Mello Ron

” God didn’t save me from drowning
to beat me up on the beach.” Anon

“I can’t stand Leroy’s language,” one woman gave as the reason for no
longer attending my home group, where she had almost been a regular.
I heard a few other complaints about this man whom I saw as a true
friend and a good Toledo AA member.
Leroy T., now deceased, did indeed cuss a lot, though not
obscenely. Most of us even found it amusing and were always glad to
see and hear him. What many don’t know today is how he made a
dramatic change in the closing years of his life and even toned down
the cussing.
I was present when Leroy came to his first AA meetings in
early 1973, accompanied by his wife Joyce, and mother-in-law Hazel
(both had drinking problems). Leroy and Hazel appeared to be
perpetually at war. Joyce was sweet and timid, and despite their
wrangling I could feel that she and Leroy were at heart a loving
couple. Of the three, it was Leroy who seized the AA program most
enthusiastically and never stopped running with it. Joyce and Hazel
participated, but not so fiercely and Joyce had trouble staying
sober; vanilla extract even became her drink of choice.
Leroy was a toolmaker by trade and often used colorful
cuss words to describe how poorly things were going at the shop or
how frustrated he was when a certain job gave him trouble. He had
emerged from the poverty of the Great American Depression, and it
became apparent that he almost needed such words to express himself.
Far from excluding him, groups invited Leroy to speak at open
meetings and he did, indeed, present a story of real redemption
through AA. He never drank again after his first meeting in 1973.
And though he made it sound as if his tool making work was one
frustration after another, he found a high-paying job in a Toledo
auto plant and worked until his retirement with a good pension.
Along with attending many meetings, Leroy studied AA
literature intensely and was especially devoted to the AA Big Book.
We lived only several blocks apart and sometimes we’d have
discussions about Big Book ideas. And one day in late 1977 he came
over to ask my help with an article he’d prepared for The Grapevine.
It was based on the professor and the paradoxes in the Big Book
second edition, which said that things are not always what they seem
to be. . The professor had explained paradoxes by noting that we
AA’s “surrender to win, we give away to keep, we suffer to get well,
we die to live.” Leroy, quite by chance, had discovered a paradox in
his own life. His article needed tidying up and maybe even the
elimination of a few cuss words, but it was a gem.
Here, briefly, was the story:
Leroy, Joyce, and Hazel had come home from a beautiful
day that included a picnic and an afternoon AA meeting, which he
described as “all three of us attending as sober and happy members
after years of stormy three-way battles.” Driving onto their street,
he could see that somebody had broken their mailbox, which had been
upright when they left at noon. It was something to cuss about, but
Leroy decided to report it to the police. After troubles with the
police in their drinking years, the thought terrified him. But he
realized that responsible citizenship required him to do it, perhaps
to save others from the same vandalism.
The police officer showed up, took their report, and
headed for his car. Then he turned around to explain that this was
the first time the police had heard from them in years. Before that,
they’d been in trouble so often that officers at the station came to
recognize their voices on the telephone. He seemed to want to know
what had happened.
Leroy took this opportunity to tell the officer about AA
and its benefits. He said a wonderful feeling came over him as he
watched the policeman drive away. Leroy saw the afternoon experience
as a sort of paradox: “…some crazy driver or kid prankster had
smashed our mailbox, and I was actually happy about it.” As he
concluded in the article, which appeared in the May, 1978
Grapevine, “…I don’t dread problems any more, because I accept them
as part of living. The paradox is that most problems are easily
solved and even avoided now that we’ve lost our fear of them. More
than that, almost every problem has a happy ending.”
As the years wore on, however, Leroy had to face a number
of problems with lots to cuss about. H e had made his peace with
Hazel when she passed on and he learned to face frustrations on the
job. But one very serious problem he couldn’t solve was Joyce’s
intermittent drinking, which seemed to be beyond his reach. It
finally reached a stage where she was virtually helpless and left him
with messes to clean up. Some people even urged him to divorce her.
But just as he had old-fashioned ways of cussing, he held to the old-
fashioned promise “to love and cherish in sickness and in health
until parted by death.” He stayed the course, grimly and loyally,
and felt real grief when Joyce passed away early in 1998.
Now widowed, and having worsening heart problems, Leroy
persevered in AA. His language had never changed, but many of us
had realized long ago that he was a kind, generous and gracious man
who always had something useful to say in group discussions. He
attended many meetings and then went home to an empty house which
held good memories as well as unpleasant ones.
Then a miracle happened. At an AA meeting, Leroy met an
attractive woman named Barbara who had been divorced eight years. It
was love at first sight, and two weeks later they were married. Some
of us wondered if Leroy had finally flipped and had set himself up
for a crushing disappointment.
But the marriage defied the odds and worked out
beautifully. Barbara, with almost ten years’ sobriety then, had two
sons and eight grandchildren who took instantly to Leroy and made him
the grandpa of their dreams. I remembered how my own grandchildren
had liked him. For the next two years, Leroy and Barbara were a
joyously happy couple, continuously marveling at the good fortune in
having found each other and sharing the love of Barbara’s family.
Then a national tragedy, the Columbine school shootings
in Colorado, threw Leroy into deep despair and serious reflection.
For answers, he decided to go to church again, supplementing the
spiritual things he’d learned in AA. He and Barbara began to attend
services regularly and even took Bible classes. He explained this at
AA meetings, but without the smugness of a Bible thumper or any
pressure to convert the rest of us. Church attendance became a very
positive development in Leroy’s life and he was even baptized at age
72.
One other change became very noticeable at AA meetings:
Leroy cussed less often. When one woman noted this, he said, “Hell,
I didn’t even know I was cussing.”
With nearly 28 years’ sobriety, Leroy died of a heart
attack on December 11, 2000. I still miss him. Other AA friends
still miss him. Barbara, her sons, and the eight grandchildren still
miss him. And we all miss his real language: The Language of the
Heart.

Addressing Some Questions Around Alcoholism
Al-Anon Books and Literature - About Alcoholism, Detachment, Is the Spouse to Blame? It never ceases to amaze me how these books and the words impact me every different time I pick them up.
There must be some people who wrote these books who we just absolutely brilliant.
Here are a few Quotes from the Book “How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics”
[Engaging - Why They Engage and What We Can Do]
P30 - “Recognizing Our Options” is the heading. [brackets are my words]
“Alcoholics act and family members and friends react. …. We react because we don’t realize we have a choice. ….. if the alcoholic has one end of a rope, and we have the other end, and they give it a tug, we would tug back. It never occurs to us that we don’t have to play [referring to the alcoholic's game]. What if we dropped the rope? There is no tug-of-war unless both players hang on to the rope ….. [envision this - dropping the rope. I get it. I am going one step further to make it fun. We drop the rope and the other team on the other side, all fall down! Remember that one?]
…..For example, some alcoholics feel guilty about their need to drink and find it easier to blame the drinking on someone else. Some alcoholics often provoke those around them, trying to start an argument or create a crisis. We who live with them tend to react to this provocation, arguing back, defending ourselves against unjust accusations, making accusations of our own. In the end the alcoholic gets what he is looking for, an excuse to drink. Dry or sober alcoholics use the same tactics to create a diversion so that every ones attention will be drawn away from the topic or situation with which they are comfortable. Dropping the rope means we recognize the behavior pattern and choose not to play the same part any more.
[Enabling] [not the heading] p32
….We don’t realize that, by playing our part, we actually contribute to sustaining the disease of alcoholism. We may serve as the enabler, rescuing the alcoholic from unpleasant consequences of their own making. Or we may play the victim, unwillingly stepping in and covering for the alcoholic.
Changing The Part We Play In The Family Disease [Heading] p32
…the most helpful and most loving action any family member can take is to get help for ourselves. By recovering from the effects of this disease we become able to stop playing our part in the family disease. The balance is disrupted. Suddenly it is no longer so comfortable for the alcoholic.
p33
We cannot make choices for other people, even those most important to us. We are not gods, and we can’t truly know what is best for anyone else, no matter how obvious a particular course of action may seem to us at the time. Most of us had to hit a “bottom” in personal agony, before we were ready to make real changes in our lives.

1. You must be a vibrational match to your desire
Your work, and what you came here to live specifically in this time, your work is to find vibrational alignment with what you have
become.
So, for example, if you don’t have enough money, you ask for more money, and the larger part of you, the non-physical part of you,
becomes more prosperous.
Now, some of you say, “Big deal. Where’s my stuff?”
And we say, “Don’t underestimate the value of living contrast and
setting forth this rocket of desire, because everything that you know as physical expression of life was first thought, and then eventually thought-form (we’re giving you a really abbreviated version), and eventually became the manifestation that you know as life experience.
Before you can want it, you have to live the contrast. Before you
can give birth to it, you have to live the contrast. When you give
birth to it, Source always answers it, but before you can receive it
in terms of manifestation, you have to find a way of becoming a
vibrational match to what you have asked for.
You must be a vibrational match to your desire, and that’s why the
Art of Allowing is something that you’re really wanting to get the
hang of. You’re really wanting to begin to pay attention to the
guidance that you were born with that lets you know how allowing you are of that which you have become, or not.
CD-2/9/08 – San Rafael, CA

” Do you have a major problem just now, or a collection
of small ones?’
His pause indicated hesitation in speaking of what was on his mind,
but he finally said, ‘I feel guilty toward those I have wronged in
past years. How can I ever make things right?’
‘Forgiveness is not necessarily a matter of going to these people,
but of psychic understanding. You must forgive yourself for being
spiritually asleep; this is possible when you see things as they
really are. This pardons you from every offense you have ever
committed, for you knew not what you did; you were out of your
true mind. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the offended person;
it is solely a matter of your own awakening. This will become in-
creasingly clear to you.’”  Pathways to Perfect Living, p. 188