The 60th Gopher State Roundup in Bloomington, MN

Good morning Gopher State Roundup. My name is Kerry Collins, and I'm a very grateful member

of this worldwide fellowship of the Al Anon Family Groups. This is going to be a long ride. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

Hi, Karen. Hi, y'all. I so appreciated. First of all, thank you to Connie and to the entire committee. You guys put on a party, let me tell you. And yeah, we're having a good time already. And, and I really appreciate the hospitality and my Hostess, Sheila. We're having a really good time so far. And I appreciated Teresa last night stepping up and starting off with the fact that she was feeling really nervous and uncomfortable because I'm feeling very nervous and uncomfortable.

And I, I, I'm also not a morning person.

Um, and, and I don't know what I just always think of like the Al Anon speakers of the luncheon person. And, and so then when I got the schedule and it showed me at 9:30, I thought, oh, and so I went and had lunch with two of my best friends in, in Al Anon that day. And I told them and in unison they went, Oh, I,

those same friends did both send me emails last night and I was really appreciative of that. And then my sponsors husband, who's a very spiritual man and he's been in Al Anon since he was an allylene and he's very, very old now because anybody that's older than me is very, very old. And

and he told me that God doesn't get up before 10:00 in the morning. So you're on your own for the first little bit.

And I'm reminded of the first time that I was speaking and I was very,

very nervous. And my friend Vince came up to me and lovingly placed his hands on my arms. And he said it's OK Kerry, just be funny and don't screw up. So I tell you these stories because if you're new, stick around and you too can have friends like this.

I want to thank all of the A A members who are here this morning and who support family recovery. I really appreciate that. And I know that there's a lot of parts in the country where people are kind of like us and them.

And I really believe that it's a family disease. I suffer from the family disease of alcoholism. And what that means is that when people I love drink alcoholically, I lose my mind. And, and so it's really important that I come here. And I'm very grateful to all of you who so lovingly and graciously share the 12 steps of a A with all of us. Alanon Anna. The other thing that I always like to say at the beginning is that I hear a lot of a, A members get up here and say, you know, if it weren't for a A, I'd be dead by now. If one more person had tried to help me, I'd be dead by now.

And I don't hear a lot of Al Anon say that, but I'm here to tell you that I believe that this disease is just as deadly for us. You know, it's funny, in the big book, my sponsor and I were reading and I'm a big book Allen on. And if you don't like that, that's OK. You don't have to be. But we were reading in in the big book and in the in the four step stuff, there's like 11 death threats. You know, it's infinitely grave. To drink is to die. There's like 11 death threats. Like this really is a life or death thing. But a lot of Al Anon's are like, oh, you know what? He stopped drinking, so I don't need to come anymore.

And I can tell you that,

umm, all the times that I contemplated suicide, all of the times that I got into a fight with my alcoholic and ended up with stitches in my head and had to go to the hospital. All of the times that I got into a car with him and he was too drunk to drive, but I just didn't have it in me for another fight. This disease is just as deadly for us and it's so important. I love to come and talk about this stuff because I forget my life is, is really good today for the most part and I forget how how deadly and how dangerous it is. And so it's important.

Complacency is my biggest enemy. And so it's really important that I come and I talk to you guys. And also I'm my favorite topic, so it's really nice to get to get to talk about me for an hour. Fabulous.

I have an A a friend who has a theme song and, and I adopted it many, many years ago and it goes a little like this. I, I, I, I, I, me, me, I, me, me, I, I, I. So

we talk about the selfishness and the self centeredness of the alcoholic, right? Yeah. We also have a disease. It's like alcoholism

and, and, and I feel like I am just a selfish and just a self-centered as any alcoholic out there, but I just like to hide mine as helping.

And

I've never done anything for anybody just because I'm a nice person.

I do it because I want you to owe me and I want you to need me and I want you to love me. And, and so all of my helping is really to serve me. I so there you go. And, and I guess with that, I'm just going to tell you in a general way what happened, what I was like, what happened and what I'm like today. And I'm the product of an alcoholic marriage. My parents were teenagers when they discovered that they were pregnant with me. And back then

what you did is you got married and and my dad was already, he was only 18, I think, and and he was already really in the depths of this disease. And their marriage only lasted for three years. Well, I don't know. I was three when they got divorced and he divorced my mom and immediately married another woman with a little girl. And in my little child mind, what I saw is that he left us to go be with them. And that kind of set up this

idea in my head that I was second best and this really became a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, what what we hear as children

so much shapes who we become. I ended up graduating second in my class and I was coeditor of the school newspaper and I was Co captain of the cheerleading team. And and this really became a self fulfilling prophecy. And it is something that still sits with me today. My sponsor. And I've been talking a lot about letting go of old ideas and and I celebrated this last May. I celebrated 22 years in Al Anon

and thank you

because I started when I was 5.

No, actually this this was a really cool year to me because I on May 5th I turned 44 and on May 6th I turned 22. So on May 7th I had one more day in Al Anon then out and that was really awesome. So hopefully I'm like even now, right, And I can start to grow.

So

anyway,

back when my parents got divorced, you know, it was in the 70s, there was not like joint custody. And we lived in Houston and my dad lived in Dallas. And so I would go spend a week with him at Christmas and two weeks in the summertime. And, and that was really the extent. I don't remember talking to him on the phone. I probably did, but that was really the extent of our connection. But I just thought he was the cat's pajamas. I, I thought that the sun rose and set from him. And when we would go visit, it was a party. It was a party all the time. There was this pizza place called Shotgun Sam's

and they had live vans and music and, and arcades and beer and pizza and, and we would spend so much time there. And I thought it was because it was summer. It was because it was Christmas and we're, you know, we're celebrating everybody's together and it's a party. No, that also happened because it was Tuesday

or because it was Arbor Day and, you know, yeah, it's raining. Oh, look, it stopped raining. Let's go celebrate. And and that was just what happened. Alcoholics drink. That's what they do.

And and we had a really rough time growing up. You know, it's it's the disease of alcoholism is so powerful that even though I only spent three weeks a year in active alcoholism, I'm still really drastically affected by this disease. And I was not an abused child. I was very loved. My mom is one of seven children, Catholic, Irish alcoholic family and CIA and,

and she was the first one to get divorced.

At this point, six of the seven have been divorced at least once. So because that's what happens in alcoholism. But she was the first one. And and so I was really, I mean, I was really taken in by my grandparents, by my aunts and uncles and just loved and treated with just so much tenderness and gentleness. I don't ever remember being hit or anything like that. And you know, I'm here to tell you that there was a, a movie a couple years came out ATV movie about Lois. And it was called Love is not Enough.

And I'm here to tell you that love is not enough to save you from alcoholism. If it was, you would have a different speaker this morning. Because I really was loved and adored. My mom remarried when I was 11 years old and and I was not happy, but I didn't tell her that I wasn't happy. I told her that I was really happy for her. And, and I think, you know, on some level I was because she seemed happy. But I was afraid. I was afraid that one more time I was going to be an outsider. I was afraid that one more time I was going to get cast aside.

And when she got married, I did end up feeling like an outsider in that family. But there was a part of me that just really, really wanted to be part of a family. And and we would go places, we would go to church or we would go to restaurants. And I would say, I bet everybody's going to look at us and think we're a real family. They had it. They had a baby girl right away and the love of my life. And I think we're everyone's going to look at us and think that we're a real family. And one time my stepdad looked at me and he said nobody's looking at us and thinking anything.

Which is true, right? I'm always so worried, like when I walk into the room, what are people going to think? They're not going to think about you at all. They're busy thinking about themselves. Nobody walks around going like a real family. Look at that over there.

Doesn't happen. But what I heard when he said that was we're not a real family. You are not a part of this family. And that's what I grew with.

The night of my 8th grade graduation, my dad almost died and I don't know the whole story. Oh, by this time we were living my my mom and my stepdad and the new babies, we were living in Colorado. My dad was still in Texas and I was still doing the one week at Christmas time and two weeks in the summer and, and I was pretty miserable

in the home. Really, some of it was probably just because I was a teenager. I was hormonal, but but also, you know, being affected by alcoholism. And my dad almost died. And I thought this is my chance. And I, I had my first geographic. I told my mom I need to go live with him. He could die anytime. And I don't really know my dad and it's time for me to go. And she, she did not want me to do that

and she tried to stop me. And it was the first time in my life that I remember consciously making a decision that other people weren't happy with because I always tried to do what would make you happy. And, and I was very firm that I needed to go. And I think something in me knew that I, I really did need to go. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why, but I feel like I really did need to go at that time. And, and, and I don't know the whole story about my dad. I know it had to do with his drinking and his smoking,

but I said I want to come live with you. And they said OK.

And that was the first time that I really remember living in active alcoholism. And it was like pouring miracle grow on all of my defects of character. And like my al anonism blossomed in that year. And and we would wake up in the middle of the night. I had you know, there was the little girl that had already been born. And then my dad and my stepmom had had another baby girl. And so were the three. There were the three of us and we would wake up in the middle of the night to them screaming with one of those alcoholic fights. And initially

at the beginning of that school year, the other girls would come into my room because I was the oldest kind of. And so they would come into my room and we would sit on my bed and we would hold each other and hug each other and comfort each other in the night. And by the end of that school year, we would all just stay in our own beds and cry by ourselves because that's what alcoholism does. It destroys these families, it destroys relationships, it destroys little girls lives.

And and at the end of that school year,

I thought, I need to go out of here. And, and so I made another geographic back to Colorado and my, my dad and my stepmom were

filing for divorce. And my stepmom and her best friend told me that it was my fault that that's I was the reason that they were going to get divorced. And they, I moved back to Colorado and they ended up not getting divorced. And so I took that on for a little while. And I know today that that's,

you know, it wasn't my fault that they were getting divorced. They ultimately did end up getting divorced. And and I don't even blame her anymore for blaming me for that stuff because I understand that, you know, when I as an adult, when I was living in active alcoholism, I was looking for those reasons. It's got to the reason that we're having problems. Can't be alcoholism because I don't know what to do with that. But if it's the little girl, we can send her back to her mom. If it's the job, we'll just change jobs. If it's our friends, yes, we have stupid friends. Let's get new friends. And those I, I can deal with

those things, I can solve that problem, but I don't know how to solve the problem of alcoholism, right? And so I got back to Colorado and I basically decided that my dad was a terrible dad and that I did all the work in the relationship and

he didn't deserve me anyway. And so I wrote him a letter basically disowning him. I was 15. Wrote him a letter basically disowning and telling that he was a terrible dad and that if he wanted to be a dad at some point he could let me know. But I was done doing all the work in our relationship.

And but what happened at that point is I was a sophomore in high school and I was very angry because living in alcoholism makes children angry. But I didn't know I was angry because I grew up in Texas. And that's not something that people are, especially little girls, you know, like there's no dealing with your anger. You're just happy,

not too happy. What are you so happy about? Just regular happy, right? And that's it. And so I didn't know what to do with all of this anger. And So what I did is I beat up girls and slept with boys. And that was my solution.

And it actually worked quite well for quite a long time because I found, you know, when I was when I was bullying another girl and if I could make her tremble, if I could make her cry,

if I could make her leave school for the day, call her mom and ask to be taken home. I felt big and I felt strong and I felt powerful. And I did that. And when I was getting attention from teenage boys in those few minutes, and they were teenage boys. So it really was just a few minutes.

In those few minutes, I felt beautiful and I felt loved and I felt whole.

I thank you for your laughter, Kelvin. I got to tell you guys last night when we got here, we're just going to digress and and this happened. So just come along for the ride. It happens. My husband nodding his head. So we had dinner with with a a few people at our table and Kelvin and Adam were joined as they came in from North Dakota and

and Adam told us some good news and Sheila and I started clapping and

and Calvin said oh great, we've lost him for the weekend. He's going to follow the Allen ONS who clap at everything he says.

So that's what we do. We encourage and understand our alcoholic relatives.

Umm anyway so so in high school is when I met my first him and and he was amazing. He was an artist. He was dating one of my best friends and he had been in rehab three times already.

And one time I was looking through his artist sketchbook and there was a suicide poem. And I thought to myself, he wouldn't feel that way if he were with me.

And so I made it my mission to make him mine. And I did. And, and we had a typical alcoholic relationship. We broke up for the first time after six days and and that established a pattern. We were together for either 5 1/2 or 6 1/2 years. I'm not really sure which one. I go back and I try to figure it out and I just can't figure it out. We were together for a long time and we broke up probably about every six days, but we always got back together because he was my soul mate

and and I could see his potential. I knew that there was a future there

and you know, it's

he was he was wonderful in the beginning. He really was he was funny and he was charming and he was talented. I love Alcoholics and I love that I come to Al Anon and you tell me that it's OK to love an alcoholic. That's the only place that this happens. Everybody else, people are like, well, why don't you just leave them? And they didn't understand. He was my how can I leave him? He was what made me alive. And in the beginning it was fantastic, but but then it takes a funny turn and

the drinking just got really out of hand very young. We broke, we got back together, we broke up, we got back together. I graduated high school and left and moved to Texas to get away because I, I realized at that point that I couldn't seem to stay away from him if we were in the same town. So I moved to another state and, and in less than by the end of that school year, he was down there living with me. And we broke up and got back together all the time. One time

I moved out of our apartment while he was at school

and two weeks later he was back on the lease with me in my new apartment.

And that's what we did. And we, we moved every six months because that's when the lease was up. And we'd be like, you know, we should move because this place has like really bad juju, I think. And

'cause it, we lived there and that's why

I had bad juju. But at the end of six months, like the police knew us really well, right? And, and our neighbors knew us really well, but you didn't know that they knew us really well because they would not make eye contact. You know, like, oh, there's the crazy people and,

and we just like we need to go. If we can start over again that I can fix, I can fix the bad apt. I can't fix alcoholism. I don't know how to fix the problem of alcoholism. But if it's the apartment, we can just move. There's lots of apartments and, and it just followed us around. And I'll tell you what happened for me, it was, it was the night of my 22nd birthday party. I was, it was just before I turned 22, the night before I turned 22. And

and we have, we were having a big party and he gave me a bottle of tequila.

Oh, and then he drank it.

No. And yeah. Good man,

but but we were going, there was a bunch of us, we were going to a comedy club because there was a comedy club within walking distance and everybody, you know, you can have a party, Everybody gets in for free and the birthday girl gets free drinks and we didn't have to drive and, and that was a good thing, right? And so we went, we had, we had a really good time. Our friends were fun. They were probably all alcoholic because that's the other thing that happens. You know, we surround ourselves with other people who drink more and act crazier so that we can go like, oh, thank God we're not like them.

And so we, we had this night

and

at the end of the night, we all went back to our apartment, finished off whatever alcohol might have been in the house. And then everybody started to leave. And I hated when everybody started to leave because that meant we were going to get in a fight. And, and we used to fight a lot. And I, I was never an abused spouse or mate. I played one on TV. You know, if you came up to me and said, what's going on, like, Oh, you wouldn't believe what he did to me today, you know, but

he was tall, but he was thin and, and he drank heavily so he'd get real off balance, you know, so I could go with him and, and we would, we would fight together and the police would come. And sometimes he was a little more beat up and sometimes I was a little more beat up. But this is just what we did. And,

and so everybody left and I knew we were going to get in a fight and, and we did. And what happened was I took a pair of scissors and I stabbed him in the leg because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And the police, you're the only one laughing.

The police came and I'll never forget this cab and what he looks like, and his name was Joe. And he comes to the door because our neighbors called on us, as they always did,

and comes to the door. And he says, what's going on? I said, oh, Joe, he's hitting me again. And he looks at Dave. And Dave's got, like, blood coming out of his leg. And he says, well, it looks like that whatever happened here was at the very least mutual. So I could take you both to jail

or I could take you neither to jail. And I thought that neither to jail was definitely the better option. And and this was this was Texas in 1991, you know, where it's like, oh, that's that's a personal problem. We're not going to get involved. You know, the police didn't get involved with stuff like that. I'm sure today I would just go to jail. So I got to keep coming back so I don't stab anybody else in the leg with pair of scissors.

And actually, that's when when my husband, my husband's here with me, which is really nice. And when we started dating

and we weren't supposed to get married, it was just going to be a summer fling. He was only 23 and I was 30. And that was a really good match. And

and we were, we were having a great time together and, and I was pretty open with him. You know, this was what was fabulous about this relationship. Oh, did you guys follow? We made another turn.

So this is what's fabulous about this relationship is I didn't expect it to last. So I was really honest from the very start. Like even in even in recovery, I was like, oh, I'm going to be really honest. I'm going to do things differently this time. But I was still doing it with a goal in mind. I was doing it.

I'm going to do things differently so that it will workout. I was still not leaving the results up to my higher power, right? So in this relationship, I already had decided that it wasn't going to laugh. So I didn't have anything to lose. I could tell him anything and I did

and now he knows it all, which is why he gets to come on a weekend like this because I don't have anything to hide. But we were dating and, and he says, so how come? How come you're an al Anon? And and because I didn't really have any active alcoholism in my life at the time. And so I told him the story about stabbing my boyfriend in the leg with a pair of scissors

and I said since I've been coming to Al Anon I have not found it necessary to do that. And,

and he said you're going to a meeting tonight, right?

And he has been very supportive of my program ever since.

He is, uh, I love this man. He is as close to a normie as anybody that I've ever met, but he did marry me. So water stinks its own level. There's something there and, but anyway, so,

so the cop came and he took Dave over to a friend's house. He said, he said, I said, can you just take him to a friend's house for the night? And he said, yeah, probably because he didn't want to come back. And, and so he did. He took him over to a friend's house. And I woke up the next morning,

and the only way I know how to describe this is I've heard it said that if you stick a frog in boiling water, it'll jump right out. But if you stick a frog in regular water and turn on the heat, it'll sit there and boil to death. And I woke up that morning and looked in the mirror, and I had become that frog.

Every ambition, every dream, every hope that I had ever wanted, I had said goodbye to. And little by little, one day at a time, I turned into this woman that I took him and recognize

and that even my family didn't know what was going on inside my home. And I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell them.

And little by little, everybody that mattered to me slipped away. I even, I had a cousin that I grew up with. Her name was Amy. Our parents are are 15 months, our moms are 15 months apart. And they were very close. And at one point, you know, my mom was a single mom and her mom was a single mom. And we all lived in the same house together. And as as young women in our late teens and early 20s, Amy and I had shared an apartment and she saw this relationship. She knew what was going on. And,

and one time

I had shown up at her work needing stitches in my head from a fight that had gotten out of hand.

And but, you know, I drove to her work to have her drive me to the hospital. So I mean it, you know, drama

I But after that, after that event, she wrote me a letter basically disowning me and said, I love you and I'm not willing to let you die. And this was somebody that I had grown up with. And so here I was on my 22nd birthday and I was utterly and intensely alone.

And the phone rang and it was my dad,

who I hadn't spoken to in many years and who was sober for a year and a half in AA

and he was calling to wish me a happy birthday. And for whatever reason, I

told him what was happening. I told him everything that was going on, and he just kept saying that sounds like alcoholism. That sounds like alcoholism

and I don't even remember the entire conversation but I know that the next day I found myself in an Al Anon meeting and and I'll never forget that meeting. It was magical. It really was magical and I and I really did feel at home right from the start. I felt like I could be truly myself. I cried for the entire meeting. I could barely say my name. I still cry at almost every meeting.

My little sponsees tease me about it, but they cried too. But but it's different today because my my tears aren't from grief and despair anymore. They're usually from gratitude and joy. And that's really a blessing.

And and I remember that they passed a basket and and I went to put, I saw everybody putting money in. So I went to reach into my purse and the woman next to me put her hand on mine and she said, it's OK, honey, this one's on us. And and after the meeting, you guys invited me to coffee, which was astounding to me because remember, I was alone. I didn't have anybody that wanted to spend time with me. Even the craziest of our friends weren't hanging out with us anymore. So that meant we were the craziest

of our friends and, and I, I didn't go to coffee because that was, you know, I don't know you people, you're kind of weird, but but it was really nice. I was very touched. I thought it was lovely. And but there was a, there was a woman there. And this was, remember, this was Texas in 1991. So she had big hair

and and she had Baloo eyeshadow and, and she looked me in the face and she said you are so lucky to have found this program so young. And I wanted to punch her in the face

because I was not feeling like a lottery winner. OK. I didn't come because baskin-robbins was out of my favorite ice cream. And, and, but I understand. I understand today what she meant by that. And she said, honey, if you want your life to get different, there are five things you need to do.

She said you go to meetings, you get a sponsor, you work those steps, you be of service and you sponsor others. You do those five things, your life will get different. She didn't even promise me that my life would get better. And I was like, OK, I'm in. That's fine. I'm totally. I'm willing to do those five things. And,

and I feel really grateful because I came into this program and I did not come to get him sober. We have a lot of people that come in and there's somebody talked about, you know, just tell me the answer. Just tell me

how to get you want me to eat blueberry pancakes on Tuesday. I will do that. Whatever it is. I can wear red on Fridays at 5:00 if that's going to do what it what it takes to make them sober. I didn't do that. I knew that I was the common denominator. I knew that every relationship that I had ever been in had alcohol and meat and I knew that I was the problem. And so I feel really fortunate for that. I also knew

that one of the things that they talk about in a A is that the the the first drink is too much

and the first one will get you drunk and 100 drinks is never enough. And I knew that too, because we, you know, we would go on these spells

when I was with Dave, we would go on these spells where he would, he would get sober, we'd have a fight, I'd throw him out of the apartment and he'd come back, you know, very remorseful and, and ready to change. And he'd be dry. He's like, I'm, I'm not going to drink anymore. I was like, OK, that's perfect. That's all I want. Actually, I didn't even care if he drank. I just don't didn't want him to drink like he did. To help him with that, when we were dating,

I created a drinking chart for him.

Stay with me And newcomers, you should really pay attention to this

because if you're not out of plans yet, here's the

new plan for you. So I had, I had heard that if you drink every day, you might be an alcoholic. And I had also heard that if you drink more than two drinks a day, you might be an alcoholic. So what I did is I designed a chart where he could drink on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 2 drinks each of those days. But I also, I'm a very loving, giving person and I wanted him to be able to relax on the weekend. So he actually could drink on Fridays and Saturdays both.

But I had also heard that it takes the body approximately 1 hour to metabolize an alcoholic beverage. So on Friday and Saturday and you know, we wanted to celebrate and relax and it's the weekend and stuff. So he could even have more than two drinks. He could have up to four drinks on Fridays and Saturdays, but no more than one drink per hour.

And then maybe he wouldn't black out. And as you can imagine, it was a very successful.

Yeah, um,

anyway, he would. So he would go on these spells where he would just quit drinking altogether. And then like, I remember we went to this restaurant. It was like a it was like a big giant boat. And this was right after Fosters Logger came out and he orders the Fosters Logger and I was like, what are you doing? You don't drink anymore. And he's like, oh, it's just one drink, It's not going to be a problem. And I thought to myself, yes, it is. We're going to end up right back where we were, you know, And they say here in Al Anon, if nothing changes, nothing changes,

right? I didn't even know what that meant because it doesn't make sense.

And, and this is, this is actually, and, and I'll get to this, this is if anybody sponsoring and you're new to sponsoring, all you have to do is say things twice.

You'll know when you know

you don't know what you don't know.

And if nothing changes, nothing changes. Oh, and here's my new favorite one. I actually say this to my sponsored all the time. It is what it is. That's all you have to do. Seriously. And they'll be like, I love my sponsor. She's so wise.

Actually, last night this was great. Last night I get, I get back to the room and I'm checking my e-mail and I have an e-mail from a sponsee and the subject line is I hate it when you're right. And I thought, I love it when I am

I,

and I'm so glad she finally knows it

because I've been trying to tell her that for a long time anyway. Oh, I don't even know where I was.

We were talking about the drinking chart.

Oh, lady with the big hair. Yes. So anyway, so I started, I started trying to do those five things right. And I, I couldn't do them too much because like, you know, I didn't really want to get a sponsor because I didn't want to have a conversation with you. I could go to the meeting, you know, I'm going to show up five minutes before it starts and I'm going to leave 5 minutes when it's over and I'm not going to actually talk to anybody.

But I am really, I just, I didn't have it in my schedule for more people to help. So I couldn't get a sponsor because I just didn't have time to help somebody that much. And

newcomer thinking, right? And

you know, I looked at my watch before I started and then I completely forgot what time I started. So I don't know how long I was supposed to talk, but I'm my favorite topic. You guys have like 2-3 hours, right? OK, so 'cause I have a lot of stories

anyway,

so so my boyfriend was going to go get sober and I was going to go down on. And the way he got sober is he went to New Mexico where his brother was, and each morning they would go and buy a case of beer and then go fishing and talk about how they both needed to quit drinking really badly. And,

and it was somewhat less successful than Alcoholics Anonymous tends to be. But I didn't know any of this. I didn't know any of this. I thought he got sober. I thought that that's what he did. So he came back and, and when he came back, I couldn't go to as many meetings and, you know, because I needed to be there for him

and make sure he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. And but my dad had invited me and him to move to California. My dad, you know, he was in a, A and he was in this process of trying to make amends. And I had dropped. I had dropped out of college

so that I could work full time and pay for him to go to college. I used to be so mad at him for that. And then my sponsor asked me the first time going through the steps, my sponsor said, did he ever ask you to do that?

No, that was my own brilliant idea.

So, so I dropped out of college and so my dad wanted to help me get back into college and I think it was just part of the immense process. So I moved to California. I mean, and, and at this point he was dry. Like he was dry dry. He was still smoking pot, but that was OK because we didn't get in a fight when he smoked potty. He was just kind of like, hey, so as I was at he's smoking, he wasn't drinking and we weren't fighting. We weren't throwing things at each other. And so we moved to California. I'm living with my dad and my dad's like a year and a half sober.

My boyfriend is dry, my dad's girlfriend living girlfriend was less than a year sober and

in my not so humble opinion, would have benefited from an Al Anon meeting or 200 from time to time. And, and I was there and I was brand new in Al Anon. So it was crazy health and I didn't know what to do. And so I just started going to meetings and God bless my higher power, I got to all the meetings where people were working the steps with a sponsor, They were of service, they were sponsoring others and they were doing the deal. And I didn't know what else to do. So I was just going to to meetings. And finally for the first time, I really started doing that

and I actually ended up getting a sponsor because there was a long timer. I, I don't say old timer because people say that I'm an old timer and I don't like the word old. So I say long time or so there was a long timer there and he came up to me and he said, Kerry, when are you going to stop hanging around the program and actually get in the program? He said you need to get a sponsor because you can't fix your broken mind with your broken mind. And I was like,

fine. And what was funny is I had I had been trying to do the steps and the first step, like I said, the first step I felt like I really got. I felt like I had

understood that principle before coming in here. That's why I came in here. This was the last step stop on my bus ride, you know, and but I got really stuck on Step 2 because it talks about the insanity piece. And I was like, he's crazy. I've been holding everything together. I don't understand this. And then when I started working with a sponsor, we started talking about things. And I was reminded of this one time where I broke all of our dishes.

I stood in the kitchen and I was mad at him and I was barefoot. And so I started breaking all of our dishes, all of our glasses, all of our bowls, all of our plates, because I was going to show him how mad I was. Now I had bought everything because he didn't have a job

and and I ended up replacing everything because he didn't have a job. And I showed him and, you know, and that was kind of like that was that insanity piece like, oh, maybe that's what insanity means. You know, I'd heard the like the the standard definitions are doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And and that that didn't really hit it for me. But when I started looking at these things, you know, throwing him out of our apartment in the middle of the night, night and like throwing all of his clothes out of the second story window. And then when he was finally like,