Meeting the New Person at the Level of Their Need – Clint H.

We have a debate going on about which of this water I can have and what I can't have. My name is Clint, and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you. Thank you, Lois, and thank you, Bill. I enjoyed the little introduction into the history of AA in this area. I come from Los Angeles. We would have given that a dramatic title like how Vanna White and Geraldo got sober or something like that. But I enjoyed it, and I'm glad to be here. It's a really pretty part of the country, and the clean air itself is just—you can't tell when you're inhaling here. You just breathe. There's no bite to it like there is in L.A. So it's good to be here. They sent a committee of Dugs to pick me up at the airport. And I thank them for that. Doug G and Doug M. Or so they said. one of them found out i'm a lawyer he asked me a legal question he said he said do you uh do any domestic law i said i don't do that no i don'T know he said well let me just ask you a question i said well all right he said if a couple from west virginia got a divorce, would they still be brother and sister? So it was a long run down here from You know we are very, very fortunate that we have people that are here for 40 years and almost 40 and over 40. I, in a week and a half, I'll celebrate 26 years of Sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous and I am more and more grateful as I go along for the fact that we have a tradition. There is a heritage. There is, as Lois was saying, people that will just stay with you hang in there with you on whatever terms it takes. It's always so very touching to me that people in Alcoholics Anonymous have the capacity to meet the new person at the level of that person's need and not at the levels or the level of that other person's merit because everywhere we've ever gone, we've been dealt with at the level of our merit or what they perceived our merit to be. And that's the way that the world is and that's just the way it's probably always going to be and that'S fine, I suppose, you know, it's part of it. People had reduced my life when I got here to little phrases like a commanding officer of mine in the Marine Corps talking about me said in a fitness report once, he said, Lieutenant Hodges consistently fails to live up to the low standards he has set for himself. And I was gone. And a cop in Glendale about a year before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous put it all in one little sentence. He said, I discontinued the field sobriety test because the suspect was injuring himself. I got his badge number by God I wanted a jury trial in those days and I have one of these sponsors that is an interesting guy. And somehow or other, this story about Pat Cronin and his introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous and the condition that he was in when he got here made me think of Clancy and made me thing of the kind of a person he is. He's one of those people that has dealt with me at the level of my need rather than... And sometimes our needs, I don't even know. And I think that's how... He told a friend of mine, he said, your mind is like a bad neighborhood. Don't go in there alone. he for the last 18 years has worked on Skid Row and shortly after he went down there to work to run a mission in those days in the early 70s pot was an arrest for marijuana was a big deal and they arrested one of the Los Angeles Rams in the airport for possession of pot and this guy was a wide receiver for the Rams and there was a lot of stuff in the paper about it and eventually he got processed through the system and he had to do community service and he got assigned to the midnight mission. He was supposed to go down there once a week on Sunday night and put on an NFL film, give them two hours a week and the way they worked it out he was supposedto go downthere put on the film and then stay for another hour or whatever it was, 40 minutes and answer questions and Clancy had mentioned this to me and I was all excited about seeing this guy up close and seeing an NFL Film and all that stuff, so a couple of us went down to the mission on the first Sunday night this guy was supposed to be there. He showed up. He was a little late, but he showed up He had his film, his projector, all that stuff with him, went into the room that had been set aside for that purpose and it was filled with guys that were living there at the mission Some of them had had a little booze maybe that day but they were really quite attentive and we sat in the back and after the film was over they had a lot of questions for him and his attitude toward those guys was really kind of disdainful and I kind of noticed that and I thought well I guess that's the way that'll be and then we were back in Clancy's office and this guy buttoned up all his thing and he came back and had Clancy sign off on his chit he said I'll see you next week and Clancy said, don't come back here. And he said, what do you mean? I've got to come back. He said, no, you don't have to come back here and I don't want you around here. This guy's a big guy. And he asked me, he said why? What's the matter with you? And he says, you took those men's dignity away from them out there tonight. We don't do that here. We don' t do that. here. They may give their dignity away, but I don't ever allow anybody to come around here and take it from them. And the way you treated them was shabby. They don't look so good and they don't smell so good, but they're as entitled to their dignity as you are. And you showed up late. And if you want to come back next week, be on time and sweeten it up. And I'm just kind of, wow. And he said, I'll be back. And we were all down there the next week, I can tell you that. We wanted to see how this was going to go. This guy Lance was on time and put on the film. And when the guys afterwards asked questions, he was right there with them. and I think he may have gotten more out of it than anybody when his time of community service was over with he had put in 14 weeks of being respectful to people that he would not ordinarily have been respectful to of giving them their dignity and he got a lot of his own in the process and I got a real look at what kind of an example do I want to set who do I wanna be around what is it that makes me feel safe in a situation like that And so I noticed that these people that have been around a long time have got something going for them. They have a look in their eye, they used to call it the Molokai look. The look of people that would rather give than get. It's an interesting thing to see that in Alcoholics Anonymous And for a weekend where we're celebrating the time of one year of sobriety, it's worthwhile looking at what the examples are and what somebody with a year of sobriety may want to do to set some kind of a vision for himself. And so I'm glad to be here. I'm very glad to being here for any number of reasons. I'm happy to be able to be a part of this. I'm also glad to celebrate my own sobriete. I'm glad to be here because at some point along the line in my drinking, I placed myself beyond human aid. And I didn't even know that I did that. There wasn't any human power that could have intervened in what was going on in my life at some part of my life. At some point among the line. And I think it happened before I was 20. I started drinking when I was 16. And I drank for 13 years. I got to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 29 years old. I'm 55 now. I got here because a bail bondsman brought me to AA. A bail bonds man in Glendale, California took a look at me one day and he said, I'm going to take you someplace. And I just looked at him. He said, where are you going to be about noon? And I told him where I thought I was going to go. I thought it was goingto be aboutnoon. And he caught up with me. and he put me in his car this guy that had never taken anybody to Alcoholics Anonymous before this guy put me in his care and drove me across town on a hot Wednesday and we went up a long flight of stairs into a little room over a laundry in Glendale, California and nothing in my life has been the same since that day nothing has been the same I got drunk after that I got here in July that year and my sober date is the 14th of August I remember coming back and another old timer was exquisitely kind to me I was so shamed that I'd been drunk for a week so despairing such a deep sense of failure and he said don't make too big a deal out of it of course you drink you're alcoholic you'll hear people say don't drink no matter what but you know what you drink no mater what that's what you do it doesn't surprise us if you want to surprise us get a job that'll surprise us but it doesn' t surprise us that you drank and in looking back on it it doesn''t surprise me and i had been all my life without knowing it the recipient of god's grace and from that day to this i've been the recipient Of God's Grace and I haven't always been aware of it guy told me not long ago he said you have to qualify for God's grace I thought that's a weird thing to say he said no you really do I said how do you qualify he said well what you have to is be a liar and a cheat and a thief and a real jerk i said i qualify he said those other people may not need it we qualify we qualify when i was growing up is that you know i don't i don' know there's always a debate raging someplace about how you get to be an alcoholic and when it happens in this invisible line and that little psychological thing in our genetic heritage and our all of that stuff i don't know my dad was a drunk i think he was alcoholic my mom had uh a whole different thing she was very religious i have a twin brother i thought he was not an alcoholic he joined aa 10 years ago he's still sober identical twin brother i had an uncle that was a missionary in china so I knew never ever to go down front in the church and get saved because they send you to China I didn't want to go to China I didn'y like him and I didn''t like his he had a little boy about our age who was always held up as the good one and my brother and I were well I'll tell you I had a funny experience some years ago. I spoke at an AA meeting in California, and this guy came up to me afterwards. I didn't mention my brother. He said, do you have a twin brother? I said, yeah. He said when you lived in Billings, did you live on Yellowstone Avenue? I said yeah. He said did you go to Broadwater grade school? I said yes. He said my dad told me to never play with you two guys. I said, you still got to AA, didn't you, pal? Kind of a goofy home. Kind of a strange mix there. There were two powers. One was God and one was booze. My father had a relationship with booze and my mother had a relation with boozo. They both seemed a little bit odd to me. Booze didn't exactly bring out the best in my father. Made him throw furniture around the room is what it did. And God was really not a very attractive source of strength for my mother. It may, there was something, she'd drag us to church four and five times a week. There was all kinds of rules around that. There was just something about dancing was bad and money was bad and this was bad. And we passed out tracks on the streets of Billings, Montana, on, which was a humiliating thing from my point of view. I hated to be down there like Salvation Army people doing all of that. I liked my dad better. He was at least sort of seemed like he was doing what he wanted to do. It didn't look like my mother was doing what she wanted to do. But I knew she had this thing going with God. And I knew my dad had this thing going with booze. And that seemed to be about all the power there was except grandma. Grandma was a power. She was sort of hovering over or anything disapproving. She was seen to smile once, but that was a fleeting moment and she recovered quickly and never did it again. Unhappy lady. But very religious. And I grew up knowing that, I don't know, not me. Questions that drive you nuts when you're growing up in a home like that. Questions, you don't, you know, I heard a guy say something interesting about that. When we're kids in school, somebody will ask the question and you know the answer and you can't say the answer. The kid next to you, he's up, got the answer out and you knew the answer, what's the problem with that? If you grew up in an alcoholic home. You really have to kind of be careful when you're asked a question. It's like there's a lot of things you need to discover first. One is, why are they asking that question? Another one is, do they know the answer? so you kind of chew things over a little bit and they think you're dumb after a while in this home my mother and I were very very close I adored her and she loved me we had a sweetness in our relationship I was crazy about that lady and she could do no wrong up until I was about 5 years old and she brought my little sister home from the hospital and that wasn't the problem the problem showed up about 6 months later I noticed that it apparently was that they were going to keep my little Sister and if I'm the greatest little kid in the world what do we need her for and my mom gave her a lot of attention it should have been mine and I'd go into my sister's room into the crib and try to encourage her to move give her a little hit my mother caught me doing that one day and threw me out of the room and i got it nobody had to explain it to me and i never asked but i just that day got it i thought she loved me because she told me she lovedme and she doesn't love me and she never did love me and this has been a hideous betrayal and my mother and i went to war after that little kids can be pretty powerful in a disruptive way if they choose to be. And I, she and I were at odds. I never did anything again that she wanted me to do without a big fight. She wanted to have me mow the lawn, that little lawn out in front of the place in Billings. Take me all day Saturday to do 30 minutes worth of work because I have this objection to doing it because she wants me to go. And she's betrayed me somehow. If that notion that she didn't really love me had just limited itself to that, it would have been bad enough. But it didn't, of course. The book calls these notions old ideas. Many of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the results were nil until we let go absolutely. But the problem is it doesn't seem like an old idea. It just seems like that's the way life is. We come into Alcoholics Anonymous, we drop our old ideas about booze. A lot of the time those old ideas get dropped, but so many other limiting old ideas don't get dropped. And I didn't drop this one and in fact it expanded. It isn't that my mother doesn't love me, it's that you can't trust women. I just knew that. I knew that with every cell in my body. Nobody had to tell me either. And you make it come true. And after a while you got all the proof that you need and when you go into a relationship with that kind of a notion it's not going to go well but i always blame them i can i can sort out the problem in a bad relationship it's her fault easy for me to do years later somebody said you know the common thread and all those failed relationships you've I thought he was going to talk about those. He said, the common thread was you. That is so rude when they do that to you. Me. So my mom and I went to war and she'd send me out there to mow the lawn and no way. She wanted me to clip around the side. No way. I have to be beaten into it. And I took a lot of beatings. We moved around a lot. My dad would come home and then he'd take off for a couple of years and he'd be back for a while and sometimes he took us with him and we'd move around. Sometimes he'd go back to Billings. We never had any money. We always lived with Grandma. She was so thrilled to see us coming. Oh boy. There were four kids after a while. In 1951, we moved out of Denver. My Dad went to Japan because the Korean War had just started and we got on a bus and went back to Billings and went into the basement where my grandma lived. She had a house and there was a basement. I didn't know it but my mother discovered a lump in her breast that spring and she got very ill very fast and my grandma took her upstairs and put her in bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms to nurse her daughter, to care for her daughter because they all knew that it was not going to turn out. And she'd go into the hospital and she'd come back and so on and so forth but mostly she was in the bedroom upstairs and we were not allowed up there. We didn't get up that year to see my mother. My sister got up once and she couldn't stay long and got sent back down to where we lived in the little basement. So I hate them too, those basements. They're dark and they're dank and they'RE dreary. And one morning in the spring, my grandma called down there and said, your mother died last night. Are you going to go to school today or not? And we, you know, we had shoved it down. The caring was shoved down. And we went to school. And four days later I'm standing at a grave in the low rent part of the cemetery in Billings, Montana and they're putting my mother in there. I didn't cry. I didn' t say goodbye. I didn''t grieve. I didn ''t do anything. I just stopped. You know what I did? I stopped breathing deeply. just started to live on the surface of my life and that's the way that it was two years later at a party after a football game somebody gave me vodka and orange juice and I started to breathe again okay, alright it's almost like this is what I've been looking for see the thing that made Peggy Lee say is that all there is is not that it had never been there, but there was a remembrance of sorts. At one time I had it. What was it? Peace, a sweetness, a conviction that everything was fine. We spend a few years like that. We get born into some kind of a situation. We don't object to it. It's fine with us. Whatever it is. We don' t know the difference between parquet and a dirt floor when we're three years old or two years old. We don't know that we don't have money, or we do. All we know is that there are these giants, mom and dad or grandma or somebody, and whatever's going on is fine. It's familiar, and that's okay. And then one day there's something that jars us badly, like the realization that my mother didn't really love me. Doesn't have to be true, it just has to be something that my little mind, without any capacity for logic, will go for. I had a wonderful, wonderful experience about that with a guy. He was sober 13 years. He was in my home four or five years ago. Billy and I had been friends in AA, and he'd moved up to the northern part of California, and the guy was a whiz in computers. And one of those Silicon Valley people who hired him. He was going to be given a big promotion. He was gonna go out into the field, they were gonna give him a car, they were going to give him an expense account, they were gonna do all this stuff and all he had to do is go into the businesses and keep their computers going. And it was a wonderful opportunity for him. It was just wonderful. And he couldn't take the job. And I said, why? He said, they want me to cut my hair. I said well, cut your hair, Billy. This is not a mystery. You have a right to ask you to look like a businessman if you're going out there and do that. And he said, I said, well, what's the real reason? He finally told me. He didn't want to tell me, but he told me, he said my ears are badly deformed. I got really weird ears. I said let me see them. No, they're know. I finally got him to let me see his ears. He pulled his hair back and it was the most shocking thing I've ever seen. His ears looked like my ears. Billy, Billy not pretty but not that bad I mean he just couldn't there's a mirror in my den so pretty soon we're standing in front of the mirror and we're comparing our ears and he finally got it that they weren't that deformed but God they were so big so then I get out a ruler and we go like this and we measure them I said after he kind of got it I said where did you get that old idea and he said like any great alcoholic he said I don't know we always say I don' t know that guy I told you about that told me who the common denominator was in all those relationships he said to me in a restaurant he said do you want to do something about that about the fact that you're having trouble with relationships I said I don't know he said you don't well who should we ask Keep your voice down, Tom. I was kinder than that to Billy. I'm a kind person. I used to, if anybody told me nobody had the right to get them to get a haircut, I'd think that meant they were hard of hearing and I'd start screaming at them. But I don't do that now. I'm mellow, I'm in my old age, everything is cool. We're busy being cool in California. We are so cool. Somebody said the United States is tilted southwest and everything loose rolls into Los Angeles County. It may be. There's a sign on a shop in Sunset Boulevard that says, guess your sex, 25 cents. it's just so the people are kind of different there but you can't breathe so it all works out about that where was I Billy Billy and I were talking about his ears I said where did that idea come from he said I don't know I said well how does it make you feel He said, it makes me feel like a clown. I said, oh, yeah, I can see that. If you really thought your ears were huge and deformed, I can get why you wouldn't want to get a haircut and go out and have some contact with these customers. I understand that. Can you see that's an old idea? And he said, kind of. I said, well, if it makes you feel like a clown, are you in touch with that? And he said, yeah. I said when did you first feel that? Great question. I was so pleased with that question. One of my better questions. Because we always know. We know. We have a wonderful memory for the emotions, especially around bad situations. if you're working with somebody and they're trying to look back and pull an old idea how do you feel about it and when did you first feel that way he came up with it he said God I was in the third grade and I was running home from school I said were you happy he said yeah I said what did you expect to happen when you got home he said well I figured I'd run in the kitchen my mom would give me a cookie and I'd ran out and play until dinner I said well that sounds like a happy time he said yeah so I said what happened instead he said I went running in the house my mom was on the phone she took one look at me she got a real weird look on her face and she's talking to my aunt Betty because she said Betty I gotta hang up now Billy just came in and little pictures have big ears he didn't even ask he never got the explanation on it he just knew that there was something bad wrong with his ears and when he could grow his hair, he did and he's about ready to lose a job because we don't ask we just kind of go with it and after a while we forget where it came from and we just it's just in there and so it was with me and my mom and how I felt about her and how I knew she felt about me. And so I couldn't cry when she died because I'd shoved it all down. But the booze was sweet. The booze made me think I had recaptured something. The boozo did some magic for me. While my mother wanted us to have faith and belief in God, I never could. But I began to believe in alcohol and years went by and one day I bought a bottle of booze and I couldn't drink it then but I did put it in the glove compartment and I felt better isn't that interesting now my relationship with alcohol is such that I feel better if I have it for later that's called faith it's faith and it went like that and during that time I crossed over that invisible line in the book it says that there are some young people that may be alcoholic. And they won't believe it. But we think that few of them will be able to win out because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired. What do you think that might mean? What is that peculiar mental twit? Well, if I begin to drink and then continue to drink because I like the effect, I want some more that's a very natural thing at some point I cross some kind of a goofy line I continue to drink not for the same effect but hoping for a different result that's an interesting that by any calculation by any analysis that has to be a peculiar mental twist weird relationship to alcohol I can't stay away from it and I can quit when I start and that all captured in a simple little sentence in step one of the program Alcoholics Anonymous, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. It's interesting, isn't it? If we were here because we wanted to stop drinking—and I'm saying this because there are some new people here in the room—this isn't about stopping drinking. That is not what's going on here. If it were, step one would be, quit! Stop it! Come on now! It doesn't say that. It isn't about that. The thing that is going on in Alcoholics Anonymous isn't about quitting. We know how to do that. We are really good at quitting. We quit a lot. I quit sometimes four or five times a day, I'm quitting. This is the last half pint of vodka I need. But then when it's gone, it's, well, maybe one more. But I quit a lot. It isn't about quitting. It's important if you're new here that you understand the problem. And the problem is simply that we're powerless and also that our lives have become unmanageable. How do I know that? Well, I was living in a garage with three other guys when that bail bondsman brought me here. That gives you a little clue. It was a double garage, but still, you know. Anytime you live the kind of a life that some stranger can walk up to you and say things like, You're under arrest. That's an unmanageable life. Now, does that clean up when I get here and stop drinking? No, it doesn't seem to. I went through a terribly stress-filled time in my sobriety because I was trying to do something that I can't do. Every time we try to get involved on a daily basis in doing the impossible, that creates a lot of stress. The impossible thing that I was doing that I always tried to do is manage my life. It's impossible for me to do that because my life has become unmanageable. That means that I just can't seem to bring about the results in my life that I want. On page 52 in the book, there's an interesting paragraph. We were talking about it on the way over here. The brothers Doug and I. Geneticists, these guys. they've got corn growing in their lab that can do things beyond your wildest dreams I was sworn to secrecy or I'd tell you about it that paragraph on page 52 just lists a bunch of areas of my life that are absolute proof that my life is unmanageable. It doesn't say while drinking, it just, first sentences, we were having trouble with personal relationships. Oh. You mean after many years of sobriety? Yes. Couldn't seem to be a real help to others. My. Pray to misery and depression. Uh-huh. That's in my life. Couldn't seem to make a living. Yeah? There's about nine of those things. They told me, add the tenth one. Add sane sex life. You'll have to get to that sooner or later. Unmanageability. And so I got a real stress-filled life because I'm trying to do the impossible. See, I'm beyond human aid. I'm out of power. Lack of power is a problem. And I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, and it couldn't have made it clearer. I either have to live a life of alcoholic despair, blotting out the intolerable situation I'm in until the bitter end, and you can do that sober, or accept spiritual help. Those are my only two choices. He says, yeah, alcoholic despair, spiritual help. Which is it going to be? What's behind door C? I really don't like those choices if it's all the same to you. And I said, yeah. And we know why. I said why? Because you don't have any control. Whether you're crawling around on the floor of the garage or you've turned your will and your life over to the care of God, you don' t have any c ntrol. And your ego doesn' t like that. And that's true. I want control. So I'm not going to live a life of alcoholic despair and I'm not going accept spiritual help. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll just get my own power going. And you can do that in Alcoholics Anonymous. How am I going to do that? Well, I got sober, I've been sober a couple years, I popped out to the other end of town, got into a noisy group out there, got a powerful guy to be my sponsor. I'm not really beyond human aid, am I? I'll borrow some of his power. I'll sponsor some guys. I will list my number in my right name. Isn't that sort of an amends to the universe in some way? You got to stay away from your sponsor if you're going to do it that way. You don't want to get too cozy. You give him a little kind of no problem problems, like you call him up and you say clancy i got a problem yeah what tie should i wear today the red one or the blue one wear the blue one kid thank you oh thank you so beautiful this program really works don't ask him anything real sometimes you slip i was in the yard one day over at his place I said I got a problem he said what he's so kind he says what I said I hate my ex-wife sounds safe enough he said you want to do something about that I went oh i loved hating her drive down the freeway and hate her it was so great i said yeah you bet i wouldn't have bothered you otherwise he said well if you want to change how you feel about somebody and i guess you do want to change how you feel about her don't you i said yeah he said if you want to change how you feel about somebody, you have to change how you treat them. I said, oh, okay, thanks. He said, how's that child support coming along? Well, I'm going to get to that. He says, yeah, you are. You're going to get to that real quick. We talked about that once before and we're going talk about it one more time. And if you can't get it paid, you can get yourself another sponsor. Oh, they get ugly over there. So every payday, I'd go make one more money order. I didn't have a checking account. I was only three years sober. He told me, get the envelope ready, dummy. Take it with you. Put the money order in the envelope. Have a stamp on it. Mail it that day. and I began to do that and because of that I have a wonderful relationship with that boy today but I wouldn't have done it for anything I would love to play cue so I began to get a little sense about what's going on began to feel like I'm part of something there's a great sense of unity in my life and some service and the years go by how else am I going to get some power I know what I'll do I'll go to law school five years sober I started law school when I was nine years sober the state of California gave me a license to practice law for making progress they wouldn't give me a licence to drive a car when I came to you well that doesn't give you quite the power you think it will how about getting to be a partner in the firm okay that doesn't quite do it either what about starting my own firm okay quite do it bring another woman into my life no that's not it two at a time for a while doesn't give you any power makes you jumpy but it doesn't I had an interesting thing. There came a time, sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, that I had brought into my life the things that I thought I wanted in my life. I was trying big high-profile lawsuit trials and lawsuits in California there was a stream of income I bought a house on a hill I had the right car I got an image I like the image got a few years of sobriety I'm speaking around having a big time I'm the only one that can see my image isn't that interesting nobody else saw it I thought I had this thing going when I was in the Marine Corps they taught us to camouflage trucks we put branches on them so they look like trees. My trucks always looked like trucks with branches on them. That's how I look with an image, keeping that image in place. Just look like a jerk trying to keep an image in play. And it was all a little bit empty and all a little bit scary and all was not going so well. Outside it was going well. I mean, that was the external seemed to... But I have an unmanageable life, and I was trying to manage my life. So I had a lot of stress. And I kind of got back, took another whack at these steps. I said that third step prayer without really knowing what I was doing. See, I was bonded by my ego to all of this stuff and to the image. And then I said, that prayer relieved me of the bondage of self. And he did. And it was not fun. The house went away. My partner came to me and said he didn't want to play anymore. That ended in a way I didn't like. The relationship ended. The only thing I didn' t care about was the car. It' s the only thing left after the dust settled. And I was scared. It looked like start over time. I'm looking at the bottom of the barrel and I don't have any substance. I don' t have any power to tap into. I don't have anything going for me. And the thoughts of drinking are getting a little stronger and I had heard about some guys around the country with 20 years of sobriety that had gone back out there and they're not coming back. We get AA slick. Go to one too many conventions. And it's a weird time. they asked me to go back to Nashville and I was feeling terrible. Two things happened in Nashville that turned me. One turned me, one was just sort of a moment. The entertainment after the banquet at Nashville with a country and western singer who said, I'm not getting married anymore, he said. What I do now every five years, I'll go out and find a woman I hate and I give her a house. I'm into the second glass now. You notice that? Well, it's an approach. But there was a guy back there who I was talking to, and I told him what had happened. I said, you know, this is so weird. I've been around a while. And he said, I know. I went through that. I asked, what did you do? He said, I'll give you the prayer they told me to say. It's a powerful prayer. And He explained to me how you don't want to be saying any prayers unless you're prepared to live with the results. And told me how was bonded by my ego and how I should never have said that third step prayer because the stuff you're bonded to old go bye-bye here's the prayer he gave me he said dear God let me set aside everything I think I know about you and about me and about this program and about these steps for an open mind and a a new experience of you and me and this program and these steps. And I knew I needed an open mind and I knew i needed a new experience. I had been running off of that experience in 1966 and the one in 1967 and the one in 1968 and that was about all I had. I knew I needed a new experience. We sat in his room that night late and talked. Somebody said if you want to hide something from an alcoholic put it in that big book and I think so. I hadn't much been in there. This guy turned out to live about four miles away from me on the west coast. I'd never met him before and he got back in town and I got back into town and we began to sit down and go through that book. I finally got it. My life is unmanageable. Until I get that, I can't have the benefit of the rest of the program because I think I'm running something. I get this illusion that I have some power and I don't have any. See, if you show up every day, things come into your life and You think you've done that. In my arrogance, I thought that I had accomplished something. And when it went out, I was shocked and hurt and dismayed and very frightened. And it's not that interesting to start over again. pull a law office into another town. Revive old clients and get something going again. My life's unmanageable. At step two he said step two is located in that chapter called We Agnostics. Are you agnostic? I said, I never thought I was and we talked about it and I'm agnestic and I didn't know it. That's why I never read this chapter. Might as well have been written We Ethiopians for all of me. Oh, I can talk a good game. Interesting stuff about step two. I knew there was a power greater than myself. I began to see that I had stayed sober on God's grace. I knew that he had done that for me. I did not do that. That was clear to me and it had always been. He removed the obsession to drink because I couldn't beat it. But the great question out of step two is if you could come to believe, if you're willing to believe there's a power greater than yourself, you're unwilling to go to any lengths to achieve sanity, what would sanity look like in your life? Isn't that an interesting question? What would that look like? What? Well, let's take the area I was having trouble with personal relationships. What wouldthat look like with the problem gone? You've got to form a vision, he told me. I said, a what? He said, yeah. You're going to be required at step 10 where it says every day is the day we carry a vision of God's will into our day. If you can get a vision going of what that might be, you can have it. It's your vision. It isn't God's vision, but it's your mission. If you conform a vision at step 2 of what sanity would look like in these areas in your life and if you're willing to take steps 3 through 9 the way it says to do it in the book by the time you get to step 10 you're going to have no more and no less if you've done a thorough job than the vision that you formed at step 2 that kind of a promise got me very excited I really dug that so we were at step two is God everything or nothing he said well I don't know well look at it well I guess he's everything well what five things would you not give up for a better relationship with God I got a list I can give you five things he said well then God isn't everything is he what do you mean well what's on the list sex all right so God and sex is everything right oh I see what you mean one by one those things had to go power money prestige influence so there wasn't anything I wouldn't give up for a better relationship with God give it up you can't get out of step two do you give it because you're never going to have the power available to you to take step three if you don't do that. And I came out of step three in a hotel in San Diego. Came out of that room one morning after looking at the book, knowing more about a father and a child than I had ever known in my life. And I took an inventory exactly the way it says to do it in the book including a sex and a fear inventory. And I read all of this. The four column inventory, the sex inventory, the fear inventory to this guy over a weekend. And the instructions are very clear. Go back over the first five proposals to see if you have left any stone unturned because you will walk a free man through the arch that you have created if your work is thorough. Then six and seven and have some real power. I was willing to let that crap go. It was objectionable to me. And there were four or five things on that list that I didn't have the willingness to let go, and he said, pray for it. Ask. And I did, and it came. And now I'm ready for step seven. Humbly ask him. And I do. I did. those prayers get answered absolutely get answered step 6 and 7 are given about two paragraphs in the text of the big book and by the time that 12 and 12 was written it says those two steps and each gets a chapter those two step separate the men from the boys I mean there is some kind of a spiritual consequence to that that's quite interesting. I heard a gal tell it in a way that I've never forgotten. She was 20 years sober. When she was 10 years sober, she decided that she wanted to get over her fear of heights. And so she decided to skydive. She wanted to be a skydiver. That wouldn't have been my way to do it, but that's what she wanted to do. And she took these lessons. She's sober in AA and she's taking these lessons I suppose today she would have been bungee jumping or something like that. Anyway, the day she's supposed to do the solo out of the airplane she has her husband out there in the drop zone the women she sponsors are out there her kids are out here her ex-husband is in the dropping zone everybody, it's a big day for this lady and she goes up and the airplane gets to the right altitude and she comes out of that airplane and the only problem with it is that the parachute didn't fully open and she hit the ground going real fast and spent the next 18 months in the hospital as these bones that were broken began to heal. And her husband left but her ex-husband who was an Alcoholics Anonymous came back to visit her and he spent some time with her and one day they're in the Hospital room and he's working with her and helping her do something I don't know what, eat lunch or something they get to talking and he finally said how come you did that she said did what good the skydiving thing what was that all about and she said i wanted to get over my fear of heights and he started to laugh and she says what are you laughing about he said all you had to do is humbly ask and i so i've been jumping out of airplanes all my sobriety in one way or another proven points that don't need to be proven. Not getting it about my life being unmanageable. And these steps are absolutely extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. Step nine has been a miracle. I've had to make amends for amends I made. No wonder step eleven says, I start by asking God to direct my thinking. That's the start of my day. I got to sit down. I want to tell you something. When I was, before all of this began to unfold, they asked me and Billings to come up there and talk. I don't want to go to Billings. I don' t ever want to go to billings. After this happened, I'm under new management. They asked me again. I said, okay, okay. And I went up there. A friend of mine who's in Al-Anon went up here with me. She knew I had to go out to that cemetery. I hadn't been there in 40 years. Forty years had gone by. We got off the plane and they picked us up and they fed us lunch. After lunch she came up to me with a shopping bag. She said, are you going out there now? And I said yes. She said you'll need this. In the shopping bag is a liter of water, some flower seeds she'd brought up with her, towels and Kleenex and a pair of shears. I was really touched by that. And a guy drove me out to the cemetery and I finally found that grave, that little marker. Warm afternoon sun. I kneeled down there in front of that marker and took those shears and I began to clip around there. It was so reminiscent of refusing to clean up the lawn. I started to cry. I wept, I weped, I Wept those tears. I'd start to leave and I'd Start crying again and I would go back. I cried, I don't know how long. And I haven't cried all my tears yet. But I got something important that day. She loves me. And I love her. And I came back to Los Angeles with a whole different idea. That old idea was gone. She was always trustworthy. Another sweet thing happened. The weekend up there included contact with AAs and Al-Anons, and we had a wonderful time. And when I got back to Las Angeles, I got a call, and it turns out that the Al-Anons in Billings had taken on a project to make sure that my mother's grave always looks great. I don't know where you get that, you know? I mean, where can you find that kind of love? That is just such a... That makes no sense. I call them my Al-Anon gorillas. Just mindless acts of kindness. Senseless acts of love. Drive-by stuff. it's available here the text says we hope you can be honest and thorough from the start it's never too late thanks Thanks for watching!