The 20th Cornhusker Roundup in Omaha, NE Part 1 of 2 August 14th 1997

It is so good to be back in Nebraska again

and I want to give the best congratulations to the Cornhusker for their 20 years. I am just really thrilled. I didn't realize we all started about the same time

and I especially like to thank Dick and Peggy. They have

brought this thing together,

they've kept it going. And not only that, they have encouraged speakers from all over the country and, and brought them here and giving them an opportunity to share. And they have given me the opportunity over the years to, to do things that I never thought I could do and, and to stretch myself and to grow and, and to, to learn about the program in a way I've never learned before. And I'm very, very grateful for them being here. Y'all are very blessed to have them here.

Well, my name is Mary Pearland. I'm an Alnon who's happy, joyous and free.

Oh, it is exciting here today. I hope that it'll be as exciting when we're through.

When Dick called me and he said we want you to come back. And I said yes, yes, yes. And he said, well, you didn't even let me give you the dates. I said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I said. I have always loved coming to Nebraska

dollar enthusiastic in the fellowship period. And I love the enthusiasm and the program and I love people who love working the steps and I love people who are willing to to try different things and what have you. And so he he said, well, what would you like to do something dicey? And I said, I'm too old for sex, Dick.

And I said, well, what do you have in mind? He said, well, what would you like to do? And I said, oh, I think I could probably just go crazy and talk about the big book. And he said, really, I like that. And I went, oh God, what have I said?

A little terrified feeling came on the inside. You know, in a lot of places it's not popular for an Elnon to mention the Big Book, much less read the Big Book, study the Big Book or use the Big Books. But I haven't really cared about that ever in my life.

You know, I'm an Arkansas rebel. What can I say? You know, just don't when you tell me I can't do something, I have an insatiable need to do it. I don't know why. I guess that's just one of those Dick pics. But I want to emphasize today that I'm here to share my experience, strength and hope. And, and I have been raised on the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And for me to get up and to share and not mention the big Book with just just wouldn't be right, you know, because that, you know, we're asked to share how we did it.

And if you think about it, you know, when El Anon started, there was some stuff that was written in that book 13 years before Al Anon ever came to pass, you know, And so obviously they were thinking about us at the time. But what I want to do is I want to tell you how I learned to make the big Book mine. I'm not an authority on the big book, but I do know and how the big Book works for me. And that's what I want to share, making that book yours just like anything else. Now this doesn't mean that I don't read and study and practice the Al Anon program and

and the literature. We have some really good literature in Al not but the big book enhanced my program to a dimension. It just it just made it all come alive for me because you know, when I came in the to the rooms of Al Anon, we were not a bunch of happy campers. You didn't hear much laughter in the rooms of Al Anon. We were sort of stuck with our hands to her head and over there doing woe is me, woe is me. And what attracted me to the program

was the fact that I got to go to open a, A meetings because that's where you heard the laughter. And for God's sake, we love Alcoholics. That's why we're here

now in our own L Anon preamble. It says that we learn to give love and encouragement and understanding to the alcoholic. And how better do you understand the alcoholic than to study the book that is written about alcoholism? And we are caught in al Anon. Alcoholism is a family disease. If so, then I need to know everything there is to know about alcoholism because that's my disease too. Now I know JD got cancer

and I read everything I could on cancer. I wanted to know everything. How do we fight this disease? How do we, how do we get past this point? You know, and it's the same thing

with me and alcoholism.

Like I say, I love the part in the book where it says

when I found God, I found myself. And that's true. You know, I didn't have a clue about those things. And that's some of the things I want to share with you is how I use that. I got my first big book, which I still have here, and I got it 20 years ago and JD gave it to me. He gave it to me for my birthday in 1977. And he said here, I'm tired of not being able to find mine when I want it.

You know, I just couldn't understand in the beginning why we need to everybody have their own book on stuff. You know, if you had one book in the house, why would you have to have? And then he didn't like because I wrote in his book, you know, and,

and I circle things. But I was doing that so that he wouldn't miss it. You know,

I've often heard if you want to hide something from an alcoholic, put it in his big book.

The thing about the Big Book was, the first time I read it, I'm going to be honest with you. I saw everything that he needed to do and I was learning about him. But as I continued to read and study the book over the years, all of a sudden a real miraculous thing happened. I found me on the pages of that book. I found me. My Home group has a Big Book study meeting every Monday night at 6:30.

So if you're ever down Arkansas way in North Little Rock, well, you're more than welcome to come in and join us. It could be very enlightening.

Get tickled at the Alcoholics who come to the Al Anon Big Book study and they say we never thought about it that way. You know, we never thought about it. We just, we've done it ours. But what's also funny too is it really scares them when they find out how many Al Anon's know about the Big Book.

Well, we started that meeting in January of 1989 and it's helped us tremendously to understand how the disease affects the family, how it's affected our lives because it is a family disease. Now, in our Al Anon Odette book on July 21st, it says there are no rules and regulations,

no management control. Nobody says you must do this or you may not do that. It's a government by principles. And what binds us together is a common problem solved by understanding and mutual service. And I feel that our problem is alcoholism here and so there. That right there tells me it's OK to get my help where I can get it. Most people I find who are against Eleanor's reading and studying the Big book are those who have never done that. They don't have a clue what's in there. You know, it's like I'm scared, but don't go in there.

You know, it's well, we, we always fear that, that we know nothing about. You know, it's just like change when you say change. So you don't know what's going to happen when you do that.

And so you get afraid. And I think that's it. But I love the book when it says it talks about there's a principle which a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, in which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance, which is contempt prior to investigation, you know, And I think that that happens to a lot of people. They're afraid to look in something. They're afraid what they might find. But the big book to me is like sort of going to life 101. You know, I miss that somewhere.

I don't know about y'all, but you know, when I was going to school, they didn't tell you how to live. You learned how to read, write and do some arithmetic. But they did not tell me how to do relationships. They didn't tell me how to live in this world. They didn't say how to live life on life's terms. And I didn't have a clue. Now, a lot of my friends in a A will tell you that I'm just a six pack short of being an alcoholic myself.

Well, I'm here as living proof that I am not an alcoholic because I take the alcoholic test every three years.

I take a drink and then put it down and see if I have a problem with it. Now to explain to you, we were having a business meeting in our group here

just back in May. We were having our quarterly business meeting and I was while they were having their meeting, I told him I'm going to be on a jet going to Hawaii and while y'all are sitting here fighting out the World War Three, I'm going to be sipping a chichi on my lanai. Nah.

Two weeks after I was in Hawaii, it occurred to me I had forgotten to get my drink.

Now

prove I'm not an alcoholic. I don't know what it

but I will tell you this. As soon as I remembered I had forgotten, I called and got one, and then I forgot to have another one

before I left, you know. You know, I enjoyed it while it was. But you know, it's real funny. You know, the alcoholic doesn't realize it with the real Ellen on. You know, we are strangely insane when it comes to Alcoholics, not just to the alcohol. You know, we're like, say we're told it's a family disease and we've been affected by someone else's drinking. And I can tell you that I was not affected by anyone's drinking in my immediate family, but my mother was raised in it. And let me tell you, if you're ever affected by an al Anon, you have a much

greater problem then if you are effect. Well, there is no known reason for the neuroses, for God's sake,

you know, you just know that you've got someone that ought to be a card carrying certifiable nut case that's out there functioning, you know, and you don't have a clue. But you see, that's how the disease continues on from person to person. And you know, when I worked with the Ella team kids, I was so amazed to find out that their biggest resentments were not with the practicing alcoholic, but it was with the dinghy alumni. You know, I understand he's drunk and he does that when he's drunk, but what's the matter with her? And I'm looking at, I don't know,

you know,

and I'd say I never had kids. So see, I am not responsible for one adult child. I'm here to tell you,

you know, I don't have an allergy to alcohol. I don't have that allergy to alcohol, but I do have an obsessions, you know, I mean, I could obsess on anything. If I think about it three times, I'm probably obsessing, you know, because I never do anything a little bit, you know, do it till you die on the spot. My God, you know,

And so some of my favorites were excitement, attention, being needed. These were my obsessions, you know, I wanted to be loved. It seemed to me all my life I went everywhere just saying all I want is just love me. Love me, you son of a bitch, love me.

You know it's hard to love people when they're talking to you like that.

You know, I'm going to make you prove your love.

And they say alcoholism is cunning, baffling and powerful. I believe it. But more than that, the alcoholic is cunning, baffling and powerful. You know, on one side, you're going to add the allergy to drinking. You've got an obsession to drinking, you know,

with an al Anon. You got an obsession to manage and control another human being, you know,

namely the alcoholic. You know, we seem to be obsessed with that person drinking, you know, and we believe that the problem is alcohol. And pretty soon we begin to to really, both of us think that the problem is alcohol, but the problem isn't alcohol. And that's what I learned in the book. The problem is alcoholism. It doesn't become alcoholism. You know, somebody sobers up. You think sobriety is the end of it all. I mean, we have reached our goal. And it's not, you know, it's just one of the things, it's a symptom of a disease.

Alcohol is only the symptom, you know, and the book tells you that you know it and it doesn't. What's amazing to me is do you know, a lot of people out there think the big book is designed to get an alcoholic sober? And that's not what the book says. The book says that it's there to help you to find a power within yourself, a higher power that'll help you to learn how to live so you don't have to drink. You know, it's not just you're about getting an alcoholic sober. And so it stresses that need of a higher power if we're going to overcome and recreate our lives. And God knows, haven't we all

to recreate our lives? How many times did you say I want to start over? I wish I could have over. You know, I was a kid playing jets. You know, you throw a rotten hand, you yell over. And I wanted to do that all my life. And it didn't seem like I'd do any different, you know, until I got here and found out how to do overs. You know, you can start your life over again here. It's not like it used to be. And I also learned that a person has to make their own diagnosis. You know, I was always a person that in fact, in my Home group, every time we got

by the end that ended up over in a a, you know, I got the spots from for some reason, and I said, God, am I in charge of diagnosis and referrals? I'm you know, what is this deal? What's going on, what's going on? And the thing about it is no, we each have to diagnose. It's our own problem. And that's just like we get lots of people who come into Al Anon that think the problem is someone else and and they leave and if they live, we'll get them back. You know, because the thing about it is the problem is not somebody else. The problem is me,

when I'm looking in the mirror, I'm looking at the problem and I didn't know that. I always thought it was somebody out there, you know, and I had to control and you know, an alcoholic needs to control their environment to be comfortable. Well, what does an al Anon do if we don't try to control another person, to control our environment, you know, and that's the fearful nature of the disease, you know, that self-centered fear and everyone around it is affected by the disease, you know, and I, I can't, my thing was I kept trying to get it all together, you know, and I would tell,

just straighten up and do right, you know. And I can remember one night in particular, my sister, God loved my sister. She bought JD a wine making kit for Christmas one year.

I was not amused.

And it's like, but you say I can't tell her she can't buy wine making kit because I'm trying to hide from the family the fact that he's drinking. So therefore I have to go. Oh, look, JD, you have a wine making kit and he's going. Yeah,

well, I read the instructions and I knew he didn't have a prayer because it talked about an aging process of a year.

Even the people who make it know there's a year time limit. See, they know. They know.

And so one night we were going to this friend of mine, she was pregnant and having a little shower. And so all the guys were going to stay at her house and all the girls were going over to the girls house where we were having a party. And we lived in Jacksonville and this was in a W Southwest Little Rock home, so it was quite a distance away. And so when I was taking my shower, I came out and JD was sitting with what looked to be like an ice tea glass, which is a big glass in the South. We don't serve them little dinky things. We use big ones.

And I said, what you drinking? Because that was always very curious about that. And he said great kool-aid. And I said, oh, OK. And so he when we got ready to go, he said, why don't you drive? I'm tired. And I said, OK, that should have been another signal to me, but I was focusing on this shower. And so as we're driving along, all of a sudden he just went down in the floorboard. I mean,

he just sort of poured out of the seat and went down in the floorboard. And I'm looking at him and I said, you're down. And he said, really?

And I said, well, now you straighten up. And so he's just stiff, you know, he's done straight.

I said you get it together, you're gonna, I don't have time to take you back home. You've got to get it together,

and so JD said. I'll try.

Now, if I'd had any sense at all, I would have gone back home, you know. But no, you see, I'm on a quest. So I go on. And when we get there, I told him, I said, now when you get out of this truck, do you, you do not wobble, you do not stagger, you are going to straighten up. And he said OK. And he got out and he did a double flip right into a cactus bed.

So the guy spent the rest of the evening picking the cactus out of JD.

I came back from the shower and they're saying take this person and I'm going, what's the matter? And they were trying to play poker and half of his cards were facing the wrong direction.

Now he was with a bunch of would be Al Anon's because they're all trying to fix him, you know,

and they're pretty disgusting with him. But that was the kind of way things were at our house, you know, trying to get it together, trying to keep the illusion that everything's OK, you know. And when I read that big book, like I say that first time, God, I knew he was on the pages of that book, you know, and I could identify where he needed stuff. But it was when I begin to make an identification, when I begin to identify with the problems, then there was hope for me, because if I can identify with the problems, I'll identify with the solution.

And it, you know, it just took a while to be able to sell that.

See that I saw the progression of the disease in myself from the time that I was a little girl. I could see that all along my entire life that I'd had patterns repeated over and over and over with different people, different places. But the same thing was happening, you know, and all during this period of time, I knew, I knew this doesn't work. But somehow or another I would go back and do that again and again and again.

See, self knowledge really doesn't help you much.

And I kept thinking that it would, you know, if you knew that wouldn't work, then why do you do it again? I don't know. It's called an obsession. And it's like the the bottom line is, I know it doesn't work, but in lieu of having a different way, I'll go back and do the known every darn time. You know, it's like something has got to be put in there because my mind will say this time it's going to be different. And it's not different till I'm different until something happens.

Now I heard my first element on speaker was Ramona from Oklahoma. God, I love that woman.

And when she would talk about her God, she'd say, I would give you my God, but I would rob you of the joy of finding your own. And I'd say that's OK, that's OK. I don't mind. You rob me, rob me. You know, it's like she had such a faith. And when she would take to the podium, there was a glow that happened with that woman. And and I wanted what she had, you know, and I'd say give me your God, Give me your God. Because see, I've been really close minded about God stuff all my life because like say when I was 12 years old and my daddy died,

I had been told that God loved me and I could not believe that God loved me because if he did, why did daddy die? Why did daddy die? And a 12 year old child doesn't know how to communicate what she's thinking and what she's feeling to you. I, I needed help then, you know, and I needed help all my life, but help wasn't there for me because I couldn't reach out and get help because I was told you can do anything you want to do if you just set your mind to it. Well, now they'll kill you. I'm not here to tell you that'll kill you.

I quit going to church.

My mother changed churches after my father died because of her fear of driving. She the, the church that we went to was on the other side of Little Rock and we lived in East North Little Rock and she was afraid. And so we went from a very church that talked about a very loving God to hard shell Baptist Church. And I'm not knocking Baptist. I'm just sharing experience here. And they, and they had all these little rules and stuff there and I knew I was guilty. You know, I mean, they were telling you were guilty if you thought about stuff and, and

I was thinking, you know, I'm a, you know, and so I'm, you know, if you're, you're, if you think about it, you might as well have done it. And so, I mean, you're gone already. I mean, you're condemned. And so I figured, well, I was going to go to hell anyway. So what the heck, I was going to have some fun before I went because it seemed to me that the people are having fun. We're doing things that were not along those lines. And then a couple of times during the active drinking, JD would get this,

he'd say, let's let's start going back to church. It's like intuitively he knew something was wrong spiritually

and I didn't really want to go, but if it would help him to keep from drinking then I would go. I do just about anything

to keep him from drinking. You know that, you know, that's how we are. But I always felt out of place and then something would happen that would push me away. We started going to church when we were dating and sometimes JD would stay over at the house overnight and this kind of thing. Well, you know, when you live in a little southern town there, there's a lot of gossip that goes on and. And all of a sudden, one day we got a delegation of the sweet little old ladies from the Baptist Church telling us they didn't want us in their church anymore because we

living in sin. And I was the kind of person who was dangerous because I knew just enough about the Bible to be able to quote it back. And I said, I think all have sinned and come, you know, And I'm saying if you don't have sinners in your church, you ain't gonna have nobody on Sunday. And you know,

and you know, I didn't want to be one of them, but my God, it hurt to be rejected by them. I'm telling you that hurt. And so I said, I'll never go back. And it's like every time something like that happened, I gave God credit for it instead of the people. In other words, God didn't want me there. And that's the reason he sent those nasty little old women from that Baptist Church. And so then later JD decided, he said, well, we'll change. We'll go to a Methodist Church. And I said, I've never been in one of those. So we went and

I went that morning to the Sunday service and I had on a a beautiful black Aberdeen suit.

It was a long pantsuit and a three piece. It was very, very pretty. I worked work all the time. And I was stopped at the front door of the church and said you can't come in here wearing pants. And I said now if you want to come Sunday night, you can come Sunday night. And I said, well, what's the difference between Sunday morning God and the Sunday night God that you can roll one in and you can take one out. I said I don't understand what difference it makes. And they said well you can't come in here. So one more time I felt pushed away from God. I felt pushed away from God by man's laws was what it was

and but those old ideas had to be defeated now before I was going to be able to to make a surrender here. You know, you get such a block here between you and those kind of things that when people say God automatically I thought of religion. I didn't think about a spiritual God. I didn't think about my creator God. I thought about that God that was saying I don't want you in my church, I don't want you here anymore. That was what I had. Now like say surrender is hard for me. I don't know about y'all, but it doesn't make any deers what it is. Surrender is hard for me, you know,

but you have to accept things and you have to surrender. And

the process continues for me even today. I mean, I've had an ongoing thing now for three years. I've had this situation with a cat. Now, I got jumped on by my sister's cat was a Siamese, and I had to have 16 stitches taken when I was about eight or nine years old. So I'm not real thrilled about the little Kitty cats.

You know, it's like I don't trust them. They come up and sort of curve around your leg. I think he's getting ready to kneel me. You know, it's like, get this thing off of me. And have you ever noticed when they get on you, they want to go eat? What is it with those crazy things? You know, I don't know, But I'm not one of those likes to run around with claw marks all in my body. Now, you may be a cat person, and that's fine, but I'm a dog person and I think dogs should eat cats. I mean, that's just the way it is.

Well, and like say, and I have confirmation on this now. Three years ago I had this desire and I made me a beautiful, beautiful front flower bed. And I mean, it's a long thing and it's a free form. And I got these New Mexico River rock to outline it and they're just gorgeous. I mean, it's beautiful. And I had these impatience and I don't know, you know, you shouldn't really plant something called impatience anyway.

But you know, I'm out there and I'm watering them with my miracle grow. You know, I'm going to be one of those people they put on TV, say, where'd you get them? 25 foot tall, impatient while I use Miracle Grow.

Anyway, they're about four foot tall out there and people are stopping when they go by. They're they're, they're amazed, you know, and it's just all this profusion of all different colors and they're just absolutely fantastic. And I'm so proud. Oh God, I'm so proud. I did that, I did that. And then all of a sudden I come home one day and there's a hole in the middle of my impatience. And I mean, and patients are a little tender plants. And if you, if it's something lays down on them, it breaks them off even with the ground. And I had a cat in my yard.

Now my dog kills squirrels. He kills birds,

kills possums, he kills raccoons. My dog kills anything. He's in the backyard and this is happening in the front yard. And so I called everybody and I said, how do you keep the cat out of your flower bed? And they said, well, he's attracted to the bird feeder. And so therefore, oh, that's wonderful. You come home one day and he's got one of your baby birds in his mouth. You are really thrilled about cat now. And so it begins the war of who's going to win in the yard, me or the cat. And some people said put mothballs on the So I put out mothball

mothballs out there. Now, the place thunk the high heaven, but it didn't bother the cat.

People said put crack cayenne pepper out there, you know, And so I got two of them great big things from Sam's. And I mean, I had everything. I mean, I couldn't even walk across my yard barefoot. It was that burning bottom of my feet. It didn't bother the cat.

People said well spraying with water, sprayed him with water, didn't bother with a cat. So then I got me a pellet gun and so I pumped it up and I shot the cat and he would go mural, but he would come back.

This must be an allocate. I mean,

he just, you couldn't get rid of him. You know, he might have been an alcoholic catch. You know, I always said Alcoholics, people worry about if they do this, they'll leave. Alcoholics are hard to get rid of. And the booger off your finger, you just take it. And that's why this guy,

it was. I just couldn't get rid of this damn cat

and so I pumped it up to about six times and when I hit him more, I mean he let out a screen but he came back. So I pumped it up to 10 and I missed him and shot a hole in the neighbors house.

JD said put the gun down, put the gun down. So I put the gun down. And so this year the new plan was I heard another al Anon. She said buy those cheap little plastic forks that are real picky and then plant, plant them in around the flowers when you first put the flowers in and where the points are up

and then the cat can't walk on them. He likes to walk on the Flyers, not the little pickies. It didn't bother him at all. Now this cat is huge. He's a great big long haired calico looking thing and he's huge. And so we tried the animal traps. He just sprays them and goes on. He doesn't care, you know, And it was just like I just, I just could. I said I've got it, Smith and Wesson,

I've got a 38. I'm just going to blow that cat to Kingdom come. I'm tired of messing with him now. Three years I've had with the cat. I don't want the cat.

And he's eating my squirrels. He's eating my baby birds, you know, and I'm really sick and tired of this cat. And so I was writing to a friend of mine and he said, oh, you don't want to do that? And I said, what do you mean I don't want to do that? He said, well, I killed a dog one time and the first shot I didn't kill him. And he screamed and he screamed and he says, I can hear those screams till today. And thank you so much for sharing.

So now I have the harp. I kill the cat. I won't kill the cat. And then he'll just lay out their flipping scream. And I don't want it that. I just don't want that. So I said,

I get that, I surrender, I'll accept the cat. My God, it's my cat. It's my yard cat. I love that son of a bitch.

So I went out there and I said welcome home Cat

and I said I'm going to call you FC.

So FC lays there and he goes meow.

The next morning I'm standing there in my living room and I'm looking out the window and one of my happy squirrels has got a limb on my bonzo tree and he's gnawing on it. I couldn't believe it. My Japanese bonsai he's knotting on my tree. I was screaming out into my front yard, stomping my feet, let go of my tree. 5 squirrels just going crazy every which way and I'm going Where the hell is my cat?

Where's the cat that eats the squirrel? Where is the cat? He's not been back.

I asked the girl that stays at my house when I'm gone last night. I said, is the cat back home? She said haven't seen. The minute I accepted that cat, he went away.

And you know, the funny part about that is I know that is a principle. Whenever you accept something,

when you surrender and accept it, it goes away. And it just never occurred to me that it worked on a cat.

But now the really funny part of that story is while I'm out there standing, screaming, yelling, where is my cat? There's people going by my house that are going,

you see, I'm out there in my panties and bra.

20 years in Al Anon and I'm studying in my front yard and my underwear.

We've come full circle

and I'm going to go,

well, the book does some basic things for me. It defines my problem. It tells me I'm powerless. It defines my solution that I don't have the power to do it, and it tells me how to bring about the solution. You know, all of that's outlined and it tells me that the solution is in working. The 12 step method of recovery is outlined in the book. You know, it's amazing to me. We used to say in our preamble, we worked a 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

They change stuff from time to time and that was the thing, you know? But recovery begins when I'm willing to make a commitment to doing something different, when I'm ready to get a sponsor, when I'm ready to do the meetings, and most importantly, when I'm ready to do what I'm told to do without belly aching, questioning and balking about it. That's when my recovery, you know, And it also, I get a lot of recovery when I share my experience, strength and hope with other people. That helps me too. But the program is not for people who need it. It's one more time

for people who want it. And see, I found that I have this disease, this disease. And the disease is a condition which separates people, you know, and we become isolated. And Al Anon, we talk about suffering, the loneliness of loneliness. We feel like we're the only people in the world that feel the way we do. And you know, when I would hear the Alcoholics talk about how isolated they feel, I thought, God, I know where that feeling is. Like I know what that feeling is, to have a hole in the middle of you with a wind blowing through.

And so I began to see me on that book when I took the word drinking and substituted the word thinking.

It's real simple. And then when it talks about the obsessive nature and other alcoholic traits, I thought, God, that's me. You know, I love people talk about the alcoholic personality. What is that? What is that? I don't know. I have the same thing. I don't know that it's an alcoholic personality. It says that, you know, it's a mental obsession of the mind. It's accompanied with irritability, restlessness and the feeling of discontent. Describes me pretty much when you say about the cat,

you know, when I was living in Newfoundland, you know,

I had a lot of anger and restlessness and discontent and I wasn't living with an alcoholic. I wasn't living with someone who's drinking bothered me. He bothered me when he wasn't drinking

because I had a thing about my landlady and I lived in an apartment. My landlady lived next door to me. You know, she's the one that I got her kids and went up the hill on the sled, you know, but I was irritable and restless, you know, and, and we had several little verbal altercations out there in the yard. And I didn't like her. And so I decided I would punish her because the revenge was a way of life for me and

they did not have door to door mail delivery. And she got really mad at me and she told my husband she wouldn't accept the rent from me. Now that's pretty bad when you won't take money from somebody shows you how bad she hated me. And and I thought that was sort of funny. And and so my husband said, well, I'll take it next door and pair. I said you will not will mail it to her. And he said but she'll have to walk 2 miles to the mailbox. I said, yeah,

every time I saw her walking, I'd go, yeah, you know, make her walk for it, you know, And then one day I, I was looking around in my house, I said, it's real drab here in the bathroom. And, and when you were living in a approved housing off base,

they had to do certain things for in order to be able to rent their places to the Americans.

And so I wanted a bathroom window. And I went to the Housing Authority and I got them to come out and they and they said, yeah, we can authorize a bathroom window. And I told her, I said it's been authorized. They sent her a letter and I waited and I didn't have a bathroom window. And God, I'd waited three or four days and

when I want a window, I want a window. And so I just, I took a hatchet and I chopped a hole in the wall. I got a window. We went to war over a lot. See, I was constantly doing stuff.

I don't like doing stuff. And it, you know, that irritability, that restlessness and discontent was always focused. It was if she'd do this, if he'd do that, if they'd do this, then I could be OK. And when this didn't fix me, then I had the clubs. God, I love to go to the clubs because there was always laughter in the clubs. There was the, the, the drinking that was going on and, and daily drinking became a part of my life, you know, So you know, the solution for an alcoholic is leaving alcohol alone

or abstinence. And if you don't, you go insane and die.

Well, an Al Anon has pretty much the same kind of deal. We have to learn to accept or we'll go insane and die. And if you don't think I wasn't going insane over the catch, you weren't living in my neighborhood, you know, and it just shows you, you can be obsessed about anything, you know, and it and then over the years, the more I look at it, when you see Alcoholics come in and get sober, what do you got? A scream vanilla Anon. That's what you got. You know, you know, it disappears to me because we're all, we all have the same problems once they're so our problems are all the same.

Now in allergies into abnormal reaction to something. Well, my allergy is abnormal behavior. You know, when I'd see the alcoholic, my behavior would get weird, you know, and I could go from fear to anger to rage to revenge to murder. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a big stretch, you know.

You know, I've left my car many times to go somewhere. I've gone in my car and when I get to where I'm going, I don't even know. I don't even remember leaving home

now, you know, that's, you know, driving in a brownout, you know, and what if what if something were to happen to you among on the way that you needed to, you weren't there. It's like, where were you? I don't know. I was in my head. That's where I was. I was going around and round up here. It's like the car was on automatic pilots, you know, just going on down the road

and say, I know what allergies are all about. You know, I've got sinus allergies. I'm allergic to insect stings. My mother said that's the reason I so mean, I stuck my head in a watch nest when I was a little child helping my daddy pick Peaches in the backyard. And they just swarmed all over me. And the only thing I remember about that I was five years old was I remember they wouldn't let me go to sleep. And I was so tired and wanted to go to sleep and they wouldn't let me. And they, doctors had said that it was very bad if I had gone to sleep.

But as a result, I'm extremely allergic to stuff like that. So, you know, and then I I had this thing about tangerine's, you know,

I'm allergic to Tangerines and I didn't used to be, but you see, I've used Tangerines.

You know, always like Tangerines. And I would tell myself they're small E3 you know, it can. Then you have the size of an orange and I've forgetting 11 weekend, I bought three dozen Tangerines and and on Sunday night I asked JD what in the hell he had done with my Tangerines and he said I hadn't touched your Tangerines. I said you have to, they're not here. He said, you beat. And I said I have not eaten three dozen Tangerines in three days. He said, yeah, you have. Well, on Monday morning I couldn't wake up. I tried, but my eyes just wouldn't go. And they were saying, I look like the fly, you know,