Steps One Two and Three – 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Wayne H.

all right welcome back I think there's missing people here I mean really come on y'all hi my name is Wayne I'm alcoholic I just I'm gonna settle into a rhythm here but I want to start off by saying being district chair in no way makes me an authority on steps one, two, and three. However, I'm an alcoholic. Man, I'm a real alcoholic. I'm the kind of alcoholic who does bad things. I drink a lot and I drink a lot often. And when I do, I don't stop. I got an acceleration problem. I drank too fast. And when I need to slow down, I know how. It is just that kind of drinker. And if that was my only problem, then all I'd have to do is quit drinking. But that's not my only problem. When I stop drinking, I go insane. I start thinking about drinking all the time. I'm just like a, I'm kind of just trying to give people an opportunity to get back in the room. I've got to repeat all this here in about 15 seconds because I see them filing in. All right. See, what we need is a bell and we need a bell. So we'd go bing, bing bing and it would ring but we lost our bell ringer so we had a bell ringers and we auditioned we got a bell ringer and he would ring the bell bing bing but he didn't have any hands so he grabbed the bell with his teeth and he shook it back and forth ding ding ding and this is going to go badly, I can tell. So he's shaking it back and forth and he just falls over one day and he's dead. And I'm like, oh my gosh, he fell over. So people start running in and they're like, who is this man? And I am like, Oh my gosh. I don't know the punchline. I totally forgot, but I did give people an opportunity to get back in the room. Thank you. About halfway through, I'm going to remember the punchline, and for the people who heard the whole joke, I'm just going to spit it out, and you're going to go, oh yeah, there you go. All right, welcome. Hey, my name is Wayne. I'm alcoholic, and I'm an alcohol, and I'm really honored to do this. I just can't think of any three steps that I would rather do than steps one two and three because uh for one it's the only three steps that a lot of newcomers ever get to before they uh either get it or they start going back out so um it's i think it's really important but two it's uh the one that i uh it'sthe ones that iuh i've got the most literature on there's like in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous there's 58 pages getting you up to two steps one two and three and uh I mean most of the the first 164 pages are on steps one, two, and three so um there's a lot I got a lot of material but uh that the material isn't that interesting. I'm sorry. What's interesting is the alcoholism. I came to believe that I was a real alcoholic, and I had to concede to my innermost self that I wasn't a real alcoholic. So what would bring me to that point? And what do I want to do with the newcomers? So I step back into my drinking, my drinking history. I drank a lot, and And I drank often. I drank too much and, you know, all that stuff I said earlier. And I had to concede to my innermost self that I was a real alcoholic. But then once I got to that point, I didn't have a solution. I mean, I was sitting there drinking like a fiend. My life's coming apart. I'm a bad drunk that does bad things. And I have this delusion that I'm an okay guy, except for I drink too much occasionally. And when I do, things get out of control. But you've got to forgive me because I'm alcoholic. You know, I wore that card a lot. And so, you know, my life's coming apart. Coming apart it seems. And I seek God. And I don't seek God because I think it's a good idea. I'm not, you know, like a stark raving Christian. I'm just flubbing along. And, you Know, the reason I'm not a stark raven Christian, I'm Just Going To Tell You, I'm Sitting Around, I'm Drinking Like A Fiend, I'm Screwing People Over, I'm Completely, My Life's In Full Meltdown Mode, And I'm Misbehaving In Such Egregious Ways That I Don't Want There To Be Any Loving God Looking Over My Shoulder And Seeing The Kinds Of Stuff I'm Doing. So I've got to try to keep it a secret. And the only way to keep It a secret is to say, there is no God. So there's no God, except for my life's coming apart and I don't have a solution. So I say, God, please help me. God, I can't do this anymore. Help me. I'd rather die than go on like this. And so there's kind of an irony there. There's no god, and yet I'm starting to pray. And I think that's not uncommon. We come into Alcoholics Anonymous not on a winning streak. We're on a losing streak, and a lot of times where not everybody seeks God. Some people get sent here by other forms of higher power. I mean, I had a Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps in the Marine Corp. Not of the Marines Corp., in the Marines Corps send me to Alcoholics Anonymous one time. He was my higher power? It didn't really stick, but I did stop drinking for a few days because I didn't want to go to jail but uh you know some people get sent by the the judge which is their higher power they don't want To me when I got to the point where I just wanted to die or find another solution and I prayed that's when I uh I got To that point where i'm turning my will in my life over the care of God I didn't even really know it because I'm I don't believe I'm not I'm in full meltdown mode. I don't believe in God. I wish there wasn't one, and so I'm praying to God that I don' understand, that I have no relationship with, and I say, God, please help me, and then an amazing thing happened. He did, and I wish I possessed the vocabulary to articulate how that happens. I wish I had that because when I'm sharing with the newcomer, that's what I want to communicate. I don't necessarily want to communicate my history. I don't really want to be sharing the gory details of my life. I don't necessary want to talk about how I came to believe in God. I mean, really, I just want to tell them how to believe in god and that would be a mistake man that's that's uh that would that's where i fall down the only tool i really have for communicating that thing that we call a higher power is my experience with it so and even though i don't necessarily want to talk about my history if i don t i lose that alchemy of identification and without identification i got nothing so i'm an alcoholic synonymous because i i prayed to god i said god please help me i'd rather die and i went to bed i woke up the next day and i and i'm looking at the ceiling and i've i'm bewildered i'm not drunk anymore i've slept and I haven't lost that despair. I haven'T lost that hopelessness I felt the night before and yet I have no solution so I pray again, God, what do I do? And out of my consciousness, out of the ether, I don'T know where it comes from. This isn'T something I'VE ever pondered in my entire life comes this thought, comes this phrase call Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went, okay. I don't know how to call Alcoholic Anonymous? Like I said, I've never even considered it. It's not like I've got this on my speed dial. I mean, in all fairness, I got sober in 1987. We had no such thing as speed dials. I pick up a book. It's called The Yellow Pages. I don't know if they have those anymore. And I turned to A. I turned to A, and it was kind of weird because it was right up front. It was just before triple A, the car thing. But they had AA at the front. Then it said C, Alcoholics Anonymous, and I turned over and page turned over to like page two or three I mean Alcoholics Anonymous isn't very far back and got the number and I called the central office and I tell them I need I think I need to get sober and like normal people call AlcoholicsAnonymous and say hey I think I need to get sobre and they go are you sure you're not no normal people don't don't call Alcoholics Anonymous and say, I think most normal people don't even think about whether or not they need to get sober. If they need to gets sober, they just stop drinking. Alcoholics of my types though, we start drinking and we stop drinking, we started going insane. That's what I was saying, I stopped drinking, I started going flipping nuts. So I call them up, I said, I need to quit drinking and they put me in touch with a meeting and I go to my first meeting and started going to some meetings, and I'm hearing the solution. There's a few things that I want to say about the solution, A, I'm here hearing people's stories, they're talking about alcoholism, they're drinking the way I drink, I get them, I used to do that, they talk about peeing their pants or wet in the bed like yeah yeah yeah I've done that they talk about you know getting drunk and waking up in strange places I went yeah they talked about you know hurting people they talked about the despair they talked about the loneliness and yeah yeah get that so I start getting that identification they talked about a solution they talked about a power greater themselves that they restored him to sanity I had no no idea what they're talking about I wish I did it was but I was curious it got me curious enough that I came back to more meetings but the solution wasn't in the meetings the solutions was in the steps the solution was read to me it was a signpost that was you know displayed up and given to me every meeting they talked about rarely we've seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path and then they went on and talked about that path they talkedabout uh step one they talkedabouts step two they talkedboutstep three they talkedaboutyouknow came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore insanity they talked about turning my will in my life for the care of god i had no idea how to do that. But they repeated that over and over and over again. So after a couple weeks of this, I start going, well, I think I've got to do these things. I'm obviously an alcoholic. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. I didn't really have a problem with that. I really got it. I didn't fully come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, but I was kind of faking it. I don't know if anybody else in this room has ever faked it, but I was kind of faking it. You know, I'm coming to the meetings and I'm thinking, well, these people are sober and they talk about this higher power. I'm going to kind of just like say, I think there's a higher power, maybe there's a higher tower. I don'T KNOW IF THERE'S A HIGHER POWER, BUT YOU KNOW, I'VE NOT BEEN DRINKING FOR TWO OR THREE WEEKS, SO WHAT THE HELL? I AIN'T GOT NOTHING TO LOSE. THERE'S AN HIGHer POWER. DOGGONE IT. YES. I didn't believe it, but I said it anyway. You know what I mean? And then I'm going to turn my will and my life over to the desire of power that I don't have the idea. So I started doing this prayer, and it's so similar. And this is before I read anything or heard anything in that book, Alcoholics Anonymous. But it's så similar. I used to go home, and I would pray, God, I'm gonna turn mywill and mylife over to you because that's what they say to do in the meetings. So if you exist, you got it. if you exist, you got it. And I just started doing that prayer every night before I went to bed. And during the day, I go, God, please help me stay sober. My gosh, I don't have any idea. It's like I had lost my best friend. I'd lost the entire linchpin on which I formed in my life. And I'm just, okay, I do not know how to act. I am just going to go to a meeting and watch these people that used to drink like I do, that do not drink anymore, and try to figure out what they do. and remember earlier I was saying when I don't drink, I start getting crazy. I start Getting Crazy, man. I don' t know when it happened or how it happened, but after a few days of not drinking, I started thinking, and that's not a good thing for an alcoholic with no program, so I'm thinking about, you know, I got to get a job. Really, I need a girlfriend. Maybe I should go back to church. Fitness program, that'll do it. Yoga. No, we didn't do yoga back then. It was aerobics. Jane Fonda. You know, I'm thinking, man, and that's not a good place, but one day I go into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I hear somebody share. Now, this is odd because this isn't a meeting I'm supposed to be at. I'm praying to this God that I don't understand. And I'm going to meetings, I'm watching people that I don' t get and I don''t fully understand and I'm kind of flubbing through life trying to figure out what to do. I'm evaluating my options. Girls look good. They don't seem to share, they're not reciprocal. I don ''t think they think I look good because they're not being very responsive but you know I thought they looked good. Exercise that was more receptive but it was hard. It was hard, so I'm going to meetings, and I'm praying to this weird God that I don't believe in, and I hear this voice. Oh, and now I'm gonna go get a job. Oh my gosh, Friday afternoon, three o'clock in the afternoon. Let's go apply for jobs. That's when people are hiring, right? Newcomer thinking, so it's like a Friday afternoon. I'm Gonna go find a job I'm all dressed up. I've got, like, clean clothes on. I've taken a shower. And I get in the car to go. I don't even know where to start, really. I'm going to the unemployment office. I think that might be someplace. I don' t know. So I hear this voice, go to a meeting. And I'm like, I've been to a meeting, and I'm doing it. I'm not going to a meeting later tonight. I go to meetings all the time. I'm sick of meetings. i don't know i mean here i was 30 days earlier i would do anything just to stay sober one day 28 days later i'm like i'm sick of meetings they don't understand out of that voice out of consciousness comes go to a meeting he's not like arguing with me he's directive go to the meeting and not just any meeting i know when he says go to a meeting. He means inner city fellowship at two o'clock. You've got 12 minutes. You better leave now. I don't know how I knew that he didn't say it, but I, I knew this was what he was talking about. And I'm like, no, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to another meeting. And then this is the kicker. Now I've got 28 days sober. If I own a big book, it's because somebody shoved it down my throat. I have certainly not opened it. I've certainly not said in big book studies, I have surely not walked through the steps page by page, line by line with a sponsor. I don't get the big book. It's like archaic. So out of this voice comes, what was once a sudden hunch or intuition may become a working part of the mind. and I'm like what we may pay for this assumption with some absurd actions and I am like okay I will go to a flipping meeting I knew I didn't know that, that had to be God I don't have that vocabulary, I don' speak like that I haven't read the big book, I do not know where that is at that time it could have been talking Swahili and so I jump in my car I drive straight to the meeting I walk in just as they're reading rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path but the guy that was reading it was reading it with conviction the guy that was reading it was reading it with understanding I totally got that what he was telling me he believed and And he just drew me in. He just drew my in. And then, so I'm sitting there staring at him during the meeting, you know. I'm just staring at this guy because he's old. He's ancient. I mean, he was like 50. I did get sober a long time ago. I'm like older than him now. but he drew me in and so I'm just staring at him during the meeting and he gets called on to share and when he starts sharing he shares his story in a general way he talked about being in a hospital bed staring up at the nurse and I went I've been in hospital beds I've come to from a blackout in hospital bed staring up at people that I don't know I mean, you don't go to, you know, just random people. Most non-alcoholics have never experienced drinking a few too many cocktails and waking up in a hospital bed staring up at strangers. Me, on the other hand, it's happened more than once. So, you Know, he's sharing that. And then he goes, and the sweet little nun was that nun. And, okay, well, it's not important anyway. But she's a personality in Alcoholics Anonymous. Huh? Sister Ignatia. And she goes, come here, sweetie, let's pray for you. So, you know, I got sober in 1987 and he had 36 years sobriety. Hank did. I didn't know who Sister Ignacia was. I had 28 days at that point. But he seemed to think that was meaningful. So I went, oh, okay. I totally got, though, that he woke up into a hospital bed staring up at his strange face. And then he shared about being bewildered and not having alcohol and not knowing where to turn. And I'm like, man, that's right where I'm at. And then He talked about getting in, like crawling in the pockets of the old-timers. He said, I just like was a little chick. One of those little baby chickens. I think they're chicks. And I just wanted to get as close as I could to the old timers of Alcoholics Anonymous when I got sober so that I could just stay in their shadows. So I could learn how to live a sober life. And he talked about it in a very matter-of-fact way. And he drew me in. And by the time he was done talking, I'm like, that's my sponsor. That's him. I've got to, you know, I want to crawl over the table and push people out of the way and step on people to get to this guy because I'm not the only one that went over to talk to him after he was gone. He was pretty compelling. And I'm, like, will you help me do my fourth step? Because I'm a newcomer. I don't know what it is to be a sponsor. I don'T know what It is to have a sponsor all I know Is I had done one two and I'm doing these goofy little prayers I'm on four and he says that's Not the way it works son but if you want To work the steps I'll help you take the steps And he didn't say work that was one of His pet peeves he says if you wanna take The steps I'll hope you take The steps and the reason he said That is because you're a taker You take take take you are a taker. You're new to Alcoholics Anonymous and you're an alcoholic. All alcoholics come in takers. You don't know anything about work. We'll work later. Right now, I just want you to take. I'm like, I don't care. Whatever. You know, I had a lot of that in my early sobriety. People used to say, you got to surrender. And to me, that sounded like, yeah, whatever. so what he was doing is in these first three steps he was with he was sharing what it was like to be an alcoholic he was drawing me in to uh identification and then he was teaching me about how to turn my will and my life over to the care of God so when we got together he didn't use he used his stories he told me about his history but to do the steps he brought me in and we sat down with the big book Alcoholics Anonymous and you know he would say things like you know the old timers when they came into AlcoholicsAnonymous they didn't have the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. They figured out how it worked by sharing it with another person. So it's important to share with another person. That's how you figure out how it works. But it's also important to stick with the big book now that we have it. It does two things. One, it adds credibility because no matter how much you believe me, no matter How much I share my story and you identify, no matter how much you believe and trust me. The big book has helped millions of people, and I want you to be able to go to the next newcomer and take that book and say, the solution that I'm sharing with you has helped billions of people. Not just me. So I think that's really when he started taking me back into the big book and getting me back Into the Steps through the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, it was so that I could share with other people. Everything that I'm doing in Alcoholics Anonymous up to the point of sponsoring other people is in preparation of sponsoring other people, all right? So here I am. I'm on step one, step two, step three. I want to share a little bit more about step three because comfortable came to believe that our power greater than myself could restore me to sanity and then turning my will in my life over the care of god it was almost cyclical i come in i get this identification i'm willing i'm i'm saying i i'm going to pretend like there's a god and i'm gonna start turning my wheel in my life over to this pretend thing okay i think that people go to church every day and do that i don't know i that's kind of the way it felt but i started doing that you know when i had these epiphanies or these things that came up in my consciousness like in the car when god said go to the meeting and i followed that direction and then something very meaningful came out of that, then it transcended something somebody told me about God and became something that I experienced about God. So a gentleman that used to live in Tampa that has spoken a great deal talked a great detail about this. He talked about how what we do is we come into Alcoholics Anonymous, and we have people tell us about God. But it's not that we tell people about God and they come to believe. We tell people About God, they find the need to come to believe, and then they take actions. So by faking my belief and my understanding, by coming in and showing up, by praying prayers I don't understand or necessarily believe, I got to the point where I experienced something that I had never experienced before. I plugged into a power greater than myself. And when I followed the directions of that, it seemed like coincidentally my life began to improve. I stopped obsessing about drinking and continuously. And it's not like my life just magically got better, but it gave me enough to go to the next step. it gave me enough to go to the fourth step and the fifth step and then as I worked through those things I experienced again experiences of being sober and I came to believe and the difference between come to believe and have faith so I'm going to refer to a back to my childhood I'm gonna this is just an analogy I mean when I was a kid I didn't have much money so uh when a kid doesn't have much money but he gets a car it's usually a piece of junk so I had a piece-of-junk car my parents bought me a car and it was it ran when it ran and when it didn't I couldn't afford to fix it so I do what a lot of people do I uh I learned to fix my own car, and that works to an extent, but I also formulated this idea, and I don't know where it came from, that auto mechanics are crooks, and it's one of those baby elephant ideas. I don' t know where it come from, and its not based in any experience or fact, but I couldn't afford them, so they must be crooks. Yet at some point, I've got this problem. I can't fix it, so I've got to go to an auto mechanic. So I'm like, man, I don't know what to do. Where am I going to take it? So I pick up the phone book. I see mechanics. I take it to the mechanic, and he diagnoses the problem, gives me a quote. I'm thinking, well, I have no idea. I don'T have any better solution, soI better go ahead and get my car fixed. I hope he's not a crook, and I give him my car, andhe fixes it. and he gives it back, and it works. Magic. At that point, I kind of get to the point where I think, well, maybe all mechanics aren't crooks. Maybe auto mechanics aren'T crooks? It introduced a new concept, kind of like when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a new concept. I didn't believe in God or a higher power, but I had, you know, I'm staying sober. I'm not drinking. Maybe. So time goes on and the car breaks down. I call up the same guy. I'm going to call him Travis just for, so I call Travis. Hey, Travis, I need my car fixed. And he says, well, bring it on in. I'm like, well I can't, it's broken. He has it towed, diagnoses it, accurate diagnose, fixes it, charges me a fair price. And I'm Like, wow, Well, Travis isn't a crook. I began to believe that Travis isn'Ta crook I go on and have a relationship with Travis for many years Every time my car breaks when it needs maintenance What have you I start taking it to Travis as a go-to solution I just start going. Yeah, so that's like Alcoholics Anonymous I start off going, I don't know. I start going in prayer. I start experiencing staying sober. It becomes my go-to solution. Just becomes that go-do solution. I don' t have to think about, well, I wonder if there's a God or if I should pray. I just start praying because I have experienced the presence of something power greater than myself. And that' s what I come to believe in. It's not a biblical representation. It's no longer, you know, a wizard, Gandalf. I always kind of pictured God as Gandalf with a long beard and a hat. And I don't know why. I don' t know where this stuff comes from. It's kind of like my auto mechanics thing. I thought God must look like a wizard. He does magic, right? Part of the Red Sea, he must have a hat . . . So anyway, I digress. I digress. So I'm living a sober life, and it's a life. I don't know if you guys have experienced living a sober life. A lot of you have. I know a lot of people have. I know many of you. And sober life means that you have good days and you have bad days. You have ups and you have downs. As a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've made some really bad decisions. I've done some really stupid stuff. and as a result of my stupidity I've had you know to clean up the wreckage of my own presence you know I mean it's crazy so uh there was at one point in my life I had gotten so crazy that I had done something so egregious I'm gonna drink you know I'm just gonna drink because I cannot stand my sober self i'm like oh my gosh this is crazy i i've done some i don't want to get into details but generally i was misbehaving i hear i am praying on one hand and misbehaging on the other hand and thinking that that this hand wouldn't know what this hand is doing and you when you do that you get caught in so unlikely ways and and i got caught and and you know, I'm just, my life's coming apart at the seams and I can't stand it anymore. So I'm going to drink. But before I do, I go to God. I go, God, I've made such a mess. I can'T stand this anymore. I'm JUST going to DRINK. You'VE got to understand, I'M getting no relief here. I GOT NOTHING. I knew that my sponsor used to say, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU'RE WILLING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR. I HAD NO IDEA TAKING RESPOSIBILITY WAS GOING TO BE SO HARD. I wouldn't have done it if it was going to be so hard. But, you know, now that I've done it, I made a bed hard. I got to sleep in it. But I think I'll sleep in drunk. I'm going to go get drunk first because I just can't even imagine living like this. And I get up and I walk out the door and I'm walking purposefully. And I'm feeling better already because I know. You don't even have to give me a six-pack. When I start going to the liquor store, I start getting relief. And I'm and I'm getting relief, I'm feeling better just knowing that I'm on my way to get drunk. And I run into my higher power. Now, at that point, it was another sergeant major in the Marines. And he puts his finger in my chest. He's where he's not supposed to be at a time he's not supposed To be there. And he sticks his finger in my chest and he says, private Hammons. Now I'm a private again because I misbehaved egregiously and I told you this is not good. So he puts his finger in my chest. Now, I have not drank in years and he has absolutely no reason to suspect that I would drink much less that I'm going to drink and that I am on my way to drink but he sticks his finger in my chest and he says if I so much as hear see or get wind of you drinking so much is one ounce of beer I'm going to throw you in prison for insubordination do you understand me that was my higher power I uh I said sir yes sir that's how I act that's why the way I talk to my higher power occasionally sir yes Sir and I and I turn around and I walk back into that that little room my little hobble at the time and And I fall on my knees, and I just start to bawl. And I say, God, please, please walk with me on this. I'm going to try to face all my repercussions with a shred of dignity. I know that I've made my bed hard, and it's going to be hard. Please walk with us. I don't want you to give me any special treatment. Just hear this prayer that at some point when this is all said and done, Whether I go to jail or not, I want to bear witness to your work in my life. That was my prayer. And I didn't drink. I didn' t drink. That was God doing for me what I couldn' t do for myself. And then I go, now I think I really believe in God, right? You know? And this is where we're kind of going full circle. We're going full cycle. I think and I really belief in God now, right. And fast forward another period. I don't know if it was another year or two years. I'm in Australia. This is my last God story because I've got about enough time for this one story. But I like this story. It really brings home my relationship with God. So I go to Australia, and I'm In Brisbane. Was it Brisbane or was it Melbourne? I don' t guess you guys really care. It was a long ways from Tampa. I was in Australia and I go to this Marine Corps gathering and it's a party and we're celebrating the 150th anniversary, maybe it's the 200th anniversary of Australia's independence. So they're having big parades and they're haven't you know stuff and we were in the neighborhood so they invited us over for a party. And I'm not drinking so they put me on duty and I get to watch people party and make sure they don't hurt themselves. And that's fine. I don't mind doing that. It's kind of an honor. I felt like I'm giving, I'm in the mainstream. I getと be part of and yet I can enjoy it and without being a total jerk. And you know, the party comes off good and after the party some of the chicks have been checking me out. They invited me to go to an after party. So I go to this after party and we're out in the outback now. We've left the city, and we're out in the outback, but we're at a bar, and people are still drinking, and I'm having soda, and I'm cool with it. It's kind of a fun time, and now I'm thinking, wow, these chicks are kind of cute. I think I can go with this. I Think I can roll with this, and then they invite me over to their house, and i'm like, aha, this is the payoff, right? So I go to her house, and we get to herhouse, and there's like 40 people there, and they're all drinking. And it's like, well, this isn't quite how I envisioned it, but okay, that's cool. And now we went to the outback to a bar, which is in a little thing in the out back, whatever you call them, a village maybe. And now we've gone from there out into the country. So we are like 50 miles from civilization in the middle of a desert. And I'm like, oh, crud. Wow. So it's cool, it's cool these are my people and uh they go you can't drink the water out here it's got methane okay all right well that's that's fine and we don't have anything to drink except for coke well coke's great oh but we're we used all the coke and mixed it with rum so all we have is rum and coke oh so I pray and it's late it's late I can just go to sleep but I'm thinking you know I'm gonna I'm thirsty I'm really thirsty God it would be okay if I just have one rum and Coke right because I'm thirsty and it is not like I'm going to get drunk on one rum and Coke and it you know you're with me you're not going to set off the phenomena of craving you're going to, you're going to be with me on this. So I'm like, I'm just going to have a rum and coke. Is that okay? And about that time, I hear a voice. I want to say it percolated up out of my consciousness. No, it was a real person saying, what the hell's wrong with you, man? And I'm like, what? You spilled my drink. I went, what you spilled my drink. It's the last drink in the house. I'm like, wow, chill out, man. It is cool. I will get a towel. So I walk off. I go to the kitchen and I get a towl and I come back and I clean up his spill, my spill, clean up my spill. And after I am done I'm toweling it up. I take the towel back to the kitchen, and I come back to enjoy my rum and coke. And there's an empty glass. Is that not God doing for me what I cannot do for myself? Thank you. That was like the epitome. That was the last time I had that, I wonder if I can drink. I wonder if it would be okay if I just have a little. Because God had done for me what I couldn't do for myself. And he did it in such a personal way, and he did it in a way that would only make sense to me. And that's what I think Sandy was referring to. That once I start turning my will and my life over to higher power and seeking a power greater than myself, whatever that is, take whatever experiences that you experience, they're authentic and they're personal to you and come to believe in that, and that is like concrete. That is like steel because now I'm not taking something that somebody said might have occurred, you know, in some past life. I'm talking about real stuff in my life that gives me hope, andthat hope is what gives me the courage to go on and take four, five, and six, seven, eight, and nine. That's the thing. Anyway, I want to really thank you very much for allowing me to fill in. I think it's a real blessing and an honor and I hope I was worthy to the task. Thank you very mucho.