The Big Book That Solved His Insomnia Problem – Bill W.

Thank you. County Jail. I was being hooked for child molestation and had absolutely no idea what had happened. Now, I always like to start out with that because I usually get everybody's attention. Now I'll start with where my alcoholism started. And I was born August the 1st in 1938. And, and I believe I was one an alcoholic. In my mind, that, I'm real comfortable with that. I don't have any argument with it, and it fits. As far as I know, I always felt the same way, always thought the same way. I've always had the same screwed up mind, and that seems to be where my alcoholism is centered. At any rate, my mother told me a long time ago when I was a little baby that she used to give me whiskey and water and sugar, and would keep me quiet and i want you to know that it always worked that way for me i didn't drink on my own until i was about 12 or 13. but i i always was excited around the holidays because we were allowed the kids in the family were allowed to have little glasses of wine or little glasses of beer and i liked what it did i always liked the effect i never seemed to get what i wanted but that seemed to be a problem all my life too. When I was 13, I had what I consider my first real drunk. A bunch of the guys that I hung around with got together. I grew up in New York, outside the city, and the guys I ran with were mostly older than I was. We got together and chipped in our money and went down to the liquor store and got a guy that hung out down there to buy us all short dogs. and we took those little bottles of wine went down by the railroad track you know i can look back today and i realized that i drank differently than them other guys did so as you see i didn't especially like the taste but i liked what it was doing for me and i can remember seeing some of the other guys who had one swallow and they were drunk you know obviously they were acting you know i remember seeing one guy's bottle was half full as it sailed out over the railroad tracks And I was afraid when they got finished pulling around with theirs, they were going to come looking for mine, and I didn't want to share. I wanted it all. So I went off by myself and drank it all, and if I were to tell you in detail about all of the rest of the drunks of my life, they were all pretty much like that. I would share if I had plenty, but most of the time I just wanted it for me, and I just needed it for myself. I just really wanted to get out because I never felt like I belonged. My whole life I always felt like I was in the wrong place. when i was a little boy i used to think that i was some kind of an alien i kept waiting for the spaceship to come get me i've heard that story a lot of times in alcoholics anonymous i thought it was the only one had it you know but uh nobody ever came and got me and no aliens ever came to got me or something But I never felt like I belonged, and I was always trying to find a place where everything was going to be okay. Probably one of the big highlights of my early life was when I was in the third grade, I got a library card. And that library card entitled me to take the books home, and and I didn't have to steal them anymore from the library. I wish I could tell you I stopped stealing them, but I didn' t. But I did. I only stole the ones I couldn' t take out. But I would take the books home and sit down and read a book in an afternoon because I could get to be someplace else, and that's all I wanted to do. All my life, I've always been afraid. I had that hole in my gut with the wind blowing through, and I did' n't know why. I did n' t know anybody else that had it, and I didn't ask anybody because nobody else talked about it, but I was constantly afraid. And I learned early on that if I just kind of gritted my teeth and jumped up in front, that most people would leave me alone, you know? And if I got the other guy first, then I usually won. And if I acted like that, most people didn't want anything to do with me, and that was fine with me. From the time I had that first drunk until I was 17, I drank at every opportunity which was mostly on weekends and at 17 I quit school and I went in the Navy and I remember getting off that bus in Bainbridge Maryland in boot camp and thinking uh-oh this isn't it either. You know that was the story of my life was this isn' t it either but I've also been the type of person that if i do something you know if i make my bed i lie in it and so i stuck it out for four years and i was up and down the east coast and around the mediterranean and the caribbean and for me the navy was a place to get drunk you know when they gave me liberty it was a good thing i couldn't have liberty all the time because i couldn t afford it number one and uh and when i had too much liberty i usually got sick i can remember i think within about my third year in the Navy, I went through the DTs. Now, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was bad chili. But the snakes were coming out of the wall and coming up on top of that mountain to get me, and I was really just sitting in the bed, you know. But I've since learned that it was DTs, and like I said, I blamed it on the chili and just ignored it, you know. And I continued to do what I did, and when I got out of the Navy after four years, I said you know it's a good thing I got got out of this outfit or I'd have turned into an alcoholic for sure, because I had no concept. I went back to New York and I got involved with a young lady, dating a young lady, and I was sitting on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, I'd been drinking but I wasn't drunk, and my mouth opened and the voice said, will you marry me? And she said yes. and I knew this isn't it either, but I didn't know how to get out of it. It was about eight months later we were married and I was scared to death you know I didn t want to do it but I didn't even know how get out it then I couldn't figure a way out so I just went ahead. You know all of the people that in my life that I was sort of close to you know guys I would run with or something like that I never heard anybody talk like i felt inside i mean i didn't feel i would hear guys talk about how they loved their mother and their father and their brothers and their sisters and whatever it was they were talking about i didn t feel that i know i felt something for them but i didn t feel like i loved anybody but i did n know you know what that was about and i was afraid if i talked maybe they locked me up or something they put me away i wasn t going to ask any questions about things that you know where came to how i was strange i just knew i was strained and i didn't belong. At any rate, I got married and my drinking was getting progressively worse until I got an Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't own a car that didn't have scratches and dents that I couldn't account for. I usually wound up buying junkers and wrecking them. I was good at not knocking down but wrapping cars around poles and trees, but I always managed to somehow come out of it mostly probably because I don't remember hitting so I was probably passed out at the time and couldn't win at any rate I went on a police department in Yonkers New York and I was walking a beat in a kind of a bedroom community I worked there for about a year and a half and back there was considered okay to fly it in the back of a bar and have a shooter that wore it off the cold and so i never got cold summer olympic and i say i walked the beat but that's kind of a euphemistic term actually uh there was a lot of nights when i was staggering the beat and i was glad nobody needed any help because i was in no shape to help anybody you know i was lucky to be able to get around on my own and how i got away with that i i now know how i got away with it that had something to do with my higher power and you know because there was somebody taking care of me but at the time I just thought I was lucky you know like I said I was there for about a year and a half and and I was doing a lot of drinking I was running around in my life but within six months of the time that we got married I started cheating on her or I should say trying to cheat on her I don't know about anybody else but when I was drinking i was worthless you know i could go through a lot of emotions but that's all and i always envied these guys that could sit in a bar all night and then take the barmaid home if i sat in the bar all right i was lucky to get home you know somebody had to pull me home and i never could figure out how to do that i used to try a lot but most of the time i just passed out i can identify with those guys that uh that you know just walk around like this you know from sleeping with your head underneath the armrest in the car Not that I put my head there, but that's how you're going to wound up. At any rate, I was doing a lot of that, running around and trying to cheat on my wife, and I felt real bad about that. I had two or three girlfriends. I don't know why. Sometimes they would all show up at the station house and end a watch, and I would have to go out the back door and down the alley to avoid them. They didn't know one another, and I guess they never talked out there. I don' t know. I just used to run away. I mean, that was my thing, was to runaway. When I realized that life was getting too hot back there and I couldn't handle it, I decided to make another fresh start, and that's how I got to California. I went out and took the exam for the police department out there, and they hired me. Actually, I was going anyway by the time they said I was hired. I was already there because I had burned all the bridges and had to get out of town. At least I felt like it inside. I don't know how come they didn't figure out my my drinking except that you know they did ask me about my drinking a that's part of the questionnaire that they put out and they did check my references but you see they asked me about my drink and I said to you know a day after beers yeah that seems to be a magic number for alcoholic and I gave them references the guys I drank with you know because those are the guys that would trust at the time and you could ask any of them if i was a heavy drinker and they'd say no you know because they drank like i drank at any rate i got on the police department and 13 months later i was arrested for drunk driving and uh it was a good thing with 13 and not 12 or i'd have been fired but i was past my probation i wound up doing 51 days of suspension and and you know i just thought i was unlucky i mean everybody i knew had already had one you know so i just thought well I'm part of the group now that's all. I did my usual thing I swore off forever you know I always swore off forever I would I would quit in the morning said never do it again and forever lasted any time anywhere from an hour to three or four weeks generally not more than that and generally not even close to that you know that long and I would go back I would start back in and I would take on I would find a reason to drink now I can look back and see that I did that but at the time I just thought it was a good idea to take a drink you know I haven't had a drink for a while or one of my favorites with the Rams won today or the Rams lost today or the Rams didn't play today and I thought they were valid reasons at any rate I would taper back on I would convince myself after having one that I had it together and I could handle it this time and this time was going to be different and I would have another sometimes that would take a few days before I would convince myself that I had it all together and back on one of those tubes but I would eventually go back and be drunk driving around in the blackout you know I just thought it was part of the you know the whole picture that that was the way it was going to be and wasn't anything i could do to change it i didn't know anybody else that was trying to change i thought i was trying to change but that's the way my drinking went and for the next it was almost 10 years that's the way of my drinking most of the time i got into minor scrapes uh about a year before i got to alcoholics anonymous i i realized that my drinking was rather bizarre and i was uh And I was going out with a young lady that I never saw her face. And I dated her for about a month. And the way you do that is you go in a bar and you drink, and by the time you can't get your eyes above waist high, that's when she shows up. And I knew her voice, and I always recognized her voice. But I never say I'll take it. and I met her almost every night after about a month I realized how bizarre that was it took me a while to realize it and I decided that I was just going to stop drinking I don't know how long I lasted that time and I started again and I stopped and I stated six months before I got to the program I was involved in a drunk driving accident where in a real short time I had about a while. I had a pint of gin which was what I liked the best about that time I used to call him martinis, you know It just was Jim. You know, it didn't matter if it was on the rocks cold warm whatever just in at any rate I was trying to I was over a friend's house and I was gonna do some electrical work for me And so he fed me all this gin and next thing I know I got in the car and then I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital Well, what happened was I was making a right turn and the car jumped the center divider and all four wheels came off the pavement. Luckily, that's why nobody else got...was involved in it. The wheels just kept spinning and I was passed out behind the wheel. Well, they thought that I...somebody thought I'd had a heart attack and they called an ambulance, took me off to the hospital, and that's how come I didn't have to go to jail at night. But when I came to, I was sitting...I don't know if anybody else has ever had these. He said, I used to get gray outs. And a gray out is where you can see about this far. You know, and everything else is gray. Now, you can hear people out there. And if you recognize the voice, you know who it is. But other than that, you could only see from here in. And I was making a pass at a nurse that was from herein. My wife was out in the gray. You know? I figured out that my problem was drinking and driving. And if I just didn't drive when I was drinking, everything would be okay. and that lasted six months because what I did was I never again drove while I was drinking I would go off by myself I would either go hunting or fishing whatever was the appropriate season I would take along the proper props and whatever I needed to drink and I'd go off for a weekend or a couple of days and just get as drunk as I needed and then sober up and come home I was working a 4-12 shift so during the week at when I got home from work I could take the bottles down from the closet and drink as much as I needed to and put them back up and go to sleep and everything seemed to be okay and I was getting by with that you know I didn't want to do that I knew that eventually I was gonna wind up someplace in skid row if I didn t die first but but I just didn't seem to have a choice whenever I would really get feeling bad about that I'd just have another drink and it would go away I almost got caught once my wife didn't think I was drinking during this period and that's what she says but I almost got caught because when when I would finish the bottles with empty of the bottles I take him out and put them underneath the trash and you know at the bottom of the barrel put something on top of it and then replace the bottles up in the closet my wife didn't drink so she never noticed that you know there was any kind of activity up there at all this one time she came to me she said your son found bottles on top of the trash you know i guess i was so drunk i forgot to put them underneath and you know i was a really good liar you know I mean I could lie just give me a little bit of it and I could handle it you know, I can really make up a good story in fact sometimes I lied when the truth would have saved me better you know sometimes my mouth opened and a lie jump out and I think why did I do that you know. I mean if you tell one lie you've got to anticipate all of the people that person's going to talk to that might relate that lie you know And then all of the people they're gonna talk to and all of The people that they're going to talk to in any one of them can come back to you with that line You know, it gets really confusing. That's why I used to move around a lot You know may not have to leave whole groups of people because when I'm gonna come back with a story I couldn't remember at any rate What I said to her that time was where their neighbors they really must be drinking a lot. They're putting their bowels in our trash And she bought it That brings us up to the last drunk, you know it was one of those weekends where I it was in January as the last weekend of Third season and I took the booze that I needed to go get drunk and I went off by myself And the last thing I remember I Was sitting around a campfire with people that were in the camper next to me and next thing I know there was a bang on the side of my camper and the sheriff Reached in when I opened the door and pulled me out put the cuffs on me next thing I was in the county jail being delouse and had absolutely no idea what had happened You know when they told me what the charge was. I knew what the chart was But I thought my god, what's happened to me now? I couldn't believe that I that that could happen to me because I couldn' believe that I could do something like that. They told me I'm less than a 10 year old girl You know for me the idea that what was left for me was to die I got out that afternoon and you know I was terrified I mean my head was playing the same number as always place it was saying this time is gonna be different we just need one drink to take the edge off but I was afraid because you see I was afraid if I took another drink did I go back to where I was and I couldn't do that so I start looking for a way out way of committing suicide at least I thought I was I know now that I really wasn't looking I was looking for way out not suicide. Suicide's kind of permanent, you know. I've never been big on permanent, you know? I mean, I always want to hold my options out. But I was looking around for help and trying to plan this big suicide that was going to look like, you know, like an accident. And I went to Kaiser Hospital in LA and I told them that I had a drinking problem and I couldn't seem not to drink. And they said well what's your problem i said it's my wife and my job and if you had them you'd drink too and they said well bring them in bring your wife in we'll talk and i did and we talked but nothing happened you know i mean it wasn't her in fact i think today that sometimes that maybe she should have been canonized for all of the crap she put up with you know I mean uh it was never her fault you know but of course that wasn't solving any problems so i went to i went to another place and i talked to a nurse there and she said what's your problem and I said I think I might be an alcoholic now I don't know where I got that from but it might have been from a program I'd watched two years earlier Jerry Dunphy was the narrator and they called it 20 questions and they made a really big error when they did that on TV they started out by saying if you have more than two yeses if you have three yeses you are definitely an alcoholic so I sat through that whole program watch that mentally wrote it down of course didn't nothing on paper put down the SS on you know in my mind and when I got finished I had two and a half that's the best I could do I was a little bit shaky about that half so I went to my wife who hadn't watched the program I said do you think I'm an alcoholic she said no good enough for me but anything is I thought it wouldn't take her word for anything else but I was willing to use her in that situation but this nurse asked me what my problem was I said I think it might be an alcoholic she said I want you to do something for me this weekend she said oh I want to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I said whoa wait a minute I know I'm bad but I'm not that bad but she made me promise she asked me to promise and I said I would and you know if I promise I'll do it you know I was a little bit afraid because the people I saw on that on that program the alcoholics they interviewed on that program they either put a shroud in front of their face so you couldn't see their face or they had the light behind their head so you couldn't see their base and I understood you know they were ashamed just like I was ashamed but I knew there was something missing in me you know it was something wrong with me that that that I couldn't drink like everybody else I couldn't handle it like everybody that I always got in trouble and other people didn't at any rate though on Sunday night when I couldn t figure our way out you know I waited till the last possible meeting I could go to I went to a meeting and it was a speaker meeting in Fountain Valley I didn't get there only a couple minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start when I went in I sat down I wasn't interested in knowing anybody or being friendly with anybody and the secretary came over and sat down next to me and introduced himself and I got up and moved I didn' want to know anybody there and he followed me you know and i probably made three or four moves around the room and he kept following me left where the meeting started you know the guy that spoke that night was the first guy i'd ever heard to talk straight into my soul because he talked about a hole in his gut with the wind blowing through and he talked not feeling love for his mother and his father his brothers and sisters and he talks about being afraid and i had always been afraid you know and by that time I'd been a policeman for about 12 years and you know it's not easy doing that being afraid you know sometimes I think if the guys inside those those dark buildings knew who was coming in they would come running out because I was dangerous that's how scared I was but I just gritted my teeth and did it but he talked about that he talked about being a thief and a bed wetter and I was all of those things I mean I was the bedwetter from the time I was a little boy until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous I don't know when it stopped because I was no longer a little boy and started because I passed out but the bed was just as wet it doesn't seem to make any difference and the funny part about it is when I got into alcoholics anonymous I stopped doing those things but he talked about all the things you know about running away and then he talked about a little bit of hope and I can remember a little bit of his talk but uh if you'd have asked me when i left the meeting that night what i got out of it i probably couldn't have told you anything but i must have got a little hope unless they got a little folk because you see i was only going to go to one meeting and i found myself in another meeting a couple of days later and an old timer came up to me and he said he was about this tall and he says i'm gonna be your sponsor kid and I didn't want to argue with that I figured it doesn't cost anything for him to talk so I let him talk but you know I knew I was not honest enough to to talk to anybody so I did at any rate though a couple days after that I was in another meeting a couple of days after another and then this guy was at the following meeting a few days later and I said to him you know I like what I'm getting out of these meetings and I'd like to get more how do I do that and he said go to more meetings I never would have thought of that you know the thing I love about sponsorship is that my sponsor tells me these really simple things that I that I did I tell other people but I never think of a permit for myself never so I started going to more meetings and I started feeling better the the people that were involved in this in this situation I was arrested for just wanted the police department to drop it. The district attorney's office did drop it, but my employer said they had to know what had happened and the people wouldn't talk to them. Finally the people were out in California temporarily from back in Pennsylvania and the People went home and asked to be left alone. But my employer said that if I were to remain a policeman that they had to know what happened so they continued the investigation. They assigned two guys that I always thought of them as headhunters but I'm glad today they were good investigators and these guys did a lot of work and there's a lot a lot of hustling too. They worked up a thing where the people finally agreed to do a hearing back in Pennsylvania. I would continue to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and in the beginning my employer told me just to stay at home and answer my phone at home, and then he said well you might as well come into the office and work here, you know, rather than at home. And I just didn't know what was going on and what this little old guy, this guy that was my sponsor said to me was don't worry about a thing it's not in your hand. You know he said just keep going to meetings, do what the people say. I didn't really think that it was gonna work for me, you now Alcoholics Anonymous, but I was willing to try. I was I was willing to try, and I was afraid to hope. About the time we got to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was no question in my mind about my life being unmanageable. It was definitely that. I was easy, and I knew I was powerless over alcohol, no question at all. So I didn't have any trouble at all with the first step. But the second step, the way I looked at it, I had to come up with a higher power, and that frightened me. I knew I was crazy there's no question there either I mean you know I used to say mostly on these mornings when I would wake up always I would say well you know we rather than spend $50 on a psychiatrist why don't we just do it ourselves so in my head I would lay me down and we were talking you know we in here and I thought that I was taking care of problems that way so I knew I was crazy I just was too cheap to go to a shrink but this higher power thing I wasn't sure about that there's a little lady that elderly lady at one of the meetings that I went to that wanted me to take a marble she said she had a whole jar full of it she said I want you to take one these marbles and put it in your pocket because if you ever take another drink you've lost all your marbles and i thought you know that's kind of childish i'm not a kid you know and the next day i was out in the backyard digging in the yard and i found a marble you know. And i thought okay twice i'll take the marble and i carried the model for about three years you know always in the same pocket and so when i keep my keys in sometimes i pull my keys out in marble go flying out across the road or across the street or across the parking lot and I was off after it because I was afraid if I lost my marble, I'd get drunk. Because you see, I didn't understand how this building worked but I wasn't going to take any chances. It was a couple of days after that that a bunch of us, a bunch of us it was me, the prosecutor and the defense rep all went back to Pennsylvania just before that. Somebody pointed out to me on the higher power thing that uh that sentence that's read at the end of chapter five about god could and would have thought and i thought there is my out because i can have my cake and eat it too if i only look for god i'll never find him and i can you know i can get the rest of the program no problem well when we got to pennsylvania i walked the streets the my defense rep went to talk to the people that were going to be at the hearing the following day and i walked to streets and and walked into a few churches, and talked to the air, and said things like, okay, God, I'm doing my part. I'm taking action, so it's up to you. Now, I didn't expect any answers, and guess what? I didn'T get any. I'd have probably fallen over dead if some big booming voice had come out and said yes. At any rate, the following day there was a hearing that was conducted in an unused room of a parochial school. It was done very quietly. there was a guy there that operated the video camera. There was a woman there that swore everybody in under Pennsylvania law and the prosecutor swore anybody in under California law, and the idea was to make sure this was ironclad and could never be reversed. And the hearing was conducted and we went outside to the people's home. The incident was reported to have occurred it in a trailer, a tent trailer. So we went out to do some measuring and look at it and stuff like that. And we got out there and the guy that was operating the video camera came over and was standing next to me. The prosecutor and the defense rep were talking to the owner of the tent and taking some measurements and stuff like That. And I was trying to see what they were doing. And the guy had been operating the videocameras put a plastic case up in front of me and he said here this is for you and it was a pin in it had praying hands on it but Indian paint California law the idea was to make sure this was ironclad and could never be reversed the hearing was conducted and we went outside to to the people's home that the incident was reported to have occurred in a trailer Ted trailer so we went out to do some measuring and look at it and stuff like that and we got out there and the guy that was operating the video camera came over and was standing next to me the prosecutor and the defense rep were talking to the the owner of the tent and make taking some measurements and stuff like that and I was trying to see what they were doing in the guy that was had been operating the video cameras put a plastic case up in front of me and he said here this is for you and it was a pin in it and it had praying hands on it but I didn't pay any attention to him and I put it in my pocket and say yeah this one's for your friend and I took that one and put it in my pocket and you said yeah this ones for the other guy you know the the prosecutor not my friend I put that in my pocket I'm getting annoyed with this guy because he's standing in my way and then he took a pack of matches out I don't smoke but he put them up my face so that I could read the end and I was about to jump down his throat and it said one day at a time and I said are you and he said I knew you were he was an alcoholic sober and alcoholics anonymous for 12 years and I knew I found God and I suddenly knew that there was going to be okay i didn't know how it was going to end up but i knew it was going to be okay and i knew that god had always been there i just didn't see him and he'd always been taking care of me or i had never got that far the woman that had sworn us all in under pennsylvania law was an alan on same length of time maybe just a little bit more i think he said but uh you know i just knew that everything was going to be okay and to make a long story short everything did turn out okay the little girl had lied and that's in fact she told the same story that she had told in Pennsylvania before they left there and that why they were in California to avoid the notoriety now by this time it didn't in my mind it didn' make any difference you know because the important thing was that I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and that is the place that I suddenly realized that I needed to be when I came back they found me not guilty and they They told me that they noticed that I had a drinking problem. And he said, we want you to go away and do something about it. He said, We want you to go to three meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous every week. And I got a real resentment over that. Who are they to tell me? Besides, I was going to a minimum five, mostly seven. But, you know, I went away. It really helped me out because I was having a problem at meetings. People would ask me what I do for a living. And the problem him I was handled I was afraid I wouldn't be accepted and when when I got suspended for my job I could tell them I was security at Safeway because that's what I did while I was off you know and so that made it okay it was almost almost five months the total suspension and when I went back I didn't know if I was going to have a job they said when when you've served this much time come back and tell us what you've done about your drinking problem if you've done enough we'll give you a job back up until that day i've been saying things like okay god you know just let me get to this one and then we'll do it your way that morning i got up and i said god let's do it your way i don't care which way that is just let's do it i'm tired of sitting on the dime you know if you want me to have a job fine if you don't fine fine. I went in that morning and they said, if you'd like to, you can start work tomorrow. And then I wasn't sure I wanted to go back. You know, I'd never done the job without having that booze to escape into. I didn't have to be drunk all the time, but I always had to have a place to go. And I didn' t have that escape anymore. And uh, I was working, they started me back working what they call a dead body car. It's on the morning watch, the graveyard shift and you just investigate all the dead bodies in the city you know i'd be out there in a car and i'd get the call and everything inside of me would say no we can't do that let's take the gun in the bed stick them under the seat and we'll call them and tell them where the car is parked you know but i would have to convince myself to just go through it one step at a time you know so I'd say things to myself like well let's just drive by and see who's over there and then when I get over there I'd say well why don't we stop and talk to those guys they don't look like they're threatening and that's what I do and the really funny part about this whole thing is that I was in charge see but nobody knew of going on inside of my head and I knew everything that needed to be done I just didn't have any confidence I mean I I had the knowledge, I just didn't have the confidence. And my head kept putting me down about anything I wanted to do. So I had to learn how to live. I'd never learned how to live. I remember early in my sobriety, my son was 16 years old and he came to me with a problem and I thought, that's what I'm going through. Same time, I don't know how to handle it. You know, I never had a relationship with my son until after I got sober because I thought I was just supposed to be the boss, and that's all. And inside, I used to think that if they would only behave, I could love them. But they never seemed to want to behave. And so I felt like they were the ones that kept me away. In that first year, one of the first things that I heard at AA meetings was get a copy of The Big Book. And I thought this was a book-selling society. I wasn't going to buy it. You probably can't guess what I thought I'd do, or at least get it from the library. But God knows how I am and what he did. I'm a sucker for a bargain. The secretary at the meeting I was going to, my home group, had had a fire at her house and that's where the books were and they were smoke damaged. So she gave me mine for a dollar off. When she said she had them for a $1 off, I bought one. And there's nothing wrong with mine, it's a little gray on one side. Actually, 15 years later it's almost the same as the rest of the book. But I had to have a deal, you know, I had a have a deal to do it. The good thing about getting that big book was it solved my insomnia problem. You know, up until then I would lay awake at night saying, you know just one drink will take the edge off and, you you know, I can go to sleep. The big book, I would get the big book out and start reading and I'd fall sound asleep. And I couldn't read a whole page I'd be sound asleep In fact, it wouldn't matter if I just woke up you know at eight hours of sleep and I still would fall asleep. So I went to my sponsor and I said, you know I don't seem to be able to read this thing without falling asleep and he said, kid it's okay as long as you keep reading the book the big books you're going to stay around here as longas you stay around here you're gonna have a long time to read the big ones but sponsors really are clever at any rate that solved that problem i uh all of the problems that came up in my life seemed to be solved you know i worried about them of course but they all seemed to get solved the only ones that didn't seem to get resolved were the ones that i charged at and i guess i've had to do a lot of that over the over the period of time i've been Alcoholics Anonymous I got into the steps right on and I it took me probably two years to get through them after I did with the first step I kind of took a I should say after I do the fifth step I kinda took a break because I thought it was rest time and then I got a new sponsor when I got when I was about to do my eighth step and that was a year I was About a year nine months old then. And my new sponsor walked me through that eighth and ninth step and made it really easy for me, you know, because I didn't have to make any decisions. I mean he took over and made the decisions for me. I was into service. I started going on as a guest on panels probably at about a year and a half. In the area I was in you couldn't get a panel until you had two years of sobriety at two years of sobriete I got a panel it was that it was a step study panel and it was steps one two three at a recovery place and you know what that panel started when I started in service work and it ended just after I left that panel sometimes I think the only reason that that panel ever existed was for me because it got me doing one two or three one two three I used to think God can't I ever go on past this you know I have to always do one two three I'm tired of doing one two or three you know the neat thing about that kind of stuff is is that I always feel good after I do that whenever I go on a panel I always still good afterwards I never feel good going you know I can think of 50,000 reasons why I should be someplace else doing something else you know but I'm the kind of person like I say that if I make a commitment I follow through so what I've had to do over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous is set myself up with commitment and if I have a commitment And then I do it and it doesn't matter all of the garbage that goes on in here I just ignore it, you know And I go do what I'm supposed to do and then I feel good You know, I think why does it fight couldn't I just come and feel good and not go through all that crap beforehand? I don't know why I just do After a year and a half in the program about folks anonymous I finally got up enough self-worth and enough nerve to go to the lady that was married to I've been married to her for Sixteen and a Half years and I said I don t want to be here. I don' t want t be married to you She said I understand dance. It was so easy, I thought, why don't I do this sooner too? All those years I was married to her, I wished her dead. Sometimes I said, God, if you have to take the kids too, it's okay. Just so that I would be free of her. And then, of course, I had to drink that much more to cover up the guilt that I felt because I always felt guilty about it you know somehow or other when i was growing up i got the the idea that if you think it you might as well do it because you're just as guilty and i never would do it necessarily but i felt like i might aswell have done it because i was just guilty so i carried around a lot of guilt in alcoholics anonymous i learned that that's not necessarily so and that i'm not necessarily guilty and then i can't control the thoughts to come into my head but i can control them once to get there. I spent that time from then until 1984, yes, until 1984 doing what I call the AA dating game. Some of you understand, I know. I had absolutely no idea how to relate to another human being none and i i believe today that the way i learn in my life is by practice you know all my life i thought that i had to do it perfect the first time i i thought if you can't do it the first thing then don't bother you know and most of the time i didn't bother most of time i stood on the side and i looked good in fact i looked so good some people thought i was doing it but i wasn't participating you know i was just just practice in looking good. And in Alcoholics Anonymous, I've learned that you have to do it. You know, and it don't matter whether you look good. Now, that wasn't an easy one either. That's taken a lot of practice. At any rate, I did what I say, what I call the AA dating game. And I know today that I needed to go through all of those relationships and those hurts to get to the point where I am today about it was almost six years ago I guess just over six years that I met a young lady I hadn't had a date for a couple of weeks and a friend of mine who was in Al-Anon called me up to ask me a question about work or at least that's what she said sometimes I think maybe there was something more to it but somehow in the conversation she said boy do I have the girl for you and I thought uh oh she said you ought to go out with this girl Susie and I said you know I don't know Susie I've never had a blind date I'm a little old to start now but I haven't had a date in a couple weeks she said why don't you give her a call okay so I called her up and I asked if she wanted to go and she said sure she said but I have braces but I don t look real bad First dates for me have always been bad. You know, I don't know about other people, but for me first dates are the kind of thing where I spend a whole time saying things to myself like either do I have to go to bed with this one or can't do I get to go together with this one? Or can I take her home now? Do I have have to take her home. Can I just leave? Sneak out. Because I don't like to prolong things once I've made a decision. So first dates are always lousy. Well, I went to my sponsor and I said, you know, I hate these first dates. And I explained to him why. And he said, well, that's easy. He said, when you meet her, just tell her that you don't screw in the first date. So, Friday night when I went down to meet her, I knocked on the door, she came to the door and I said, Hi, I'm Bill and I don't screw on the first date. We had a great time. All of those worries were taken off my head. I had never been friends with somebody first. I always went to bed with them first and then became friends. And And with Susie, I became friends first. And then we went to bed. And it seemed to work out real well. It was just about a year later that Susie and I were on our way back from a convention in Southern California, the Southern California State Convention. And I asked her to marry me. And I don't know if she'll share that in her pitch tomorrow, but she says often that when I asked Her, she started to jump out of the car. She was hyperventilating because she was afraid. But she didn't. She just said yes. And a month later we went to Hawaii and we were married. Susie's my best friend. She's my lover. You know, we have a really good time together. And we've been married for five years, which is the longest she's ever been married, but the longest relationship I've had in sobriety too. susie and i about three years ago we decided that uh i was getting close to retirement in fact when i first talked to her i had almost 20 years on the job and uh and i could retire at 20 but i decided to go for 25 because of because the amount of money that pension would be much greater so So about three years ago, we started making these plans to retire. And we bought a trailer and we bought truck. And they're just about, well, the truck's paid off and the trailer's almost paid off. And I have 48 days to go, and I get to retire, you know. The bad part about it is that about six months ago, Susie said she changed her mind. Now, that let me kind of up in the air, you knows, because I didn't know what to do. And I said, I don't understand. How can you do that? You can't change your mind. You know, what am I going to do? And she said, well, I guess you're going to go unless you change your mind. And I thought about it a while and I couldn't come up with a reason to change my mind. And so about the end of March, I'm going and she's staying. And I know that sounds strange because that's not normally what couples who are in love and live well together and having a good time together do. do but i don't know it just seems to be that's what's the next indicated thing you know i try not to think about it because if i think about It I say you know I want to stamp my feet and scream and holler and say no you can't do that to me you have to come but the truth is she doesn't have to you know did she gets to do what she wants to do and and I want do what I wanted you know this this trip I'm gonna head north of and it's gonna take me about four months to get from from Los Angeles up to the Seattle convention. And that's one day at a time, of course. And that is assuming that I continue on my trip because I realize that the only way I learn in Alcoholics Anonymous since I have been sober is by doing. You know, I don't have the slightest idea what is going to happen until I do it. I mean, I can think about it and I can try to anticipate every possible outcome but the truth is I only know one way and that is bydoing it. And no matter how many answers I come up with beforehand there almost always seems to be another one after I do it you know something I couldn't possibly see so uh so I'm going to do it and I'm and I'm looking forward to it but I'm trying not to look forward to the part about her not being there you know and I keep hoping maybe she'll change her mind but uh you know she's she's real happy with what she does she likes doing what she's doing and uh uh and I guess it's okay I guess it's got it's gotta be okay for today you know all I have to do is is realize that that since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, that all of the things I thought might be bad turned out to be good. All of the, the things that I was sure were bad at the time turned out because they got me to where I am. And I'm in the best place I've ever been. I mean, I have a great relationship with my son and my daughter. I'm still friends with my ex-wife. I mean that wasn't an angry settlement. In fact, six months after I got a divorce from her, She said to me that that was the nicest thing I ever did for her. It hurt my feelings. But, you know, my life today is fantastic. And I have a lot to look forward to. You know, I think about all of the AA meetings that I'm going to get to visit and see all ofthe people around the United States, see allof the different ways that they conduct a meeting. One of the things that happened to me, I was in Houston about 1978 or 79, I forget. There was an icky pod down here, and I came down on a Tuesday night before the weekend, and the only meeting around was in the hotel in one of the rooms, and there was wall-to-wall bodies. I mean, it was just stacked in there as tight as you could get. You couldn't see people. I was sitting down on the floor next to a chair, and you couldn't say who was in a room, but you could hear the voices, and they all had different accents, and yet they were all saying the same thing. and I realized then what I want to reinforce in my trip in my travels that AA is everywhere and I want to thank the committee for inviting me here and thank you for the fruit basket and I guarantee I'll eat the best part of it and thank you for having me. Bye now