"I came to find the disintegrated pieces of a personality that was me."
"Hillbillies don't like to be obliged."
"He knew why I could not trust people."
"If you fail to carry this message then may God have mercy on those people and may God have mercy on us."
"Whatever happens today is none of my business."
"The world is much bigger than my family of origin and I have a home sweet home in the Fellowship."
"I came into Al-Anon and then found my story."
"I'm one of those who thinks a story starts with 'Once upon a time..' and ends with 'got married and lived happily ever after'. And I found out that isn't so. People get married and get happy once in a while and that's whether there is alcoholism or not."
"My Higher Power can do for me what I cannot do for myself."
"The effects of my alcoholism have shown up in this way:
I am a recovering co-dependent,
I am a recovering adult child,
I am a recovering compulsive overeater,
I am a recovering person who is addicted to relationships, and
I am also in a very special group that I am going to talk briefly about which is S-Anon and that is for people who have been in relationships or are in relationships with sexual addicts."
"The Atlanta Roundup has not always been Al-Anon friendly but it is Al-Anon friendly today."
"I am of the theory that when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck."
"I stand before you a reformed husband beater. I have been kicked out of more bars never having had a drink for attacking my husband."
"There is a power in our way of life that my simple mind is not capable of comprehending."
"I needed to be better than you so I could feel equal to you."
"My husband says I was a born Al-Anon waiting for an alcoholic to happen."
"That is not a bald spot on my head. It is a solar panel for a sex machine."
"I have not found it necessary to manage, manipulate or control since I came into the Program..."
"Robert "Bob" "Smitty" Ripley Smith II, born June 5, 1918, the last eyewitness of the start of Alcoholics Anonymous, died of congestive heart failure at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. about 5 o'clock Thursday evening, April 22, 2004.
"Smitty," his nickname in youth and later at recovery gatherings worldwide, was the only son of Anne Smith and Akron, Ohio physician Dr. Bob Smith. Then teenagers, young Bob and sister Sue were there on Mother's day 1935 when his father, Dr. Bob, met one time New York stock analyst Bill Wilson for the first time."
"It is a bit much to ask a woman who has spent 30 years trying to hide her problem to get up here and tell all."
"I am the husband, the brother, the brother-in-law, the son, the grandson, the father of, the father-in-law of alcoholics."
"We had skid row at home."
"Gee, alcoholism has really hollowed you out, hasn't it?"
"Whatever relationship I was in, I was always looking around. I was always looking for greener grass...What I didn't know was that the grass is greener where it's watered."
"I heard on this tape that if you are going to one meeting a week, you are keeping a seat warm for a newcomer.
If you are going to two meetings a week you can maintain.
If you are going to three or more meetings a week you can grow."
"My story is a little different from a lot of Al-Anons.
I didn't come here to get anybody sober.
I was completely and totally isolated and alone except for one sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He did not live in my town. He had been my counselor and he was my line to sanity.
I came to you because every day I was standing in front of the mirror and saying
'I have it in me to hold it together - today.'"
"We are much more brothers and sisters in our defects than we have ever been in our virtues."
"I take it in, stuff it down and try to figure it out."
"Al-Anon has given me the tools to live a life that I didn't know how to live before I came into Al-Anon."
"I was willing to go to any lengths to marry an alcoholic."
"I am a sponge for other people's emotions."
"And elephants do what elephants do."
The Al-Anon spends half a life cleaning up after the elephant. Then the alcoholic comes into the rooms and laughs at the mess they made of "their" lives.
Detachment says in part,
"Elephants do what they do but not to poop on me...but I can love them right where they are..and I didn't have to fix him."
"I quit saying I was sorry so much because that is not my name."
"If you ever get in trouble - Power will get you out."
She says,
"I do not ever have to be afraid again."
"I know that into each life some rain must fall and, you know, I'm glad mine was spiked because it gave me Al-Anon and it gave me this Program and it gave me a way to live."
"I had a God before I got here and my God led me to my alcoholic and my alcoholic led me to Al-Anon and Al-Anon led me to ya'll and ya'll led me back to a more understanding God than I ever had."
"I was never happy at any point in my life. If it was Saturday, I wished it was Monday. If it were winter, I wanted summer to come and if it was night I wished it was day. It was always going to be better at some other time or when something else happened. That's changed for me today and I am very grateful. I depended on other people to make me happy and when I wasn't happy it was someone else's fault."
"When you learn to laugh at yourself you will never run out of material...and people don't have to pretend that I'm perfect."
"I was like a chameleon on a plaid skirt."
"Trying to keep an alcoholic sober is like trying to teach a pig to sing.
It doesn't work and it just annoys the pig."
"I was a basket case of negative emotions...I was in a spiritual coma."
"I was a desperate women on a relentless search for love and I searched for it in all the wrong places."
"My mom said I came out of my room when I was 15."
"Well I learned real quick what the rules in an alcoholic home were: you don't talk, you don't trust and you don't feel and another rule in my home was - you don't need anything."
"It is very arbitrary the rules I choose to follow."
"Do I tell it the way I remember it or do I tell it the way it happened?"
"Part of my problem is indecision and paralysis."
"I have to tell you today that thanks to the Steps, the Traditions, Concepts, Slogans, Sponsorship, Service, and just Participation, I think I am an ordinary person living a very extra-ordinary life."
"I got real good at playing games."
"Look for that in another which is untouched by the disease."
"Am I wasting God's Grace?"
"mean Irish drunks"
"Everything that came up we just made jokes about it."
"Jesus-Others-Yourself"
"It was as though somebody gave me a set of skis and a parker with a hood and gloves and snow goggles and then dropped me in the desert."
"I was always fascinated by kids who got into trouble...If Saddam Hussein had been an exchange student, I would have been attracted to him."
"Our Father which art in heaven, how'd you know my name?"
"For me to be quiet for four hours is almost an act of God."
"Is your soul dry from desolation, wrinkled from worry, itchy from alcoholic irritation, rough from resentments?
Try Oil of Al-Anon."
"Al-Anons talk longer than AAs because we remember more."
"I am not a public speaker. I may be more like a cross-eyed javelin thrower who doesn't set any records but he sure keeps the audience alert."
"It is our birthright to be Blessed. But we go out and look for the blessings in all the wrong places."
"... cause some are sicker than others."
"I always thought that if I could be free then I would be happy but, you know, the Al-Anon Program has taught me how to be free...it's an inside job and it doesn't matter that much what 'they' say or 'they' do, it's all inside. And when we have the ability to have some answers in this program, then we're not in bondage anymore. I found, for me, that I was dependent as long as I didn't have answers."
"If your alcoholics and you're in the room - thank you. You're my idea of an open bar...I'll have a double shot of that one."
"I tried to reason with him, which is just another word for nagging."
"We didn't know it, but we suffered from the same disease which was alcoholism. He suffered from the effects of drinking it and I suffered from the effects of reacting to it."
"Anxiety is the price we pay for playing God."
"When I got involved in service, it stared to change my life."
"All I wanted to do was kill him."
"Eye-Lash-Energy came to me at a very early age."
"I have a disease of perception and what I heard was, 'I'm no damn good. I'm the stupid one in the family.'"
"I came primed and ready when I met 'her'."
"I had this cellophane wall that I couldn't reach out and you couldn't reach in."
"I have to remember for me, that I am my own qualifier for Al-Anon.
I marry alcoholic women because I qualify for Al-Anon.
I don't qualify for Al-Anon because I marry alcoholic women."
"It says in the Bible that 'This, too, shall pass.' It doesn't say, 'This to shall stay'."
"All my knowledge of cancer will not keep me from contracting it."
"Am I weller than some by coming all those years or am I sicker than some? I just still feel the need.... I am cultivating the young ones because you can still drive and I need you!"
"Just being married to an alcoholic doesn't make me an Al-Anon...Just sitting in a garage doesn't make you a car."
"And I was very much at dis-ease."
"Don't be what you ain't.
Just be what you is.
Cause if you is not what you am,
Then you am not what you is."
"Don't be so focused on the Big Miracles that you miss out on all the little miracles along the way."
"Nobody does it to ya', and nobody is gonna' do it for ya'."
"One person in recovery can change the dynamics of a whole system."
"Would I stand on the seashore and, like King Canute of the ancient legend, try to command the tides? It is just as fruitless to try to control the alcoholic. Yet this is what I would be doing in attempting to force sobriety by my will-power."
"My story is REALLY about the family disease."
"I was overly responsible."
"I qualify for the program of Al-Anon because my husband tells me he's an alcoholic and I believe him! I have not always believed everything he's told me."
"I did not intend to stay here 45 years. I came in to find out what I needed to say and what I needed to do to keep him from drinking that crap and then we'd be all right and then I could get married."
"It hurt to walk through the air. My fingernails hurt."
"I'm gllad there's not a slogan, 'Figure It Out'."
"We had no friends and no one walked into that house."
"It was getting worse but I was starting to feel better."