Contrary Action — Whatever My Head Says to Do, I Have to Do the Exact Opposite – Terry D.

Okay, what do you say? Let's have an AA meeting. My name is Terry and I'm an alcoholic. Yes! And please bear with me, I was just asked to do this. For good reason, though. A good friend of mine is telling this story tonight. Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speaker Meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her story. Again, I told you, I was asked at the last minute to do this and with good reason, because our speaker tonight is a very good friend of mine and one of my best friends. Of course, I've got a lot of best friends now. My sobriety date is February 20, 1990 and through that process we develop a fellowship around us and I'm talking about a fellowship of people, men and women when I needed somebody to talk to, to be there at my house, to accept me. Terry, the speaker tonight, I lost my mother a year and a half ago. It's a long story, but I tried to buy the house and couldn't buy the house. I had to get out of that place. I made them throw me out, so I got evicted in sobriety and seven days to move a whole house of her stuff into storage and no place to go. You know? Just had been in the job a short period of time. I work at night. Oh, what a story. So anyway, without hesitation, Terry accepted me into his house, him and his wife Leslie. Just really special people in my life. We both lost sponsors. They died sober. Really important men in our lives. Everywhere I show up there's this guy, you know, and it's like even if I wanted to get rid of him, I couldn't. But this is what happens when you put together, days of sobriety. You can't help but to bond with people, to make friends, real friends, and I can honestly say Terry is one of my best friends, and I know you'll really enjoy listening to his story, and I hope you get as much out of it as I do. So, we'll see. My name's Terry. I'm an alcoholic. And tonight when I was driving, my home group is the We're Not a Glum Lot of Buford Big Book Study, which meets at the Serenity House up in Buford. For anybody that doesn't get outside the perimeter, that's a little far north from here. And on my drive down, being the kind of guy that I've always been, I was thinking, you know, you always want to tell a story that's going to be funny, and it's going to touch somebody, and somebody's going to identify, and you want to be congratulated afterwards. So, I was asking God, just help me just to tell the truth. And it as soon as I said that, I get a text from Terry that says, hey, I think I'm going to hang out so you don't embellish anything. So, it's kind of funny the way this stuff works. You know, my story, I've told it numerous times, and it changes, but the bottom line is there's certain facts in my story that don't change, because it's what brought me to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. How it comes out, I don't know. Sometimes, I have my big book with me, this time I don't. I left it up at Serenity House last Tuesday, and it's locked up, and I couldn't get to it. So, I always like to use that as a crutch. The big book has been pretty much the Bible, the textbook, as it clearly states. It's a textbook. It's even categorized in the Library of Congress as a textbook to tell me how to live without taking a drink. So, I kind of use that as a crutch a lot. I go to it a lot. It's very worn. It's been used a lot. It's highlighted, and there's things in there that I write, and when I tell my story, I like to refer to it, but you're just going to get what comes out tonight. And the main thing is that, you know, it said there, I like that passage from page 29, where it talks about where we reestablish a relationship with God. Because my whole life, it was, that's what I was missing. And only through the fellowship of AA. Was I able to find that. I don't know why that is. I didn't have a horrible relationship with God when I grew up. In fact, I had a good one. In fact, the God that I grew up with was the one that I went to when I needed him most. So, that being said, when I share tonight, I hope that somebody in here can identify with what I'm talking about and say, okay, you know, if this guy can do it, I can do it. And that's all that matters. How it comes out, how funny it is, how on point, how, you know, if it's all over the place, it's all over the place. But that's the objective. If I share my experience and somebody gets something out of it and it allows them not to take a drink tonight and maybe through the rest of the week and so on and so on, beautiful. I've done my job. So, that being said, on May 30th of 1997, I had my last drink. And that last drink was up in St. Louis. And that's in Missouri. If anybody doesn't know where that is. And it was about 10.30 in the morning and I had been out on a long drunk about three or four days. I guess I need to make this disclaimer. I was out on a long drunk because I used a lot of outside issues. So, I was able to stay up for a long time. I think most of us can get that. That was the one thing that brought me to my knees. But alcohol is interwoven into my whole drinking career. So, on that morning, I had my last drink and it was a bunch of Wormbush beer. And they were in the floorboard of my 1987 Toyota Corolla, which I was basically living in at that point. And I made a decision that morning to check myself and do a rehab up there, a detox center. Not because I finally said, I'm finished. Lord, do what you will with me. I'm ready to get sober. No. I was running from a warrant. And I felt the best decision for me to do was to check into a detox center. Because somebody had told me out there that if you're in a detox center, you can't get arrested. You can check in and you can figure some sort of law. And I'm thinking, that's a great idea. I'll go in and I'll kind of clean some stuff up. What brought me to that point though was years of drinking and using drugs. I grew up outside of Columbus, Ohio. Grew up in a great family. I'm the youngest of two older brothers. Mom and dad. We weren't super rich. We weren't poor. We got everything we needed. Most of the time, we got everything we wanted. I had a really good childhood. And I had no issues whatsoever. I was an altar boy. I was a Roman Catholic. So I'll do this disclaimer. I'm not a recovering Catholic. I just don't practice anymore. But I grew up. I went to a Catholic grade school. I ended up going to a Catholic high school here in Atlanta. I went on to a Catholic college in New Orleans. Ended up meeting a girl there who was Catholic. And we got married in the Catholic church. And we had three children. And Catholicism is interwoven in me through and through. From the time I was born to the time that I really got sober. It was there. So, that being said, I had a good relationship with God. Because I think when I got it, you know, at that point in my life, even though I didn't know it, that morning, my life was really, really unmanageable. It really was. And I was powerless over alcohol and drugs. But at that moment, I didn't think I was. I thought it was just simply the fact that I had a really bad run of luck. And it just kind of finally came to a head. In high school, you know, grade school, I didn't drink early on. You know, I'm not one of these guys that took a drink at 10 and said, you know, that was as long as I could wait. It was not that for me. I had my first beer, I think, a sophomore junior year in high school, and it wasn't even much. It was with five or six guys, we split an eight-pack of seven-ounce Miller Ponies. You know, and we drank that before we went to a basketball game, and it was it wasn't, you know, I had arrived when I drank this beer. It was simply just my thinking was, cool, we'll go in and we'll talk to girls and we'll have beer on our breath and we'll be cool that way. And I drank like that in high school. We all did. I mean, high school was just we, in the weekends, we would meet up somewhere after football games, basketball games, whatever, go to somebody's house, go to a park, whatever, and everybody drank beer. Get somebody to buy it for us, and no real consequences. I didn't get real drunk. Every now and then, somebody would get drunk and sick, but there was no, certainly no evil consequences of like, you're on your way to alcoholism at that point. But what happened was, is that I went to school in New Orleans, and my senior year, or the summer of my senior year in high school, I went down there to take a look at it, see if it was the place I wanted to go to. And what they did when we got down there, they took us to Bourbon Street, you know, as an incentive to come to school in New Orleans. And the drinking age at that time was 18. And I got blasted. We went to all sorts of places there, and I just got blasted and loved it. All the people that I met there were, everybody was drunk, it was so much fun. You know, it was great. So that's when I made my decision to go to Loyola. And when I went there, I came back and told my father, my dad was ecstatic. Finally, somebody's going to go to a small Catholic liberal arts Jesuit school and get a fine Jesuit education. And that was what I led him to believe was the reason I was going there. But the reality was is that, I can get a lot of names, it's going to be fun. It's a party school. It was awesome. And it was. So for the next four years, I drank alcoholic Lee. The moment my parents dropped me off and they left, me and my roommate went out, and I don't remember anything after that happened that way. I don't know what happened. I don't know how the light switch went from on to really, really, really bright. I don't know. But it did. And what happened was, is that, I remember seeing pictures, and I believe somewhere in the scrapbooks or something, there's a picture of me, and I'm on my dorm bed, not naked, but in my boxer and permanent marker all over me, shaving cream, all the stuff that college kids do to somebody who's passed out drunk. And for four years, that was kind of the way I drank. Didn't get into any trouble. Went to classes. Graduated. Met the girl that I thought was my dreams down there. And after school, we got married, and we moved back to Atlanta. And shortly thereafter, she was pregnant with our first daughter. And I still was maintaining, but I was drinking more and more. I wasn't drinking in the mornings. I wasn't drinking all day, but when I would go out, I would drink, and I would get drunk. And I would get drunk to the point to where there were lots and lots of times I didn't remember anything. There was a lot of warning signals at that point. My soon-to-be ex-wife thought that I had a problem with drinking and that I needed to do something about it. And warnings from my family that alcoholism runs in our family and we think you drink too much. But I had no consequences. So if I wasn't going to have a bad consequence, it was meaningless to me. I wasn't going to hear it. But those consequences started to finally, a little bit at a time, began to fall into place. By the time my second daughter was born a year later, I had taken a transfer with the company I was working for. Up to St. Louis. And my second daughter was born up there. And I was spending less and less time at home and more and more time out with the guys and girls from work. And then taking every opportunity I could to figure out ways to have parties at the house and do whatever I needed to do. And I was drinking at that point very alcoholically, I would think. What is alcoholic drinking? I don't know. Might be something totally different for you guys. But for me, I was drinking all the time. I mean, if there was any reason for me to have a beer or a drink, I had it. You know, there's that old saying, you know, I was a social drinker. Somebody said, I'd like to go out and have a drink. I'd say, so shall I. You know, it's just the way it was. So, what happened was, that marriage began to dissolve because I was kind of prioritizing drinking. I was prioritizing spending time with other people, not my family. Granted, I was still working, but you know, I was beginning to have problems at work. There was one incident where we were at a Christmas party and the Christmas party was, you know, had alcohol free, you know, dancing, dinner. It was a great time. Except the problem was, when I drank, I drank so much is that I actually grabbed the regional vice president's wife and tried to make out with her on the dance floor. For whatever reason, somebody saw that and they called me into the office Monday and wanted to know what that was all about and I had no recollection of it. None. My wife did. She didn't like it. And that was kind of the beginning of the end for me. But it didn't happen then. This is probably 1993, 94, when this was all beginning to happen. So, the summer of 1994, in 93, the last of my children was born, my son. Who, by the way, is in the military now and he's over in Turkey. So, I'd like to, if you guys can, just think about all that crap that's going on in Paris and I just hope that he stays in Turkey. But neither here nor there. So, in 94, the summer of 94, I had a, my daughter's birthday party and I, at this point, I had, you know, our relationship was so, it wasn't violent, but it was, there was arguments all the time. There was nothing, I was miserable. I was sleeping on the couch and she was in the other room and she was spending more time with the kids and she was with me and can't imagine why, but she was and I finally said, I'm done. I'm leaving. I think you're the problem and I'm out of here. And if I can just get back to the way I was when I was single, everything will be great. So, that's what I did. I left and moved in with a guy that I was working with in his apartment and he introduced me to all that outside issues. Now, I had done a little bit of that through school, you know, dabbled in pot and cocaine and all that, but when I hooked up with this guy, it went to the next level. All of a sudden, I felt like I'm 21 years old again, I'm free, I've got no responsibilities even though I'm three children at home and need to pay child support. All of the things that we're supposed to do as adults, but for whatever reason, because I'm an alcoholic and I got the emotional maturity of a three year old, I wasn't about to do any of that stuff. See, what somebody told me once, that my maturity stopped, my emotional growth stopped the moment I began drinking alcoholically. So, I would have to guess that I was 18 years old at that point, because I'm going to guess that's probably when I began drinking alcoholically. So, if you go 18 years old, I'm 51 today, you know, and I got sober at 33, I'm just about an adult now. Maybe middle, you know, 35 or so, you know, emotionally. I don't think that's actually true, but the point is, is that, you know, I was not ready to quit partying. And I did not want the responsibilities to be a father, I didn't want the responsibilities to work, but I did because I had to. I had bills to pay, I had things I needed to do, and so I did that. But what happened was, is that that whole lifestyle accelerated to the point to where I lost that job, I lost another job, I went from job to job to job, and for whatever reason, I either lost those jobs because they said, look, we're going to give you the opportunity to quit, or we're going to fire you. Because when you show up drunk, or when you got alcohol in your breath and you're going out to meet clients, it's not a good thing. The perception is, is that we've hired a drunk. Or what would happen is I wouldn't show up anymore and I would blame them. If they would just do this, or, you know, they're not paying me enough, and they screwed me on my commission, you know, this is a crazy ass, I'm not working here anymore. I did that for a long time. Up until about 1997, I picked up a job in 96, and I'd gotten back into the industry that I first started in, the insurance industry, and my drug use and alcohol use was at the point now where I was doing it every day. I could not go the day without drinking. And I was beginning to drink during the day. It was bad. Still, I hadn't gotten any DUIs. Hadn't gotten any real jail time, so to speak. I think I got picked up once for a bad check, but it was like in and out in a couple hours, so can't count that. But what happened was is that all of those things that I hadn't gotten were beginning to show up. And what happened was is that with this company, they gave me the opportunity, I would go out and adjust claims and I'd go out to somebody's home and look at it and say, you know, this is what it's going to cost them. Write checks. And we'd give them to them. Well, the people that I was hanging out with, we came up with this brilliant idea that we could set up a bunch of bogus claims. And we could start buying drugs with it. And that's what we did. I knew right from wrong. I knew it was a bad idea. But I did it anyway. I didn't care. I just wanted to feed this incessant need inside of me that once I take a drinker, or do drug, I need more of it. I don't know. It's an old joke. You know, alcoholic, there's a new pill out there and it says, take one of these pills and you'll never have to drink again. And the alcoholic says, wonder what two would do. That's the way it was. That's kind of the way I went my life for a few years. And it worked for a while. But then in 1996, the summer of 96, I got a knock on the door and it was the company that I'd worked for and it was the guys you don't want to see from the internal audit team. And they had a stack of files. And I said, hey, we need to talk to you about these claims. And the gig was up. And I just said, you know, I got some personal problems. I don't know what's going on. And by the way, by the time this was happening, I was living in a bottom basement in a really crappy part of town. I had nothing left. I got divorced by this point. I was way behind in child support. I was living, you know, hand-to-mouth. I was just surviving. And we do it very well. I did it very well. But when that came, that happened, they said, look, we're going to have to let you go. We need the company car. We need this. We need all that stuff. And they took it. And I thought that was the end of it. Cool. That was easy. Didn't think anything of it. So, life goes on. I continued to party and it progressed to the point that it didn't work out. In 1997, I picked up a sales job selling long distance services. And I had gotten evicted from the crap hole apartment I was living in and found in the newspaper some guy that was down the street looking for a roommate. I went in and I could dress up and look good and talk good. You know, he thought, hey, this guy's probably right on. You know, he's got a job. So, I moved in. What he didn't know is that I was so far into my addiction that I was going to do anything I possibly could to feed that addiction. And I did. I started stealing money from him. I found a checkbook of his and started writing checks for dope. And when I wrote those checks, I wrote small amounts at first and then bigger and bigger and bigger and fed my addiction. And then Memorial Day weekend in 1997, the gig was up. I had gone into a bank in St. Louis and had one of his checks and my driver's license and I had a girlfriend at that time. Probably not the kind that you might think of, but I had a relationship and we went to the bank. I went in to cash that check and they said, you know, Mr. Dunn, can you wait one second? We're going to verify the signature on this. I said, sure. No problem. And when they went back to verify it, I turned around and walked out the front door. I left my license. They called the guy that I sold the checks from and he said, nope, I've never given him any checks for $300. Wasn't a whole lot of money. So he started doing a little research on his end and found out that I had taken a whole lot more than that. So by the time that evening rolled around, I had gone back to that house not knowing any of this had happened. And when I pulled into that driveway, there was two sheriff cars out there. And I walked in there and the guy that I was rooming with had a baseball bat and he was going to kill me. And he said, I called the police so I wouldn't kill you, but you are in so much trouble. You have no idea. You need to get your shit and get out. And I did. The sheriff walked me out and I got in my little car and drove off and guess what I did? I just said, cool. Nothing really happened here. All's good. What happened was that that final weekend, I'd gone out and was on that long run and I got rumor. I think I might have called my ex-wife and she said, the police are looking for you. There's a warrant for your arrest. By the way, you're never going to see your kids again. I'm going back to court. I'm filing for sole custody. I talked to your parents. They don't want to talk. In fact, why don't you just go die? Go get away. Nobody wants you around anymore. You're a piece of shit. And that's the way I felt. I really did. I felt like, this is my life. Way to go, Terry. Nice job. How proud can you be? You're such a success. I was a very, very successful drunk and drug user at that point. I was very good at that. But other than that, I was a failure. But I didn't really feel like it. I didn't feel suicidal or anything like that. I just felt, okay, whatever. We'll see what happens. And it was after that run I made a decision that somebody had said when I was out there, hey, go into a treatment center. You can get into a treatment center when you're there. Nobody can touch you. So I figured if I can get three or four days behind me, clean up a little bit, sober up, I can figure all this stuff out. So what happened was is that this is the beginning of what I would like to say is my recovery. I really started feeling that I was beat. I was done, as it talks about in the big book. I was at that point of like I needed to do something different. I didn't know what it was, but I had to do something different. And I went to this detox center and said, I think I have a problem. And the lady kind of looked up and said, you think? I'm sure I was probably that big and I reeked and three days of no bathing and all that. She said, do you have insurance? I said, hmm, I don't know. I might. Because I hadn't gone to work in weeks. I didn't know if I was still employed. And sure enough, I pulled that insurance card out of my wallet and she called it and I had insurance. And she said, come on in. Because if you've got insurance, you get to come on in. So I went in and I thought, okay. So that was the beginning. I kind of felt a little whoo, this is good. So I checked in there. They gave me Librium and a bunch of other stuff and sent me up to a room and said, you know, you'll have a counselor and stuff and filled out all the personal information. I called my ex-wife and I told her and she said, doesn't matter. You're in so much trouble. I'm just telling you, you have no clue what's going on. Your life is over. I didn't care. You can't touch me. Everything's cool. So what happened was, is that I called my parents. I didn't call my parents. Let me take that back. I was walking down the hall and I hadn't talked to my parents in a few years and they used to have pay phones on each side of the wall and if you called in there, they would bring it up to the patient's thing and as I was walking past it, the phone rang and I just picked it up and said, hello? And it was my dad. And I hadn't talked to him in a year. And it was really emotional. I was like, dad, I'm in big, big trouble. Big trouble. He said, I know. I know. Michelle's called. We know. Your mom and I are way up. It's going to be a be okay. And that moment of just finally telling just a little bit of the truth kind of freed me up. Like, everything's going to be okay. There's nothing like family when you need it. You know, and it may not be your blood family, but it's somebody that cares about you when you need it. It just, it was a relief. And that was the beginning for me. Because what happened then the next day, my parents drove all night from Atlanta to St. Louis. What happened the next day was that as I was signing out, they're going to take me back to Atlanta. And which is what I wanted to do anyway. I wanted to go home. I was signing out and the security guards from the detox center were behind me and they said, Mr. Dunn, St. Louis County Police are here for you. What happens was that they cannot get you while you're in, but they can get you when you check out. So if anybody's got any plans to try that, there you go. So I got arrested. My mom and dad saw me arrested. I was put in the back of a squad car and I went to jail. And while I was there, I interviewed with a detective and he wanted to know about some of these checks and I told him, you know, I got a serious, I got a serious problem. I need help. And he said, yeah, sounds to me like you probably do. So what happened was that I had friends of mine through college and all that were attorneys. And the only time I ever would talk to them was when I was in trouble. I remember telling my dad, call Tim and Tim will talk to somebody and they'll get me out of it. And my dad, while this was all going on, he talked to a judge and my father was he wasn't an attorney, but he had a law degree here and he worked for an insurance company. The judge basically said, we're going to let him go down to Atlanta. You know, in your care and custody, he's got to make all of his court dates. And that's what happened. So I came down here and recovery began. I would like to say that it began, it was perfect. You know, I came down here, never wanted to take a drink again. I got a sponsor. I worked the steps immediately and I got relief. And I haven't taken a drink since. That's not quite the case. What happened was I got a few days underneath my belt. And I started thinking, hmm, I don't really need to do this. All's I need to do is get a job, pay back some back child support, everything will be okay. Because I'm in Atlanta. I can deal with that other stuff later. But what my parents had done was they basically made a pact between them and said, here's the deal. You've got to find yourself a treatment center long term and you need to go to it or we're going to give you a one-way ticket and you can get on a bus and go back to St. Louis and good luck. So I was kind of like, okay. So what I did was we lived in Tucker and I just kind of went down the phone book and, oh, Mar. I called them up there in Doraville. I said, hey, you know, I need to check in and they're like, hmm, tell me a little bit about you. And the guy on the phone said, as I was talking, he said, let me ask you a question. I said, what's that? He said, why are you so angry? I'm like, angry? He said, yeah, because I can hear it in your voice. I said, I'm not angry. I said, you'd be angry too if you had all this stuff hanging over me like, I've got. He's like, no, I'm not quite talking about that. Why don't you come in and talk to me? So what happened was after I hung up the phone, I think they called my parents and made these arrangements. Because when I went over there and talked to them, they said they laid it out. Terry, this is going to be a 90-day program. You're in here for 90 days. Minimum six months probably for you, maybe nine months. And I was like, there's no way I can do this. It's impossible. You don't understand. I've got three children at home that I care deeply about, even though I pay child support and hardly ever see them. I've got to find a job. I'm a very important person. I have a college degree and I really need to do all of these things. He said, no, we think we're going to keep you. And I was like, you? No, I'm not. And they said, why don't you step out and let me just talk to your parents alone. So I stepped out and five minutes later, my parents came out. They didn't look at me. They just walked straight down the hallway and walked out. And I'm like, what's up? He's like, you're here. Welcome. Welcome to Mark. And that was it. And that's where I learned how to get sober. That's where I learned this way of life. What happened was that I pretty much admitted that I was powerless over alcohol. I mean, my life was pretty unmanageable, I can tell you that. I hope my story at least gives you some idea that it was unmanageable in a general kind of way. But what they said was that hey, you know, if you believe that we can rebuild you and the world would fall back into place, do you think that's something that you might be interested in doing? It was taking care of you and let the world just take care of itself for a while. And I'm like, yeah, I'm game for that. Okay, well these are the kind of things we want you to do. You know, you're going to go to what we call AA meetings and CA meetings. You're going to do those and you're going to live in a community of men. You're not going to he and she. You're not going to do anything else. You're just going to focus on recovery. What we think is what is the best thing for you to do. At that point I was kind of game because see what happened was is that by this time, this was probably two and a half weeks, three weeks after my last drink, I'd gotten, you know, phone calls and letters from my attorney and he was my goodness, I've got to speed it up. He was saying that, hey look, dude, you got a lot of stuff going on. It looks like you know, just on the local stuff you've got charges that are, you know, you've got two years of jail time just for that. Then some of those checks that you took, you wrote checks and they were from banks from out of state and then you manipulated the mail so your roommate wouldn't see all that stuff. So that's going to be federal charges for interstate mail fraud. So each one of those, and you wrote 15 checks, each one of those carries five years. So that's 60 years. So a lot of stuff is going on. So I really, really got into recovery because I didn't want to go to jail and I just said, you know, if I get into this thing it's, you know, but what happened was, is about nine months sober, I had to go up and I had to face those consequences. And for whatever reason, by that time I had I got really deep into the program. I learned to pray. I started doing the 12 steps. I had gotten a sponsor. My meetings here were right there next door, the 545 and at that time it was a smoking room. I was there religiously for years. Terry who's left was here. Frank was here. Terry was here. Carrie was here. I remember you know, what it was like and I was really beginning to dig this thing. It was beginning to take a hold of me and something was changing in my life. So, but I had to pay consequences and my sponsor said, you know, you're going to have to pay consequences long into sobriety. And for me, my consequences were eventually they were 10 years probation and restitution. And at 10 years sober, what had happened is between that time and when I got into these rooms, a lot of good things happened. Those children that my wife was not going to let me see, I was able to eventually establish a relationship with them to where today I have a great relationship with all three of my kids. I have a somewhat relationship with my ex-wife, but that's not anything at all that is surprising. I've gotten married in this program. I've been married to the same woman we met here at NAVA. It's really weird. I'm not saying that it's the best thing to do, but it's worked for us. She stood up on a chair one day, come in, and said that she was screaming that she needed help. And I looked at a guy, a buddy of mine, and said, she might be a fun date. And a year later, and she fortunately, if you're here next week, you'll hear her story and it's way better than mine. And she and I started dating after a year. My sponsor did say leave her alone for a year. The he and she, I didn't do real good at that at Marr. I dated a girl new in sobriety and I don't recommend it. It doesn't work. It's very difficult. You take the focus off of what you're supposed to do. Just don't. If you're a guy, leave the newcomer women alone. They come in with way too much emotional baggage. Just leave them alone. Give them a year. Let them take care of themselves. And then you can have all the women you want after you take care of yourself. So I met Leslie and we've been married now for 14 years. It's been a fascinating journey. My story is there's just not enough time for me to get into too much. I'll say this. Ten years into sobriety, I think I said this, I was able to clean up the wreckage of my past. My child support, I got that current. I was able to pay restitution. And real quick, I'll tell you this real quick. Five years into sobriety, Dennis Sanfilippo was my sponsor at that time. If you didn't know him, he was the guy you either loved him or hated him. I loved him. Anyway, he was my sponsor and five years into sobriety, that insurance deal, remember that? It happened in 1996 and I'd been back and forth to St. Louis for court dates and none of it came up. But at five years sober, guess what? It showed up. They had an active warrant out for me since 1998 and in 2001, I had to go up and do the deal, or 2002, to St. Louis. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. And Dennis said, Terry, you said you were willing to go to any cost. Go up there and turn yourself in. And I did. I turned myself in and went up there and said, my name's Terry Dunn. I'm here to turn myself in on a warrant. A couple detectives come down and they said, this thing's like years old. What are you doing? I said, I'm sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. My sponsor said I need to turn myself in. They're like, well, come on in, you know? So I got processed and booked in sobriety. Not any fun. I'd been working in halfway houses. I'd been sponsoring guys. I was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and this was happening to me? But what it was, was God was saying, you're ready for it. You're ready to deal with this thing. And I guess I was. So I had to go through this whole thing all over again and I got another five years probation. I got a suspended sentence and I had to make more restitution. And I remember calling Dennis on the phone on my way back saying, this is bullshit. I can't believe that they're doing this. Dennis, I am working with newcomers. I'm praying every day. I'm reading out of the big book. I'm doing step work. I'm living a spiritual life. And these guys are saying, that doesn't matter. Dennis said, Terry, did you steal the money? Yep. Click. So I had to go nine hours driving back to Atlanta from St. Louis just steaming at my sponsor. But by the time I got there, because of this program, I was like, he's right. And I'm free now. I mean, I literally said, I got nothing more going on. I'm done. Once I'm done with this, I'm done. And I've been a good employee since I've been sober. It's been fantastic. I mean, I started out in what they call the sober job at Marr. I couldn't sell anything. I couldn't do what I usually do. I couldn't be a big shot anymore. So I started out pulling wire at a company that my brother worked for for $7 an hour. And I did that and I eventually got into sales for them and eventually got into management. And what happened was, over the years, is that little job that I started with, I'm in an industry now that I have my own little company and I have guys that I've hired. So that's been a blessing to the program. It's been a truly amazing journey. And the only thing I can tell you guys is that if you're in here, and you're in here just to test the waters, go a little deeper. Wait out a little bit and see what happens. This is the only program that has taught me that I've got to do a lot of things that I've never wanted to do. But I need to do. It's about change. It's about doing things that I'm not comfortable with. I've always said that I have to be comfortable at being uncomfortable for a long time. And I have to be willing to do things that nothing that I would ever do. And I still do it today. If I'm thinking, just like on the way down here, if I'm thinking of something that I need to do, I usually need to do the exact opposite. Because it says that I suffer from a hopeless state of mind and body. And it is. I'm not tired right. You know, it's like the old perception. You know, if Terry could say, Terry, you know, you're a great friend and I love you. And I hear, Terry, you're an ass. That's just the way it is. We're just horrible. We're just built different. The good news is that I've accepted that. I've smashed that idea that I can drink again. Or that I can use. And I've accepted the fact that I am an alcoholic. And I'm okay with that. Because I have a life and a way of living and a step right there, outlined on that wall, lit up even, that says if you do these things, your life will be better than you can ever imagine. It doesn't mean you're going to get you know, win the lottery or drive a Ferrari or get the big house or marry the right person. It doesn't mean any of that. But it means no matter what's going on, you'll have a sense of happiness. You'll be joyful. You'll be free. That's what I've found in this program. I don't know what I touched on, what I didn't. But I hope I gave you guys a sense of what recovery can be like when you've screwed up your life. There's a way to get it back. We have been given the greatest opportunity ever. We get a second life. Not many people can say that. Too many of us never even find these rooms. They die. So there's one thing I'll leave you with this, is that Alcoholics Anonymous is the greatest way to live life. The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is the greatest way to live life out there. And I'm very, very grateful to be sober tonight. I've been sober a while now. And I love sharing my story when I'm asked to do it. I don't do it very often, but when I do, I like it. And I love this way of living. So thanks. Thanks, Terry. Adequate. Very adequate.