Sessions by the Sea in Ocean City, MD

Can you all see me? I feel like what Mark Twain said, I'm always embarrassed when people compliment me. I feel they're not saying enough. That was the shortest introduction that I've had in a long time. Before I tell you my name, I'd like to say that, I read some place which says that intelligence of of a group is measured by how easy it is for them to pronounce a foreign name.

My name is Ajit. Hi, Ajit. Got a Mensa crowd in here. Love it. I I want to, dispense with the formalities.

I want to thank Maurice for inviting me to come to this conference and for the committee for sanctioning it. But I do have one complaint, Maurice. When I come to Al Anon or AA conferences as the Al Anon speaker, usually they send a very striking woman to pick me up. You send Zippy. And to add insult to injury, he stood there looking around.

I walked right past him but then I recognized from the sick look on his face. He was an AA speaker, but I mean, AA committee member coming to pick me up and I asked him, I said, how come you did not recognize me? Wasn't I reeking of serenity? And he said, no. I was looking for a turban guy.

As I mentioned to my friend, the chieftain and I wanted to spell some some stereotypes, I have never ever won a turban. I don't have a dot on my forehead. I don't have a cobra or a tiger for a pet. I don't wear my golf shoes with the spikes on the insides. But I do want to thank Zippe, he's been a consummate host, he's fed me more than I've eaten and I realize why he is in the shape he's in.

So he's been very very considerate, very very thoughtful, always present. I wanna thank you, Zippy. I don't say this to too many men, but I do love you. You're quite a guy. I wanna thank Madeleine for hosting.

Madeleine, I have a present for you. I brought this all the way from California when they called me and told me that, you had a certain passion. Oh, no. They put me up to it, Madeline. I know of Popeye.

That's the other exhibit he is wearing a T shirt and it's got a finger pointing this way. He said, then the guy next to me is Popeye. And he and I are walking down the boardwalk and people are giving us other curious looks. Anyway, I I also want to thank the other speakers. I've learned a lot of this weekend, as I always do when I go to conferences.

God, I I did not get to hear the the Wednesday night speaker, Ed, but I heard he was wonderful. I'm sure I'm gonna get something from his state. And then I enjoyed David thoroughly. What a delightful message followed by, Bill. And then, of course, my buddy Rick from Toronto.

Wow. And then, god, top it off with Sheila. And then tonight we get to hear Marty, which I'm not too sure about, but, he's got a great message too. And, I just wanna tell you, that, the name Ajiv is, as I mentioned, Indian, not the feathered kind but the turban kind or the never wanted turban. And it means one who cannot be beaten.

My mom must have really had high hopes and expectations of me. And I'm surprised that I have about 99 odd versions to my name ranging from horse shit to ass shit. I don't know why. Most of them from my former mother-in-law. Ah shit?

How do you come up with horse shit from a jeep? You know? I grew up in Bombay, India, left the shores of Bombay at the age of 22 with no knowledge of this disease called alcoholism and that's kind of ironic because we lost an uncle to that disease. He died of cirrhosis of the liver, blind in both eyes, totally alone. I was told that his wife literally dropped him off and almost stopped car outside another uncle's home.

I thought maybe she was practicing detachment. I realized wasn't detachment was geographic distancing, out of sight, out of mind, and and my uncle died literally alone. So I had no idea what this was all about despite the fact I came across AA in my 6th standard. And we call them standards. They call them grades here.

And I I recall my vice principal, my headmaster, had started the first chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Bombay, India. Now I asked a friend of mine, I said, what the hell is Alcoholics Anonymous all about? He said, oh, they get drunks off the street and get them sober. Little did I realize that at least figuratively, AA would come to let my now former spouse up and and get her sober. Now I'll tell you in a quick second my problem, my disease.

I cannot recall when exactly I walked into AA into Al Anon. It was circa 1980, but I know exactly when she walked into AA. May 25, 1983, 8:0:2 PM at the University United Methodist Church in Irvine, California. And my other problem is image management. Bunch of you nod on that.

Image management states that I may look like I may feel like shit, but I gotta look good. And I look even better if the person next to me trades a certain image that tells other people around who don't really care a good about me, but I think they are, that I'm okay. And that's been the bane of my existence for the longest time. See, I I fought with the word disease. I did not like the word disease being applied to me, a nonalcoholic, until I was in an Al Anon meeting and a woman said something that clicked with me.

She said diseases dis ease the insides not matching the outsides. That I could understand because it's been a big, big problem for me, a big trip for me, if you will, to bring the 2 into into connection with each other. I'm still kind of in the it's progress, not perfection as they say. But before I go any further, I do wanna welcome the Al Anon's and show virtually every Al Anon is attending this meeting. Welcome.

I see a bunch of AA's in this room, I welcome you. Some of you are really welcome. But anyway, I finished up with my education in India, my undergraduate work and I climbed the proverbial mountain and I was selling Zippy, I wore my best Sunday loincloth, star studded. And I walked up the mountain to my guru and I said, oh great one, I seek serenity. He said, go to Detroit, Michigan and join Al Anon.

The pastor neglected to tell me I had to marry an alcoholic in the process. And, you know, I was thinking today, so what the hell am I gonna talk about? I have no idea. So a voice said, why don't you just keep it simple and say how it was, what happened, how it is today. And so that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

So the first part of what I tell you is really static. It's not changed unless I lie really well and embellish it somehow, which I'm doing every now and then. It's progress. I'm still sick. And so if you heard my story, surprised my friends from Chesterton, I Renee and Jewel and a bunch of other people.

I'm so happy to see I saw Lei Caroline from Pennsylvania. God. That's that's wonderful to see some people that I've run into in the past. But, anyway, I come out of Detroit, Michigan well warned by fans and family. They said, do not get involved with American women.

Canadians are okay, Lee's. I said, why is that? They say, oh, they drink and smoke in the open like men. Translation, Indian women, at least the discrete ones, do it behind closed doors. I come out of the states.

Now the fact that the American woman smoked was not an issue, but I loved the fact that she drank. I like Al Norder's comment in MASH. She said, my kind of woman drunk. Since that candy is dandy but liquors quicker, it made my progress in an evening extremely cost effective and expedient. It was fun.

Because then I realized it would cost me was gathering karmic debt. I remember when, I was going to working on my graduate work, doing my graduate work at a university called Wayne State in in the middle of Detroit in heart of Detroit and then I finished up and I was, living in the suburbs in Troy, Michigan and I used to hang around a meat market called Yesterdays and I used to invite these women to, you know, you best thing to do is create some sense of adventure by inviting them to downtown Detroit where no sane person would go after 7 o'clock because even the buggers were mugging each other. But we used to go to Greektown, which was policed by the Greek mafia, and you're very safe. And the reason why I like to go to Greektown is because in those days and I'm somewhat dating myself, but what the hell? I'm 49.

Back in the seventies, you could get a 4 course meal which included a bottle of Rodidus wine for about $25. And the thing about Rodidus wine was it would transform an absolute stranger into the best of friends over one evening. It'd go from dinner to my place and it was it was wonderful. And I, you know, when I married my wife, I said, god, I dated a bunch of these women and I did not get into a relationship or I did not marry them. Relationship was just stretching the word to its ultimate.

Maybe a week or 2 is what it lasted. And I'd say, you know, we all lost carrier beam. Alcoholic, no. Don't waste your time. Alcoholic, no.

She doesn't need taking care of. She's not meant to be with you because she's not gonna give meaning to your life. Move on move on move on. And I said, I met you. My beam took off and here I am taking care of you.

And she said, nonsense. If you married 1 of them, you would have driven them to drink too like you did me. Okay. They say never get to a boxing match with with an alcoholic. You come out bruised.

You know I don't like this difference we create between alcoholics and alanines in in so many ways. I think when I share at a meeting, I have sometimes a bunch of men in AA come and say, Jesus, well, I felt quite a bit like the way you did. May we need Al Anon? And when I first started Al Anon, I used to go to open a speaker meetings and I'd identify with the speaker except for the drinking part. And I'd tell my wife, you think I'm an alcoholic?

And she said, no. Don't even come near us. And I said I said, but I totally identify with this guy. She said the feelings, not the drinking. And I and I come to recognize that friends of mine and Al Anon said they are self centered.

And I said, now why did you want them to get sober? Because it would straighten out my life as Rick was talking about yesterday. I said, isn't that self centered thinking too? I really did not care she would stop drinking. I just wanted to stop drinking so my life would be okay.

And as my story progresses, you'll see that. Anyway, I, my serenity desire for serenity drove me to this place called Traffic Jam. And Traffic Jam was a student hangout. I I was I was a part time lecturer, and I take my students to this place for a couple of beers after class. And here comes this woman who's working her way through nursing school to wait on this table.

And my being took off, you know, met the woman I'm gonna take care of, make excuses for, pay her bills, blah blah blah. Greg, you can't leave. And a little bit took out that let the idiot who's gonna make my excuse, to tell my lies, make my relationships, count my drinks, blah blah blah and the next thing you know I ask her out. And she tells me and my ego has me believe this that she had never ever been out with anyone from that establishment, the patron letters and I was the first one. God, I stood about 610.

We went out. Now see, there were strange things coming my way. My God's a God that his sense of humor has a god of irony because messages are coming at me but I was ignoring them. We went out to I invited her to a party and I talked about image management. This was a party being put on by my boss at the time.

I worked for Xerox, and the woman I was seeing at the time did not meet the image on have the image that I wanted to display at this party. Certain people think, boy, what a cat. I used to be a cat. I'm less of a cat today. So instead of checking that woman in, I'm waiting at this at this restaurant, this bar, and this woman's beam takes off.

And I look at her, and she fits the image I wanna project, and I ask around, she says, yes. And before the party, we go out to dinner. Now normally, when I went to dinner, I'd listen with an open mind in one ear out the other because I was strategizing. Well, with this woman, I was actually indulging in intellectual intercourse. Actually she was talking and I was listening, and it was over 3 hours.

That's scary. I should have left in the restaurant, got in my car, driven away, but no one's gonna seek serenity even if it killed me. So we went out to the party and my buddy, George shows up. He says, oh, you and Susan look so comfortable together. How long have you been seeing each other?

6, 7 years. I said, George, I met this woman last week. Week. This is our 1st day. He said, no.

You look too dented comfortable. Something is not right. He was right. I should have left at the party, got my car driven away, but no. We were gonna see each other.

It was about 4 months in our relationship relationship. There was a knock on the door and I was open the door, this woman stood with a lump on her head and I said, what happened? She said, my mother hit me in an alcoholic rage. Now the father in me, the knight in shining armor, I mean, personality that Sybil and Roseanne would have fought over. Him gushing forward.

I said, you will not move in with that woman. You will move in with me. Now, a Hindu from Bombay, India does not ask a Polish Catholic girl to move in with her. Well, not the scary part. The scary part was watching her God fearing Catholic mother who disavowed sinful living together actually helping a daughter move in.

That should have been a clue, Hashem, given the key to mother and daughter saying, I surrender. Again my card to God, I don't want serendipity, let me be the cat I am and move on. And that was not all we lived together in sinful bliss for about a year. Strange things were going on and I should have had, you know, some knowledge that something was awry but I wasn't in denial because you see, to get to denial, you have to have some awareness. When you're clueless, how can you get to denial and then how do you get to acceptance?

And the reason I recognize in retrospect is that you have to have some depth to your personality to have some feeling awareness. You see, I was totally disconnected. I think I have a mild case of, at least in those days, of being slightly sociopathic. If you served a certain purpose in my life, you were welcome. The moment you exhausted that, I have no need for you.

I did not care about your feelings. I didn't care. I pretended to at times. I had no depth emotional connection to you. There's some people or someone sharing or someone died and they get so touched by it.

The pet dies or or relative dies. I really did not affect me in that way. I was totally disconnected and as as a matter of fact, it's it's in my men's tag Al Anon group and all these men were talking about feelings and love and all that good stuff and I said, god, this Al Anon is going to bring out this feeling side in me and perhaps that's good. And one day, I'm driving and I'm drinking a soda, and all of a sudden, I feel a welling up in my chest. It's, I'm experiencing a feeling.

But what is this feeling? I'm not happy happy. I'm not sad sad. Things are okay. And all of a sudden, there's a carbon dioxide a carbon oxide or whatever it is escapes from me.

And I said, oh, Lord. It wasn't a feeling. It was just gas. I mean, that's how disconnected I was from myself. How the hell am I gonna see what's going on with this woman?

I mean, she was minding her own business, doing what she was doing. Occasionally, she'd make a mess, you know, and and create a noise and that irritated me because it was affecting my image But it wasn't bad enough, so we got married. And here, something started. I guess I really did drive with a drink, and I'm still waiting for her to come and say, Ajit, I'm so grateful you drove me to drink with. I found a and I'm a much better person than I was but she hasn't done that yet.

Anyway, here this is for the newcomer. I mean, if, you know, you guys have been through and I'm not gonna give you her drunk a lot but I'm giving you my portion of the insanity. I started noticing strange things in the house. For instance, I would go to this little half bathroom we had in this little condo we bought in Warren, Michigan. And I would open up this little cabinet and 6 or 7 empty cans of beer would topple out.

I would go like an idiot to my wife and say, sweetheart, what were those empty cans of beer doing? They were not even in the trash can. That was what I was concerned about. Why weren't they in the trash? And she'd say, aunt Bunny came over and had a few beers.

I never ever picked up the phone and called aunt Bunny and said, why do you take a 6 back into the bathroom? Are you eliminating the middleman, for instance? He is pouring it down. Or I thought, buddy of mine would come and say, Tom, would you like a glass of wine? And I want some alcoholic who's been in the firm for a long time and might know something about this to please clue me in because I still don't know how she did it.

Tom would say, sure. I'll have a glass of wine. I'd reach into the cabinet, pull out this bottle. I swear to you, there's a cork on it, there's a seal on it, it's got this little red ring on it, but it's empty. Do you sell long syringes?

Some alcoholic shop, like, they have those golf shops. They get the papers and the scales and all that. They have a special shop for alcohol. They'll give you syringes. You can suck the wine out and pour it in a glass and screw up the other guy.

I started noticing a few strange things about this woman. She was saying it loud, sometimes violent, verbally and physically. And I said, you know, I think she's got a drinking problem. So I've been watching those shick shackle commercials. You remember those from the seventies where this woman goes up to her husband.

She says, sweetheart, you have a drinking problem. He says, darling, you're so right. And they go over and get treated. So I believe what I saw was a foreigner, you know, even you were a foreigner at the time. So I walked up to my wife and said, sweetheart, you have a drinking problem.

She said, you're an idiot. I don't. So I had to resort to, you know, I do not have plan b in place, only plan a. I thought she'll say yes. I'll take it to shiksha.

So I figured now this is a disease that I think we men are afflicted by. It's called logic. In my case, pseudologic. And it's something I think that women perpetrate on us, this myth that we are logical to manipulate us. Right?

Men, we know we're lied to. So I used to say, okay. If I catch her in the act, then she'll know, I know and she'll stop drinking. So if you don't have much of a life and a lot of time on your hands, you might consider doing some of the things I did even though they have no do not change a thing but it gives you something to do. I would sit on a couch looking at a blank television set pretending to do the crossword puzzle.

Who in the world uses words like Anewi? Five letter word for boredom. Some of you experiencing that right now. So I'm writing, annuene, d n n u r, and I'm looking at the reflection. And I see her reach under the cabinet and pour some booze and I make this Archimedean exclamation, like I've discovered a new law in physics.

She was doing what a good alcoholic does. By the way, why do we call them active alcoholics? There was nothing active about her. She was sedentary. Yeah.

She sat on the couch and the only activity she had was throwing stuff at me. And then I saw her once on a bicycle about 10 feet of snow in Chicago going to the grocery store to pick up some booze. That's about the level of activity. But when she was in the midst of a disease, I'd see her pour a boozing then she'd put put the bottle away and then she'd crawl upstairs to the bedroom with some semblance of dignity and then I'd follow her hours or later making sure she was passed out and then 2 o'clock we both wake up our feet time and then she'd get downstairs to move her booze around the port. I would first move all the bottles around before I went up thinking that she'll come down not find the bottles, know that I knew and she'd stop drinking.

And I hear this clang clang going on and I'd say, Now she knows. I did not know that good alcoholics hide their booze in about 16,000 places so they kinda place swan at the place too. I don't know why searching for god searching through garbage cans became so important. You walk home, this woman is passed out on the floor, there's stuff coming out of her mouth, it reeks of alcohol. Even a 6 month old child would speak up and say, that's booze.

But I have this compulsion to go to the garbage can and go through the litter inside and critique her choice of alcohol. Screw top bottle of wine. How goes? She didn't let it breathe. Came out champagne.

How can you get so low? And I told this to my sponsor. I said, god darn, I'm being a garbologist. I'm going through garbage cans. And I guess they sent sponsors to 1 upmanship school.

He said, oh, that's nothing. I said, how could that be nothing? He said, I was in the army and I would work on chiefs in the middle of the night with a flashlight in my mouth so my hands would be free. And he said, that skill came in real handy. I could go through 2 garbage cans in the middle of the night.

I said, god, I'm not gonna tell you they sell that helmet at Granger's with a flashlight. You can really go through it. Man, it was embarrassing. You know, they say you can spot an alcoholic from the behavior of the person next to them. We'd go out to a dinner with friends and I'd look at and say get all upset and my friends would look and say, Jeet, what's wrong with you?

I say, she's got pepperoni dripping down her chin, she's got mozzarella on her eyelids and you're asking me what my problem is? She's no, she's having a great time and she was. You know, alcoholics have a tea should say, I drink, I get drunk, I pass out, no problem. Problem's right here. Honey, I haven't had a drink.

Really? Let me kiss and smell. I'd go. Are you on the kiss and sniff test? Oh, god.

I got more I got buzzed more than she did just sniffing and kissing. Nothing was working. She would not stop drinking. Life was getting unbearable. And I said, you know what?

I'm gonna leave. No kids. We had a house. Little, you know, assets were not that high. We could cut loose and move.

And I don't know if she when she developed this fatal attraction to me, she said, if you leave, I will commit suicide. I said, that I wanna watch so you don't watch it up. So as I follow her from the doorway where I was about to take off with my little polka dotted thing on a stick, my claw felt like Elmer Farti, bitty, bitty, bitty, and I was like, a porky pig. As I go to the kitchen, her intention changed from suicide to homicide, And I have these knives and dishes flying at me about 95 miles an hour and this idiot, this image management idiot is dodging these dishes because I don't want my neighbors to find out that I have a drunk in my home. And that brings me to the next question, why do alcoholics get anonymous after they get sober?

So bloody drink anonymously in some dark dank room, I don't give a hoot. I'm teething. God makes your life miserable when you drink and you act up and everyone has to sick was talking about it. Everyone in the neighborhood has to see dad running down the street. Why can't Dan just sit in a corner and get drunk?

No problem. That's called self centered thinking on the other one on the spot. It's incredible. So nothing was working. I could not leave because she had this fatal attraction to me.

She would kill me if I left. So I came up with my next solution. I homicide on my part, I'd kill her. I was reading this magazine called Argosy. It's written by there's a story by Alfred Hitchcock and it described the perfect northern weapon.

Oh, Greg's coming up here. Thank you, Greg. I need to make an announcement. Please. If somebody in here has a black vehicle with a dog, you have to go to the parking lot to place her by your vehicle.

Thank you. Thanks, Greg. Thank you, Azim. Not a problem. So I was reading this magazine and in it, it described the perfect murder weapon.

The lady in the black dress is paying a lot of attention all of a sudden. You're listening, aren't you? And you have them in Baltimore. It's called an icicle. It disappears.

It's the middle of February, I said I'll take this icicle and kill her. That icicle disappears. No murder weapon. A 1 armed bearded man did it officer and I'll go look for him on the golf course in Florida. Not getting political, just kidding.

And I figured I'd dig up the basement. All this is happening in nanoseconds. Right? Now this is a kid who comes from the land of Gandhi, right? You do not kill someone, you simply starve yourself to death in front of them.

So, gee, please don't starve. I'm leaving. I was listening to Kabini and said Gandhi were in Italy, India would still be under the influence of the British. Okay. Chicken Parmesan.

Are you kidding me? I'm not starving. Yeah. Bring it here. So I took a dig up the basement, I bought a body of fresh cement.

I know nothing about masonry but who cares? Details. And life will be wonderful. But what stopped me was not the fact that it was a heinous crime that I was gonna take someone's life. What stopped me was my mother-in-law or my fear of my mother-in-law.

She lived about 3 miles away. I figured she'd find dust on my wife's company car, and she'd call the police. And I realized I did not come out of the United States to befriend some guy named Bubba in a Michigan prison. That was not the goal. I was so guilty about that.

I was sharing that in my meeting on a Friday evening in Irvine, and a lady said to me, she said, I'm so glad you shared. And I said, why? She said, oh, God. I've been guilty feeling guilty about this. I too wanted to kill my husband.

I said, what happened? He said, she said, he was lying on the couch and there was a pillow. He was fast asleep. I was gonna take the pillow and snuff him out. I said, why did you not do it thinking she'll say, god, that taking someone's life is not right.

It's immoral. It's blah blah blah. Instead, she said, oh, there were a fried cotton in his nose. Call that self centered thinking, I do. Finally, the twins came to my rescue.

I'm not talking to the Norwegian ski team. I'm talking about dear landlanders and dear Annlanders and dear Abby. I'm a man of the nineties and the 2000. I read them. And there was a big band in the Detroit Free Press that said, I'm a mother or child or father or whatever of an alcoholic.

Go to Al Anon. Said finally finally finally someone is gonna tell me how to get this woman sober. So I strode into my first Al Anon meeting. I did not crawl under the belly of a snake, under the door, or any of that stuff. I walked in real hard, looked into the room, and as someone said yesterday, the disease of perception.

Room's brightly lit as there's beautiful people in there. But to me, the room was dark and dank and there were 6 women in there, average age to feast. That was my impression. 6 dead women and I said, oh my god. I walked up to the deadest one of them and I said, are they about as old as I am now?

I walk up to the dentist of them all. She had a few more cobwebs on the skeleton. I said, how does this thing work? And she was scared. She did not wanna talk to me.

She pointed me to the literature table. She said, you will go there. There's a pamphlet. She wouldn't even walk up to the table with me. And she's with the pamphlet.

It says 12 steps. You pick that up and you read it and that's how it works. So I in my naivete, in my stupidity, I'm thinking there's an escape clause at the top. It says, these steps are taken from Alcoholics Anonymous. We change one word in the 12th step.

We call it others. Instead of saying we take it to the alcoholic, we take it to others. I figured some steps apply to me, some don't. I'll go through these steps right now. Step 13, she gets sober.

Now I know what step 13 is, but I didn't know the time. So I read the first one, admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives have become unmanageable. I said, I'm not powerless over alcohol. I drink to my limit, which is 1 drink shy of this intense to die to wear a lampshade and be the life of the party and embarrass people. And my life isn't unmanageable.

Talk about denial. God. You know, I was using my wife's drinking for every damned excuse. I've started a new job and my boss said, Hal, we had such high hopes for you. What's happening?

You're not working out. You're not producing the results. Oh, my wife drinks too much. People stop me in the street and say, what time? Then what?

My wife drinks too much. What's wrong with you? What? My wife drinks too much. And and nothing without isolating myself from my friends and family.

I did not wanna talk to anyone because I was so damned embarrassed by what was going on, by the fact that they would snicker every time they saw my spouse getting soused. And I wasn't my life wasn't certainly unmanageable. So move on. Step 2 came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I said, I'm the sane one.

She's the insane one. What am I doing reading this? Move on. Step 3, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I said, 12 years of Catholic school told me that God helps those who help themselves.

Why give back to God that which he's given to me? That would make God an Indian giver. Only I can say that. Step 4 took a searching and perilous moral inventory. I was perfect.

I said, I'm living in this trunk. She won't let me leave and I'm doing the right thing. Move on. Admitted to God to myself and to another human being. That step goes against the credo of image management.

First, there was nothing wrong. If there was something wrong and god didn't know about it, then what kind of a god was that? And if there was something wrong, you certainly were not gonna find out about it. That's crazy. Move on.

Step 6 and 7, nothing to be removed. No humility in the play here. Actually, I was so humble I was proud of it, so I moved on. Step 8, made a list of persons I had harmed. I said if I harmed them, they deserved it.

Step 9, made direct amends. I was still waiting for her to make amends to me. It did not apply to me. Move on. Step 10, my head was really hurting by now because the halo was fitting too tight.

It's too bad, I tell you. I have been stuck in this damn program. It's been stuck in this 95 inches right here. I'm exaggerating. It's only 8 inches.

And it's taken close to 18 or 19 years to start seeping down here because I was living in a state of conceptualization. I was living in a state of thought and analysis and and philosophizing and all that sort of good stuff. And as my story will reveal to you, it's a very difficult process to then finally come to and get your feet firmly on the ground, come face to face with matching the insides of the outside. But I don't have alcoholism in my life directly today. My former spouse now is sober almost 8 19 18 plus years.

I don't have any drinking in my home. I have kids who don't, at least to date, have not used and abused any kind of substance. I have 16 year old twins and and 2 after that, 14 and 10, and I I have not seen anything. So I'm not directly affected by alcoholism. And people ask me, why do you still go to Al Anon?

I I say, I don't even use the word qualifier for the alcoholic. Qualifier is my daughter. Oh, my qualifier is right here between my ears because this has what has created the base illusion for me in terms of my perception of the world. And that's what Al Anon is showing me, but not in that room. That room, I was trying to find out if only if I can get this sober.

See, I didn't know the meaning of the word sobriety. All I wanted her to drink was drink with the way I wanted her to drink which was two glasses of white wine specifically Chardonnay because when she drank the 3rd glass, she made my life miserable. So I'm reading these steps. I'm reading now the 11th step, you know, sought through prayer and meditation. I did not get to the second half.

The first half, I said, god, I pray all the time. God, get it killed. 6 Hail Marys. Don't get anyone else killed. 12 Hail Marys.

Forget it. God just bring her back. God said, are you nuts? Ask for a prayer and stick with it. And I looked at the lady 12 steps later.

I was spiritually awakened in 3 and a half minutes. I looked at her and said, now what? And she looked at me. She said, keep coming back. I know why Moon Unit Zappa wrote that song.

Gagged me with a spoon. I said, why? She said, because you're sick. I didn't realize how deceptive that woman was. I said, okay.

And I'd go back every 6 weeks. Now, I'm embarking on a program that's literally gonna get to the core of my psyche. It's gonna take that little tool and twist the inside just somewhat so I change my perception of life from victim or martyr to someone who's creating their reality and the choices they make and how they respond to the world. And I'm gonna do this to change my outlook by changing. It's gonna change my outlook, change my attitudes, change my belief system, change my behavior, change the person I've become on becoming by going to one meeting every 6 weeks and cutting it.

And then you got me stuck in this world called disease for the alcoholic. Oh, your wife has a disease like cancer or your wife has a disease like diabetes. I would request my friends and alumni not to use that analogy for idiots like me. And you ask the person first. First of all, I wanna find out, are you an idiot like a g?

If you are, then we don't wanna use this analogy. Let's use another analogy. And I'm telling why because my brain starts to break up into about 16,000 fragments with thoughts and anti thoughts flying and you got epsilon thoughts coming out and they're all screaming at each other. And the first had said, she's got a disease like cancer. Why is she seeking chemotherapy?

She's got a disease like ins diabetes. Seek insulin therapy. No one said and said, hey. This disease goes beyond the physiological and physical definitions of disease and enters the mental and spiritual and psychological realms of disease beyond anything you can conceive of it. Number 2, it really is none of your damn business what it is because your problem is not the disease part.

Your problem is your focus on this person. See, I recognize that. I figured out if I figure out that it's a disease, then I'll accept it. Today, if you ask me, do you know if alcoholism is a disease for sure? I'll say, I really don't know and I don't care for two reasons.

1, I have no control over it, number 1. Number 2, I obsess over behavior. I'll go to a restaurant with a beautiful woman on a date. She'll be drop dead gorgeous in every sense of the word but, god forgive her, she's got a piece of leather stuck in a tooth. Because I obsess on that.

I wanna take dental floss and I wanna clean it. I wanna spray water on it. I wanna do so I'm exaggerating but you know what I mean. I was talking to my wife one day. I said, you're alcoholics.

You give up booze, then you are focused obsessed with cigarettes. You give that up that up, then you're obsessed with exercise. You give that up and you're obsessed with sweets and something. And she says, isn't that interesting? Your obsession has moved right along and you're observing it.

See, that's my problem. My problem is not to fix the disease, and that's what I was stuck on for the longest bloody time. I even took my wife in and people said, you know, take her to marriage therapy. Maybe that'll help. So I take her to marriage therapy.

Right? I call this guy up. I educate him for half an hour on the phone. I said, I'll bring this woman and you take one look at it and you say you're an alcoholic and you strap it to some bed post some place and put whatever stuff you put down and dull it and get us sober. He knew he was talking to an idiot.

So I dragged my wife to the marriage counselor and I guess he hadn't heard a word of what I'd said. He said, so what's the problem? You don't ever ask a guy what because my brain shuts off, my reflexes take over. So my wife drinks too much. So he makes starts to take notes to make a long story short.

She's crying. He's riding. I'm standing there totally dumbfounded because plan did not work out. She said, I'll find a marriage counselor. She did.

We've got to see this guy. He'd been to school with the first guy because he asked the same question. So what's the problem? Like, you know, they're gonna solve the problems of the world by ponderously looking at you. So what's the problem?

I said, my wife drinks too much. He said, so what's the problem? So I figured he had a problem with my accent. So I spoke louder and slower and I'm doing charades. My wife, Why do we think that people who don't speak a language are stupid and deaf?

I scream them. Maybe Lola could have gone with me and made science to the guy. So now he says again, so what's the problem? And this time I hear meaning what's the problem with that? And I looked at this guy and I swear to you his nose was so red.

He could have served as a beacon on a dark ocean guiding ships. I look at my wife and said, oh my god. He's one of you. And she said, no. He understands.

See, I tried everything. I tried homicide. I tried or at least thought about it. I I I started Al Anon and still wasn't working. I was still fixated on on taking care of this problem that was creating a problem for me.

It was embarrassing me. It was isolating me. It was. See, I wasn't the actor. I was being caused upon me and I was simply reacting to the situation and yet I was the same one, yet my life was manageable, But my focus was still on this other person.

The final straw came is that as I give up, nothing is working. So the Al Anon thing and I'm I'm I'm conceptually getting into this Al Anon thing, and I'm going to one meeting every 6 weeks. Finally, someone said, treatment center. Your company has insurance policy. They'll send her up to Hazelton.

So I pack her up and I send her up to Hazelton. I'm not casting aspersions on treatment centers. They have their place. But I know from personal experience that when you force someone to go someplace, it does not seem to work. The seed may be planted.