NEFOTS in Portland, ME

I'm still Mary Pearl. I'm still an Al Anon who's happy, joyous, and free, and I'm very grateful to be here. I want to thank Elise and the committee and everyone who had made it possible for me to be able to come up here this week. She and Joe, took me out the other night to dinner and we went and, I mean, it was just it was just fabulous and your hospitality has been just wonderful. And it's so nice to be among friendly Yankees.

It's always an honor and a privilege to be invited to share at a conference, the Alcoholics Anonymous. I am very grateful to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I send you greetings from my husband, JD, who is at home babysitting my husband and our dogs. And, he says, try not to be too hard on them, kitten. I have a reputation being a little hard on alcoholics, you know.

As I was sharing with you this morning, a little bit about my life, you know, I I am supposed to explain in a general manner, what I used to be like, what happened, and what my life is today. And, as I told you, I I learned a lot from my dad when I went fishing with him. And, the tragedy to my life was that I like I said, I was the change of life baby. I was the youngest of the 4 children. The closest one to me was my sister who was 16 and a half years older than me.

So I was raised as an only child. One brother was dead by the time I was born, the other one, was married by the time I was 4, and Dorothy was married by the time I was 7. So I was raised as a lonely only child because I went my mother and father, friends did not have little kids. So I learned how to function with adults. I never learned how to interact well with other children.

So therefore, that was gonna help to make me extremely self centered. My daddy, when we would sit down on that fishing boat and, we would talk and we would I would ask him lots and lots of questions. I was a tremendous why person. And, daddy was a very patient man. He would explain to me all the whys, but this had a a downside to it.

When I started the school, I had a vocabulary. I had over 500 words that I could read, write, spell, and define. So if you were my 1st grade teacher, you had hell on wheels coming in your classroom. And I was irritated with other kids when they didn't know those things. I was very intolerant, and I tried to help them.

I had very little patience. And and so the my teacher's challenge was to keep me busy so she could teach. You know, because if not, I was teaching the class for her. My sister was extremely smart. They put her up 2 grades in school.

And having done so, took her away from her peer group, and so Dorothy was always a social outcast. Therefore, they would not say anything about putting me up in school. And I'm really grateful for that today. I am very grateful. My father, on November 30, 1954, I watched him die of a heart attack at home in bed.

And my world, as I knew it, ended right there. I had gone to church with my family on a regular basis. And I said, well, that's a lie. Because And I said, well, that's a lie. Because if god loved me, why would he take away my daddy who loved me?

My mother didn't love me. I was, you know, I'm a kid that's hard to love. You know, it's really hard to love a kid that does exactly what you tell her not to do. I was a rebel from the front end because I am very self centered. Even if I wanna do it, if you tell me I have to do it, I won't do it.

You know, nobody's gonna tell me what to do. That was the kind of attitude I had. Now, I was, like I say, I was the straight a plus student. I'm the overachiever because I have to make an a plus so I can feel equal to a kid making a c. That's how my self esteem was.

I don't know why it was that away, but that's just how it was. And, I was a class valedictorian. I get tickled today that people that I sponsor, they go to soccer games and baseball games and all this kind of stuff. All the sports and activity. I never had anybody there, You know?

And so I always think, you know, you're not going to a meeting because of that. My mother never went to any of those things. I survived all that. But I can tell you one thing, I had resentments about that. I didn't like her.

Like I say, when daddy died, I declared war and whoever dies, the other one wins. So I made it my personal job to make her life a living hell. I did real well. I know today that I would have killed a kid like me. No question.

My mother tried. She was a physical a physically abusive mother. She was a verbally abusive mother. Not that my mother cursed at me, but I got things like this, to think to God I prayed to get pregnant and had you. This is pretty, rough stuff when you're 14 years old.

Or how about you're the biggest disappointment of my life. Those were things that I took and mama said one time, and I said them a 1000000 times in head. You know? And I could always fall back on to poor me. Look what happened to me.

And I became a victim. I became a victim. And the only thing I live for was to get away from home. And so God jumped in and said, I'll make an air force base in Little Rock. And there's an article in the paper says there's 10 men for every woman in the area.

And I thought, I want my 10. And I want your 10 and your 10. You see, if it's worth doing, do it till you die on the spot. There's never too much of a good thing. That was how I lived.

Those were my philosophies of life. And so this little Yankee boy, he was from Pennsylvania. He never knew what hit him. And he asked me if I would marry him and he promised me he would take me away. I would have gone with the devil himself if he'd self if he'd have said he'd take me away.

Because I wanted so badly to get out of that house. I was also in love with the idea of being in love, and I fell in heat all about the same time. It all came together for me, you know. Well, he took me away from home. He took me further than I had ever planned to go.

We were stationed in Newfoundland. Oh, that was a wonderful thing, you know. Now my drug of choice is adrenaline. If I don't have excitement, I create excitement. Well, I gotta tell you, Newfoundland back in the early sixties was a very boring place.

You can just say, moose going through the front yard. Annual snowfall average, a 190 inches a year. So we had snows anywhere from 8 to 9 months of the year. And if there's any it's just boring. That's just it.

You know, you just sit there and watch you. Snow at first is sort of pretty when you haven't seen any. And then after a while, you know, it just gets pretty old. I look out in my backyard when I got there in February. And when I got there, I looked out and there were strings stretched across the top of the ground and I'm thinking, what is that?

That's your clothes lines. It was a culture shock to say the least. But in more than anything, it was boring. But now, I'm like say, I'm a creator of excitement and I begin to notice things around me. I'm a I'm a real watcher of people, places, and things.

I like to scope it all out, figure out where I fit in here, fit in the plan. And I realized that I am for one time, I am in the land of Christmas trees. Now in Arkansas, if you want a Christmas tree, you have to go down and buy one from the Sertoma or the Optimus Club lot or whatever. You know, we don't have Christmas trees. We have trees with leaves.

And, in Newfoundland, there wasn't a tree with a leaf. They're all needles. And so I'm sitting there and thinking now I can have the real spirit of Christmas here because I can, go up the the mountain there and I can cut down a tree and I can bring it home and I can make these popcorn and cranberry chains. I can have the real feeling of Christmas. Sounded good to me.

I always run stuff past me. And, well, you don't have a descending vote when you do it that way. And so I got the help of my landlady sons who lived in the apartment next to me, and they had a toboggan. I had never seen a toboggan before in my life before coming there. And I had had a sled that I'd used twice when I was a child because we don't get a lot of snow in Little Rock area.

So, anyway, the plan was I would take my husband and these 2 kids, and we would go up this mountain. It was right across the street from our house. The we had about 18 or 20 steps cut in the ice and then the road went back forth. And on the other side was this big mountain with all these wonderful trees and we're gonna go and cut down a tree. We're gonna tie it to the toboggan.

We're gonna bring it back home and we're gonna have our wonderful Christmas. They call me captain spontaneity. At home? And so what happened, we cut down a tree and there's something that happens to the trees when you cut them down. They didn't look as good as they did just a moment ago.

And this has gotta be the perfect tree. So we cut down several trees. And then I realized that the perfect tree is the top of the big tree. So we cut the big top of the big tree and we have all these trees littering the the surface out there. So we gather them all up and I'm gonna take them back to everybody in the apartment complex who has not asked for a Christmas tree.

Always willing to help. We tied these trees on the toboggan and then here is when the plan began to go. I said, why don't we ride back on top of the trees? Man, that would be a rush, wouldn't it? So I got on the front and I had some leftover rope and I tied me on, and they got on behind me.

I always seem to have this group of idiots that will follow directions. I'm a natural born leader. What can I say? I'm not a follower, either leader. I don't go, you know.

So down the hill we come and I gained some information real fast, but I can't do a thing with it. And that is going downhill, you gain lots of speed. There are no brakes on a toboggan. There's no steering mechanism on a toboggan. So I'm coming down that hill and we're going over some smaller trees, and they get thrown off, but not me.

I'm tied on. And all of a sudden, we're coming up on that road and there's cars going back and forth on that road. I shot between the cars, went right down there my steps and through the bottom of my house. Thank God they didn't have brick. I'm laying there.

I mean, it's created a tremendous hole in the side of the house. And my landlady comes running out and she says, what are you after doing, you crazy Yankee bitch? And I looked up at her and I said, don't you call me no Yankee. That's a typical day in my life. I worked for the American Red Cross, when I was there at the base.

And if you've ever been in the military, you know when you're on a foreign solo, you don't get an emergency leave without Red Cross verification. There is, in fact, an emergency. So I like the power. I like that real well. I was the kind of person, like I say, I always push the envelope.

I had a black market on the flight line. I I bootlegged a whole plane load of watermelons up to Newfoundland. And back in, like, 62, 63, I was selling them for $10 a piece. I was enterprising. It was against the law to carry liquor off of the base, you know.

And everybody's gonna carry liquor off the base. I mean, let's face it, but they would have these periodic checks at the front gate. I've just been to the package store. I have 2 big brown grocery sacks full of booze because drinking was a daily thing. It was a way of life.

And it was wonderful because, you see, my mother told me, don't ever drink. We have the bad seed, so I can't wait to drink. My mother said that because her father died in the in the mental institution with wet brain from alcoholism. Her mother died of cirrhosis of the liver from alcoholism. Her oldest brother was shot in bed with another man's wife.

He was drunk at the time, but he was my favorite. Love, uncle a b. And then she had a brother and sister that was still practicing. My mother was the only person in her family that didn't drink. Always felt like she needed one.

She was real uptight. That's that untreated alanonism, you know? Anyway, I would stop at that front gate and so here I am and the guy pulls me over and he says, booze check. I said, okay. Just a minute.

And I got my grocery sacks. I stood out and I said, check the car. And he checked the car. I said, thank you very much. I got back in, set my boots back in, drove off the base.

This is military for God's sakes. There are not metal giants out there, you know. My husband was an aircraft mechanic. We were there for 5 years, and it was time to rotate. And they said, I was talking to the guy down in Sac assignment section.

I never talked too much to my husband about stuff. I just did it. And, he said, y'all are gonna go to Minot, North Dakota. I said, Minot? I'm not.

I said, I've been up here 5 years and I said, no, I am not going to Minot, North Dakota. No, thank you. He said, where do y'all wanna go? And I said, well, we want to go back to Little Rock Air Force Base. Don't you know it's gonna be all different back there now?

You see, I didn't know that everywhere I went there, I'd be. Didn't have a clue. And so he says, well, there's not an opening in your husband's career field. I said, create one. See, I've always been a positive thinker.

And he says there's not an opening in his career field. I said make one. And he said I can't. Well, I said well then change his career field. He said, oh, I can do that.

So with a stroke of my pen of a pen, my husband who was an aircraft mechanic overnight became the head of a missile inspection team. He had never seen a missile. That ought to make you sleep well tonight. And we went back to Little Rock Air Force Base. You know how you're gonna try it one more time and everything's gonna be different?

Well, it's not. It's worse. You know, it's just worse. You just, you know, there's some things that's when they're dead, they're dead. You know, quit trying to revive the dead.

Go on. Go on. And so, after they got the paperwork all straightened out, they were gonna send him on and I decided I wasn't going. And what I did, I told him I said, you know, we've been in Newfoundland all this time and I've missed being a hippie. I said, the hippie thing's going on and I don't wanna miss anything in life and I need to find myself.

That wasn't a lie. But it would, you know, like getting a whole group of Mary Pearls together to find ourselves. But anyway, he said, okay. You see, he came from a broken home and he didn't want a divorce divorce I wanted to be separated. Now you can say to yourself, well, why didn't you just go ahead and get a divorce?

Well, I wasn't ready to be self supporting through my own contributions. I liked having that allotment check coming in every month, and I didn't have to work, and I could dedicate myself to being the artist that I was. And, but, you know, I got I got bored during that period of time, and that's when it's always been for me. I look outside myself for something to fix what's on wrong on the inside. That's the reason it never works, you know.

If it's broke inside, it's gotta be fixed from the inside, but who knew? And I noticed now that there's a gentleman across the street, him and this little girl, and he's one of them. I know he's one of them because, see, he's like my mama's family. They go out, get drunk, they'd come home, try to kill one another, burn the house down, you know, just normal alcoholics living together. And, this guy would go out, get drunk, come home, and beat his little wife up.

And she was pregnant. And so that would irritate me. And so Joanne come over to the house that night and she said, she she looked pretty bad. He had busted her lip and her eye was turning blue and she was in labor. And he's she said, well, I'll take her to the hospital.

So we went back over to her house to pack her stuff and there he was laying passed out with a smirk on his face. And I looked at him and I thought, you know, somebody ought to whip your butt. And then it occurred to me. I'm somebody. It's a spiritual awakening.

I tied him up in his bed sheet, took the slide out of the bed, and I beat the fool out of here. And it made me feel good all over. Next morning, he came over at the house and he said, where's Joanna? I said, she's in the hospital. She had a baby last night.

He said, well, I was in this hell of a fight. I guess you were. And then, there was one that lived on the other side of me too. Did you ever feel like you were carrier? Because everywhere you go, there they are.

You know, this was an old man named Freeman and the doctor told him he was quit drinking, he'd die. He quit drinking, died anyway. He never found Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. We got to see what irritable, restless, and discontent was next door as if it wasn't in my house, you know. And, I I'm a night person by nature, and so I would come home around 7 in the morning and I would be ready to go to sleep.

Well, this guy had a garden and he felt like it was best to get out in the wee hours of the morning, like 8 o'clock, and till the garden. Very unreasonable. And so I went out and I tried to explain that to him, and he told me to shut my mouth and get my fat butt back in the house. You see, he didn't know about mama and the fish. So I got my daddy's frog gigging headlight and I mowed the grass at 11:30 at night.

Well, the sheriff came to see me. Have you ever noticed how narrow minded law enforcement people are? He told me I couldn't do that. And so I said, okay. So now I I feel like every good, alanon in waiting has contingency plans.

So I went into plan b. Now plan b is Freeman has 6 beagle dogs. Now if you've ever had a beagle, you know they're barking little dogs, little hunting dogs. And so he had a whole chorus out there in the backyard. And so what I'd do is I'd wait a wee hours in the morning.

I'd run out of my back porch. I'd take a broom handle, run up and down that dog yard fence. I'd stir them into a frenzy, go jump back on my porch and wait. And he'd come out in his underwear, cuss them out, hose them down, have a fit out there in the yard. He'd finally go back in the house and everything get quiet for about an hour.

So we do it one more time. The sheriff came to see me. There were several other skirmishes and I finally determined that, you know, I better look for entertainment elsewhere because the sheriff and I are beginning to develop a relationship. We have a neighborhood softball team. Hot damn.

I love it. And so I was an athlete in school and so I got me some stretch boots, some hot pants and joined the team. I loved it. It was a mixed team and we just had a lot of fun. And after the the game, we would go back to someone's house and we would discuss our strategy for our next game, what we could've, should've done better.

And in the doing of that, some of us would pop a few tops and some of them were sniffing some stuff and some of them had some little funny cigarettes and then that little sugar cube bunch, you know. I mean, it was just your normal gang back in the sixties, your normal neighborhood. And then one night, there's all over at my house and this little kid got drunk at my house. He was 18. That's not legal agent in Arkansas to drink.

And so I'm thinking if he gets picked up by the cops going home and tells him where he got served, then I'm gonna have a problem here. So to save my self, I said to him, I'll drive you home and somebody will follow and bring me back. And got in his little pickup and he had this little China tea set sitting in the front seat. And I said, what's that? And he said, that's for my mom for Mother's Day.

I said, oh, sweet. So it's the wee hours of the morning. It's 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. And I am, taking a drunken 18 year old kid home. You know?

And I'm carrying a China tea set. Your everyday situation. We're going through the house and he flips the light on in his bedroom. There's a man laying on the bed with nothing but his jockey shorts on. He looks up and goes, well, hot damn little brother, you brought us abroad home.

And I said, not tonight, fella. But that's who I'm married to. You met yours on the front row of the choir? I think not. Later on that summer, we met again and we started dating, and it was just really really nice.

We just had seemed to have a lot of things in common, enjoyed doing things together, and the great romance was on. And for the next 4 years, we had a wonderful time. And then he ruins it. He ruins it. He asked me to marry him.

You see, there's a time to tell things. And when you pass the right time to tell, there doesn't seem to be the proper time to tell things, you know. And I said, I can't marry you. And he said, don't you let me. I said, nothing to do with it.

He said, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm still married. He said, you're married? And I said, yes. He said, married?

I said, I forgot. I forgot. You know, out of sight, out of mind, you know. You know, we see what we wanna see here, what we wanna hear. You know, that's what we do when you're a self centered person.

It's all about you. You know, you're not much, but you're all you think about. And so I filed for divorce. And guess what? Alcoholism moved into my house.

Didn't have a clue. You see, he didn't drink like my mother's family drank. He didn't do the things they did. And you know how you have an idea in your mind of what an alcoholic is. Under the bridge wino.

That was what an alcoholic was to me. And JD wasn't there. It was a really, it was it's sort of funny when I think about it. Now we got married on 7th November that year. And for Thanksgiving, we had a bunch of people over.

And what did you always do when somebody came to the door to visit? What would you care to drink? I go into my fully stocked bar on November 7th and it is empty. Empty. We've been robbed.

He goes in there and helps me look for it. Now, the insanity is already gone now full bloom because you see logic And see, I'm the queen of logic. Logically, if your house hasn't been broken into and there's only you and him and a German shepherd and a poodle living there, and you've had an occasional drink, what happened to that alcohol? But you don't follow it there. Because if you follow it in a logical thing, it's gonna point where you don't wanna see.

And so that's gonna begin the process of I'm not gonna see stuff I don't wanna see. I'm not gonna hear things I don't wanna hear. Later on, JD began to do the disappearing act. You know, he would say he was going out for a cup of coffee and be gone for 4 or 5, 6 days. And then when he would come back, I'd look at him and he would act like he'd only been gone 10 minutes.

And I'd say, how is Juan Valdez? And he'd say, what? I said, well, surely you went to Colombia for the coffee. It took long enough. You know, the sarcasm, the the, you know, the the thing about it is there's great power of the human tongue.

And with that tongue, I stripped and ripped a man of his well-being. I took his self esteem away. I kept ripping and tearing at him with the sarcasm and the things that I said to him, and I broke his spirit. There's nothing to be proud of. But as the violence happened with the girl and her husband, the violence would come to our house.

And JD became my little boy and I told my little boy what he could do, when he could do it, how he could do it, and where he could do it, and how long he could do it. And when he would go out and get drunk and come home, he had to pay the penalty. He had disobeyed, and so violence entered our home. And, it was around Christmas time 1 year, and like I say, I was doing all my sculptures and things, and I had a whole bunch of greenware sitting on a shelf in my, studio room. And JD came in drunk, and he walked like rick rack.

You know. And I said, don't come in here. You'll break something. Well, see, he's just like me and mama. If you said don't do it, he's gotta do it.

It's my hell. It's my God. I'll do what I wanna do, you know. We'll see. And he came in there and I said, don't break anything.

And with that, he took his arm and he pulled that shelf down and broke 1,000 of dollars of work that I had done that was on order. And something went all over me and it was the rage like you could not believe. And I grabbed him up and I beat on him and I knocked him out and I dragged him and put him in the closet and shut the door. I didn't even wanna look at him. Now, JD has a fear of being buried alive.

So when he comes to and there's closings, it's material brushing his face. He thinks he's in the coffin and he is screaming his head off. I'm alive. I'm alive. He shouldn't have told me that.

I opened that closet door and I had to do a little tamp dance on him to prove to him that he was, yes, alive. Not in a coffin. You know, that's expensive dental work too when you're getting that stuff. And so that was our happy little home, you know? Now, by this time, I've had to take a job and I'm working, am the assistant to the CEO of a large company there.

And, CEO of a large company there. And I've got to function and do things and try and hide now. The fact that I live with someone who's doing the things he's doing. And, it became you know, you begin to have to keep the secrets. And I began to withdraw.

I couldn't go to the professional associations and meetings and things anymore, because I had to go home and watch. I had to go home and watch. There was a period of time that I went with him to keep him from drinking. That didn't work. Then there was the times that I would go doing, you know, he would we would play hide and seek.

He'd hide, I'd seek. You know, and when I'd find him, it wasn't good. And then, I'd go in and tear up a bar and him and his lower companion and the whole schmear. And, the bouncer would throw me out and then I'd get irritated with that and have to go around or 2 with the bouncer. And then I'm going to jail for assault.

It's not a good time, you know. So then you quit doing that and then you wait for him to come home so you can kill him. And I would pray, God, please don't let him get killed. I wanna do it. Putting him in, taking him back out.

Putting him out, taking him back in. That kind of thing. And then finally, it got to the point where I said, I can't stand it any longer. I didn't like how I kept feeling, and I was just absolutely a screaming nut all the time on the inside. The people at the office were afraid of me.

My boss said, you know, you can get more work out of people than anybody I've ever seen. Yeah. You're terrified. You don't know what she's gonna do. You know, just a little spaz here.

And, so anyway, JD, I told him, you're gonna have to leave and that's it. And he said, well, I don't mean to do what I'm doing. I think I'm sick. Because boy, that is the truth. You are sick sick sick.

But I'll fix that. So I took him to our family doctor. And for the first time now, the doctor knows what's been wrong with me. I've been in there with nerves, stomach problems, high blood pressure, all these things. And now, the doctor finally knows because JD says I have a slight drinking problem.

That's like saying the Titanic had a bad day. You know? And so the doctor told him you should go to Alcoholics Anonymous. They seem to know more how to deal with this than the medical profession because frankly, I don't know what to do for you. And JD said, well, I have some friends that are taking a drug called Antabuse.

And I just know if I have this little pill that I'll be okay. Now what I heard the doctor say was, if you give him this pill every day, he cannot drink. That is not what the doctor said, but that's what I wanted to hear. So I became the administrator of the pill. You see, by this time, I have the high blood pressure.

I've got a dog with epilepsy and JD's on the pill. Every morning in a hurry getting going to work, I don't know who got what, but everybody got a pill. Now, for all these years, I have said, if he'll quit drinking, I'll be okay. Drinking. I wasn't okay.

So now, you have to reevaluate. And then, I realized it wasn't the drinking. It was him. It was just him. He had to go.

Well, this was the summer. Now keep in mind, this is a year of a dry drunk. You know? No treatment for alcoholism. No treatment for my family disease of alcoholism.

We're 2 spas living together. And irritable, restless and discontent is a nice way of putting how it was in our house. You know, it was things like, what would you like for supper? Anything. Well, would you like fried chicken?

No. I don't want fried chicken. What do you want? Anything. Do you want spaghetti?

No. You make the world's worst spaghetti. Well, thank you for sharing. What do you want? Anything.

So I would fix anything and then he'd say, you don't expect me to eat that, do you? And I'd say, well, you have a choice. You can eat it or you can wear it. Sometimes he ate it. Sometimes he wore it.

It was that summer I'm sitting there and I'm so miserable and I'm thinking, you know. And that's the phrase that when people I sponsor say I've been thinking that just gives me cold chills. And what I was thinking was like this, God, I am so miserable. Boy, isn't that the truth? Well, you know, you could divorce him.

No. You can't divorce. Why can't I divorce him? Well, you've already divorced 1. And if you have to keep divorcing them, what's common denominator?

We're not going there. But if you know, if he were to die, you could be a what was that? Well, if he were to die, you could be a widow. That's honorable. That's better than divorcee.

Oh, yeah. But he's not dying. We can take care of that. Well, what do you wanna do? Well, personally, I wanna take him take an ice pick, stab him in the neck, and watch him drip.

Oh, God. That is good. Or we could back over him with the car, make a note, buy new tires. I began to feel better. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Now, you know, the thing about it is you have thoughts that are crazy, you know, and you run them past the sponsor. You have somebody you can talk to. You don't tell anybody these kind of thoughts if you're not just out there. You know, if I could have heard somebody else say those things, I would have said they're crazy. But when you're doing it and you're cosigning it yourself, you just justify in rational way murder is simple as anything in the world.

Not a big deal. No. Nothing difficult about it. And then there was a lady in town that killed her husband, said he was a drunk and they put her in prison. Tacky tacky tacky.

If I'd been on that jury, that wouldn't have happened. I can guarantee you that. That would never have happened there. So now we gotta have another meeting. So we gather all back and fall and we're sitting there thinking about it and all of a sudden it occurred, you know, if an alcoholic were to pass out in the bathtub and drown, who would know?

We all liked it. It was a group conscience. So now all you have to do is just wait for the time for it to take place. You know, you'd be surprised how patient I could be to get revenge or what have you when the need be. And so later on, a year to the week, he went on an abuse.

Guess who came home drunk? We had ice and snow, and all of a sudden, I heard our truck coming down the the street. You know the sound of your truck. If you've ever, you know, lived in alcoholism, you know the sound of the vehicle. You can hear it from 3 blocks away.

I can smell a cap of a off of a beer bottle at the back of the room. You know what I mean? You get really attuned to things. You know? Your senses are heightened.

And I heard our car our our truck and it sound like he was doing about 60 in second. And so all of a sudden, he just didn't quite make the driveway. He just came right across the yard. He hit the hitch and post horse. It was cast iron in concrete.

Went sliding sideways, hit a tree, and then bounced in the side of the house. And I said, he really can't drive on ice and snow. And I'm standing there. I'm looking out that window and I saw him open that truck door and pour out. I'd seen that a million times.

I said that SOB is drunk and I'll kill him if it's the last thing I ever do. So when he came through the door, I didn't say a word. Just hit him as hard as I could. And I don't hit like a woman, you know. I was raised on that highway and, for friends.

I had 11 boys and another girl. So I learned to fight the hard way. And so, he fell. He hit the coffee table and knocked him out. And I dragged him across the living room, down the hall, and into the bathroom.

I ran the bathtub full of water, took his clothes off, put him in, and held him under until the bubbles quit coming. I wanted him dead. He was my problem. And then a voice came that was not a committee member. And the voice said, look what you're doing.

You can't do this. I picked him up by the hair of the head and I said, the hell I can't. Put him right back down again. The voice came back and says, do you not realizing this is murder? You're taking the life of someone you once loved.

And it's that moment of clarity when you see yourself as you truly are. I had become an animal to fight an illness. Scared me to death. I jerked him out of that bathtub. Thank God I had worked for the Red Cross.

I was able to resuscitate him. See, God always goes ahead and plans in love. He knew I was gonna need that. And, took him into the bedroom, dried him off, put him in bed, got the hair dryer down, dried his hair. Didn't want him to catch a cold on me now.

And I shut the door on that room, and I went in my living room, and I started rocking. And I rocked for about 8 or 10 hours with a desperation I had never known in my life because, you see, I had I knew I was capable of taking another person's life. I knew I couldn't live like that anymore, but I didn't know how not to live like that anymore. And JD nearly died in that room. You see, he screamed and begged for help out of that room.

I can't I didn't go back in there for 3 days. I was afraid of what I would do because I kept vacillating between wanting to kill him, not wanting to kill him, wanting to kill him, not so I just stayed away. And I went on to work and people say, how could you do that? I said, well, I got 2 best friends, justification and rationalization. If he hadn't come home drunk, I wouldn't have to do that.

It's not my fault. He made me do that for God's sake. You know, that's where you give yourself a good excuse for bad behavior, where you don't take responsibility for your actions. That's what that's all about. And so I came home from work one day and he was sitting at our bar.

He looked real bad. And, he was shaking. And he said, I've tried to call Alcoholics Anonymous all day, that number, and I keep getting the wrong number because he was shaking so hard on that push button phone. He just couldn't get it. And he said, would you call?

And I looked at him and I said, what can a group of drunks do for you that I haven't done? And he said, I don't know, but I know I'm gonna die if I don't get some help. So I called and I talked to the lady at the central office, and she told me there was a meeting in 1 hour's time, 6 blocks away from our home, in a community building that was built by my grandfather who died of wet brain from alcoholism. And that's where the AA group was meeting. And so I took him over there and there were 2 ladies that came up to me and they said, we have Alan on and it's for you.

And I said, I'm here with him. And thank God for the old fashioned AA. There was an old man there. It was in his seventies. And when he came in, he looked over at JD and he said, boy, I'm gonna be your sponsor.

He didn't wait around and wait around to try to find somebody to help him. They came to you. And if that that old man saved JD's life. Saved his life. Later on, like I say, the worst thing can happen is somebody getting better at your house and it ain't you.

I'm trying to fight with him, you know. And I'm trying to talk to him, which means tell him how what I want and make him convinced that's what he wants to do. And, he looked at me and he said, honey, you got a easy tusset. I said, what? Easy does it hell or kill something.

What are you talking about? He said, honey, you gotta learn to live and let live. And I thought, save me. And you know, JD had done a real sneaky thing. He prayed and asked God to help him stay sober.

Job because he could drink on the job. And he changed his playgrounds and his playmates. And that's what brought me to my knees. Because you see now everything financially and everything is on me. And it was more and so I went to the Al Anon and I said, how do you manage when there's nothing left to manage?

And how do you keep an alcoholic sober? And they said, we don't know the answers to those things. And I thought, why am I here? But there were 2 there the group was 2. And 2 other ladies from another group were visiting that night.

See, God knew they were gonna need reinforcement. And they began to share their stories, which is the best thing we can ever do, share our spirit, strength, and hope with one another. And so I started going to Al Anon. For a long time, I wondered why did I keep going back? Why did I keep going back?