Chemical Bottom – Big Book Study – Part 6 of 7

Hi, everyone. My name is David, a corporate alcoholic. Thank you. I hope everybody memorized the big book. Everyone? No one? All right. If I say anything that sounds like my opinion tonight, please disregard it. Please throw it away. I'm here to carry out my experience, strengthen hope, and my experience in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as I've done it with my sponsor and as I have done it of my sponsees. So, you know, sponsorship is a funny thing. Several weeks ago I was driving up to my home group and I kept thinking to myself, you now, I think I'm going insane, you know? Am I too old to go insane? Forty-eight? You know, I mean, you'd think I'd go insane earlier than this. So I walk into my homegroup and I walk over to my sponsor and I'm about to pose the question, is it too old to go insane? And he goes, would you like to do a big book study? And I thought to myself, yes, I would. You know? And for me, that's kind of the way God lets me know to stop whining and get busy. Briefly, just a brief qualification is I drank. I don't know why you're here tonight, but I drank and drinking worked. I have found two solutions in life. One is alcohol and one is a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I consume alcohol, my problems feel as though they're getting smaller. And all of you people start to get nice. The problem with that is that it's not reality. When I worked the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and I strived to maintain a spiritual awakening, the reality is that all you people are nice and my problems really aren't that bad. The first time I drank, I was 12 years old. And I don't know about you, but, you know, 12 was about as long as I could last. A friend of mine came up to me in the middle of summer, beautiful summer day. He was riding his bike. The guy's riding my bike. He said to me, you want to get some beer? I thought, yes, I do. I'm 12. I've been waiting all my life for that question. And I thought to myself, I'm going to get drunk. I didn't think I'm gonna get a couple of beers and hang out with the guys down by the river. I thought I'm not gonna get drunk I said, what do I got to do? He goes, give me two bucks and meet me down by the river, I gave him $2. I had $2 and 25 cents for the summer. It was 1973. and I was willing, you know. And then down by the river there's a bunch of older kids smoking pot. You know, in a situation like that normally I would have been baffled as to what to do but I walked right in grabbed my six pack of warm Schlitz you know opened it up with I think it was still a church key at that point for those of you who know what a church tree is drank two and a half beers and then did something I would never do again. I said, that's enough. And I handed off three beers to somebody else And I went home that night, and the world was okay. And I didn't even know the world wasn't okay up until that moment. I had no idea that I was uncomfortable with my own skin, that the world Was full of mean people. I knew that I Was a little different. I Was A lot different, actually. I knew That you guys Were all judging me. But I Just thought, ugh, this is the way life Was. Two and a half years later, and you guys Weren't judging me anymore. Two and A half years Later, and You guys Were my friends. And I found a place in life I felt comfortable. The next morning, I bounded out of bed, found my friend Richie and said, let's do that again. And he looked at me and said something, I don't know how you say. He says, no. What? I figured he got caught. I figured she had to do it. He had no money. Now, I only had 25 cents for the rest of summer, but I was willing to steal the next day. It didn't do for him what it had done for me. It solved my problems. I didn't drink again until I was 15. Then I was a blackout drunk, you know. And I spent the next eight and a half years drinking that way. I tried all the things in the big book. You know, I tried swearing off with and without oath. I tried changing from beer to hard liquor and all sorts of things. You know, I tried all those things. And inevitably there would be periods where I would be able to kind of white knuckle it for a certain period of time but never really get any sort of satisfaction for that because for some reason what would happen inside of my gut would be you would start looking at me weird again and you're not driving fast enough. And you? Gee, I just don't like you. and after a while that becomes a burden I don't want to bear by myself you know and I need some form of relief and the only relief I've ever gotten is from alcohol the periods between when I would be able when things would get so bad that I'd be forced to stop you know I was forced to leave New Jersey because there was a guy who was looking for me and my partner to do us physical bodily harm and we lived under a bush in San Diego. And I'd go downtown twice a week on a bus and get plasma, get nine bucks and come back to my bush and buy no frills bread. It just said bread on that. Remember when you used to be able to go to the store and buy just bread? I'd buy bread and I'd by the white and black label baloney and that would last for two or three days under the bush. And I thought I was doing pretty good. That was an uptick from New Jersey. But when things would get so bad, I'd white knuckle it for a period of time and then I just couldn't do it anymore because I'm living without a solution. My solution is booze and anything like booze. That's the only thing in my life that's a light that turns off the pain and suffering that I think is going on inside of me. I come out of the house, to the left is the light of booze and I don't know that over here on the right is a spiritual awakening in the steps and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don' t know, right? I get to the point where I can no longer live with alcohol or live without. And I spent about a year and a half staying as drunk as I possibly could. I was a full-time criminal, so I didn't have to show up for work. And no health care, trust me. And all I had to do was kind of hold it together for other full-term criminals who looked as bad as I did. And that I couldn't even really kind of do at the end either. And I felt horrible. And I just wanted, I just knew that something had to change. And I made a decision that I would, this time, that I was stopped for good. This time was going to be different. This time I was not going to consume anything and I was going to get my act together. And somehow I was gonna pull my life out of the gutter that I was in. So I white knuckled it. First day I could not eat. I could do nothing. Second day I did nothing but eat and sleep. Third day I do nothing but throw up. The fourth day I woke up and I thought to myself, I've got this thing licked. And two hours later I had a glass of white wine in my hand. And I don't drink white wine. I don' t drink white wine. And I just kind of knew I'm not going to make it. I'm a defective unit. My entire life is void of anything. And I used to see those people, you know, all those healthy looking people outside. You know, I'd be coming home from the bar at six in the morning and they'd be out jogging. Are you kidding me? If there's not a cop behind me, I'm not running. And now it's 6 in the morning. The fourth day I wake up, I've got a glass of white wine in my hand. It's 10 o'clock in the evening. It's 9 o' clock in the early morning and I am hopeless. All right? I am helpless. I do not believe the future will be any better. I am lacking hope. I know that I am a defective unit and that my life is over. and I decided there's only one feasible solution and that's suicide. So I gather a friend of mine up later that afternoon and I said, we're going to go over to New York and get some pills because I figured the one thing I knew how to do was consume things. So I get him in the car and we get over to 23rd Street and I give him a couple hundred bucks and say, you'll get me some whatever. He gets me some of whatever. I said well, you know what? This isn't going to be enough. Go get me more of whatever so I give them a couple of hundred dollars more And he goes out, and I eat the whole bag. And he comes back, and my son, here's a couple hundred dollars more. Go out and get some more whatever. He goes, where's the first bag? I said, I put it away for safekeeping. And then I ate the second bag of stuff. And I don't remember anything after that, oddly enough. I do remember that gravity took hold in a way I'd never experienced before. And I do Remember being dragged up the driveway of a local hospital. Somehow I had made it back to Jersey. And it was very late at night because I remember it was very dark and it was Very quiet. And I was being dragged up this driveway into the emergency room of the hospital. And I Was put on a gurney and put in a room. And I think my stomach was pumped. And I woke up, right? And I I was pissed because I'm not dead. And I had set out that night, that afternoon, to accomplish one thing and one thing only. And I thought, Jesus, what am I going to do now? But I looked around the emergency room. I'm going through the drawers and there's nothing that I'm going to use. I'm looking for more pills, by the way. There's nothing this is going to work. I'm not a fan of any sharp objects. I don't like pain. So I found this big bottle of Betadine solution. You know, the stuff they rub on you and then turns yellow and brown on your skin. And I started drinking that. And that doesn't kill you. And it doesn't taste good. and it looks stupid running down your face onto your shirt. So I thought, I've got to come up with a better plan than this. This isn't working. So I though, I'm going to nonchalantly walk out of this hospital. So I burst through the doors of the little room where they had left me on a gurney by myself into the bright white hallway and looked to my left and there's the big glass doors to freedom. All you do is get through those doors and I'm home free. One small problem is the nurse station is there, and there's a police officer standing there chatting with the nurses. So I said, this is not going to work. He's going to stop me. So I'm going to have to come up with another plan. I'm thinking on my feet here, folks. You know, give me some credit. So I make a beeline for the crash cart that's next to the nurse's station, grab a bottle of rubbing alcohol, douse the police officer, and go for the matches in my pocket because I'm gonna set him on fire Because I figure if I create a diversion, I can make it out the doors. I think he was surprised, shocked, and then a little annoyed when I'm going for the matches. And he put me down. And he puts his knee on my neck and he put the handcuffs on me and screaming and whining. He put me back on that same gurney. and they put me in four-point restraints. And that was my chemical bottom. I laid there trying to chew through my wrist because I had seen a movie where an animal chews through his paw to get out of a trap. It was 20 years later from the podium that I realized that if I had chewed through my wrists, I'd have no hand to undo the rest of the restraints! and it came to me in the middle of telling this story that that was the fact so I didn't have a lot of good plans that night they wheeled me off to a psychiatric hospital due to my actions and I'm really very fortunate to have been wheeled off to a psychiatric Hospital I was put on a locked ward to be evaluated because I was considered a danger to myself and to others alcohol took me to a place where I would do things. I have not, since I've gotten sober, tried to set fire to anybody. Program of Alcoholics Anonymous works. I have not tried to chew any hands off either. Alcohol took me to a place where I was completely and utterly devoid of any hope. I was at a point where I believed that there was no tomorrow and that no tomorrow was a better solution than a tomorrow with me. For 30 days they evaluated me on this psychiatric hospital, and the answer came back that I wasn't insane, that I was a garden-variety alcoholic, and I suffered from a spiritual malady, a mental obsession and a physical craving, an allergy, a phenomenal craving. And they gave me two choices. I could go and be arrested outside the doors of the psychiatric hospital by the police officer who I tried to set fire to. Well, maybe not. I'm not sure. Or I could get to a locked drug and alcohol ward. And I had to think about that. You know, is there a choice number three? Fortunately, you know, God works in mysterious ways, and I ended up in the locked drug and alcohol unit. And for two weeks, I didn't quite get it. You know for two week, I wandered around. I remember walking into the day room with my pants that no longer fit because I had started eating after a year and a half, and my tube socks halfway off my feet. And seeing this second step came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore society, and me thinking, I'm not insane. I'm now in a locked ward, and I'm willing to admit I'm insane. fortunately for me there was an alcoholic there who had about two years of sobriety and he was one of those people you ever see those people in alcoholics they're all bright eyed and bushy tailed and they smile and they look healthy and you just want to slap them when you've got 11 days and you're feeling like the world's coming to an end and how am I ever going to get through today no less tomorrow without booze but this guy had that smile on his face And I asked, you know, Kurt. He's still sober to this day. We still see each other at the gym. I said, Kurt, you now, tell me your story. I mean, I'm having no hope, right? I'm only in there to avoid prison. He tells me his story. And his story was a story that I can relate to. It was a sorry about bikers. It was story about this. It was the story about that. Then he told me about a solution found in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was amazed because he had done the things that I had done. And he had acted the way I had acted. And he has been, you know, so a slave to this disease. You know, just absolutely. I cannot, I can't tell you how many times I'd walk through the door and go, I'm not going to have a drink as I'm reaching for the bottle. I'm saying it out loud as my hand is moving, as if I'm controlled by somebody else. I'm going to go home at 11 o'clock I drank with heavy drinkers they'd go home at 11 O'Clock drunk and get up for work the next day I'd go to Staten Island I didn't get the 11 OClock thing if you make it to 11 you can make it to 3 he told me his story and I finally got an idea that there was a solution at the end of 110 days, coincidentally, completely in tandem with the fact that my insurance ran out, I was suddenly cured. And the rehab said, time for you to go. Here's your $110,000 big book, Don't Drink and Go to Meetings. I said, if I could not drink and go to meetings, I actually didn't say that, but I wanted to poke the doctor's eyes out when he did that to me. You know, it was 1985. I turned 24 years old in rehab and the best that they could give me was a big book of alcoholics and tell me don't drink and go to meetings. And that's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that if the first thing I do is go to a meeting and find a sponsor and start to work the steps. But I'm looking for every out. You know? I'm working for the easy way still because I don't actually believe I can make it. I believe I'm so broken that nothing's going to fix me, right? I get out and I'm willing to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. And I start going to meetings. And I make 90 meetings In 90 days, and when I've got 90 days I can go out and shoot some heroin. Maybe at your home group you get a cake, I don't know. but i was a good alcoholic because i came back on the 91st day i raised my hand and said i'm david i'm alcoholic and i got 91 days i spent 17 years with that lie 17 years and if you have a lie like that you can come and see me after the meeting because you know what it was like acid on my sobriety i'm not working a four-step searching and fearless what i don't think so I didn't want to give up my time. 90 days, I didn'T want to give up MY time. I also didn'T wanna go to jail and I figured if I said something they might, you know, that was a lot of legal problems for a long time. So I didn' t talk about it. Having said that, I didn''t do any step work. At five years, they asked me to qualify at my home group and I did. And all I had was a drunk log. And even I was bored. You know? And I love listening to me talk. And, you know, at 10 years, I'm not making nearly the same amount of meetings. I was the guy who if there was a roundup, a rodeo, a conference, a convention, or anything going on with 100 miles, I was talking you into going with me because I wanted to hang out with you guys. Because all you guys were happy, joyous, and free. And I wanted what you had as long as I didn't have to do the work. ten years I'm just not going to a lot of meetings anymore you know, it's getting dull because I'm not doing the work I'm now experiencing the nine step promises my life has gone from being a high school dropout you know literally hopeless to something more than I could have ever hoped you know I got my GED I got into university I've been going to class. I've Been Working. I've Been Getting a Job. All these things, all the outside accoutrements to life were coming together, you know? I wasn't working the steps 15 years. I'm as dry as a bone. I'm like the foothills in Los Angeles, you know? I'm flammable. I'm not working the stops. I'm about to go combustible. 2002, a guy calls me up and says, you know, I have this business deal you can do with this guy in Arizona. I said, I'm going. I had every intention of going to Arizona and getting drunk. I got on a plane, I went to Arizona and I got drunk. I got drank on white wine. I hate white wine. White wine does not solve my problems. I came home from that business meeting as demoralized as I had been in 17 years because I knew that I had nothing. And I'm not coming back to meetings. I'm not coming back to meetings to do the work I never did because I'm better than you people. And if you would ask me, I would have said I've evolved out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've evolved like one of those things coming out of the water. Certain lack of spirituality in that comment, huh? So two more years and my wife has a suggestion. She goes, I want a divorce. She was usually the most selfish, self-centered, self?serving, ungrateful person I've ever met. I said, what can I do? She goes, why don't you try AA again? So I'm back in these rooms on August 8th of 2004, 74 below in New York and I raise my hand and I say, I got one day back and all of you people welcomed me as if I was a lost brother. Like I had never gone missing, right? And 90 days passed and I'm going to meetings every day and I am reading the big book. I'm doing searches on Google for four-step software. You know, I want to be a part of this. And the guy who was sponsoring was out in Chicago because he was my cousin. And Buddy is in his late 70s now. He still makes 10 meetings a week. He's 30-plus years sober. He's non-Spanish speaking. He started Spanish-speaking meetings near his house and learned Spanish to do that. The guy's active. I got him as a sponsor when I first came back because I knew I needed to do the steps. What I knew was missing the first time was the steps and sponsorship, right? I mean, I don't get a sponsor because I don' t want to do the steps. So after 90 days, he says, you know, you really need to get somebody local. And there was this kid who used to get up at the break at my old home group and say, you know , we have a temporary sponsorship program here. And he always had that stupid AA smile on his face. Hi, I'm spiritual. So I thought, you now, that puke is spiritual. I'm going to go ask him to be my sponsor. I'm gonna wipe that smile off his face or get what he has. And I asked him and he started taking me through the steps. And you know, one, two, and three is about me getting right with God. You know, I've got to admit that I'm an alcoholic. And then the big book references real alcoholic 14 times. You never hear anybody in a meeting go, hey, I'm David, I're a real alcoholic. Almost never. right? But the book talks about it. And for me, a real alcoholic, what defines a real alcoholic for me is that when I drink, I cannot tell you within any certainty what's going to happen. And when I'm not drinking, I am ultimately going to drink again. I am powerless over alcohol. So when I consume alcohol, the wheels absolutely come off. I went to a party when I was 16 years old. I went to a party, to go party with all my close friends. I woke up six hours later on the side of the road in Pennsylvania covered in somebody else's blood. That was not my plan that night. That is not the only time things like that happened. I'm unmanageable because to the best of my ability, I cannot stay away from a drink of alcohol. I had two hours on the fourth day away from alcohol and I found myself drinking the only thing that was in the house. Powerless over alcohol and my life has become unmanageable. Not because I can't pay the bills, not because I cannot keep a job. I came back into the room as an alcoholic and I was a dry drunk. My life was unmanagable because I was the most unspiritual person in the world. I drank 17 years later. Two and three are about me getting right with God. Me accepting that a power greater than myself is going to restore me to sanity. And I've got to surrender. Chuck Chamberlain talks about it, right? In A New Pair of Glasses he talks about you know surrender is a continuous act. And I didn't get that when I first came back in. What I got was you took these steps in the order they were supposed to be taken and you did these things like a task. Like if your wife leaves you a note, go clean the garage. You clean the garage. And then that's done. Make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I have to do that on a continuous basis. A guy like me wants to take that back. Four and five are about me. Six and seven are about God. And eight and nine are about you. I've got to find out what my insalable inventory is. Make a confession of that to my sponsor or to whoever whoever I'm working with, you know, and to God. I'm not going to go out and ask God to remove these shortcomings, these defects. You know, Bill Wilson talks about it in the big book in a variety of different ways. You know? It's not just character defects. It's shortcomings. He's a wordsmith. He uses a lot of words to describe these things. And I've got to take those actions. I've Got to ask God To Remove These Shortcomings because I don't have the power to do that. My goal in life is to get a spiritual awakening. That's what the book promises me if I do the work. I want to get an spiritual awakening, my problem is not alcohol. My problem looks like alcohol because when I consume it, the wheels come off, right? But the reality of the situation is the first thing that happens to a guy like me, right, is I become spiritually unfit and then I seek a solution outside of myself which is alcohol and I develop a mental obsession about that and the last thing I do is drink i've got to ask god to remove these shortcomings because i can't do it and i'll tell you something i remember going through my sponsor my first sponsor right we get to the sixth step what can you possibly do work-wise on the sixthstep we were entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character when you possibly due for me that was like the middle of the steps It's the coffee step. You take a break. This guy has me writing. What am I going to write on? He has me reading for six weeks. And you know what I figured out? I was catching up to him in the steps. That's what I thought. That's not what I had figured. That wasn't the truth, by the way. But that's what i'm thinking. But he, I guess maybe he thought I might have a problem with humility. and I've got to ask God because I can't do these things. And I remember walking down the streets having done six and seven in Manhattan on a beautiful day and seeing beautiful women walking by and going in my head, please God take this from me, please God takes this from you, please God, take this for me because lust wasn't so easy to let go of. You know, I got a lot of character defects that aren't easy to go with Because I want to hold on to them, not because God's unwilling to get them. And I've got to tell you something. When I did seven, it was the first time I really got two because I've Got to have a loving and caring God to hand this stuff off to. If I don't, who's going to want to take this stuff? I've had to go out and make my amends, right? Eight and nine are about you. and, you know, the book is very clear. You know, I'm not supposed to make a living amends. I'm supposed to direct amends wherever possible, right? And I had to do that. And there were people that, you know, so I had this long period between the time that I came off my chemical bottom to the time that I truly got sober, right. So I had two sets of amends, I had amends, some of which could not be made because people had died in the interim. Sixty percent of the people that I hung out with are dead when I was a kid. I'm 48 years old. Sixty% of the People that I Hung Out With on my street, my list of guys who I hung up with are Dead. There were guys I can't make amends to. Parents of guys that I needed to make ammends to were dead. I had to go out and make amends to those who I could and I had a different set of amends a lot of those were business amends I didn't steal from my partners but I treated them poorly self-centered, self-serving I did not have a spiritual awakening I was all about me one of the first amends I went to make was with my mother Now, I had made amends to my mom before, but this time I actually meant it. And I showed up with her. Now, let me tell you something. Before making these amends, I'd complain, why doesn't she come by the house more often? She has three lovely grandchildren. She lives nine miles from me. And I would complain that she wouldn't come over on the weekends. Now I sit down with her and I do my amends with her, and we're both sitting there crying. and this is during the week the next Saturday morning I woke up and the first thing that came to my mind was why don't I take the kids to Grammy's house and if you had told me that simply making amends would free me from the bond itself with my mother somebody who I had a close relationship with I would never have gotten that you know, I would have never realized that all of a sudden I'd want to do for others to the exclusion of myself You know One of the ways to describe The beginnings of a spiritual awakening for myself Is when I started to put my wants aside For other people's needs Now By the way, not all my amends went that well I had some business partners who did not want to talk to me But you know I was willing to make the amends And I've been willing to do that I'm willing to take the amens to anybody I've reached out and gone and met with people who do not want to talk to me and I can't change that but I'm available to them anytime they want anytime they make the change and they know that because I've told them that more than once so 10 is 4 through 9 now I don't know about you but I can wait to the night time to make I know guys who have these 10 step lifts who make these complicated 10-step lists at the end of the day. They sit down, maybe they meditate a little bit, they make a 10-stop list. I'm not like that. I tried that. My first sponsor was like that, go home and make a list, let's go through that. I'd get home and I have like five people on my list. I'd be like, oh crap, now I can't sleep. I don't think about it, I run scenarios through my head. I'm having conversations with people who aren't there, don't exist. You know, how am I going to make these amends tomorrow? What happened was, you know, I used to trade on the floor of the American Stock Exchange so what would happen is I'd be down in this very competitive environment and I would really rip your heart out just to make a nickel that was my nature and I'd go down to the floor and you'd be standing there and a trade would come in and I'm going to be like buy them you did nothing and I take the whole thing for myself and a couple hours later I'd start to feel bad about myself oh gee here we go this is old behavior you really need to be more fair and equitable and I had to go find these people. And I usually do it after the bell and I go find those people and say, listen, I'm really sorry. And all day you'd get it in my face and I'd be like, no! As I became more spiritual of course the time between where I'd go well I'm sorry to the time where I go listen, I was wrong. It started to narrow. And I started to find that the more and more that I wanted to practice these principles someone would come up in my place and I would be like No! Ah, forget it. You know, but the harder thing would be many times at home. I'd come home at night and I'd just be tired and torn up and work would be hard and you don't understand. And I'd walk through the door and my wife would turn to me and she'd just want to tell me about her day. And in the old day it would be like, leave me alone. You know? And I stand there and I just quietly shut my mouth and I listen to my wife and she tells me this stuff. And in my mind, I would start to write down the important things that I was going to say while she was talking. The things I was gonna interrupt her with and tell her, right? I'd write them down on little mental cards and put them in a little mental box on my little mental shelf. And an hour later, I'd sit there nodding my head. Yes, honey, you know. And an hours later,I'd take my mental box off my mental shelf and I'd go through those cards because if something there was important, I'll be remiss in not telling her,right? So I'd take the first card out of the box and be like, did you think of that yourself? That's probably not a good thing to say to her. Tear that up. Second card out-of-the-box, just like your mother. No, I probably shouldn't say that. Don't need that. Third card out the box, when monkeys fly out of my ass. Oh, that's not going to be spiritual. And the problem here is that I started to realize that the vast majority of my problems were solved when I did not open my mouth. That the problem wasn't you people. The problem was that I interjected my thoughts and my opinions while you're trying to lead your life. So it for me became an evolution. It became an opportunity for me to sit back and to review for myself that I needed to not speak all the time, that the things that I thought were so dramatically important were better left unsaid, and my life improved dramatically. I started to get the nine-step promises after I came to realize that the problems around me were typically of my own production. And doesn't Bill talk about that on 63? Right? The 11th step. I kind of knew how to pray. Right? I kind of knew how to pray. Prayer for me was always fairly easy, right? I had some simple prayers. You know, I really kind of never had a problem with God coming into the program with Alcoholics Anonymous. I just figured I didn't count, you know. And I would pray, but I wouldn't get the ease and comfort that I kind OF expected from doing an act of 11-step, right, And oddly enough, my first sponsor stopped calling me back. I'm not sure why. But I got a second sponsor, and the second sponsor I got was the most spiritual guy I'd ever met at the time. He's this little like 5'4 truck driver with 30-plus years of sobriety, and he always had these really just, you know, he always condensed it down. Like, you Know, when Dr. Bob was dying and he spoke in 1950 at the first AA International Convention, and he said when reduced to the last, our fellowship was about love and service. You know how there's just, you get that, yeah, that's what it is. I used to have this guy as a sponsor because he would reduce things for me into the simplest of terms, like I was a four-year-old, which I got. So I called him up. I said, Kenny, I'm a little embarrassed because I've been sober two-plus years and I don't get the meditation part. He goes, Dave, do you pray? I said, yeah, Kenny, I pray. He goes what do you say? What do you do when you pray and I told him my prayer he goes that's great. Do you ever listen when you're done praying? Oh, I should sit there and I should quietly in contemplated meditation listen for the answers to what's going on in my life and I started to get a sense of well-being because the answers are known. For me, the answers are known It's the path that hurts others the least. It's a path where my wants are always secondary to somebody else's needs. The 12 step You know I was very active in my original home group which is 74 below on Trinity Place in Manhattan. And I had a bunch of guys. He asked me to sponsor them early on. And I would sponsor these guys and inevitably they would fire me and go get other sponsors. Now, I had always been the guy doing the, I took over the temporary sponsorship role at my home group. I thought, geez, these guys are firing me all the time. This is getting annoying, you know? They're not even going out and drinking. I would have been happy if they went out and drank, you know? But no, they're firing me. Bastards. And so I'm sitting on the toilet one day reading The Grapevine and there's this little ad in The Grabevine, right? And it says, guys, we need guys to write to guys in prison. And I'm like, that's the deal. They can't fire me. They can only not write back. So I call up the home office, the A&A home office and I say, you know, I want to write to guys in prison. So they send me three names and I write to these guys and one of them writes back to me on a fairly consistent basis and I go, I need three more guys and they give me three more boys and I get three more kids and I'm writing to those guys and oneofthemwritesback on a very consistent basis and I am talking to this one guy his name is Kevin Kevin and I are hitting it off and he goes I said, you now, Kevin Kevin, he is a year and a half more than me. I'm saying, Kevin, you know, if you haven't done the steps, you're going to need to do the steps. He goes, let's do them through the mail. I said, okay, I'll do them Through the Mail with you. I said but when you get out, you've got to get a sponsor and do them in person. He goes no problem. So we're doing the steps Through the mail, right? Now when you're in prison, you can't do it on a searching and fearless moral inventory because you might do more time. You've got to change the phrase of what you're saying that you've done and talking about when you're writing to this guy. So we're writing back and forth, and all of a sudden I stop getting letters from this guy, but I get a phone call. He goes, I just got out. Now, in case you're wondering, AA will hook you up with somebody in prison on the other coast of the country just in case they get out and they're pissed at what you said. So this guy gets out. This guy gets out, and he lives in Bakersfield. And they have him halfway else. He goes, Dave, I just got out. I'm like, wow. Dude, you need to go get a sponsor. He says, I'm not going to get a sponsored. I got you. I want you to be my sponsor. I said, Kevin, I can't sponsor you from New Jersey because you've already been doing it. He said, all right. Well, what the hell? I'll try it. But I said, but I want to know. My sponsor told me that I need to fire you when you're supposed to get another sponsor. He goes, I'm not doing that. All right. So now we're doing a real fourth step, a real fifth step. And we're going over stuff for hours on the phone. And I'm working with this guy. And this guy's working with me. And my life is changing. And he's changing along the way. And we're connecting. And all of a sudden, he's doing eight and nine. He's go out and make it. He knows, I got a bill in the mail. You know, he owed a lot of money when He went to prison. He goes, I got a bill in the mail. What should I do? I said, well, I think you should pay it. I said throw caution to the wind. What could possibly go wrong? So he pays it. You know what they do? They send him a new bill for some other charges. I said well, I guess something can go wrong. I said contact them and find out what the total amount is for you to make this right because they would just keep sending him bills. They're a collection agency. He went and cleaned up his past far faster than he ever thought Now, this guy is taking armfuls of big books and packs of cigarettes and going down to the Salvation Army every weekend in Bakersfield, California. And he's handing out the cigarettes and the big books to people. And he is doing big book studies with these guys. And these guys are getting out and he is sponsoring them. He says, this is great, Dave. You have done such good for me. I am like, I did nothing but sit on the toilet. What did I do? He goes, this is a blast. I said, all right. Well, so I'm coming to Disneyland. I'm going to Disneyland in California. I said let's get together. So we get together and we speak in Bakersfield in front of 150 people and we tell our story and people are crying and there was a little kid in the front thinking, the kid jumped out of his seat and the whole place is going crazy. And I don't get this. I don' t get this under my own steam. Under my own steam, I'm in four-point restraints trying to chew through my arm. I don't get this when my best thinking comes into play. I get this because two alcoholics in June of 1935 shared with each other their story and began to realize that they could stay sober with the help of each other. I stood in Akron at the Cyberling Estate in the room where Dr. Bob and Bill first met after dinner. And I get goosebumps just thinking about it. If you ever get a chance, Founders Day weekend, second weekend in June, thank you, second weekend of June every year, and it's a blast. It's a blast. Kevin and I have become close friends. Kevin's been out to New Jersey. Kevin spoke at our home group. You know, Kevin carries the message. Kevin pulls up in front of a 7-Eleven a couple of weeks ago, two months ago, and there was a guy panhandling for change at 7 in the morning, shaking, waiting to get some booze. Kevin goes in, buys him a can of beer, wraps his phone number around that beer, and hands it to the guy and says, brother, I've been there. If you want to feel different, call me on my number, and I'll take you to a meeting. Two weeks later, that guy's in a halfway house. I didn't do that. Kevin didn't doing that. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous. In its unbridled form, the simple message that was carried to me by one alcohol that I hope I can sometimes carry to another alcoholic did that. For 5,000 years, people like you and I died from alcoholism. From the first time they crushed grapes. And now I get to lead a life beyond my wildest dreams, right? Not this past weekend, but the weekend before my daughter had a bat mitzvah. Thirteen-year-old daughter had bat mitZvah and I found out two days before that, that she had a boyfriend. Yeah, he's going to be at the bat mitztvah too. I'm going to track him down. And I'm standing there at the bar mitzva and this little blonde haired kid runs up to me and hands me an envelope and goes, this is for Lucinda and he runs away. And Lucinda's new boyfriend's name was Ryan. And I looked down on the envelope and it says, To Lucinda from Ryan H. And I thought, Ryan? Get over here! But I shouldn't have that. You know, not that I shouldn'T have that, but a guy like me doesn't get that kind of end to his story. You know? A guy like Me ends up with the choice of, you know, jails, institutions or death. You know, a guy like me, I drank at all costs, you know, and today I've been given a gift and it's a simple gift and my responsibility is to carry that gift unchanged without Dave's opinion attached to it to you guys. Thank you very much. There was a lot of good stuff starting on page 83 that I had every intention of covering today. Any questions, comments, critiques? We have three minutes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you.