The Restoration of a Social Wrecking Ball – Tom I.

Well, let me introduce myself. I'm Tom, an alcoholic, and I whispered to his ear, I said, what, no foreplay? Getting right down to it, delighted to be here, and congratulate you on a great conference. I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group of A.A. in Southern Pines, North Carolina. And I got gently nudged into Alcoholics Anonymous. February must have been a good day to come in out of the cold. I was kind of nudged in February 2nd, 1957. And... Thank you very much. Never intended to stay sober this long. That's a doggone fact. I really am glad to be here, and I do congratulate you on this great conference. This is my kind of conference. I really like one where we do the work. We get to a lot of spiffy places where we've got all kinds of catered stuff and hot and cold running maids and stuff like that. Here, we do to work, and that's just a great spirit, And I'm just delighted to see the good turnout and to be able to be a little piece of this. I really appreciate it, Joe. You always want to get a guy from New York to host somebody in Dayton. We had a wonderful time. We've used a map everywhere we've gone. To no avail, I might add. And we toured the entire greater Dayton and even lesser Dayton area. Had a great time, and I really appreciate being in the home of Joe and Patty. They have a couple of youngsters at their house named Jacques and Mimi. Jacques is a 14-pound miniature schnauzer. and Mimi is a 100-pound Rottweiler. You can bet I have been on my P's and Q's the whole time I was there. Really, it really has been great. Joe and I shared another addiction. I thought I had an addiction to motorcycles until I met him. He's got four of those suckers sitting in his garage. They look like Evel Knievel in Triplicate or something. Well, I want to share with you, and it's great to see a bunch of old friends here, but I wantto share withyou. I wanttoshare my story, but I think Iwantto kindof go at it the left-handed sort of way here today. We only have one story,but it comes out a lot of different ways. I have really appreciated being here with the group that are here today I knew everybody here but Kay, the Alatea speaker. They're all old and dear friends. And so it's always a treat to see my buddies like that. And I'm so proud of Mickey, I could just bust. I thought he just did a super job of getting right down to the nitty-gritty of what this deal is about. And I really have appreciated this. If we're going to have Merv for dessert right after dinner, that's a treat you must not miss. or she'll hunt you down and kill you. That's the fact. I know I have the experience, and I'm sure you do too sometimes when you tell your story. I always get kind of aggravated because I get so interested in being drunk that sometimes I forget to get sober almost. And then I do that right at the end and say, and then whoopee. And I'm always a little frustrated because I've been blessed to spend most of my life in recovery. I'm 46 years and I'm only 51 years old. Well, give or take a few. And so most of My Life has Been in Recovery. So today I want to just kind of hit it a little different way and share my story around the program of recovery and build it into that as I go. Yeah, I'm a guy that don't think of anything extraordinary. I think I'm pretty well a garden variety type of alcoholic. Didn't think that when I first got here. Didn't believe I was one at all. And today I don't really think I am radically different than anybody else. I identify with almost everybody that I hear tell their story, AAs and Al-Anons. I identify very much for those things, those pressures and tensions and all the stuff that goes on. So I'm a fairly typical kind of a guy. I'm the fellow who found himself at the age of 24 at a point in life where life seemed surely over. I found myself sitting in a maximum custody penitentiary, and I'll assure you that of the things in my life that I aspired to do, that would have been well down the list. And a lot of when coming out of the fog, you know, and starting to have some awareness of where I was and who I was and what it was about, there was naturally a lot of bewilderment of what happened. My God, what went wrong? I'm at a point in life where I should have just been getting started. And rather than getting started, I'm in a place where it's over. And for all practical purposes, I truly believed it was over. I never thought I would ever come out of there alive. and so that was it and I should have just been getting going and here it was at a point like that and when I look at that, look at that life and look back at it, you know I was a guy who started out and this is about as close to a drunk log as I've come except interwoven that I was a guy who, like most folk, booze did something magical and important for me and I started to drink with gusto I loved everything about it. I loved the drinking life. I took it up as a way of life, and somewhere in the course of it, I developed alcoholism, and when alcoholism took over my life and drove me, you know, my life happened so quickly that when I look back at it, it was like a blur. And so that's what I looked at when I saw that and said, What happened? And I look Back at a Life That Just Happened So Quickly that I was in deep trouble before I even knew I was in trouble. I knew I was in trouble a lot of times, but I never knew I Was in trouble as a person. So there I sat in a penitentiary with an illness called alcoholism that I knew nothing about, didn't believe that I had to compound the situation. I was serving time, a max of 15 years, for a crime that I Had absolutely no recollection of committing then, now, or ever, but a crime that I know that most everybody I've ever met in AA can fully identify with because so many of us, particularly those of us who have lived with considerable experience with blackouts, are well familiar with that familiar panicky feeling of waking up in the morning and scared to death of what you might have done. And like most everybody else, hundreds of times I did that, hundreds of time took a look around and no major damage done, but always lived in fear that I might do something god-awful that couldn't be undone, and sure enough it happened. So I was serving a time for a crime of manslaughter. I could be nice to myself and say that I had an unavoidable accident, but the fact of the matter is I don't know. All I know is that I was driving blind drunk, blacked out down the main street of a city up in Michigan and ran down and killed two people. So I was not only sitting in a place where restoration to life seemed an impossible dream, but sobriety wasn't even something on the agenda of things sought. And so when I look at that, it just absolutely compounds the power of the miracle of what this program is about. How you can take a 24-year-old social wrecking ball like that and give him a brand new way to live that's lasted this long. And I want to tell you about how that came about and how it's continued. There's a place in the book, I'll probably skip over it if I get down that far, but there's a space in the Book where I think it really succinctly describes this whole business of recovery, of how we keep it and lose it, in the section in the big book on the tenth step. There are only about four paragraphs in that, and the middle two describe very clearly to me how you keep it by practicing this as a way of life and how you lose it by subtly backing off and resting on laurels and stuff like that. And so I want to share with you about what was it that turned around a life like that and gave it a solid footing from which to go. Now, I believe, have no way of knowing, of course, but I believe that I was the kind of fellow who had I had to wait until I exerted some initiative on my part to come in AA, I don't think I would have ever come. Not only because of the resistance and denial and delusion of the illness, but because of the overwhelming guilt that absolutely overwhelmed my life. You know, the challenge for me was not looking for a new life. It was being willing to live. Being willing to take a place. Because I was so deeply ashamed of what I'd done. I was deeply ashamed of breathing. and couldn't stand to be around people. And when I look at that, I know that it would have taken more than I could generate to have reached out and looked for help. I didn't even know there was such a thing as help for an alcoholic. And what happened to start to turn the page for me, like you, I've had many turning points in my life, many of them. Most of them I turned the wrong way. I rarely took one the right way. But there were some that started to happen to me Soon after I got into that institution, they put me into a processing center as they usually do. And I at that time was so withdrawn and isolated, I didn't even engage in conversation with people. All I did was sit in my cell, do anything I could do to keep from thinking. And I'm sure that I would have vegetated in that condition had something not happened. One day a guy called me out for an interview. That was fairly routine. People always call me out on something. They'd call me up, they'd ask me questions, I would respond somehow. and then they would make their conclusion. This guy called me out. He was a social worker, and he talked with me about my social history. Well, my God, the biggest fool in the world could have diagnosed me from looking at my social story. It was about that thick, and it was all about drunk. And I think they had taught him in college, when you see one like that, that's an alcoholic. And you ought to tell him to go to AA. Well, that's exactly what he did. I don't think he knew any more about it than I did, and that was nothing. But he did his deal. He made his interview, and I told my lies, I'm sure. I was somebody who didn't need to make up lies. I was someone who needed to make it up the truth. I've never in my life blurted out the truth ever, ever. And so I know I told him a lie. That was just second nature to me. I got through with it. Sure enough, the thing worked. And he made the same diagnosis that everybody who had ever talked to me made. It was always something like, my God, you drink a lot. Or you're a drunk, or you're an alcoholic, or on and on and off. He made the same kind of declarations that you've had a lot of trouble with booze. And then he added something I'd never heard before. He said, we have an AA group here at the institution, and I think you ought to go. Now, it was just a flat sort of conversational level of communication. Just, we Have a Group, You Ought to Go. Didn't put a noose around me and say, if you don't go, we're going to hang you. You'll never get out of here. Nothing like that. Just to say, if you're hungry, go over there and eat. There's a restaurant right over there. Go eat. About that simple. And I got a little piece of paper a few days later. Looked like an old telegram. About that big. Said you can go to your first meeting. Didn't say Groundhog Day, but February 2nd of 57. Now, I didn't want to go there. I didn'T believe I was an alcoholic. I'd been drunk all my life. But I didn' t believe I wasn't an alcoholic . I was kind of like Nick. I thought I was a rocket scientist in the making. And one of these days, man If I ever get off on the right foot Look out, man Here I come And other delusions But that was what I believed I didn't think I was alcoholic And so I didn' t want to go there I didn''t know what it was But I knew it didn' d sound like much fun And what I wanted to do Was sit in my cell And stare at my navel I didn ''t want to get out And mix up with people I just simply couldn't fathom the notion of that. But I walked into that first meeting Saturday afternoon, February 2nd, a nice February day, and I looked like a guy on Thorazine. I just kind of shuffled in. I didn't have any zeal to go. And I walked in. Three hundred people at that meeting. One guy spoke to me. He had a correctional officer on the door, Ivester. He had it written all over his shirt. He didn't want to have trouble telling it. Ivester said, sit down. And I sat down in the middle of that 300 and listened to my first meeting with alcoholics. And I was never felt more out of place anywhere in my life. God knows there were some, most people in there, this was a long time ago, and I will assure you 24-year-olds, if you do the math you can tell I'm 51, in the neighborhood, that 24-years-olds were not coming off the production line very often, not into AA. I was the youngest person at every meeting I attended for a number of years. Youngest member in my entire state. Started for a young people's group in North Carolina a few years later. But it's an awkward place to be. Now I relish that experience. I rellish the fact that I got here at what seemed kind of early in those days. But back then, I felt hopelessly out of place. Most folk in that group had drunk more years than I was years old. And I felt like an absolute wimp. You can talk about identify or identify, don't compare all you want to. But when you're outweighed by 25 years of drinking, you're going to compare and come up short. So I was hopelessly out of place. First speaker was as different from me as any human I've ever met. The guy told his story. I'd never heard anybody tell a story like that. I thought he was some kind of freak from a circus. It was totally different. I couldn't imagine why he was doing that. Why would a fellow get up there and tell a god-awful story like that to 300 hairy-legged convicts. It made no sense to me. And I didn't identify him, never did. He became my first sponsor, and I loved him better than Peter loved the Lord. But I'll guarantee you it didn't happen that day. I sat there in utter amazement. Oh, my God, what is this? Some of it I sort of expected. You know, I knew if you were going to help drunks, Jesus was going to have to be there somewhere. And I just knew that it was coming. and I couldn't imagine any place talking about drunks where they didn't sort of hum Amazing Grace in the background. And so I was all tensed up waiting for that to come in, and I sure didn't want any of that. I'd long since closed that door. And they did. They prayed the same thing we prayed here today. they'd introduce the speaker a lot longer and said said a lot of very kind things about him and then then they started read that stuff that we always read I thought it was poetry or something I never heard stuff like that I liked what they read in the church they'd read that script it didn't mean anything it was just a lot of pretty words and and I left the amazing thing Now, when I left, I felt like I'd just escaped from a loony bin or something. There was nothing there that I connected with. But the most amazing thing was I was back the next week. And I absolutely treasure what I know today brought me back. And it's one reason I value enthusiastic people. Deliver me from sad sacks. Delivered me from folks that are bone dry and lookit. I got, get me, let me get close to people who are alive. Let me get loose to old Tom and listen to a guy with 40 years rattle the timbers. Let me hold that. And that's what brought me back. It was something, no connection, no feeling that I finally found my planet. I was out of places I've ever been. and what brought me back was that magnetic appeal of the spirit of that guy who spoke. I couldn't have told anybody why I was back, didn't have to, but I sat there. I truly was miserably out of place. I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. I said I was because I hated to be the only one out of 300 that was something else. And so they all said they were. I said, yeah, me too. Didn't mean a thing. I didn' t know what an alcoholic was. It certainly wasn't a 24-year-old guy with an incredible mind. I certainly never believed that. And so I sat there for the longest time with absolutely no clue. Back in those days, alcoholism was not seen as an illness or disease. It was seen as a moral problem. It was seeing it as a morale problem by me. When I first heard people talk about it being an illness, I didn't know what they were talking about. You know, malaria or something? How does getting drunk become an illness? So I didn't have any clue whatsoever. I kept sitting there. The funny thing about identification and about the levels of starting to get engaged in this program, that I listened to people, and the thing that to me is so critical to this program is that it has very minimal requirements for membership, very minimal. All it takes is about that much willingness, about that much. Now, if I don't have that much, I think I'm in trouble. But it's got to be just enough that there can be a little something come through the door. And I think i had that. Yeah, i think i was just enough to start to hear. What i heard was not always what people said. I'd hear folks tell their story. What it sounded to me like they were saying was that when they got drunk, they got in trouble well, i thought, my My God, if that's what that is, I've had that all my life. I've been in trouble all my wife and I've never been in trouble sober. I've ever been in jail sober. Never woke up in a burning car sober. Sleeping in a highway. Married to somebody I didn't know. Did all that drop. Well, if trouble is what it is, my God, that's my middle name. And so I kind of grudgingly copped out. I said, yeah, yeah. Like a guilty plea. Yeah, I did that. And that much willingness, eh? He had just enough to say, hey, maybe, maybe at some level. And that was enough to get here. It was clear to see unmanageability at the level I was thinking. My God, my life had been nothing but a train wreck from day one. I'm locked up like King Kong in a zoo and wall 40 feet high. If that doesn't spell unmanageable, what do you need? I didn't know that that has little to do with it. I didn'T know that. But it was enough for openers, eh? And it was enOugh to keep me going there. Yeah, and you know, the thing about this, I really believe our program is essentially one of preparation and action. Preparation and action, you know. If I'm working with somebody and they tell me they're having trouble with a step I never talked to them about that step. I talked to him about the one just before that. Because it's preparation, and when I'm prepared, things happen. And so when I got to a point where I grudgingly admitted, copped out, that I might have the problem, look who's knocking at the door. And I am so tremendously grateful for how our program approaches, how you deal with a goat. You picture that guy. Here's a 24-year-old guy living under a mountain of guilt, absolutely convinced he doesn't have the problems, I'm sitting in a group with people he doesn't identify with, listening to a program that's so foreign it sounds like it's coming in Farsi or something. It totally foreigns me. And so how do you deal with a guy who starts to say maybe I'm in trouble? Well, it's a spiritual program, eh? But it's special kind of spirituality. I was leading a newcomer's group a while back and there was a smart young woman sitting there, and she very sincerely, she said, Tom, I keep hearing about the spiritual side of the program. And I said, oh yeah. She said, what's the other side? I said shut up. Smart Alec. What's the other side. Well I heard that too. And I'll guarantee you that was not good news for me, so thank God for how we approach that. Because how we approaching a guy like me with no belief and a lot of trouble is that we come to believe in a power greater than our self-restoration society. Thank God for every word in that step. It doesn't say we had a conversion experience or we joined a church or we came to believe some particular theology or creed. It says we come to believe, a gradual process. And it takes exactly as long as it takes. Thank God that this program is not about getting good, it's about getting well. And what I was given to understand and what I needed was to believe that what? A power greater than myself. Undefined, thank God. A power that I believed in. The first power I ever believed in in my life. Now, I was a guy who grew up in, I won't get too specific with it, but it was one of those sort of hoop-ma-holler, razzmatazz churches down in the Bible Belt. They just grow there. And I got introduced to that, and it made me sicker than a mule. I tell you, that stuff drove me nuts. And when I finally got out of there, I said, well, I ain't going back there no more. I still feel that way. I ain'e going back here no more." I'm going somewhere else. But every time I started thinking about power, that's what I thought about. I remember some red-haired woman I saw running up the aisle in church one day had stockings rolled down below her knees. I don't know why that stuck with me. But it looked so gross. Well, anyway, gosh. Well, those were the images I had. So what are we talking about now? God has come to believe that a power, The first power I ever believed in in my life, strangely enough, and yet when you think about it, it's not really all that strange. The first Power they ever believed In My Life was the power that I felt in the first group of Alcoholics Anonymous to which I belonged. Now, that was a group of 300 convicts in a maximum custody penitentiary. But we met in a meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous, and there was a power in that room that I came to feel and know that was greater than any of us or all of us. And I came to believe that. The first sincere prayer I ever made in my life was to that power. The first prayer that I ever committed to memory was called the agnostics' prayer. And I still carry it to this day because it was about that prayer of the struggle for my unbelief to be relieved. Thank God that this program starts that way. Come to believe. It's always interested me that when we discuss this step, we spend about 90% of our time about believing in a power. What the step says is believe that a power whole different thing. It's a difference between a concept and a vital living spirit in my life. I come to believe that a power can restore me tremendous difference in that to balance to normal to society and then having that belief. I'll tell you it's critically important for a guy like me to be sure to take the counsel that's given in the book. Where it talks about it's okay to have your head in the clouds, but keep those big feet on the ground. Very important for me. Now I tell you, the most difficult... I was talking with a friend about some people I've worked with in the program and it's amazing how difficult it gets. It's probably some of the most difficult people I've ever dealt with. I've sponsored a couple of priests. And dealing with people who are spiritually troubled, deeply spiritually troubled and highly trained in theology is a real challenge. Somebody who sees themselves as relatively intact in this department, always a huge challenge. Any day, give me some scrapper who comes in and says, man, I don't believe nothing, especially you. Then I know I'm dealing with somebody. Because what this is about is coming to believe that a power that is mine. Our book says, I can't quote it exactly, but somewhere in there it says that we seek God all over the place and then we finally find Him deep within. I've heard that all my life. Never made sense until I heard it in Alcoholics Anonymous. But that's exactly what happened there. So what's the power? What is it I'm hanging on to? a power greater than myself. That little grudging admission that I was in trouble opened the door for the power within to the power without, and there started to be a foundation for some spiritual life. First time in my life ever. And then the step says, if you believe it, use it. It doesn't say it in those words, but make a decision to turn it over to that power that I've come to believe in. I've done that process hundreds of times. Every way you can imagine. I've don it by myself, probably the best way I've ever done it. I've do it with individuals. I've done it with newcomers. I did it with 30 guys around the lake up in Minnesota a while back. Every one of them were powerful things. You know the most quick, efficient, effective way that I think I've every found to do it? That prayer we opened this meeting with. I can engage that prayer any time. I'm trying to get the power to have influence in my life. I can say that simple prayer, and I can do it. So it's not rocket science. It's a matter of letting that power be the force that drives my life Now, that's a piece of our program, a very important piece. I know lots of people, and what I'm sure you recognize now when I talk about those first three steps. I know lot's of people who have done those first 3 steps and done no more. and have died sober. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. I know some who've never done that. Some people can get by on just surviving with fellowship, with just hanging in and staying busy. Some people could do that. But I think it comes down to what is it that I'm willing to settle for. If I'm willingly to settle on sheer survival, I can get buy on that. But I'm not that simple a case. I'm a complex kind of a guy. I'm driven kind of guy. I have alcoholism. I don't have drunk-ism. I'm not a bad drunk or a heavy drinker or a problem maker. I have alcoholicism. I'm driving in ways that other people aren't. So just survival is not enough for a guy like me. I want what AA has to offer. I want happiness. I want joy. I want freedom. I want dignity. I want integrity. I want to be able to look my fellow man in the eye. Those are important things to me, and they don't come from not drinking. Those come from restoration. And so the rest of the program is about the restoration. If I wantto be free of what it is that drives me, then I've got to get down to causes and conditions. And so, so the next thing that's introduced. Now, I came in when we didn't do any real planful ways of working steps. There was no such thing as a big book workshop. or big book studies. I wasn't even sure there was a big book for a long time. I heard about it. People talked about it sometime, and nobody used it much. The notion that it was a lot purer in the old days is more myth than fact, I'll tell you that. The old days to me were action, action, action. I mean get out and get it done, all drunk, fight drunk. That was the name of the game. And the thing of methodically working through steps is a relatively new science in Alcoholics Anonymous, if you want to call it that. Relatively new. The first 50 or 20 years I was in the program, I never went to a big book group because there weren't any. And so mine was a sort of catch-as-catch-can thing. It never was a methodical thing where somebody was sitting down and doing it with me. It just didn't happen that way. And so most of mine just sort of came by impulse and whatever. Went to meet one day, didn't mean to do anything, but it was another one of those huge turning points in my life I didn't know it then. Went to the meeting, sat down, listened to a guy tell you. I thought he was going to tell his story. Instead, he talked about the fourth step. Nothing but. All he talked About. Went into great detail. Read part of it out of the book. Stressed the importance of writing it. When he got through, I said, all right, I'm going to do that. Now, I had been sort of thinking about it. That's dangerous for an alcoholic to sort of mentally inventory. Now,I could convince myself of anything as long as I don't let it see daylight. and I'd been thinking about my question of how on earth did you wind up like this and so I'd be thinking how a nice fellow like me got in such a mess and so when that guy got through, I went back to my cell and I said alright, I'm going to do that and I got out the old trusty legal pad now I had been giving serious thought to this whole business and what I'd figured out now this is an extremely pitiful story And you may want to Kleenex right over here if you want to. My family didn't break up. My dad left when I was four years old, and he can come back. Now, I didn't know where he was going, but I knew he wasn't going to come back, and that was kind of bad news. That's upsetting to a kid. Worst news was my mother found another one, and she brought this little old guy in, and I don't mean to offend any vertically impaired people, but he was just a little old stub of a guy. And I was about as tall as him, and I wasn't but six years old. And so she brought that thing in, and his name was Alvin, Alvin. My sister used to be seven years older than me. We're twins now. I don't know how she did that. But she called the thing Alvin, and I had to call it Daddy. God! Every time I called that sucker Daddy, my blood pressure would go up here. Because I knew that wasn't my daddy. That was the most crude, vulgar, I don't mean his language. He was just an obscene man. I'd shake hands with him if you wanted to go wash or something. He's just a real dud. And I really didn't like that cat very much. I promised myself if I ever got big enough I was going to beat him like a drum and then I went off the army when I came back I was too big, I couldn't whoop that little old shrimp sure wanted to, he died I never did get to whoop him well I've been thinking about it anybody that grew up under that kind of junk would have to be a little weird and I was And so I said, I was going to write a little story about Alvin and how cruel life is and what a victim of circumstance. The founders were wise when they said, write it. Because I believed that when I had it up here. But when I started to put that down in writing, I wrote two lines. And then, I swear to you, with absolutely no intent, forethought, nothing. All at once, it was as if I hit a wall. Now, there was no echo or anything, but it was as if I hit a wall. And I think what happened, sometimes we call it a moment of clarity. I don't know if that's what it was or not. But I believe that in addition to alcoholism being a self-centered kind of an illness, it's also an illness of delusion, of not being able to see the reality as it is. And I feel my whole life was made up of illusion and delusion. And so what happened? And I believe when I wrote that and I had all at once, I think I saw the charade of my life and how pointless that whole thing was. And in one motion, one motion with no preparation, I mean, I'd read the book and stuff like that, but with no preparaion, I just opened up and started to pour out my heart. That's all. It wasn't any real fancy inventory with columns and evaluation and analysis. Well, it wasn't that. When I got through with it, I had three pages of hopeless scribble. Nobody could have read it. Nobody's supposed to. That's my inventory. And I'll tell you this, it's the most important day's work I have ever done in my entire life, bar none. Bar none. More important than the second inventory I wrote, which did fall into columns and evaluation. More important. Because what happened to me that day was profoundly, profoundly important. in two or three senses. I'll just allude to them a little bit and then hurry on because we've got to eat and Murph's going to talk and I ain't making that girl mad. She is bad when she gets mad. She's bad when he gets mad and when she's happy. Poor J.D. When I got through, the thing that happened And that was so important to me. I mentioned that sort of gradation of alcoholism, that thing of sort of seeing it as a guilty plea. That won't last long. That wouldn't last until the water got hot. But what happened that day was that the nature of the game changed. When I finished that inventory, I knew at the core of my being that I was alcoholic. No question whatsoever. Not the young alcoholic. not the tragic case, not the whiz kid. I knew I was an alcoholic, not a bad drunk, not a problem drinker, not a jailbird. All of those things were part of my reality, but they were not part of my condition. I knew it was alcoholic. There is something about me that's constitutionally different from non-alcoholics. I don't know why. I am almost abysmally ignorant about alcoholism. But the one thing I am not ignorant about is that I have it. Absolutely no question. That's been almost 46 years ago, and I have not doubted that for one second to this instant. I've come close to drinking a few times in the first five years of my sobriety. I was visited with obsession. Human power is sufficient to withstand it, especially mine. It has to come from God as I understand Him. And that's not theory with me, that's absolute experience with me. I have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have a mind that requires continuous treatment like we're doing here today. And so that was profoundly important to me, that I knew that whatever it was, there had been a pretty good fight, but I lost and I was beat. And the issue is simply this. I can't drink without disaster. I can'T drink. It's not that I've wised up and decided that I won't drink. I can'T drink. And, folks, the fight was over. The fight was OVER. The other thing that happened that day, I became a real member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I looked like one then. But there is a big difference between being just another tragic face in the crowd and being a clearly identified, functioning member of Alcoholics Anonymous. From that day to this, I've never gone to a single meeting without knowing 100% why I'm there. Not a single one. I'm a man on a mission. I've got a purpose here today. And it's not to educate or entertain or titillate. I'm a guy whose life depends, whose well-being depends on doing the kinds of practices that I've found to be successful in my life. So I have no illusions about who I am and where I am and how I fit into this thing called alcoholism. That started to shape there. There's one other area, and I'll just sort of allude to it and move on, that defects of character, we're looking for the exact nature of our own. We call those things defects of characters. And when I first, it was kind of like it was with alcoholism. When I first heard folks talk about defects of character, I thought they were talking about bad behavior, you know. I thought defects of characters was what I did and what I stole and who I insulted and all that kind of stuff. I didn't realize that we're talking about a different thing. We're talking About Causes and Conditions That Drive My Life. You know, that there were certain things that shaped in me as a child and as a developing person so that I could cope in this thing called life. None of them attributes. I developed a capacity to isolate from other people, to be totally closed into a shell of self-centered isolation. And that's a defect. That defect of lying. I didn't lie because it was nice to do or fun to do. I lied by instinct because it Was a protective thing. So defects of character went very deeply. And so that day, I didn't get a lot of insight, but I at least cracked the door enough to see that everybody rides a tiger when they come in here. Everybody rides a Tiger. They're not all the same. Some are snarling and biting. Others are a little more taciturn. They're nicht alle die selben. But everybody rides the Tiger. and will continue to, in my task here, is to try to figure out, let this program find a way to make that dude lay down, make him take a nap. And so that door cracked a little bit that day. What a tremendously important thing that was for me. And my life has never been the same. That was a big turning point for me Now, again, it doesn't really make anything happen except profound insight and some real solidity. I believe that's where surrender is born. You know, there's a place Mick can hit at. I keep picking at Mick because I can't remember far back. I remember Mick because he just sat down. But what happened in that process is well stated in that book. I canít tell you where anything is, but you probably know. Itís a place somewhere in alcoholism where it puts in one line what I put in several paragraphs. It says that we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. That's exactly what that was. I love that word, concede. That's a private word. It's not a public word. That's an alcoholic when it started out. That's communication. That's not what that step's about. That's saying you won, I am too. Let's talk. But this is a more deep thing. It's conceding. It's accepting at my innermost level that I'm beat, I'm whipped, I concede that it's over. And so that was a hugely important thing for me. When I got through with that, I didn't want to do a fifth step. I needed to dołychistep. And I didn' t want to dotho it, for doggone sure. I'm an isolated guy. I opened up with people very rarely, if ever. And I had a lot of people to choose from. There were 6,000 guys locked up in that place. Any of them would have probably listened, but I just somehow didn't muster up a lot of interest in getting one of them to listen to my innermost stuff. And at that time, I didn't really have a solid sponsor at that times. There was another guy in there, an inmate, a wonderful fellow. He was probably the wisest counselor I've ever seen. He was not a counselor, but he was probablythe wisest councilor I've never known. And he was my good friend. And so when I was sort of impelled to do that step, I kept talking with him. And we would run down various people, and I'd consider it every one of them didn't make muster. And it took me, with this brilliant mind of mine, it took be two months to realize I'm talking to the only guy I can talk to. So he says we ought to be very careful about conditions when we do this important step, andI was. We went out on what looked like a park bench on a prison yard with 6,000 yo-yos milling around. And I opened up to the first human being on this planet who ever saw me. First one. God, stuff came out. And it wasn't just unloading. Certainly that was important. But what was really important to me, I think in hindsight, was my experience is exactly what it says in the book. I just almost flew. When I got through with that step, I was just euphoric with that thing. And what it constituted for me was the first crack in that wall of self-centered isolation that was my prison. The tightest prison I've ever been in was that wallof self-centered isolation. And what the therapy of this was was to start to open that door a bit and let me start to hook to this world around me. Tremendously important thing. We call that step the hump sometimes because the only way you know what's on the other side of that hump is to do it. And then you look back, and just like me, I savor the memory of what that meant. And then move into a place in the program where I literally, when I first got to it, I thought it was a rehash of old business, you know, six and seven. There's all kinds of speculation. Some people say Bill in six talks about we don't have steps up here. I've been saluting ever since I walked in here. That ain't them, in case you're new. Six and seven, we were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. You know, we pulled them out, we've taken a look at them, we shared them with somebody. And now comes an extremely important juncture in the program. And when I first read it, I really thought it was kind of like saying two and three over with different words. Seven says we humbly ask you to remove our shortcomings. Some of us say that Bill didn't want to use the same word. He's talking about the same thing in two different positions of prayer or something. I don't really like to say it. I'll tell you the way I think about it. It doesn't make it right, but it makes it fit a guy like me. is that there's a place in the Bible that folks tell me about that refers to sins of omission and sins of commission. The sins of ommission is what I don't do. Sins of commission is what i do. And that's really what a defective character is about. A defective character, the visible part of that was the actions that I took in my warped and distorted relations with people where I used and abused and misused and took advantage of folks. Those were sins of commission, sins of omission. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. When I first came to the program, I think like many, many people who come in, I realized I'd done some grievous damage in my life and said, well, it didn't do that much damage and I never really hurt anybody deep down except for some notable exceptions. Never hurt anybody bad, like family. At least I had the decency to be gone so that they didn't see me. It took me a while to realize. I never punched my mother out. I never mistreated her in any way like that. Well, I did in some ways, but it wasn't aggressively. All I did was deny her a son for a long, long time. That's the sin of omission. The sin of ommission. You didn't have to do any overt behavior. But what a horrible thing. I understand there's nothing more important to a mother than their kids. And so I just took hers away. That's what I'm talking about. They're different things. One is what I exhibit, and the other is what i withhold. I'll tell you one other way I like to look at this if I were going to try to display it some way. When I came into alcoholics and I was, if you picture an old balanced scale, when I came in today, defects of character owned me. My life was absolutely overwhelmed with defects of character. If it hadn't been for defects of characters, I wouldn't have had any character. I mean, it was absolutely loaded. And I'll let you in on a little secret. I don't want to discourage anybody who thinks everything is going to be wonderful. It will. But I'll Let You In On A Strange Kind Of Thing That's Been My Experience. I have never, in 46 years, I have never consciously solved one single problem in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not one. Not one single time I've sat in a meeting and said, Eureka! That's it. Now I've got it. Has not been my experience. We describe this experience that we have as a journey. As a journey, not a destination, but a journey It's a way that we live. It's the way of life. And what my experience has been is that I've never solved problems. You know, like I have never solved the problem of why I was an inveterate liar. But I got introduced to the truth here. Now, it didn't come natural. I'm still not a natural teller of the truth. If something goes wrong and I don't do something right that I'm supposed to be, my first instinct would be to lie. It is never to tell the truth. And I've never blurted out the truth of my life. I honestly believe if somebody came into my house and woke me up unannounced at 3 o'clock in the morning in my own bed and said, what are you doing here? I guarantee you I'd hit the floor lying. I'd have an excuse for why I was there. I mean, it's just natural. So I never solved that. What I did was learn to tell the truth. It takes a little deliberation to do it, but that dude shifts. You know, I never learned how not to hate. I hated everything. And here I got introduced to love. And so what I find is that the scale balances. I come to a love feast like this, and when I get through with it, man alive, I think the whole world is in love. And it'll last until I get to the airport tomorrow. And they tell me to get up against that wall and open that stupid suitcase. And I say, oh yeah, real world. But you see what I'm talking about? You know, it's a transition. And so the sins of omission, as I start asking God to remove the shortcomings, what this program does is takes me through the process that removes the shortcoming. And so, no surprise that it's visited with. And that whole thing, I'll tell you, I'd just say one more thing about that because I think it's a critical juncture. That I believe, and you think about this, it certainly has been my experience and shared a lot with people that if you're working with somebody and they're going through the program and you lose them, take a look where you lose it. And all too often it's going to be right in the area that we're talking about because the nature of the process changes. We quit talking about our operation and then we take a look, well, do you want to get well or don't you? Do you want a change or don'T you? Are you willing to take some actions or aren't you?" It's decision time. And then having done that, we move into what I think are probably the most rewarding things in the program, but they have to grow out of that process of preparation where it says that we list the people we've harmed Write them down. Some folks say it's the same bunch we wrote in the fourth. That has not been my experience, not been My Experience. If I had written down my list at that point, it would have looked like a telephone book. But when I started to get realistic about it, what happened was that the list shrunk. It was still formidable, but it shrunk, it didn't grow. Most people had enough sense to avoid me. I would have used them, but they wouldn't let me. They got away. And so it wasn't that big a list, but it was a major list. Very important for me to personalize that process and to write it down. Who is it and what's the nature of the wrong? So I know exactly what I'm talking about. Because then what the step says is to become willing. What a huge word. Here we need more than just a tiny bit of willingness. We need a quantum leap of willingness, is become willing to make amends to them all. A lot of people read that statement and say, Make amends with them. It doesn't say that. It says, Make direct amends two such people wherever possible. That's my responsibility. It's about clearing the wreckage of my soul. It's a matter of making amends. It's also about getting my side of the street clean. Now certainly the other person is important in it, but very important for me. The biggest problem that I had to watch in this, and I have to watch with people I sponsor, is that remarkable instinct to manipulate. Where we want to go into this thing and we want a plan amends, but we also want a planned outcome. So that we know exactly how we're going to kiss and make up and all that. And when I go into it with manipulation in mind, it won't happen. It's about making right those things that have created my warped and distorted relationship with the world around me. I'll just tell you this, my belief is I mentioned that I wanted what the program is. I want freedom. I want to be a free man. I wantto be somebody who can take my place in this world, and these steps are critical to that. And what I believe is that every person, place, or thing that I misused or abused, I didn't win. I lost. I paid for it with a piece of my soul. And I will never be a free man until I go back and make right those wrongs and straighten out those warped and distorted relationships. I'll never be an unrighteous person. I'll be a freeman until that's done. Paying back money won't do it. That's a piece of it. But it's about straightening out those relationships. I won't go far with this because I've got to quit. Murph's already fidgeting. Now, I'll just touch on this just a little bit because I've got about two more hours of sermon and I ain't got nearly that much time. So let me just hit it quick. One that I'm always really kind of interested in, I think, tells a little something about relationship. It took me a long time to understand something about if there's anything that we talk about ad nauseum and it's about relationships because it's all about relationships. And a lot of times we're talking about he and she relationship. I was somebody who had an enormously difficult time in relationships with people, and I had a neurotic need for relationships. I was Somebody that just felt like he just had to be attached to somebody. But I had never in my life, never in My life, had a truly committed relationship, particularly with a woman, until I got into this amends process and started to understand something. Now, I'm not a Freudian kind of a guy, But I'm not a numbskull either. That when you take a look at this stuff, those defects come from strange places. Like, I grew up in that house with that thing there that my mother was married to. So I never really had a male, a significant male that had any meaning in my life. So I grewup with the significant people in my wife being all women. Well, it ain't bad. To a point. But it can be, because when you're trying to grow up and try to figure out what a man is, it's hard to do that with all women. And so I grew up, and my mother, she's a marvelous person, but a very dominant kind of woman. She was a large woman, a very confident woman, an aggressive woman, and she beat the fool out of me a few times. And so I grew up with that, and I had a real fear. I had an morbid fear of being turned into a woman or something, I guess. But I started running from that stuff as a kid. Well, none of that ever occurred to me until I started to get into relationships. And until I could make right that relationship with my mother, that was always a skeleton in the closet with relationships. Now, it took me a long time to understand that. But I had to get free of those kinds of things that distorted my personality, distorted my character, so that I could freely have a committed relationship with a human. And that's worked out fairly well. We'll be celebrating 35 years of marriage this summer. So it's working out okay. I'm wimping out. I've only called mine twice today. One time too early. She is not a nice person when I call early in the morning. But you see what I'm talking about? It's the thing about freeing, the thing about freeING. And until I get those things straightened out, I can't engage in this thing called life. I won't talk about it now because it'd take a little too long to talk about adequately. But if there's anybody here that's with me, you know a huge thing with me was taking human life. Let me just tell you that this program is more powerful than illness and is more powerful than that condition in terms of being able to find worthwhile life and trying to find a way to make amends in a real kind of way. So if there's anybody here that's troubled by something like that, by all means, contact me now, later, or anytime because that's huge but it'll take a little more time. Just let me tell you that this program has taken me through it, continues to take me through it to this day and so there's peace here. Now, what happens when I get through and make these amends with the world is that one of my dreams starts to come true. And it's true for me today. I'm a free man. I never thought I would see the day, but I have seen the day and I know it today where I can walk the streets of any city in this world and look anybody that I meet in the eye. I can say to anybody, I say it to you, ask me anything you want to ask me, my life's an open book. If it isn't, I've got work to do. And so that's what that process is about. It's not about Better Business Bureau or balancing books. It's about getting a disordered life into freedom so that there can be function. One thing about being old, as Benny, is that I had a chance to meet Bill Wilson. I didn't have a chance. I made a chance of meeting him in 1965. They were having an international trial, and I was just afraid it would be my last time to see him, and last chance to see them. And so I went there primarily to see it. It turned out it was my last chance to see him. And so, I did. I sat in a small meeting with him. It was a terrible meeting with most of them. But I sat there in one small meeting talking about tradition. And he made a statement in that meeting that relates a lot to what I'm talking about. He said something like this, that Alcoholics Anonymous was never intended to be some furtive hiding place for alcoholics. It's not a place where we build a subterranean society and sort of operate in close-guarded secrecy. He said, the outcome of this program is to restore me to my rightful place in this world. And my God, was he ever prophetic in that observation. I've seen alcoholics take their place inthis world and achieve things that defy imagination, absolutely defy the imagination. So it's a liberating, restoring, reuniting kind of an experience. It's tremendously valuable. The last three steps, some people call them maintenance steps. I sure don't. I think they are enormously important steps. You could reduce 10 down and say it's slip prevention, and maybe so. I'll tell you what I really believe. And if you take a look at those two paragraphs I mentioned and stepped in in the book, it won't take you 10 minutes to read it. Take a look. You'll see what I'm talking about. I believe that if I am earnestly trying to live this program as a way of life, a slip is an aberration. It's a slip, it's an aberation. It will not happen. Slips happen when I quit practicing this as away of life. And if I do those things, and I think it makes it abundantly clear in those little short paragraphs about how practicing this as a way of life will relieve us of that emphatically and make us free. That's tremendously important. And then that next paragraph tells me all I have to do to lose it. And that is just simply to let up on the practice. It says it different than that, but it says what we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of that spiritual condition. And if I do that, things work awfully well. Ted's a very, very important slip. I'll tell you one other thing that happens in it to me that's important. I think beyond that. It's not just about how I can keep me in good shape. It's about how I can take my place in this world and participate in life the way I want to do. And this is step 10. Step 10 to me is about how I put these principles to work in my life. I'll tell you something. I'm no hero. But I'm selfish about my gusto for living. I don't let anybody decide what kind of day I'm going to have. I don't let anybody screw it up because I practice a way of life as a way of life that I treat every person I meet as a lady or a gentleman. If they prove to me that I've made a mistake in judgment, I know how to get away. And the extraordinary thing to me is that I live in the same world you do. But I live in a marvelously warm and welcoming world When I get through with my day at night, I rarely, when I'm reflecting, come up with things that I have to go straighten out. Sometimes, sure. But most of the time, whenI settle at night and I start to reflect on today, I am overwhelmed with the acts of generosity and courtesy and kindness and consideration that's been mine just by the way I approach folk. And so that's the wayI live. And as a result, I have a marvelous time almost everywhere I go. And if I run into a jerk, I'll give him a little daylight and move on. But I'm not going to live there. And so that's what this program is about, is about how will I live? How will I present myself to the world? What kind of an A member am I going to be? And then 11 or 12 are about how to put this dude into action, how to make her go. 11 to me is not a big, deep meditation prayer. That's part of it for sure. But it's not about going up on the mountain and staring at my navel. It's about girding for battle, because what it says is, we try to improve that contact. The book says it well, that the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Now, I used to hear people talk about living the spiritual Life, and I swear to God, it sounded like spiritual robots or something. Now I'm one of them. And what I do is practice this thing integrally in everything that I do. my spiritual life is part of my work part of the highway, part of an airplane tomorrow all of that stuff is very much part of it and what that step says is that I try to improve that relationship praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out but I believe this is just my belief and I'll just put it on you for no extra charge I believe that for every person in this room Every person, A.J., Al-Anon, Alateen, whoever, who practices this program as a way of life, an avenue of service will open for you. An avenue of services will open up for you and nobody knows what it'll be. It won't be the same thing for everybody, but it'll open. I believe that the quality of my sobriety without any question will depend directly on how I respond. If I selfishly back off and take care of my own comfort and my own needs and fail to open to that avenue of service, I'll pay for it. I'll play for it fellowship will miss me, but I will lose in the process. I believe that the quantity of my sobriety will hit you directly on that. So that's a powerful action step to me. Yeah, I believe that everybody in this room has a story that somebody needs to hear. Mick and I, when we were talking at lunchtime, I told him, I said, man, just tell it like it is because you've got a story that I'll guarantee you people in this room need to hear. They need to Hear Me. They needed to hear Mick, and somebody needs to hear yours. So for God's sakes, don't selfishly hold it to yourself. Share it with somebody and watch what happens. And then 12 is about practicing. This is about doing the work. It tells me that these 200 words and the steps will give me a brand-new way of life, an awakened spirit, and God, is that ever true? And then when that happens, my job is to carry the message to other alcoholics and to practice these principles in all my affairs. That's what I was talking about earlier. And, geez, does it ever give something. I'll just wrap up because people chew me out if I don't. And so what happens? I talked about being restored and being able to function in the world. Now, all of what I've described to you, practically all of this happened inside a maximum custody penitentiary. It didn't happen when I got out. I mean, it continued when I got out." I don't think the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the liberation depends on the circumstances. I had a good friend in an iron lung. Some of you are old enough to remember an iron lungs. It's a horrible thing for a human being. One of the freest people I ever knew was an AA member in an Iron Lung. So it doesn't depend on circumstances and conditions. It depends on how I live this way of life. And so what happens? I was a guy, they let me out of prison on condition I go to North Carolina. And I grudgingly agreed to leave Michigan and go down there. When I left, I had just this small dreams of most men. I wanted to be free physically, of course. I wanted To be able to work and have an honest job for once. I wanted TO have a friend. I wantedTo be trusted by somebody I never thought I would be. And God knows the dreams come true. Every dream I've ever had has come true, and many, many more. I hit the ground running. I started doing prison work the second week I was out. Somebody asked me to go over to a prison. Two months after I was off, I was named outside sponsor. I just got out of a maximum custody penitentiary, and I'm named outside supporter of a penitentiary. And unbelievable. Same time, my parole supervisor came to me and said, Tom, you're real active in this A thing, and it concerned me. And I said, yes, sir. I thought he was going to tell me to slow down. I knew I wouldn't do it. And he said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? And I said, yes, sir, but I can't. And he says, let me check it out. Called me one day to come up to the Sears store. I went up there and saw it was absolutely true. My sister drove me there, went back, talked to my pro guy, introduced me to a fellow who happened to be the license agent. We chatted for a while. We got through. The guy handed me a driver's license. Didn't even ask me if I could drive. And no test, road written, verbal, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Didn't even pay for it. I don't know who paid for it, $4, but it wasn't me. I know that's not legal, but I've been driving for 40-some years now, so it's passing so far. Huge stuff. I was elected DCM five months after I was out. Two years after I Was Out, I said to my house one day and a phone rang from a fellow from the state capitol that had visited the A group that I sponsored in a prison at one time and told me who he was, and he said, Mr. Iverson, we're expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system and we were wondering if you'd consider accepting a physician. And the first thing I said was, man, do you know who you're talking to? And he said oh yeah, yeah, we've checked you out. Now at that time there had never been an ex-con in history hired into a corrections system and I knew they weren't going to start with me. And to him I said, intellectually, I said good God, man I couldn't imagine doing anything that I'd like more than that. To myself, I said, there ain't no way. But there was. So I went to work two years after. I was out of a penitentiary working in one, and that started a 39-year career in corrections in North Carolina. I was going along having a great time, and one day the head of our system asked me to come by his office. I went by, and he said, Tom, I'd like for you to take over an institution as warden. And I swear that still sounds ludicrous to me. It's old, old history. You know that? And I think, gosh, boss, I don't know if I want to do that or not. But I agreed. And for 20 years, that's what I did was run institutions. And my basic pattern was that I'm a developer. I'm somebody who likes to create things. I'm not a status quo. If you want somebody to guard prisoners, don't get me. Yeah, I'm someone who wants to build a brave new world. I work with people and obviously a great career. And I retired two years ago. So the day I retired, I had been elected chairman of the Correctional Facilities Committee at AA in North Carolina. So my retirement lasted about a nanny second, I think. The only thing that happened was I quit getting paid and moved to the other side of the fence. And I've had a great time. It's been a busy two years. I've been an awfully – it's been an rewarding time too, and it continues to be. I'll tell you this for whatever it's worth, and then I'm going to sit down and go eat. I'm a busy member of Alcoholics Nonprofit. I'm the busiest man I know. And I've been as busy as anybody I know for as long as anybody I know and I have I truly believe that I am the most rewarded man in the United States of America. I truly believe that. When you're busy like this, I grew a family just like most of us do had a couple of kids, got a wife, that little Canadian girl sitting in North Carolina by herself this weekend. I'm no hero out dashing around in the snow in Dayton, Ohio. There's a hero at my house. It's that little gal who's taking care of everything. And I've been doing this for 44 years. And she's the gal who has carried the sword that whole time and kept everything going. But in spite of that, I can tell you this, and the reason I say I'm the most rewarding man I know, when I think about this level of activity and program, what I want you to know is this. There is absolutely nothing in my life whatsoever that has not been richly blessed by that activity. Not one thing's been harmed. I think when I'm doing God's will, it's not going to occur at the expense of those who are dear and dear to me. This program doesn't compete with anything in my Life. If I'm Doing It by Principles, if I'm practicing these principles of the Way of Life, If it doesn't make me a better husband, a better father, a better employee, a better employer, a better citizen, I better check up and see what's going on because I'm missing something. AA doesn't compete with anything in my life. This program of recovery is the most important thing in my life. AA activity is not the most important thing. This program of recovery. And so, man, I tell you, it's been a hoot for me. In my 46 year. I'm having more fun in Alcoholics Anonymous than I've ever had. I've never been more excited. I'VE NEVER BEEN MORE STIMULATED. I'VE NEVER BEN MORE FIRED WITH IMAGINATION. AND I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT 46. IF YOU'RE NOT HAVING A GREAT TIME, FOR GOD'S SAKES, MAN, DON'T SIT ON THE SIDELINE. JUMP IN THIS SUCKER AND GIVE HER A SHOT. THAT'S IT. THANK YOU. THANKS. Thank you.