrible.

Spanish dad died during that time. My dad died shortly before this.

He went to the funeral and he looked like something, I don't know where your Skid Row is, but that's what this kid looked like. We loved them,

we told them we loved them, but we didn't love his behavior. We couldn't put up with that behavior.

He came home one day after about a year and a half living out the way he lived, and he said I'd like to move home again. I don't feel good

and we said, well, you're welcome to come home if you don't use, he said. I'm not going to use ever again.

Going to the doctor found out he had this illness and he quit alcohol, he quit drugs, he quit smoking. He started eating right. He started living right. One day we got a pack of the mail from the local Technical College. It was for him. He went back to school, got his high school equivalency diploma. Couple of months later we start getting stuff from the University of Wisconsin. Superiority. Now,

Kurt, are you going to school? I'm thinking about it,

you graduated over the 3.8 ever.

As hard as he went into everything that he did is to kill himself and he bragged about not living until he was 18. As hard as he went into destroying his life, he went into saving his life.

He's going to Claremont College on Los Angeles right now. He's going for his masters.

28 years old,

Recall our miracle kid. But you know something, Sandy? I don't take credit for that.

You people in Al Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous helped us to understand what we had to do to maintain our sanity and to turn him over to God and his understanding. For him and the God of his understanding to work. We couldn't do anything for him.

He was destroying our house, he was destroying our life, he was destroying our mental sobriety and we knew what we had to do and we did it. I'm not saying it's always going to turn out that way because it's not,

but it did for us. And I thank you people so much for that, having that happen.

My kids are little Christy and Chucky. They're upstairs sleeping. They're 3-4 years old

and

I'm home alone watching TV,

not seeing it, just watching it.

Fanny's all drinking someplace bowling or some damn thing

got kids in bed because it's winter time and winter time is superior. 5:00 it's dark. Kids don't know how to sell time. Kids, it's dark go bed.

Is that great?

Because then you know what happens. I'd get busy worrying, pacing the floor, kicking the dog, whatever I have to do to keep staying. You know, because I'm not nuts.

Chris comes to the top of the stairs. Dad, I need to go to the bathroom. So I go upstairs with her and I take her into the bathroom, bring her back to bed, tuck her in bed, kiss her on his cheek.

Where's Bob? Zed? I don't know.

Come downstairs. A little while later, Chris is back paddling in here a little. Footsteps going upstairs to the top of stairs. Dad was Boogeyman in my closet. Go up the stairs. Look in the closet. Look under the bed. See, Chrissy? There's no Boogeyman here. If there was, I'd beat him up for you. Pull her back in bed. Cover her all up. Kiss her on her cheek. I wish Mom was home. I wish she was, too, Chris. I really wish she was.

Here comes those. Chris is so persistent. She got some good qualities for me. And then she got a persistence from Sandy. I'd tell him that. Come to the top of the stairs. Yeah, they need you. So I go back up there and do whatever it was she needed to do. Bring her back to bed. Tuck her in bed,

Dad, I want to know where Mars and I said shut up

now. I'm big and my voice is low and when it's loud Sandy says I can't whisper.

Here's this little 3-4 year old kid laying in bed. What does she want to know? Where's mom? What time is she coming home? Is she OK? Are those invalid questions? Are those questions so far out that I should get angry enough to scream and spit in her face,