$640 in Freud and Jung and Not One Page Could Keep Me Sober – John H.

Good afternoon, everybody.
My name is John.
I am an alcoholic.
Since he brought up the watch, I've got to finish the story.
I was asked to speak at our home group.
That was last year or the year before.
And Terry, the lady who's the chairperson for this get-together, was the speaker person.
And I said, how long do you want me to speak?
And she said, well, God will let you know when you're done.
And afterwards, my friend Mark here came up to me and said, you were a little windy.
And I said, well, Terry told me that God would let me know when I was done.
And he said, you didn't hear him the first time.
So he's sitting real close to me here.
He can tap me in case I don't hear him the first time this afternoon.
This is a catechism.
It's a killer, tragic disease.
But if I couldn't have fun, a lot of fun, I certainly wouldn't be here.
If I had to go around with sackcloth and ashes and moaning about things I did in the past and what happened in the past,
I might as well go back out drinking because it wouldn't be worth it.
But this is not only fun.
It's absolutely wonderful.
Absolutely wonderful.
And it's an honor to be up here to try and give something back of what you've given to me over the years that I've been here.
And I'm very appreciative of that.
All the time that I was drinking, I didn't think I had a drinking problem.
Yeah, last night I might have had a couple too many.
Or I might not have remembered what I did.
Or maybe I made an ass out of myself or something like that.
But that was last night, and I won't do that tonight.
I won't have that much tonight.
I won't do that.
When I got here, I found out I didn't have a drinking problem.
But I also found out that I had a bigger problem.
I was an alcoholic, and I had alcoholism.
And that drinking was only a symptom of all the problems that I really had.
I never thought my drinking hurt anybody.
I didn't know I had alcoholism.
And that was also hurting people.
And the closer you got to me, the worse it was.
So the people that my drinking and my alcoholism hurt the most was my family.
My mother, both my wives, and there was five children involved.
But it was too many.
It was too many.
It was too many.
It was too many.
And they paid the sacrifice supreme price because they bore the brunt of my alcoholism.
My mother could and did disown me.
My wives and I could and did get divorced from each other and separated, got away from each other.
We didn't know we were taking our alcoholism with us, though.
But my kids were screwed.
I got custody of two of the three kids from the first marriage.
And so they had an alcoholic mother and an alcoholic father.
Then they had an alcoholic father and an alcoholic stepmother.
And then when I went into treatment the first time, she sent them back to my first wife.
So then they had an alcoholic mother again at the age of 15.
They were in four different families.
Everybody was an alcoholic.
I can't imagine what it was like growing up for them.
And I know, looking back on it, it must have been terrifying for them.
But it was terrifying for them when they knew that I was coming home.
Because they didn't know who the hell was going to walk through the door.
Was he going to be a nice, happy drunk?
Maybe he'd be a raging maniac.
And what the hell was he going to do tonight?
What the hell was he going to do tonight?
Maybe he'll just come in, stagger into the bedroom, and fall on the bed and pass out.
But looking back on it, it seemed to me that my kids were gone from our house most nights.
They were gone from our house most nights.
You know, when I was growing up, I'm a resident of Galveston, Texas now,
but I'm originally from Buffalo, New York.
I started out in the Perry Projects down in the first ward.
And I moved out to West Seneca and went through school out there.
And toward the end of high school, I went to Buffalo State for a semester and a half.
Into there, I had this dream that I would get a nice job,
have a wife and a couple of kids, a house with a white picket fence around it,
and I would do all the things that my mother and father and my sister and I did when I was a kid,
and we'd have a happy life.
There was one fly in the ointment, and that was my father had some drinking problems.
And I didn't see much of that.
I think most of it happened away from the house.
But I decided at a very early age that I was not going to drink
because I saw the problems that it caused between my mother and my father.
And I thought, if that did that to you, why would you even bother with it, you know?
What was the big deal?
I quit Buffalo State at the middle of the second semester,
and I got a minimum wage job, dead-end job, no chance for promotion or anything.
I just didn't know what the heck I wanted to do.
And I had been hanging around with the three other guys,
and we'd go out to bars, you know, not all the time,
but maybe two or three times a month, playing shuffleboard or whatever,
and they'd order three beers and a Coke.
And the ones we went in all the time, they knew.
They set up three beers and a Coke for me.
And I never had any problems with that.
It was fine with me.
But I remember in July, about a month before I was 19 years old,
and the four of us were out at Larzac's.
Out on the lake.
And they had ordered two or three rounds,
and the guy sitting next to me had two beers in front of him.
One had some out of it, because he was drinking out of it,
and the other one was full.
And what I really had was a resentment,
because I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do.
I knew I didn't want to be doing what I was doing.
And I looked over at that full beer,
and this is probably, as I look back,
this is my first alcoholic thinking.
Everything's going to hell, I might as well start drinking.
Everything's going to hell, so I might as well start drinking.
So I reached over and grabbed that full bottle of beer that he had,
and I started drinking it.
And they all went, ooh, ah, and John's drinking,
and look at this, and take a picture, and all that kind of stuff.
I don't remember how many I had.
I know I woke up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers.
And that was the first thing I thought about.
My head was throbbing, and my stomach was upset.
And then I started remembering what I could remember of the evening before.
And almost my second thought was,
the next time, I'm not going to drink so much
that I can't remember everything that happened last night.
And the next time, I'm not going to drink so much
that I get sick and throw up like I did all over the place at the end of the night.
And the next time, I'm not going to drink so much
that I do crazy stuff like tear the antenna off my friend's car,
beat the hell out of his car,
and ride around on the hood all night because I wouldn't get in the car.
I'm not going to drink that much the next time.
The big book says, and I'm not a big book thumper,
but I have memorized some phrases which seem to particularly apply to me,
and I try to remember them because I know I forgot the first time I was here.
The idea that he will someday, somehow, be able to control and enjoy his drinking
is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
That sounds like a lot of maybes.
A lot of maybes.
And the alcoholic part of my brain loves that term, abnormal drinker.
Makes it sound like I'm drinking beer from a coffee cup out of a straw or something, you know?
But the sober part of my brain says, you are way beyond abnormal, buddy.
You are a hopeless, chronic alcoholic.
And I hope I never forget that.
I wanted to have a nice job.
Three months after I started drinking, and this didn't have anything to do with my drinking,
I finally got to the point where I knew I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I said, well, I'll go in the Coast Guard for one hitch and see.
When I got out, maybe I'd know what I wanted to do.
I stayed in the Coast Guard for 27 years.
I absolutely loved it.
It was exciting.
It was an exciting, interesting, challenging, wonderful job.
And I know many, many times I said, if they would buy my beer and cigarettes, I'd do this for nothing.
Not if they'd take care of my family, I'd do this for nothing.
If they would buy my beer and my cigarettes, I'd do this for nothing.
I was describing this Coast Guard thing to a couple of friends last week.
I was over at their house for supper.
And it just occurred to me, you know, that describes my sobriety today.
Exciting, interesting, challenging, wonderful.
That's exactly what it is.
Exactly.
When I say that both my wives were alcoholics, that's not my words.
Those are the facts.
My first wife died.
She died about seven or eight years after we got divorced.
Her death certificate said she died from cirrhosis, hepatitis, chronic alcoholism.
She was 37 years old.
37.
My second wife is and has been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Alcoholics Anonymous now for a number of years.
And I can tell you, although I haven't seen her, that we're both very grateful for that.
So I loved both of these ladies when I first got married to them.
When I got divorced from them, I absolutely hated them.
I had a conditional relationship with my children.
There's a lot of lines in the books that were written for me.
They were written to me.
When I read that line, unable to form a meaningful relationship with another human being, that was it.
My wives, my children, my mother, people I worked with, the ones I worked for, the ones that worked for me,
it was all the same.
It was all the same.
So I had two dream families.
I also had one wonderful sobriety.
I gave away all three of those lives for one can of beer.
One can of beer.
Not for a case.
Not for a truckload.
For one can of beer.
Many, many times.
I gave it all away for one can of beer.
One can of beer.
And I was very grateful to get that can of beer, too.
Very grateful.
I have run into people since I've been sober,
who say things to me to bring back my alcoholism and my drinking.
And I get to hear the real story.
Because although I may have been there physically for a lot of it,
I really wasn't there.
I was a blackout drinker.
I told you about that first time.
Two weeks later, I went to a wedding reception for a girl I worked with.
And I decided I wasn't going to drink that beer,
because it was a lot of liquid, you know.
I was going to have them little glasses with the ice in them.
You know, they had the 7-Up and the water and that other stuff in there.
The next morning after that, I woke up with the same thought.
The next time, I'm not going to drink so much I can't remember everything.
I'm not going to drink so much that I do crazy stuff like I did last night.
The next time, I'm not going to drink so much.
I didn't fight that all the time.
Most of the time and toward the end of my drinking, I just gave up.
Because I knew that the next time would be the same as it was this time.
And that was fine with me.
I remember the day that I had the thought that I earned the right to drink.
So I can drink anytime I want.
And I never, until after I was brought here to Alcoholics Anonymous,
had a thought run through my mind that I would actually quit drinking.
That would seem insane to me when I was drinking, that I would quit drinking.
Because drinking seemed like it was the only thing that sometimes worked.
It seemed like it was the only thing that sometimes worked.
It seemed like it was the only thing that sometimes worked.
My life, my marriages, my children, my work, whatever.
Everything I touched turned brown.
I got in a lot of trouble with the law.
And if the laws would have been then what they are now today,
I would have been in prison several times, several times.
I remember after three or four years, I was stationed in New Orleans.
And I got thrown in jail twice in a three month period.
And I always thought I was special.
I always thought I deserved special treatment, you know.
I was on the other side of the counter in a lockup,
taking out my wallet, checking in, all that stuff.
And I pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and I went to light up a cigarette,
and the next thing I knew, I'm laying on the floor there.
And I'm looking up at this guy.
He looked like he was 8 foot tall and weighed 500 pounds.
And he said, if I want you to smoke, I'll let you know.
I didn't say it to him, but the thought ran through my mind,
well, you don't know who I am.
You don't know who I am.
He knew who I was.
I was a drunk that ran through a stop sign at 2 o'clock in the morning
in a French quarter and hit another car that had to ride away.
I'm very grateful that nobody got injured.
And I argued with the cop on the corner
that they had to do something.
I said, I had the stop sign in the wrong place.
That's why I didn't see it.
I said, if it would have been over here, I could have seen it.
But it was over there, and so I didn't see it.
They, of course, threw me in the car and took me down and put me in jail.
I got thrown in jail, in military jail and civilian jail,
several times when I was drinking.
I've never been thrown in jail sober yet.
About three years ago, I looked up a friend of mine in Florida
who was stationed with me in 1966 to 1968.
I was like 25 to 27.
And I pulled in his driveway, and I hadn't seen him in 30 years.
We give each other a big hug, and we're talking.
After about four minutes, five minutes,
he stopped the conversation in mid-sentence
and with a kind of stunned look on his face,
he said, you're not drinking anymore.
And I wasn't expecting that, so I kind of smiled,
and I said, no, Lonnie, I'm not.
As a matter of fact, I haven't had a drink in a long time.
He said, you didn't have to go to the farm, did you?
And I smiled.
And I said, as a matter of fact, Lonnie, I had to go to the farm twice
because I'm a slow learner.
I said, but I think I got it now.
And he said, you don't still have to go to those meetings, do you?
And I smiled again, and I said, we hope so.
We hope so.
And the alcoholic part of my brain could not resist asking him this question
because I wanted him to tell me that I wasn't really that bad back then.
And I said, Lonnie, when you knew me back then,
did you think that I had a drinking problem?
If I would have asked him his name,
he couldn't have answered any quicker or any more positively than he did.
He said, oh, yeah.
Anybody that drank like you and Ralph and Eddie definitely had a problem.
And I thought to myself, Ralph and Eddie, man,
them were the two biggest drunks on the ship.
And then I thought about it.
There was three bars.
There was three bars.
There was three bars.
There was three barstools, Ralph, Eddie, and John, all the time.
And sometimes John was there, and Ralph and Eddie had already gone back.
Ralph died 10 months after he retired from the Coast Guard.
He was 42 years old, 42.
42.
Eddie has been a very grateful member of Alcoholics Anonymous for over 25,
45 years now, and I'm very grateful for that, too.
I went fishing with Lonnie last month up in Canada.
And we talk about old times all the time.
We're out there fishing.
He said, you know, we used to call people like you alkies.
We didn't know what alcoholic was, but we knew that you were an alky.
I used to call people alky, too.
But I didn't think I was like them.
In December of 71, January of 72, I came to Buffalo, New York,
as I often did in between duty stations, and I stayed at my mother's out in South Buffalo.
And I was there probably two weeks.
The last night of those two weeks, she sat me and my wife down in her living room,
and she said, I'm tired of your drinking.
I'm not going to put up with it anymore.
If you ever come to Buffalo again, do not plan on staying at my house.
As a matter of fact, do not even plan on coming to visit me.
My first thought was, who the hell needs you?
There are plenty of places in Buffalo that I can stay and I can drink all I want.
My own mother.
I'm going to fast forward here.
Two years after I got sober, my mother came down to Virginia to visit me and my two children.
It was Christmas, and she gave me a credit card for Christmas.
The credit card says, as I still carry it in my wallet today,
to remind me of what IEA has given me.
And the credit card says, son's credit card.
This credit card is not good for monetary things.
It's just to give you credit for being the world's greatest.
I tried to tell her that that was because of you people.
But being a mom, she wouldn't have anything to do with that.
I thank you that the last ten years of her life, I was able to be a son to her.
And when she died of protracted uterine cancer,
the illness of cancer, at the end, I was able to be there for her instead of,
like when my sister and my father died.
I was out drunk.
Poor me.
My mother, father, my sisters dying.
Poor me.
The hell with them.
Because that was all about me.
In 1979, I was at the end of my second marriage.
I remember the Friday that my wife came into the bedroom.
After the kids had gone,
I went to school and she said, you don't live here anymore.
Pack your stuff up and get out.
And she left the house.
I went to the refrigerator and I got a beer,
because I always did my best thinking when I had a beer.
And I was tired of this.
I was very tired of this.
I had been hopeless for a long time.
Hopeless for a long time.
We had just got a new MasterCard in the mail, and it had a $500 credit limit on it,
and I said, hmm, this is alcohol, I'm thinking.
I think what I'll do is I'll go out and have a good time for the next week,
and then I'll kill myself.
I'll go out and have a good time for a week, and then I'll kill myself.
And that's what I attempted to do.
And I know that was a $500 limit on that MasterCard,
because in the divorce papers it said,
Mr. Hanner is responsible for the $500 on the MasterCard.
And I spent it that week.
Ended up in the hospital, went through the DTs for two or three or four or five days.
I don't know, you people that have had those know how they are.
You don't know what time it is.
And I remember at least two sessions with a psychiatrist,
and at the end of the second one,
he said, John, I think your problem is you're an alcoholic.
And I said, I had to clear my throat because it stuck in my throat.
I said, an alcoholic?
You haven't been listening to me.
I have all these problems.
How could I be an alcoholic?
These are my problems.
He said, well, I'm going to recommend you go to treatment.
And so somebody picked me up,
and they took me to treatment over at the Bremerton.
Bremerton Naval Hospital in Washington.
And I remember the first night,
there was a fellow there, Sharon, I think it was a man.
I don't remember a word he said.
But I remember at the end, after he got done,
there was a real small, faint glimmer of a light in my heart.
And it was hope.
I don't know what I was hopeful about.
But when that guy got done talking, I had some hope.
And I bought a big book in the 12 and 12 the next day,
and I read them and sucked them right up.
Because I found me in every word and every line and every page of them things.
I used to turn the lights out at 10 o'clock.
I went in the bathroom to read it.
I was so excited.
All my life up to that point,
I knew there was something wrong.
But I didn't know what the hell it was.
I thought it was bad karma or bad luck,
or maybe I was just supposed to have a rotten life.
But when I heard that guy and I read those books,
I knew that wasn't true.
I knew that wasn't true.
I knew that wasn't true.
But somewhere,
somewhere in there,
I got the idea that I could fix myself.
And I started buying all these books.
I bought books on transactional analysis.
Rational, emotive thinking.
Me, rational.
And I'm okay, you're okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I bought my first book.
I got my first book.
I got my first book.
I had $640 worth.
Freud and Jung.
When I had 11 months of sobriety,
I didn't think about drinking.
But here's the other alcoholic thought.
By the way, I'm an alcoholic,
so every thought I have is an alcoholic thought.
Do you ever think of that?
Every thought I have is an alcoholic thought.
That's why I'm here.
So you guys can supervise me.
And I thought this AA stuff worked so good that I didn't need it anymore.
It worked so good that I don't need it anymore.
Four months later, I'd gotten transferred,
and I stopped in Oregon to say goodbye to some folks that I knew.
And there was three or four families at a picnic down by the river down there,
and the adults were all drinking beer and smoking dope.
And I was there for a couple hours, and this guy walked over to me,
and he said, he's got a beer in one hand and a joint in the other one.
And he says, look, I know you don't drink anymore, but would you like a toke?
And I'm looking at him holding the beer and the joint,
and I said, that's not alcohol.
Sure.
Sure.
I didn't drink that day.
And two days later, I was in Montana, and I bought a six-pack of beer.
Probably one of the only times I ever remember buying a six-pack of beer.
Matter of fact, I brought this up at a meeting not too long ago.
I said, what the hell would an alcoholic do with a six-pack of beer?
And a guy jumped up, and he said, he must be going to a wedding.
Must be going, need something to get there with, you know.
I said, yeah, that's right.
I pulled one.
I'm going to go to a wedding.
I pulled one.
I got my cans out, and I set it on the table, and I was eating dinner.
I got a camper.
And it was like the devil was in that can of beer.
I didn't get too close to it, didn't touch it.
After dinner, I did the dishes, and I'm still kind of staying away from it.
Pop the top.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
Now, here's real alcoholic thinking.
I drank beer.
I read my 24-hour book.
You know, the one for alcoholics.
And I went to bed with a big grin on my face.
I got a mate.
One beer.
I got a mate.
The next night, I drank two beers.
I read my 24-hour book again.
And I went to bed with a smile on my face.
I didn't realize that I'm now drinking twice as much as I did yesterday.
I didn't realize that I'm now drinking twice as much as I did yesterday.
The third night.
And every night thereafter for about the next five or six months,
I damn sure didn't read the 24-hour book.
Can I tell you that?
I drank the three remaining cans of beer.
I went and I said,
Pfft!
You know what?
I got this night.
I'm going to go in town to one of the bars.
Because I got this all under control.
Now, I had a camper with a furnace.
This is in Montana in April, and at night the temperature is going around 30 degrees.
And I got a camper with a furnace. This is in Montana in April, and at night the temperature is going around 30 degrees.
I got a camper with a furnace. This is in Montana in April, and at night the temperature is going around 30 degrees.
I got a camper in the back with a furnace in it
and a bed and all that kind of stuff.
And I woke up the next morning on the front seat of the truck,
no blanket or nothing, just freezing my hiney off.
And I don't remember what the hell happened.
It was like the first time I drank.
I don't remember what the hell happened.
And I was off and running for five months.
At the end of five months,
I came back, and I knew I was in serious trouble.
And I asked to go to rehab again, and they were gracious.
I owe the United States Coast Guard and the United States Navy my life
because they were very gracious about sending me again.
When I got done the second time, though,
they sent a letter back to the ship with me, and it said,
if this man is found drinking again,
further treatment is contraindicated.
Shit can him.
That's what it said.
Get rid of him.
But I'm very grateful they gave me a second chance.
About the fifth week of this treatment,
I had an overwhelming, compulsive urge to have a Budweiser all the time I was in there.
And I think I had maybe 10 or 11 days left.
And I got down on my knees.
And I said, God, if they let me out of here now,
I'm a dead man.
I'm a dead man.
Because I know where I'm going.
Please, take this compulsion away from me.
I'm a little slow.
Three days later, I said, wow.
I haven't thought about having a drink in three days.
Thank you, God.
Thank you.
It never came back.
It never came back.
Thank you.
There was a lady came in from AA every Wednesday right after lunch.
Somebody used to come in from AA and share with us, tell her story.
And this lady came in.
And this is my alcoholism.
My alcoholism doesn't say, man, it's a hot day.
Look at that guy having that beer.
Wouldn't that taste good?
My alcoholism doesn't say stuff like that.
This lady said in the beginning of her story that she used to get up in the morning
and drink a big, tall glass of water because she knew whatever she drank first was coming right back up.
And she didn't want to waste her alcohol, her beer.
She lost me right there.
Because at the end of my drinking, I'd wake up laying in a pool of my own urine, shaking like unbelievable,
go to the refrigerator, get a beer, go in the bathroom, sit down, kneel down at the toilet,
start drinking because I knew that that one was coming up.
And I was praying that the second or third one would stay down so I could go to work.
Then I started thinking.
How many of those did I throw up?
If I had drank water instead of beer, how much beer could I still have?
And how much money was that?
And by the time I got done thinking about all that crap, she was done saying whatever she was saying.
I'm driving down the road.
But I've been here continuously this time since September 25th.
1980 and I'm very, very grateful for that.
Very, very grateful.
It's still unbelievable to me that I can go one day without a drink.
And that's only because of you people.
Because I didn't know how to do that.
I didn't know how to do that.
Three or four years I'm driving in upper Michigan through a little town.
Didn't even have a stop sign.
I'm going by this convenience store at about 50 miles an hour.
And this little thing hits my...
My right eye and it's a sign that says Miller High Life.
$7 a 12 pack.
Right?
I don't see nothing else but that sign.
That's the alcoholic part of my brain.
My next thought is, that's $14 a case.
Then the sober part of my brain jumps up and says, you haven't even had the first one.
And you're already talking.
You're already talking about a case.
Because that's the way I think.
That's the way I think.
I got out of treatment.
I did not have a sponsor the first time.
Is there anybody here who's new here?
Please get a sponsor.
I was a fairly intelligent person.
I can do this myself.
Right?
Right.
I didn't get my sponsor.
I was three or four weeks out of treatment.
And I went to a meeting that I had never been to before.
And before I went to that meeting, here's the prayer that I said to God.
I said, God, this is going exactly the same way it did the last time.
And I know that I am not going to make it.
I said, I don't know what's wrong, but please help me.
Here's the story.
My sponsor had never gone to that meeting before.
He doesn't even know why he went to that meeting.
At the end of the meeting, I don't even know what I shared.
He came over to me and he said, it sounds to me like you could need some help.
Two days later, he was my sponsor.
And of course, he was the world's best sponsor.
He's a wonderful, wonderful man.
He's very heavy into service.
And he walks the talk.
He walks the talk.
We had about two or three weeks.
Oh, yeah.
Let's back up here.
After about the second or third day, he comes in with this list of stuff.
And he says, okay, you're opening this meeting.
You're setting up this meeting.
Make the coffee here.
And you're giving a lead over here and doing that.
And I thought, man, this guy's pretty bossy here.
But I did what he said.
Because I did not know what to do.
And it was obvious to me that he did.
It was obvious to me that he did.
He said, we're going to hear this guy.
He's having a birthday.
And he had a lot of sobriety.
Now, I only had six months or whatever.
And so I thought the guy had 30 years and might have been 20.
But we got there.
And this guy got up and spoke at his own anniversary.
And he started off like this.
He said, I know that a lot of you people think I'm a grouchy old bastard.
But I haven't had a drink in 30 years.
How about you?
And it went downhill from there.
As we were walking out, I turned to Larry and I said,
Larry, what the hell did you want me to go to that meeting for?
And as he always did, he said something absolutely brilliant.
He said, would you like to have sobriety like that?
Would you like to have sobriety like that?
And he didn't have sobriety.
He didn't say anything else.
Of course we don't want to have sobriety like that.
I know that I don't have to take a drink for my alcoholism to kill me.
And I've seen a lot of people like that who end up dead.
I've seen a lot of people like that who end up dead.
If I can't be happy and joyous and free here,
I want to go back out drinking.
Because what you have to offer not only has to be as good as drinking
or better than drinking,
it's got to be a hell of a lot better than drinking
or I wouldn't be here.
A lot of time.
He says, I have a lot of time.
That's good.
It wasn't easy.
And I'll tell you some of the things I've done.
The things I did the second time I came back
because I wanted to make sure that every loophole was closed
and anything that I could possibly think of
to not drink
and to get sobriety like you guys had was done.
When I left treatment, they give you six months supply of antabuse.
I had a little poll with one of the medical people
and I got a year's supply.
And I told him and I told myself
if any morning I get up, I'm going to have a year's supply.
If any morning I get up and I don't take that pill,
it's because I want to drink.
I heard that 30% of what you hear when you're sleeping, you retain.
This is alcoholic thinking.
I had a complete set of tapes for the first 164 pages of the big book.
That's what I did.
I put a tape in there.
I put the tape under my pillow and I fell asleep for the first year.
When my sponsor asked me to or told me to do something, I did it.
Because I didn't know what to do.
I knew I didn't want to go back out there drinking.
Like it says, if you're an alcoholic and you go back out drinking,
you end up in prison, in a mental institution, dead if you're lucky.
Or if you're unlucky, you're going to get up every day
and say it's going to be different today.
Today is not going to be like the last 50 years.
It's going to be different today.
I want to talk about God.
I don't want to offend anybody.
The God of my understanding, I call God.
I don't know if he's a Catholic, a Jew, or a Muslim, or what he is.
But I can tell you what he is to me.
God is just what the book says for me.
God is just what the book says for me.
God is an unbelievable,
God is an unbelievable,
known source of power
for my whole life.
In the 23 years I've been here,
I must have asked God for help
thousands of times.
Sometimes I just say,
God, I know something's wrong here.
I don't know what it is.
Please help me.
I cannot recall one,
single time that I didn't get an answer.
Not one single time.
There were a number of times, particularly in the beginning,
that I didn't like the answer that I got.
But I had to realize that I not only didn't know what I wanted,
I didn't know what I needed.
And God knows that.
And God knows what I need.
And it seems to have turned out to me
that everything God has given me that I needed
is exactly what I wanted.
And we'll start with Alcoholics Anonymous.
This is the last place that I wanted.
I certainly didn't think I needed it.
But you're my friends and family.
You are what I tried to find.
You are what I tried to find.
To the sins of every heartbreak,
the pain of every adversity,
the insufficiency of every life we sort of bought.
You have been with me for twenty years.
I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and money.
Just come here.
But until I came here the second time,
I never had thought it was a good idea to come here.
This Lakeshore group here is giving me a spiritual boost.
I mean there's a rest.
I knew from the time we were dating them,
a spiritual boost.
And they already know what I'm going to tell you,
but what it appears to me to be is service.
And that's what those people are all about.
And I think that's what I'm supposed to be all about.
I'm supposed to be about doing things like this.
Because every time I get up here and do something like this,
guess who gets the most out of it?
Every time I go to prison for a meeting with Mark or Tom,
I think I'm there to help them.
It's a spiritual experience.
I used to be terrified about getting up here.
God, I come late.
I hope they don't ask me my name.
Read how it works.
I've got to get up there.
I don't want to do that.
I used to be terrified about getting up here.
It's a spiritual thing now.
It's a spiritual thing.
Because I'm going to learn something.
I'm learning something up here right now.
I don't know what God is,
but it's just like the book says.
A lot of people can't describe electricity
or tell you how it works.
And that's me.
But I damn sure know how to turn on the lights when it's dark.
I damn sure know how to turn on the lights when it gets dark.
And when I get in trouble,
or I think somebody else is in trouble,
I know where the best power is to help me and them out.
And that's the God of my understanding
that you people gave me in Alcoholics Anonymous.
When I was growing up as a kid,
we went to church every Sunday.
We went to Sunday school,
was involved in the church,
ushering, counting money, all kinds of stuff.
Very active in the church.
But I never found the God that you have shown me
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I never found that God there.
This God is a very personal God.
Very personal.
He's my best friend.
You guys are all real good friends.
But God is my best friend.
And I want to close with something here.
Mark, a couple years ago,
asked me if I'd be interested in going to a book study.
He was taking some newcomers through the first 164 pages,
which he does on a regular basis.
And I said, certainly, I'd be, I'm a senior member here.
You know, I could probably show him something.
Guess who learned a lot out of that big book study?
But before he started the big book study, he said,
I'd like to start this big book study with the set-aside prayer.
And every time I get up here,
whether you've heard about the set-aside prayer or not,
I'm going to tell everybody I can about that
because it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And I start my day and I end my day
with the serenity prayer followed by the set-aside prayer.
Because I found out that I was using the serenity prayer
just like the foxhole prayer.
God, please get me out of this.
And when I was saying the serenity prayer,
I already knew if I wanted serenity or courage.
So it was a waste of time.
So in the morning and in the evening,
before the clamor of the world gets into my head,
the last thing I say is,
God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.
The courage to change the things,
the things that I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
And God, please help me set aside
all that I think I know about you
and about a spiritual life
in favor of a new experience.
A spiritual life lived in conscious contact with you throughout my day.
God, please help me set aside all that I think that I know.
I hope that God will bless each and every one of you and your sobrieties.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for mine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.