Living Recovery

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Houck knows how much a group like this can mean to someone. After he decided on Dec. 12, 1934, that he would never drink alcohol again, he made restitution with his wife and others he had harmed. "I started telling my wife what kind of a fellow I was," he says. "I did this for three nights to get all of the garbage out. I wanted to be honest about everything in my life." He says his wife was grateful for the talk and then understood his behavior. "Now we could start our family and raise the children with the same guidelines. We had family quiet time every day. That's the way we raised the whole family." Houck lost his wife to cancer in 1988, but believes the lessons learned from the Oxford Group gave him a life he had not been sure was possible. "A marriage that wasn't supposed to last one year lasted 57 years."