At Fifty-Something My Sponsor Has Me Doing Tenth and Eleventh Step with Pen and Paper Every Night – Eric W.

That's my story, I'm sticking you with it
That's my story, I'm sticking you with it
All right, y'all ready for AA meeting?
Let's have one. My name is Cornbread and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speaker Meeting at the Napa Club
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his story.
This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Each individual has his own personal stories describing their own language
and their own point of view.
The way they establish their relationship with God.
They give a fair cross section of membership and clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider their self-revealing account in bad taste
or hope that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight are listening later on aabluchipspeaker.org.
Desperately in need, we'll hear our speaker.
And we'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We believe that it is only by foreclosing ourselves and our problems
that any of us shall be pursued to say,
yes, I'm one of them too.
I must have this thing.
And his speaker tonight is a very special person in my life.
He's been my sponsor for probably about four years now.
And we went to a group called Complete Abandon.
I was there when he was there.
And I went back out a while and he left the group.
And a few years later,
after giving up,
he's been my sponsor ever since.
He is a wonderful man.
And I trust him with my life.
And, you know, when you get a sponsor that just connects,
it's an awesome feeling.
And he's a great man.
And I love him dearly.
And I'll give you Eric.
I'll pay you later.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name's Eric.
We overland.
I'm an alcoholic.
My sobriety dates to 7-20-2003.
And I have a sponsor.
I sponsor other guys.
And I never, never really imagined that I would be an Alcoholics Anonymous.
I really didn't.
I'm going to read one, two things out of the book and then we'll proceed.
Because these are two things that I learned day one when I walked into that door
and into the 9-30 meeting across the way in 1992.
I was 26 years old.
The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure,
have lost the power of choice and drink.
Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent.
We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force
the memory of the suffering,
and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.
We are without defense against the first drink.
I had no idea I was without defense against the first drink.
I had no idea that I was forgetting about the humiliation that had happened just last night
when I was picking up the next drink.
And that's something I learned day one.
On page 44,
there's a lot of talk in Alcoholics Anonymous,
about alcoholic thinking.
My experience is that we're human beings,
and human beings have a lot of thinking going on.
And that's not what makes me an alcoholic.
What makes me an alcoholic is when I honestly want to,
I cannot quit entirely.
And when I am drinking,
I have little control over the amount I take.
I was under the delusion that I was in control of my drinking.
I was under the delusion that I was in control of my drinking.
I was under the idea that I could go out and have a couple beers
any time I wanted to.
And yet, the facts became more and more clear.
The more and more I came around Alcoholics Anonymous,
that that was a delusion,
that I was lying to myself.
I would go out and have a couple drinks,
and wake up the next day not knowing where the car was,
who's this person next to me,
and, you know, what happened.
And those were escapades,
that happened a lot in college.
But after college, it kept happening out in the real world.
And it was becoming a problem.
And so, my story starts,
I was born in Philadelphia to two successful, smart people.
I had two younger sisters.
And from the get-go, I was always out the door.
I was the kid that didn't,
I didn't want to be where I was.
And there's some stories of me hanging out the second story window
at three years old, trying to crawl down.
You know, these are, you know,
there's a story of my mom getting very upset with me,
and shaking me physically, shaking me pretty hard.
And these are things that just kind of happened.
Didn't make me an alcoholic,
but these are just kind of behaviors and situations that happened.
We moved to Atlanta when I was six.
I got my first resentment at six years old.
Did not want to be here.
Was put into public school for a while.
And moved, and changed public school several times.
And I didn't like it.
I didn't like being the new guy in the room.
I didn't like trying to make friends.
It turns out that I had a lot of fear toward people,
you know, and that later on in life,
I realized that alcohol helped get rid of that fear.
And we ended up in Druid Hills.
And my father, we were moved down here in a big deal.
Jimmy Carter invited my father to come down here
and head up Georgia Mental Health Institute.
Because my father had been dealing with heroin addicts in Philadelphia.
He's a psychiatrist, and he was treating heroin addicts
coming back from Vietnam.
And he was having success with a conversational approach,
along with,
I'm spacing out,
along with, what do you give heroin addicts?
Come on.
Methadone, thank you.
I'm blessed that heroin was not part of my path.
I missed it by a hair.
So, methadone and counseling was having great effect
with the addicts in Philadelphia.
So, therefore, Jimmy Carter invited him to come down
and help revamp the mental health industry in Georgia.
And so, he did.
Big job.
Big deal.
And he had a six-year-old son who hated it.
And was not afraid of letting him know that at every step that I could.
At seven years old, I discovered a kid down the street.
We started smoking cigarettes and playing on the trampoline.
At eight years old, I was transferred to another school.
I had to go through the whole developing relationships at that school.
And I ended up making some really close friends.
In seventh grade, my parents had the opportunity to send me to a prestigious local private school.
I was not very happy about it.
I ended up taking the test and purposely answering the questions incorrectly.
It was very obvious that I was doing so.
And since my father knew some people, I got into the school regardless.
At that point, I'm from a family of fairly heavy social drinkers.
So, Dad would come home from work and have a Budweiser.
He and Mom would have some drinks, some glasses of wine at dinner.
And then he might end the evening with a highball or a rock, a couple fingers in a glass.
Cousins were heavy drinkers.
Whenever we went to visit, there was a lot of drinking going on.
I happened to have some older cousins.
So, about thirteen, I discovered at Thanksgiving the joy of drinking wine at dinner.
And I ended up catching a nice buzz.
And I ended up becoming the center of attention and enjoying it.
In seventh grade, at this new prestigious high school I was at, people had older brothers.
And we were beginning to talk about wanting to drink and to smoke pot.
A lot more talk than action.
But in eighth grade, some more action started occurring.
The first time I was able to score some weed, I used a good old Queen album.
And rolled my little joints in the Queen album, sitting in my parents' bathroom, hoping I wouldn't get caught.
Ninth grade comes around.
And in ninth grade, some buddies and I went out to the school dance.
And we all brought our bottles of alcohol, poured them in a big old Dixie cup, if you will.
And then proceeded to pass it around and drink it.
And every time that cup came around, it just got warmer and warmer going down.
And I took as much as I could and then went to the basketball game and then went to the school dance.
And entered a blackout.
Ended up kind of passing out to the band playing some Van Halen.
And ended up throwing up in the principal's bathroom.
Ended up being pushed in the back of my mother's car.
And she turned around and beat the hell out of me in front of everybody at the school.
So when I came to school on Monday, everybody knew.
Everybody knew.
What happened was, I was the ninth grader, the freshman, who got drunk.
And I had a new reputation at school.
I proceeded to get suspended for a couple of days and then life went on.
When I transitioned into that private school, there was a breakup.
There was a breakup.
I put my buddies in the neighborhood.
And I took it pretty hard.
So I had the opportunity to go back to the public school.
Decided to stay in the private school and just work it out.
And life has this weird way.
You could say God has this weird way.
It's been a very good situation for me to have gone to that school.
Little did I know when I was there.
But I will say that in a private school environment, I would have found it in a public school environment, too.
And I liked alcohol.
And I liked learning how to smoke weed.
And I liked to go to concerts.
And I liked to do that stuff.
And so I would do that as much as I could.
I ended up doing fairly well in school.
I played sports in school.
I had the opportunity to go to college.
And I had one goal in college, which was to go to a college as far away from Atlanta as I possibly could get.
And I found a school up in Pennsylvania that I had a cousin at.
And I found a school up in Pennsylvania that I had a cousin at.
They had great fraternities.
And I decided that's what I was going to do.
I was going to go to that school.
I got there and I joined Greek Life and basically felt that college is now a country club.
And to this day I regret the way I did college.
And when I've talked to sponsors about it, they've reminded me that,
Eric, if you're powerless over alcohol, you're powerless over alcohol.
Until you know that you're powerless over alcohol,
There's nothing you can do about it.
And so I spent a lot of my college life drunk, stoned,
experimenting with other drugs.
The goal was to get drunk, get laid, and wake up and do it again.
Discovered a band called the Grateful Dead in college
and decided that that was it.
That's what I was going to do.
Grateful Dead music, concerts, drugs associated with the band,
and then barely get through school.
And so I graduated, and I graduated about six weeks late
because I had to summer school to attend.
Decided to, I had to lick my wounds.
As a good alcoholic, I had to lick my wounds.
And what did that mean?
Going home to Mommy and Daddy.
So I licked my wounds from college, went home and lived at home for a little bit,
saved some money, and moved to Washington.
Washington, D.C.
Because that seemed to be the place to go in the mid-80s.
Washington, D.C.
And I'm a man who's been given a lot of opportunities in my life
just because of the fact that I was born in a decent situation.
Not really created by me, but just because it's that situation.
And I've blown some really good opportunities.
One of my opportunities in D.C. was that I happened to have an uncle
who worked for Chrysler International.
And I was given.
I was given his name and number.
Go contact him.
Go interview with him and see maybe how he could help me.
I don't like help.
That's part of my thinking process.
I think I know everything.
So I go into his office and he asks me what I'd like to do on Capitol Hill.
And being a good deadhead hippie wannabe that I was,
I said, well, why would I want to work on Capitol Hill?
And he said, well, you're in Washington, D.C.
And if you don't want to work on Capitol Hill,
there's not much I can do for you.
And he showed me the door.
And I went out my little arrogant way and became a bike courier in Washington, D.C.
Did a lot of drinking, drugging.
So I had mentioned that I had a, you know,
life has all these little opportunities, right?
These stepping stones.
And I had this opportunity.
One day to do some heroin.
That was going to be the next step because I'd done the acid, the mushrooms, cocaine,
the alcohol, the marijuana daily.
So what's the next thing to do?
Well, heroin's on the list.
Opioids hadn't come out, really.
And I wasn't into pills.
So we're talking about doing this drug.
We're going to go see a reggae band.
It's going to be great.
It's going to be great.
I took a swig of my beer.
And I had a yellow jacket in it who proceeded to sting me in the lip.
And as my lips swelled out, I looked at my friends.
And I literally said, I'm not doing any heroin tonight.
So, you know, does God work in mysterious ways?
Probably.
Because I would have liked the drug.
I am very convinced that I would have liked the drug.
And it never came up for the rest of my running around.
It just didn't come.
It never came up.
So, of course, broken heart has a lot to do with alcoholism
and drinking and drugging with relationships.
And, you know, going through relationships is part of the story
and part of the sadness of being an alcoholic.
It's just kind of the sadness of how life is.
It just happens, you know.
You go through relationships.
So my relationship in Washington, D.C. ended.
And my glory days of being in Washington, D.C. needed to end.
And a friend of mine had been working at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
And he suggested that maybe I should go down there to work.
And I thought, adventure job.
Spend a year down there.
Make some money.
Save it.
Travel.
Great idea.
So I set it all up.
I set it all up.
I set it all up.
I made the phone calls.
I told some fibs.
Got the job.
And got shipped down to Antarctica.
What I learned about Antarctica is that there's a lot of people who drink just like I drink in Antarctica.
And they're the guys who support the Navy base down there.
So they're either in the Navy or they're the blue collar guys who are going down there to make some money
and to have an adventure job.
And the bars are based on the...
They're based on the level in the Navy.
I'm not very familiar with that because military is not my story.
But needless to say, I went to the bar with the lowest of the E-9s, I guess maybe it is.
The privates, if you will.
And we drank and played darts.
And we worked six days a week.
We had beer machines in our James Ray tents.
We could get a bottle of liquor or a case of beer from the distributor.
Every week.
And that's what we did.
I met some guys from New Zealand who could bring in some black ash and we could smoke that.
So I had all the little toys that I needed to get through.
What I didn't realize is that in a small town, everyone knows each other.
And if you're a town drunk, people know that.
And the people who manage these things watch.
Right?
For all my drinking and drugging,
I never really...
I never really saw what I looked like.
And I always thought I was having a good time and other people were having a good time around me.
That's not always the case.
Long story short, I got in a verbal altercation with one of my fellow workers
who decided that he wanted to take me out back and beat me up.
And we'd all signed a contract that there'd be no fighting.
Fighting meant you'd be kicked off.
And so they fired.
They fired us both.
And I was sent to Christchurch, New Zealand.
And then I was sent to L.A.
And that was the end of the contract.
Get home on your own.
I saved up about maybe $1,000.
I spent a lot of money at the bars.
I bought a fancy camera.
I bought some stuff.
And, you know, my money saving was not...
You know, I had another nine months to go on my contract.
I got to do some fun things in Antarctica.
But again, it's...
It was one of these opportunities that I squandered.
Or it was squandered because of the alcohol and the drugs.
I was powerless over it.
I came back to Atlanta.
And went back to mom's and dad's.
Now, I'm a full-blown alcoholic at this point.
Don't know it.
My mother had started going to Al-Anon.
Didn't know that.
And they...
My mom and dad let me stay in the house.
Let me drive the 15-year-old family station wagon.
And...
And I got this little job in a catering company
making about six bucks an hour.
And I could go out and bartend at night
and drink on the job
and do these things that we tend to do.
Got involved in a relationship.
And the relationship ended.
Decided to go up to Washington, D.C.
to see my friends and recreate some old times.
And found out that that relationship ended
because she was with my best friend.
And then we proceeded.
We had to share a sexual disease together.
And it just kind of blew up in our faces.
Came back to Atlanta.
Broken.
Sad.
And I could do nothing to blame my parents
or blame the schools or blame whatever.
It was all about the drinking.
Because I had spent a whole weekend up in Washington, D.C.
trying to recreate the past
with a lot of alcohol.
And it didn't work.
I asked my father, I said,
Dad, maybe I need to do something with the alcohol
and maybe I need to go to AA.
Why don't you make some phone calls for me?
Twelve hours went by and the next day came
as a little thought.
Why don't you call AA, Eric?
And so I followed up on that thought.
And I found out that there was a 9.30 meeting here in Nava.
And I drove over here.
In August 1992.
I walked into a room over there.
And I had no idea that all those people knew each other.
I thought they were just strangers.
Like I was just walking into a meeting
because they had a problem with alcohol.
I didn't realize that there was people like George Montgomery
who had over 20 years and Pat Pugh and Lawrence Potts
who was my sponsor and a lot of these folks.
They just had time.
They told me two things.
They told me that I was powerless over alcohol.
We did a first step meeting.
I didn't realize I was the center of attention,
but I picked up a little bit.
They went to the chips.
I had to be kind of told,
you're supposed to pick up a white chip.
So I went and did that.
I also learned that maybe I could go to a meeting at 5.45,
8 o'clock that night,
and there's more here to go to.
And I was told that getting on my knees in the morning
and asking the higher power for help.
All I had to do was say,
please help me stay sober today.
And at night, do the same thing and say thank you.
And I went to a Christian prep school.
And they ruined Christianity for me.
Because they made it sound like it was the only way.
And being of a rebellious type,
I rebelled against that.
So I wasn't too excited to find out that spirituality
had come into play in Alcoholics Anonymous.
But I also had a lot to learn.
The differences between religion and spirituality.
But the ease of just asking for help.
Didn't have to put a Jesus on it.
Didn't have to put anything on it.
Just asking for help.
And so I did it.
The next day.
I went to the 9.30 meeting.
Then I went to the 5.45 meeting.
And then if I wasn't working,
I went to the 8 o'clock meeting.
Because what I did learn was that
if I am not drinking,
it certainly is easier to do that
in a room of other people who are not drinking.
Especially if they happen to be enjoying their not drinking.
Because I wasn't enjoying my not drinking.
Slowly I got 30 days.
I got 60 days.
A girl flirted with me at the job.
I got a date.
I wasn't following some of the rules.
I was letting the group be my group of drunks.
I didn't quite want a sponsor.
And some things started happening that was
seemed positive in my life.
Six months in,
I met a woman I had gone to college with.
And she was a teacher down here.
And we started dating a little bit.
Six months in,
I started liking my catering job.
And thought maybe I need to get a career here.
Because I need to get a career.
I'm in my mid-twenties.
My friends are going to medical school.
Getting MBAs.
Getting law degrees.
And I'm feeling like,
oh, I have to do something with my life now.
So I found a way to get to culinary school.
And then it became, well,
before I go to culinary school,
I've got to get to the staffs.
Because, you know, I just had heard enough.
You've got to go to the staffs.
This is all with a mistaken,
belief that alcohol is my problem.
I'm working on alcohol.
The drink is my problem.
I'm not working with my life's unmanageable.
I'm not working with the fact that
my thinking and actions are my problem.
So what happened was,
I went to culinary school.
And a few months in,
I decided that maybe smoking a little marijuana
was going to be okay.
And what that really led into was that
it became a problem again.
But it kept me from drinking.
But it also kept me from connecting with
people in Alcoholics Anonymous.
So I played that game of some chip games
and coming in and coming out
and getting some sober time complete
and then, you know, picking up chips again.
And then saying, fuck it,
I'm just going to smoke weed.
Excuse my language.
I'm just going to smoke weed.
I'm not going to drink.
I'm going to let everyone think that I'm sober.
And I'm going to get married.
And I'm going to create a life.
But I'm going to be high through it.
And it worked for a little while.
It looked okay.
It looked okay.
I had two cars.
It was a good job.
It looked like I was advancing in the job.
A beautiful wife.
We happened to get a beautiful child.
Owned a nice condominium.
And inside I was miserable.
The woman wasn't right.
The child wasn't right.
Because, you know,
there's not much going on
with a one and a half year old child
if you're stoned.
And the job, of course,
was becoming less right
because, of course, you need more money.
And I am not grateful.
I'm just not grateful.
I've been given a lot,
but I'm not grateful.
I decided to come back to Outbox Anonymous one day
because I was really thirsty.
And I didn't want to drink.
I hadn't had a drink in about nine or ten years.
And I knew that having a drink
was going to be a disaster.
So I came back to Outbox Anonymous
and played that game again.
30 days, 10 days, 20 days.
And then I kind of connected.
And Mike mentioned the group.
I connected with this young guy
who invited me to meet him
at a meeting the next day.
And I decided to do that.
And then he had some other friends.
And I met these guys.
And for whatever reason,
here I am, 37 years old,
running around with a pack of 20-something-year-olds.
Because mentally,
I was really maybe 20 years old myself.
And I'm running around with this pack of guys.
And what we're doing is
we're just going to AA meetings.
And we're talking about helping others.
When I did the steps the first time,
I never did step 12.
I was urged,
I was urged to,
but I didn't really want to come and clean up
after your coffee cups
or at that time your ashtrays.
And I didn't really want to
hang out with the young people.
I wanted to get on with my life.
Right?
I needed to get on with my life
and become successful.
I needed money.
And I missed the whole thing.
So I'm running around with these guys
doing what we did,
which was helping other people,
street sweeping,
getting drunk,
trying to sober them up,
going to a hell of a lot of AA meetings.
And after about two years of doing that,
we had a sponsor outside of the group,
which was a saving grace.
And my wife decided that
we needed to get a divorce.
And so I was guided
by a couple men in AA
how to get through a divorce and stay sober.
Because I didn't know how.
How to get through a divorce
and not be a real jerk
about it.
How to be able to trust that
I was going to make the money
that needed to be made
to pay for everything.
And to get okay with the loss
of what I was going through.
It all worked
because I relied on other people with that.
If I had done it on my own,
I was going to make a big deal out of it.
Because I like to hold on to the little things
that you can just let go of
in order to keep the big things.
And my son was three
when it was all over.
And my visitation
had to be supervised to an extent.
And that's just the way it was.
So we get to build from there.
So what I learned at Alcoholics Anonymous
is I come in here
and we get to build from there.
Wherever you come in,
you get to build from there.
Some people come in high,
some people come in low.
That's where you start building from.
So it came evident to me
that a group that does steps one,
two, three, and twelve
is missing a big chunk
of what Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer.
So I got another sponsor.
I joined another home group.
One thing I've learned about Alcoholics Anonymous
is to be successful
is to have a home group.
It's really important.
So I got another home group.
That had some mature men in it
and long-term sobriety
and started doing what they did.
And then I had the opportunity
ten years ago
to help start another group
at Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I jumped in
and started helping do that also.
So I spent, I would say,
the first ten years of my recovery
this time
very active in Alcoholics Anonymous
in one way or another.
Through that time
I got to spend time with my child
who developed a love for soccer.
I must say that I had some influence on that.
And so what happened there was
I got more time with him through sports.
Because the ex-wife didn't want to do it
so I did it.
I kept the same job.
I had to live.
I had to live in situations
I didn't want to live in.
I had to rent a room for a while.
And I was able to rent a downstairs apartment
for a while.
And then eventually I was able to
purchase a small home.
All of this while
continuing to pay child support
and being on time every time.
Continuing to be involved in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Sponsoring guys.
And for a while we had an AA meeting at my house
where we had about six to ten guys
coming over to the house every other week
to have AA meetings.
Things were good.
I found a relationship with a woman
in Alcoholics Anonymous
and we ended up getting married.
I brought three more teenagers into my life
to be stepbrothers and sisters with my son.
And it's worked.
In fact, just three weeks ago
we were at the wedding of the oldest daughter.
And they were like family.
It was great.
It really was.
And because of Alcoholics Anonymous
and what I've learned
and how to be in here
the other family and I
we get along, right?
So they graciously
they invited myself
and the mother of these other people
into the wedding scenario.
They didn't have to do that.
All this comes
because I do stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because I'm not perfect.
My last sponsor and I
kind of had to slowly drift apart.
We just had to drift apart.
And I became a meeting maker
and a prayer
and kind of a half-ass sponsor guy.
And
and some things have suffered
in my life because of that.
Right?
It's just part of the journey I've been on.
Recently
the past year and a half
the business I worked for got sold
and the new owner and I didn't quite see eye to eye.
And after about eight months he let me go.
Now in retrospect
I've handled that differently probably.
Was there a lot of resentment?
Absolutely.
You know sometimes
we gotta go through these life lessons.
My new joke is
no one told me my fifties would be this difficult.
Right?
I thought fifties you're supposed to have it going on.
Well
I have it going on.
I'm sober.
I have not had a desire to drink
or smoke any weed
or to do any other drugs
in a very, very long time.
If that's as good as it gets
that's as good as it gets today.
Right?
I think there's more to it than that.
And usually there is.
Usually there is.
But um
So I lost this job.
I have
in the past year and a half
been catering on my own
and created my own little boutique catering company
that's been just enough to stay alive
and afloat.
Right?
Uh
I've gotten into breeding dogs.
I have a special breed.
We breed dogs.
We've had three litters.
And that's been fun.
And then it's brought in a little income.
Not a lot.
Um
I have a
good relationship with my wife
and yet we still have our situations.
Right?
I've had the honor
of going to Al-Anon these days
and learning something completely different.
Um
I have a mother who's getting older.
And now I have to begin to address that.
I have a mother-in-law who's definitely getting older.
And I have to address that.
I've discovered a group of people
who love the Grateful Dead
and we started to go see shows together.
And we do all this through Facebook.
It's kind of been strange
but it's been fun as hell.
Um
Some of them are sober.
Some of them are not.
And it doesn't really matter
because we have this love for this band
and this music.
And so
in two weeks I went out to the Hollywood Bowl
to see this band
because
it was on my dream list at one point in time.
Um
Other people do whatever they want to do.
My bucket list was to see a Grateful Dead concert out in California.
And by God I figured out how to do it.
And I'm meeting a bunch of people
that I don't really know out there to do it.
So it's going to be fun.
Um
I'll stay with my mother-in-law.
Um
It's all because of this.
Alcoholics Anonymous.
Right?
I don't give it enough credit.
But it's true.
Um
Through my own devices I'd be drunk.
And most likely I'd be dead.
There's
We've lost
I've lost some folks along the way
that I used to drink with
and they're no longer here with us.
And alcoholism definitely played a role in their passing.
Um
It's a daily reprieve.
Gotta do it every day.
Um
I've been given a manner of living.
I like that terminology.
I didn't like it in the book.
But I woke up one day.
I have a manner of living now.
The alarm goes off.
I ask God for help.
I begin to plan my day.
Lying in bed.
And then I get up.
Start the day.
Uh
There's times during the day that I'll remember
and pray during the day.
Other times I don't.
Sometimes I'll call an alcoholic.
Sometimes I won't.
Um
I just went through the 12 steps of the new sponsor.
And he's got me doing things I hadn't done before.
And uh
Been new at some of it.
Should have been doing it all along.
But I didn't.
And uh
He loves to say,
Eric, when your will and God's will are lined up,
it's all great.
But if it's not,
it's not going to be great.
And uh
I got some things to work on.
So I'm now working on a 10th and 11th step every night.
Uh
You know.
Actually with pen and paper.
Not just kind of mentally doing it.
I would say I'm 70% good at that.
I'm not perfect.
But every night I say thank you for being sober today.
Right?
And um
And that's about it.
You know I've
I'm the guy who was not going to have a relationship with God.
And I'm now a guy who has a relationship with God.
And I
It enables me to
It enables me to meet people like y'all.
And uh
And
And to walk this path with you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Eric.
It was adequate.
More than adequate.
More than adequate.
We have asked Tinsley to come and pass out the chips.
My name is Tinsley.
I'm an alcoholic.
Thanks, Eric.
That was a great story.
A lot of
A lot of similarities.
Although I've never heard of a yellow jacket intervention before.
It would have taken a whole swarm of them for me.
Uh
If you'd like to try this way of life one day at a time,
we offer a white chip.
Would anybody like to pick up a white chip?
For 30 days?
A silver chip?
Anybody got 30 days?
What is this?
60 days?
60 days for this new fangled chip?
Gold chip?
How about three months?
Red chip?
Yellow chip for six months?
Nine months green chip?
And a blue chip for one year or multiples?
Alright.
Alright.
Let's see.
Alright.
My name is Mark.
I'm an alcoholic.
This is 16 years.
I go to a lot of meetings.
I got four home groups.
This is my last home group I'm going to pick up a chip this year.
I did it, I go to a lot of meetings.
I go to a lot of meetings.
I pray not to start over no more because I was a guy who started over all the time.
And I did the work.
I worked the steps, and I go to physical work and be responsible
and go to a meeting and talk to and help alcoholics.
How I did, I remember how I used to, I couldn't handle sobriety.
And I would relapse.
And I tried to get sober again.
I couldn't handle sobriety, and I relapsed.
But, A.A., when I got fully in, Alcoholics Anonymous, and got honest,
you all told me.
Thank you.
Any other birthdays?
Anybody want to reconsider on a white chip?
Big hand for the chips you hold.
All right.
Thank you, one and all, for joining us at Blue Chip Speaker Meeting tonight.
You're so in it, and I'm so out.
You're so in it, and I'm so out.
You're so in it, and I'm so out.
You're so in it, and I'm so out.
You're so in it, and I'm so out.
Live with you or live without
You're torn up and torn down
I feel like a slave to this run around
It's a strange disease
This is why I'm the same
That's what I'm doing, I'm taking you with me
You're so black and I'm so white
And you wanna know everything I do all night
You're so vanilla, I'm so white
You're so vanilla, I'm so white
You're making me feel like the dance of a child
Oh, it's a strange disease
This is why I'm the same
That's what I'm doing, I'm taking you with me
You're so black and I'm so white
I feel like a slave to this run around
I ain't never got nothing like heart
When you're turning up the heat
For heaven's sake
Rock with you is hairier
Than planet of the Apes
It's a great to see
There's a quiet of pain
That's my story
I'm taking you with me
It's a great to see
There's a quiet of pain
That's my story
I'm taking you with me
It's a great to see
There's a quiet of pain
That's my story
It's a great to see
There's a quiet of pain
That's my story
It's a great to see