Bob S., Jr. from Naconda, TX Alanon speaker at the 2002 Illinois State conference in Chicago, IL

Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to start by thanking the committee that made it possible for me to be here and to make this thing run as well as it has. I know these things don't just happen. A lot of people did a lot of hard work.

How about let's hear it for the committee. There's still a few seats up here in the half measures row. If any of you are interested. My name is, Bob Smith, and I'm an Al Anon. I got here like most Al Anon's.

I love an alcoholic. My wife, Betty, who died 4 years ago, was, a member of, AA, 19 years sober when she died, And, I came into the program, I started this journey with you in April of 79. Oh, and I gotta tell you this, I went to Memphis to a meeting, a Al Anon meeting. Never had been there before. Lady came up and handed me a newcomers packet.

Well, to show you I'm getting better, I thanked her. I didn't say anything, and at the end of the meeting, I took the newcomers packet and put it in the back of the room. I didn't feel obliged to tell her I'd been in the program 20 3 years, so I'm getting better. I think to be an Al Anon, there's 4 things that I must do. I must live the steps.

I must abide by the traditions. I think I must attend meetings regularly, and I think I need to have a sponsor, and I do these things. And one of the parts of our triangle, both programs, is, service. And I'd like to tell you that I jumped right into service. It's not the way it happened.

My sponsor goaded me into it, but I've been the GR, been the Doctor. I served 3 years with the west Texas assembly. And several years ago, I got a call from our central office asking me if I would consider being a candidate for trustee at large for all of Al Anon. And I prayed about it, and I seemed to have the educational qualifications for which they search. I talked to my group, and I called them up and said, yes.

Yes. Please put me down. I'd love to be a candidate for trustee at large for all of Val and I. Guess what? I didn't get it.

Well, of course, my first thought was, if they didn't want me, why did they bother me? But what I wanna tell you is my program came to my rescue like it always will when I let it and said, hey. Whoever got that position was better qualified, met their needs better than I would been capable of, and maybe our heavenly father has something else for me to do, and I'm totally free of that. That's one of the blessings that we get in our programs, totally free of that. Although I've only been an Al Anon 23 years, I am somewhat of an anachronism.

I'm the only person still left that was present when the 2 fellow founders of Alcoholics Anonymous met for the first time mother's day, Akron, Ohio, in 1935. You see my beloved sister Sue passed away February of this year. And I'm the only one left. It's kind of scary, you know, to be the last man standing. And then another little thought has entered my mind.

Nobody can say, now Bob, that's not the way it happened. My dad had come home on, mother, the day before mother's day with a potted plant and set it down. And he was potted, went upstairs and passed out. Mom was a friend of Henrietta Cyberle, he said Henrietta called and said, Anne, there's a man out here that thinks he can help Bob, bring him right on out. Well, my mom had explained that doctor Bob was in no shape to talk to anybody, but she said, I'll get him out there the next day.

So I rode out with the 2 of them. He had a terrible hangover. He said one of the worst he ever had in his life. And as we rode along, he said, 15 minutes of this bird is all I want. But folks, it wasn't 15 minutes.

He and Bill went off in the room by themselves, and they talked many hours. And as a result of that meeting and at my mom's invitation, Bill came and he lived at our house all that summer. And this is a time and place that the alcoholics anonymous program was formulated. We lived in a one industry town, Akron, Ohio. They made tires, Goodyear, Goodrich, General Firestone, Cyberlink, Miller were all there.

Well, when the depression hit, people stopped buying cars and they didn't need tires. So there were a tier after tier of repo cars there in Akron, and there were strong men on the street corners selling apples for 5¢ apiece to try and support their families. That's how tough things were. But again, I think maybe that was providence erased because people had more time for each other. They were not as hurried and harried as we are today, and this was absolutely necessary to get the feed in from early AA members.

They had to have time to visit, time to talk, time to think about it. I wanna tell you about my dad. You know, I look at those pictures of doctor Bob, and he just looks so grim. Well, you'd have loved the guy. He wasn't that way at all.

But I brought my bride to be home for the folks to look over just before we were married in the early 19 forties. My wife is tall and slender, and dad looked her over, and he got me aside and said, she's built for speed and light housekeeping. And I'd like to share with you his sex and hygiene lecture to me as a teenager. He got me up in the bathroom one day and closed the door, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna find out all about it now. He said to me, flies spread disease.

Keep yours buttoned. Now this guy was a surgeon, distinguished man, but he was the best sport in the world. He wanted to go back to Vermont and up into Canada one time, and he had some sort of an old car that used a lot of gasoline and wasn't very reliable. And I had bought a Ford Roadster for less than $30, And he said, do you think that thing will run to Vermont and then up into Canada? And I said, yeah.

I think it will, dad. It runs good. But I said, the reason I got it, it's so cheap. It doesn't have the top. I said, what are we gonna do when it rains?

He said, we're going to get wet. And anyway, he and another high school buddy and I toured all through New England and Canada, and that old Ford Roadster just had a wonderful time. He was a graduate of Dartmouth, one of the Ivy League colleges back in the east, and, worked in industry a couple of years, and then prevailed upon his dad who was probate judge there in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to send him out to Chicago to go to medical school. And he busted out of 1 medical school because of his drinking, because it was progressive, like it always is, but somehow managed to graduate and get a, a coveted internship there at city hospital in Akron.

It was coveted because they had some advanced equipment and he moved to Akron and married my mom after a whirlwind courtship of only 17 years. Doctor Bob thought things over very carefully. Some of you may have known Bill. Bill was also a tall, thin Verma mater. They were born within a 100 miles of each other.

Bill at east Dorset, my dad at St. Johnsbury, total opposites. My dad was a man of few words, thought things over very carefully. Mood always went along steadily, very steady sort of guy. Bill was just the opposite.

Bill was careless. Bill loved to talk. Bill was a visitor. When Bill came to visit, he was gonna stay a while and talk. Bill Smoot swung.

He was either high as a Georgia pine or low as a snake. Never seemed to level out, but these two guys never had an argument, total opposites. And again, I think it was providencely arranged because, you know, folks, if any 2 of us are exactly alike, one of us is unnecessary. I remember in this depression, they couldn't raise $50 between them, these two guys, but they had 2 things going for them that I could see. They both had open spiritual minds, and they had the desire to be of service to another human being.

And these are the things I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about starting from nothing, because perhaps there is someone in this room whose life is in that shape right now. They feel like there's just starting from nothing, starting over. And I wanna talk to you about what I consider to be miracles. The program, miracles, absolute miracles.

Can you imagine what it's like in my eyes, seeing it start from 2 guys, couldn't raise $50 to millions of people all over the world? This program has had a lot of help from a loving God, and I think he has allowed these miracles, and most of us here are miracles. And I wanna talk to you about recovery. What worked? What didn't work?

How did they do it? Well, the first guy that they thought about and picked up was a young man by the name of Eddie R. Eddie had just been thrown out of his house for non payment of rent with a cute little blonde wife and 2 stair step kids. So they moved the whole family into our house. We still had a house, just barely.

Took Eddie upstairs and locked him in the upstairs where he'd be available as they got this knowledge. Hey, you gotta remember, there's nothing written. They're just trying to stay a page ahead of Eddie. But Eddie was an agile young guy, and we had downspouts. And Eddie would open the 2nd story window, slide down the downspouts, and escape.

And they would have to postpone Eddie's recovery long enough to recapture him. Can you imagine a more inauspicious startup, a wonderful program? Well, when Eddie sobered up, he had a few things that hadn't surfaced, and he began beating up on this little wife to whom he was married. Then he began chasing my mom around the house with a butcher knife. So we held a group conscience meeting him, and it was decided the only thing for to do with Eddie was for his little wife to take him back to Ann Arbor, Michigan and recommit him in a mental institution.

And Bill and dad were crestfallen. Here's their first attempt to sober another alcoholic total failure. But I wanna tell you folks something. At my dad's funeral, 15 years later, a guy walked up to me and he said, do you know me? And I looked over at him, and I said, yeah.

I know you. You're Eddie. And he said, that's right. And he said, I want you to know, I'm a member of the Youngstown, Ohio AA group, and I've been sober 1 year. So we don't know the result of these 12 SIP calls.

Our part is just take that hand that reaches out for help. I don't think we're responsible at all for the result. Our part is to go, make the call, take care of the person the best we can go with what we got. You don't have to be fully qualified to make a 12 step call or nobody to ever make one. You go right?

You go with what you have at the time. We began taking these alcoholics into our home. Now I was a teenager at the time. My sister was too. Let me ask you this.

Were any of you like me raised in a home of active alcoholism? Would you raise your hand? Okay. Wow. Let me touch on that for just a moment, if I may.

I think we reached adulthood with some scars. I don't doubt that. I think we learned to cope with our situation in ways. I was a runner. I got out of that house and stayed out as long as I could because you never knew what you're going to find when you got home.

There are other ways of coping. But the thing that I must guard against is not to allow myself to get into a victim mindset. You know, all the screw ups I did, all the things I was supposed to do and didn't do, they're not my fault. I'm a victim. I'm a victim of an alcoholic home, and this works.

It works great, but right up front, there's a price to pay for me. And that is in order to keep that thing going, I must increasingly resent either a person or a place or group of things or group of people increasingly resent that. And my program has taught me a long time ago. The one thing that will destroy us is resentment. So I don't look at myself as a victim.

I look at myself as a survivor. And fortunately, both of our programs tell us how to do that, how to be a survivor. Well, we began taking this wet alcoholics into our home. Now, remember, Susie and I were teenagers, and you can imagine a home full of wet drums. Oh, it was exciting.

This was recovery. My dad, being the only medical man associated with this fledgling movement, would take a new guy upstairs and say, now, fella, I'm gonna give you a shot of whiskey, but I want you to take this medicine first. And it was peraldehyde. He knows pyraldehyde is a very pungent sedative. So when my sister, Susie, and I opened the front door coming home from school, if we smelled pyraldehyde, we knew we'd lost our bed.

Soon as he went to the couch, I went to the attic, but we didn't mind. This was recovery. We get to see him come in with the blank eyes. You know, there's nothing there. Pretty soon, a little twinkle.

Then pretty soon, you've got a viable human being on your hands, and it was great. This was recovery so much better than it had been. Bill and dad developed a standard diet that they took the new alcoholics through. They brought them downstairs. They had knocked him out from 24 to 36 hours.

He gave him a terrific jolt. But when the guy came to, they brought him downstairs and started the food, you know, to settle the nerves and get the mind going again. This is a diet, canned tomatoes, sauerkraut. Bill had an ulcer, and he thought sauerkraut cured everything, and Karo syrup. I think you'll agree the early alcoholics were a hearty group.

I wanna talk to you about somebody that nobody knows anything about, and that's my mom. And I think maybe she wanted it that way. Mom was a graduate of Wellesley, one of the fine women's colleges back in the east, and she went there on a scholarship. And her great uncle was president of the Santa Fe railroad. And at that time, the president of railroad had his own private cars and could tie onto trains wherever trains went.

And they were very opulent and he liked mom and he would take her with him sometimes. So she got to see the jaunty opulent side of life. Mom was a school teacher. Mom had led a very sheltered and protected life and was very easily shocked until AA. But remember, this is the lady that said, hey, she didn't say come over and have soup with us next Tuesday, Bill.

She said, Bill, come live with us. Isn't that a miracle? And another thing, remember Bill lived in New York city and we lived in Akron, Ohio. There's another miracle. Bill said, okay.

And mom wrote to Lois and Lois came down and visited that first summer. Lois, our beloved, Illinois co founder, Bill's wife, and stayed as long as she could, but Lois had to get back to New York city. You gotta remember Lois is the only one that had a job, Well, it was the start of a friendship that lasted until Lois's death in not too distant past, but now, mom was the one that was making the beds, and mom was the one that was cooking the food, and mom was the one that was cleaning up the messes, and mom was the one that was on the telephone because we began there began to be an interest in these what these guys were doing. Mom was the one that made everybody stay there and have a quiet time in the morning that they might feel not near to God. Mom was the one in 1936 started a movement for the wives of alcoholics, where she tried to teach them in her loving way, the tolerance and patience and love.

So she saw from the word go that it was a program that affected the whole family. I was the one that endured the snubs. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous was not an instant success. It was thought of as a cult and a bunch of nuts. We even got kicked out of the Presbyterian Church on account of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I never heard of anybody getting kicked out of the Presbyterian Church, but we were.

So you see, it wasn't an easy thing. And mom never lost faith in these 2 guys that they couldn't make something of this. Mom took up smoking when she was 50. Maybe these guys had something to do with it. But anyway, I said, mom, you're not gonna start smoking now, are you?

And she said, well, if you wait till you're 50, I won't say anything. It was in the depression, and a mom got a, a, an economy kick on, and she thought she would make her own cigarettes, quit buying the TaylorMade, you know? So she bought a Target machine. Have any of you ever seen a Target machine? Well, it's a little device that you laid the paper in a trough, and you sprinkle the tobacco on, and you took a lever and put it over in back, and you had a cigarette.

Well, my sister and I thought this was a little bit beneath our class, so we volunteered to make her some cigarettes. But instead of using tobacco, we used shavings out of the pencil sharpener. Well, when she lit the first one, of course, the fire didn't go out. After 2 of these or 3 of these, she said, you know, these aren't nearly as good as those lucky strikes. Mom always sat at the back of the door of the meeting room.

You see the early AA meetings were open meetings. Greeted everyone that came in the door, always wore the same old black dress. And when dad got back on his feet financially, mom got 3 new dresses and somebody said, Anne, you're gonna wear one of your new dresses to the meeting tonight. And she said, oh no, I'm gonna wear the old black dress. There'll be somebody come through that door that can't afford a new dress.

And that was my mom. Mom died in 49. We attended the 1st international Cleveland in 1950, and that's where they adopted the 12 traditions. Now Bill had gone around the country stomping for these traditions, and groups were then like they are. Now they said, Bill, go on back to New York and run that like you want to.

We'll run this like we want to. They weren't paying attention to it. So at that first international, 6 guys got up and each of them read 2 of the traditions and they adopted them unanimously. And I say thank the good Lord for that because those are the things that the glue that holds us together, folks. Those 12 traditions are the glue that holds us together.

And again, I think they were a miracle, absolutely inspired. Because, now, think about them. They're damage control. Somehow they took care of some of the all the things that would have caused AA to just blow apart. Let me give you one of the little miracles.

Money, We're self supporting through our own contribution period. You know, in the early days, the whiskey distillers wanted to give a big bucks. Yeah. Wanted to give a big money because, the alcoholic laying out in the gutter is not very good press, but somehow they had the courage to say no because there would have been some strings attached. I'm sure they would've expected something in return.

Isn't that a miracle? Even though they were so broke, they learned they did not accept that money. My dad was terminally ill, dying of cancer at the time. And, his work was pretty well over, you know, dad only lived 15 years, but isn't that like the time he personally treated without charge medically and AA wise over 5,000 alcoholics. He, he was mister 12 step.

He was good at it. And a new guy would come in his office, and he'd ask him, do you believe in God? The guy said yes. Said, okay, let's get down on our knees. And he got down on his knees with him, and that's the way he did it.

And his success rate was terrific. He ran a little, you know, they're running 75% of better success rate those early days. But anyway, dad was very, very ill and wanted to go back to his beloved Vermont one more time. And so my wife and I had loaded him in the car, drove back to Vermont, to his home. And I wouldn't take for the caring and sharing that we did as we rode along the road together, sitting on the edge of the bed at night and in the car.

And we brought him back to Akron, Ohio. And I had I had a flying job out of Dallas at the time, and I had to get back to work. I never saw my dad alive again. You see, my mom had died the year before, and he was very sick and very lonely. But what a wonderful guy he was.

What a what a great guy he was. Bill invited, my wife and I to the 2nd international in 1951. That's the one where the religious people gave talks. People who were in religions of different kind loved AA when AA wasn't cool. Gave talks, doctor Sam Schumacher from New York and father Ed Dowling from Saint Louis.

And these talks are recorded word for word, and they're beautiful. They're in the book, a comes of age, a chapter religion looks at a a a, if any of you are interested. Then we did not attend an international for some time. AA was doing well. The media got a hold of it.

It became an absolute day lose, you know, the word got out in our area that there was a doctor in Akron, Ohio could fix drunks. And they came in on the bus and on the train dropped off by loving relatives, Dropped off by relatives who weren't so loving. And again, our heavenly father provided the right person. Sister Ignatia was the admitting nurse at a hospital Catholic hospital there in Akron. And she and dad prevailed upon the mother's superior to allow them to establish an alcoholic ward where many people could be admitted with a disease of alcoholism, not under some guys like gastroenteritis, but of alcoholism.

It was just a small room. It had 7 cots in it. It was a flower room, you know, where they trimmed the flowers for the patients and rearranged them. I've often thought what the early alcoholics thought when they came to and looked around. There's nothing but flowers.

Must have been quite a joke. But anyway, that facility is still in that hospital, still in operation, occupies the whole 5th floor now, but it was a beginning. As I said, my wife and I didn't intend any attend any of the more internationals. You see, we were party animals. We loved to dance and we loved to drink, and I sure wasn't telling anybody my father was doctor Bob Smith.

But once in a while, somebody would find out about it and invite us to come to a meeting, and we would go and enjoy it. And as we rode home, we'd say, oh, good for them. Yeah. They needed that. All the while alcoholism was working in our home.

Betty put her dad in a drying out place in Denver in 1944, and he and other guys started AA in, New Mexico. So if there was ever 2 human beings that should have recognized alcoholism, it was my wife and me, but we didn't. You see, we were different. I see some of you thought you were different, But, alcoholism, as far as I've been concerned, was 3 parts, fun, fun and problems, problems. And we were well into the problem area.

We didn't just jump right into AA. We began doing little things to adjust to see if we couldn't, do better. Let me tell you a little story about 2 hunters that loved to hunt way up in the wilds of Alaska, and they would have an aviation company fly them in, land on a lake, leave them, and pick them up a week later. So the plane came in, landed, and the pilot one of the hunters said to the pilot, oh, we're so glad to see you. We had a wonderful we got 3 moose.

The pilot said, 3 moose, you 2 guys and me in this airplane? I don't think so. 1 of the others said, don't worry about it. Said, man came in with a plane exactly like yours last year, and we had 3 moves. What he did was he taxied up the river and got a log or run for takeoff, and he didn't have any trouble taking off.

So pilot thought, well, I'm new with the company. I gotta try it. So he did, and sure enough, the little plane takes off, and they start heading back towards civilization. But the engine is working so hard. It begins to overheat and lose its power, and way out in the middle of the wilderness, it crashes.

Well, one of the hunters drags his buddy out from under the plane and his buddy looked around and said, Oh, where in the world are we? The other said, you know, I think we're within a 100 yards of where we crashed last year. And that was us trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Man. Well, when it finally got bad enough, my wife went to AA.

Young guy called her up and said, babe, we're starting a group here in Ocona, Texas for people have a problem like you, will you come? And she said, yes. And she came, and she never took another drink. Hiding on by her fingernails. She said, I wouldn't recommend.

That's the way to do it. But she said, I'll tell you one thing. You won't forget it. Never took another drink. Well, she's working her program so well and so hard, she's running off and leaving me.

Yeah. She's doing the things that they're supposed to be doing and left me back in the dust. And I thought, wow. This is really a program of attraction as far as I'm concerned. So somebody said, well, Bob, why don't you go to Al Nod?

And I thought, well, why not? I don't mind joining the auxiliary. So I got my car and I drove 40 miles to the east of Gainesville, Texas to my first Al Anon meeting. I walk in there and I look around and I'm the only guy, room full of women. I'm the only man.

Well, I immediately got mixed emotions about Al Anon. I like to describe mixed emotions this way. It's kinda like the feeling you get when your teenage daughter comes in at 4 in the morning with a Gideon Bible on her arm. But I stayed and I really laid a trip on those gals, you know, told them the rock that'd been holding the family together, bloody, but unbowed. You know, they listened very patiently.

And I left there knowing I'd made a wonderful impression. These things are revealed to us, you know, as we can handle them. Few years later, I talked to Anne, one of the ladies was there, and she said, oh yeah, I remember that meeting, Bob. After you left, we held a meeting. And we said, there's one that's not gonna make it.

But I blessed that bunch there, my home group, and have been all this time. Where did the ideas come from? Bill in New York city for 6 months. And my folks in Akron, Ohio had belonged to an organization called the Oxford group. Now the Oxford group was started by a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania.

The basic principles of it was back to 1st century spirituality. They had meetings they shared with each other. They had, they had a form of a fist step. They talked to each other. They had the 4 absolutes that are been incorporated on our program.

Absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity of thought and absolute love many, many things that we picked up and use in our program today comes from the Oxford group. We owe those people a tremendous debt of gratitude, but it was inevitable that we part, You see the, the Oxford group catered to the upper middle class and the early alcoholics were not upper middle class. The Oxford group wanted publicity and the alcoholics already had all the publicity they wanted, and they had a form of a fist step. They would take a new guy upstairs in one of the bedrooms at t Henry Williams' house and bore in on him till he finally confessed what his problem was. And it must have really worked a more, I can see in my mind's eye, the guy coming down pretty ashen faced.

But anyway, folks, this was a form of open confession and it was not acceptable to people in the Catholic faith. Now, I don't know whether you realize it or not, but there are Catholics that drink too much. So anyway, it was inevitable that we part and it was a difficult parting, but something that that absolutely had to be done. Also, some of the ideas came from God's big book. You know, God has his only big book.

Came from the 13th Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, the book of James, which is all of you know his faith without works is dead. All these things were used to weave into a formula program that we have today. Our recovery was difficult. We had a lot of anger between us, a lot more than I really had realized, and it was difficult working our way through this anger. We had to establish boundaries for each other.

Sometimes we had to just walk away. Sometimes we used the little slogans that we picked up like, oh, I didn't know you thought that way about it. Or this is my favorite ones. You may be right. You know, it's within the realm of possibility.

But we both worked our programs, and it was such a wonderful blessing for this family. Thank God the program was there when we needed it, just like it was there when each of you needed it. I had to learn that our relationship didn't have to be 5050. Sometimes it's 9010. Sometimes it's 1090, And what's the difference?

I had to learn to peel away the past, and the past dies hard. But I had some wonderful, wonderful blessings that occurred along the way. I learned about a loving God. You know, I was I was raised in the Episcopal church. That's Catholic light.

And God was used to improve my conduct. And I didn't much like that when I got to be an adult. And later on, I was a bomber pilot and flew 45 missions out of Africa, an old B 24, a 4 engine liberator. And I had a different relationship with God. I had a 911 relationship.

I made deals with God. Do any of y'all any of y'all ever make deals with God? Oh, God. I swear if you get me out of this one, I'll never and that isn't a very loving relationship. But the programs have taught me that my God is my heavenly father, that we're all God's kids, Loves us just like we are, wants us to do better, but loves us just like we are.

And what a wonderful blessing. I talked to God. I thank him every night and I pray to him every morning. And I tried to pray for other people, not so much for myself. I talked to him during the day, just like I could talk to you.

God, did you see that SOB cut us off? Another one of the blessings. I learned about honesty. I always thought I was cash register honest. You know, the lady gave me too much change.

I'd say here, honey, you gave me a quarter too much and it just made my day, you know, here I am totally honest. And also the next step may be what I call resume honesty. You know, you tell the truth, but you gussy it up a little bit so you look good. That's not program honesty. The program honesty is absolute honesty.

When I can show you me warts and all, and you do the same for me, we can have an instant, intimate friendship. And I know of no other organizations in the world that this works. And what this does for me, and, perhaps for some of you, it dispels loneliness. I wanna talk to you just briefly about what I consider a few miracles. Let me run some of them by you.

Because I think these whole programs are miracles, guided by a loving heavenly father. Money. You know, Bill and dad were dead broke and they thought, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a bunch of dough for this movement? We've had, we could establish treatment centers. My father could see himself.

I'm sure in his white coat, reading the patients and maybe Bill out on the streets, flagging them in, you know? So they went to New York and met with people with deep, deep pockets, and mister Rockefeller and his group listened very carefully and then said, no, money will ruin it. Now that's a miracle. Now just think what might have happened in your mind's eye if mister Rockefeller and his group had dumped a $1,000,000 on a 100 broke alcoholics. That's horrible to even think about, ain't it?

Miracle. Anonymity. In the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were people with huge egos. Now I know we don't have that anymore, but you can't be mister a a or missus Al Anon if nobody knows what your name is. And another thing that has done, it doesn't make any difference if you've been here 40 days or 40 years.

We're all exactly the same. And isn't that the way it should be? Miracle. God, as we understood him, that was incorporated in the steps to quite a loud mouth agnostic by the name of Jimmy b. And Jimmy said, this god stuff will ruin it.

It'll run them out faster than we can drag them in. So to quiet to be down, they put God as we understood him. What that has done, folks, that has allowed these programs to go completely through the entire world. People who have an entirely different concept of a higher power than perhaps you and me. Just the one thing.

It's another little miracle. If you're new here and your life is right on the bottom, and you think you're just starting from nothing, So did these programs. So did these programs. It started working when they surrendered. If you think that you're in bad need of a miracle, these programs are absolute miracles, and every one of us sitting in here is a miracle.

So I say to you, talk to us. We wanna hear from you. You don't bother us. You help us, believe it or not. You strengthen us.

Doctor Albert Schweitzer, who was a a, medical doctor in my era. Doctor. Schweitzer had been a world class organist and went and got his MD, and then went down into darkest Africa and started hospitals and did nothing but that for the rest of his life. And doctor Switzer said, I know not what your destiny may be, but this one thing I do know, that those among you who will find true happiness are those who have sought and found how to serve. So you see, that's where our happiness is.

If you will let us serve you, you don't bother us. You help us. And you gotta remember every one of us was brand new at one time. Every one of us. So we know where you are.

So hang in there with us, hang in there with us. Don't you dare quit before your miracle. You've got your own miracle coming. Well, Betty and I were going along great. We, got all the kids through school.

1 had a bachelor's who had master's degree and one had his doctorate. And we were, they were out on their own. The dog had finally died and we were just going along great. And I got a phone call one day. Scott, my oldest son, Scott had a master's degree, criminal law from the university of Texas and was a member of MENSA.

Well, the people, you know, with a genius IQ, no problems with drug or booze was top BMW salesman in Dallas, went to work one day and something happened there. I guess it's corporate stress, went out and sat down his car, took out his gun, blew his brains out. Terrible thing. Terrible thing. You know, no parent wants to outlive their children.

But what the point I wanna make is when this tragedy occurred, the groups and the people in it took us in took us in their hands and propped us up until we're able to stand again. 6 months later, my beloved wife came down with lung cancer, inoperable cancer, and died shortly after that solved within a 2 year period. But again, the groups and the people in it took me in their hands, held out their cupped hands for me, propped me up, took care of me until I was able to stand for myself again. And I don't tell you this for sympathy, because it's probably some of these things are going to happen to you if they already haven't happened. This is life on life's terms folks.

So that's one thing of another beautiful blessing that we have in our program. Oh, I gotta tell you something. You know, my God never closes one door, but what he doesn't open another one. I've got a fiance. We're both old, But I wanna tell you this.

You know how us Al Anon's can home in on an alcoholic? We could spot 1 at a 100 yards. Mona, my beloved, is 25 years sober in AA. Thank you all very much. I've loved being with you.

I loved talking to you. I hope we'll visit some more. Thank you.