The 18th Area Fall Conference of AA in Hagerstown, MD

Tool. These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair.

Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush

warm cookies and milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day. Some take a nap every afternoon. I like that one.

When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The golden rule and love and sanitation, ecology, politics, insane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3:00 every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own misses.

And it is still true. No matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is still best to hold hands and stick together. Thank you.

That, yeah.

Thank you.

Can you see me now?

Glenn had asked me to do a little birthday announcements for Adalian. You know, I don't know her that well yet. And so I, I was a little nervous about that. I'm glad it came out the way it did. God always works things out. I'm a member of the Wednesday night Recovery Al Anon family group. We meet at 7:00 at the First Christian Church in Eugene, OR, and if you're ever there on Wednesday night at 7:00 with nothing else to do, come and join us.

My name is Shirley Trimble.

I I do have a few housekeeping announcements to do. I want to thank Duke and MRG for picking us up at the airport. Bob had been on the telephone and, and he got off the phone and he says Duke is picking us up from the airport. And I, you know, I thought John Wayne immediately I'm going to get to meet Duke. And so we met Duke and Margie and they picked us up and they delivered us here after a delicious meal and here we are. Here we are. And I'm so glad we are here.

What a great topic. You know, beginning a new life. That's what happened to me when I got to Al Anon, and I'll tell you all about that in a minute,

Adalia hinted to the fact that. Well, first of all, you know, I've never had it set up for me before where the place I was going was on the news every night for.

So I got to know who your Lieutenant governors were and your police chiefs and all of that,

and I'm so grateful. Thank God you're out of that terror.

You've been in my prayers for many weeks now and I'm glad that's over for this community and some healing is beginning. So I also,

Sunday morning, this last Sunday morning, woke up and I had a little bit of a side ache in it. You know, it kind of was getting worse and worse, worse. It was really hurting. And I finally said to Bob, you know, we got to take me to the hospital. Something is really wrong. And so we went to the urgent care and and they gave me morphine.

I was like everything was right again.

But they did tell me that I had a kidney stone and that the likelihood of me passing it wasn't going to be too great without some more pain. And so they gave me Percocet.

So I got some Percocet if anyone's interested.

My husband informed me, he says, well, I'm taking the Percocet before we knew how this was all going to work out. He goes, you know, I really do not want to be sitting in the audience with my wife stoned on Percocet talking to an A, a audience. I said no, I'll be sure not do that. So I had my speakers lined up already lined up and Adalia didn't know anything about this because I, I've been in her

place before.

And the last thing you want to hear is that your speaker may not be showing up. It just feels real uncomfortable. And so I knew we had it covered in Eugene, OR and,

And so that night I ended up in the emergency room and they gave me some more morphine and, and he says you need to get to your primary care physician, your regular doctor. And sure enough, I had a, I had a, an appointment already set up

to go see her and so for something else. And so we went and saw her and I said, you know, I need to go to this is this is like Tuesday now or Monday, I guess. And I said, I'm going to Maryland Thursday morning. She just gave me one of those. Looks like you're so cute.

And so she said, well, did they give you a CAT scan? And we did all this medical, don't hold it wrong. And finally they got me in that morning, that next morning for a CAT scan. So now we're talking Tuesday morning

and they got me in to see a doctor Tuesday afternoon, a urologist, and I said, you know, I'm going to Maryland Thursday morning. So now we're Tuesday afternoon and I'm leaving in a day to go to Maryland. He said,

OK. He said we can, we can do that if you're willing to go in and have surgery tonight at the hospital. And I said I'm willing. I'll go to any lengths. This too should pass

so so Tuesday night I was in the hospital as a patient having a minor surgery and Wednesday morning I woke up to nurses and Ivs and came out of my being put to sleep for a while and and thought, am I really going to go to Maryland tomorrow morning at 4:30, you know, am I going to get up and.

And I guess I was, because

next thing I knew I was in Maryland and here I am. And I'm so glad I got to come.

Thank you. Yeah. I was really, I was really glad it worked out the way it did. And it just worked out like, you know, Bob and I were talking and, and I, I had a few tears about because I thought there was a real good possibility I wouldn't come. And I went and sat in my little place, like we call it the coast property back in our, at our home. And it's a little garden that I've set up with all the things that grow at the Oregon coast. And, and I was sitting back there crying and. And I said, OK, God, you know, I'm just going to, I'm just going to take this one day at a time,

one duck at a time and get my ducks in a row and see if they're all my ducks and head, you know, I'm just going to plan that it'll work out the way it's supposed to work out. And I was so gracious, glad that it did so. So when I was 15 years old, I won't bore you with the 1st 15 years. Mostly I don't remember the 1st 15 years. I remember some of it, that when I was 15 years old, I met my drug of choice,

my addiction, my obsession. And his name was Bob. And he was better than chocolate.

And I, I just was, I mean, I didn't want to be without him. I didn't want anyone else to have him. And I didn't want to be without him. Do your Alcoholics relate here? You know, he was my bottle and I wanted you to keep your hands off of him. And I wanted to be the only one that drank from him. And I, I just fell madly, obsessively, indulgently in love. And like I said, he was better than chocolate and I was a chocoholic from the day I came out of the womb.

So Bob was it. He was going to make me happy. He didn't make me happy except for when he made me sad. I loved him every day except for when I hated him,

right?

And so my life began and I I met Bob's mother and father and the home I grew up in was a bit like Vietnam. And

so when I met Bob's mom and dad, I watched TVI knew that they were Aussie and Harriet Nelson. You know, now those of you that are young and have never heard of Ozzy and Harriet Nelson,

they were this like unreal family that were nice to each other and they were on TV and they had this really cute kid named Ricky. And, and they, they didn't, I mean, they were just nice to each other. Of course, we found out later in reality, they weren't quite as nice as we thought they were. But the, you know, the writers did a good job and they had them being very, very nice. And I thought Bob's mom and dad were Ozzy and Harriet Nelson.

And I also found out that they were

involved in something called A A. And Al Anon,

I would help Bob babysit his little brother and his little sister on Thursday nights while they went to AA. And Al Anon and I knew about AA, my Grant or my aunt, our family alcoholic, or at least the one we all talked about, the one that was out there,

she went to a A every once in a while because the courts would make her go to a A in order to get her kids back and she'd get her kids back and then they take him away from her and, and it went on and on and on.

So I knew two things about AAI knew that Bob's dad went to a A and I knew that it didn't work. But there was something about Bob's dad that I had never seen in another person before. And what I realized came to realize is a, A is a recovery program. And that if you're working the a A program and sober, NAA, you're in a recovery mode. And that's how he was.

I'll never forget the first time that Pop and I had asked him, Ozzy if we could do something and he said no, I don't think that's a good idea. And Bob said but dad and started to say something else. And I stood back about I stepped back about 5 feet because I knew someone was going to get hit and I didn't want it to be me and and nobody got hit. And I watched this all with fascination. And so it made me even more in love with.

We went together for quite a while because I was 15, we couldn't do much but go together. I mean, you know, we were just buddies at first, but he took care of that. And so

we became more than buddies. And he went off and joined the Navy and we wrote and we remained in love. And when he got home, we got married. Now, I knew that Bob drank a little differently.

He would try and leave cars going at 45 miles an hour. You know, he was just going to get out. And

I didn't think that was normal. But I hadn't been exposed to a lot of drinking except my mom's, which was come home, sit down and have a beer and two and three and four and then go to bed. But you drink your Nyquil before you went to bed. So anyway, Bob and I dated

Harriet. Harriet thought that if I was going to hang out with her son,

I perhaps needed. I can never tell what time it is with this. It's a it's a Mexican Rolex.

Cost me 1995.

Oh man, yours must not be a Mexican Rolex.

So anyway,

where was I? Oh, I was falling in love with Bob. OK, Harriet thought that perhaps I might need an Al Anon meeting if I was going to hang out with her son. And so at the tender age of 17 years old, I went to my first Al Anon meeting. Now that was a long time ago and I will tell you I do not have 40 years in Al Anon. So Needless to say, it didn't take, but it was a start. And so she took me to this. It was a great house. It was this neighborhood house

and in the house was this wonderful front room with a fireplace and kind of a little bar and a kitchen area and these little overstuffed chairs. And I thought, oh, this is nice. And so we walked through that. That was the a as room. And we went down the hall to a bedroom, a little 8 by 8 bedroom that had six chairs in it. And in each chair was a little white haired lady.

And they said,

honey, it's probably your attitude.

We know that a change in attitude can aid recovery. And I thought you can take your attitude and put it where the sun doesn't shine. Because I knew that I could love him enough. You know, if I'd been married to them, I would have drank, too. But I was me and he was going to get sober when I loved him enough.

So they said keep coming back. And I did. Every three or four years when Bob would misbehave, I would go to an L and I'm meeting to remind him that I knew what his problem was and it was not me.

We had assigned hats in our home. His was black and mine was white, and it was important that he remember whose hat was whose and which color each of them was. I was the good one and he was the bad one. And so I will go to Al Anon and I then I would try to share all this wonderful wisdom with him when I would get home. And he made it very clear to me that he knew Alan I could be good for me. He had watched his mother go to Al Anon, but personally he wasn't much interested in what I had to

about the meetings and would I please not talk about them, But I could still go and let him know what he was doing to me. So we went on like that. We went on like that and I, and I have to tell you, Bob and I are good friends. We had a great life. We had a lot of fun. We didn't isolate so much. We had a group of Alcoholics, drug addicts were that were just so much fun to hang out with. And we hung out all the time. And I partied, I partied right along with them

quite as heavy as they did. And once in a while, it seemed to me we could grow up and pretend we were adults, but that wasn't what we were doing. And so after we had been married for seven years, we had our first child, Laura. And

I remember in the hospital looking at that baby and thinking, I'm going to stand for the best, best Mom Ever award. I'm sure there is one, and I'm going to win it. And I'm not going to be the kind of mom that

isn't there for their kid. And so I just fell in love with that little girl. She was just, oh God, she was gorgeous and she was wonderful and she was smart. And, and, and 11 1/2 months later, we had a little boy When we finally got it figured out, we got it figured out quick. So we had a little boy named James. And James was Jim was premature and we almost lost Jim. And I remember going to the nursery late at night and saying, you know, God, if you let me take

him home, I'll be the best mom ever. I'll win that award. I promise I will. And we, we did get to take him home. And, and I, that's what I set out to do. I wanted to be the best wife ever, but I really wanted to be the best mother ever. And there's just one problem with being the best mother ever when you live in a home with alcoholism, is that it it, it doesn't work that way.

Alcoholism gets in the way of almost everything that's in your home. And you know, it didn't just knock on the door one day and say hello, I'm alcoholicism, may I come in and have a seat? You know, it just seeped in

through all of the cracks in the house and all of the cracks in each of us and pretty soon we were just consumed with alcoholism and it, and a lot of the time it was fun and a lot of the time it wasn't fun. So we went on doing what people do when they're consumed in this disease. They they party, they fight, they don't have enough money, they have too much money, they love the kids too much, they don't love the kids enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did. We did what they

what people do, and we fought a lot. I didn't have a license, a driver's license. And Bob has this. He had this mentality that if you didn't stay and fight, the fight didn't get any worse. He left. I mean, that was really a good thing to do, play. It would piss me off. Yeah, we get in a fight and he would get the car keys and he would

throw gravel everywhere, leaving the driveway and he would leave for hours.

I would get so mad. I would just sit there and steam. Our kids suffered as a result of that, but oh, I would be mad. So when I finally got my driver's license, because it became clear to me it was stupid to have a drunk person driving you around all the time,

made sense to get a driver's license. And so I did, and I had the keys in my pocket and I was ready. I think I started the fight.

So off we went. We were fighting. I grabbed the keys. I run out, I jump in the car. I locked the door so he can't stop me. He didn't come after me, but he couldn't stop me. I, I, I do, you know, how does he do that? I, I try to like lay rubber and, and I kind of go

out of the driveway and I drive like a block and a half and I'm sitting there, I pull over and I'm going.

I wonder what he does

and I wonder where he goes.

I couldn't think of a thing to do. I just wanted to go home.

So I went home and he left.

One of the one of the things that that I did, I didn't drink to take care of my problems. I daydreamed. And if I if, if, if I daydreamed it away, it went away. You know, I had the kind of life I wanted because I did daydreamed it as such. And I have a very active imagination and my brain is a very dangerous weapon or instrument or tool depending on how I choose to use it.

And umm, I knew that Bob wore the Black Hat and that Bob was the problem.

And so I daydreamed him away.

Killed him, if you will.

But I did it nicely. It was a dark, rainy night, and he drove off the road

and there would be a knock on our door

and the most handsome

Eugene cop was standing there in his Eugene Blue.

And he'd go, hello. And I'd say, it's Bob, isn't it? And he'd go, I'm so sorry. And I go, That's OK. One does what one must.

And he said, yes, it is. Bob, is there anyone you want us to call for you? And I said, well, perhaps we should speak to Ozzie and Harriet. So we called Ozzie and Harriet and told them of their son's demise. And he stayed with me until I felt a little better.

And the next day I did go to our lawyer who informed me that Bob had really loved us a lot and he had set up a private secret fund that we had not known about

and we are now very rich.

And the next day was the funeral. And we went to the funeral and I walked down the aisle with my 2 little babies and I would hear the people in the audience going. She's so brave.

And I remember thinking, one does what one must.

And so after the funeral was over and we were gathered as friends and family, I, I, I noticed this man from the back of the room and he, I'd gone to high school with him and he slowly walked toward me. You know, it was that like in 10,

he slowly walked toward me and he said, you know, Shirley, I never married.

So that's how I live my life.

I was gonna

pretty good at it and I was still working for the Best Mom Ever award, but I was getting pretty good at

dealing with he's going to drink. He does what Alcoholics do. He drinks. And I can live that way. And so, you know, they never follow the rules. They never follow the rules. One day at work, he showed up at my desk and said I'm going away for a while. I'm going into treatment. And I thought, well, damn, I just got it figured out. Now he's going to get sober.

But I also knew all these years that I've been going

to Al Anon. I knew that if you're in AAA, if the spouse is in a A, the other spouse, the the woman's, you know, the wife needed to join Al Anon. It's just what you did. It's what Ozzy and Harriet did. They were clear to me. That's what I would do. And so I did. And we were going to be this cute little couple in recovery, walking, trudging the aisle together. So that's what we did. And we went to a A and element. It's kind of like the Elks and the elk hits.

Now I know you guys aren't L cats. Don't come up here and tell me that

time I say that women elk come to me and they go we're not L cats. I know that. It's just part of my trying to be funny. OK, so

I'm going to meetings, I'm going regularly and I'm here in the steps red and I heard the 12 step read many, many times and all of a sudden I heard it read differently. That night the woman looked right at me and she said, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,

we tried to carry this message to others and practice these principles and all our affairs. And I went,

perhaps what a good idea. I think I'll work the steps now. I knew enough about A to be dangerous. I knew that they were written by Alcoholics for Alcoholics. I thought they were a good deal. I thought he needed them. But I never really much thought about the steps for Al Anon and we'd been reading them at every single meeting I gone to. Of course, I didn't get there till about 10 minutes after, so I probably hadn't heard them as many times as I thought I had,

and they seem like a good idea. I certainly knew that I was powerless

and that when I thought I wasn't powerless, my life was unmanageable, and that when I thought I was powerless, my life went a little bit better. And I certainly had come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. The group, the people in the group were being restored. I was watching it happen. Some of those people are huge survivors. They survive unbelievable terror and they do OK. And I watch that happen. And I knew that could happen for me too,

as my sponsor at that time kept telling me you get it too. You get it too. You're not that special that you don't get to have this also. And so she had me start working the third step and and believing in the care of God as I understood God. I'm so grateful for those words in our steps because I didn't believe in the traditional

organized religion God. I had given up on that God a very long time ago because

that got in on helped me. And so, umm, I was given the opportunity to believe what I needed to believe to get where I needed to get and I was so grateful for that.

I took my four step inventory. I what I do need to tell you is the first, I think it was like the second or third or fourth meeting I went to of Al Anon. I was probably like 20 by then, maybe 22 somewhere in there. I, I, I went home one night and did all of the steps and, you know, I didn't quite do them according to how they were set, but I made an attempt,

Emma, and my 4th and 5th step with

small attempt. It wasn't written and I didn't tell it to anybody, but I looked And so I thought, well, you know, that didn't work. So maybe what I need to do is, is do a really thorough 1. And so I I did, typed 55 typed pages, spell checked,

and then I found someone to take it with. Now I'm not going to take it with anyone in al Anon 'cause I don't want you to know who I am. I do not want you to know about my deep, dark secrets,

which I have mostly all told from here at the podium. But then they were dark and they were deep and I didn't want you to know. And so I had heard about this priest in Eugene, OR Oregon, Oregon, pretty good, who did fifth step work. And I made an appointment with him and I went to see him. His name is Father Joe Black. Now, I'm not a Catholic. I don't have anything against him. I'm just not one. And so I don't know much about these guys. I know that they are in buildings and they don't let them out.

That seemed to me

like a really good idea because I didn't want to see this person I was going to tell all this crap to, you know. And I also knew he was paid to listen to me and he could sit still and listen, you know, it was his job. And so it seemed to make sense to me to do it with the priest. And so I went to him and I gave him all my deep, dark, dirty secrets. Now, what I will tell you is I found out that they do let them out and they shop at the at the grocery store on your corner in your neighborhood.

If their parish is near where you shop, they're there in public, out and about,

and they remember your name. You know, it's like every time I would see him, I just wanted to die. And he would go, Hi, Shirley. How are you? And I think this man knows.

So now, of course, everyone in Ellen knows way too much about me. They just assume which they didn't know that as much as they do. But anyway, my, my, my sponsor at that time said, Are you ready

to have all your defects of character removed? And I went, no, some of them are kind of cute.

Why would I want to get rid of them?

And she goes, well, perhaps you could pray about the wisdom of the pain they bring you and the ones you love. And I thought that was a stupid thing to do, to pray for pain, but I would do it. I mean, you know, everyone said you're supposed to do what your sponsor says. So I would do it, and I did. And so if you want to become ready to have your defects of character removed,

why don't you pray about the wisdom of the pain

that they bring you and your loved ones? And it might work. It did for me. And so I started getting a little humble and asking God to remove my shortcomings. And then we got to the 8th step list. I made that list. It came from my fifth step list. One of the women that was on one of the people that was on that list was my mother.

When? When

I think the kids were three and four. So it was quite a while before I got to Al Anon and where I am in this place of recovery.

And my mother was dying of lung cancer. And I did not know how to let someone I loved die. I didn't know how to do it. And I remember one night standing and my dad didn't help a lot. His solution was don't cry because I don't want to. And I said OK, I won't and I didn't. And I would go and hide to cry that my mother was dying. And

I remember standing at the doorway

watching her hooked up to Four's and in a coma at this point. And the nurse said, honey, you can, you can come in. And I said, no, that's OK. And I didn't want to go in. I didn't. I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to do that. But on my immense list was my mother. And

God always gives us opportunities to grow. And sometimes they're not the way we want to, but they're given to us. And Bob's mother, Harriet, had

at this point in time become quite I'll and we knew that we were going to lose her. And I was there.

I stood up to the plate and I hit a home run and I was there. And I was held her and I talked to her and I kissed her. I sang to her. I almost took her out of a coma.

I said, shall I sing to you? And I was holding her hand and started singing and, and she kind of winced. And I went,

that's OK. I won't sing. I won't say. That's all right. Don't worry about

when Glenn asked me to help celebrate Adalia's birthday. I thought I was going to have to get up there and sing to you guys.

I was thinking, Oh no, the pain of it all.

Thank God I didn't have to. Anyway, the hospital finally called and said that Harriet, or as we knew her and lovingly called her mom or Frankie had passed away. And they said those of you that would like to are welcome to come to the room. She will be in room so and so, so and so. And there's no, there's no tubes, there's no mass, there's no nothing. She's just

resting and you can say your goodbyes. And I remember thinking, I want to do that

because I knew I could with the help of alanine. And so I went out to the backyard and we had some dahlias growing back there. And there was this gorgeous purple dahlia. And I said, I'll take that to her. And then I have always in my on my person, I have a is that this is Alanon. It's a pamphlet. It's a blue and white pamphlet. It's a small pamphlet. Mine get very dogged and torn and ratty and they have phone numbers and dates and

they're laminated and stapled and taped and I, I just carry them till they fall apart or I need to do something else with it. And it felt like, you know, what do you give to a person who gave you Al Anon? What do you give? There's no gift big enough. And so I took my Al Anon pamphlet in my flower, and I thanked her

for giving me life and giving me al Anon. So those are one of the the

eight steps that I got the 9th step that I got to do. I didn't get to do it with my mother, but I got to do it with my mother-in-law who really was my mother and All in all respects. So I was working the steps. Look at this look. Are you impressed?

You thought it was just a name tag, didn't you?

So anyway, I'm working the steps and I'm, I'm trying to do this deal and, and we get to that night step, which I'm doing and we're financially making amends to debtors that we had forgotten to pay. Well, we hadn't forgotten, we just refused.

But we were starting to pay some of those. I was showing up for my son, I was showing up at court. By then, Jim had been diagnosed as an alcoholic

and self diagnosed as well as diagnosed by all the experts.

And so I was showing up at court and school and doctors and I was there for him and I was there for my daughter and her 4H and her horses and her rabbits. And I was like winning the best mom ever award. And

one day I was in the car with Laura. She was about seven or eight years old. And she said, I said to her, you know, I love you. And she goes,

are you my real mom or a woman that looks like my real mom? And I said, well, that's a strange thing to ask, but I'm your real mom. Why did you ask that? And she goes, my real mom doesn't say I love you first. But that night I had, it was working. It was working. I was beginning to show the people in my life that meant a lot to me, that meant the most to me, that I loved him and I cared about him.

So I started making amends. The promptly part my sponsor and I had a really hard time with. I had more of a hard time with it than she did. I didn't know what the word promptly meant.

You know, if you look at the evolutionary process of the earth prompt is not real quick.

But she seemed to think that as soon as I became aware of it, I owed it promptly. And so

we didn't always agree on that, but she always won. And, and one of the things that she had me start doing was with Bob was in our One Day at a Time book it on page 264. It talks about that Alcoholics are not bad people, they were born that way, and that the last thing they needed from us was to scold them and belittle them and put them down,

and that we needed to treat them as a man or a woman. And so she said I had to read that every morning,

and I had pat Bob's leg or pat his head or touch him and some loving manner each day. And I don't remember how long she made me do that, but it was sure a good idea because I began to lose contempt for the man I had fallen in love with.

And I started doing promptly is because I felt like it was OK for me to be wrong. And that was incredible. And so one of the then, then, then, then came prayer and meditation. Prayer was really difficult for me because I wanted to get it right.

You know, we were having financial problems and, and, and so I remember one day I said we had a rural mailbox where you had to walk across the street to get your mail. And I said, Oh dear God, let there be money in there.

And so I went across in the mailbox and there was there was money in there, but it was money a creditor had returned us because it wasn't enough and they were going to sue us. So I thought, oh, well, I should have asked for it to be not our own money back, but their money, someone else's money for us. And a lot of it, this was only like $8 or some ridiculous thing. So finally, my sponsor said, do you remember that part where it says praying only for

knowledge of his will for you and the power to carry that out? And I said, yeah, she says, well, let's, let's try that. And she reminded me that the word power had a lot of meaning in that because I could always know God's will for me, but as long as I didn't have the power to carry it out, I wouldn't do it. And so she asked me to pray for power and courage.

About now I'm thinking these 12 steps are wonderful. They can work for anybody, for anything. And I have this little addiction to nasal

spray, four way nasal spray. And I remember thinking I should have probably gone to Narcotics Anonymous.

But you remember I Daydream. So this is what I'm painting the picture. I walk into the basement of a church. It's full. There's one empty seat next to a guy that's seven foot tall and £300. He has tattoos up and down both sides, you know, and needle marks. And I have to sit next to him. Now, I know that's not Narcotics Anonymous. I've been to a couple of their meetings, open meetings, and I've seen what they're like. But that's what my Daydream was. And so I sit down next to

Butch

and he leans over to me and he goes, hi honey, I'm Butch. What's your drug of choice?

And I was going to look at Butch and I was going to say four way nasal spray

and I knew it was an artist program, but I was going to lie to Butch and I was going to tell him cocaine.

Anyway, I love being up here. I love to listen to haven't we had some great speakers? Wow, just some incredible speakers and thank you to each and everyone of them. And there will be more to come. I love to hear the laughter. And it used to just drive me nuts that Alcoholics had Al Anon jokes and I would go, you know, that's not Al Anon. Al Anon's a recovery program. And what they're talking about is not someone in recovery. And So what I figured out, what they were talking about were

people called Narps, not a real person,

because that's what I was when I got here. I was an art. I wasn't a real person. I didn't know how to be who I was because I had no idea who I was. So I have a couple of narc jokes for you. This is just to kind of pick things up a little bit. Do you know what happens when an ARP is drowning? Everyone else's life flashes before her eyes

and and you know what why an art closes her eyes when making love she didn't like to have anyone else haven't watch anyone else having fun. So those are those are narcs, those are Nars.

I do have one Allen on joke for you. You know how many alanine's it takes to screw in a light bulb? None. They detach and let it screw itself.

Sorry, I'm you know, I had to do it. The devil made me.

I've done service work in Al Anon. It has increased and improved my recovery tenfold. I travel with people, as you know, we were introduced to some of them. I go to lots of assemblies. I go to lots of workshops. I travel around the state, as I've been known to say. I sleep around in Al Anon. We get four people to a room and we just have a wonderful time and the girls fill up that car and off we go. And we have so much fun. And I've learned how to be away from my drug of choice,

Bob, and to be still OK. And I'm so grateful for the Al Anon program that they they let me do the service work to them, that they let me help pay back just one piece of what I give. One of the things I did in service was I had help with a retreat for women. Alan don't doesn't have retreats, but this was a women's retreat of women that were in recovery. And they invited a woman named Pat R from Oceanside, CA. Some of you have heard her speak and

they invited her to come and talk and she

was going to be appearing 2 weekends in a row. And she brought her daughter with her and they came and showed up and I was going to be at both of these retreats 2 weekends in a row. And Pat and her daughter Kitty came and they we played and we had a great time. And then they went to the coast. And the whole time they were at the coast, Pat would say, you know that, that, that oh, what was her name? That twinkles girl, that twinkles girl. And so when they got back, Kitty says you're my mom has just nicknamed you

now Twinkles. And so we laughingly took that nickname on in my home and and and most of my Home group and and about two or three weeks later, after I had talked to Pat a little bit about some of her experience, strength and hope, I called her because my sponsor had quit going to Al Anon. When you quit going to Al Anon, it's not a lifelong membership. You got to go to meetings to be a part of Al Anon. My opinion only, but it seems to work in my area. If you go to meetings and you call your sponsor and you

people and you read literature and you pray and meditate, it seems to me you get to be a member. If you stop doing all of that, you're we're once a member, but no longer. All right. Anyway, that's my opinion. You can agree with it or disagree, I don't really care, but you don't need to tell me what you do