Meditation & step 1 at a Big Book Workshop at the Fellowship of the Spirit conference in Queens, NY

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Juanita and I'm a member of Al Anon

and

it's nice to see y'all back from last night.

I think we have some new people here this morning

and welcome to you as well.

Couple of you came up to me last night to us last night and said you really like the meditation and would it be possible to start this off this morning with some more meditation and if you guys are up for it,

we will do that.

I we'll let a couple of you just kind of settle in and

relax.

We'll start off with a moment of silence

and the Serenity Prayer,

and then we'll go into the quiet.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

So I think my wish for you all, if you get nothing else this weekend

and it doesn't matter whether you're new or you've been in it some for some time, is that the most important thing for me

on what has been of the most value is my relationship with my creator.

And that relationship, my connection

with this Creator,

is what has kept me here

and what has given me peace

and has eased my heart

and allowed me to show up and be the person, the woman that God would have me be.

So I'm really liking that you all are enjoying the quiet time and the meditation.

When Bill and Bob first

got sober, Anne Smith, Doctor Smith's wife, was the one who insisted on quiet time in the morning. If Bill and Bob had had their way, that had been out the door and out saving drunks. And Ann insisted that they take some quiet time in the morning. She said that's the most important piece. And Doctor Bob, later on in his book Good Old Timers,

he emphasized First things first and first things being God. So

we'll ask you to get comfortable,

get quiet,

feel your body

begin to breathe in,

breathe out,

breathe in,

breathe out.

Begin at the bottom of your feet on the soles

to feel

a light began.

Begins at the souls,

goes up to your ankles.

Just a quiet small light

that slowly goes up your calf to your knee

with a gentle warmth

that begins now to go up your thigh.

Soft, gentle, light,

gentle warmth.

Feel it in your butt,

your abdomen.

Soft

breathe in,

breathe out.

Breathe in,

breathe out.

Breathe from your belly,

slowly filling it,

letting it out

with each breath

you take in.

It's God's love that comes into you, filling you,

and with each breath goes your worries, your troubles, your concerns.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

The light slowly spreads, going up your spine, filling your back,

into your shoulders,

your chest.

Breathe in,

breathe out.

Breathe in God's love,

breathing God's peace.

Breathe in God's grace.

The light goes down your arms, to your shoulders,

sorry to your elbows,

down your forearms, to your wrists,

into your hands, and to each finger.

Breathe out your troubles.

Let them slide out through your fingertips

and what's left is God's peace, God's love,

God's light.

The light slowly goes up into your neck,

up the back of your head. A nice gentle light

down your forehead,

your eyes,

your nose,

your ears,

cheeks,

mouth.

The light goes down into your chin,

filling you completely.

With each breath you are filled more and more with God's peace.

The light begins to grow,

filling you more

until you feel it radiating out from you,

reaching out

to your neighbor,

filling us all.

Breathe in,

breathe out,

God, we feel your presence with us.

We ask this morning

as we begin our day that you direct our thinking,

divorce our minds from thoughts of self pity, dishonest self seeking motives, so that our thinking may be on a much higher plane free of these wrong motives. So we might use this brain as you intended.

Grant us an intuitive thought or decision as we go about planning our day and as we move through it. Show us what our each and every step should be along the way, and give us whatever we need to take care of such problems. Grant us the ability to relax. Take it easy not to struggle. Just wait for the right answers to come.

Take away our self willed to the exact degree it is not of service to you

and to our fellow men.

Grant us the ability to recognize when we are first becoming agitated or doubtful, irritated, bugged, pissed off or fearful. And in that moment, grant us your power

to pause and ask you for right thought or action, and your power to carry it out.

Grant us the ability to remind ourselves consistently throughout the day that we're not running the show, but to say to ourselves in a humble manner, Your will not mine be done.

Your will not mine be done.

Keep us from the dangers of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, foolish decisions, jealousy, self righteousness, procrastination, perfection, criticism, and judgment.

Grant us the ability to become more efficient, not burn up energy foolishly trying to arrange the show to suit ourselves.

Discipline us in this practice

as we are undisciplined.

Show us the way of kindness, patience, tolerance, and love with everyone we come in contact with

as we go about our day.

Help us to grow in effectiveness and understanding and love and tolerance. Grant us the ability to carry the vision of Your will for us into all of our activities. How may we best serve You

again? Your will not mine be done. Show us what we can do for the person who is still sick and suffering, and grant us whatever it is we need to be able to do your work.

We feel your presence. We feel your light. Deep within us. It burns brightly.

Keep me open, God, with this light

deep within me as I go about this day.

Open me up so that I may let your loving presence shine out from within me and

so that I may experience and see your shining presence in others.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts that we are blessed with this day

and blessed with your bounty and blessed with the presence of each other.

With each breath we begin to feel not only your presence,

but the energy

that you are going to feed us with today.

An energy that will keep us present. An energy that will

prepare us

to be receptive

to your words,

to those thoughts that are of you.

With each breath, we take in more and more of your energy,

more and more of your light.

And as we begin to slowly pay attention

with each breath to our body,

our body begins to respond to the energy and we become more and more present

to be centered, to be with you and each other to day.

Slowly we pay attention to our bodies. More and more

slowly,

we come back

to be present

to this beautiful day.

As you're ready,

come back and join us filled with a new energy

to be present.

Thank you.

Morning. You ready? All right, let's do it.

You started us off, honey.

My name is Tom. I'm an alcoholic.

By the grace of a loving God, I'm sober and I'm alive and I'm grateful to be in that shape and grateful to be here with you all.

I guess there's some people who weren't here last night.

I'll tell you, I've been continuously sober since June the 15th of 1986. I have a Home group in Santa Fe, NM where I'm from. We're called NAA group meet at Monday night, The Salvation Army in Santa Fe, 7:00 and you're welcome to come join us. I think you'd if you're here at this deal, you'd probably like our group quite a bit.

All of those are some of the components to

what I consider make me a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

One of the other components, as I do service work,

almost always have a service commitment of some sort. And I sponsor people. I think everybody ought to sponsor. That's my personal opinion. If you're not sponsoring, you should. That's what I think. You know, if you're two months sober, you've got something to offer somebody and that's the way this thing started. And I think that's our real service. When he gets down to the the basics of it is one alcoholic talking to another. We talked about that last night.

Not everybody agrees with that, and you don't have to. That's just what I believe.

Let's see, I didn't say last night tell you a little bit about myself. I'm I'm 58 years old,

been married to this woman, Juanita, for 28 years. I have four children. Yeah, it's pretty good.

First wife only lasted seven years.

I have four children and seven grandchildren and don't look like an old grandpa. I am but and

let's see what other pertinent information is it that I can give you? I grew up. I was telling you last night. I went to school, grew up. I didn't really grow up. That's, that's

not a good description of it, but I got older in this area, Nassau County, I went all the way through school and back in late 60s, early 70s, I moved to Santa Fe, NM. I've been there ever since, did some 90% of my drinking I did in the New Mexico area, but I did some real interesting drinking

here in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont. And there's people who still Remember Me from those days.

So that's kind of that's kind of my deal.

Juanita and I met in 1977 and was lust at first sight and

we, our, our mutual sickness is kind of meshed and we got sicker together. And then I like to think that we've gotten well together and that's a story that we we try to tell. So last night

we started off.

Do you want to do more on the Doctor's opinion or we Pretty well,

yeah, I think we pretty well hammered the Doctor's opinion last night.

Basically, the idea, if you read that what I, what I get from the doctor's opinion is that this is a real physical illness that can be diagnosed as a physical component to it, which is beyond any mental

considerations or psychological considerations. And the doctor goes over and over that, you know, I, I,

Bill Wilson says in the doctor's opinion that we believe that any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete. And my sponsor Don P

was, was very adamant about that. And there was a movement that took place, I don't know, 3-4 years ago. It was rolling along pretty well where we tried to get

the Doctor's opinion, which had been page one in the very first printing of the Big Book,

restored. We didn't want to change it. People got their hackles up and we even talked about it. We said no, no, no, we're not saying change it. We're saying restore it to its first edition,

you know, format so that we get the doctor's opinion back to Page 1 and people don't miss it. And in New Mexico, we brought it up at the area level and we had tremendous debates and fights. And you know, you have people who got sober anytime after the 2nd edition came out, which is 1955,

who were just adamantly against, you know, any, any messing with the big book whatsoever. They, they had never heard of restoring it. They, you know, the old timers were railing against it and all this. Finally it went to a vote in my area and I think it was 55 to 18 against doing anything about it. And I was agsr at the time and I called Don and, and I said, Don, you know, it's just a horrible failure. We just, you know, we got voted down so badly. I said if anything at all happened,

maybe we raised the consciousness about the doctor's opinion a little bit, He said, what did you think you were doing it for to begin with? What do you think the point of it was? You know, so anyway, and there's still some of us are making waves about that. I don't think it'll ever happen.

But at any rate, it's, it's extremely important. I think if you don't start there, you, you, you don't, you don't understand that it is an illness. You know, I always say in my Home group, if I don't have a physical disease,

I'm just a nut job, you know, I'm just, I'm just a wacko, you know, who is doing something that's destroying him, you know, because he has no mental control over it. But it's much more than that. You know,

I one other piece. I don't want to miss this. I'm I'm so blithering and and sleep deprived on this trip. But there's a piece here I didn't want to miss. Don really got a kick out of this. And since we're in New York, I think it's appropriate.

If you've got a 4th edition. If you want to follow along with me,

14, which I'm too tired to even figure out what that rumor Roman numeral mean. I think it's 14.

There's, there's a little piece here. You know, I was telling you last night when I came to this work because I almost missed the whole recovery process. So when I came to this work, I didn't want to miss anything. I became anal retentive and I dotted every I and crossed every T and I wanted to follow every direction precisely as it was stated in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think Juanita was there when this happened. I, my Home group, we registered in, in New York at GSOI registered as I was the first, first GSR

up on soft Broadway up there where the, you know, some of you been to the general service office used to be on Park Ave. Now they've, now it's up there on Reinhold Niebuhr place or whatever it is. And because we're in New York, we went up there and I registered my group there. But then I did another piece that I wanted to do for a while. I said

if you read the bottom of this page, 14 in Roman numerals says we should be interested to hear from those

who are getting results from this book, particularly from those who have commenced work with other Alcoholics. OK. We should like to be helpful in such cases. So I'm up at GSO and I've registered the Home group. And I said, oh, by the way, to the lady that was the office manager, I said I'm here to report in from Santa Fe, NM. And she said, what What do you mean report in? I said, well, I'm here to report about the results that I'm getting,

she said. What? What in the world are you talking about?

And I've whipped out the book and I said, well, it says right here that you're interested in hearing from people are getting results using this, but particularly working with others. And we've been, we've started to work with people who could never stay sober using the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, taking them through the book and, and working the steps as they're outlined there. And these people getting sober who never could. So I'm here to report that, she said. Duly noted.

OK, so the doctor's opinion speaks about the mind, the obsession, and it's the same thing for the family member as it is for the alcoholic. I can't stop thinking about what he's doing, what he's going to do, what he has done. How much will he drink? How can I get him to not drink? You know, where can I hide the bottle? How can I threaten him? How can I reward him? I mean, how and how and how.

And I said it this way, maybe said a different way, maybe a little more emphasis on a different word rather than that word maybe the right place. You know,

just that he's all I think about. He's all I think about. He is the main occupation of this mind, just the way booze was the main occupation of his mind. And my body's affected. And like I said last night, I have the allergy of the body, an allergy being an abnormal physical reaction. I had that when he drank. I had that

when he drank.

And then the doctor says that

this is all well and good, however, a psychic change is needed for the person suffering from alcoholism.

Psychic change. And he also says that the person suffering from alcoholism has to recreate their lives. He talks about how those of us affected by alcoholism can't tell the difference between what's true and what's false.

There's a total lack,

a perception in my thinking. I don't know what's real. I don't know. I have no clue what reality is. And I'll give you a little. For instance, one day I was going to wash Tom's Levi jacket. I was emptying out the pockets. I pulled out handfuls of Kleenex pens, construction pencils, papers. And all of a sudden

outcomes a needle and spoon, and I sat down on the bed and I held it in my hands. And just then he came into the room

and he said, Juana, what's up? As he saw what I was holding in my hand. And I said, what is this? What's going on? And he patted me on the shoulder. And he says it's not what you think.

Oh, thank God, it's not what I think.

You know what I mean? Because what I was thinking was not good.

So I'm I said OK,

I handed it all back to him, got up from the bed with a Levi jacket and went and put in the wash.

Couldn't tell true from false and I if I even caught a glimmer

of what the truth was.

OK,

there's a joke. Then the punch line is you're going to believe me or your lying eyes. I believe you honey. You know, can't tell truth and false. My sponsor always says people ask me what step are you on? And what I ask them is in what area of my life because these steps can be worked in many areas of our lives. First time I worked the step was about alcohol

in him and was I alcoholic, which I found out I wasn't.

Then it was about his recovery, you see, because I started working the steps

when I was two years in, he still hadn't worked the steps. I would tell him about working the steps out of the big book and he just thought I was crazy. Be oh, yeah, yeah, whatever. You don't know, you're not an alcoholic. So I had to let that go and I had to work the steps around his recovery. I've worked the steps around many, many things. Jealousy, fear,

my dad's illness, I mean you. I've so many things. So in what area of my life?

Every time I get to the place where I find myself restless, irritable, discontented, which is what the doctor's opinion speaks about, I have to ask myself what's going on in my life? What is it that I'm trying to have power over that has got a hold of me? What is it that I'm trying to have power over that's got a hold of my ass that I feel the flames of hell licking at it? You know, I mean, really, that's what it feels like. It feels like hell is right here

and the doors are just about ready to shut in on me.

So where am I? Where am I?

Because that becomes a normal way of life for me. And the book, in the doctor's opinion, says this then becomes

the normal alcoholic life. Paraphrasing.

That, I think is the essence of the doctor's opinion, the allergy

of the body and the obsession of the mind

and that we have to recreate our lives and we need a psychic experience in order to have that. A complete psychic change is what the book calls it. You know, I meant to mention this last night and I might have said something like this. You know, the line that one he was quoting is to them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. And what's abnormal can become normal. I mean, it just seems like it's, you know, I, I thought everyone was drinking like I was at one point and as bad as I, as I thought I was and, and

that I was 20 years ago, consistently over the years. And I think this has to do with working the steps with other people, you know, taking something, you know, we call it taking somebody through the book or taking them through the work or taking them through the process, whatever you want to call it. I get glimpses of myself. Sometimes I get better glimpses of myself than I do when I'm actually working the steps for me because I'm less defended.

Do you get that one? That's a trick to that you can use with Alcoholics. You know, you want to tell her something,

say it to her. She'll be listening and she won't be defended against it. OK, So if I'm working with the steps with someone, it's not about me, right? It's about them. So my defenses are down and I absorb things. And what I found over the years is I was a lot worse than I thought I was. You know, the depth of it has has become richer. And if you will, you know, over the over 20 years, I'm still finding out stuff. And I'm talking about my active drinking alcoholism. That's what I'm talking about. Things I had no idea about.

To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. I think we've hammered that sufficiently. I said it last night that I assumed, and I don't know that anyone ever told me this, but it's certainly what I put together, was that if I would stop drinking. See, I got to the point where I was physically dependent on alcohol, which has nothing to do really with alcoholism. It has a lot to do with drinking a lot of booze,

but you don't have to become physically dependent to be alcoholic, as most of you well know.

And some people who are physically dependent, OK, given us sufficient reason, frothy emotional appeal can stop or they can moderate. That's the hard drinker. OK, that that was not me. But I became physically dependent and I drank so much that everyone saw it as a problem, including myself. And I assume that if I will stop drinking whiskey for breakfast, that my life will come together. I'll have some kind of a of a decent life or, or at least a much better life

than I had when all I did was drink and think about drinking. I'd become unemployable. I'd become just a complete mess. So I stopped drinking and I didn't have hangovers anymore. I wasn't physically sick. I wasn't vomiting blood in the mornings. I wasn't doing the things, you know, the family didn't see me stumbling around. I wasn't beating holes in the walls and doing the crazy stuff that I did when I was drinking. But inside, I was a mess. OK, Juanita said it. Restless, irritable discontent.

OK, I'm I've got an illness, a disease, a malady inside myself that I found out later was a soul sickness. And now you've taken my medicine away. It's not good. That's not a good deal. OK, So I, I got real, real busy for six years. I did a lot of stuff, OK. We had there was a lot of workshops in Santa Fe. A lot of famous synonymous were coming through, doing workshops, charging money for it.

There was every kind of psychotherapy and psycho Babble and, you know, you name it. And

I tried everything I could try other than working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

in doing things like writing inventory and making amends, right. So I didn't get well and, and I didn't get happy. I mean, there were, there was some sweet periods just from physical sobriety, You know, I don't deny that there was some, some good things. I, I went from an alcoholic junkie who, you know, couldn't walk a full circle around our, our, we call it the Plaza in Santa Fe. It's the square

to two years later, I was playing ice hockey, you know, and I was, you know, physically I was starting to come back really well. But inside I still had this this thing going on and came to a head when I was 5 1/2 years sober. Our youngest daughter tried to commit suicide and it kind of the whole House of Cards that we had going kind of fell apart at that point. It was you couldn't deny what was happening. And I hit a bottom in sobriety that was at least as bad as the as the

drunken bottom that I hit. And at that point I became teachable. And you know what? What?

It's kind of this chicken or the egg thing sometimes with alcoholism. But I had

AI was wired a certain way many, many years before I started drinking. It's like this. I've heard people say I needed to drink long before I took the first one. And with me,

I, I think of two things in particular.

I was a little boy. I was 6-7 years old. I was down in southwestern Kentucky with my grandmother one summer. And I was bitching and moaning and complaining. And my grandmother said, she said, Tommy, do you know what's wrong with you? And I, I did. And I wanted to know, you know, do you know why you're so miserable? She said, and I, I didn't. And she said you never think of anybody but yourself.

OK, so she nailed me at six or seven years old. I mean, really, that's, that's what it's going to grind down to.

A month ago, I was back in Port Washington. I went to my 40th high school reunion and I saw people I hadn't seen in 4550 years. And I saw one, one guy, Billy Guerrero, a guy that he grew, he's not an alcoholic. He's a kid that grew up in my, in my immediate neighborhood. And I saw him and I say, and we were saying hi to each other after almost 50 years. And I said, Billy, I remember, you know, we were about 11 years old. And I said, hey, Billy,

let's you and me blow up the sewer.

And he looked at me, said, why would we want to do that? And I said, I knew right then we weren't on the same track. You know, you went home and I dumped gas down the sewer and blew it up. You know, it's that kind of stuff, you know, budding alcoholic.

So I, I don't know where did that come from.

I guess I assumed that I had grown up and just wasn't aware of it because I was drinking so much. But in point of fact, I hadn't grown up and I had a lot of problems. I had a lot of things eaten at me

and on top of all of that, I had all of the stuff that I'd done as a drunk. 16 years of drinking added to all of that, that other stuff that I came into it with. So I was carrying a lot of lot of junk with me.

Tom I some of you know, we were talking about Tom I this morning and I heard him talk about the immense process one time and he said I've never heard it put better. He said when I was out there ripping and running and doing the stuff that I did, he said I was selling

little pieces of my soul every time I would do that. And he said through making amends and working this process and living a decent life, I've been buying back pieces of my soul little by little. And so I hadn't done any of that. You get it. I've been physically dry, but I had not done any of that recovery. And, and so I was in bad shape. And I hit this wall at six years. And they say when the, when the student is, is ready, then the teacher will appear. And I think that's that's the case.

I've never known God to let anybody down who kept seeking.

That's just been my experience and especially my own experience. And So what what I found out was, and I said it last night, alcoholism doesn't live in a bottle of Jack Daniels like I thought it did. It's inside of me and it always was. And, and the booze is just medicine for that. There are other things that that are that are wrong. And what I got it six years was I can't live a successful life drunk or sober,

OK,

when I'm running it, when I'm doing it, when I'm making the decisions, when I'm using this, which is broken to try to fix this, which is broken, it's not successful. It doesn't work. You know, I, I do a, our state penitentiaries in Santa Fe and I go out there Thursday afternoons. We do an ongoing big book study with these guys. And I always tell them and they love hearing this. I say, you know, in a A, we don't talk about right or wrong, good or bad.

Said that the catch word we have in a A is how's it working for you?

Does that work or doesn't it work right? The big book constantly talks about effectiveness as one of the one of the keywords, you know, and it wasn't working for me. You know, it just wasn't working for me. I wasn't able to put together a a successful life. So what we were taken to you. You want to do 52 or you want me to?

Well, you got something else. She's got something else up her sleeve

anyway, and I'll let her do that.

Page 52, Yeah,

we were led to page 52. And generally when we work with people, we'll go, we'll go all the way through, you know, up to page 43, which I should have read, wasn't so tired. I would have read

one. One of the questions that we're asked to consider

in this book is

there's so much here and obviously all we can do is just give you a little taste.

But one of the things I realized, and it speaks to this, and there is a solution, is that it says on page 19 that we feel elimination of our drinking. Elimination for me of my controlling is but a beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations and affairs.

You know, I could go to meetings for a long time, sit in meetings,

sound great, look great.

But watch me after I leave you.

Watch me when I get in my car. Watch me when I walk into the doors of my work. Watch me when I walk into the doors of my home.

And I think this speaks to it. You see, I could pull this off for an hour. I could pull it off for a little while before the meetings talking with you or after the meetings talking with you. But what I was living was an entirely different story. I was told if you're not taking this program home with you, you don't have a program.

And for a long time I thought, yeah, whatever, you know, because I wasn't living it. So I didn't want to listen to that. But the truth was, that's where the real demonstration of this program comes to be. How was I behaving when I walked in the doors? How was I treating my children? How was I treating him? And I will tell you, for a long, long time I didn't have a program at home, Did not have a program at home.

So there is a solution, tells us there is a solution. Can you imagine that?

It tells us a little bit about 1/4 dimension of existence. The 4th dimension of existence is the spiritual life for me. And this book later on says it's not a theory. We have to live it. I have to live it in my home. I have to live it in every phase of my life.

So it goes on to say at the end of there is a solution that there are clear cut directions given in this book on page 29 showing how we recovered. So that's what this is about. And then it says each individual in the personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view, the way he established his relationship with God.

That's what this is about.

This is about my relationship with God. See, for a long time I thought

it was the steps that kept me in recovery. It was the meetings that kept me in recovery. It was my sponsor that kept me in recovery and kept me saying it was my relationship with God. Later on in this book, much, much later, it says in a chapter 2, the wives, I think of the family afterward, I can't remember which one it is. It says God's either relieved his alcoholism or he hasn't.

It's not the steps, it's not the book, it's not a sponsor, it's not meetings. God's either relieved it or he hasn't.

So what does that mean about the book? What does that mean about the steps? It means that that's what I do as a practice, so I can get out of myself, out of my head, begin doing things for me in a clear, practical manner so that by the time I get to the step 12, I have a spiritual awakening. I have a relationship with my Creator

that'll relieve my alcoholism.

So

then in a chapter more about alcoholism

and I got and I got to share this with you because for me this was so classic. It says on page 30 more about alcoholism

and this is the way I read it. Most of us have been unwilling to admit that we were real, obsessive, controlling family members.

No person likes to think that he has bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it's not surprising that our thinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove I could think like other people, that I could think like other people. The idea that somehow, someday I will control and enjoy my alcoholic

is the great obsession of every abnormal thinker.

That was it.

What I found out was that if I'm controlling him, I'm not enjoying him,

and if I'm enjoying him, I got no reason to control him.

Why would I, if I'm enjoying him?

The great obsession? Well, the persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

Many, many years ago, a woman I worked with walked into the rooms of Alan and I said, Caroline, I'm so glad to see you. How you doing? And she says, well, I'm doing OK. And you know, she came around for about 6 months and then all of a sudden one day I didn't see her and I didn't see you at work either. And about three months later, after that three month period, I saw her at the office and I said, where have you been? I haven't seen you at meetings. I haven't seen you at work. And she said, well, you know, she said, I had a little problem with my heart

and but I'm back now. I'm OK. You know, it wasn't. It was just, you know, little mini stroke. But, you know, I had to pay attention to it. I said, great. And it was turns out it was Wednesday. And I said, well, will I see you at the meeting today? And she said, well, you know, I don't think I really need it anymore. And I thought, OK, well, at that time, it was only her husband who drank. And later on, it became her son.

And later on, her daughter married an alcoholic.

And I was just reading the paper about a month and a half ago, and I saw that Caroline had passed away. And I never saw her in the rooms of Al Anon. A friend of mine, Arbutus from down in Texas, says there's nothing more stressful than living with an alcoholic. Drunk or sober?

Drunk or sober,

and

Caroline never felt she needed this program, and it doesn't matter whether she did or not. But I have to pay attention to this because the illusion that someday somehow, which is my great obsession, that I will control and enjoy him, control and enjoy my children,

right? Because at times they're drinking and their use of drugs affects me.

That's my great obsession, that's my great obsession. And my obsession can go from one person to another to another. Wherever there's booze, then it tells me I had to fully concede to my innermost self.

Those of your alcoholic have to concede to your innermost self that you're alcoholic. I had to concede to my innermost self that I was a controlling, obsessive family member. Then it says the delusion this, this is the first step in recovery. This is the first step in recovery and the delusion that I'm like other people. OK, I used to think I was like other people, but what about now? 20 years, 20 years in the program? I'm not the way I used to be. I'll tell you, I'm a far cry from the woman I

Dennis.

It's like night and day.

She hadn't tried to drown me in the bathtub in well over 20 years.

I'm not the same woman,

however

it says or presently may be. That has to be smashed. You see, I'm not the same woman. Later on when we get to the 10th step, it says it cautions me about resting on my laurels.

I used to think that laurels was, you know, sitting on my rear end. I found out that resting on my laurels is resting on my successes. And I'll tell you, I've had a lot of successes in my life. After 20 years, I'd like to take it easy. I'd like to just coast for a little bit. Thank you very much. I'm tired, you know, I got a lot of sponsees. I do a lot of traveling. I got 7 grandkids. That's a lot of work.

I'm married, for crying out loud. You know,

I've got a lot of successes, so I think I'm probably like other people.

Now. After 20 years, it says,

can't think like that. That idea has to be smashed. And if it's smashed, if you took a glass and you smashed it, that means it's no longer usable. That idea is no longer useful for me when I walk in. Or after 20 years, it says we know. We know that no real alcoholic, no real obsessive controlling family member ever recovers

control.

Then it tells me