Al-Anon: Sally Ann M from New Zealand (25 Years)

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

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Sally Ann M (0:27)

Sally Ann is my name, and I am a grateful member of the Worldwide Fellowship of Al-Anon Family Groups, and I'm here to recover from the family disease of alcoholism. And that's my primary purpose. So I called this Damn Your Old Meetings, because the kind of person that I am, I love a bit of history. I love learning about how this fellowship started and how 12-step recovery started. When I was new and I went to my very first meeting, I picked up the first book that was attractive to me, and it was Lois Remembers, because I love a bit of a novel, a lot of a bit of excitement and drama. And I took it home and I read it cover to cover. And I saw myself on those pages. I looked for the similarities and I looked for really how Lois' life was now manifesting in my life. And a lot of it was to do with thinking, with the compulsive thinking, with the obsession with an alcoholic. You know, my biggest qualification to be an Anon or family group is that I love alcoholics. I love alcoholics. And, you know, once upon a time that caused me a lot of heartache and devastation. And today, I still love alcoholics and it doesn't cause me any of that anymore.

Do they irritate me? Yes, occasionally. Is harm involved? Yeah, occasionally. But for me, because I've taken my primary purpose, and I've put it into action in my life, not from the beginning, I should say none of what I'm going to tell you about my journey. I haven't done any of this perfectly because mistakes are the best teacher I'll ever have in recovery. Mistakes are the best teacher I'll ever have. So anything that I say here today, it's my experience, I share my experience, strength and hope. I don't share my opinions, I don't share my ideas, I don't share my thoughts on something. I really work to stick on my experience, strength and hope. And before I had any of that, before I'd worked the steps and found closer conscious contact with the God of my understanding, I didn't have any of that. The only thing I had when I walked in the room is a desire to change an alcoholic, hello, and a love of reading. And so I can't talk about my journey in Al-Anon and not talk about Cal, not talk about Conference Approved Literature and all of the books on recovery, because it's in there that I found the wisdom that I didn't have when I came in the rooms and that I didn't get until I took the action of working the 12 steps of AA, as outlined in Tradition 5

So I read Lois Remembers, and I looked at the photos of her life, and I saw the transformation that her taking the 12 steps of AA and putting them into action in her life had on her. And I thought, heck, I want that. And I didn't speak for ages in a meeting, and I understand that that's not who I am today. And I think, you know, often I say, you know, I'm sure you can't imagine that. But for me, that's one of the examples of how I've been transformed. You know, I walked in and I didn't talk, and I didn't talk, and I didn't talk. And part of why I didn't talk is I was really caught up in being sad. I came in because I was broken, and I was suicidal. I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. I basically managed my own life into the gutter.

And I remember sitting in my first few meetings and thinking, these people are so wise, and they're so happy. I've got nothing to contribute to that. And you know, I was right. Because I didn't have experience, strength and hope of recovery to share. I had experience of disease, and I had experience of being broken, and I had experience of obsession. And what I did have though, was I knew the words to the serenity prayer. And so I loved it. At the end of the meeting, you know, I would just sit there and listen, listen, listen, listen. And slowly over time, my brain, the obsession would just calm, calm, calm right down. And I could hear what was being said. Then at the end of the meeting, everyone stood up and held hands. We held hands, we connected physically. And then we said the prayer. And that's when I could speak. I could say, God, grant me the serenity. And I could feel connected and feel a part of. And that means so much to me. And I would come back because I liked the feeling in the room. You know, I liked the relief and I liked being around people who were committed to finding solutions to our common problem. You know, I could hear women share and men share about how the disease of alcoholism had affected their lives and how those effects were manifesting. And it's a disease that often comes up in relationships, obviously. So people would come each week and they would say, this is going on. And then they would share their experience, strength and hope. And they would say, this is the tool I used. And that serenity prayer was the first tool I was able to pick up and use. And it's come to me a lot to me. Circling back to Lois.