The 3rd Anniversary Soberfest in Champaign, IL

This is when you'd like to look around and see if you can find a backdoor. My name is Arbuthis O'Neil and it is for the grace of God that I belong to the Al Anon family groups. Hi, Arbuz. I'm looking for Clancy. Probably taking a nap.

I shouldn't have said that because he's got my time last. I'm powerless. I'm powerless over people and over places and over things. And because of the program, I can make this admission without feeling guilty. My life continues to be unmanageable when I fail to practice principles that were given to us by a bunch of ex drunks who found their sobriety an Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I like to believe that the families of the early members of AA were convinced by the miracle of sobriety that this program would work for everyone. And it was out of this conviction that the all non family groups grew to reach all over the world and have shown astounding results. We subscribe to the concept that alcoholism is a family illness and then we get so carried away telling people how sick we got that we forget to say, we have a program for family recovery.' Ours is a fellowship that shares, but I feel strongly that we should share our recovery, not our sickness. And that's why these gatherings on the weekends that we call conventions or conferences or roundups or festivals, whatever we call them, these are a showcase of recovery. I think it's very hard to see growth within ourselves, but we can see it in other people and we say, hey, people just delight me.

You know, they love without expectancy. They get together these things use you know, the big ones, the internationals and they pound each other on the back. They're just so tickled to see each other. Everybody as Chuck think Chamberlain used to say, everybody's talking and nobody's listening and then somebody else comes in back there and they stop right in mid sentence and they say, look, look, there's old George and he's still sober. They don't even expect each other to stay sober.

And I'm delighted to be here to help you this weekend. Just delighted. I regret to say that my bill could not come along. He had to go to the hospital last Monday to have some testing done. I talked to him this morning and they they had released him.

I have to say this slowly because I'm not used to medical terms but Bill's diagnosis is diverticulitis. Did I get it all out? Anyway, he hasn't had a bite to eat except liquids since last Monday morning and so I said to him, did the doctors, give you a special diet? And he said, no. I had barbecue last night.

And I said, please, Bill, try to stick to soup till I get home. But he insisted on me coming. It would have been kind of bad for me to call June, last Monday and say, I'm sorry, but I can't make it. And Bill says that I need to come to these things. They are my energizers, so here I am and I'm very grateful to be here.

I'm called a long timer in the Al Anon family groups. I refuse to be called an old timer, and it's been my pleasure and great privilege for a large number of years now to talk to a lot of people in a lot of places and I've learned about people. Every one of you here here this afternoon are here for exactly the same reason that I'm here. We were driven here under the cruel lash of alcoholism because we had nowhere else to go. Nowhere at all.

I once thought that alcoholism was a product of my generation, but this isn't the truth. Alcoholism is as old as time. Alcoholism is an insidious, progressive, fatal illness that prompts the unthinking to make jokes about drunks, but it can leave a family homeless and penniless. Alcoholism is a public cancer that can turn a man or a woman against themselves. Alcoholism is a blight on the history of mankind.

The Bible warns against it. Shakespeare diagnosed it. Tennessee Williams built a prize winning play around it. But no one, as far as I have been able to learn, seemed to be able to do anything about alcoholism until the advent of AA. Priests and ministers before our lifetime, were baffled at their inability to cope with this insidious habit, this dreadful malady, if you please.

They preached to alcoholics, prayed over them, had them sign pledges, and when these things failed, they damned their souls to hell. Men of science and other generations wanting to find a cure for alcoholism. They wanted to find a pill or a vaccine that would stop compulsive drinking and failing to do this, they said to the medical students at that time, don't waste your time on these people. They're hopeless. Preachment failed.

There was no cure. So there was only one other thing we knew to do with alcoholics. You must be punished. So we locked you up in jail. The more you drank, the longer we kept you in jail And the longer we kept you in jail, the drunker you got when we finally released you.

It it became a vicious cycle. We tried to change the body chemistry of sick people with punishment and society allowed this to happen. Nay, we insisted on it to our everlasting shame. But there was one group of people, one group of people who never gave up on the alcoholic. These were the families of alcoholics, the people who loved you.

We took jobs to feed the children that you were too sick to be responsible for. We doctored your hangovers. Some of us bought your liquor. We picked up your hot checks. We bailed you out of jails.

We plead with judges. We said John's a good man when he's sober and to, repeat this ridiculous paradox, we gave you hell every time you got drunk. And society was puzzled by the behavior of the families of alcoholics. They could understand the alcoholic when he wrecked cars and did ridiculous things, wore things, wore lampshades on his head and things like that. They could understand it because they had been drinking but they could not understand us.

Long no. They couldn't understand why we continued to love and care for the alcoholic. Of course, they almost killed us with pity. We don't need pity. We need understanding.

It gave us nice shiny halos to wear and and we accepted them quite willingly. I put mine on every morning when I put on my lipstick and my halo had a name. It was called self righteousness. Did you ever notice that word doesn't even taste good? It doesn't.

They couldn't understand the families of alcoholics. There were some people that thought we were endowed with some special quality that made us better than other people and then there were other peoples who thought we were plain fools to live under such circumstances. My mother came in this group. Mother used to say, God looks after fools and drunks and that takes care of our abuse and bail. And mother was right because God did look after us when we didn't have sense enough to look after ourselves.

Then a little further along, the professionals got involved. Now, please don't misunderstand me. I work on the perimeter of professionals for a large number of years and, but this is just what happened. These were the people who, put the labels on us. They seemed to think that we were masochistic.

Now that's a 12 cylinder word mean that means you like to suffer and I guess it depends on which side you're on, but these were the people who labeled us. Aggravating influences, we were called. Disturbing factors. And then they took the wraps off and they called us Suffering Susie, Wavering Winifred, faltering Francis, couldn't do a thing without beauties. But the thing that puzzled the most of all now every one of you, I believe, knows what an alcoholic is.

Don't you? They're sorry, no account, low down people who never draw sober breath, never do a day's work, and they don't support their families. You know that. But these people that were doing these innumerable studies on the personality of an alcoholic, whatever that is, and their families, were completely baffled when they discovered that some very brilliant people, some very talented people, were alcoholic and they couldn't fit them into those little square holes and the round pegs and all of those things. So I did some research on these folks and I learned that Alexander the Great was an alcoholic.

He'd conquered the whole known civilized world when he was only 33 years old, and he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. But he couldn't conquer his compulsion to drink and he died prematurely in an alcoholic convulsion. Stephen Foster was an alcoholic. He gave the world its most beautiful folk music. But Stephen Foster was an alcoholic, a compulsive drinker.

It seemed to come on him like a sickness, his wife once said, and so it does. They found Stephen Foster sick unto death on the New York Bowery And when they were when he was dead, they found in his pockets 38¢, 1p for each year of a misspent life and the lyrics to another song. Stephen Foster loved his wife, his genie with the light brown hair, but the love of his wife couldn't stop him from drinking and he died drunk. Robert Louis Stevenson was an alcoholic. He could weave the magic of children's stories and he all but destroyed himself with the magic that he found in a bottle.

It could have been a fifth of gin or a quart of bourbon and he describes the personality change of an alcoholic in the story, Doctor. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And I watched this personality change right in my own living room just like a lot of you did. You saw the Bible change the man you love or it could have been your wife into a babbling idiot, into a degenerated animal, into a doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde.

Now history says very little about the families of these men and others like them, but I believe that I know the fear and the loneliness that Jeanne knew when she waited for her restless, talented husband to come home from one of his sprays. And I believe that I know the homesickness that Fanny Stevenson knew when she left her home in California to go to a South Sea Island with her husband in hopes that he might regain his health. Robert Louis Stevenson had a dual problem. He was all. He also had tuberculosis and I believe that I know the joy that they knew when he did regain his health and I believe I know to some degree the serenity that they both knew when he found sobriety.

How did you like your history lesson? My Al Anon friends give me a hard time about that. They say, why in the name of conscience, Arbius, do you feel like it's necessary every time you get a whack at one of those microphones to give us a history lesson? And, of course, I have a reason. I can't tell jokes.

I forget the punchline. No. That isn't the reason at all. I tell you these things to point out the contrast that I've described to you a few minutes ago to explain to you that the very self seeing people who were so completely baffled before the advent of AA are doing a great deal about the problem of alcoholism at this point in time. It is now possible to get an alcoholic in a hospital with a simple diagnosis of alcoholism.

This wasn't true when alcoholism reared its ugly head in mine and Bill's life. You couldn't get an alcoholic in the hospital, not unless a doctor was willing to make a false diagnosis and call it something else. You just couldn't get him in the hospital. Priests and ministers now feel that alcoholics are God's children too and so they send them to AA for treatment and they send their families to us so they can get well too. And and and it's and the National Council, of course, on alcoholism has done a yeoman's job teaching the public that alcoholism is a treatable illness and that alcoholics need help and that they deserve it.

And and did you notice it's almost impossible anymore to pick up a magazine or a newspaper and not find an article on alcoholism? I was amazed last year the National Geographic ran an article on alcoholism and you know, that's a prestigious magazine. They don't just publish junk and but it's almost impossible not to learn about it anytime you read anything at all. It seems to me that it's become the end thing to have an alcoholic in your family. Now if you don't have one, I strongly suggest that you got go out and borrow 1.

Don't marry them. They're the handiest things you'll ever have. They're as handy as a pocket on a shirt. Anything that goes wrong, anything at all that goes wrong, you can blame it on the alcoholic. I'd have been happy a few years back to share some with you.

I was overstocked. And please, again, don't misunderstand me. These dear people in the professions are doing everything they can about alcoholism with the knowledge that they have to work with. But the truth of the matter is, and I regret to report this to you this afternoon, they are not getting the job done. Had you noticed that?

They're not getting the job done because they don't know all there is to know about alcoholism. But right this minute, I'm looking at a room full of experts. You're the ones who know about alcoholism because you've lived with it. You know the symptoms. You know the progression.

You know about slips in AA. You know about the alibi system. You know about alcoholic convulsions. Some of you, bless your heart, have lived through the terrors of d t's. There isn't very much about alcoholism that you do not know.

So in my opinion, this is a job for you to do. A job for you and for me. And I learned that a long time ago. You see, when I came I came into this outfit before we had an outfit. I really did.

I predate Al Anon. We used. When I got here, we simply called our fellowship, small as it was, the family groups. Then in 1951, when, we became we got some attention and got a name, while we, called ourselves Al Anon Family Groups. Al Anon is a contraction of the words 'alcoholics anonymous'.

We took the first syllable out of alcoholics and the first syllable of anonymous and became Al Anon Family Groups. Please do not forget to put the hyphen in the name. But this is how we got a name. When I came here, we had 50 groups in the whole world. I think now we have between 3,540,000 groups in the world, and I've been privileged to watch this society evolve and it's been the most fascinating thing in my life.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world and I wouldn't do it again for a $1,000,000. When I came here, we didn't have any literature. Now we could paper this meeting hall and maybe the corridor out there with the pamphlets that we published. We've forgotten our primary purpose, I think, and turned into a publishing house. I think we have an unlimited printing budget.

We didn't have 12 hardback books when I came here. We didn't have any literature at all. We didn't have a program to live by, But worse than that, we didn't have a purpose to live for. Al Anon is a kiss and cousin to invention because they were both born of necessity. And the dear people who put the life changing program of Alcoholics Anonymous together were visionaries.

They knew that in time, the families of alcoholics would become aware of this necessity. And so when they wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous, they made necessity and so when they wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous, they made provisions for us because they included in that book 2 chapters just for us. One of those chapters is entitled 2 wives. Now that is not intended to be a put down for the Fern men that we have in the Al Anon family groups. Not at all.

The fact of the matter is that when that book was written, there were no women in AA, so they addressed that chapter to wives. The groups up in Canada used to call their groups the wives groups. The other chapter, of course, as you well know, is entitled to The Family Afterwards. And down in that part of the country where I grew up in Al Anon, we took a paragraph from that chapter and we made of it a preamble that we used to open our meetings. They've asked me to start collecting things for our archives in West Texas, and I'm just hoping against hope that one of those preambles will surface.

The copies that I had blew away in 1979 with a little thing called a tornado. Blew a lot of things out of our lives but I'm hoping against hope that one of those preambles will surface. This is what the paragraph says. The past is the is the principal asset of the alcoholic's family and frequently, it is almost the only one. This painful past can be of infinite value to families still struggling with their problem and we feel that each member of it should only be should be only too willing to bring formal mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places.

Showing others how we were given help is the only thing that makes our life worthwhile. Cling to the thought that in God's hands your dark past is the greatest possession you have, the key to life and happiness for others. With it, you can avert death or misery for them. You know, it's powerful stuff. As far as I'm concerned, we don't have a piece of literature yet that more clearly points out to me what my responsibility is to the families of alcoholics.

And we don't have one single piece of literature that more clearly points out to me how I can show my gratitude for the recovery in my family and for the good things that recovery has brought to us. Now we've got a little thing going around in our fellowship that says under no circumstances should Al Anon members take a big book or a book Alcoholics Anonymous into a meeting. I think it's banned in Boston. And I'm gonna say some things as, June said might ruffle some people's feelings and it won't be a new experience. I require the people that I sponsor to study the first 164 pages of the book Alcoholics Anonymous or get themselves another sponsor.

Now, when all of this thing about developing literature started, we developed this literature for Al Anon on the assumption, which is always a mistake, that you had first studied the first 164 pages of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now please think with me. Think with me back to the late forties and the early fifties when there weren't very many AAs around. And remember, we didn't have anything going for us except the dubious permission of these very new these people who were very new in AA to come to their clubhouses while they had a meeting and that's what we did. We met in wide hallways and dirty little kitchens.

Remember that place down in Abileneva? God. We met in those places and we talked. Now you know very well what we talked about. It was a kind of a morbid competition to determine which one of us lived with the sorriest man.

And then I wasn't comfortable in those meetings. I didn't live with a sorry man. I still don't. I live with a fine young man who drank too much and I get pretty defensive about those those early meetings. To be sure, there were nothing more than gossip sessions.

But I have to remind you people in Al Anon that if we had not been there then, you wouldn't be here now. So don't get proof critical. And so I went to those people in AA. Took Bill 6 years to make 1 year sobriety and those AA people were very supportive of me and I went to them and I said, I don't understand this. This is out of character.

Bill's a good man. Why does he tell me lies? Why can't I depend on him? Bill Bill lied and he broke promises and he stole people's money. Of course, he said it was advance on commission but he was stealing company money.

And Bill isn't a thief and Bill isn't a liar and I couldn't understand that. And they said to me, read this book, Arbutus. You can read the personal stories if you like, but concentrate on the first 164 pages. It will explain the nature of the illness that Bill has and then you'll understand the behavior. God, that's what I was looking for.

And they went on to say, these pages will teach you the philosophy that you need for your own recovery. What more can you want? That's exactly what I was looking for, to understand the behavior and to learn something to do about it. You bet. Now I want you to know that we watched those fellows very carefully.

We saw people go to those scroungy little old meeting places, people that had never been able to draw a sober breath. And they went down there and they talked to each other and they never took another drink and that impressed the hell out of us. And and and and so this this this this fulfilled my need. I think that's how I want to say it and I can't understand why anybody is reluctant. I've been rereading the book that they put together people put together a few years back called As Bill Sees It.

It's a reprint of much of the things that he wrote in other publications, except for the personal letters that they reprinted. And Nell Wing, bless her heart, he carried on a voluminous correspondence and Nell was smart enough to keep copies of those letters and and he says more than once, you know, let's don't let's don't let any base be uncovered. Let's get all the information we can from whatever source and and put it together for your own recovery. So this is this is what I did. This is what I did and this is what I insist on people that I sponsor doing because I can't I can't work with people unless they follow the same outline that was given to me.

I know it isn't the only way to find recovery but you all kind of put me on the spot when you asked me to come up to Illinois or anywhere else. You say to me, in essence, tell me how you got well. And I got well by reading the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And then and then if you notice that outline in the big book is pretty concise and brief and then Bill Wilson, Busy Hart, wrote another book, 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. And in that book, he talks about feelings.

He tells you what'll happen if you don't get in your get rid of your resentments. He tells you what'll happen if you continue to be suspicious and jealous and, God, I've got a streak of jealousy down my backbone as wide as both of my hands. I didn't like it when that boy of mine came into this fellowship, good looking, smart, and those little a a gals that cuddle up to him. I like it. I like it a bit.

He's mine and I don't share him with nobody. I know this is a program it shares, but I'll share anything with and Bill Wilson writes in that book what will happen if you don't rid yourself of those suspicions and those jealousies. And so I use this book when we have step study meetings and if that offends you, I don't care a bit. I'm going home in the morning and you all can fight out among yourselves. We share with you our experience, strength, and hope.

And that's what you asked me to come up here and do. I'm sure you was. And I want I attended my first open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in Amarillo, Texas in 1948. I didn't want to go to that meeting. My bill, as I told you, made it go, took 6 years to make his 1st year of sobriety.

He learned about AA and Fort Worth, Texas, but he couldn't accept the second half of the first step and, he couldn't stay sober. And I didn't have very much confidence in my young husband's sobriety. And the only reason I went to that meeting is because I'd put myself under an obligation to a very lovely lady who was married to a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and if you haven't picked up on the accent accent yet, I'll tell you that I'm a hillbilly from the hills of North Carolina and hillbillies don't like to be obliged. Hillbillies don't like to lose. Hillbillies don't like to lose.

We're not reluctant to get an equalizer, but we don't fail. And so I went to that meeting because I'd put myself under an obligation to Marguerite and it was, as I said, an open meeting. There was about a 150 people there and I drank an awful lot of coffee, as some of you have noticed. And after the meeting started, a very lovely lady that I later learned was AA, leaned across Marguerite and whispered to me. What she said was, how long has it been since you had a drink, honey?

And I wasn't embarrassed with her question. I'm not a teetotaler. I used to say I didn't trust teetotalers but I have a friend down in Wichita Falls, Texas, that never tasted liquor in her life. She's a real teetotaler and I trust Mildred with my life. So I don't say that any more.

But Marguerite was embarrassed to death and she answered the question. She said, Mrs. O'Neil is not an alcoholic. Missus O'Neil is not an alcoholic, but she knows about alcoholism. I grew up in a house with 2 men, both of whom was my father.

My dad was a 2 fisted construction man. He worked hard, he played hard, and he drank hard. Dad was a great old Irishman who taught me to love poetry, who taught me to sing Irish folk songs, who had the patience to teach me to work my geometry problems with his framing square. But on Saturday night, my dad turned into a devil. My father was absolutely and totally insane when he drank liquor And and he hurt my mother.

He hurt my mother emotionally and he hurt her physically. And and mother never could understand when her jaw was broken that dad had just intended to kill a centipede that was crawling in her hair. She couldn't understand that and I'm quite sure I couldn't have understood it. My father's alcoholism destroyed both of my parents. My father's alcoholism turned my beautiful mother into an old, ugly, bitter woman who hated him.

She hated him as long as she lived. She hated him long after he was dead and in his grave. And the last years of her life, when she stood in total darkness, she hated anybody that had ever loved John Martin and that included me. Dad was one of those people who never found this program. He used to come to Texas and he'd go to a a meetings with us.

He used to go to meetings out on Butternut Street. And he I don't think you ever met dad. And we'd come home from those meetings and and he would say to Bill and me, how do you get the want to? How do you get the want to? Dad couldn't find the want to and he couldn't stay somewhere.

And for many years, after I found the courage in this program to ask the God of my understanding for special favors, I closed every day of my life with one special prayer. God, don't let my dad die drunk. Now I cannot tell you why that's such a terror to those of us who love alcoholic who love alcoholics. I can only tell you that it is. My father died in 1965.

He had throat cancer. He did not die drunk. And when my brother, Mike, called to tell me that my that dad had a terminal illness, he said to me, we're going to have to pray extra hard for dad, our viewers. He isn't gonna make it. And I said, no.

No. Now, you know, very well that I didn't want that filthy stuff to destroy that beautiful baritone voice. You know, I didn't, You know I didn't want that filthy stuff to make it impossible for my dad to even have a drink of water. You know I didn't. I prayed.

God, don't let my dad die drunk. I do not tell you these things my dad or about my mother that you may weep for them because my dad's alright. My dad doesn't have to drink anymore and mother doesn't hate him any longer. I tell you these things that you may know that I've always loved an alcoholic And because I love alcoholics, I want to restore their families because I know about you alcoholics. I know that of all the things you love, you love your families most.

Of this, I am convinced you love your families most. Even when you tear us down over and over and over again, you love your family smallest. And I want you to know that when I married Bill O'Neil, I wasn't concerned with this drinking. Father Martin says you can't identify an alcoholic except for the ones that you know and Bill wasn't hallucinating drunk. Bill was was not insane when he drank.

Bill was the life of the party drunk. He crashed he crashed debutante's parties and taught the, the chaperones to put your little foot. He wasn't like that at all and I was not concerned. I drank Whitville. Good Lord have mercy.

It was very important in our generation that you have fun. I heard an a lady say she had so much fun, he'd like to kill her and that's about what happened to Bill and me. We got drunk everywhere we went. We worked for a company that sent us all over the United States and we got drunk in Chicago, Saint Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco. Anywhere we went, we got drunk.

I don't remember that we were ever in Champaign, Illinois, but if we'd been here, we'd have been drunk. But in 1940, two things happened to make Bill and me grow up. We became parents and the world became involved in a war. And I quit drinking with Bill. Things were too serious.

I was watching the troop movements in Europe and, later, in the South Pacific and I quit drinking with Bill. We had our second child the next year and Bill wasn't there when Nancy was born. Nancy came on Wednesday, but she didn't get to meet her dad till Sunday. And when Bill came to the hospital with the usual paraphernalia that you men bring to us when we have your babies, he caused a great deal of confusion in the maternity ward in a Catholic hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio because he wanted to teach the head of the maternity ward the taxi stomp and the good sister didn't want to dance. And he left he left the he left the hospital, at the insistence of the doctors and with the help of 2 big, burly orderlies and and sat down on the street car track in full view of my window, forced the motorman to stop, tell him about our new baby girl.

You see, Bill was still having fun with his drinking. Our only son was born the next year and, and I know that this is a dreary recitation for you to listen to but you see, my brothers went into the service and my sisters went into the defense plants and I had to stay home and keep up production. But when our only son was born, something went wrong in the delivery room and and they needed Bill and they couldn't find Bill. Now had I been able to talk to them, I could have told them that they'd find Bill in a bar but, you see, I didn't know which one. And my friends and they tell me there is no loneliness in the world as great as that of the alcoholic who has run out of time And I believe they believe that.

But I also believe that I know about loneliness. The loneliness of an alcoholic's wife when she goes to a delivery room with the full knowledge that a compulsion to drink is depriving her of her husband's devotion. This, I believe, is loneliness. This lonely task of keeping the spirit of Christmas alive for small children whose father has forgotten what day it is. Missus O'Neil is not an alcoholic, but she knows about alcoholism.

The crawling fingers of loneliness that you feel when you wait by the hospital bed of an injured child who cries for her daddy and you can't find her daddy. I won't want daddy and you can't find her daddy. This, I believe, is loneliness. Our son was a frail little boy. My doctors told us he'd never walk.

And I was overwhelmed with the strongest sense of guilt that I've ever felt in my life because I manipulated that pregnancy. I knew that Bill wanted a little boy. I guess every man wants a son. And I gave him a son who couldn't walk. And that started an odyssey for me that took me to many hospitals in many states across these United States to try to find a doctor that'd make my boy walk.

When Luther was 3 months old, I learned I was pregnant again. We were living down in Knoxville, Tennessee about the time that they brought that atomic energy plant in. Of course, the alcoholism had progressed, and Bill changed jobs pretty often. He had personality clashes with the people he worked for and he had a good job, John Knoxville. He worked for Holland Furnace Company.

Straight salary and commission And it was not at all unusual for Bill to make 7 or $800 each week. That was a lot of money in the early forties. We were evicted from a furnished house in Knoxville, Tennessee that rented for $50 a month. And I couldn't find another place in Knoxville. So I had to go up into Kentucky, a little town called Middleton and I find a I found a garage apartment up there.

Now please remember, I'm expecting my 4th child any minute And the arrangements that I'd made in Knoxville had to be canceled because I'm not in Knoxville anymore. I'm 70 miles up into Kentucky. And I checked in at the local hospital there to learn that I wasn't eligible to go there to be delivered of my child because that hospital was for the exclusive use for the coal miners that lived in that area. And about the time that I made this big discovery, they carried Bill home. Now they carried him home before, but this time his leg was broken.

He had an argument with his boss and Bill never won a fight in his life. He must have felt 10 foot tall when he was drinking because he'd just get the big jabers beat out of him. Him. I carried him home and they did agree to put a cast on his leg at in the emergency room. And I got on a go down bus.

Luther can't walk. Peggy is 3 years old. Nancy is 2. Luther's a year old and he can't walk. And I'm expecting my 4 child any minute.

And we get on the Greyhound bus to go back to Cincinnati, Ohio. Mother didn't know I was pregnant. I think she told her friends, at least 2 of my children were premature but they were not. I don't know who was most relieved when we got to Cincinnati, me or the bus driver? And I go out to Mother's Neighborhood.

She lives in an exclusive district, an apartment where they don't have children and they didn't have an elevator. So I grew upstairs with Luther in my arms and and, knocked on the door. She my mother was only 12 years older than my bill and, God, she hated him. She hated him with a purple passion. After he got an AA, she thought she hatched him.

But she opened the door and almost dropped dead and and I said, mother, would you please go downstairs and help Bill? And she said, what is the matter with him? Is he drunk? And I said, no, ma'am, his leg's broken. So she puts down the couch and you all know those lectures that we get, you know, and she said, of all my children, Urbius, you are undoubtedly the most brilliant child I have, but it takes a damn genius to get in a mess like this.

And there, little Teresa, was born in the Salvation Army in the charity ward. I don't like to tell this story. Bill says I have to because it's real good for you. How about them drunks? And this didn't take 10000 years to happen.

This this was fast. Bill hit the skids, and he was gone. And again again, the things that I wear to my grave, the emotional scars that I wear to my grave, came from those experiences when I was served with those eviction notices. And please believe me, that was not the last one that I was to see. And each time that they served those eviction notices, I thought I saw the look of pity and disgust on the faces of those who served them.

And when I had to make application to get into that hospital, I saw the look of pity and disgust on the social worker's face when she wrote on my application blank in bold black letters as if I couldn't read. Husband is a drunkard. Mrs. O'Neil is not an alcoholic but she knows about alcoholism And I'm not sure that the people in Texas, appreciate this part of my story. I don't think that I'll ever be able to describe what it means to hillbilly to accept charity.

But you'll go to a welfare agency to feed your children. Don't think you won't. And you'll go to a welfare agency to get treatment for your young son. Oh, yes. You will.

And I like to starve to death because I couldn't eat the food. I hope to God I never see another bowl of spaghetti. Spaghetti is cheap And I almost starved to death because I couldn't swallow the food. And I want you to know that when I came to the state of Texas in 1944, I had never heard the term alcoholism in reference to my young husband's drinking, not one single time. My Bill lost his left eye as the result of drinking and he couldn't stop drinking.

My bill lost his left arm as a result of drinking, and he couldn't stop drinking. I watched this boy lose everything that he had that he wanted to keep. I watched him lose the affection of his family. I watched him lose the respect of the people he worked for. I watched him lose his self respect and I'll never forget the day that Bill looked up at me and said, honey, why don't you take the kids and go?

I'm no damn good. I watched him lose everything that he wanted to keep and I wanted to help him and I couldn't. I'm going to say something directly to you people and you alcoholics. I've I've heard you through the years stand at podiums like this and say a nonalcoholic don't know what they're talking about.' And I want you to know that I know what I'm talking about. I've worked with alcoholic women until my hair and my skin reaped with the odor of Peraldehyde.

That used to be what they used to sober up the the people who were drinking too much. I've worked with these people until my skin and my hair reeked with this nauseous odor and gone home grateful in the knowledge that, but for the grace of God, somebody might be walking me up and down and feeding me by coffee to send my own children to school. I've held an alcoholic in my arms through the long nights when he was in convulsions, scared to death that he wouldn't live till morning, scared to death that if he did live, there wouldn't be any sanity left. I didn't know which one of those eyes was artificial. And I've had my own father beat me black and blue, killing spiders that only he could see.

And my father loved me. I was his firstborn. I'm not talking about child abuse. I'm talking about this insanity that comes with alcoholism. I know what I'm talking about.

We wanted to help you, but we couldn't help you because you wouldn't let us. It seemed to me that you put us on the other side of a thick glass wall and we could see you and we could hear you. We're not calloused and sensitive people. We know the mental anguish you in you endure. We know the physical torture.

The feeling I'm trying to describe is a feeling that those of you who are parents will understand. It's the feeling you have when you tend a sick child. The baby's burning up with fever and it cries and you wanna help, but you can't help because the baby can't tell you where it hurts. And the alcoholic couldn't tell us where they hurt and we couldn't help you. But there's people very likely in this room who wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for somebody like me.

And I want you to remember that the next time that you indict an Al Anon member. You know, just being married to an alcoholic does not make you a member of the Al Anon family groups. Don't you ever think it does? You gotta do a little bit more. You have to make an honest effort to practice the principles of this program that you gave to us.

You've got to go to meetings regularly. You've got to write that 4 step inventory. You've got to get a sponsor, and you've got to sponsor people, and you've got to be willing to get up any time of the day or night and go help a little gal that's sweating it out in a dirty bathrobe, and go inside of our house and put your arms around her and say, my name is Arbutus O'Neil. I'm a member of the Al Anon Family Groups, and I came to help you. That's an Al Anon member.

When I went to Texas in 1944, I went there with the illusion that Bill's family would be supportive of him. They didn't understand. And please, this is not an indictment. They didn't understand. They thought that anybody that married a girl from North Carolina, where they make all of that bourbon and make built all those cigarettes, couldn't help but be an alcoholic.

He certainly didn't drink too much when he lived at home. He was one of those Southern Baptists. So I failed to find the support that I went to Texas to find but I did find something else. I found a group of people. These people called themselves members of AA.

And when I came, when I found these people, I was totally, totally and utterly destitute in mind and body and these people tried to help me and I never shall forget the first AA member I ever talked to. He came to my house in the middle of the afternoon and he described to me what I referred to then as this rehabilitation program. I didn't know anything else to call it. And after about 2 and a half hours, I asked him a question. I said, what do you have in this rehabilitation program of yours, please, sir?