AA Circuit Speaker Shares His Story on the Solution – Scott L.

I'm Scott Lee, and I am an alcoholic, and really honored to be here. And I notice that it's your custom to give your sobriety date. Mine is June 28th of 1984. And I had to remember to do that in Tennessee. We don't do that. There are customs in different parts of the country, and the Lord's Prayer has a different cadence, and I can't pray as fast as you two, so don't think I don't like the prayer. I do. I just can't play that fast. And I'd like to thank everyone who was involved, John, who chaired the committee, and Kim, our old friend. And John and Lorraine for taking such great care of us. I have asked Tim, and thanks Tim, to get a note off to my home group about how I should be treated. They're not getting it. And I would like to take a little inventory here before I start. Can I see the hands of the people here, AA members who are sober a year or less? Who's under a year? Wow. Okay. Welcome. Wow. Thank you for coming and what an honor it is to speak to you. And also congratulations to whoever required you to be here. I assume that's why you came. That's why I did things like that when I was new. I'd also like to honor the Al-Anons. Can I see a show of hands for the Al Anons, please? Thank you for coming. I'm always honored by your presence. I couldn't have the fabulous life that I have today if my wife didn't have a Dynamite Al-Alanon program. And those of you who are fortunate enough to be here this morning heard about that. And I like to open my talks with a quotation from Lois Wilson, co-founder of Al-Alanons. there on the far left, was asked one time what she did in the moment of silence. And she said, I invite God to the meeting. And it's not that I don't believe God's here. I believe God is here. But I get a special gift when I stop and honor that presence. And so in a minute I'm going to ask for a moment of science. I'm asking everybody, if you would, to invite your God to join us. My great mentor, who never sponsored me but I learned so much from, he told me that he had learned to treat God like a gentleman. Gentlemen don't go where they're not invited. and they don't stay where they're not made welcome. And so it's my job, I believe, each morning to invite him in to run my life, not give me some help and I'll take it from here. But, you know, I've always wanted to be God's coach. Big fella, take a knee. And give him a set of instructions and sort of coach him, really. And anyway, maybe talk about that a little bit later and how well that worked for me. And I found God's very difficult to train. I don't know why, but he's... Anyway, if you're new and you don't have a God when you're afraid of or something is not working for you, borrow mine for this time we're together. And I actually mean that. I heard another one of my teachers do that a long time ago. This is page 46 in the text. I'm going to do just a little bit out of the big book. I love this thing. It changed my life. It says it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. And so I think when we talk in steps 3 and 11 about God is your understanding, we're not saying I'm going to understand God. Ms. Linda says if God were small enough for me to understand, he wouldn't be big enough to handle the things I'm gonna need for him to handle. And I think that might be right. So what we're saying is I don't have to believe what anybody else ever told me about God. So if you've got one that's not working for you, borrow mine for this time. You can address him as the God of Scott's limited understanding. Get you off on the right foot. And the other thing that I do in the moment of silence is I ask God to help me not judge any of the speakers. Now, you don't have to do that, but it's certainly made meetings better for me everywhere. So whatever you need to do is okay with me. Let's take a couple of minutes and invite God to join us. Amen. Thank you. I was asked at this session to tell my story. I found the directions here. I actually found them a couple of places in the book. Here, this is page 50. It says, In our personal stories you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the power which is greater than himself. Now, I didn't begin my life in a search for a power greater than myself. I began as a victim of the delusion that I could rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if only I managed well. You recognize that? It's on page 61. It says that I'm such a poor observer that I still at times believe if I can get what I want, it will make me happy. Isn't that insane? Isn't it absolutely insane when I look at the evidence? By the way, I didn't fly in from Nashville, Tennessee to talk to you. I'll come to talk with you. Play with me. It will be more fun for everybody. So we're going to do a show of hands on this first portion here. Who, when you were a child, wanted a bike? You were certain if you could get a bike, you'd be happy. And you got a bike. Let's see them. Great. Thanks. Are you happy? Let's try another one. Let's Try Another One. Who wanted him or her? Sure, if you can get him, you'll be happy, and you got him. Let's See It. All right. Now, you could be sitting next to him, so I'm going to give you a break not to ask the other question. Made a pretty good point. Who's sure if you get rid of him or hurt? Right. Okay. Yeah. My lady's got two hands and a foot off the ground over here. Yeah, sometimes it's like trying to throw a cat out of a rowboat, isn't it? I mean, some things are just harder to let go of than others. So I've got to embrace the great truth, and the great proof is some of what I know for sure ain't so. And that was the beginning of learning for me. I didn't mean for this to be a book study, but I'm sorry. I'm just in love with the book. this page 42, it meant I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out of the window. So one of the lifelong conceptions I had to throw out ofthe window was that getting what I want is going to make me happy. Never did. Never did, getting what I wanted gave me a hunger for more, better and different but it never made me happy my observation on it is I had pleasure and happiness confused pleasure is on the physical plane there's something out there that if I can get it will bring me pleasure for a limited period of time happiness is onthe spiritual plane It's an inside job. And it's a side effect of having a healthy relationship with God and with all of you. And that's at least in part what the 12 steps are about. That's my experience with it. I didn't start drinking until I was 18 years old. There was a good reason for that. I didn' t know what it would do. I needed to drink way before that. I thought, by the way, what a fabulous conference. They had free beer in the lobby before this meeting. Did you see that? I mean, we are not forcing you to stay here, okay? I don't know that I've seen that before. You guys are the leading edge here, aren't you, Tim? But anyway, I passed. But I thought it was very thoughtful. And this being recorded, I better put this on. There's a wedding reception in the next room, okay? I'm almost sure that was them. Y'all didn't really fund that, I don't think. But I didn't start drinking until I was 18 because I didn'T know what it would do. I needed to drink long before then. And I'm not sure the first day I needed a drink, but the first one I remember for sure was the day I left for kindergarten the first day. I could have used a double that morning Couldn't you? Yeah, absolutely But it's hard for a five-year-old to get a double So I just did without And I went away to college this summer I turned 18 I was in fraternity rush And these guys were out I was out with some guys from a fraternity I wanted to be in And they started drinking beer So I started drinking gear And I didn't have an opinion on it one way or another before we started. As we started, I didn' t like the taste. I didn''t like the way the bubbles felt going down. I'm not that large on carbonation. And it made me feel kind of full, and I wasn' t fond of that. But whatever they were doing, I would have done. I'm the great chameleon. I'm going to fit in here at any cost. And by the time the second beer hit bottom, I'm pretty sure it was that soon, all of a sudden I got magic. And all the alcoholics know what I'm talking about. I don't think anyone else ever really will fully understand the level that this magic happens for me. And I was just suddenly taller. Who got taller? Come on, taller, taller. How about better looking? Leave them up. Better looking, yeah. Pimples fell right off. Right? Is that right, Travis? Right. I expected, they relapsed the next morning, but I wish you could have seen me that night. And I keep expecting to see that on the Super Bowl ad. Bud Light cures acne, you know what I'm saying? Have you seen the ad? Those of you who watch sports have seen the add for the new Budweiser Select. Have you seeing that one? You've seen the end? One of the things they say about this new BudWeiser Select is it finishes clean. I know what that means. That means when you puke, you don't even have to wipe your mouth. Just nice and smooth. So those of you who are new or wondering what finishes clean means, now you know. You won't have to go find out. Okay? Taller, better looking, and I was suddenly a pretty fabulous dancer. Any dancers? Some dancers? Yeah. With this one, should get everybody. Expert on many subjects. Just all of a sudden just new stuff. Right? Just new stuff! Oh man, that was so good. And all of a sudden I could talk to the girls too. I got lubricated lips. Yeah, and the amazing thing was that y'all wanted to hear what I had to say. Changed you. Two beers. Changed me. Changed who? But the big one was that something inside me that had never done this before went, and it was just okay to be Scott. Never had been. I believe I would have traded with anybody. and I don't know how but sometime when I was a very small boy and it predates my memory I became convinced that I'm not as good as everybody else there's things wrong with me that can't be repaired and I became an actor as a very little boy as a small boy and my act was that I am going to pretend to be the guy that I think you want me to be and use whoever is in front of me right this second which means I am a different guy to everybody at the end of my drinking I got a customer in Morristown, Tennessee is a very serious religious guy. Knows me as a pretty serious religious guy. Got a customer in Knoxville who's a Friday night party guy. Knows be as a Friday Night Party guy. I got business partners, they know a business partner guy. I got the boys in the pool room on 8th Avenue South where I buy my dope and drink my beer and they know that guy. I got neighbors and I got family and everybody knows a different Scott. And the greatest fear in my life was that people from different segments of my life would be at the same place same time. How am I going to act? And when I get to you, I have been acting so long that I really have no idea who I am. I have no idea who I are. All I know for sure is that if you see through this mask I'm holding up you won't want me around because I'm defective and a bunch of together people like you wouldn't have a defective model like me around if you could get out of it. That's all I know for sure when I get here. And I chased that booze hard. I zipped through a four year college and five years in two summer schools. Come on. I know you're here. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, and the Hawaiian shirt, yeah, for sure. And I, like Terry, joined the United States Air Force. I went to Air Force pilot training. We flew the Cessna 172 for about six weeks. We flew T-37s, a twin-engine jet trainer, about 300-mile-an-hour airplane for about four and a half months, and we moved to the T-38. And although you may not know it, everyone here is familiar with that airplane because everybody saw the movie Top Gun. It's one of the best-selling movies of all time. Everybody saw it, and at the beginning and end of the movie they had the dogfight with the MiGs. Well, the Russian government didn't loan Hollywood any MiGs, didn't happen. That airplane that they called a MiG is the Air Force's advanced jet trainer. It still is today, and they were brand new when I was flying them, absolutely brand new. It's a high-performance airplane. That means it has after-burning jet engines. It will fly faster than the speed of sound. It has a roll rate of 720 degrees a second Yeah, twice around every second I have gone from brake release to 40,000 feet In three and a half minutes in that airplane A number of times Yeah, it's an amazing thing A loop is defined as a 360 degree turn Through the vertical plane pulling positive Gs At 10,000 feets you enter the loop at 500 knots And you pull up at 5 Gs I want to tell you what that means You're pulling 1 G right now force of gravity. That's what that means. At 1g, a 200-pound man weighs 200 pounds. At 5g, the 200- pound man weighs 1,000 pounds. That is what that means. It means everything on you now weighs times five and you will be quite aware of that as your upper eyelids now weigh five times what they used to weigh and you struggle to keep them open. All right? 10,000 feet, 500 knots, 5g where wings level inverted at 20. We lose 8,000 coming down the back side. Total elapsed time on the maneuver is under 25 seconds. Yeah, yeah. They don't have that right at the fair. Don't worry about it. They don't have that one. Guys like me doze off on roller coasters. I mean, this is really, we ought to get one of those. And I tell you that about the airplane for two reasons. The first, of course, is to impress you. Anybody? Mine's up. I'm up on that. Yeah. And the second one is because that tells the story of my alcoholism so well. I come down from, I've flown the airplane all day. 5.30 in the afternoon, we're finished. I head over to the officer's club and I used to get drunk on purpose a lot. Right? Didn't you? I mean, that's the mission. I'm going out tonight to get drunken. If that's not where you're going, I don't want you along unless you're driving and buying. Right? Because you're gonna be a pain eventually. You're gonna become a problem. But I also used to gets drunk by mistake. Were you ever accidentally drunk? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, this looks like it could work. Would you be willing to do audience participation with me? That's not good enough. Yeah. Very good. I'll give you your cue. Fill in the blanks. You'll know all of these answers. All right? All right. Now, I'm not going to get drunk tonight. I have a flight tomorrow morning at 730 on that airplane. We're going to be a two-ship. Did you ever see the Thunderbirds? They flew this plane seven years. We did almost everything they did. I'm going up tomorrow morning to do that at 730. Nobody with a three-digit IQ would get drunk the night before and to go flying acrobatics in a high-performance plane. Can you see that? Yes, very clearly. Right, okay, so I'm not going to get drunk tonight. I'm gonna drop by the club and have one beer, no more than... I noticed some of you Al-Anons didn't play. I'd like to encourage you. I'd love to encourage this what you heard on the phone. You know what they heard on the phone? Yeah, and you believed it again. That's why you have to come to Al-Anon. The ones that ran screaming from guys like me don't have to come to your thing, do they? No, they don't. All right, so all together now. Going to drop by the club and have one beer no more than I should be home by 630 no later than 10. It's good to have a plan. Somewhere between the first sip of the first beer and the bottom of the second one, I get this phenomenon of craving Dr. Silkworth talks about in the text. And I don't get home at 7. I leave the officer's club at exactly 1 o'clock in the morning because they... Close! A lot of pilots here, John. We'll talk flying later. Drive home drunk with a hand over one eye? Right? Who knows on that? Right? Okay. Right. For those of you who don't know, if you're not going to stay with us, it'll keep that single center line from crossing itself. We don't know how it does that. I walk in the house, my first wife tears into me something fierce. A lot of information in that sentence. Play it back. And I head into the bathroom for my after-drinking chores. Yeah, we're going to talk about it. We sure are. I thought the two greatest inventions of the 20th century, most invented by alcoholics, I believe, where the first one was that little half-moon shape of carpet they put around the commode for you to kneel on. That was invented by one of our guys. You know, his knees were all torn up from that hard floor. He said, we ought to... And that soft commode seat you could rest your head on, you're kind of in between each there. They think we're not creative. I mean, really. Okay. All right, let's find you. Where are the pukers? Come on, even once. Let's see them. Nice an eye. Very good. Thank you. How about nose pukes? Ever come out your nose? Yes. Oh no, darling. Yes. One of the things that for those of you who don't know, one of the things that the nose puka is all have in common is they quit forever when they're puking out their nose every time, every time. That's one of the automatics uh who quit solemn oath on the bible in front of witnesses okay that's pretty good all right who uh who peed in the closet who did did you i never did that i'm so embarrassed for you oh that's awful i don't believe i'd have told that i i yeah there's a big difference between sharing in a meeting and a fist step you might want to talk to your sponsor about that That's pretty awful. Golly, I never did that. That's terrible. And I will admit my first wife is still mad about that antique coffee table that used to be in the living room. All right, I'll give you that. I'll gave you that who's taken meetings into correctional facilities. Come on and keep them up for a second. Yeah. Wow. For anybody else, anybody else. If you're having trouble with depression, Get with one of these people and take a meeting into the joint. It will break a depression faster than anything else there is, and I guarantee it won't harm your recovery. And there are a lot of things that will, but taking a meeting into the jail won't. Just do it once and see what happens. I had an experience about 10 years ago. I'm sitting in a little restaurant in Nashville having lunch, and a fellow walks up to my table and he says, you don't remember me, do you? And I said, no, I don't. If I should, I apologize, but I don' t know you. He says, you'd come into a prison a few years ago and you spoke, and I heard you and I believed you, and I'm doing what you said. I'm never going to be incarcerated again in my whole life, and I'd like to thank you for my freedom. And I'm overpaid for the rest of my life. Yeah. You don't want to miss that experience. I've had it more than once. You don'T want to mess that. Anyway, I was in Depod in the county lockup about three years ago doing the hold up the hands thing, And they don't laugh much in the jail, for your information. And about 30 of them sitting there this night, and I ad-libbed the who peed in the closet, and one poor fool put up his hand. And I worked him over like I did you. And when the laughter finally died down, he said, hey, man, no big deal. It wasn't my closet. It's a perspective thing. Don't go tell your neighbor how funny that is. They won't get it. Yeah, that's how we spot the earthlings that sneak into our meetings. They don't know when to laugh. Right? So I'm in there puking on my toenails, quitting forever. And I would pray. I call it, it's not in the literature, okay, I'm just playing, but I think it's true. I call het the pre-AA prayer. We're going to pray it together. I'm going to do the first line, you're going do the second. Are you ready? God, get me out of this. which is alcoholic for amen isn't it right and then i brush my teeth and go to bed it's got to be 2 30 maybe three o'clock in the morning i get up at six yeah i'm not even hung over yet i'm i'm in that wonderland you remember the wonderland between drunken hungover you remember that i miss that so much and at 7.30 that morning I'm in that airplane I was telling you about yeah and I'm number two in a two ship formation at 170 miles an hour we rotate them and come off and as the gear's coming up I come up under the leader's tail and if his afterburner was right there my instructor would be in the back seat screaming at me to get up close to him I'm about halfway to where I ought to be in formation and we're going to be going over the top pulling 5 G's and I'm dying. I am dying. I call it the force five hangover. It's the one where the butcher knife came in here at an angle, went out the back. Do you remember that one? And the eyelids are made out of sandpaper and I got a tremor in both hands. I'm sweating booze out of every pore. My throat and nasal passages are raw and I don't want to die. And I'm also tight on the leader flying the mission. What I just described for you is willpower. I believe alcoholics have tremendous willpower. It's no defense against this disease of ours, but boy, we've got plenty of it. And the only thing that keeps me going is assuring certain knowledge that I'll never feel this way on a plane again because you see, last night, I quit forever and I meant it with all my heart. Didn't you? I just realized that a couple of years ago, that literally several thousand times that I quit for a year, I quit it forever. I meant every time. I meant everything. Couldn't make it stick. By 5 o'clock that afternoon at 530, I'm not well yet, but my body's resilient. I'm a young man. I tell you one thing I know for sure. I ain't getting drunk tonight. No chance at all. But I do want to socialize with the other pods in my squadron. I think I'll drop by the club and have one beer. No more than... I should be home by 630 no later than... But I'll leave the club at exactly 1 because they... When I drive home drunk and I listen to her and I puke my guts out and God get me out of this... That's an amen in the front row. Yes, sir. That's a fine amen. Yes, sirree. Over and over and over. And I can't look into the past all the way to yesterday and say, wow, weren't you dying of a hangover yesterday when we released breaks? And every day last week and every day of last month. And I was powerless over alcohol and I was ignorant of the fact that I was powerless over alcohol. I was to fly for five years for the United States Air Force. I'm a distinguished graduate from Air Force pilot training. There were four in my class of 50. I just had the gift. I flew most of my times in C-141s. Bill Taper here was on those, too. He was a crew member. We were telling some flying stories, and we cleaned them up pretty good, I thought, didn't you? That was good. We'll get those others later. And I did a tour in Southeast Asia originally and puffed the Magic Dragon, the old DC-3 with the guns in the back, and eventually into an intelligence mission. and I was drunk in the Phu Cat Officers Club, South Vietnam, one night drinking tequila. You ever drink tequila? Yeah, probably shouldn't be doing that, or at least I shouldn't. For me, tequila is traveling juice. Get to drinking tequila and need to be someplace else. Need to be there right now. And I woke up someplace else, you ever wake up someplace? Yeah, I woke somewhere else. And fortunately enough, I was still on the airbase, and I'm collecting my stuff. It was still in my flight suit. Got into my boots and my sunglasses and my hat. I walk about 6 o'clock in the morning. I walk across this airbase a couple of miles. I passed, I would guess, 15 or 20 enlisted guys. I was a captain by this time. You know, I passed them one or two at a time. They all saluted me. They had these funny expressions on their face, and I thought how can these enlisted guy know that I was an idiot in the officer's club last night already? I cannot figure this out. And I walk into my trailer, and I walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror. I'm missing the lens out of one side of my sunglasses, and I don't know it. The exposed eyeball is the color of this gentleman's hat right back here. You see that red hat back there? I'm bleeding to death through this eyeball. It was about that time the colonel came to me, and he said, Captain Lee, you have such a warm relationship with our enlisted men, and i'm very concerned about several of our sergeants and their drinking. Would you counsel them for me? I'm not making this up. And so one morning with a pretty serious hangover, I counseled three sergeants on their drinking, and I hope it helped them. I really do. I was eventually flying a mission that was a very, very highly classified mission, and at 4 o'clock one morning I was so drunk taxiing out that I taxied off the pavement off into the weeds. And maybe some of you have had that experience with other types of vehicles. Yeah, I thought so. And, you know, if there had been a rock out there or a stump or a ditch or if it had been afternoon instead of 4 a.m., if there would have been another plane taxiing behind mine, I'd still be in prison. The Air Force didn't have any alcoholism in 1967. It would have meant bad. Anyway, I used to sit in cockpits and say to other pilots, I can't even believe that they pay us to do this. It was so good. I wanted to fly. My earliest memories are wanting to fly, And after five years, I resigned my commission and walked away. I was under no pressure whatsoever. They were working me hard to make me stay. But I walked away from my dream. Alcoholism took my dream away. I got a job as a sales rep. I got business partner. We opened a rep agency in the summer of 1984. He put his wife in treatment for a Darvon addiction. They don't prescribe that anymore, I don't think, because it's so highly addictive. A painkiller. He went through family week and figured out what was wrong with me. a couple of days later he and i played a new game that was then sweeping the country called intervention possibly some of you played huh john yeah and uh yeah june the 28th 1984 which is my sobriety date i signed into a little charm school outside of atlanta georgia called ridgeview and uh yes i didn't sleep the first three nights i was there and they say that's real common people doing the kind of things i was doing and i'm laying the fourth night laying there in that bunk knowing I'm not going to sleep again. And it's lights out at 11. I've got to lay in that bunk until 6 in the morning. I make short potty breaks, but that's it. And I'm laying there. And some of you may recall, if you're not drinking, you're nicht sleeping. It stays dark a long time at night. It just goes on and on. And, uh, I'm lying there knowing I ain't going to sleep again and, um, this is the best I can do describing this. I saw my life like you might see a movie. If you've had a near-death experience, I'm fascinated. I'd love to hear about it, but it was not one of those instant things. This was over the course of several hours, and it was like watching a movie." I've always given myself credit for my intentions. I'm probably the best intended person you'll ever meet. I have some fabulous intentions, and my favorite one is I used to do close-up magic, and I was going to get a clown suit, and one of these days when I was on the road, instead of running the saloons, I was gonna put on the clown suit and take my magic kit into a children's hospital and do a show for the kids. I think everybody here would say take a fabulous guy, I haven't done it yet by the way, take a really fabulous guy to do this and you know one of these days our third step talks about a decision. For me the difference between an intention and a decision is that intention is followed by more intentions. A decision is followed by action. That's the difference. That is how you can tell them apart. And this night I am laying there in this bunk and the intentions are gone. It is not a pretty story without them. And I got to the place where I began to think about the worst thing I've ever done. I have one stanza alone. And I'd always been able to stop at three fast scotches to do that, a six-pack will take that away. I know how to turn that off. Not laying in a bunk in a treatment center, I don't. And I reached what for me was bottom, and bottom for me is not, I don' t find the definition in the literature, this is my experience with it. Bottom isn' t on the physical plane. I know men serving long prison sentences as a direct result of alcoholism that are not at bottom. I have thrown up blood. I have been in plenty of kinds of trouble. It's not bottom, not at all. Bottom is in here. Bottom is when I hate myself. I'm so repulsed by what I've done that I pay any price at all for relief from that. That, for me, was bottom. And at that point, this part of me that didn't happen in my throat, my head, this part OF me screamed to a God I don't think I believed in. God forgive me. It was real loud from in here and in the next moment all of what I'm about to tell you happened I'm laying on my back in a bed with my eyes closed suddenly I can see the entire room better than I can see this one right now there's this magnificent light shining just on me and on my bed physically there was a sensation very similar to when you've had x-rays taken to your teeth and when they finish they pick that lid apron up off of you it's what it felt like that something I was unaware of very heavy was laying on My body And it flew off of me very fast It felt like I was going to float off the bed And I knew in that moment That there was a God That God had the power to forgive me And I was forgiven And I used to say He forgave me then But I don't know that that's true I know that I received the forgiveness then But I'm not very comfortable around people that do Quite honestly So I can't say he forgave my then But I can tell you I received forgiveness then And I lay there in the presence of infinite love, and I couldn't tell you if it was two seconds or three hours. I do not know how long. And I've talked to other people who've had experiences like this who agree that when I say what we call time does not exist in that presence. I can't explain that to you, but I can report it. I see some people know what I'm talking about. I'd like to talk to you. And after that, I must have slept because the next morning I woke up and I had not had that experience in several days. And I woke up wanting to be one of his guys. And that was my first cornerstone. And for those who feel like they've had their pocket picked because they haven't had one of those, this is Bill's story, page 12. But soon the sense of his presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. I can't tell you what Bill was saying there, but I'll tell you What I'm Saying. I don't believe that that event alone would have kept me sober these 22 years in big change. I don' t believe it. It was necessary for me to do the rest of it, just a cornerstone for a last gasper like me. That's all that was. And the staff at that hospital saw me change, and I thought I'd changed completely, and I got a lesson a few weeks later. I went into my counselor's office to talk about my aftercare plan. That was the purpose of the appointment. I knew that. He was a member of Al-Anon. I'd like to salute the Al-Ans again, how much I love you and how much i honor you. And this counselor who saved my life was a memory of your fellowship. Thank you. God bless you. And I walked in there with a great attitude to help him design this aftercare plan. If you're new and don't know why that's funny, please try to listen closely to this. And I explained to him that I was not taking Antabuse. I wasn't going to Halfway House. They had a 28-day program. That's as long as I'm staying. And I just did that to allow some parameters to help the man do his work. I was just being helpful. I had this great attitude. And he said, You've left out something you aren't going to do. I said, What? And he said, you're not going to make it. Took that personally, I did. Not usually a violent man. Make a few exceptions. Made one for him. And fortunately enough, it was verbal. And I said to him, why'd you say that? Boy, is that ever not a quote. Because I've learned to lay down the language of the gutter and pick up the language of the heart, so I can't quote myself on that. But I think you get the idea. I said, why did you say That? And he responded with a question that changed my life. He said, if you already know how to run a program to keep yourself sober, how is it you happen to be a patient here? And I responded by very cleverly saying, and nothing came out. Never had had that experience before. You know, my mouth, something comes out. I had to make up some of it. But something comes up. Nothing came out, I couldn't believe it. I was astounded. I had been asked the unanswerable question. and I don't know. I know that was a one-hour appointment. I knowthat that happened in less time than it just took me to tell it, and that I stayed in his office for a full hour. I remember none of the rest of that as my mind locked onto the unanswerable question. And from there, I went to lunch, and from there I wentto group and phys ed and whatever they had, my body was there. My mind is back in Jim's office trying to answer the unanswerable question about 9 o'clock that night. I'm walking back to my cottage, and the best I can describe this is like the answer was flying through the air, And I'm walking along, and all of a sudden, this part of me knew the answer before this part now. Can't explain that to you. And the answer was and is, I don't know how to run a program to keep myself over, and if I'm going to be one of the few that make it, I'm gonna have to do it all. This is not a cafeteria lunch for me when I can take what I want and leave the rest, because I must win this time. I must winning now. I cannot afford to not make it this time, and I do not care what the price is. I will pay it. There's nothing in my life that matters to me that isn't suspended from my recovery. Here's my recovery, here's what hangs from it. My life, how many times do you think a drunken pilot could have been killed in a couple of thousand hours of flying time, not to mention driving drunk, etc.? My sanity, I've been to the insane asylum hallucinating things as real as you sitting there. My freedom, I'm supposed to be serving life at Leavenworth. my relationship with this fabulous woman that I'm married to and our children and grandchildren, my house, my cars, my peace of mind. There's nothing in my life that matters to me that isn't hanging from my recovery. For if I lose it, all of those things hit the floor and shatter. And I didn't come here to tell you that's your situation. It might not be. It's mine tonight, 22 years over. And that's when I embraced what I lovingly today call Step 1, Section B. Oh. Oh. I originally read the first step to say we admit we are proud of our alcohol. Therefore, our lives have become unmanageable. On close examination, I have discovered the word therefore does not appear in the first step. And I looked up punctuation in the dictionary and strangely enough, a hyphen is not shorthand for therefore. A hyphen actually connects two unrelated thoughts. The reason I was confused is on June 27, 1984, the day of my most recent drink, the fact that I was powerless over alcohol and my life was crashing down around my ears were related. On May 19, 2007, I am powerless over alcoholic. My life is unmanageable. I am not playing with you. It's one of the most powerful concepts I ever got. I can't find the page in this book that promises me and says, congratulations, having now achieved this lofty spiritual level, your life's now manageable. The tank's full. The keys are in it. Load up. Go get them. Somebody shout out the page number. Now, I can't find it. Call me collect if you find it but I can find it and I've searched. I do find some places that promise me sanity and part of my sanity is I don't want to run my life anymore. I have fired me as general manager of my own life based on my performance. A good manager would have fired me decades ago and one of the first things I did when I woke up this morning was I invited God in to run my life today. Not, as the 12 and 12 says, as a Bush League pitch hitter, but to take it. Whatever you have in mind for me suits me fine. I'll take it sight unseen. And I think that's what that third step prayer says. One of my mentors calls it the formal terms of surrender. It doesn't say give me some help and I'll taking it from here. It didn't say get me out of this and I will fill in the blank or get me outta this and never again fill in the black. It says take me and I don't care what the package is. I can't stand mine anymore. I don't want what I want anymore. I was getting what I wanted when I qualified to come here with you nice people. There's serious doubt as to how much more I could survive of what I won. It was killing me. So I want what he wants me to have. I know what it is. And that's by doing what's in this book and walking with you and the magic words today. And that was where I embraced that. Well, I zipped through that 28-day treatment program in six weeks flat and get back to Nashville, Tennessee where the only person I knew in the entire city that was in recovery was one of my customers that I didn't want him to know. For those of you who don't recognize that, that's newcomer thinking terminal case. I will die from this soon if I don't get some help with it. And I set out to follow the aftercare plan. They said stay away from your old playmates and playgrounds. My favorite watering hole in Nashville was on 8th Avenue South. I had a two-year chip in my pocket the next time my car turned onto 8th avenue south. I went over two years without being on that street. I was that committed. I completed this, well let's see, they said 90 meetings in 90 days. I've gone to 87 and I've forgotten two of them now but one night I was about to leave for the meeting and my son decided to learn to dance standing up in a rocking chair. We went to the emergency room instead of the meeting. Everybody here is going to say that's a good call. It's the right move. And so I missed, and I thought if you'd missed, you just missed. I didn't know you could go to two meetings in a day because I've got newcomer thinking that's probably going to kill me soon if I don't get some help with it. I completed this psychobabble thing that they alleged was a fourth step, and i've cleaned up my language, and so I can't tell you what I think about that thing. I'd like to recommend the actual fourth step very cleverly concealed in this book. Strangely enough, and one of the easiest steps we have, maybe the easiest, a little bit on the long side, very easy. Now I'm talking about the actual four step, not that stuff that you see. I find it to be a series of lists, observations, and prayers. It is my experience that it is the observations and prayers that are life-changing. I don't think the writing part of step four has any effect at all. At least I've never seen it. I hope you know what I'm taking about. I hope you find out if you don't. The forgiveness process is contained in step four, and it's not about writing. Powerful, powerful thing. But anyway, I completed this psychobabble, multiple choice fill in the blanks one of the questions you still hate your mother you know that kind of stuff and i called down the treatment center to bernie now he hadn't been my counselor but the reason he was a counselor there and i had asked him to hear my fifth step while i was still a patient because you could look at him until he was stoned out of his mind and that's i thought he would be a good one to do my fist up with because i had this big white light experience and i'm gonna have to do it and i chose him because well i mean you know what looks like when somebody's stoned he's got a dumb grin his face is real relaxed he moves he moves very slowly You know what it looks like. I thought, I'm going to take my fifth step with this junkie. Two weeks later, is he going to know what I said? He probably won't even know if we did it. So I thought he was a good choice. Called out. He said, sure. I drove about four hours and did my fifth stop with Bernie, which is where I began to get relief. And if you're new to AA and the steps look like they're designed to punish you, welcome to AA. That's how they look to us. We were wrong about that, and you are too. Because that's where I begin to get relieved. If I'd been working with a real sponsor, that would be one who's already done this, and allowed him to take me through the steps out of here, I'd have been getting relief long before then. Because that's what the steps do is they bring me relief. I think there are only two things on the planet that treat alcoholism. One's drinking alcohol and the other one's doing these 12 steps. Anyway, I completed that with him and I started to feel better. And by the way, Bernie was not stoned. Bernie was sober over 20 years. That was serenity. I didn't know what it looked like. I got it. I still got this terminal case of newcomer thinking. I'm so dry, they're not smoking near me. And at this point, I've done everything on the aftercare list except get a sponsor. Let's see if you can fill in this. This is two-word, fill in the blank. See if you could do this one. Absolutely insane newcomer. I'm looking for a sponsor I can relate to. Isn't that hilarious? Holy mackerel, I can't think of anything dumber in my life. I mean, thank God I couldn't find a sponsor I could relate to. I can't figure out you go to two meetings in a day who can I relate to? I can relate to some other loser that doesn't know his fanny from straight up is who I can related to. Thank God I couldn't find a sponsor I could related to we'd both be dead by now. I don't need a sponsor I can relative to today. What I needed then and what I need now is a sponsor I will obey. New concept. And there was this guy in this meeting his lights were on. You know what I mean? I wanted to feel like this guy looked. I said, would you sponsor me? He said, we'll find out. Here's your first assignment. Assignment? I thought a sponsor was kind of like a big brother going to show you the ropes, maybe loan you some money, fix your wife. Man, I'm wrong about a lot of things. And I do the assignment. I come back to him and I say, okay, I did it. Sponsor me. And he said, I'll sponsor you my way. What does that mean exactly? He said you are too sick to stay sober on the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. You will need the program also. and i got no idea what the man is talking about and uh he said to the end of his life that he thought the single best kept secret in our fellowship was the definition of our program and how do we keep it secret when we read it at almost every meeting that's how we do that it's on page 59 and the most read least listened to portion of all of our literature where it says immediately before step one here are the steps we took which are suggested as a no steps no program that's simple forgive me i'm gonna be real direct i've been to too many funerals we're committing murder with a phrase and phrases don't drink and go to meetings you'll die from that that'll kill you i mean if sitting with other alcoholics talking about problems going to get people sober wouldn't the guys under the woodland street bridge in national tennessee be sober tonight yeah sure they would doesn't work for them doesn't worry for us here the steps we took. I heard this the other day, and I loved it. For those of you who are hiding behind the fact that the steps are only suggested, we have good news and bad news. The good news is you're right. They're only suggested. The bad news? Those are the only suggestions we got. And he said, you're going to do the 12 steps at the pace I set, the way I lay them out, or I'm going to drop you. He scared me, but not enough. I said, why? My trump card. Why? And I'm never looking for an answer when I say why. I'm looking for a fight, just like you, right? He said, I don't answer why questions for the men I sponsor. The reason is step one, section B says you're not in management. Why is a management question. Consequently, all the why questions have the same answer. The answer is you don't need to know. I hated that. Today, I love it. It's one of my cornerstones. But back then, I hated it because I thought it was not knowing that made me crazy. Uh-uh. It was needing to know that was making me crazy. Yeah, I was the problem. Imagine that. I said, why do I have to do the 12 steps? He said, that's the only why question I'll ever answer for you. Here's your answer. He said think of yourself as a garbage can. Okay, Jerry, I got that. He says what we're going to do with these steps is we're going to dump you out. We're going scrub the can and stand it back upright. We're gonna fish through your life. Most of it's trash. We'll toss it. But portions are good. We'll keep them. For example, do you love your children? I said, a lot. He said, great, we'll keep that. When we get finished with these steps, you're going to be a big, clean, empty can with just a little bit of good stuff in the bottom. And the reason is because alcohol's not your problem. What? Alcohol's not Your Problem. Never was. Alcohol is your answer. It makes you tall enough, smart enough, good-looking enough. You can talk to the girls. You're an expert on many subjects. Fantastic dancer. It makes your skin fit. So when we say to you, lay down booze, we have not said lay down your problem. That's why you couldn't do it by yourself because you weren't laying down your problem. You were laying down the only answer you have ever known and to do that you're going to have to pick up a new answer and the new answer is going to be at least as good as the old answer. I used to quit, excuse me, I used to quit forever by myself quite a bit and as you know forever is somewhere between 20 minutes and about 8 weeks. The earthlings don't, oh how long they think forever is don't ask them. They'll scare you. But we know it's a couple of months tops. And so I can, right? I can quit forever, but I can't get unthirsty. This is the piece I could never find on my own. I mean, something was on. I would go a couple of weeks or a month even without even thinking about it. But something's always coming down the pike where I'm going to get thirsty again. I own my own business. I'm gonna close a big deal and make a lot of money. Ima get thirsty. Imma lose a big deal. Lose a lot of money. I'm going to get thirsty. I want to get a new convertible. I'll get a new boat. I get a girlfriend. I married, by the way. Get a new girlfriend or the big one that's going to hit. The Redskins are going to play the Cowboys on Monday night and I am going to get thirsty." They say one day at a time here. Is that one of the things you guys do? One day at the time. For those of you who are new there's a second line to that they're not telling you. I will tell it to you under their breath. They're saying One day at a time in a row with no breaks at all. That's what they mean, one day at the time in a row. So if I'm going to stay sober one day at a timem in a row, they're going to have to give me this piece. I'm going to have to get unthirsty. I can never find it. I think maybe the most powerful promise in the text is the top of page 60. It says 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. That's what it says. The means one. It's my experience that spiritually awakened alcoholics don't drink beverage alcohol, and they don't ever get thirsty, no matter what. I have been continuously unthirsty since sometime in December of 1984. I don't remember exactly the date. I remember all the circumstances. If you've been driving around town, if you're new, with a white-knuckle double grip on the wheel to keep the car from pulling into the quick stop to get you a six-pack, I know what that feels like, but that's not the package. I haven't felt that in over 22 years. That's not what this is about. I Have a New Freedom and a New Happiness. That's what it's about. And that's where it came. That's the big promise is the spiritual awakening. Anyway, and he said, when we get through with this, you're going to be a big, clean, empty can with just a little good stuff in the bottom. He said, because one of these days something heavy is just going to slam into your heart. He said your father's going to die, and on that day if you don't have that big, empty, clean can to store that pain in while we love you back to spiritual health, you'll escape. and the only escapes you know are killing you and devastating everyone around you. And I ran out of wine and I allowed the man to coach me through the 12 steps and I've had a spiritual awakening as the result and I'm going to do it again. And I've been rendered unthirsty and it's been important for me to stay active and continue to do these things. I have personally never yet seen anyone in and out of the program. Haven't seen the first one. I've seen quite a few in and Out of the Fellowship But at my home group, they say hanging around a few AA meetings won't anymore get you into recovery than moving into the garage will turn you into 57 Chevy. It's not going to happen. I have not ever seen anyone do the steps out of this book while being coached by a sponsor who's already done them out of his book and stay active and drink again. Has anybody seen that? I don't think so. I've asked that question to about 100,000 AA members since I started speaking at conferences. I've only seen five hands. I asked them to come talk to me. Four didn't. One lady came to me about six years ago and said she had seen someone who had done that. I said, who'd done everything out of the book with a sponsor who'd already done it. She said, well, he never did a four-step. I said、Well, pardon me, ma'am. I'm going to have to discount that. So this is not some people get it and some don't. This is some do it and som don'ts. It appears to me that we as a group tonight stand by the first line in Chapter 5. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. forward to the third edition says the path is the 12 steps it's that simple so I allowed the man to coach me through the steps and it changed my life and I'm going to tell you a horror story this is a tough one it has a happy ending grab that on some time in the wee hours of July the 4th of 1993 my precious daughter fired a pistol into her mouth I found her we don't know how much later several hours later we rushed to vanderbilt hospital within 20 minutes there were 20 or 30 of you in that hospital by dark it looked just like this they tell me there was well over 200 i don't know how long that went on i'll tell you this for the first four days that we were there they told us that they could not save her and i didn't say may not they said we cannot save this little girl four days is a very very long time and now she's conscious and and she can she's a nightmare to look at she's got tubes stuck all in her she can't talk she can squeeze your hand once for yes and twice for no she does not want to die anymore and four days is a long time i believe if i had not allowed that man to coach me through those 12 steps if i have not had that empty clean space to store that pain in because he said that's what i was going to need it for if i hadn't had that clean space to store down in while you love me back to spiritual health the story would not have the happy ending that it does i would have committed first degree murder i believe sometime within the next few days there. I'm fully capable of that. I don't doubt it for a second standing here before you. I could have done that. Um, I moved into Vanderbilt hospital. I went home once sometime within the last week and got underwear and shaving gear. And I moved into her hospital room and I didn't leave Vanderbile hospital for 60 days. I'd like to tell you who you are because there are new people here who don't know who you are yet. I want to tell you who you are. I learned it from the Al-Anon's trust the actions, not the words. I saw who you are because I saw what you did. I like your words. I trust your actions. Let me tell you what you said. You put a 24-hour watch on me for 60 days. There was not a time for the next 60 days, 24 hours a day, there wasn't a member of my home group as least as close as I am to Terry here in the front row. 24 hours today, seven days a week you were there. Not to keep me from drinking. They never even talked about that. So one of my people would be there to hold me if I needed to cry four o'clock in the morning. One of my people would be there to hold me. That's why you did that. You can pretend to care. You cannot pretend to show up. You showed up, saw what you did, know who you are. I had learned to cry when I was sober about a year. I'm noticing a guy, very masculine man in my home group, and he's crying at almost every meeting. And I went to him and I said, tell me about the tears. And he said, somebody says something beautiful and I weep and it feels so good. And I said, I can't cry. He said, I will teach you. And he did. And, uh, and I can cry and I do frequently. I, it's not unusual for me to cry up here. It doesn't bother me at all. Never apologized for it. I've learned to be real. I hope you like me. I'm okay if you don't say I didn't have that when I got here because if you didn't like the act, there was nothing because I thought I was trash and I was just wrong about that. And um, and it's, and there may be people that now that disrespect me because I'm a man that cries? I hope not. I hope not, but I'm okay if you do. God bless you. And now it's one of my great pleasures to teach people to cry. And I need to warn you guys, if you start crying at appropriate times and places, you'll attract a lot of very healthy females. So I've warned you, don't call me and complain about this, all right? I don't want to hear it. And by the way, if your marriage is bad, don t worry about it. Healthy females aren't going to damage your marriage. They're not a problem. Okay? If you'd like to learn to cry, see me later. I typed it up. I got a handout right over here on the corner of this table. I mean that. I'm deadly serious about it. And I always, I thought when I started doing this, I thought it'd be like 99% men. It's about 60% men and I'm astounded how many women can't cry. Anyway, it was necessary for me to become real because I don't think the act gets sober. I had to get in touch with me and I am a very masculine man who is in touch with his emotions. That's just who I am. I am comfortable in my own skin. I didn't have that when I got here. My daughter and her husband presented us with our first granddaughter back in July. She's doing fantastic. She sends you love. Absolutely unbelievable. You can look and see she's blind in one eye. You can see that. It's the only thing wrong with her, and the doctors will tell you today they didn't do it, and it ain't possible. You know what happened. When I first got sober, I started going to the Woodbine Clubhouse in Nashville, Tennessee, Little White House on Nolens Hill Road. I still miss it. And they had slogans on the wall. One of them said, First things first. I understood that. But I'm a newcomer. I ain't doing it, of course. And one of them said, Let go and let God. I wonder how they do that. I wonder what that means. One day at a time. I know what that mean. Don't drink today. And it does. But eventually, that's not enough. And I believe, for me, one day at a time means that with the first ten steps I've cleaned up my past. There's nothing gaining on me. I do not have to look over my shoulder. The last two steps are about me embracing the great truth that a loving God holds my future. We got a good friend in Nashville who says he spends too much time in his head trying to clear away the wreckage of his future. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so guilty as charged. That one hit a little slow but it hit. Okay, and And so the past is clean. A loving God holds a future. Those two facts combine to free me to live one day at a time in this day. If I don't have both of those in place, I can't be here. And I think that's in part what the 12 steps are about. But one of the slogans on the wall, the only one I was doing, you know which one that was? Think, think, think. Think, take, take. Oh, yeah. Hey, man, have I ever got that covered? And it's just for me because I don' t see that in the literature. They didn' t define that anywhere. It actually came from IBM, I'm told. But for me, it says think, think, think. What that means to me is that three thinks is the limit. Whatever it is, I can think about once as good, twice as good. I can thing about it the third time if I want to. But once I've thought about it a third time, I must lay it down. For if I were going to outthink it, I would have outthunk it in three thinks. If I go to the fourth think, I got a problem with Step 1, Section B. I'm trying to manage it. That's right. That's correct. That's that's right and anything I'm upset about I'm tryin' to manage automatic from international politics to the way you drive your car to the fact that this fabulous woman that I'm married to puts a toilet paper on the roll backwards. It should feed over the top as I'm sure you know. Should feed right over the tip. Thank you very much. I fixed the one in the men's room. It should feed right over. She says she puts it on the other way because we've got a cat, but I've been watching that cat for years. He does not use it. I want to brag on her for just a second. I hope not to hurt anybody's feelings, but I hope you'll think about it. One of the gifts that my wife gives me, they talk about supports, one of their words in Al-Anon, and one of the things she gives me is that she does not drink. I don't come home and kiss a martini. I don' t come home from a hard day and kiss the glass of Chablis, and it means a lot to me because she could. She's not any good at it, but she could, and she chooses not to. It's one of real gifts I have, and I'll brag on her Al-Alan program one more time. And she never helps me find a parking place if I don't ask her to. Yeah, that hit home in a couple of places. I know it did. Yeah. I've got a sign on my desk that says, Ask Linda. And the reason is because if I want to know what she thinks about something I'm fixing to say or do, I have to ask her because she's not working my case. I am not a husband-in-training. It is such a freeing thing. I talk a little bit about my experience with Step 9. I walked out of a meeting one time, and a fellow whose sponsor I sponsor said, I disagree with something you said in the meeting. I'm always looking for people to disagree with me, by the way. If you disagree, I can't wait to hear from you. I won't try to sell you anything, but that's how I learn. And that happens to me doing this, and that would be great. But anyway, what I had said in The Meeting was that my amends to my children would never be complete, and he said, That's not right. He said, Did you go to your children and tell them what you thought you'd done wrong? Did you ask them how you could repair the damage? Did you do what they said? Did you ask for their forgiveness? Did they give it? Excuse me, I said yes to all of that. He says you're trying to be the best father you can be to them today is not night step work. It's 12th. It's the principles in all your affairs. And if you think it's night stepwork, you have not accepted their forgiveness or God's or your own, and you have work to do. And if your sponsor has got you making living amends, it's good with me. I don't have a quarrel with that. I agree with your sponsor. But I don' t find living amens in my big book. And I finished my ninth step with my children. My amends to them are complete. I'm still trying to be the best dad I can be because spiritually awakened people try to do that. It's 12-step work. And I got free. I came down off the cross that day. I've seen teenage and older children manipulating us into some pretty sick stuff under the banner of you were a lousy parent in the past. And I share that only because I got freer that day, and I share it. But if your sponsor disagrees with me, I agree with your sponsor. I believe that God blesses sponsorship. I really do. And I'm going to talk now for a couple of minutes about something that's kind of a hot topic. If you've done what I'm about to talk about and it's okay with you, it's Okay With Me. All right? Don't hear anything else in this. I'm sharing this only because I got free and because there are people in this room that need to get free. As a young man, I paid for an abortion. And that's what I was thinking about when I was laying in that hospital bed and my soul screamed for forgiveness and got it. I get to step eight, and it looks to me like I owe amends to an unborn child. And I don't think it can be done. This is page 83. Some people cannot be seen. We send them an honest letter. And I do not care if it is an unborne child, a grandparent, somebody that is gone. We serve a powerful God who gave us a powerful program, more powerful than everything I did, more powerful that everything that was done to me, I was an abused child. More powerful than all of that stuff. And I was shown how to write that letter. And my experience with that letter is, as the fourth step, although there's writing involved, isn't about writing. It's about observations and prayers. My experience with this letter is it is about tears. And it was for me the tears that were cleansing. I've had the privilege of working with a lot of people since I started talking about this in public. And if you have got a letter to write, I've learned some things about how to do that. It's on the back of this crying thing. I'm not kidding. And I'll be happy to talk to you. I got absolutely free. Nothing happens in here when I talk to You about that. I got absolutely free, and I believe that's available to everybody. Two gifts from my home group. I don't have the power to make a mistake so ugly that God can't turn it into something magnificent. Probably just now using one of the worst things I ever did as a tool to help somebody else in this room. That's a powerful God. And the other one, God forgives me for everything I ever did, and he loved me while I was doing it. And my God got bigger the day that Don said that in my own group, and i believe that. And I'll say again, don't hear the political thing in that. If you've been involved in one of those, it's okay with you, it' s okay with me. I shared it because there are people here who need to get free. And that's the only reason. I think that's what this whole thing that we do here is about. It's about getting free. I had an experience coming back, went to New Zealand one time. They got a beer down there they call Leopard Strong. I don't know about the leopard. And I got a snoot full of that stuff. and we came back from Christchurch, New Zealand to American Samoa. We took on fuel and from Samoa to Hickam is about eight hours. About halfway across we get into the new fuel and it was contaminated. It had water in it. At 35,000 feet it's minus 50 degrees centigrade and it turns to ice and it clogs the fuel lines and jet engines about that big compressor stall. Kind of like a backfire, only it's a little bit more serious out over the water. And we come down into warmer air and the engines run pretty good down here, but we don't have gas to make hickam at this altitude because a jet engine is much more efficient at altitude. So we go back up and the compressor stall. And the worst thing you can do for fuel mileage is this. And it looked to us for about four hours that afternoon like we were going to put a four-engine jet into the Pacific Ocean. Many of us have had the experience of believing we were gonna die in the next moment or two. And we've wrecked motorcycles, we've had head-ons with semis, we've looked down the barrels of guns. Many of us have had that momentary, I'm going to die in the next second or two. I'll tell you right now, four hours is a long time to think you're going to die today. And the conversation in the cockpit was unbelievable. I promised God if he'd get me out of this, I was going to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit visiting ladies I wasn't married to. I'm coming back to church. I might build some churches. Memorize the Bible. I didn't leave anything in the bag. And we shot a forced landing at Hickam. We turned final at 9,000 feet, showing empty on all the tanks and put it down, taxied in. They dipped the gas tanks like you dip your crankcase. See how much oil you got? We do not have sufficient fuel left on this plane to start four engines and taxi to the runway. We don't have that much left. I didn't even check into the quarters. I went to the stag bar, walked into the officer's club back to the crazy section, put my bags down on either side of the barstool. I said, my tie, the big one, pack of Marlboros. And I look back at it today, and this is my analysis of it. In those days when I prayed, I was trying to make him my God. And what you've taught me here is how to make me his man. I had it backwards. I had so, so,so many things backwards. This one came up at dinner. It's a story I don't normally tell, but I was having a discussion with another member. I was about two years sober. I was standing in the Woodbine Club kitchen before a meeting and having a discussion with one of our members. Now, not being as spiritually evolved as I am, you might have thought it was an argument. Yeah. And about that time, Joe B. walked in, and Joe was very intelligent and had been sober since several weeks before the earth began to cool, which is clearly going to put him on my side of this burning argument, which I can't at the moment remember exactly what it was. And as Joe poured his coffee, I posed the question. I said, What do you think, Joe? And Joe said, I am not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Do not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorse nor oppose any causes. My primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. By which time my opponent and I were laughing pretty hard. And it took me a while. I had what I call a revelation. The sponsors will get this. My own definition of revelation is when I figure out for myself something you've been trying to tell me for six months or longer. right it's a revelation yeah and uh i went to joe and i said you meant that he said oh yeah joe was living the aa preamble you could not get him into a controversy he would not controvert with you and um he uh he had a primary purpose it was to stay sober and help others to achieve sobriety and he never let anything get between him and doing that pretty pretty powerful i moved down to the condo my first wife and I were living in when I was sober six years. And the event was, she told our daughter a few years ago that when I got sober, I changed and she didn't. I believe that's correct. And I did a lot of things to make her very, very sick. I stand before you guilty as charged. My sponsor told me when I get here that I was what I wanted was mercy for me and justice for everybody else. Yeah. And that the package was mercy from for everybody or justice for anybody. AndI was part of everybody and I got to choose. And that's where the forgiveness process in step four, that's what that's all about. And so I'm not angry with her and I'm not taking her inventory. But she was tearing into me one more time and I had this moment of clarity. The moment of clarity said you're just before giving her a straight right to the face. And when she goes down, you're going with her. She's on the way to the hospital, you're on theway to the jail. It's a bad plan. Worked it out all by myself. And I turned around in mid screech and walked out of there and got in the car and drove away and bought a newspaper started looking for a place to live 48 hours later i moved and i didn't believe in divorce i also knew if i lived with her it was question of time and i was given a gift and i'm going to share it just in case somebody can use it the gift was three prayers and i prayed these three prayers each day for a long time and the prayers are god if it's your will for us to be together put us together that's the first one second one god if its your will to be apart put us apart those are the easy ones here's the one that counts god if you will for me not to know today Leave me not knowing. Step one, section B in prayer form for me. When I can pray that prayer and mean it, I can have what my sponsor called serenity. He said serenety is not freedom from the storm. Serenity is peace in the midst of the storm, and I can only have that if I stay in today. One of my teachers showed me this the other day, and it really knocked me down. This is on page 59 in the text. Without help, it is too much for us, but there is one who has all power, that one is God. May you find him now. He said, Now isn't when I find God, it's where. I have to be here present in my own life to find God. My God is the God of right now. Dr. Paul used to say that, he said, It's like me and God are on a tandem bicycle. He's up front steering, and I'm in the back pedaling. Now, I can steer any time I want to, but he won't pedal. and whenever i get out of today i'm staring and he won't pedal and i believe my god is the god right now and so i share those prayers just in case somebody somebody needs it i i found it necessary on a couple of occasions to uh to change sponsors and uh and i'll answer questions about that later if somebody wants to know why because your sponsor wants you to do the 12 steps it might not be a real good reason, wasn't it? But I was shown how to do that in case you have to because I was always afraid of confrontation. And what I was told to do was to go to my old sponsor and say thank you. Thanks for all you've done for me. Thanks for the gifts. Thank you. You've been a blessing in my life. It's only fair for me to tell you that I've asked someone else to sponsor me. And then I don't have to answer questions. I don' t have to ask questions. And if he gets angry about that, the one thing I know for sure is I've done the right thing because he got his ego tied up in sponsoring me. And by the way, he's got a sponsor or I wouldn't let him sponsor me because I think that's one of the characteristics that's absolutely necessary. I had an experience a few years ago. I want to talk about anonymity. I give my last name in AA meetings in keeping with our tradition of anonymity." I hope that made sense to you. If it didn't, I hope you'll read the pamphlet, Understanding Anonymity, and the book, Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, page 270, where it talks about we need to use our last names in meetings Now, there are exceptions. I've been to meetings with federal judges who needed to be sort of anonymous within the fellowship. We're not a secret society. We're não é uma sociedade secreta. É no nível público. Eu digo, você vai para o hospital, alguém da sua casa está no hospital, então você vai entrar no hospital e dizer, Excuse-me, ma'am, could you tell me what room Wall Street Dan is in? Or what room is Janet from another planet? Do you have her? What room is she in? My name's Scott Lee. I'm in the National Phone Book. Come to town and look me up. You can find me. I think it's important we do that. But another part of anonymity is doing something good for somebody else and not getting caught, and that's not my style. I think if I do something, well, I think you should know me better, especially if I did something good. But anyway, when I do that, it's like there's a piece of sunshine about so big that lodges itself in my chest, and I can think about what I've done any time, and it glows, and it makes my whole body glow. I can't explain that, but I see some people know what I'm talking about. and I did that a number of years ago. I did something really good for somebody and I never told a soul for about six months and then I just couldn't stand it any longer so I told him when I did this thing got out and I'm going to tell you what it was because there was another lesson for me and it was one of the big ones and what I had done was I'm a sales rep and I had a magical day where I walked into my 8 o'clock call and as I come through the door of the reception it says he's ready for you and I walk into the buyer's office He says, I haven't got time to talk today. Here's your order. And then it happened to me until noon. My day is done. I've got nothing to do. Fishing gear in the trunk. There's a park. There's an stream. I'm fishing. There's the family having a picnic. They've got a seven-year-old boy. Apparently he and I are going to fish together today. It looks like I'm going to cast, and he's going to do everything else is the way it looks. And I had a wonderful time with the little guy. I got to meet his family. He had three siblings. There's not a fisher person in sight in his family? That was my experience. I was a fisherman at age five. I mean, you either have it or you don't, and I had it. And I was at a time in my life where I had time. I got to know the family. I took this little guy on a couple of fishing trips just to be sure he was really hooked, and he was. And when he was about eight years old, there's a river about an hour west of Nashville, Tennessee. It's a national scenic river called the Buffalo River. And I hope there are places in heaven as beautiful as the Buffalo river. And he and I launched a canoe on that river and floated five miles of river in about ten hours when they caught over 100 fish. It was one of the magic days. A kid caught a four-pound smallmouth bass. He got my fish is what happened. Anyway, about a mile from the takeout, the sky suddenly blackens and I hear the thunder and we're going to get it and there's nothing we can do but take it. And there was a backwater and I did, canoeists call it Eddie Out, kind of parallel park up under some trees. I'm about to give God a little peace of mind. Did you happen to notice St. Scott down here in the boy? And by the way, he got my fish. I'm about to do this prayer, you see. And about that time, this beautiful little guy looks over his shoulder at me and he says, Is it okay to fish here? It was one of the great lessons in my life. Prayed the third step prayer in a minute. Prayed The Seventh Step Prayer in a Minute. The rest of my life is none of my business. And I believe when the skies in my live blacken and I hear the thunder, that that's the prayer I'm supposed to take to my father. Is it okay to fish here? Because I think that's my assignment. I believe that. I know people that are brimmed full of those little gold things, those little pieces of sunshine. You can see it out in their eyes. That's how they got them. On my last flight in that high-performance airplane, I leveled at 40,000 feet three and a half minutes after takeoff, and they gave me a working area. It was a 30-mile circle around a point in an altitude block, And I just wondered how high it would go. It was back before the radar told them. And they told us every day we're not supposed to be above 45,000 feet. And they said there were two reasons. One is you could get killed. The other is you'd die very quickly and you would owe them an airplane. Those were the two reasons that you're not suppose to be about 45. There are things that happen at a high altitude that you don't recover from. And I pulled the throttle back out of afterburner because the fuel gauges move kind of fast in afterburners. And I pull the nose up and I'm about 15 degrees of bank and I am climbing in this circle. And I thought I was going to get to 10 miles, and I didn't. At 52,300, she was done. And I was 80 miles west of Jacksonville, Florida, and I rolled out on a northerly heading, and this thing will not climb. I'm at nine-tenths of the speed of sound in a high-performance plane. I can move the stick like this, and nothing happens. There's no air up there. And I looked for the first time. Sun's coming up over my right shoulder. It's about 930 on a clear morning. The sky above me is black at 523 on a clean morning. and I look out to the west and saw the curvature of the earth and I didn't see it a little bit I really saw it this thing we're riding on is this magnificent blue ball just floating out in space I believe it's held there by love and I sat and looked at eternity for a couple of minutes about two poem high flat the author says I reached out my hand and touched the face of God I did that that day it was like something warm had been poured over me It was a magnificent experience and I eased the throttles back and brought it down. I didn't tell. I'm going to get court-martialed if they believe me, I don't tell them. About a number of years later, I was sober for five years and I spoke at an AA meeting and I heard myself telling that story and I didn t know why I was telling it. I got to the end and figured it out and of course you know it was my first spiritual experience. I just didn't know it. For over 30 years I wanted to see the curvature of the earth again. Four years ago, my little business had a pretty good year and Ms. Linda and I chartered a Learjet and a Lear 31 will go to 51 and that's close enough. Alcoholism took away any chance my dreams had of coming true. Alcoholics Anonymous brought it all back. I serve a big God. I've learned to dream big. And I left out something I usually tell when I was talking about my daughter shooting herself. I sponsor a guy whose son did not live and it was under the worst possible circumstances. It was a lead story on CNN for weeks. And emotionally, he was gone a long time, but he stayed sober. He's carrying a 21-year chip now, and I have his permission to tell this to you. And this is what he says now. He says one of these days you're going to have to go to the mountain all by yourself. If you have not done the work out of this book and you don't know how to reach up and take the master's hand, you won't be able to go. I believe that's right. I believe he was right about that. And I stand before you in my stocking feet. I asked you to invite your God here and I invited mine and I could be standing here on holy ground and I've tried to hold that in my heart and I have and I thank you for that and if you borrowed my God and you got touched borrow him again I'd like to thank you for coming I believe you did and I want to tell one more story my great mentor is a fellow named Don from Denver and he was terminal three years ago Thanksgiving when my wife and I spent the day with him and I was finally able to ask him the question that has torn my guts up for the longest time. I've taken him impossible questions, and he has always had a fabulous answer. He's a very humble guy. And I finally asked him the big one. I said, Don, what are guys like Scott going to do when guys like Don are all gone? And he cupped his hands, and we were talking about this. And he looked at them, and they said, I have been bringing you hands full of water. Go to the river. He said it wasn't him, that he had access to a power and a wisdom far, far beyond his own and go to the river. It is my prayer that I brought you tonight a few hands full of water as Don brought them to me. And I want to close with what I think is the most important thing I've said tonight. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. God bless and keep you. Thanks.