He’s the Guy That Lowers the Bell Curve – Joe M.

Thank you, Ed, for the introduction. Thank you for inviting me to speak today. I'm humbled to be in the lineup with some very, very dear friends, the sponsee and people I haven't seen for a long time. And one of the most powerful prayers I've ever done has been with Sandy up in Ottawa when I was up there speaking at your convention. And I love you, Sandy, and it's good to see you. And my very dear friend, Stacey. Stacey, I don't believe I've ever heard you give a finer talk than what you gave today. It's good seeing Stacey being around and seeing her mature and blossom from when she came in Alcoholics Anonymous to where she's at right now. And I want you to know I love you from the bottom of my heart. And I'm so proud and grateful. Thank you. and uh tim is just awesome uh pashon that's the first time i heard you share a really good alice thank you um carl i'm really looking forward carl he he's i'm humbled to be on the same lineup with him i i really love him and liz i can't wait to see you and hear you and um then darren gosh what a great guy i i spent got to spend some time with him in las vegas and his his family a couple of years in a row and really love him. And then seeing Robert from Stewart, Florida. What a great honor to have him here. And then, of course, I'm humbled and kind of uncomfortable because I'm forced to not veer and take what my wife calls a literary license. And my sponsor and my wife are here watching. watching, so you'll get the pure truth here. But anyway, my name is Joe McFadden. I'm a very grateful alcoholic, and it's truly by the grace of God that I haven't found it necessary to face life nor escape life by taking a drink of alcohol or anything else to change the way I feel from the neck up since June 14th, 1993. And for that, I am extremely grateful. I'm grateful. I've got a lot of sponsors and grand sponsors and a couple great grand sponsors in and so I just hope you all lower the bar a little bit, you know if if y'all went to college or high school you know they grade you on the bell curve. So you speakers should really like me because I'll be the guy that lowers the bell there, okay? I'm asked to speak tonight and on the, I call them the 12 surrenders of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I am to share this evening on surrenders eight and nine. They are, Or, you know, when you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, you see all these beautiful people, men and women. And they talk good. They look good. They smell good. They probably get in cars that they have the titles to. They probably have driver's license with the same address on it. and you see that and you say my god i'm not ever going to cut it in this joint i mean i'm i'm i'm living on the streets and once in a while i can hustle somebody and let me let them sleep with uh on their couch or on their floor just so i can be warm and i'm coming in here these people they can put together sentences and we don't realize you know tim mentioned he's a a big and when he comes down and visits me, we go to the world's greatest barbecue joint in Texas that's fighting words. But I'm telling you, we Go to the World's Greatest sauce, barbecue place. And when you walk in there, you know, we're starving because we're looking forward to going to Lockhart for barbecue. And when we walk in There, the succulent aroma of sausage comes and And you smell it, and man, you're just going to spend $100 on a barbecue plate because you want so much. But they say that if you ever saw sausage being made, you would never take a bite of it again. Well, I'm here to tell you, I think these are the spiritual sausage-making surrenders of Alcoholics Anonymous. because if I knew, like I'm a very selective guy. I read the big book and I have what they call a pornographic memory, I mean, a photographic memory. I can remember what I read. That was a joke. And I would read the things in the big books that says it may be that he has done you more harm than you have done him. We realize, Joe, I personalize it, that the people who harmed you were probably spiritually sick. And here's the thing, we could triple or quadruple or get a lot more excitement in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and our membership would quadrupole overnight. Here's all we have to do. Our biggest problem in Alcoholics Anonymous is if we did this, would be finding coliseums big enough to hold the meetings. The topic for every meeting at 530 after everyone got off work would simply be this. The first thing apparent is that this world and its people were often quite wrong. Oh, I love that. And when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, you'll never meet a bigger victim in the world than Joe McFadden. I was a victim and I loved it. I loved that. I loved because I never had to be accountable for myself. self. So that's kind of where I'd like to start is Alcoholics Anonymous, the person that you're looking at right now is not representative or indicative of the person that came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous busted disgusted and not to be trusted. I was a taker, I was a user, and I was a loser from everyone and anyone that would come within my gravitational radar. And I would suck them into my black hole and use them and chew them up and spit them out. And when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, and we had those stairs on the wall, the steps, and I would read them and I'd get down there at eight, nine and said, there is no way in the world I'm ever going to cut it in this program. I don't ever want to look at that. And And I wouldn't. You know, it says that faith without works in the A-step, the A step promises that now we need action, more action, but which faith without words is dead. I'm so thankful that I run into some people who said work without faith creates faith. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. You see, Step 8 has made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And it's only a little less than one page. It's on page 76. So that's no big deal. But then you get to Step 9, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. That step nine is nine pages. It's from pages 76 to 84. And I'd like to point out something and hopefully I'll have time to go over them. You know, everyone knows the nine-step promises of page 83 and 84. But there are actually 20 nine-stepped promises, and hopefully I'll get to those because they're really important. And what is the big deal about this step? This step is that nothing, the big book tells us, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we do so. Until we make amends, become willing to make these amends. We're not ever going to have anything worthwhile. That's what it's telling me. That is a promise in the big book that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we are able to accomplish it. We do so page 42 tells me that quite as important as the discovery that spiritual principles will solve all of our problems. Well, I don't know about spiritual problems or spiritual solutions. I don t know about that. All I know is that I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and they want you to take these steps. I listen to these people in AlcoholicsAnonymous. The more I listen to them when I came in, the more I m convinced I can t cut it here. You see, I want to give you a little brief um snapshot of where i was when i arrived at your doorsteps june 14 1993. i weighed 370 pounds i just got out of the san antonio state insane asylum the state hospital again this time i wasn't going into the alcohol ward i was going into bowie hall And that is where you have your shock treatments and the lifers go. It's caged unit. You go outside after you've been there for a while and you've earned the right, you can go outside to 12-foot fences with concertine wire around it. i was there i received 37 shock treatments i weighed 370 pounds i was court ordered to take 14 pills a day to sedate the intensity of my emotions because i was of danger to myself and society at large my prognosis was i couldn't even hold a job doing dishes because that would be too much pressure for me The only hope I, and I came into Alcoholics Anonymous from the state hospital after taking 37 Xanax, drinking a half a gallon of Reuniti, calling up the prayer hotline, telling them I'm going to cop a plea with the devil when I die because I can't make it to heaven. And I'm gonna go back and haunt those old timers at Club 12, the Ellis Island of Alcoholics Anonymous, because they didn't understand me. They called. They broke down the door, took me to the state hospital again there. I found out. I found that I was such a loser, I couldn't even kill myself. And that's when I went to alcohol or I went to the State Hospital. A lady was there and she said, Joe, I don't know what we're going to do with you. and i said would you give me a bunch more shock treatments but don't send me to alcoholics anonymous because alcoholics anonymous doesn't work for people like me you see they quit drinking and they start going to pta meetings and they love everybody their kids love them and they're happy joyous and free when i stop drinking it's like the coating of a 220 volt wires on my hair are just rubbing and arcing. And I hate myself, that self-loathing, that extreme contempt, disgust, and hatred for myself. I cannot escape that. The only thing, the doctor's opinion, you know, it talks about some make the supreme sacrifice rather than go on fighting. And that's suicide, folks. And i would come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and i'm sure this isn't the message I heard, but this is what I thought I heard is that if you just stop drinking, it's all going to be great. Maybe afterwards go out and have some coffee with the folks, go there for your one hour cheap feel good talk therapy, and it's All gonna turn out fine. And I did that. And You know, I don't know about you, but alcohol kept me alive for a long time. It kept me Alive until I could get to you folks. Alcohol changed the way I felt. You see, I was a phony. You see I was born into a family where I'm a product of rape. I was A mistake. Nobody wanted me. I relate a lot to what Sandy was talking about. I was in a family where I didn't belong and I was a mistake and I stuttered and I wasn't smart and then I found sports And I excelled in that. And one day at about, I don't know, 15 years old, I get a phone call from the rich kids saying, why don't you come over and put the chain on our motorcycle for us? We heard you know how to work on motorcycles. cycles. And I went, I walked about approximately four to five miles in a hundred degree weather. And I win in there and they were all there with the cheerleaders and I put on the motorcycle chain and then after it was all done, I made sure it wouldn't come off. They all circled around me, says, get the hell out of here. We don't like your kind around here. And the cheerleader's are looking and laughing at me and I would have fought them, but there were a whole bunch of them. So I left. I took the shortcut going back home. I cut through a graveyard and I said, Jesus, I'm dead on the inside. My body just won't let me die. And then I saw my cousin Jack and Stanley and they had something in their hand and they were giggling. and I took my first drink of alcohol and it made me feel wonderful. And you see, I followed that until I couldn't do it anymore. I have, alcohol saved my life until I got to a point where I would have where it talks about on page 30, brief periods of recovery followed always still by worse relapse which in time led to pit upon incomprehensible demoralization. I got to the point where I couldn't live sober and I couldn t die drinking and that was hell. And so with that, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous from this hospital. They would bring the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to the state hospital. And I would tell them that AA doesn t work and I wouldn't go. And then finally, I met my therapist there. Her name was Kate Holy. And she says, I need for you to come in my office. And I said, what is it? She goes, I'm not allowing you to Come into any more of our group therapies. She goes I seen you going in and out of club 12. You go there stoned you go there to try to pick up girls. You've never gotten a sponsor. You'd never taken the steps. You never tried to be of service. You Go there and then you leave just to get paper signed so they don't throw you back in the state hospital in another ward. And she goes, I'm going to tell you something about Alcoholics Anonymous. AlcoholicsAnonymous cannot, will not, never has, never will, and is absolutely impossible to fail provided you take certain steps and you've never gotten a sponsor. You've never taken any steps. People like you who come to my group therapy, you learn how to hustle people better And I'm not allowing you to come back in. Here is the number of a man. I suggest you call him. I talked to him and he said he would help. That man, I gave a few weeks ago, I give a 65 year chip to his name was Jim W. out of San Antonio. And I called Jim from the state hospital. And he said that if I cared to, he would take me through the 12 surrenders of Alcoholics Anonymous. And at the end of that, as a result of taking the 12 surrenders of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn't change. He said, if you could change, you wouldn't need to come into AlcoholicsAnonymous. And this is the fulcrum that my life has been built on, is that I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I took the 12 steps. I did not work the 12 steps. He was very, very critical of me saying, work the steps. He said, you take the 12 steps so that you can do the work of the 12 step in the trenches where we found you and where if you ever stop working, you will go back to. And so I took the 12 steps and I was changed. I didn't come to Alcoholics synonymous to change. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous to be changed. I realize I'm harping on that a little bit, but that was so important. You know, page 45 is where the juice is for me. It talks about lack of power is our dilemma. And then we talked about in the first step, we're powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. I have a physical allergy. Once I put alcohol in my body, I manifest the phenomenon of craving. Well, I just don't put alcohol on my body. I won't have the manifestation of craving, but that's not, we suffer from something much more insidious. Page 23 tells us that these observations would be academic and pointless if the alcoholic didn't take the first drink, thereby setting this terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic center is in his mind. See, I got a mind that tells me I must drink and I got a body that tells me I can't. And trying to manage either state is impossible. So there was the terrible dilemma where I was. I end up going to Club 12, the Ellis Island, and I sit around and I'm meeting with Jim. I'm taking the steps. I'm doing the things. But I'm not really convinced I need to do these steps. And I reach a point where I have, you know, I think I'm bipolar because I've been in the nut house and I'm on all this medication and everything. And he said, Joe, you're not bipolar. What the hell you are is dry. You don't have sobriety. You've got so dry. You're just not drinking. There's more to not drinking if you're a real alcoholic than just not drinking. He goes, youre going to go permanently insane or commit suicide. You got to take these these 12 steps, I didn't want to take the 12 steps. I couldn't look at what I had become. You see, there wasn't a single person in my life who would have anything to do with me. I didn't want anybody to have anything to do with me because I knew I would eventually build up your trust and I would hurt you. And I just, I was at a point where my defects of character never bothered me if they bothered you. But I was that the point where where my defects of character were bothering me and I couldn't do anything about it. I was sitting in Club 12 one day, and there was a guy who introduced me to a guy named Mark Houston. And Mark talked to me, and he told me some things that has stuck with me my whole life. He said, Joe, is there anybody in your life who is better off from coming in contact with you? And I started crying. I said, no, no. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don'T know why. um he said you're going to have to go get into the 12 steps because the man that you were is going to drink again you need to have a spiritual experience and i said mark what is a spiritual experienced and he took me to appendix two in the back of the big book he He said, it's a profound alteration to your reaction to life. It's a personality change sufficient enough to overcome this alcoholism. And I said, how do I do that? And he said, that is a flawed question. If you could do that and then we went right back there, I can't do it. Page 45 once again says, I don't have the power to change. It says the main purpose of this book is to find a power that can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. And he says, Joe, if you take these 12 steps, you will have access to that power. We'll clear away the wreckage of your past and you'll have access access to that power. And so we got involved, we started a group there was 81 of us, we were called the truth seekers, 81 societal throwaways. There was Joe Hawk, Mark Houston, and I and we started this group in San Antonio. And these were the people that never ever were given a snowball's chance in hell of getting sober, and they all kind of gravitated towards me. And this is where I was at. I was so radical and believed what Mark was telling me. I wore a black t-shirt weighing 370 pounds just out of the state hospital. I wear a black T-shirt that said work the steps or die in effort. I had on my big book bullshit sifter. I would tell the old timers that the way they were Sharon in meetings, they ought to be brought before the magistrate for assessority to murder. Wouldn't you have loved to have me in your home group? I asked the old timers now, why did you let me do this? Oh man, we were having too damn much fun watching this. But you know, my friend Bill Cleveland and Jason they tell me we love radicals. You were a radical. you're still a radical and i pray to god i never not become i'm passionate about life and i'm passionate for what alcoholics anonymous has done for me through this well i sat down with mark and i said mark i i don't there's things about me i don'T want to tell anybody and so he and joe and i I, we did fifth steps and we shared them together. Joe had just gotten out of the penitentiary with like 10 years sober. He went, Mark had just got now to like from a nervous breakdown with about the same amount of sobriety. And I just got out of a state hospital with 37 shock treatments. And they said, just not drinking ain't cutting it. No matter what the amount of sobrity you have, And you, you've never had sobriety. You've got more, you could, you know, if you've got a lot of desire chips and you can't stay sober, there's got to be more to this program than just going to meetings. So the truth seekers, we all got together and we made a commitment. We were going to meet two days a week and we were going to take the 12 steps. We thought that reading the big book and studying the big book was a waste of time we thought that it was the only way it would be beneficial for all involved was to do everything that it asked you to do in the 12 steps we called up our friend danny sherman and he had just gotten this book put together when he experienced uh with joe hawk at the salvation army going through the 12 steps out of the big book. We turned every statement in the big book into a question, and as a group, we took the 12 steps together, and when we got time to do the fifth step, we had multiple fifth steps, and we shared them. When we got to step nine, we all had accountability buddies, and we had to talk to each other twice a week to be accountable where we're at. Then we all had to come back in the ninth step and share where we were at on the ninth step on our amends. Out of this, we formed, some of you have heard, I'm sure, of the steel-on-steel groups. Joe, Mark, and I, and a few other people up in Kerrville, Texas, that came out of that. One of the guys, whenever we were reporting where we were with our amends one of the guys says my parents want me to go to church with them we said well then you got to go and he came back the next week and we asked him hey how'd that go he said well the preacher did this sermon that was pretty cool as iron sharpens iron so does another man sharpen another man and so we changed it to steel on steel and we became all accountable where we are in the in unity service recovery mind body spirit steps tradition concepts home home, occupation, affairs, work, play, love. So the three legacies became multidimensional and we held each other. Now after I, and so I had some amends that came up and that's what I want to get into right now. As you see, I get asked to speak a lot and I turn down a lot more than when I go because of the gifts y'all have given me. I'll get into that a little later. I don't like sharing some of the stuff I'm going to share with you because it disgusts me. And I understand this is part of it. Joy shared in Alcoholics Anonymous is tripled, Trouble Shared is cut in half. And the reason that I love Ed and I said I would come here tonight, I'll share these things. It says our dark past becomes our greatest asset. With it, we can avert death and misery for others. And that's what my hope is. My favorite page in the big book says, if you persist, and that's what we're talking about in 8-9, all sorts of remarkable things will follow. When we look back, we realize the things that came to us are better than anything we could have ever planned. And that is just what I want to share with you, is that I didn't know this was going to happen to me, the beautiful, wonderful life. It's a dream life that I'm experiencing now. And I'll get to that in the tail end, but I had to get to the spiritual sausage making. So with that kind of framing, I'd like to get in. After I did my fifth step, you know, and it was hard. I didn't want to do all these columns. I'm out of the state hospital. I can barely pronounce my name. And he said, Joe, let's look at it this way. Let's just get it really dumbing down for you. You know, I'm a slow learner and I'm a faster forgetter. So he says, Joe let's get a rabies list. I said, what the hell are you talking about? He says, let'S do a rabious list. I said Mark, what is a rabius list? He said this, he said listen if you got bit by a dog that had rabies and it's one of the most painful treatments you're ever going to have they had to stick a needle that long in your stomach and shoot you twice a day for about three weeks or so to get you cured of your rabies. And it's painful, and it's debilitating. It's awful. Before you got that shot and got cured of rabies, who would you go out and want to bite so they'd have to go through that? I said, shit, that's great. And I wrote down a whole bunch of names. He said, said, Joe, that's your fourth step. And I shared it with him and that was my fifth step. I did a meager, it wasn't good. Sandy did a great job on six and seven. I waited an hour, asked God to remove all this crap from me. That's about all I could do. And then he says, now let's get out to rabies list again. I said, great. I thought it was going to get a bunch of old timers and they were all getting Bob Olson with us. And we'd go out there and kick some of these people on my rabies list butts and he said just to be fair let's write another list and i said all right arabians he said yeah i said i love it he said who do you know that if they got bit by that dog would come looking for you uh i didn't like that first one that came to mind was my ex-father mother. You see, I'm a good person today because of you people as long as I stay on the sunny side and keeping the grace of God but I was a filthy disgusting despicable animal and I'll give you an example. So I met a girl whose daddy owned a car dealership and I'm poor kid from the projects and that's love at first sight in Kansas City vernacular and I married her and I put her through through hell. And when she was pregnant and having the baby, we were doing Lamaze class and I was going out and getting drunk, coming back in drinking vodka so that, you know, cause you can't smell vodka. And then she finally had the baby and she's shivering when they take the body, the baby out of the body. And I kissed her on the cheek and she is freezing. And I said, you be your cheat. You've been cheating on me. I projected what I had been doing on her. Her father heard the commotion in there. He's a Navy CB and we get in a fistfight and they throw me out of the hospital. I go get drunk. I get in the car wreck. I end up in the same hospital as my wife and newborn baby. And the nurses are treating me. I'm saying, hey, hey, women have babies every day. I get in a car wreck and could have died and I'm the bad guy. That's disgusting. And he asked his wife, my wife to divorce me after that. And she filed for divorce and I had this big resentment with him. and um while I'm gone I I end up just when the divorce is I meet a girl and we haul off to Texas and that's how I endup in Texas and I'm down in Texas and she calls me and she says Joe I I finally found out where you're at what are you doing And I said, well, what's the matter with what I'm doing? You're filed for divorce. She goes, the sheriff's here. They took away my car and they're kicking it out of our house. You borrowed money on it and left. I said well you should have been a better wife. That's the naked truth of who I am and who I can become again folks. I need to perfect and enlarge my spiritual life through clearing away that crap. And I perfect and enlarge my spirit to life through constant work with others and how I can meet their needs. Mark made me call that guy. I called him up. And another thing is I lent him five thousand dollars so that his bookie wouldn't kill him back when I had some money. and he put on the payment of the check loan repayment instead of I put loan, he put hyphen payment. And he told my then wife that I had borrowed the money and I was paying it back to him. And so I told his wife about his girlfriends and everything. And now Mark wants me to call the guy and make amends. So I call and he won't talk to me. And then I talked to his wife and I said, said, look, Pat, I am going to get drunk or die in insane asylum. And I'm your granddaughter's father. Would you please? I have to make this amends. So I finally talked to him and he goes, what the hell do you want? And I said, well, I'm trying to stay sober. And if I don't make an amends and tell you that I want to make it right, what I did, he goes to, you know, you're the only person with our family's Catholic. There's never been a divorce in this family. And you broke our our family up, and we're disgusted the way you hurt our daughter, and what you've done to our family. In fact, stay away from me. I hope you do get drunk, and if I ever see you again, I'll run you over, and then he hung up on me. By all accounts, that's a horrible amends, but let me tell you what happened. I go in the mirror in my bathroom where I'm staying, and I look in the mirrored, and I see someone I haven't seen since he was about seven years old. I see a guy looking out at the mirror at me, who's someone I've never known. I feel like I'm a different person that had changed me. I knew that I was never going to be the same. Next thing that I have was an amends is that I had to, I, you know, I owed a lot of money in child support over $5,000. and I had to work out payments with my ex-wife or they were going to put me in jail. So I call her and I tell her, you know, when I meet a guy in AA who's a lawyer and we send an affidavit up there that if I pay it and make the payments on time, the attorney general in the state of Texas will not put me In jail. And so I send it up to her. She goes, sure, send it to me. I sent it to her I overnighted to her. And this woman never has said one bad word about me, nor her husband about me said to my daughter, your daddy's sick. He's a good man. He really loves you. And they sent it back. And when they sent It back, I opened up the UPS package. And it wasn't the affidavit that I sent. It was another affidavia that said the $5,000 that I was behind was paid in full. And I looked at it and I took it over to my attorney and he says, you're off the hook. And he says who's this person that notarized it? And the person that notarize it was my ex-father-in-law. The one who owed me that $5,000. and you know the big book talks about there are some wrongs you can never make right I don't know that I believe that I believe in the 10th step the 9th step is preparedness to be in the world of the spirit my daughter called me that daughter from this marriage called me and said daddy I'm getting married and I want you to walk me down the aisle and I had to tell her I wouldn't do it I said I don'T DESERVE i don't deserve the right to walk you down the aisle i said tony your stepfather does and she was heartbroken and i said well i'll do it under one way is that i'll be on your left side but on your right side you have him with you i walked her down the aisle with her stepfather on the other side and when i sat down next to my ex-wife my ex father-in-law and mother-in law came and hugged me and said they were proud of me. They're glad I'm sober. And there are many, many, many more amends that I've had to go through. I've worked the 12 steps really deep dives three times in my life. I mean, I go through them daily. They just become the partitions in our life fall and it's just not i'm working every area in my life is the program but you see lack of power is my dilemma and something that i've learned is um i was doing a big book study with bob darrell uh once um and it was mine to talk about the fear inventory and i i don't know where Where this came from, but it's where it says in the big book, fear set in motion trains to circumstances we felt we didn't deserve it that not we set them in motion. Therefore, fear is a prayer for what we don't want to happen to happen. Now, what I found is by making these amends, we set in emotion trains of circumstances for the good to happen happen. And as a result of that, good things set in motion. You know, it talks about in the 12 and 12, chief activator of our defects of character is primarily self-centered fear. Well, if fear set in emotion trains the circumstances we felt we didn't deserve, what would courage and faith a sudden motion. You see, we've got this block of this triadic circuitry of this block. We've got God, others, and me. Once we clear away all of this lockage that we have, these amends that we need to make, we have access to this power. Lack of power is our dilemma. The lack of that, do we clear way that dilemma? We have access this power, and I'm telling you there is nothing too too good for a sober alcoholic. The guiding principle of Alcoholics Anonymous is found on page 128, giving rather than getting. The things that have come to me when I make AlcoholicsAnonymous number one in my life are astounding. The person that came in on disability that couldn't even have a job washing dishes now, is I'm an elected public official. I sit on the board of companies. I'm married to a beautiful woman I truly love. I have a life that is an open book. I'm transparent vulnerable and open to everyone I have an intimate relationship with a higher power I look at my life today and I wonder how in the world could I have ever gotten here and you know I have to look at the 12th tradition the long form where it asks us it talks about a genuine humility, and it talks about anonymity as the spiritual foundation of our whole program. And it asks us to practice principles before personalities. And I have to say this, I've never had to make amends by practicing principles. Every amends I've ever had, and It goes all the way back to when my first time I went through the steps and I had to make amens, it was because of this. is practicing personalities before principles personality is who is right and who is wrong principles is doing what is right that's what they mean when they say quite as important to discovery as spiritual principles will solve all of our problems and anonymity is regardless of circumstance today i stand stand before you. I've made every amends that I know of. I'm clear, I'm clean. I stand here walking hand in hand with my creator on the road of happy destiny. I got a motorcycle over here. I'm at our mountain house right now at the ranch and on my motorcycle, I have a gold wing and it says trudge. Trudge the road up happy destiny, not too happy destiny." I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where I've been, but I know where I am. And I'm right here in the center of Alcoholics Anonymous. So far in the middle I can't see the edges of myself or others. I want to be, I want to walk in the sunlight of the spirit. I want to have to have suntan lotion on that I clear away all of the blockage and everything that I've got because I'm like I said, I'm a slow learner, but i'm a faster forgetter. I want to wrap it up, but I just, I just want to say that I sponsor a lot of guys and this is where we lose a lot of people is in the eighth step. What I've been able to do, and it'll take me three minutes to do this is I I've come up with a way in the eighth Step. They have a four column eight step. It's my experience. This isn't in the big book. The principles are, And what it is, is my willing and wherever list. The first one column is column one, willing and where ever. The second column is willing no where ever, third column is no willing, but I have the where ever the fourth column is I have no willing and nowhere ever willing is I know where they're at, is that I'm, I'm willing to make amends, and I have to wherever I have the money and i know i know where they're at and i'm i want to do it when i don't have the wherever i haven't got the money or i don t know where i've seen guys make this for a list and they go and as the power of gods gets in there and and people just say you know carl young wrote about synchronicity it's that once our intention is to do god's will god makes these things possible God's job is to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Our job is just to try. And if I can't do anything, so there were people on these amends and I have incredible stories that have happened. It's just, we limit God too much. If you're just coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, just to surmise, if you're coming to alcoholics anonymous, just do not drink. And that's it. it. It's kind of like a starving man learning how to fish for minnows and later finding out that he's standing on top of a huge well. There's so much more, so much more than just not drinking. I'm power hungry. I love you people. I love each and every one of you and I love Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you very much for allowing me to share.