The Old Rucker sits down with longtime recovery advocate Libby D. for an honest conversation about resilience, recovery, service, and purpose. From breaking barriers as one of the first women in corporate sales and pharmaceutical representation, to life as a farmer, community leader, mentor, and recovering alcoholic, Libby shares a remarkable journey of overcoming abuse, addiction, loneliness, and personal loss. She reflects on the lessons learned through Alcoholics Anonymous, the importance of boundaries, humility, and helping others, and how recovery gave her a deeper sense of purpose. The conversation culminates with a powerful story about a horse and a donkey that serves as a metaphor for discipline, freedom, and the choices we make in life. This episode is filled with practical wisdom, hard earned experience, and hope for anyone navigating recovery or life’s challenges.

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Thought to Consider…

Faith is not belief without proof; it’s trust without reservation.

There is no such thing as being ‘a little bit alcoholic.’

Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen. 12×12 pg 91

AACRONYMS

S P O N S O R = Sober Person Offering Newcomers Suggestions On Recovery

D E N I A L = Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying

F E A R = False Evidence Appearing Real

Resentment

“It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.”

Until we came into A.A. most of us had tried desperately to stop drinking. We were filled with the delusion that we could drink like our friends. We tried time and again to take it or leave it, but we could do neither. We always lapsed into ceaseless, unhappy drinking. Families, friends, and employers threw up their hands in hurt bewilderment, in despair, and finally in disgust. We wanted to stop. We realized that every reason for drinking was only a crazy excuse.

To Survive Trials

“In our belief, any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes wholly to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed. Release from alcohol, and not flight from it, is our answer.” 

“‘Faith without works is dead.’ How appallingly true for the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic fails to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he cannot survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he does not work, he will surely drink again, and if he drinks, he will surely die. Then faith will be dead indeed.”

“Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power that One is God. May you find Him now!”

“Because I’m an Alcoholic”

“That sense of being different, which had long plagued me, disappeared when I saw the threads that run through all of us. Sharing our stories, our feelings, it is the areas where we are the same that impress me. The differences are but delightful flourishes on the surface, like different-colored costumes, and I enjoy them. But the basic ways we are human, the basic ways we simply are, stand out to me now. I came to see that we all are really one, and I no longer feel alone.”

A NATURAL FAITH

. . . deep down in every man, woman and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.

Simplicity

“A willingness to do whatever I was told to do simplified the program for me. Study the A.A. book – don’t just read it. They told me to go to meetings, and I still do at every available opportunity, whether I am at home or in some other city. Attending meetings has never been a chore for me. Nor have I attended them with a feeling of just doing my duty. Meetings are both relaxing and refreshing to me after a hard day. They said ‘Get active’ so I helped whenever I could and still do.”

Dianne