The Design for Living He Finally Learned – Don M.

Oh yes. My name is Don Maloney and I am an alcoholic. And through the grace of God and people like you, I've not found it necessary to have a drink now since July 1st of 1975. And for that, I'm really grateful. i don't have a clue how you do that uh except you just don't drink don't die and keep hanging out you know and doing the deal and uh i didn't come here to stay sober i came here to get the heat off you know some of y'all may identify with that heat uh so i really don't care why you're here as long as you are here you know i will tell you what they told me if you are hearing your are alcoholic and they sort of let you decide that just for a little bit after that they tell you are you know but but the real reality is if you're here uh please stay here because you got nowhere else to go you know and i can tell you that from my own experience because i did not stay in alcoholics anonymous the first time or the second time or third time fourth time fifth time sixth time i was in charge of marketing research in dallas texas for alcoholism for for a couple years, you know, and I was what they call a 90-day wonder. Every 90 days, I'd wonder what the heck I was doing in AA, you know, and I just had made some bad choices, you know, and I wasn't really quite like you people. I do speak for me and not for Alcoholics Anonymous, although I am a member in good standing of my home group, and my home groups are the ones that I work with. My home group is the Lake Whitney Group, and we are the AA capital of the world where humility is our primary purpose. And my sponsor who's been dead many years, Bob White, told me that if I ever am asked to speak out of town, he said, which I doubt if you will be, but he said if you are ever asked to speaking out of the town you must always wear a coat and tie so you look like a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said you must tell them that you are from the AA cap of the world or you will get struck drunk within 24 hours. And I'm not going to run the risk. I'm just not going do it. And so we're here to talk about my experience, strength and hope, whatever that may be. And I will tell you that I'm very proud to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and have been proud to being a member this long. I've never stuck with anything this long, you know. I mean the second longest thing I've ever done is been married to Precious for 22 years, you know, and that's careers and everything else goes along with who we are and what we do. Y'all, I'm glad to see that AA is alive and well here in Kansas. And I've enjoyed meeting lots of people. And it is always a pleasure to be asked to go anywhere to speak in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've never quite figured out why you have to fly somebody all the way across the country to hear a drunk talk when you've got so many good drunks right here, you know, who probably talk as good if not better than we do. But it just seems like if we fly them all the Way Across Country somewhere that we hear something better or different, you know, until we get to our home group and it's just the same. And so I don't know what we will hear today, but y'all have had some good speakers already. Tammy and I had shared the podium in Florida during the hurricane that Francis went through there, and we were sort of grounded there for a couple days and had no power and had nowhere to go. We had no way to get up and down the elevator, and they had no water, and you couldn't flush the toilet. It was just a lot of fun, you know. And I was one of the daylight speakers. Maybe that's why you all put me on during the day today because I was on when the power was on and Tammy was on When the Power Was Off, you Know. But the bottom line is drunks go on regardless, you Now. And we just light candles and hold flashlights and we think we see somebody at the podium. We hear this voice coming out of there. And I told Tammy, I said, I sure did enjoy your lights-on talk a lot better than I did your dark talk. And Yvonne gave a great talk, and I'm looking forward to CeCe's talk too because I like her. She's a neat lady. She's all dressed up, so you all better be here at 3, giving you a plug. Alcoholics Anonymous is fun, and it's designed to be fun. So if you're not having fun being an Alcoholics Anecdotist, you're just not in Alcoholics Onemous you know uh because it is designed to be as the book says to be happy joyous and free and that's what god's wish is for me and for you uh we will share a little bit about uh my drinking even though it really hadn't got much to do with sobriety you know i mean i never could quite get that connection the first connection i missed in life is i never couldn't get the circumstances in my life uh tied to the consequences of my life you know I never really knew that my action had anything to do with how it ended up. And that was always a problem with me, is to connect my part in whatever was involved. And when I'd end up in jail or wherever, doing whatever the bad situation, it was always because, well, if you was married to her, that would happen too, or if you had this kind of dog or this kind parents, and we have that disease called victim disease. And we have to. I mean, we don't have a choice because the disease really dictates that you can't be at fault. Because if you found out you were at fault, you'd get over the disease. I mean you'd go to AA early. But the reality is for me and maybe for you, the big book talks about what a real alcoholic is and I think I qualify for being a real alcoholic. But we have to reach a surrender at depth to the point. And the book says alcohol will beat you to a state of reasonableness and that's pretty gentle for kicking the hell out of you and that is what had to happen to me I had that 90 day wonder syndrome and my problem was not coming to AA even though I thought that was a life sentence but my problem in the AA was trying to identify because if you knew, I would sit in meetings and try to not identify I would only listen for the parts that didn't fit and then I would store enough of that information in my head to the point where I would say to myself, see, you're really not like those people. And you could have a little sangria wine with Mexican food or a little beer with pizza. I mean, after all, you are over 21. You are a man. And I have a whole list of reasons why. And my head was always out to get me. My sponsor said, your mind, son, is like a bad neighborhood. You should never go up there by yourself. And that was one of my problems, is that I was always trying to fix the problem with the problem. And the problem was my mind and the way I thought. And I'm trying to go through life fixing the problem by using the problem, you know. And if you understand that, well, you're in the right room, you don't. You will hear in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and speakers talking across the country that we are above average intelligence. You know, I've heard that many, many times. This is the only place you'll hear it. You know. You will never hear it in anywhere else but right in these rooms that we are above average intelligence, you know. In fact, I would tell you to keep it a secret because if you go out and share that at a church group or a social group or a business group and say I'm an alcoholic and I'm above average intelligent they're going, yeah, okay, you don't know. Our best thinking, God, is in these chairs today, you Know. And that was my problem is I had a thinking problem. In fact, the big book talks about we think that our problems center in our mind. Ooh, I didn't like that one. We think that Our Troubles might be of our own making. Those who fail to enlarge their spiritual life may not overcome this problem called alcoholism. I do have a disease and I like to call it a disease because I was at dis-ease most of my life. and it seemed pretty natural for me to have a disease. God knows I didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn' t have a clue what was wrong with m, but I knew that I was never comfortable. And the only time I was really comfortable is when I was drinking. And I'll talk about my drinking and about my recovery. I won't talk much about dope because I never liked it. I just never liked It. I mean the only dope story I got at all you know is that i hung out i hung out with the wannabes i always wanted to be the big guy you know the ceo guy i always want to have the country clubs and the big cars but i never could get them and i could visit their neighborhoods periodically but i never could go in the house yeah i mean it was sort of one of those deals but i Never Wanted To Be Just Down And Out I Mean I Just Always Wanted To Be Up And Gone You Know And And Those People Weren't Sitting Around Smoking Wacky Tobacco And All That Stuff I Mean They Were You Know They Just They Weren'T Doing I Mean And they were sitting there drinking scotch, lying to each other. And I was drinking Jack Daniels, black, lying to them. And that's just the way we operated. But I got involved with some young people one time when I was drinking. And I got here pretty young as it was. And they had this weird looking pipe with all these bubbles and stuff going on in it about that tall. They were all sitting around smoking off of that deal. And they said, have a hit. And i said, i didn't know what that was. You know, i knew what about hitting was because i've done that a few times. Hitting each other but but i said all right and i took a hit off that pipe and uh man i lost control i mean i just lost control there was no doubt and i and i even though drinking took me totally places i didn't want to go play and didn't make me do things i didn't wanted to do i never really had the sense of losing control you know i mean and that's alcoholism is what it is and i'm gonna tell you that that dope just took me places i didn' t even want to the room got crazy i got got crazy, everything started swimming, you know. I went outside and threw up immediately, you know. And I woke up the next day. The next day, I mean, you know, I lost a whole night, you know. I'd done that drinking but it didn't seem to be as perilous as this particular night. And I woke up and I was laying naked in the bed and there was this lady laying next to me who looked like she might have expired from natural causes. I mean, she was rather elderly. At first glance, she didn't have any clothes on either. And there was an Irish setter on the right-hand side laying in bed with us too. And I said, I'm never going to do dope again. And I never did. I mean I just never did it. And I got up and dressed real softly and gentle. And I was afraid of waking her and afraid she wouldn't wake. I got to the door and looked back, and that Irish setter poked his head up and winked at me. The dog didn't really wink, but the dog really was there. And I just said, if dope does that to you, I'm not doing it. Where's my Jack Daniels? And I crawled back in the bottle again, and so that's the only dope story I got. You know, and because I had to have the illusion of having control in spite of being out of control, you know. And that was just one of the things that alcohol seemed to have done for me. And then later on in my drinking, I didn't drink for the effect. I drank for the end result. I was an end result drinker, you Know. Life had become to the point where I couldn't stand the high cost of low living any longer, you know, and some of y'all may have gotten there where you just can't stand the high cost of low living any longer and you don't know what to do about it. And for me, it just had gotten to that point where life just wasn't worth living anymore based on the terms of my life. And then I drank. At those times, I drank to be oblivious to everything. That was my goal. My goal was to drink it all away. And towards the end of my drinking, probably the last year of my thinking, that's what I did. I drank not to get drunk, party and travel and go places just so i couldn't feel just so I couldn't exist so I didn't have to just didn't Have to put up with any of that stuff you know uh there was a time that uh my dad and and my dad was uh I know we're Irish and uh so we drank hard worked hard and did our you know we just did it I mean that's what Maloney's did you know and uh and my Dad was drunk every Friday or Saturday depending on if he had to work Saturday if he Had to work saturday he wouldn't and get drunk Friday, we'd hold off until Saturday and then he'd be drunk. And he was a happy drunk. I mean, he was pretty good, happy drunk and I can't see that, you know, he never beat my mother, never beat up the neighbor, never did any of the stuff I did. He seemed to be a pretty happy drunk but without fail, he always was drunk. That happened, it seemed like, every weekend so it was pretty natural growing up in that environment knowing what to do and how to drink and so forth and so on. Money was sort of a not expected thing. But I remember the first time I got drunk and they took me home and I'd been sick and the older people didn't know what to do with me because I was sick, you know. And you have to pay your way in to get drunk. I mean, I did. I had to be these guys who were 16 years old and had a car when I was 14 and they said, you got any money? I said, yeah, I got some money. They said, well, bring $40 with you and you can go out with us this weekend and chase women. I said my God, that's good enough for me, you know, and I would have held up a store to get 40 bucks, you So I had my chance to go with the older boys, and I gave them my $40, and they went off and bought whiskey. Everybody had a pint of whiskey. I didn't know that a pint of whiskey didn't cost $40 in those days. But I'm sure I bought whiskey for them all. They said, you know if you drink that real fast and hold your nose, it won't burn. I said, I know that. I didn' t know that, but you can' t ever let them know that you don' t now. That was a pattern I had all my life. is you had to always sort of fake your way through the deal. And I said, I know that, you know. And so I grabbed that old crow whiskey and slugged about half of it down and chased it with a Coca-Cola. And man, I hated it. It was terrible. You know, you talk about people up here talking about that first drink and how they feel a man amongst men and a lover and they could dance. I wanted to get sick is what I wanted too. I mean, it burned and I spit it and spewed it a little bit. But I finished that pint of whiskey in 23 minutes and I don't recommend doing that. you know that's a little quick to get started and I got deathly ill and then they tried this took another five dollars from I guess that's the second initiation fee and they bought me coffee and they tried to sober me up on black coffee you know and they pour a cup down I throw a cup up and they poor cut down and we did this for the longest time and they were trying to get me sober up on coffee I'm here to tell you that an alcoholic cannot get sober on coffee it It takes time without booze to get sober, you know. And coffee don't do it. And I got so sick, I thought, oh my God, you know, and I made a conscious decision that night, you Know, I had a moment of clarity. I said, I'll never drink Old Crow whiskey as long as I live or black coffee. And to this day, I've never drank a cup of coffee after that, you Now, and then I never drank another drink of Old Crow whiskey, you You know, I didn't see those guys for a couple weeks, and they saw me and they said, where have you been? I said, oh, I've been hanging out on the other side of town. I haven't been locked in my room is where I've Been, you know. And they said you want to go out with us again this weekend and chase the women again? I said I missed that part, you Know. Well, he said you shouldn't drink that stuff so fast, you Know. And I said oh, oh yeah. And I say I think I'm allergic to that old crow. He said you ever drank Haven Hill? I said no. And he said oh it's smooth, you Know. So I went out that week, and they bought me a pint of Haven Hill, and we sipped on it instead of chugging it. And it changed my life, I guess, because then I started doing the things that alcoholics do, hanging out with the people that they hang out with. And I got very deathly ill, and they took me home and stood me up in the door, between the front door and the screen door and lean me in. And then they rang the bell, knocked real hard, and left. and my mother and dad came to the door and opened the door and I just went you know and on the way down I was yelling food poisoning my dad said son of a bitch is drunk he hauled me down pulled me down the hall threw me in the tub and ran the shower on me clothes and all and cleaned me up and took $20 out of my wallet it and he said that's for cleaning you up he said be 40 bucks next time you come in drunk like that if you can't handle your liquor don't drink it you know and somehow another in that mixed message i felt i was okay i felt i have arrived i'm a maloney finally you know hey i'm one of the big guys you know and and that's the sick way to get approval i mean it really is a sick wayto get approval and and my dad and i became drinking buddies towards the end of my drinking and sometimes in the middle too but he couldn't go quite as long as I could you know and he never did want to chase women you know he didn't want to do the things I wanted to do so when he retired he moved where I was and I was in the clothing bushes in Dallas Texas at the apparel mart in those days and had me a big office and I used to hang out on Harry Hounds I forgot to tell you that was sort of my game out there drinking bullets you ever been to Bullets? They named that place because some guy come in there and shot it up one night they said let's just call this Bullets I said alright you know But Harry Hines is a good place to drink, isn't it, Tammy? You betcha. Anyways, my dad and I were at this show setting up for a clothing show and we'd been working on getting the showroom set up and I don't know if you know about clothing shows but that's where you have people that are wholesalers and a lot of retailers come in and you have to entertain them which means you always have to have a bar and offer them drinks and so we are getting ready to get ready to get ready for them to come, you know. And so we got the showroom set up and it's about two days before the show and I said, come on dad, we've worked hard, let's go over here to the Blue Note Lounge was the name of the place, Stan's Blue Note Lounge, you now, and it was in a bad neighborhood, before bad neighborhoods were really bad neighborhoods, you know, I mean, and we went to Stan's Blue Note lounge and started drinking sophisticated drinks, we were drinking in Boilermakers, you know. Shots of whiskey submerged in a big thing of beer and you sort of drink it down, swallow it down trying to have the shot glass not hit you in the teeth at the same time. I mean, it's an art. I mean really, it is an art and it was one of those they had a matinee going on that day and I don't know about y'all but in Dallas there's lots of matinees going on and that's sort of where they have a band during the day. That's where the housewives go during the night during the daytime and they called them pressure cooker clubs. You know, they put supper in the pressure cooker and they'd go off and party all day and come home and have the supper ready, you know, for the husband. And we'd go off and play with the wives, you Know. And so I was dancing with this old girl, and we was having the best old time. And I was drunk, and, you Now, Dad said, Come on, we've got to go home. He said, It's too late. I'm going to be home. Your mother's going to Be mad at me, and she's got to have dinner ready for me, and I've got To get home. And I thought, Well, hell, he's got his own car. Why don't he just go, You know? And I said, Why don' t you just go? He said、 No, you're too drunk To drive home. He said," I'm Going to follow you Home in my car to make sure you get there. Now, that makes sense. One alcoholic going to follow another alcoholic to make sur he can drive, you know. And it just seemed to make sense. And I said, Dad, I can't go. He said, why? I said I'm in love. He said in love? He said you're always in love after the second drink. You know, I said I'm In Love. He said who is? I said you seen that girl I've been dancing with? He said yeah. And I says look at her. Dad said look at here. She's at the bar. And I looked over and she was sitting at the the bar and she'd gotten tired you know and she was taking a little nap she had her head down i guess she just couldn't dance good enough and she Was Taking A Little Afternoon Nap Before She Had To Go Home And Cook Supper For Those Husband And Kids And It Was In The Days When They All The Women Were Wearing Wigs And You Know I Guess They Were Hot And Scratchy Because She Had Had Her Wig Off And Was Sitting Next To Her On The Bar So There She Was And My Dad Said Look At she ain't got no hair. I said, so what? I'm in love, you know. He said, you better leave her alone. I say, all right, we'll go home, you know. And I never did wake her up, you know. We left and we got outside and I never ate when I drank. I mean, I was one of those guys, you just don't eat. You get an Irishman every once in a while if you drink a Coke, you know, and that was about the deal, you know, and call it a balanced diet. And all of a sudden I was hungry. And And I said, Dad, I'm hungry. He said, Hungry? He said I've got to go home and I need to follow you to make sure you get home. I said I'm Hungry and I looked across the street and there was a church's fried chicken over there. And I thought that's the deal. And so I had a big old Lincoln that I was driving and I drove that big old LinkedIn over. My dad drove over to make Sure I could drive across the Street. And I got out and I walked up to that church's. And it was a churches that had bars all over the windows. you know and it was i told you he's in a bad neighborhood and the only way you could get chicken was to go through that little hole in the window you know where they had the little shelf sticking out you had to bend down and yell through the hole what you wanted you know and and i said i've been down and was yelling through the whole and the lady you know lady said to me she said what do you want you know she had that family voice you know like what are you doing that again for what do you want I said what do I want she said I said what do you want and by that time I had grabbed a hold of that shelf that stuck out there and the building started moving on me I mean if you've been as drunk as I have and you hold on to a building that's fixed all of a sudden your job is to keep the building on the ground you know and I'm trying to deal with this obnoxious lady and she said what do you want I said I want some chicken she said She said, how much chicken do you want? I said, How much chicken have you got? I mean, we're in a power struggle over chicken right now. I said I want all the chicken you'll sell me. She said Do you want the biggest bucket? I said You betcha. She said You want mashed potatoes? I want them mashed potatoes. Do you Want corn? I want that corn. I even bought peppers and I don't even like peppers. But she wasn't going to win. So now my dad's sitting in the car shaking his head. Now I've got all this chicken and I'm setting up my food line in the car. We can live in our cars forever. We can't. Drunks do that. Today they design them where you push little pieces on the dash and drink holders flop out of everywhere. If you ever get in a rent car, your whole job is to find out where the drink holder is because they hide them a little bit. In those days, they didn't have drink holders in the dash. They had them things you'd hang on the windows or humpers you'd put in the middle. And, you know, I had two or three of those things hung on every window. And I had sort of a roving bar going around in there. And it worked real well until you forget they were there and you slam the door. Booze would go everywhere. So I got all my chickens set up and got my picnic laid out and I'm sitting there eating and drinking. You know, that's what I do best, eating and drinkin'. My dad says, come on, we've got to go home. I said, alright. So we start home. And we're heading home, and I'm drunk, and doing that one eye, two eye, which you know that lines are moving in and out, and you're trying to eat chicken at the same time. I like legs but I don't like wings, and got to look at each piece, and it's hard, it's really hard. And I looked down the road and there was a wreck, and oh my God, it looked like there There was about four, five, six 18-wheel trucks all piled up together. I saw all them lights, taillights, and I thought, oh my God, there's going to be flares and police. You know how it is when you see a wreck. Your heart goes, oh, if you've been drinking it, it really goes, Oh, you know. And as I got closer to the wreck, I had sort of a moment of clarity again, and I looked up, and it wasn't a wreck after all. It was the Dallas North Tollway. and I saw all them lights, you know. All of a sudden those lights, the closer you got they sort of parted and then I had another problem, you know, my dad's honking the horn behind me going go go, you know, and I had another problem and that was I didn't want to put my hands in my pockets with all that greasy chicken on and get 20 cents out for the toll booth, you know, and so now I pulled up that toll booth and I got me a problem, you know, I'm going to ruin this pair of pants with all this chicken or what and my dad is honking in the horn, you know. So I just thought if I throw in a couple dollars worth of chicken it'll just level out. So I'm reaching that chicken bucket pulling them wings and stuff out throwing them in the my dad's behind me honking the horn chickens flying everywhere. I pulled on through there after a couple bucks worth of Chicken and went on home you know and my dad pulled off at the first exit and didn't call me for two weeks. When I finally talked I said, I thought you were going to follow me home. He said, boy, when I saw that chicken come out that window, I was gone. He said you're crazy. We were talking, or Karen was talking in Palm Springs one time at the roundup out there and I was carrying her bags that weekend and it was fun and I'm sitting on the front row because my sponsor sentenced me to the front road for life and he said you don't need to look at everybody in the room them you just need to look at the speaker sit down front row shut up dummy and look okay so i'm always on the front row and there's this old boy sitting next to me and she's talking and giving her press and she gives precious talk gave a great talk smart didn't she god sure brought me a good one there i tell you anyway i'm sitting there on the front row in this guy wants to talk to me you know and she speaking now that's pretty rude And he wants to carry on a meaningful conversation with me. And she's speaking, and I'm trying to listen. She listens to me, I listen to her as part of the deal. And he goes, where are you from? And I said, I'm from Texas. He said, oh, I said I'm form Arkansas. I said ,I don't care. I really don't Care. I'm Trying to Listen to My Wife. He said ,you been in the program a while? I said yeah, a little bit. He said well, I've been in three years. I said oh good. good. I said, shh. And he wants to talk. You know, he said, Texas, huh? I said yeah, Texas. He said, you ever heard of an old guy down there called the Chicken Man? And I said nope. Said I want to be known for a lot of things but Chicken Man wasn't on the top of the list. Anyways I failed forward a couple more times in life and it was just part of the deal and it's really okay to fail as long as you do it this way. You know, failing backwards will hurt you. And I had to give up the victim mentality when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. They say there are no victims in AA, they're only volunteers, you know. And I hade to quit volunteering to be a victim, you now. And part of that was to quit blaming you and them and it and all the circumstances in my life and the bad luck and the law and that story goes on and on. And my drinking would take me to the place where I didn't want to go. And I was packing guns and doing the stuff you want to do and got drunk one night and shot a hole in my leg I mean you know because I was trying to outdraw somebody in my mind I mean it was one of those crazy deals but you know God looks out for old drunks and thank God I bought stainless steel silver bullets I mean they had a steel jacket on them and they were a dollar a shell and that was my high rolling days and I you know and it just went smooth through my leg through the seat through the floorboard killed somebody in China I'll bet you you know but you gotta be prepared you know So I wrote a, this is not a suicide note on the window with blood and fainted and didn't die and woke up. It was just a crazy deal. I mean, it was just crazy deal, you know. I went home and laid on the horn and that old first wife, she'd come out there saying, you're going to wake those kids? And I threw myself up on the hood of the car, blood all over you. I said, I've been shot, baby, you Know. And I had her convinced I was part of the Dixie Mafia, you know. She even told my dad one day, she said, he's in the Duxie Mafya. And he went, oh, I've never used that one, you don't know what I mean. Crazy deal. So I was due to get sober. I mean, I was duped for something because I was running out of time. I was runnin' out of stuff. I was rannin' outta people. You know, it finally got to the point where nobody would have me anymore. And I'd bounced in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous for about three years. Now, the good news, if you're new here, is you don't have to do that. Whatever you've lost to get here, you don'T ever have to lose anything else in your life. Everything can be added to you. When you hear all the speakers get up here and tell you how their life is better than they ever expected and they go places and do things they never thought they could do. That's true, by the way. That is all true. So whatever you've lossed, you can get in here and quit losing it right now. You know, and if you just turn your life and your will over to these people, people, you know, and these steps and sponsors and God, your life will change. Your life will change. And if you don't, well, I just tell you, go get it, tiger. It's out there waiting on you, you know. And eventually, it will get you. It'll just get you and the sad part about our illness is a lot of us don't get here and a lot Of us that get here don't stay here, you know. In the 29 years that I've been sober and I believe I've been sober one day at a time and it's been a privilege to be so is that I see a a lot of people kill themselves and i've seen a lot of people leave this program and we don't know where they go you know we don't keep good records on those that go drink you know we just don't but we do know a lot of people that come here don't get to stay you know and i've done a lotof goofy stuff in my life sober and drunk you know but i've never not not gone to meetings of alcoholics anonymous and i'm here to tell you that that is one of the questions i always ask them when they come back if they get back is what happened did you quit going to meetings well well, yeah, I sort of got away from going to meetings. And then you sort of get away from God. And then You sort of go back to doing your old skimming, scamming, lying, cheating deal just because it's an easier, softer way to do it. And you're used to doing the old deal the way the old dealer was. Especially if you knew. It's a lot easier to go back and be crooked and do the old stuff than it is to be sober. I didn't know that. I mean, it took me a while to get all that deal. And I will tell you that once the behavior starts back, eventually you'll have to pick up again because the disease dictates that you will have to drink again. Because one day you'll wake up one more time and you can't stand the person you've become as a result of you becoming the person you've became. And when you get to that point, you have no choice but to drink alcohol because that's what the disease is about. It's called alcoholism. It's not an alcohol wisdom. You don't get here and get cured. We get a lot of young people in AA today and I'm really grateful for that. I was fairly young when I got here, I thought, but we get them a lot younger now. We really do, and it's great. But they believe in what I call optional sobriety, and that is not the case because what happens in the disease of alcoholism, you don't get the choice of, well, if I get drunk, I'll come back to AA, or if it causes me a problem this time, I know I can always get back to AAA. I'm going to tell you, you cannot always get Back to Alcoholics and Homeless because sometimes out there you either get killed in an accident or you will get hurt or you'll fall down the steps or you'll reach the point where the light goes out. And when the light goes out for you in your eyes, you have no desire to ever try Alcoholics Anonymous again. And that's the killer part of this disease. It's just what it is. I wish I could tell you it was a lot nicer, but it is a killer disease and it will get you if you do not do what we do in these rooms. I heard an old boy from Tennessee say, well, if you deal with what we deal, you'll get what we get. And if you don't, you've got, you get exactly what you had before and go get it, you know. And that's really what it is. This is not an optional place. This is now where you can come in and say, I think I'll hang out in AA for a while. I mean, this is a lifetime deal. And we do it one day at a time. Thank God we do It one day a time because I couldn't have stood my life even in sobriety if I knew everything that God was going to do for me. Even the good stuff. I couldn'T have taken it because it's as hard for us to accept good stuff as it is the bad stuff. In fact, it may be a little easier to accept the bad stuff than it is good stuff because we get here so unworthy and we get her so not feeling good about fitting and feeling a part of and then when something good comes along in your life you go yeah I just don't know you know and so it's sort of hard I bounced in that a for a while and finally I got back to doors of alcoholics and honors at the Preston Club in Dallas Texas and no boy was sitting there and he saw me at the door and he'd been watching me for a couple years you know i mean going in and out in and down in and now in and he said maloney i said yeah and he says and i had my bottle with me i was one of those kind of drugs you know last time went to a i took my jug you know because i wasn't sure i really wanted to go but somebody picked me up and took me there and you know and my choices ran out again he said you can't bring that jug whiskey in here with you he said this is a place for people that don't want to drink and it's evidently pretty apparent that you still want to drink. You've got that jug in your hand and he said, we'd love to have you back but you'll have to leave the jug outside. He said, besides I've got your problem figured out. Wow! I didn't have my problem figured up. I had lots of problems and this guy says he's got my problem figured out? I said, yeah, what is my problem? We're cocky right to the end. We're the only people who can lay in the gutter and still look down on people. I mean, you know, that's the disease of alcohol, isn't it? Say, I'll get out of here by God, I'm going to be president, you know. Oh, yeah? Yeah. He said, I got your problem. I said, what do you think my problem is? He said you're having trouble with sobriety. I said what? He said no, he said if you drank like I drank, he said you drank so you didn't have to deal with being sober. He said see most of us get here and we don't have tools for being sober, we don' t know how to be good fathers and and good providers and good husbands and good church members. We don't know how to fit in the society, and so we drink to ease our pain of society and ease the pain of sobriety. He said, so we don't know about sobrietry. We don'T have the tools for it. He said that's what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous here is we teach you a design for living. And the book says that. What we have here is a design för living. And he said we teach You the 12 Steps, and we're able to show You a program where You can live without having to take a drink. And that's what we teach you here. He said, it really hasn't got nothing to do about you getting drunk. He said we've watched you and you got getting drunk down as good as anybody we've ever seen. In fact, we think you know more about getting drunk than anybody else we've never seen. He said but it isn't about drinking. It's about sobriety. And he said now if you want sobrietry and you want to have some tools to deal with life, he said we'd love to have you come back in here and be a part of this fellowship. worship. I said, oh, you know, I wasn't no longer was I angry. I didn't have to get in his face. I just said, Oh, and I turned around, walked out of there. And I went down to the restroom and went in that men's room. And there was about six stalls and a couple of urinals. And I Went in the last stall on the end. Now here's, here's the disease of alcoholism. I'm lower than I've ever been in my life. I have, nobody cares that I live or die, you know, except maybe the members of NAIA, and I don't know that for sure because I burned them pretty bad, borrowed their money, stole their stuff. I mean, you got all this stuff. And I'm sitting on the toilet, sucking on a bottle, and trying to decide if I want what you people have or do I want What I Have, you see that? and that's the insidious disease of alcoholism because what we do is we say to ourselves if we ever have a problem there we will quit what we're doing and by God I'll quit drinking and I'll change my life and then all of a sudden we move the bar down to here because we've already gotten there and we can't deal with being there so we move it down one more level and we say well now if we never get there we will do something with our lives and we keep moving the bar up and moving the car down and moving them down until you finally can't stand the high cost of low living anymore and you just got to give up and surrender and then victory happens. And I thought, well, maybe I'll go to one meeting. So I hid my bottle behind the toilet at an angle where nobody could see it if they walked in standing or sitting because I wasn't sure that I wanted what you people had. In spite of the conditions and the causes of my life, I was not sure that I wanted to watch you people. So I went back to the meeting, and he said, come on in. Now, I don't know what he said or they said or what they did, but I know that somebody took me home that night, and then they had a bunch of them watch me. They were sort of watching me around the clock for about seven days. They just watched me. They shuffled me off to a noon meeting. They shuffled me off until 6 o'clock, and they took me to an 8 o' clock. And I'd sleep on people's couches, and I'd sleep in their beds and, you know, I'd throw up on their floors and I just, you know I was a mess but if somebody hadn't taken care of me for those seven days in a row which we call 12 step work by the way for some of y'all we can't always wait on the treatment center to send the bus you know or the judge to send me some more of them you know I'm ready 12 steps somebody who's coming next you know we actually went out and looked for drugs that's what we used to do we'd go out and look for drugs what we use to do and I believe if they hadn't have sat on me and watched me for a period of time I don't think I would be standing here today. You see, because I was confused and I was frightened and I scared to death and I didn't think AA would work for me and wasn't sure how to do it. But I do know at that point I became teachable and that was one of the few points in my life I've ever been teachable and I've had several of those points in sobriety but we don't stay teachable very long. We don't. We just get too smart again and we got to get teachable again. My sponsor used to say, Sonny said, said, how is it when it gets good? I said, it's good when it get's good. He said, well you got to give it up when it's gets good. I said why do I got to give it when its gets good, he said you can't ever experience the better until you get the good. And once you got it where its good, you got a give it in order to get the better. And that's what we have at Alcoholics and Alarms, we have better for you. I say, oh I want that better, you know. So all of a sudden I said I got the better you know, and I felt like I had the better and he said well after about six days it will just be good again. Because better don't stay better but about six day then it It gets good. And then you've got to give it up in order to get better, you know. And I went, whoa! And sponsors are weird like that. They talk in circles. I mean, they do. And they never talk about your problem. They always tell you some story about something, you Know. I mean. That ain't got anything to do with your problem, you Now. And somehow or another you walk out of there thinking, Oh, is he smart? God, he really helped me, you Knew. And he didn't talk about anything I went to talk about, you Know. Anyways, I got sober and I got married. Married, oh, what's her name, number two. And she was in the right side of town. She'd been married to a drunken banker and, you know, she loved Al-Anon and we went off and did the deal and, look good, we looked good. We looked good, yeah, we did. I was making money again and, you know stealing from myself. You know, if you're in business for yourself you can learn how to steal from yourself, you know, now you forget about stealing from yourself because you get broke. I mean, what happens? You can't pay the people you're supposed to pay because you've been borrowing money from yourself, which is actually their money you're supposed to pay bills with and eventually you will steal from yourself enough where you go broke. And I had to learn that lesson in my fourth year. And away went the wife, away went the business, away went the cars, away Went Life. And I thought, how did this happen to a guy like me? You know, and I'm sober. And my sponsor, Bob White then became our sponsor at the lake because the only thing that left me was a lake house and it had dead on it, you know. And so I was sentenced to Lake Whitney is what I was. And And I said, well, I'll stay here a couple weeks. And he said, oh, no, you'll stay her until we tell you you don't need to be here anymore, you know. And he says, we're going to give you an assignment every morning. He said, you report to me at 730 in the morning. He said I'll give you the assignment for the day. Can't call her because I was obsessed with staying married to her and she was obsessed getting rid of me, you know. And he said, and I said but I'm lonely. He said buy a dog. I had to go buy a dog. I said it just was goofy and he said we're gonna study a book called the big book Alcoholics Anonymous you know I said I know that book he said we know you think you know that but you don't know that so I say he said bring your book and I brought the book over with all the speakers signature in it you'll see those people come around would you sign my book oh yeah I signed your book you know and then they walk around the meeting for that big book sign from everybody you know hey and I showed him that book and he said that one there's all marked up and got signatures in that ain't no good that ain' no good it's a good look look at there I got Chuck C's name in there he said doesn't work for you your life's a mess That book doesn't work. Go get you a new book. We're going to start on a blank page because that's where you need to be. Nobody wants your life right now, you know. You've got nothing to share. He says, in fact, I'm going to sentence you to not talking in Alcoholics Anonymous for a year. A year? I mean, that's a hard time, you Know. For an old boy that's got a mouth, that's hard time. So for a years, all I could say was, my name is Don Maloney, I am an alcoholic. Give me some ride today and shut up. You know. Had to do that for a Year. One day I snuck off to Waco and he wasn't looking and went down to a noon meeting and, man, I talked 20 minutes. They didn't know I wasn't supposed to talk and they called on me and I let them have it. I've been saving up. 5.30, I had to report back to him at night and he said, I hear we've been talking today. I said, really? He said, yes. Do we need to start the year again? I also was sentenced to not dating for a year. I had learned that and I had to get along with my dog and with God, and maybe someday a woman would come into my life. You know, but I had to create an environment where I could nurture instead of non-nurturing, and then came Precious, you know. After that year was over, oh, I did it a couple times, and Karen told you the story where we found each other at the street dance, and we've been AAing and fellowshipping ever since. She talked about rage, and that was an issue in our early marriage, and I went to Bob White one time And I said, Bob, I've made a bad choice. I said I just shouldn't have done this deal and it ain't working. And he said, well, what's wrong? I said we don't agree on anything. We just don't disagree on anything He said, oh, really? He said I thought you said you were going to try to stay married this time. I said well, I am. And she looks like a pretty nice girl, comes from a pretty good family, good background. He said but you're a good looking kid. He said why don't you just divorce her and get rid of everything and maybe next time you can find a heroin addict or somebody that's shooting dope the day before you meet her and steals all your stuff. I said, what? He said, no. He said if you want to stay married, he said I'm going to tell you how to do it. I said yeah, are you willing to go to any lengths? I'm willing to goes to any length. He said okay. He said I want you to start making the bed together in the morning. I said make the bed? What the hell is that old man talking about, making the beds? I said I don't make beds. He said you do now. He said my wife and I have been making beds for 43 years. It's been working for us. He said, you will have to at least agree on one thing before you leave the house. And that's how to make it bid. Well, I went home and she was waiting on me. And Bob liked her a lot better than he did me. She was prettier. She sweetened him and they precious each other. She was in the Al-Anon stance. Some of y'all may know it. It's where you got your... And you've got what I call the penguin walk. It's when you put one leg up and tuck it against the other leg and you're able to stand on one leg and hold your hand. I don't know how they teach you all that stuff. She was in that stance, and she said, What did he say? I said, He said we had to start making the bed together. She said, Bullshit. What'd he say?" I said,"That's what he said." She said,"You're lying to me." I said--"Bob, tell her." And I heard her say, Make the bed. Okay, Bob. We started making that bed together I mean, you know, it's hard making a bed with somebody that you don't like. You know? And they don't do it right. Anyway, I mean I don't know nothing about bed making but all of a sudden I'm a bed making expert. We're making that bed and trying to figure that deal out, you now, and doing the deal. About two weeks after we were into making the bed deal I woke up one morning and I was mad because she wasn't minding something was going on. You know, one of those little self-centered deals. King Baby. You know, that's what we are. Our king baby ego gets crazy again. And I'm heading out the door going to work. Now, we work together. I'm headed out the doorway going to working. She said, we haven't made the bed yet. I said, I'm not making the bed today. She said Bob said. That's like calling your sponsor. You heard it. Bob said you have to make the bed. I said I don't care what that old man said. I am not making a bed. Do you hear me? Watch me. I am NOT making the BED! and I heard her say as I hit the door you will have the worst day of your life if you don't come out and I lost 10 grand in commission that day before noon I mean just everything went crazy just goofy stuff fell apart you know and to this day we've never not made debate I don't know why that works but I will tell you that it works and it's the simple things in life that work we walk around with an elephant gun waiting for the elephant and what we really need to do is have an anteater because the ants are what spoils our picnic. It's the little bitty things in life that we have to deal with. It ain't the big things. We do big things good. We all surround each other with big things, but we try to do little things by ourselves without even asking God. And that's not the deal. The deal is everything has to be turned over to God. Little things, big things and do the deal." We were sitting in that house one day when she was going through her rage deal and I'll tell this because she didn't tell it. I said, I'm going to tell on you. She said, okay. And I said, we were angry about something. Now, I will tell you, we've been married 22 years, 22 years. And we've never had an argument. Never. Now, we have had some intense moments of fellowship. Let me let you know that right off hand. And we were having one of those intense moments of fellowship and she was telling me as she says how the cow ate the cabbage. It's early in the morning. I don't know why we do this early in morning. But we do it early in mourning. and she's giving me that and my sponsor told me you've got to learn how to say three things if you want to stay married. I said, what? He said, yes, no and I've got a goal. And I've Got a Goal doesn't mean you're leaving. That doesn't means you're getting divorced. You can't talk about the D word. It just means that you're living for right now because you can't stand the heat in the kitchen. That's all. And she said, you're not going anywhere until I'm done with you. I said bet me. and so I'm hitting the door and she's hitting the door and she is right behind me and she is yelling and screaming and she has a little sailor in her and she is talking like a sailor and you know and we had at that time we had a house with a detached garage and we got half way out to the garage and I turned around and she said I said just look at you and she looked down and all she had on was her pantyhose she is so mad she is standing out there naked in the middle of the yard and she went ahhhh she was so sweet that day at the office I mean it was like a great day I walk home at night and I said honey she said I really am sorry for my behavior this morning she said will you forgive me and I says sure but it's not me that really needs forgiveness I said we need to go next door and talk to Jack Griffin She said, what? I said, you know that man's had a heart attack. He was out there with his hose watering his plants. He just stood there going. She said oh my god. And she said we're gonna have to move. You know. And then before the evening was over she finally remembered that Jack Griffin is never there on Monday. He doesn't get down until Tuesday. Then she She was really mad when she found out. But we have fun, and we have fun in sobriety, and that's the way this thing is designed. It really is designed to be happy, joyous, and free, and that's what we should be. We work at staying married, but we don't work at staying married. We have a mutual respect for each other, and quit trying to change each other to a major degree. We tweak it every once in a while, just to make sure we're still there, got a little fire. But the bottom line is that I choose to stay in this relationship because I choose to stay in this relationship. And I have no, really, control how she chooses to stay in the relationship at all. That's her choice. But I know what I choose. And part of that choice was my sponsor said, don't leave. I don't care what you do, but just don't leaving. You stay right there and you work it out. He said, AA is designed for you to work out problems and to work on opportunities in your life. And he said, that's what you got to do. He said our choice is usually to fight, flight or run. And that just doesn't work. We had one of those crazy times and she was packing my clothes one night and she said, you're out of here. I said, I ain't going nowhere. My sponsor said, I don't leave. She said, well, I don' t care what that old man said. You're leaving. I said well, I'm not going anywhere and she says, yes you are so she broke out the suitcase and started packing my stuff and I said Karen, you're just going to have to unpack that deal. I said I'm no longer going anywhere. I'll be here in the morning. We'll work it out. He'll be there in the mornin'. She said you're outta here. I don''t want you know and she's into that deal packing this stuff you know And I said, you're just going to have to unpack all that stuff tomorrow. And so then I said the magic words, where are you going? She said, if you aren't leaving by God, I'll leave. She threw my stuff out and started packing her stuff. And then she'd load that stuff in that Cadillac in the garage. Blam, blam, throwing doors. I'm in bed. I've learned I don't have to act all the time. And I say, where Are You Going To Your Mothers? Oh, she didn't like that. you know. Wham, the door shut and I heard that car start and she hit reverse on that car and it burned rubber all the way out of my garage and you know I mean she was mad you know so I'm laying there I'm trying to go to sleep you know and about a half hour passed and I thought I wonder if she closed the garage door you know. So I got up to look at them when our bedroom was an old den that we converted into a master bedroom next to the garage and I opened up the door and the garage door was open, sure as heck it was open. So I pushed the button on the garage door and the garbage door went and got to the bottom and went back up. You know how they do. And I went and pushed the button again and went and went back out. And I thought something wrong with this garage door. It went back up and I thought I bet she's hit a garbage can or something and she's knocked it under the garage door and it's probably hitting on something going back up, has that safety deal. So I turn on the the lights in the garage and the lights in the front yard and she's sitting in her car out there with a button going I'm glad she didn't leave you know we really had a great marriage we really have it's been interesting a few times you know we've traveled all over the world and been involved in Alcoholics Anonymous all over the world and it's been our pleasure to do that we've had some good sponsors and that's very important. If you don't have a good sponsor, let me tell you how you find a good sponsor. Find somebody you don' like. If you do, just find somebody you don't like and chances are that'll be your sponsor. You go up to them, ask them to sponsor you and you want to have a sponsor that has a sponsor. That's another criteria I think. Somebody that's read the big book, studied the big books, Alcoholics Anonymous, and when I was studying that big book that Bob talked me through, he said I had to go through wherever it said alcohol or alcoholism, I had to cross it out and put my initials and put SC on there. And I said, what's that for? He said, self-centeredness. He said that's the key to your problem. He said it's a problem we have. Our disease is really not about alcohol and drugs. It's all about self-centredness. And he says when it says we were reborn in the big book, it doesn't mean the Christian reborn. It means you have to die of self. And that's what we practice in here is how to get out of ourselves to be able to help somebody else. I asked Father Martin one time when I cornered him in my cocky days, early into sobriety. And if you're in your first five years, you all are running Alcoholics Anonymous, by the way. I want to let you know that. You all are changing and redoing the books and reformatting the meetings. You're just doing stuff. And then every once in a while, you get out of control and you'll call some of the old guys in and they'll say, no, we ain't going to do it that way no more. Then we straighten it back out again. But after your fifth year, you sort of figure out that you don't have to run AA. AA runs pretty good without you. I mean, it really does. But it runs better with you being sober and being part of it. but I had to study that big book and wherever it said SC on it meant I was self-centered and that was the nature of my illness and I had learned it wasn't about me anymore it was all about you it never was about me when I was talking to Father Martin I said tell me the difference between getting sober in AA and getting sober in the church you know I'm ready to do church battle you know he said there isn't any difference he said there's no difference I said what do you mean there's not a difference he said there's no difference he said both of them experienced the same miracle of god in their lives because we we believe i believe maybe you believe that god has to intervene in our lives for us to finally get sober and stay sober we can get sober periodically because of courts jails wives whatever the case may be but we can't stay sober unless we invite god into our lives to help us stay sober on a daily basis and he says so everybody experiences the same miracle of alcoholics anonymous whether they get it through church or whether they to get it through AA. And I said, I was thinking on that. He said, now the main difference is the guy who gets sober in church receives the same miracle as the guy in AA, but he never gets to participate in other people's miracle. And in AA your miracle only happens for a while and then you get involved in other person's miracle and that's the reward of Alcoholics Anonymous is to be happy. He said that is where the magic of Alcoholic Anonymous happens is when you can all of a sudden get more involved in your life, I mean in their life than your life and you absolutely, this is the only organization that I've ever been in or ever heard of where we absolutely insist on the highest good for everybody in the room without even knowing each other. We absolutely insist on the high quality of the highest goods and we'll go to any lengths to get you turned around so you can quit doing to yourself what you've been doing to yourself all these years, so you can experience the fellowship and experience the happy, joyous, and free life. And it's the only organization. We don't even charge each other for it. My sponsor said if I ever knew how this thing really worked, I'd be dangerous. I'd probably sell it, paint it red, franchise it. You know, I'm that kind of a guy. And he said, it's good for you not to know. And the longer I stay in alcoholics and amas, the longer I know that I don't know. but I do know that the miracle is the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's my involvement with you and through my involvement with you, I'm able to go out in the world and be involved at the business level at the work level at the church level I've gone back and that part of my life and the book said I could go back I said well I don't know if I can go back or my church they said no, right here in the book it says people of faith have a logical idea of what life's about some of us go back to our church so i said oh okay i can do that you know and so but so what we do today is my life is complete as a result of alcoholics and arms whereas before i got to alcoholics in arms it was just a bunch of broken pieces and somehow another god and you all have put those pieces back together in my life where i like the person i am today not out of cockiness or self-centeredness just I hope I can hang out with me the rest of my life you know because I don't do to me what I used to do to me and maybe by you sitting in these rooms and coming to meetings and working steps and getting sponsors you too will be able to experience the magic the magic of alcoholics and honest I hope that for you and I pray that foryou and I really will pray that foryou I'm glad to be here, I'm blad to be sober I want sobriety for you, I really do that, I mean, I want bad for you. I mean I want as bad as I want my own sobriety. I want everybody to be able to get this program. The sad part is we're not all going to get it. If we said let's all meet again next year right here, this time. Let's all get together. Everybody raise your hand. We'll all go. We're all goingto be here. We can't make it. Some of us just can't making it. And I don't even know who those are. But for those people I will pray for them. And I will be here available when they want to come back so they can experience the magic of alcoholics Thank you for asking me. It's been a pleasure. Love y'all. See you later. Bye.