The Disease of Denial and the Patient Who Must Make the Diagnosis – Tom B.

Thank you, Dick. Good morning, everybody. My name is Tom Ballway, and I'm an alcoholic. My God, there's a lot of you out there this morning. I haven't seen this many people assembled in one room since I suggested to my wife's family I was ready to make eight to nine sets of amends. and that was just a suggestion you can imagine how many of those vultures would have showed up if I'd have actually gone through with it forgive my breach of the 11th and 12th steps anonymity by telling you my name is Tom Ballway but Tom B spells tomb and I've had a slow recovery but come on guys not quite that bad Just a parenthetical observation before I get started. I was here last night for the meeting, and I thought that Vince just did an absolutely incredible job. I don't know whether Vince is here. Vince, I figured that's the only way I'd get any applause is to announce your name this morning. But I really thought he did an incredible job, and you get some sense. Vince, in fact, as he was going, and I knew I was going to be the speaker this morning, I thought, Vince, you really don't have to be that good. You get some sense of how effective the previous speaker is when the committee stations guards outside your room to keep you from escaping overnight and going home. One of Bill Wilson's favorite expressions were, memories are at flood time, and when Vince was speaking last night, he certainly took me back down some memory lanes and some of my early beginnings were somewhat analogous to his my first 12 years of education were in the Catholic Church with Dominican nuns I majored in guilt even today if I see a Dominican nun walking down the street my knuckles will start to bleed indeed. It's almost a spiritual experience, like the stigmata, you know? Now, I think in retrospect, and when you get to be my age, most things are in retrospect. I think in retrospect those gals did as good a job as they could given what they had to work with, and you'll know more about that in a few minutes. However, I don't believe everything they taught thought me was true. I have not as yet gone blind. Well, a hell of a lot of you have been there, huh? I'll tell you this, though. They don't ask me to do a lot of reading in my home group either, so... Well, so much for the spiritual side of the... At the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that my wife and I attended together and incidentally Giggles is here with me today and I'm glad she's here because if we don't kill each other on the way back to North Canton and if we stay together two more weeks we will celebrate 39 years of marriage together together. And let me assure you, everyone in the room had a lot to do with that. We have seven children together. I was compulsive in a number of areas besides the ingestion of alcohol. We had four boys and then finally three girls. My oldest boy is sober 14 years years in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's wow! I'll tell you. That's another miracle too. The first meeting that she and I attended in Alcoholics Anonymous was late in 1966, but I fooled around with the program, and I've been sober consecutively since February of 1968, so I've celebrated 22 years of sobriety this past February. Not that that has any relevance to anyone in this room with the possible exception to myself. But at that first meeting, and we nearly drowned the newcomers in love, and that certainly happened, and someone who was far wiser than I, and that didn't take much at that point in time, came up and said, you're not going to retain very much of what is said said to you tonight, and they were certainly correct about that. But they said, if you could retain something, Tom, if he could take something out of this meeting, what we would suggest or what I would suggest that you take is that you would remember that you were not a bad person trying to become good, but that you are a desperately ill person trying to become well. And then they said something to me that I thought was very interesting. They said, If you be alcoholic, and I remember that verb selection like it was yesterday, If You Be Alcoholic, they said then then you suffer from an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind resulting in complete spiritual deterioration. Now, I don't know whether I believed that. I don' t know whether accepted it. I certainly didn't understand it. But it certainly was something different for me to consider that possibly some of those crazy, bizarre, insane and sick kinds of things that had happened to me were not necessarily of my own volition or at least exclusively of my only volition. and that maybe this was some other dynamic besides what I thought it was, which was clearly a moral problem and then I was a complete and total failure in my life. After some period of time going home and thinking about that and pondering that and I couldn't get that out of my mind and I said the giggles and I don't remember why I called her giggles. I just hope the statute of limitations has run out and whatever it was. But I said to her, you know, you have been with me longer than anyone else. And isn't that an interesting thing that they advanced us to, that first meeting, that this alcoholism is a disease, that it's a disease? You've been with my all these years. Do you think from the beginning that I had this disease? And without a moment's hesitation she said, well if you haven't, you sure as hell have been a carrier. So much for any comfort I was going to get from that. But I share that with you now because the relevance for that to me today and then and perhaps through the years of my participation in the fellowship is the insanity that Wilson wrote about in The Second Step, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That insanity for Tom, I don't know what it is for you, but that insanity for me over time has been the total inability or the unwillingness to see the truth about myself. I've never had a good sense of who I am and who I was and what my responsibilities were were, and what it means to be a normal card-carrying, dues-paying member of society. But everyone around me knew, Joanne knew, and my family knew. This is a disease of denial, and I was certainly trapped in that disease of denial because I had no sense for that inability or that unwillingness to see the truth about myself. I had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I had to come into a form such as this, a body such as this, where a vehicle called group conscience would allow me to get some sense and get some touch with who I am and what my responsibilities are. And if I stray from here very long, this is also a disease where the mind rationalizes a way to take back the problem and let me believe that one of these character defects is behind me. Let me believe I understand something about this program. let me believe that I have worked a step and that will return and bite me in a very uncomfortable place that total inability the total unwillingness to see the truth about myself the thing that I've come to cherish and love and I'm far too cavalier about it, shame on me I'm way too cavalieri about the fact that I can come here and when someone says an alcoholic's anonymous to Tom how are you it is not a rhetorical question it means how are you because I care we care we both need to know how are your life really and it's ok to say I don't know it's Ok to say I'm angry it's OK to say I've regressed it'sOk to say I'm afraid it'sOK to say I'm confused how are You now I didn't have that in the experience with the ingestion of alcohol I like Vince know nothing about social drinking okay that is not to say that there were not some people with me when I was drinking but I I was so in love with myself so self-centered so ego driven that I didn't notice the people who were around me now I suppose in those experiences and cocktail lounges or beer joints or wherever the heck they were I suppose someone at some point in time probably said to me how are you just as as a social convenience or the normal social intercourse that takes place among people. How are you? And I had a pet answer, I'm fine. Thank you very much. I'm fine. I don't even know why the hell you'd ever ask that question. Mother says I was born fine and it's just gotten better every damn year. Since you brought it up, maybe there's one or two things I would change I hate my job I'm married to the wrong woman the Catholic Church is driving me nuts when I'm working I want to be on vacation when a vacation I want be unworked and when I married I want to be in love when I am in love I'm in deep shit trouble but outside of that everything is fine thank you very much by the way I did tell you I'm a medical doctor jet pilot parapsychologist and defrock priest, didn't I? Oh, I didn't? Well, I'm sorry, I didn't. Let's have a drink. Total inability, total unwillingness to see the truth about myself. Now, over time, as hopefully my inventories have become a bit more fearless and searching and moral, and I've examined that point, I don't know at that point in my social drinking whether my answer was was an out-and-out lie, an evasion, or whether I was just being facetious or being a smart you-know-what. But the point that has come back for me to consider over time is that in that answer that I gave, whether I understood it or not, I endorsed one of the fundamental concepts of the disease of alcoholism, and that is that I would be okay if external things were all right. That my well-being, my substance, my ability to function, to perform, were dependent on exterior things. And when the pressure was great enough that I had to consider that possibly there might be some relationship between my ingestion of alcohol and the things that were coming to me, my answer was always, yeah, we're going to deal with that after vacation, after we buy the house, after I get the next job, after the promotion, after the baby is born, after Christmas, after New Year's, ad nauseum. I thought when I came here that I was learning something about living one day at a time and my inventory suggested to me that I was living one day at a time then, living one way or another. One day at the time in bondage, denying the ability to be happy or productive or free because I thought it was dependent on external things. And those external things had to change and that kept me from looking at myself, aiding and abetting in the disease of denial where the patient has to make his or her own diagnosis. Isn't that a grabber? This is a disease where the patient has to make his or her own diagnosis. We can't be checked into a medical facility and have someone draw some blood or a urine sample or some of the specimens say, you're in, you're out, we don't know about you, drink a fifth and come back next week. By the way, I would have liked that kind of doctor. He'd have made a hell of a lot of sense to me. But the patient must make his own diagnosis and the nature of the disease is the total inability or unwillingness to see the truth about ourselves. I submit to you that's catch-22. too. I, who am blind, I am the victim, have to make this diagnosis. Isn't that amazing? Maybe that suggests why it took me so long to get here. And I denied that and I hated that. And if there was something in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, in that first 164 pages, that I rejected more categorically than the rest of it, and I rejected all of it at one time or another, but if there were something that I hated the most was Bill's analogy about the compulsive jaywalker. Do you remember that story? The compulsive jaywalker? That turkey walked in front of everything, you know. They'd put him in the hospital. He'd walk out and he'd walk in front of a train, a bus, plane, you know, all that type of thing. And I thought, my God, Bill, you must have been out of ideas that day. Or maybe you got into some of those other substances earlier than we thought, you you know. But as I look back, one of the things that characterizes my alcoholism is the fact that I continually picked up and petted the same snake and said, this time it won't bite. Total inability, unwillingness to see the truth about myself. Sometimes the deception was so great that it wasn't a snake, it was a stick. Other times it was not a poisonous snake. And other times it WAS a poisonous snake, but it won'T bite today. Total inability total unwillingness to see the truth about myself. Is that any different than that compulsive? I repeated over and over and over the same kinds of mistakes. And you wonder that we have to drink up so many opportunities and jobs if there is something that God will hold me accountable for. It's the many times that I brought promise. I brought a fresh start and it was going to be different. only to fail only to fail in the disease of alcoholism with the total inability and unwilling to see the truth about myself I was never alcoholic wasn't necessary to be alcoholic one of the great things about being alcoholic and not being able to see the truth about yourself is that you can identify with 20-20 vision all the other alcoholics in your world I had no problem at all identifying all the other alcoholics in my world. I knew exactly who the hell they were. And when you put the heat on me, I said, when I get as bad as him, I'll do something about it. When I got as bad at him, I found her. When I get bad at her, I went to another him. And except for the intervention of a loving God whom I didn't understand, these negative role models for me, if you will, negative role model of denial would have permitted me to die one week, one hour, one month before the alcoholic that I was comparing myself to. And I would have never gotten the license number of the truck that hit me. The total inability or total unwillingness to see the truth about myself. I was confused in a number of fronts on that area. I've shared with you that Giggles and and I have seven children together. And one of the things that I used to say to her to allow me to escape and do the kind of oblivion drinking that I wanted to do is I would say to Her, You and I are totally incompatible. Now, I submit with seven children that's probably a contradiction in terms because I don't remember ever seeing any stars over the house. But I say the things at most... It isn't going to be that kind of talk, folks. The things that motivate you bore hell out of me. You are content to stay here with these rugrats and these diaper pails and you get all excited about your ings, your washing, your cleaning, and that bores hell out on me. I've got to get out with creative, exciting, and dynamic people. And there's nothing creative, excited, and dramatic about this damn diaper pail. Well, after a few minutes she said, say, why don't you get the hell out of here? Which is precisely what I wanted to do in the first place. And so I would slam the door behind me, and alcoholic rationalization would begin, and I was planning my opening salutation to the bartender, which was clearly that this idiot threw me out of the house. Okay? Geez, now that sounds crazy today, doesn't it? You know, but it was kind of like the guy that murdered his mother-in-law. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know? And that's the way it was with me. Seemed like a good Idea! Total inability, unwillingness to see the truth about myself. And so I went out to find those creative, exciting and dynamic people. Do you have any idea where I looked for those creative exciting and energetic people? Yeah, damn right. Absolutely. I went to the kind of place, you'd have to paint it before you condemned it, you You know, those kind of places. You know? Parked in front of it, there were 12 Harley Davidson motorcycles and a clapped out 66 Chevrolet and that was the car you were driving. Okay? And I walked into those kindof places, dark, dank, dingy. Walked over and climbed up on a bar stool and I had no idea who was sitting on my left or my right and stared at myself in a back bar and said, let me have a doubleheader and a beer back. Bang, bang, bang. And I became creative, exciting and dynamic. I often became so creative, exciting, and dynamic that they threw me the hell out of there at about 2 o'clock in the morning. And then I would come home to Mrs. Boring. One of the characteristics of my disease of alcoholism is that my enemy of 7 p.m. was my friend of 2.30 in the morning when I had no place else to go. Those of you who are still awake have probably perceived that I'm a motor mouth. and apparently sometimes in those places where I had no business being I said some things that were unnecessary to have said and some people thought it would be clever to rearrange my head a little bit and do some kinds of unnatural things to me and I remember one particular episode just to give you some idea of this rampant insanity where I appeared on my porch at two or three o'clock in the morning never learned to carry a key and I was a god-awful looking mess. Blood was cascading down across my face, my jacket had been ripped, my tie was off and my glasses had been broken as someone had stepped on them when I was wearing them at the time. And I was just one hell of a looking mess, some apparition ringing the doorbell at three o'clock in the morning and my wife opened the door to let me in and I know what I wanted her to do, I wanted she to physically abuse me or at least mentally assault me, verbally assault me because I felt so ashamed and so guilty. So terrible. And I think I will go to my grave seeing the look that was given me that morning at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was a combination of fear and disgust and loathing. And she kind of just helped me into the house. And she said, I despair of you. you. I despair of you. Hear me, Tom Ballway. You're not going to quit drinking and I accept that. I have no problem with that. I've done everything I can do for you. I've prayed for you, I've talked to the priest, I counseled with people, I tried to be your friend, I try to be your wife, I'm trying to be the mother of your children, I have tried to be your lover. You don't care, you don't give a damn about me or yourself. So hear hear me, I accept the fact that you're going to drink, but my God, man, look at you. Look at the condition you're in. You know who's going to call the boss, and he isn't going to be you. You neither have the fortitude nor the ability to do anything about it, and I'll have to call. You're out running the streets, and you're gonna get killed out on those streets. So my God if you've got a drink, why don't you drink at home? I don't care if you bring it home in five-gallon pails. Why don't you drink at home? So I drank home for two weeks, and she said, why the hell don't your drink out? Now, my dear friends, we have just identified a very sick turkey, right? There's a really confused, screwed-up lady. She doesn't know what the hell she wants. Is there any damn wonder I drank the way I did? Damn lucky to be here this morning, wouldn't you say? You're excused, giggles. Okay? Uh-huh. Total inability, total unwillingness to see the truth about ourselves. You see, again, as the inventories perhaps have become a bit more fearless and searching and moral, I finally concluded that this lady had to do something without any mind-altering substance in her body requiring far more courage than I ever did in my life because what she had to doing is face the reality of the situation of watching a human being climb up on the Davenport with a fifth and an eight-pack of beer and through some metamorphosis called alcoholism watch some kind of a base animal being created in the face of the children. And what a tough decision. And better that he roamed the streets than we see this. Because you had to come face to face with the reality that an alcoholic never sees, the reality that my God if there isn't something else wrong with him then for better or for worse is always going to be for worse and this job that we desperately need to support these children is going to disappear and my dear loving God I'm married to a drunk total inability total unwillingness to see the truth about ourselves so she aided and abetted me in that inability to seethe truth about herself and that's how life went on erosion of values I spent 38 and a half years retired this March and through another miracle called Alcoholics Anonymous I've taken another position with one of my customers. Incredible that someone would want me at 61 years old to go do something else. Clearly through the vehicle of AlcoholicsAnonymous but that's another story. But I spent 38 and a half years with this company and during that drinking period my files were filled with the term he is an enigma. Who the hell is he? will the real Tom Ballway stand up I could work like crazy to get people to get the pressure off or to accomplish a certain amount and when I got to that point I would hear Peggy Lee's record is that all there is singing in the background and after I got there I didn't want it as a boredom threshold you know I'm bored 15 minutes no matter what I'm doing whatever I'm going and ecstatically happy about it but I want to change it in about 15 minutes. Total inability, total unwillingness to see the truth about myself. Erosion of these values, things that I had learned in my church, things that i had learned as a family member. I like Vince. If I came from a quote dysfunctional family, I don't know about that. Only one that seems to be dysfunctional is me. And that's okay too. Little by little, Because the book says cunning, baffling and powerful, but I always add one word, insidious. It will wait for you, it waited for me. These things that happened to me, all the erosion, the erosion of the confidence, the change in the personality, didn't happen overnight. It was gradual and progressive. Little by little, a company began stripping away things for me to do. As little by little they had no confidence in me. And I still couldn't see it. still I was totally blind to what was going on because of the total inability and total unwillingness to see the truth but I was kind of like a duck I woke up to a new world every day I just woke up to a whole new world every day and wondered wondered what was going to happen the only thing I knew with some certainty is it was going to be bad it was gonna be bad life went on that way if you can call that life little by little withdrawing sealing myself up some of the public drinking that I was doing is now sealing up in motels all by myself where no one can see me. I stopped talking about my drinking. There was one time that I could talk about my drink and talk about how much I could drink and as the disease progressed, I lied about that and hid from that and I retreated from that and life just went on and I couldn't see what was going on. I thought that I had an inalienable right and a duty to drink and I could plead at times rather eloquently that drinking was a necessary part of my existence. That drinking was a business and social lubricant and I had used it as a business and social lubricant. And the truth is, the truth came to me when I was sober in AA two years. I hadn't had a drink with a customer in God knows how long. And there was a good reason for that. The only thing I ever wanted out of drinking was oblivion. What I wanted was oblivian. If I can drink enough of it, you'll go away, I'll go way, we'll go all the way together. Okay? And one night I was entertaining a customer when oblivion set in and I fell into a plate of spaghetti. No one said, Jesus, he's fun to be with. God, let's bring him back next week and have lasagna and see what the hell happens. Nobody said that. What the wives said is, why the hell don't you stay away from that turkey? I think there's something wrong with that guy. And so I handled that the way I handled everything else. I lied about it. Okay? I lied about it from that point on I had blood in my urine urine in my blood sugar in my urine urine in my sugar and my blood pressure was high low non-existent it had to be something temporary because if I flew over lords and got cured I'd be drunk as a skunk and so I lied to everybody about that but I believed that I was using this as a business lubricant the total inability total unwillingness to see the truth about myself I thought that I was creative exciting and dynamic when the truth is That I was traveling in ever-diminishing concentric circles. There was no creativity, there was no excitement. There was nothing in my life. I brought nothing to a customer, I brought Nothing to my company. It would take me a week at times To get over a drunk. I can remember driving from Akron to Pittsburgh After a god-awful drunk And staying and shaking in a hotel For a matter of days Before I could just get on the phone And call a customer Not go see one. and this was the vehicle that was aiding me to be creative exciting and dynamic I thought that I was functioning on my job as a result of the ingestion of alcohol and the truth is I was about to lose my job and I never saw the total inability or the willingness to see the truth about myself paranoid totally paranoid every morning for about a year and a half before I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I opened the hood of the car If I could find it, I opened the hood of the car and looked for the bomb that the Mafia had placed in my car. How about that game? I wouldn't have recognized it if it had been sitting on the air cleaner. But I knew the Mafie was after it. By the way, that's interesting. I was out this morning about 5.30 jogging around the parking lot, and I saw all kinds of license plates out there. Easy does it, let go and let God, one day at a time, higher powered, and so on and so forth. what. And Vince, if you're here, there's one out there that says, text one. Okay? How is the guy? Okay. Now, but by the way, Vince, you're not paranoid if you know they're after you. Okay. And that's, and that's the way it was with me. I wasn't paranoid. I knew damn well they were after me. Okay, total inability, total unwillingness to see the truth about myself. And life went on that way, the erosion of values, and it would have continued and continued and continued, less and less opportunities, retreating farther from life, until a given Saturday. And I had constant visitors in my room in the morning, and those visitors were shame and remorse and guilt and humiliation, and most of all fear. Most of all fear. Fear was mounting and rising in me at a level that was just absolutely unbelievable. Sometimes I could identify what I was afraid of and there was some conscious reason to be afraid of it. And other times I had no sense, it was just an overall feeling of impending doom that would wash upon me. In the least expected times I have no control over this but it always visited me in the morning. And I would get up in the morning just if not shaking externally, shaking internally. If it's possible to a shake in your soul. And I think it is. And I did that for a long time. And this particular Saturday morning, I awakened that way. And I have never been that afraid. I have never been disenfranchised in life. I never knew with that certainty that my life was over. That if there had ever been any purpose, if there'd ever been any substance, if they're never been inequality, that they wrote it a long time ago and I didn't know why. External external things, certainly. But I knew that, and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to run. I want to run, I wanted a hide, I want me to get out of there. There were seven kids in the house, two dogs and my wife and plenty of booze, but I wanted her to get out of here. And my wife awakened and looked at me, I suppose this is 7 o'clock in the morning, and she said to me, My God, Tom, do you have any idea what you look like? Do Do you have any idea what's happened to you? And the first part of the question I could answer, as honest as I could be at that time, because I had some idea what it looked like, because my confidence, my value system, my self-worth was so eroded that I had to get dressed up the way I am this Saturday morning to go out and drink in the worst kind of a place where I was going to be sick upon myself in a matter of hours. Because I was so sure I was worthless and I was so sure the front had to be plastic and it had to be fake and so I had some idea what it looked like because I had to lock this hand and try to tear the whiskers off my face without cutting myself bleeding to death I had some that the nature of this program is the total inability the nature of this disease is the totally inability of the unwillingness to see the truth about ourselves sounds. She said to me, why don't we call AA? And I said, why don't you call AA. Now that's a contradiction in terms. I was not alcoholic. I've never been alcoholic. Now if that is a valid premise, that we who must see cannot in fact see, then how do we get here? I didn't come here because I was alcoholic. I don't know about you. I came here for one reason, because whatever track I'd been on, whatever race I had run, whatever my life had been, it was over. I was not alcoholic and I didn't think alcohol was a factor in that, but anything would be better than what I had. There's a line in our book that says, if you want what we have, but I think there's something in parenthesis that says and damn sick of what you got, and damn sick of what you've got. I did not what you have, did not want what you have, but I was damn sick of what I had. And so, yes, why don't we call Alcoholics Anonymous? And we did. And that night, a Saturday night in Cahoga Falls, Ohio, just north of Akron, we went to our first meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous. The meeting was at 8.30, and I'm standing outside the meeting at 8 o'clock. Now, the decision to call AA at 7 o' clock in the morning seemed like a hell of a sensible thing to do. At 8 o'clock at night, it was a stupid idea from her and her lousy mother who never liked me. Okay? God Almighty. God, I was afraid. If you're new today, or if you'd like to be new, and i like to be new every day let me share with you what was going through my mind standing outside that meeting close 23 years ago number one is i knew my life was over number two i knew that i was a failure in every dimension of my life i've been raised in a family that said you only finish in first place nobody notices who finishes in second place and you finish in the first place and if you get knocked off the horse you don't say anything about it men do not share men do now have tear ducts men do Now cry, and you get back on the horse and you ride the horse. I knew that I was a moral failure in every dimension of my life, that if you rolled back a rock, the slimiest thing, there was going to be me. I knew this clearly was a morale problem, and that I'm a moral leper, a degenerate, if you will. And then most of all, I thought, my God, what's on the other side of those doors? What am I going to say to these people? because I don't even know why I'm here. I don' t know who I am. I don''t know what my life is about. I don ''t know whether I have a life. I didn''t knoW about our preamble, which is nothing more than a mission statement. I would hear it read that night. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share the first active verb written a long time after the big book. When the fellowship asks itself, Why do we meet in church basements? why do we have 164 pages and what are we bonded why do you think why do I do these things what is our vehicle what is a purpose many many hundreds of thousands of people sober and the mission statement became Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share the first active verb share it said nothing about alcoholism and I knew about sharing with those people in the bar do you know what people shared with me their new job their new house, their new stock portfolio, their new wife, their new mistress. Everything that demeaned me and made me feel even less worthy than I was before. It was with those kinds of convoluted, tired, sick, fear-driven feelings that I walked into my first meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous brightly lit as this. Probably a hundred people Saturday night night couples. And people came up. And a dynamic took place in that room that is different than any other place I have ever been in my life and was as constant last night and is constant this morning and will be as constant this evening. And I traveled all over the country, companies desperately trying to find something that I can do. And no matter where I go to AA, I see the same kind of thing. And the dynamic that happened that night is someone walked up to me and said, Hi, my name is Bob and I'm an alcoholic. Could I tell you how i got here could i tell you something about what happened to me tom hello my name is mary and i'm an alcoholic i don't think i've seen you before do you think you could hold a cup of coffee if i brought a cup for coffee to you tom because i'd like to tell you something about what happened to me hello my name is george tom you look pretty good to me i've often wondered what the hell george looked like if if I look pretty good to George. I don't remember seeing George's dog, but at any rate, George said, you look pretty great to me, but he said, I think maybe we've gone down some of the same paths and could I tell you something about what happened to me? And in a room as brightly lit as this, people whom I had never seen before in my life held a hand that was wet and shaking in hands that I perceived to be strong and dry. they looked into eyes that darted away, red, white, and blue. I had flag eyes. Did any of you use that Vicene? See, isn't that wonderful? I was buying that in five-gallon pails and kind of flushing it through with a catheter in the morning. Jesus, it was wonderful. God, I wish I'd bought stock in Vicene. But these people had clear eyes that seemed to rivet on me. And what they did when they held my hands is they told me things about themselves in an open forum that I couldn't face about myself when I pulled the covers over my head at night, turned off the lights, sucked my thumb in the prenatal position. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who shared their experience and said, What are you going to share with me as a new person? They shared their fears, their humiliations, their failures. years. I did not become alcoholic as a result of that, but I also wasn't alone. I was not terminally unique at that point. My wife was absolutely being surrounded by people who loved. And my God, she came up to me a little bit later and people kept coming and talking and saying, and none of them told me what to do. They were telling me of their experiences. Then Joanne came across and she was just radiant and she's carrying this. She says, He says, my God, have you ever met people like this? She said, aren't they wonderful? And I said, no. They're wonderful if they're my people, but not if you like them. What the hell's wrong with you? Next thing you'll be bringing your mother. She said... You know, they want you to buy this book. This blue book, this big book. I said... What the heck is wrong with buying a book like that? I may sit around with those crazies, you know, drinking coffee and eating cookies or something something like that, but I'm not going to buy any damn book like that. She said, well, honey, I'll buy the book. You buy the books, you read the books. And that's how we left our first meeting in Oklahoma. With that emotional profile of a caged lion. My life had been full on or full off all the time. I was either so high and so into it, or I was in the pits right away. Up and down. And I never knew which way I was going to react. Now, Giggles did not join Al-Anon because she raised seven kids, eight if you count me. So she had plenty to do, but she would have made the consummate Al-Anon had she chosen to join. Because one of the things that she did in this early part of my sobriety with the big book is she would wait until I was in the room. Now you've got a picture of this room, okay? First of all, it's been an alcoholic house, which means that the driveway looks like the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I had been in the paint business for I don't know how many years and the only house in the neighborhood where all the paint was peeling off the house I mean it looked like an Anzio beachhead most of the time we'd got seven kids in the house, a couple of dogs and this is where the master is holding court and so she would wait until I was there and then she would come in carrying the big book now I don' t recall that she ever had it draped in purple but that's about the only thing that she didn' t do and somehow she could walk through this whole hideous mess of kids and dogs and whatever the hell else was there and she would sit down and look at me and she had this look of peace, joy, love, contentment, serenity. Hell, it might have been menopause. I don't know what the hell it was. But whatever it was, she would open the big book, smile radiantly, take her pencil and begin to underline little passages in the first 164 pages of the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that she thought applied to her Tommy. Now by God, and I took the bait every time, the minute she would leave the room in the same graceful way that she came in, And I would open the book and look at it and say, My God, that's a sick woman. Someone has really blown her pilot light out. She thinks what Wilson wrote applies to her tummy. And she must have thought quite a bit dead because as I recall, she underlined the entire 164 pages of the book over a period of time. And now comes the biggest disappointment of my life. What I had to deal with and find out in Alcoholics Anonymous is that the total inability or unwillingness to see the truth about myself hadn't changed a bit because I wasn't drinking. The total inability or unwillingess to seethe truth aboutmyself hadn'tchanged a bitbecause Iwasn'tdrinking and somehow I thought it would. Somehow I thought there was a cause and an effect relationship. There were people with great memories who used to say you weren't too bad a guy when you were drinking. So somehow Ithought if I don't drink I'll be alright and I wasn'alright. I don'know how you were, but I wasn''t alright. I was afraid and that vehicle of escape, that vehicle called oblivion wasn't there anymore and you know kids get sick in the night and there are deadlines and customers expect things and there are health problems and people die and i didn't realize it was living one day at a time with unsolved problems without the necessity to take the drink without the necessary to take the drink total ability total unwillingness see the truth about myself continued in in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a terrible time adjusting. I had terrible time adjusting to reality, adjusting to pain, adjusting to expectation and trying to find some balance in my life. Terrible time. There was a vehicle for that. AlcoholicsAnonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and what's strength? 164 pages, 12 steps, 12 traditions, 4 absolutes, all written down, all written up and written down There's never been a time in the past 23 years that I couldn't find the answer in the 164 pages when God felt it was the right time for me to find it. I still don't know who sneaks into the room and changes my big book. Somebody does, because what I read this morning is not what I saw last night. And I really thought that was happening. I started making marginal notes and dating them because I thought it was different. It's a comfort to me, too, to know know. That 164 pages was written in 1938 and published in 1939, when the oldest member Bill had three years of sobriety. And today the federal, state, and local governments are throwing millions of dollars at the disease of alcoholism. I cannot listen to my car radio, I cannot turn on the television without hearing an ad for a treatment center someplace. We've We've got one back in our area where the girl says, Clemmie, Clemmy, we care. It's damn near worth a slip to go back and find out what the hell that broad looks like, you know? And, uh, you don't know. But it's interesting to me, and I'm, you now, and as a member of AA, I have no opinion on outside issues, and that's an outside issue. I certainly endorse the singularity of purpose that was talked about last night, but it certainly is interesting to me tonight that after millions of dollars have been invested in the disease of alcoholism, the vehicle for treatment is the same 164 pages that was written in 1938 and that we use in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous today. I don't know about you, but that's a hell of a comfort to me standing here tonight. Anyway, I was to look at those steps and my perception disorder, the total inability to see the truth about myself was the same on those steps. See, I knew I reversed the first step. Now yes, I know why I drink. I drink because of her and him and those things in my life. Wilson took that away in her disclaimer in the first statement. We were powerless over alcohol and our life became unmanageable. The unmanagability of my life was a result of the ingestion of my alcohol. That's not the way I saw it. I saw het just the opposite way. Until I could get down to understand that what came first is the alcohol that was powerless over the alcohol. I forget how I got, you know how I got in, what the dues for coming in here this morning is? Let me tell you my as a consequence of coming into Alcoholics Anonymous let me tell You my credentials. I'm really proud of these I am powerless unmanageable and insane that's what the step says. Powerless over alcohol, my life is unmanangeable and a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity go out and get a job talk to the personnel department good morning, what is it you can do? I am delighted to tell you I am powerless, unmanageable, and insane. Now the answer I got most frequently is we've got enough of those is there anything else you can do? But that's the way I saw it. That's the ways I saw them. Totally misunderstood the steps. You may find this difficult to believe but I share it with you In case you're new, in case you are struggling, in the case you don't know why you were here, I did not make a comment my first two years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I came here with petty grievances. I came with hostility and anger. I came judgmental. Herbert Spencer's admonition in the back of the book, contempt prior to investigation, I had all of that. As far as I can determine I had no bearing on the way I was treated in Alcoholic Anonymous Apparently, I was loved unconditionally. Apparently, everyone wanted the best for me, regardless of the hateful attitude that I brought her. I did not lead a meeting until I was over about two and a quarter years. It was about then that I abandoned rewriting the big book, as I recall. About two and quarter years? That's how it was. That's why my perception disorder continued in the program. I had to learn about a God. I had to turn my life and will over to care of a God that I didn't understand. And so I had To Have Your God. Now, my analysis of what was happening to me in Alcoholics Anonymous was as strange and bizarre as it was any other time. I remember saying to giggles one night when I was getting close to a year of sobriety and I said, My God! Jesus, do you know what you and your mother have sentenced me to? I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in church basements with a bunch of sanctimonious idiots talking about what I can't do and that's going to be my vehicle for success I drink hell I never could that was the reason I was there in the first place the next thing you know I won't smoke and I won' dance and then and sex will go, okay? All those things happened. It took a little while. And I haven't said anything about hair. I did not realize that in the big book more will be revealed as the top of my head. That is not in the Twelve Promises. You can go, you know. At least I haven'T found it there. But that was my perception disorder. And I said, you Know, if I stay around around, if I stay around for a year, do you know what happens then? I get to do the whole goddamn thing over again. Thanks to you and your mother. Jeez, isn't it a blessing I didn't say anything for the first two years. Now, what was happening in alcoholics, and what What was happening during that period of time? Here's what was happening. You were burying loved ones with equanimity and peace and serenity without the need to take a drink. I saw some of you in dead-end jobs through the vehicle of recovery shake yourself with your hand in God as you understood God. And I saw you make new career starts. I saw some of you in relationships and marriages that should have been over a long time ago except for the disease of denial and begin to see the truth and extricate yourself from those situations I saw far more marriages healed I saw far more broken homes and distraught children brought together and that is what was happening in alcoholics and oh thank God God for something we call group conscience. Because, you know, God made a balanced world up, down, east, west, north and south. And I love the line in George Burns' Oh God, why did you make the pain? And he said, because I had to, to balance the joy. Because it's a fair world. And the thing that kept me in bondage is the denial, the total inability of the unwillingness to see the truth about myself and see all the drinking alcoholics in my life when I came here while I couldn't see my recovery or couldn't deny yours. I saw your recovery I saw those dynamics working in your life and you shared them with me and I was somehow bonded with you willingly or not it would drive me crazy to go to an AA meeting and feel better when I left and then on the way home and say but if you were really any damn good you wouldn't have to do that how sick sick. How sick! There was an old Amish man up in our part of the country, Mose Wye, who's been dead a few years now. He led a lot of meetings with Mose and helped a lot people. Mose used to say that he didn't understand anything about electricity but he was damned if he was going to sit in the dark until he figured it out. It made a hell of a lot sense to me. I hated the cliches and the bromides. Did you? I hate them. Easy does it. One day at a time, let go and let God. This is a simple program for complicated people. And then the one that drove me absolutely nuts was a guy, I figured he must be a dentist in the area because I never saw anybody who had so many teeth and he was smiling all the time. Didn't make any difference, his hair could be on fire. And he was smiling and he would say, keep coming back if you don't get it, it'll get you. And God, I went to one meeting one night and I was just having an absolute frenzy. And I saw him, I said, Al, I think I backed out of the driveway tonight and I backed over a couple of kids. He said, keep coming back if they don't. Geez! I went home and I said to Giggles, if that turkey one more time, you know, first of all, I knock out all those pretty teeth and then I go out and and get stiff, you know. Doesn't this guy understand that I got a hole in my gut that I'm afraid that I am angry and so on and so forth? And I said, My God, I tell you tonight, Giggles, my time will come and if that happens to me I'll give somebody something. Something from the big book. Something from his bill season. Something from the 12 and 12. Be careful what you pray for. Wasn't two weeks later at the same meeting one of the gurus of AA had been sober about 114 years you know I had a great respect for that lady she shaved more often than I did as I read that's how they call them anyway she found this new person and brought this new person to me and said Tom you know tell this guy how it works and I looked at him and I said keep coming back if you don't and my god motor mouth has never been so ashamed and I couldn't think of another thing to say and what really irritated me he said that's a hell of a good idea here. He said, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. You know, and I was thinking of all this profound stuff I was going to lay on him. And it occurred to me that's all I did is I kept coming back. I walked the walk. I did the one percent. I worked my way through it one day at a time. Played the cards that God has dealt. I can't control the hand that God deals. I have no sense of what kind of a hand that God will deal, but I can control how I play that. That's called conscious contact with God. One of the great cardinal mistakes that I made in recovery, the one that I think comes back and assails me and assaults me more frequently, is that being of Catholic persuasion and similar to Vince last night, I confused the fourth and fifth step with the examination of conscience in what we called then confession, I guess now it's called something else, whatever it is. And I knew that that wasn't going to work because I could see myself as a seven-year-old, seven-years-old about to go to confession, as a 7-year old. And I know it was a failure in my life because I had looked over the Ten Commandments. In fact, they'd been hammered into me for seven years up to that. I looked at that and God, here I was standing in line and I knew I was a failer. I had not committed adultery. greater. I had not coveted my neighbor's wife. And I confused the dimension. But finally, finally in taking that step through the program and listening to Norman Vincent Peale speak about that step and how he reveres and treasures Alcoholics Anonymous. Norman Vincent Peale was one of the true supporters of AA and he said that he saw that step and he imaged us standing on the back of a boat and the boat moving slowly through the water and one by one we threw our disappointments and sins and indiscretions of our past life into the wake of that boat and theboat pulled away from it forever. Pulled away from him forever to set us free, become happy joys and returning home we took the book down from the shelf and I did that. And I did this and I said that and that worked. I remember doing that finally in California with a Catholic recovering priest. And I remember finishing that because I had finally done it the way Wilson had suggested. There are so many manuals on how to take the fourth and fifth step. How to take The Fifth Step if you are gay and living in a sewer in Sausalito. the fifth step for joggers on a cruise ship. Jeez! You know, when I was renouncing the Catholic Church and my alcoholism, I joined a Bible study group. Now, I showed up drunk most of the time, but I joined this Bible study groups and I figured out they were spending so much time reading books on how to read the Bible that we never got around to reading the Bible. And hell, I was the drunken. I figured that out. But I did the same thing in recovery, so I finally did it the way Bill did it in the book. I finally did it the way Bill did it in the book, 164 pages, and I did it in California. And I remember the cathartic experience as if it were yesterday, and i think that was 1973. I think. Doesn't matter. I remember because I said to this guy, I said, Oh my God, Tom. His name was Tom also. I said for the first time, I have some sense of the the biblical injunction that the truth will set you free. I feel good, I feel clean. I feel at peace. And then he said two things to me. After hearing this litany of garbage, he said, I love you. Now let me tell you what happened to me and this Catholic celibate priest living on the originally from the east coast now living in california shared with his father seven at the same time it was deja vu i was back at my first meeting alcoholics anonymous bonded in this fellowship bonded in the spirit and i said oh god by now the sun was setting on the pacific and vince is here i was in irvine californIA and he knows how pretty that can be. And I said to Tom, I said, Tom, this is clearly the finest day I've ever had in my life but I've been sober long enough to know that it won't last. I've being sober long enough to know that the mind will rationalize a way to take back the problem so would you please give me something that I can take from here today so that I'll remember this day and I will treasure this day and without a moment's hesitation he said pray for a willingness to understand the powerless now in all areas of your life. pray for a willingness to understand the powerlessness in all areas of your life. And I looked at him and I said, Tom, this is an honest program. I have to tell you something. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. He said, take it into will. At some time, being transferred from California to Chicago and finally in North Carolina, it suddenly dawned on me what he was talking about. What he was saying was, what he's talking about and the thing that I take back often is after clearing away the wreckage of my past in the fourth and the fifth step, it's now possible for me to take charge of my life. It doesn't say that any place in the book. It doesn'T say that any place in the traditions. It doesn' t say that any place in our program. But as my mind rationalizes a way to take back the problem, my mind says that these things that are working in my life are a result of something that I am doing and I can run my life It's not what 67 said he became entirely willing to have God humbly ask him saw through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious consciousness and what he was saying is that your life today Today is a testimony to the love of a living God because you're calling hard here that you're powerless, unmanageable, insane and you cannot stop drinking and you have not had a drink. Doesn't it make sense to appropriate that same power in every area of your life? Doesn't It make sense not that this has nothing to do with drinking or not drinking it has to do with the unsolved problems in your life and the dynamics of appropriating that power And what I take back now, generally speaking, is not fear, it's not anger, it is not lust, it is no shame. When those things come, I take power. My prayers erode in the morning. My prayers become rote. My attendance at AA meetings is sporadic. My participation is less than it should be. feet. I have a different kind of a God. I awake in the morning. This has happened to me a number of times. Maybe it has happened with you. When my program is right, or I think it's right, I wake up in the mornings and say, ah, wonderful. I know where God is and and God knows where I am. I fell asleep last night talking to God. I think I'll read the 24-hour book. That's what God and I were talking about. This is an omen. I can sit down at the breakfast table. My wife can pour cereal through what's remaining of my hair. The dog can commit an unnatural act on my trouser's leg, and nothing affects me. I sit there like some kind of a simpleton. And then I get out, get in my car, and begin to drive to work with this peace, joy, love, and serenity through my heart. And 15 minutes out on the freeway, I give somebody the one-finger pizza. 11 o'clock in the morning, I'm in a raging argument with my boss. 1 o' clock in the afternoon, I've lost our best customer. 3 o'clock in the afternoon I'm written up by the personnel department and I come home that night at 11 o' clock at night they say where the hell were you and what I had was the 7-11 God I saw God in the morning and I saw a God at 11 O'clock at night and that is not what Bill wrote what Bill Wrote was upon arising we examine the day ahead of us and we ask how can we be helpful and we asked for guidance and then the part that I didn't see for years and years and we get back to God after every task. We get back to God every task I'm going to close first of all I want to thank the committee for asking me to come here this morning, it's a great honor to be here and to share this fellowship with you I have learned over time that Alcoholics Anonymous denies nothing it permits everything my life has totally changed from what it was when I came here at one time. I'm very active in my church, I'm sehr aktiv in my community, I'm très activ in my job. And all those things are important because AA does not stay in these rooms through the vehicle of the 12th Step. It goes outside of these rooms. But I must remember one thing, my core responsibility to AA. All those things were in my life and they had no meaning, had no substance, had no ability for me to appropriate them before I came here and surrendered to win some years ago. I'm as enthusiastic about Alcoholics Anonymous this morning as I was when I came in here because I know it works. I see it in you, I see that in you. I see the truth in the group conscience. And still for me there is something that happens here when we stand and hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer that is a dynamic that is different than anything else. And I have no idea what that is. But I bless all of you for allowing me to share it with you. God bless you and thank you.