Help for This Day

I AM A thirty-five-year-old priest. For twenty-seven years, I had a speech impediment, which at times was very bad and at other times bearable. During the course of years, I consulted many doctors and speech experts, who gave me advice and treatment, but with little success. I was left with the far-from-consoling fact that the only cure lay with myself and my own determination to overcome the stammer. This I tried, with small success. Somehow, I came to the understanding that no amount of willpower or determination would bring success without a different mental approach to the problem; what I badly needed was a new philosophy of life. Two years ago, I found the answer to my problem when a priest friend, who was in AA, invited me--a teetotaler--to an AA meeting in a small town in the heart of rural Ireland. (This priest gave me your Grapevine.)