The Accountability That Demanded His Behavior Change – Dick M.

good afternoon my name is Dick Martin and I'm an alcoholic everybody by the grace of God the actions of a and sponsorship I've been sober since September the 15th 1965 I'm very grateful for that today I the whole thing about staying sober as far as I'm concerned follows a principle And the principle that I believe in and I think it works and has always worked for me is one of sponsorship. And sponsorship is a thing of principle, not a thing of personality. A lot of people think it's a personality. There's a person who's got to be a sponsor. There's no personality involved. You have to have some big name band or whatever the hell it is to be your sponsor and so on. And that's not really true. And they think that you have to Have some sort a special talent to be a sponsor, and that's not true. There's no one in Alcoholics Anonymous that has any particular better skill at being a sponsor than you do. And the question is to be able to find the point and find the person that you can sponsor and that you can be of help to. Feel better now, even though my heart did stop beating for a moment. Well, when you sneeze, your heart stops beating, that's all. No big deal. But I forgot where the hell I was. It just blew my brain, but I think it's the thing that I have to learn is that it's quite possible that you can sponsor someone without being their named sponsor, and if you're new in AA or if you've been around in AA for a long time, that you can very simply be helpful to someone else. Just look for a newcomer. Look for someone's eyes that looked like a dog that got caught on the freeway or something and go up and talk to them, give them a little pat on the back. We all would be better served by doing that and being kind to someone because someone was kind to us. I think that's what sponsorship is basically about, But what I'm going to address my remarks to are not the generality of sponsorship, but the specificities of sponsorship in my experience. I have experience in two different ways. I have one of being sponsored, and I have the experience of sponsoring other people. And I've been an active sponsor ever since I've done Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not something that came on me all of a sudden when I was sober for a year or two years or ten years or whatever the hell it is. I began sponsoring someone directly as far as sponsorship was concerned shortly after I came into AA, and I'm not going to suggest to you that I was successful. I was successfully because I stayed sober. I'm no longer going to say that what I had to offer was successful for those people that I sponsored, however, because God doesn't allow people, when you first start sponsoring, God doesn' t allow you to have somebody that you can screw up. So the chances are that when you First Start sponsoring, just as I did, they're going to drink. And I can remember the first guy I sponsored was a guy named Roger. Roger was a lawyer. And I'm not sure whether he had a lot of money or his wife had a lot of mony, but one of them did. But he got kicked out of the house because of his drinking, and he was a relatively young guy. He was in his 30s, and he looked good. He looked kind of like a spanked choir boy. You know, he had just red cheeks, and he was Irish, and just had a big smile, and you know, just a bullshitter is what he was. And he was a good enough fellow as far as that's concerned, but he was one of these guys that I was living in Washington, D.C., and I suggested to him that he not drink a day at a time and told him a lot of other things not to do and told Him some things to do, and he did those things, and I guess he was sober for about six weeks, and he disappeared. I mean, he just disappeared. I didn't know where he was. He didn't call. He didn' t answer when I called him. He just flat-ass disappeared, and he came wandering back with his tail between his legs and I said, where the hell have you been? You know what happened to you? And he said, well, I got horny and I went over to Baltimore and he said you know I'm Irish Catholic and we just don't believe in adultery and think that that's wrong and I had to drink in order to have sex with this girl And I said, Roger, that's not really true. I said you know you can have sex without drinking and as a matter of fact you can even remember it and enjoy it more thoroughly perhaps even perform a little better and I began to realize that sponsorship doesn't have to do with necessarily walking somebody through the steps it has to do with that too but not alone you know or taking somebody through the book or whatever whatever you want to do an alcoholic synonymous but what what sponsorship really does is to help i think by being accountable to someone else i found when i was accountable to someone else in reality, and that I had to be honest with another person for the first time in my life. And this accountability was a demand on me then that my behavior change. And I had to change my behavior because I was accountable to somebody for the 1st time. And I believe that that accountability is the most important factor in sponsorship. For For the first time I found that there was somebody around who had my welfare in mind and they didn't have any emotional ties to me, that they were just doing it because someone had done it for them. As we talked this morning, you know, we're talking about doing something for fun and for free and freely giving what has been given to you so that you can keep what you have. That all sounds very cute and it sounds very A.A., but in reality, that's what works. I drank for a long time, or it was a long term for me. I drank 19 years. I came to A when I was 33 and 65, and 33 was pretty young at that time. The average age in Alcoholics Anonymous at that times was about 42 years. and it was comprised 95% men and 5% women and those were just about the ratio so AA wasn't then as it is now the face of AA has changed greatly over the period of going on 30 years that I've been in AA There was a lot closer sponsorship in those days, and there was a lot more 12-step work done. I had called the minister that I had gone to see a couple of times who was trying to be helpful to me. I told him I was drinking more and enjoying it less and maybe I would try that AA thing. I didn't want to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. AA was the last place in the world i wanted to go because it was filled with derelicts and bums and near-do wells and used to bees and has-beens and a few gray-haired little old ladies with blue tent who would lead us in prayer and hymns and you know and i didn't want to go there that's what i thought aa was and uh i that was the last place in the world i ever wanted to do and i mean that literally because I was a snob, and I felt that that was greatly beneath my dignity. And I really didn't want to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know anybody that was in AA, by the way. I didn'T even know anybody THAT I knew of that knew anybody that WAS in AA because AA was a much more closed, small, hidden, fearful society then than it is now. There were about 250,000 people in Alcoholics Anonymous worldwide when I came in. And so it was still a pretty fearful little thing. And the meetings were relatively small and there weren't as many meetings. In Washington, D.C., where I came into AA, in the metro area at that time, there were some 63 meetings a week. And that's a metro area of some, probably the population of the area was a million and a half or something at the time. And unlike it is today, well, after I've been sober for, I guess, about five years, I remember looking at the where and when, and there were at least 63 meetings a night. It just all of a sudden burgeoned. And Alcoholics Anonymous grows, and groups grow because of sponsorship. If there's a strong sponsorship ethic, then you have a good, strong, large numbers of people that are staying sober. And you have people that have been sober for periods, long periods of time. And people who stay active in Alcoholics Anonymous because of sponsorship. By the way, I feel in talking about sponsorship, and people know that there's sponsorship going to be talked on, the people who go are people who are already sponsored the people Who Go are people who are Already Sponsoring Other People and it's almost like talking preaching to the choir for Christ's sake you know as much about it as I do sadly the people who aren't here are the ones that need to hear what we have to say and that's the way that is that's always been and that is the way it's always going to be because they feel other people feel that, well, they're not sponsors and therefore they don't want to be embarrassed or whatever the situation is. People don't realize that we have to take the action. We just put one foot in front of the other. And if we put one feet in front of another, just take the smallest sort of an action, then that begets another action. And we can continue to go on and pile them on top of each other. But Roger never did stay sober, by the way. The next time I saw him he was in the Washington Hospital Center in the nut ward, and I saw him there by accident. I didn't know he was there. I went over there to see someone else, and that was going on a pigeon hunt, and that wasn't – nut houses are a good place to go to find newcomers. I don't know whether you know that or not, but they really are. And I was with my sponsor and went on a pigeons hunt. As I mentioned before, I had called this minister and said that I was drinking more and enjoying it less. He said he wanted to go to this AA thing. He said that he had someone in the parish who was a member of AA and he would get him in touch with me. He got this fellow named Kelly in touch and Kelly says, I don't think I can be of much help to you so I've gotten my sponsor. sponsor was a fellow named Buck Doyle. And by the way, Kelly was right. I later went to meetings with Kelly and he said, you know, I never understood. He said, I took all the steps in two days and I never misunderstood all the difficulty that everybody has in AA and talking about these steps all the time. You know, they just go on and on. Of course, he had a drink of wine occasionally too, we ended up discovering. And sadly he died drunk. He never got the idea that you're just not supposed to take that first drink one day at a time. But I was put in touch with this fellow named Buck Doyle and Buck was a, he looked like a retired Irish cop and he didn't have any neck and he was overweight and he was kind of florid and he kind of acted like a retired Irish cop as a matter of fact. He did a lot of pointing and this pointing had to do with his finger in my chest a lot because that's the way he did it I mean he would literally do that everybody has heard of people who did that but he literally did that and he used to poke me right on my sternum which was not a good place to poke me at that time because I had broken my sternum. I'd gotten in a terrible fight, and somehow or another my sternrum was broken, and he would punch it, and it would hurt. But by God, I wasn't going to let him know it hurt. I'd just tough it out, you know, and he'd... And he was not... He was a very gentle, loving guy, and he really was. He was always very gentle with me, And he told me the things that I needed to do, and he was always honest with me. Peggy was talking about, mentioned the phrase brutal honesty this morning, and I don't think there is such a thing as being brutal and being honest because I think being honest is the kindest act that we can perform, and he Was always honest With me. And he Told me right from the very beginning that he Was going to be honest With me, and he expected me to be honest with him. And as far as I know, he never lied to me. And I never lied to him. I didn't have to. And he told me about him. And I was 12-stepped in very much of a traditional sense of the word. He asked me to meet him, and I met him at the corner of Fox Hall and Reservoir Roads in Washington, D.C. and he took me to a meeting out in Silver Spring, Maryland and my first meeting was a service meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and the area chairman a fellow named Ernie the attorney in AA he's still active and still sober and Ernie was talking about the structure of Alcoholic Anonymous and general service structure and so on and so forth and they showed a film strip something like Circles of Love and Service that night and I remember that and uh but i also remember walking across the parking lot going into that building and it was a community center and i it was made of stone granite and uh i can remember walking across and it wasn't uh cold drizzly september evening and i thought to myself my god look look at what you have come to you know look at look at What happened to you? Look at what you have brought yourself to. And just as an observation, I was not feeling sorry for myself. I was just observing what I had come to. I'd come to the last place that I ever wanted to go because I didn't want to go and associate with these people. And I remember walking down the steps into this basement of this community center and there was a guy standing at the door and he stuck out his hand And he said, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. We're glad you're here. And I remember distinctly him saying that. And I was very impressed. I was really very impressed because, frankly, I was not wanted a lot of places. Most places I was not wanted as a matter of fact. I wasn't wanted by the police even you know I mean nobody nobody nobody wanted me and I wasnít wanted in my home I wasnít wanted at work I just wasn't wanted anywhere I mean the guy said welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous we're glad you're here. It gave me a feeling of comfort, it took away the feeling of dis-ease that I had and I went in there and Ernie was talking or he began to do his talk and said his thing and it was it was of interest to me and I felt good about being there. I felt like I was in the right place. I I felt like it was perfectly okay for me to be there. I no longer felt ill at ease, I just felt okay. I mean that, I really felt okay about the whole thing. I'm not sure today that I would have sense enough to think about taking a newcomer to a service meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as their first meeting. I would rather think that, well, I want to take him where some speaker was talking that I knew what he was going to say so that this guy could hear the right words. But Alcoholics Anonymous is a very odd place because what's in Alcoholics Anonymous it doesn't make any difference where it is. It doesn't what the circumstances are, whether it's a service meeting or a roundup or a convention or an area meeting or something like what I'm doing right now. It really doesn't make any difference because a newcomer can feel at ease because they're not challenged to feel ill at ease. We don't really care where you come from. I was told it didn't make any difference whether I came from Yale or jail, and I can remember that. And the only thing I can remember is the idea that what I ought to do is to just not take that first drink. After this meeting was over we went to a hot shop, kind of a coffee shop, and sat there and I remember eating a hot fudge ice cream. I had a piece of hot fudged ice cream cake with marshmallow on it. That's the first time I'd had anything like that in years and I really thought I was going to puke to tell you the truth but I didn't but I did somehow or another my sponsor told me that I ought to eat sweet things because it gave me a physical sense of well being he says you feel like you've got to have a drink he said eat something sweet he says you're not a diabetic are you and I said no I'm not a diabetic and he said fine he said you just do that I did that, and I went up, went for about 160 pounds when I was brand new. In about six months, I weighed 208. God. And I've been eating sweet things ever since and keeping under 208 ever since. And it's a struggle. but uh my buck told me that he would uh he would go out of his way to do do things for me that no one else would do and he said i will do this because i want you to get and stay sober i want to have an opportunity of staying sober just like i did and uh he said that although it may seem to you that i am in a superior position to you He said, I'm not really. He said because someone else was able to help me only because they had the experience in being able to stay sober. He said I know how to do something that you don't know how to do. He says I know the same thing that you do, I know how to drink but he said I know something that you don' t know how to do and that's how to not drink and be comfortable and I'll give that to you. And he was sober for twelve and a half years at that particular time. And he was very capable of delivering that message to me on how to stay sober comfortably, because I didn't know how to do that. And you know, that's what AA is all about. AA is not about not drinking. AA is about staying sober. AA ist about staying not taking that first drink. AA is about keeping on with life, keeping going and it's not about not drinking. AA about being sober which is an entirely different prospect. I learned that that's what I had to do. I had to be responsible for my life and I had to be responsive from my sobriety and I learned that I could stay sober the rest of my life. All I had to do is to maintain the attitude that I had one of being having some gratitude for my life and having some gratitude for being sober and having some gratitude to my sponsor who taught me these things and I think that what he became to me was a great teacher because I didn't know how to act in alcoholics and I was maybe you know maybe I was a little bit idle brain, but frankly when I came to AA I was incapable of making a decision by myself. I really just didn't know how to do that. I was afraid because I'd made so many bad decisions and I was grateful that Buck was willing to make those decisions for me. And I'd been in AA for three or four days and I'd done what he had asked me to do. I went to meetings every day, spent a lot of time calling him and talking to him and he asked me that I call him every day and that I go to a meeting every night for six weeks and he said i want you to go tomorrow we're going to go the aa business men's lunch and the aa businessman's lunch in washington is still going on and uh what it is is a bunch of guys who get together and sit around and talk about sex and politics and everything else that they don't understand and we just had a good time it's not It wasn't an AA meeting as such. It was just people who got together. There was nothing formal about it as far as AA was concerned, but we just got together and were people who were sober and who were staying sober. And sometimes we talked about AA, those sorts of things, but other times we didn't. And I found that AA then could be... had a social aspect to it. It had a fellowship aspect to IT that I didn't think it would. and that I was able to be with these guys, and I found some peers and some people who lived in the same strata of life that I wanted to or that I did, whichever the case may be, and I felt comfortable with them. So he taught me that AA is comprised of really the fellowship and the program. The program is the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the fellowship is everything else. What we're doing in here today has to do with the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It has very little to do with the program of Alcoholic Anonymous because I'm not going to talk to you about the steps and what I've done with those things. But he taught me that if you believe in AA, carry the message and act like it. Act like it, you like AA. He said you may even become you maybe even get to the point where you become a good member of AA if you act like it, you're a member of AA. And he said, what you have to do is to make AA important to yourself. And he says, AA really has to be the most important factor in your life. And I thought, well, what about work? What about my kids? What about the taxes I owe? What about this? What about that? And he told me very simply, he said You know, without AA, you are not going to be able to stay sober. And I knew that because I had not been able to stay sober up to that point And I was in AA for a few weeks, and I look back and I've been sober for a few weeks. And this was working. And AA is one of those things, as far as I was concerned, that was not dogmatic. It was not thou shalt not. It was you can do these things and you can stay sober because we have done these things, and we have stayed sober. It's very pragmatic. and the pragmatism of Alcoholics Anonymous was given to me by my sponsor he said this is what I've done it works why don't you do it and this is the experience he shared well I will share with you my experience strength and hope share our experience strength and open that's what we do in AA he says I'll try to help you and he says I don't know the answers to anything He said, you're going to have a lot of questions and I don't know the answers to any of them. But he said, what I will do is I will give you actions that you will take so that you can find your answer. And he said, I will make sure that you're in the solution. And if you're in the solution, you are going to find your answer. And that's what he did. He didn't have answers for me. He provided a solution. He provided the method for me to get in the situation so that i could find my own answers because we don't know the answers for other people i don't know how to live your life i only know how to live my life every human being is different we all have different intellects we have different we live in a different environment we live in different homes we live and we have different emotions we have different colors and different tints to the whole world. Everybody is a little bit different and we see things a little but differently and so we have to get into the solution to be able to find out a piece here and a piece there and a peace over here and we can put that together and it can become our answer for us, the answer that we need. That's why we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous If I was capable of translating Buck said to me the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous the true way the true and only way in that you could understand them that would be one thing but he said I can't and he said nobody can I thought that that was kind of interesting he'd been sober for a long time and I didn't see why he couldn't he said the purpose of meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous is that's where we take newcomers so they can be 12-stepped it needs everybody I need to hear what everybody has to say so that I can come to understand the steps the way I understand them, the traditions the way I understand them and that sort of thing so you take a little bit of what this guy says and a little but of what this gal says and you put that together with your own intellect your own emotions, your own environment your own life your own experience and you can find an answer for you And that's what he did. He guided me to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous wherein the solution lay. He taught me all kinds of things that I had to do. He taught мне that I should respect Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, you know, to you, Dick, because you don't go to church, Buck was a Catholic and he went to church every Sunday. He said, but to you, because you don't go to church, AA is going to be your church. Because AA and God are synonymous. They mean the same thing. And what you have to do is if you go into church, you're not going to wear a hat. You're going to dress appropriately. You're gonna look decently. And he said, when you come to AA, I expect you to do the same time. And you have revere what's here. You have to have the responsibility to look at AA in the proper fashion and to make it important. If AA is important to you, act like it's important to you. If AA isn't important to you, dress like it is. If it's not important to you, then don't dress like it's important to you. If it is important to you, dress like it's important to you. That's why we go to picnics and we wear t-shirts and shorts and you know those sorts of things we go to an aa meeting we try to wear i mean in in the ethic in which i believe that i belong we wear a shirt that has a collar on it no big deal but it's just a little something isn't it it's just a Little something just a Little indication that i care that i Care about where i am it's not formal it's informal but it's paying attention and it's putting some importance to it i'm not going to go swimming or jumping or leaping what i'm going to do is i'm gonna go to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous so i look appropriately he taught me he said when you get behind the podium of alcoholic synonymous if you know that you're going to be able to do that you wear a coat and tie and he said maybe the only reason why you're gonna wear a coating tie is not to do anything because maybe there's going to be some newcomer out there that doesn't have a coat and tie. And he may not be able to understand or feel the word that you say, but he'll be able to say to himself, you know, maybe if I stay sober I can get some threads like that myself someday. You know, it gives them some hope that they can do it too. And he told me that I have to carry that message. I haveと carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous that i have to start meetings you know i have to begin meetings i have to show up on time i have to be there before they start and stay there afterwards pick up my own chair and somebody else's and be willing to clean up the ashtrays and the coffee cups and so on so forth and to do those things find if if there's something on the floor pick it up and put it in the trash you know take care of take care of where you live remember you're a guest wherever you are and act like you're a guest and try to leave the place a little better than it was when you got there. He taught me that I was supposed to honor an AA request. He said, an AA quest is not going over to your sponsor's house and raking leaves or cleaning out the garage. He said you may want to do that for your sponsor and you may not want to doing it for your sponsors but you may do it because you want to it for you sponsor because your sponsor is going out of his way to do things for you. But that's not an AA request. An AA request is when you're asked to speak or do something or perform some service in Alcoholics Anonymous at a meeting of Alcoholics Aenomalous or at a function of Alcoholic Aenonomous. That's what an AA Request is. And never say no to an AA Requests unless you have another commitment. And if you have Another Commitment, then obviously you say, No, I can't do that. I have Another Commission. he told me that all of my good friends would be in Alcoholics Anonymous I can remember him saying that that Saturday night at the Annandale meeting I can remember him telling me that and I was thinking to myself well that's fine for you Buck you're obviously a fanatic laughter I'll have a lot of other friends other places I didn't have any friends anywhere but that's what I thought to myself and I want you to know that all of my good friends are in AA and they have been almost really from the time he said that and he said that those people who are not consistent and join in the fellowship and the responsibilities of Alcoholics Anonymous don't stay sober and he said you have to pass that on to other people to let them know that they have to participate in their own recovery and they haveと make sure that they're going to provide a vehicle for someone else's recovery. And if they do that on a continued basis, they're gonna be able to stay sober. I learned that in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in chapter 7, it's in reference to working with others, it says practical experience shown us that nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics this works when all other activities fail this is our 12th step carry this message and I really believe absolutely what that says I have been an active AA member ever since I came into AA because of sponsorship I've been guided in the direction to help other people. AA is not a self-help program contrary to what you may have heard, but it's a help others program and I was taught that right from the very beginning I was taught to come early and set up the chairs at a meeting stay late and tear it down and leave it a better place than what it had been and uh i uh it's kind of nice to go to a place really where you can be of help and you can always be of health to someone else being of help it's a pain in the ass sometimes but uh what it really is is a way for me to get out of me if i'm helping you i'm not thinking about me and when you sponsor people and they're listening to their petty little problems just prior to that time of course you were thinking about your petty little problems but the advantage of it is when you're listening to their petit little problems you're not thinking about your own petit little problems and it's really kind of nice to use your freedom from yourself that's what helping others is all about that we're giving freely so that we can get freely We give freely so we can have the freedom from our own minds. And that's what it provides. He said that as a sponsor, he said, I'm going to suggest some directions for you to take. And he said I really expect you to tell me what you're going to do. And he says we're not going to argue about them or negotiate. We're not gonna discuss them. He said I just want you to just do what I ask you to do and I'm not going ask you anything that I'm willing to do or have not done myself. I thought, well, that's reasonable. And so, and I knew when he told me that that he was telling me the truth. He was not lying to me. He really meant what he said. He's not going to ask me to do something that's wrong or something that is illegal or immoral. And I knew that he would, I just knew that. Intrinsically, I knew that he wasn't going to mislead me in any fashion. And I know that he wouldn't. And that gave me a feeling of comfort. And he said, you know, you can't do this thing by yourself. He said, coming into Alcoholics Anonymous, you admitted by going to your first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous two things. You admitted you were powerless over alcohol and that you admitted that your life was unmanageable. He said otherwise you never would have come here. And he says, so what you need is a new manager and he'd be your manager. And I thought to myself, how can AA manage my life? And, you know, I had thoughts like that. I never said them out loud, but I had thoughts likethat all the time. And he said, until you come to understand Alcoholics Anonymous, he said I'm going to be your sponsor and I'm gong to tell you what to do so that you can understand AA. He said, that's what I'm here for. My job is to translate for you so that you can understand Alcoholics Anonymous because it's a new place. And so he became a translator. He told me what AA meant as far as he was concerned, and he told me in a principled way. He never misguided me. He never gave me misdirections. He really did that, and He told Me what I should do, told Me the actions that I should take so that I could come to understand. he told me not to drink he said don't take that first drink and he says don't take any mood altering drugs or smoking those funny little cigarettes with no names on them he said because if you do that we can't help you he says that's something that only you can do only you can stop drinking we can' t stop drinking for you and he said if you can do that we will provide you with the comfort so that you can keep on doing it for the rest of your life we will remove the barriers to sobriety and that's what he did he removed one by one the barriers to subriety so that i could stay sober the barriers that i had in my mind that would have prevented me from staying sober he uh he taught me that uh there weren't any dumb questions in aa they're only dumb actions and i could ask him any question and he wouldn't make fun of me he lied about that one he did make fun but he you know he talked he talked to me about drinking dreams he talked to me about the fact that my skin was going to itch. He talked me about the fact that he knew that I had some form of peripheral neuritis which is whiskey legs and that I was going to get over that in time if I would stay sober. He said that you're physically going to be in better condition and you're going to feel better physically in a relatively short period of time he says if you don't drink and if you eat you're going to be okay and you have to get some rest they taught me not to get too hungry angry lonely or tired he said when you get hungry you get mean and when you got angry you end up feeling very you set yourself up set yourself up so that you end up feeling so isolated and when you when you get lonely it feels like well my today's sponsor he says sometimes it feels they have always they're always invited to the party and i'm not they're going somewhere and having a good time but i'm going to be all by myself and that sort of loneliness and uh when you're tired i think He goes, when I'm tired, I'm not very tolerant of other people. And I get this attitude that what God wants me to do is to take an Uzi and kill him. To tell you the truth. It's like, get out of my way! But he discovered that I was willing to do what he asked me to do and so he gave me things to do. And as I was willing to participate in my own sobriety, he was willing too participate. And he said, I will care for you until you can learn to care for yourself. And He did. He cared about me until I learned to care. Once I learned to care about myself, He gave me the responsibility of caring about myself. I had to take care of me. I was responsible for getting to the meetings, I was responsible for looking into where and when and seeing when and where the meetings were and being there on time. He was no longer going to be the one that was going to directing which meeting I was going when. That I had an intellect and I could select that meeting. And he said what you should do is take a a group conscience now he said in aa a group conscious what we do is we take a vote and see what people think and he said but you don't have to do that he said what you can do is you can take a group consciousness and you look around at the people who are successful in alcoholics anonymous and do what they do follow the winners stick with the people who are successful in Alcoholics Anonymous. He did not talk about success in relationship to money, property, power, or prestige. He talked about success in the area of a spiritual success where a person was comfortable in their life, where they were living a good life, where the guys were good husbands, where the gals were good wives. He said do what they do. Listen to them. Stay with them. and stay away from the others because they're like a rotten apple in a barrel and if you stick with the losers, you're going to end up being a loser yourself. And he said, sponsor losers because you have something to give to them because you can have a winning attitude to give it to them and so they can be winners. he taught me not to look at AA through my fly which is interesting because I kind of always looked at my life that way but he said that isn't the way to do it he said when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous you're there for spiritual relief not sexual relief And he said, it wasn't long. I was just standing in a line of newcomers and this old-timer came along and plucked me away and asked me to marry her and I was weak and heavy laden and I said, oh, okay. When are we going to get married? And she said, well, what are you doing next week? So, yeah, you did. But I was a willing newcomer. Always willing to do what the old-timers said. My sponsor told me that I wasn't supposed to make any decisions or any major changes without talking to him first. He didn't say for a year. He said without talking to him, without talking to him first. She asked me to marry her. I mean literally. what am I supposed to say how can I answer such a question I can't answer that question I said well I don't know I have to call Buck Buck was in Dallas, Texas and his luck would have it I knew where he was I knew what hotel he was in and I called the hotel and I asked for his room and he was at some AA conference down there and uh i told him i was thinking i said buck i'm thinking about getting married and of course i'd already made a commitment to get married but i didn't think i had i said i'm Thinking about getting Married he says who are you going to marry he says Peggy and i said yep and he says well that's okay she's been sober longer than you have that was not good direction i would prefer to suggest to you that you not marry someone who's been sober longer than you have. It's not easy being a newcomer all the time. I mean, I've been a newcommer ever since I met her, for God's sake. I have to get her a cup of coffee every morning, take it into the bedroom, which I do. So it isn't easy being a newcomER, but it is possible. Every now and then they pipe up and they say things and you think to yourself i mean i've said to peggy every now and then how sober can you get for god's sake they get very serious from time to time those old timers do she doesn't even have hemorrhoids and she looks she looks at me like she has hemorrhodes though that's the way old timERS are you know but uh he said that that was okay and he said but there's something i want you to know and I want you to know this right now. He said, when you stay at home at night and you talk about the 12 steps and you talked about the twelve traditions, he said that's not AA. He said AA is held in church basements and he said when you go to an AA meeting you go and you be with your friends and let her go and be with her friends and if it's a discussion meeting you don't sit at the same table where she sits You sit at a different table because you will intimidate each other, you will try to impress each other or you'll be afraid to say something. And so as a consequence it really makes sense to do that. We oftentimes take two cars to go to the same meeting because I sometimes stay later than she does. Sometimes she stays later than I do. We have someone we're sponsoring, we have some dealings with. So he taught me to do tha. and he said if you're going to stay home and talk about the steps and the traditions and the big book he said you think that's AA you're wrong he said AA is in church basements he said what you do at home is ass to ass it isn't AA and that makes sense to me today because I've seen that to be very true and what ends up happening to people who do that by the way they end up getting very spiritual and they say, well, we go to family meetings. We're always there together and we goto our family meeting every week and our AA meeting. It's an open AA meeting and wego to that. And the rest of the time we talk about AA every day and God is in our lives. They become so spiritual that they're no earthly good to anybody. I mean, they just get so far up here and they're just so wonderful. You've seen them and I've seen him too. You know, beware of the wonderful people in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the only thing I can say. Beware of them because they'll lie about everything else too. There's nobody that's wonderful in AA or anywhere else. We're just human beings. He said there are two times to go to meetings. He says you go to meeting when you want to and when you don't want to. And I said, well, that means I have to go to them all the time. And he said, yes, until you know the difference, dummy. Gradually, I found out what the difference was. And I'm not going to tell you because it has to be your experience. You have to know when to go and when not to go. I can't tell you that. And that's what he told me. You haveと learn that yourself. He says, I can' t tell you thаt. And I've found what's comfortable for me. And I averaged four meetings a week, and I have for years. At first, I went to a meeting every night, and I went through a meeting ever night for a long time. And gradually, one week, I didn't go to a A meeting, and my life seemed to be okay. And so I went the six meetings a weekend, and then I went five, and then went to four. And four is just about right. He told me, he said, if you go to one meeting a week the chances are you're not going to be able to stay sober because you're going to depart the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. You can't be in the fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous by going to one meeting a week. And he says, you can go two meetings a week and probably stay sober. You can go to three meetings a weak and probably end up feeling pretty good about yourself. But if you go to four meetings a week you will continually grow. And I found that for me to be true. I found that being an Alcoholics Anonymous, contrary to what I had believed when I got here new, was one of those things that I had a desire to do. And I built a desire to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous purely and simply based on the fact that I began to know and like and respect the people that were in AA. And as I got to know them and like them and respect them, there was something else that I wanted and I wanted to be like they were. I wantedto emulate them. I wantedtobelikethosepeoplethatirrespected. And I looked at them and they were sober. And all of a sudden I had a desireto stay sober. The desire to stay sober did not come at first. He taught me, because I was lonely, I had just gotten a divorce, and he said, you know, the thing for you to do is to become the best AA member that you can. And he said if you become the Best AA Member That You Can, what's going to happen is that she will come along and you don't even have to look for her. She'll just show up. And that has been my experience and the experience of the guys that I sponsor. You know, everybody has to take a lonely walk sometime. And when we're new in AA, we've got to take that lonely walk. But we're never really by ourselves. We are sometimes lonely, but we are never alone. And he taught me that I never had to be alone again because there's always someone around for me to be with. There's always another human being or in time you will discover some solace and comfort and some power greater than yourself. He said, but in the meantime, until you can accept some power greater than your self, as far as you're concerned, I'm God. And I thought, huh, that's kind of odd. You know, what I did was I turned my life and my will over to the care of Buck as I understood him. you may think that that's wrong and I had people tell me that was wrong and I said no I am right this is the right thing for me to do and I'll tell you right now if you're new I would much rather you put your faith in someone that you believe in and truly mean it than to put your faith into something that you really don't believe in and don't mean so don't be afraid to have a sponsor that you put your faith in that you can put your life in their hands they're not going to hurt you they're no longer going to harm you they're going to not hurt you at all I gradually what happened to me in AA is that I I'd stayed sober and I moved out of town a couple of times moved to different towns and moved to Hagerstown, Maryland of all God-forsaken places and got active in AA there. Peggy and I were up there and helped to start the first Maryland State AA Convention. And we always went to a lot of conventions, a lot o' functions, and were involved in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And in being that, we always took those people that we sponsored along with us so that they could be exposed to the same things that we were exposed to, which gave us a commonality and gave us something to talk about and it gave Peg and I something to talk about. And it gave me something to talk about with other members of Alcoholics Anonymous and still does yet today. I didn't go out and try to see how many people that I could collect up. I never have attempted to do that. I told you earlier that I sponsor 60 some odd guys and And that is that I actively sponsor and talk to 60-some odd guys a week about sobriety, and I do that today. And I've done that—I've had that number of people for some time. And it's not a burden to me most of the time. Normally, unless I was talking about sponsorship, I wouldn't tell anybody how many people I sponsor. I've been asked that question, and the answer that I usually give is sometimes one too many sometimes one short and that's the best answer I can give but I want you to know something you might think well he's an old-timer and he's got all those people that he's sponsoring and I don't know how the hell he does it you know what kind of crap I don' t know how I do it either I don''t really care I just do it but I think that the nice thing about it is that my doing that allows me to stay sober and maybe I sponsor the number of people that I sponsored because I'm sicker than you are think about that it may take a little more for me than it does for you I don't know but I do know this it works for me because I don t think of me very often I don' have much time to think of me and I'm very grateful for that I think if I was going to pass along something in Alcoholics Anonymous. It would be the fact that I think that I was taught, and I've tried to teach others, that I've got to do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm gonna do it. If I tell you that I'm going to be at Jason's for lunch at 12 o'clock, then by God I better be there at 12 O'clock. I better do what i say that I am going to do. My whole life was based on the failure to do and to be where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. I was always somewhere else. In my mind I was somewhere else I could be there physically and not be there mentally or I could not be there at all, physically even but if you always show up and do what you say you're going to do and you say you're doing it and you're going to do it and be where you say you're going to be when you're going to be there do what you're supposed to do when you're there then you'll be comfortable and I know that that's an oversimplification perhaps but he also said that what I should do was aside from showing up is to stick close to my friends be a friend to them and stick close to them and if you stick close to your friends you're going to end up staying sober because they're staying sober. You're going want to be doing what your friends are doing. And be accountable to your sponsor. As time went on, I moved out of Washington, D.C. area and I moved off to Bellevue, Nebraska. And I called Buck on a regular basis. Buck and I became very good friends. And the sponsorship pigeon relationship kind of disappeared. and I felt that what he was doing when I had some question in my mind how I was supposed to do something in my life it seemed to me that what he was giving me a very self-serving sort of a direction that he was suggesting that I do what was comfortable for me to do and I would almost invariably do the opposite to what he said and I wouldn't be able to and I'd end up feeling good about doing that And I didn't know what to do about that, but I really didn't have a sponsor. And I knew that I really didn'thave a sponsor I had a sponsor in name only. And I began to feel uncomfortable because I was sponsoring these other guys. And the discomfort that I ended up feeling was one of not knowing exactly what it was, but perhaps I can describe it to you by saying it was like being in a dark room and not being able to see it all and reaching out, knowing that something was out there but not being unable to touch it. And that's what that discomfort was, not knowing what it was that was quite wrong. I finally determined that I needed a little better discipline in my life and I needed some better ethics in my wife not that I was living badly or not that i was living poorly or not the I wasn't being a good AA member because I was to the best of my ability. As a matter of fact, I was a chairman of the intergroup. I was the DCM. I was active in the state committee. I was PI chairman. I was actually running Alcoholics Anonymous at the time. And I was doing a very good job of it, I want you to know. And I also want youto know that there has been no one who has done it as well since, and I mean it. with the exception of my wife. She ran the intergroup for a couple of years, and she did a very good job, but not as good as what I think. They liked her a lot better than they liked me. But so I've always been active in AA, and I've also been active and I always had a sponsor in AA. But I felt this discomfort, and I knew that I ought to do something about it. and there were two people that I've gotten to know in Alcoholics Anonymous. One was an old-timer who lives in Moorhead, Minnesota, whom I respected very much, and I knew that he had good ethics and good discipline, and one was a fellow that lived in California. And I didn't know which one I wanted to ask. It was one or the other as far as I was concerned, and I was asked to go out and speak in Sacramento, California, and I went over there to speak, or Yuba City rather. And I thought, well, when I do that, I said what I'm going to do is I'm going to catch a hopper plane and make a circuitous route back. And I'm gonna stop by in Los Angeles and I'm to go see my friend Clancy and go to the Pacific group on Wednesday night and I'll come on in. And so I got on the plane that morning to fly down to LA. And while I was on the airplane, I thought to myself, you know what I'm gong to do? Is I'm gunna ask Clancy to sponsor me. and the second thing that came to my mind was he is going to ask you to shave your mustache off because he doesn't sponsor people who wear facial hair and the third thing that came into my mind I don't really care what he asks me to do if he asks to shave my head I'm willing to do that I want him to sponsor me he has never said anything to me about my mustache and the reason for that is really very simple because I was willing to do anything that he asked me to do if he asked my mustache off which I've had for years and years I'd shave it off period I don't really care whatever he would want me to I will do whatever he asks me to and I don' have any qualms about it and I told him the circumstances and I asked him if he would please sponsor me And he said, yes. He said, I would be glad to. And he said, but I am no longer your friend. And I said, the hell you're not. The hell you are not. And he said, you do understand, don't you? And I said, yeah, I understand. And he is always my sponsor first. Always my sponsor first and secondarily he is my friend. And I'm glad that i made that change i said well what am i supposed to do about buck should i call him and tell him that i've decided to have another sponsor he said no dick he said i don't think so you have had this relationship for a long time why don't you just call him just like you always have we're not in this thing to hurt other people and that would just hurt his feelings and don't hurt him and i said okay and so i continued my relationship with buck and up until the time that Buck died. I went to Buck's funeral in Washington, D.C., and I did those things that I should do. Every year I sent Buck an anniversary card on his anniversary, which I'd always done. Every year, I sent a Christmas gift to he and his wife, which i had always done, and as a matter of fact, he's dead, and we still send Dolly a gift every year, and gratitude for what has been done for me and gratitude in turn what's been done for peg because it all worked that way every now and then i sponsor somebody whom i don't understand what the hell is wrong with them they're just goofy and i was reading a book one night and after i i'm going to read this to you and after i finish this i'm gonna quit i was writing a book and i read this page and i and peg was there we always read in bed at night, and I said, my God, look at this. It reminds me of so-and-so. And this is what it said. The borderline patient is a therapist's nightmare. During my training years before I decided to specialize in children, I treated more than my share of them and learned that the hard way. Or rather, I tried to treat them because borderlines never really get better. The best you can do is to help them coast without getting sucked into their pathology. Translate this into AA terms as I go along. At first glance, they look normal, sometimes even supernormal, holding down high-pressure jobs and excelling, but they walk a constant tightrope between madness and sanity, unable to form relationships incapable of achieving insight never free from a deep corroding sense of worthlessness and rage that spills over inevitably into self-destruction they're chronically depressed the determinedly addictive the compulsively divorced living from one emotional disaster to the next. Bedhoppers, stomach pumpers, freeway jumpers, and sad-eyed bench sitters with arms stitched up like footballs and psychic wounds that can never be sutured. Their egos are as fragile as spun sugar, their psyches irretrievably fragmented like a jigsaw puzzle with crucial pieces missing. They play roles with alacrity, excel at being anyone but themselves. They crave intimacy but repel it when they find it. Some of them gravitate towards stage or screen. Others do their acting in more subtle ways. No one knows how or why a borderline becomes a borderline. The Freudians claim it's due to emotional deprivation during the first two years of life. The biochemical engineers blame faulty wiring. Neither school claims to be able to help them much. Borderlines go from therapist to therapist, hoping to find a magic bullet for the crushing feelings of emptiness. They turn to chemical bullets, gobbling tranquilizers and antidepressants alcohol and cocaine embrace gurus and heaven hucksters any charismatic creep promising a quick fix of the pain and they end up taking temporary vacations in psychiatric wards and prison cells emerge looking good raising everyone's hopes until the next letdown real or imagined, the next excursion into self-damage. What they don't do is change. I think that we who have sponsored people have all had experience with people like that and we wondered what the hell was wrong with them and what or what was our weakness that we couldn't help them. And I think that all alcoholics, me included, are a little bit nuts or else we wouldn't be here in the first place. There's something wrong with us that's beyond our own help that we need some higher power for. And i think it has always been my sponsor's responsibility to guide me so that i'd have a better relationship with God and i think that that's what my sponsors have always tried to do i uh i still have a sponsor yet today i call him every week i called him this week and he uh this past wednesday afternoon and i have a i i that's committed time for me to call i do call him Every Week and uh the uh i call them at any other time that i need to and i spend time with with him when i can i respect him as much as i respect any human being in the world and i treat him that way if i respect somebody i treat them like i respect them and so i treat hem like i respect hem and life goes on probably in alcoholics Anonymous, the single most important part of my life is sponsorship. My being sponsored and my sponsoring other people. I am so grateful that I had an ardent sponsor and 12-stepper in my life who set me on the path. I hope that you have one yet today. Thank you. Thank you, Dick. Why don't we take about five minutes? I'll give you five minutes before Peggy comes.