David B. on Alcoholism, Character Defects, and Combining AA with Therapy

my name is David and I'm an alcoholic and it's all about a grace of God and the effort and willingness I put in the fraction of the principles of this program that I hadn't found necessary to drink today since February 22nd 1984 one day at a time and I like thought start off by thanking the committee for uh for inviting me to speak here today i uh i'm just glad they thought enough about me to give me the opportunity to uh to share and i thank joe for all the hats on the back he just gave me i needed that too and uh let's see when we come up here we talk about what it was like what happened and what it's like now and uh it's going to be tough to cover 25 years of drinking in 14 years of trying not to drink in 50 minutes, but I'm going to try. So I told Joe I can either be honest or be short and I know I've got to be honest. So an old priest said one time that he was talking about homilies but applies to giving AA talks that they've got kind of be like a mini skirt. They've got be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to be interesting. So I'm not going to I'm going to try not to dwell too much on my drinking days, but I will share about that so that we can identify. And I always used to start off by saying I grew up in a little town on the east bank of the Mississippi River called Paulina, Louisiana. But now I know I was born and raised in Paulina and I grewup in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because when I got here at the age of 25, looking back now, I sure wasn't grown up. You know, I started drinking when I was 15, and I didn't drink every day, but very seldom I did anything socially without drinking. And I think at that point, to some extent, I quit maturing. I never depended on life and life's terms to be happy and feel good. I couldn't talk to people without being afraid. If I drank first, everything worked all right. I was raised in a large family. I'm the oldest of ten children. I had eight sisters in a row, and I have a brother 15 years younger than me. Was raised in an Catholic environment. Went to Catholic school for 12 years. Had a pretty good childhood. I think I had some great parents, but even great parents make mistakes because they had parents just like I have parents. Just like I'm a parent and making mistakes still today, they did, And I forgive them for that. And sometimes I forget to say this, my daddy died with nine and a half years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm grateful for that But anyway, I was going to school in the River Parishes and they, in the late 60s, they started integration over there and they had a lot of problems. They had schools burning down and just a lot stuff going on and my daddy and mama wanted me to go to jesuit high school in new orleans and i was one of those guys that went to school did what i had to do did as little as i can get away with after school for his homework and just went on and uh and i i just couldn't think of four years of going to a school like jesu within uh i knew i couldn't make it i just didn't want to work that hard so they had this little deal that some people were going to ascension catholic high school in donovanville and boy i jumped on that i want to go over there so i uh i went to high school and donaldsonville and after uh being raised in this little town for 12 years and then all of a sudden going to this new town with new friends and riding the bus for 45 minutes every day i had a hard time adjusting you know my ears are big today but they were this big when i was born and uh that's what i thought about myself I was this little chubby boy from on a river with big ears and nobody liked me. And I went to that new school, and I was a new kid, and they picked on me a little bit. And I Went Off of Football That Spring, and I made the team, and we started football my sophomore year. And through a coincidence of me getting in there and busting butt for a couple plays, and somebody getting hurt, I started off for a coupla games. And we went on and we won the state championship that year. And after that game, we were riding up and down Railroad Avenue in Donisonville. And I was drinking slow gin and stepping up. And I don't know how much I drank, not a whole lot, but I know that it made me feel a certain way. I wasn't worried about what I looked like or who they thought I was. I just knew that I was all right. and i was hanging out the side door of a 1952 buick and uh singing that was uh that song if you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world i was singing that and uh went back to school tuesday they gave us a day off monday and uh this girl said uh you were so fun that night i never knew you had that side of you and i knew from that point on that all i had to do was drink and everything was going to be all right. And I think from that point on, I think it was December 13, 1973, I used alcohol. Every time I was going somewhere, if it was a party or sweetheart dance or prom or whatever it was, I would drink. And it was always a 45-minute drive from luxury to uh donaldsonville so i'd go to a quick and easy store that sold alcohol to minors buy me a eight pack of little millers and i always had my prime before i got to donaldstonville and uh that was the story of my life i um i started getting into some semi trouble i found out after i was sober that my daddy ran a milk route and every morning he had this little rosary and he would say it on the way to making his route he used to drive from saint james parish to St. John's Parish and start, and he said he used to always pray, God, I know my son's not going to do everything right, but if he does something wrong, please help me to find out. And I think just about everything I ever did that wasn't right, he found out about. But I did a lot of drinking and a lot trouble and a whole lot of things that he don't know about. But somewhere around my senior year, I got accused of drinking while in football training. And I wasn't drinking, but I was in a bar room that I wasn' supposed to be in that was off limits. And I kind of never did start off or do the coaching like me or whatever. I didn't do very much that year. And I would hang out on the sideline and cut up with the juniors and the sophomores and make myself up to be this bad guy. And somehow I knew that I was heading down the wrong path. Even at that age, because of the parents and the environment that I was raised in, I knew what kind of person I wanted to be. And I knew I was headed down that wrong path So I figured if I take a geographical cure that things would change a little bit. So what I did was, well, I got another girlfriend, then I dumped my old one. and uh i married her and she's here to date but uh i figured if i had a different kind of girlfriend one that was uh was good and all that stuff that uh that i wouldn't have to drink or get in trouble so i started dating this little girl in my uh on halloween night and uh i was a good boy for about from halloweens to christmas and i remember on christmas eve we had all the uh we had all the bonfires on the levee and stuff and I started drinking again that night and um I got drunk and I threw up and she wasn't too happy and I was crying to my daddy that I loved that little girl and he was saying you got eight sisters how would you feel if somebody did that to your sister you gotta take care of that little girls and she stayed mad at me for a long time and around Valentine's Day we was going to a senior party and the same thing happened again i i didn't drink too much but i ate too much dip and uh threw all over her good friend's mama's carpet and uh she stayed mad at me for about a week that time and i thought that i lost her for good so i i promised her that i wouldn't drink and this was at the age of 17 that i was already having trouble with uh with alcohol in my life. I finished high school. I went to school in Nashville for diesel mechanics and when I went to that school, I was a new kid in the new town and I automatically knew what I had to do. All I had to do was drink and they would like me. And right off the bat, I started drinking and hanging around in bars and we had guys from all the states in the United States, I think there, and nobody really knew who I was but they knew what i was when I was drinking and that was the style of my life and went through that school and i found out something that if i applied myself and did what i wanted to do that i could learn and uh i did very good in that school made good grades and got a few awards and stuff and i got out of school when i was looking for a job you know i was a decent mechanic and uh and i wound up in homer looking for the job and i turned around so many times I said the hell with homer and I everywhere I went I hit a drawbridge and uh I was trying to find my way back to the river and I wound up well right where I was looking for and I got a job and started working here in homer 20 years ago and uh when I started working that was the same thing again here I am the new kid in the new town with the new people and I drank and drank and drank you know i did my job i did it well i showed up when i was supposed to i uh i always was able to comply and do what i had to do but once i started drinking everything shook loose and my life is just from that point on till the time i finally had enough it was just uh endless times of drinking getting in trouble uh waking up full of guilt and remorse uh telling people i was sorry trying to do better again and uh there were periods of time when i didn't get in trouble for weeks or maybe months and then all of a sudden i wound up drunk again and in 1980 i married my high school sweetheart and before the wedding she told me i don't want you to drink anything before the wedding and uh i mean told me she knew what an alcoholic was she didn't know she knew that but she said don't drink anything and uh and i didn't i didn'T drink anything AND she also said don'T drink at the reception and i DIDN'T drink ANYTHING but champagne but i kept refilling my glass and i drank about a bottle of that stuff but uh you know she married me knowing that she didn't know what alcoholism was married me thinking it was all going to be all right and uh the next four years was three and a half years was what would happen a young alcoholic getting into the finishing stages and a young couple learning how to be married and communicate with each other and just endless uh making up breaking up never left uh never kicked out or separated but just always lightning and thunder you know marriage was made in heaven but so was lightning and thundering and uh and that's kind of how it was but uh you know somehow i knew that that uh that god loved me and god loved her and that uh i made a promise between before my family and a large community of people in God's house and promised to be true to her for the rest of my life. And I knew that somehow he would give me what I needed to be the kind of person I wanted to be. And I prayed as much drunk as I do sober. I always turned to God. If I had a nickel for every Hail Mary I said in my drinking days, I can probably buy the rest at Easy Desert Club. But that was the way that I lived. and god took it god did his job too he answered my prayers it wasn't the way that i wanted to answer him but he did and as i tell the rest of my story i just want you to realize how hard god worked to get me where i'm at today uh and and i remember that because you know some days i don't feel like doing what i'm supposed to do and some days I uh I don't know if God's there but God went through a lot of trouble to get Me to where I'm at Today and get me to Alcoholics anonymous and some days i sure do a lot to try to screw up what he's done and um and that's kind of what i want to share about i uh november of 1983 my daughter right there with the maroon shirt on was born and uh i had all these dreams of what kind of father i was going to be and she was a little girl and she was sweet i wanted a little boy but i got a little girl and i wouldn't trade it for nothing in the world and uh i kind of behaved for a while and i would get drunk and my wife would get on me and i would feel bad and i'd get straight and i'd be drunk and and sometimes around the end of january uh i just didn't care anymore i uh i didn't know if i wanted to be married i didn' t know if I wanted to a daddy I wanted to be a married and I wanted a daddy but I didn't the inside of me and outside of me sure didn't resemble what was going on uh if i'd have told people what i felt on the inside and what i wanted to be family and stuff and outside would have had no idea that i was telling the truth but i think deep down inside i wanted it to be a good husband and a good father and a good employee but i just didn't have what it was and that was part of god allowing me to do what i had to do to get to where i'm at previous to that i had attended an alcoholics anonymous meeting one time and i picked up a desire chip and i carried it in my pocket and i stayed so i never went to any more meetings but i stayed sober i guess maybe a week or so and then i didn't drink a lot for a while but that was my only experience with alcoholics anonymous around february uh i went offshore on a friday and uh on a thursday and i was ready to come back in on friday morning and uh and at that time if i called my wife and told her i was going to be offshore for the weekend she would go to her mama's house out of town and spend the weekend so i called and told her that i was fog bound and i probably wouldn't be in till uh till saturday or sunday and uh if you wanted to go to our mama's houses that was fine and less than a half hour after i got on a boat and rode into intercoastal city and came back to home and i drove so fast to get to home before them bar rooms closed and uh i got to home when i called home and nobody answered so I knew she was gone, and I was just going to enjoy me a night of drinking without nobody knowing where I'm at, not having to go home and explain anything, just to drink and be peaceful about it. So I kept drinking and drinking and drinkin' all night long, and the next morning my beeper went off. I spent the whole night on the road, and we used to drink in Terrebonne Parish, and when everything closed, we'd go out to Blues 2 on Highway 90 And I guess I was in a blackout. I didn't know what blackout was, but when I walked out, it was already daylight. And it didn't seem like I had spent the whole night drinking, but it was уже daylight and my beeper went off. And I'd also called my employer when I called my wife and told them I wouldn't be in. And I was the only mechanic working for this company, and my boss had went on a job that morning because I was offshore. And the guy he went working for had saw me out in the ballroom that night. And he asked him where I was, and he said, oh, he's offshore. And he said well I saw him in a ballroom last night around midnight. And by this time this guy, he drank with me, but he knew what I was up to. So he paged me, and I called him, and He said, where the hell are you at? Your wife is looking for you. And all I could think was when he said wife, she went home, and she knows I've been out drinking all night. So, boy, all the way from Bayou Blue to my house, I was praying and thinking what I was going to tell my wife. And I turned the corner, and her car wasn't home. And, boy., I went in that house, and I walked to the bedroom, and the bed wasn't messed up, and it was like, whew. So I messed up the bed, put my work clothes on, and then I went to work. And I was ready to quit drinking if she'd have been home, but since she wasn't at home and everything was okay, I figured that was a freebie, and I was going to be all right. So I went back to work, and once again I was just full of guilt and remorse, and I went to help my boss finish this job he was on, and we was out in the navigational canal test running the tugboat against the bank, and I Was standing on the back of that boat, and the wheel wash from the engines was stirring up, and all the riffraff was floating around his little whirlpools like and and i thought about jumping into that stuff because i got to the point to where i had prayed all i could pray and uh and i just knew that i was no good and uh i wanted to jump in and uh i told him i'm jumping in and he said don't jump you know i'm hoping in he said no jump he said when we get back to the bank we're gonna go drink a couple beers and we're going to talk about it so that's what we did and uh we talked and uh and i knew that i had to straighten up and we went for a cup of beers and next thing you know it was about four o'clock and three or four hours had passed and by that time i was feeling good it was it was all all right and uh went to the house and by the time my wife was home and i remember this day like like it was yesterday he and i walked in the door he walked in before me and he went to the refrigerator and he got a beer off the bottom shelf and opened it and my wife said uh where y'all been so at the same time we both said oh that job took longer than we thought and she said yeah i saw both of your trucks at jerry's lounge and uh he said well cuz i gotta go so he took off and and uh my wife thought it about why i lied and why and i had promised her when i called her from offshore but when i was on a guilt trip that morning when i got home and saw that that she wasn't home boy i was like boy i'll do anything now so i called up and said leave leave our baby at your mama's house and i'm gonna take you to bell pomonon mall that's when it first opened and Harvey, and so she did that, and it was in a bar room, and she started about what I promised her and all, and I said, hell with all this stuff, and I grabbed my offshore bag that was by the door, and I took off. And I went and borrowed $100 from a friend of mine and went back to the bar room where I was at and started drinking again, and I don't know what happened, but sometimes around 7 or 8 o'clock they had a band coming in and I still had my work clothes on and I smelt nothing but diesel mechanic, and I decided that I had to go to the shop and take a shower and get cleaned up. And I remember thinking that, but I don't remember leaving. I don' t remember getting to the show. The next thing I remembered was about... Miss Emma. The next think I remembered was waking up after midnight, sleeping on the front seat of my truck behind the steering wheel. I had my blue jeans and a shirt on with my work uniform on top of that. The doors on the truck was locked. I didn't have any keys, and I came to. And I didn'T know whether I got called out and went to the shop to change clothes and was supposed to be on a job. I didn' t know what happened. I didn''t know where my keys were. I didn ''t know anything. So I took a tire iron off the back, andI broke into the shop, and uh and i found my keys in the uh in the bathroom and i saw that i took a shower when i kind of figured that maybe i must have left the bar room to uh take a shower and so i went back to the bar where i was at to try to figure out what i did and uh the bar mage was over there and said oh we thought you went back to your little old wife and he wasn't coming back to for you and i was like did she call for a minute said no and uh i just couldn't drink i uh i was just all mixed up and i remembered staying out that night out on blues too and i don't remember what happened but i know i showed up home and and when i got home my wife was getting ready to go to eight o'clock mass on a sunday morning and uh and i said i just don't want to talk about it i just need to be by myself and uh then she left and went to church and and i i hadn't slept much in a week and uh and i couldn't sleep that day she left и went to her mama's house and and that whole day i sat up in a chair and was just uh praying and asking god to help me and when she came back that evening i said john i made a lot of promises for you in your life in my life about drinking and uh i really want to do something about my drinking and all i'm going to promise you is that if i drink again i'm not coming home until i'm fixed and uh i didn't know what fixed was but i knew i couldn't make any promises and i kind of knew that if i made one i would break it but the only thing i knew was that I'm going to try not to drink, but if I drink again, I'm not coming home. And she said, David, you're sick, and when you're sick, you've got to go to the doctor. I don't know what you need to do neither, but I think you're safe. But boy, I had some willpower. And I went to work Monday, and I got off of work at 5 o'clock and I came home. I didn't ride down Grand Tide Road and see who was there with Barham, and then I came back home. And I came home and i guess things was pretty good that night and i woke up tuesday and i went back to work and i knocked off work at five o'clock and i win home and uh i got called back out around six or 6 30. and uh my wife said well how long are you going to work for i said well from what i got to do i said we should be finished about nine o' clock he said okay so uh he was standing at the kitchen colony she had Emily who was three months old at that time and I was looking at that little baby with them blue eyes and my wife and they were just holding each other like this and said you're not going drinking tonight. And with everything I had in my heart I said there ain't no way in the world I could do that to y'all. And I went to work and I did what I had to do when we finished up about eight o'clock and uh my mind started working. I said nine o'clock is eight o'. I can go just touch base because they hadn't seen me since saturday night and uh tell them what's going on and maybe drink when i had a cousin working with me at that time he was five years younger than me but he's just like me and um and i told him he was my helper and i said look we're gonna go to jerry's lounge i said you uh i'm gonna buy around you buy around then we leave and boy said man you know we can't do that once you start you're not gonna stop myself man i'm serious this time i I said, I promised my wife and that little girl. I said I'm not going to get drunk. So he said okay. So we went and I bought a round and he bought a rond. Then I figured well I said around 9 so 9.30 is okay. And I was an alcoholic and we know what happened. But I just kept once I started that intercycle I just couldn't stop. And I took the first drink. and uh and around uh 11 o'clock the phone rang and it was my wife and they said david you here so he said no he's not here and then she called again a little bit later and the girl working behind the bar said davis we're not lying to your wife anymore you know i was one of these guys who was in a ballroom and all these drunks fell sour for me because i was young and i had a wife and i Had a little kid and and they didn't want to see me mess up my life like they did theirs. This one guy who almost killed himself in a wreck a couple months ago took me on a chair on the side that same night and said, David, don't screw up your life like I screwed up mine. You know, you got a wife, you've got a new baby, you're got everything going for you. He said, it's too late for me to turn back. Do something about your drinking. And boy, I started feeling sorry for myself. And And I said, what I need to do is call my daddy. Now, my daddy was this big old guy that worked all his life. He had a wife and he had ten children and he Had two jobs. And he went to work at four o'clock in the morning and he worked till four o´clock in The afternoon and he came home and ate supper and changed his clothes. And then he owned a drive-in restaurant and he'd do that till ten o' clock. And sometimes he'd have a couple beers after ten o´ clock and heíd come in at three in the Morning and go back to work at 4, and he'd come home and take us. I mean, he just had it all together. He drank a lot, and it disturbed my mama, but he somehow was able to stay married for 26 years, and he was my hero. So I picked up the phone in his bar room, and I called my daddy. At that time, they still had seven children at home, and their phone rang and rang and ring and rang, and nobody answered. So I started thinking. I said, somebody should have answered the phone by now. So I hung up thinking that I dialed the wrong number, and I dial the number again, and I let it ring four or five times, and nobody answered. So by that time, I was so full of guilt and remorse, I had to talk to somebody. But I had this other guy in my life that was my daddy's business partner. And this guy drank more false death beer than anybody I know. But he had a son who went through treatment about five years before this time. and uh and when that little boy my cousin went through treatment he who was my godfather and my aunt their whole life changed and uh i labeled them as holy roller because he wore a cross around his neck and and they had they had a vital spiritual experience and they were involved in al-anon and stuff but all we knew was holy roller and he had talked to me about my drinking because he knew what was going on and uh I thought that night that what needed to do was call him so i called and he answered the phone right away and i told him who i was and what was going on and how it was no good and i was trashed and i used to call me dago and he said they go he said this is the third or fourth time you call me and uh i always tell you to call my bag the next day and you never do he said i'm not gonna waste time talking to you when you're drunk because i need to talk to you when your sober he said write down my name and my work phone number on a piece of paper and i wrote that down in a napkin he said put it in your top pocket and maybe tomorrow morning when you're putting all your stuff back in your pockets you'll find that piece of paper and remember you called me if not i'll call you and uh and i said okay so i hung up the phone and i went back to the bar and my cousin was there and he said uh he said who you were talking to on the phone and i thought i called uncle fatty up and all he told me was that's your ass now you should have never called him you're going to be saying the rosary and you're You're never going to drink again. And I said, if I got to say the rosary every day and I got to be a holy roller and wear a cross around my neck like him, if I can get out of this drinking thing, I'm willing to do it. I said but since we're drinking, we might as well get good and drunk. And I drank the rest of the night at peace. The guilt was removed. The remorse was removed, the fear of what my wife would think or fear of losing my job or fear of anything every everything was gone i drank from midnight till the next morning and uh it was like i was on vacation everything was okay and uh the next moment i was driving to work and it was uh it was after eight o'clock and and uh somehow i was coming i knew i was drinking out on blues 2 on highway 90 and i was come through and somehow i wound up on a hollywood road and And I was trying to get down by the lodge, and I was passing through Summerfield Subdivision on St. Charles Street, and they had little kids waiting for the school bus with their mommas, and the sun was in my eyes, and I didn't have any sunglasses, and I Was crying, and I couldn't see, and I was just afraid I would hit somebody, and I knew my life was all screwed up, and what I was going to tell my boss, I was supposed to be there at 8 o'clock. It was 815, and And I figured, well, the only thing I could do is go straight in his office. And I had three bosses, not the one that drank with me. This was the big man. Go straight in His office and tell him that I had a drinking problem. So that's what I did, and I walked in there, and he looked at me, and I guess I looked like hell warmed over. And I said, Mr. Brady, I think I have a drinking program. And, boy, he looked back in his chair, and He said, Son, I've been knowing for a long time you had a problem with drinking. and it never interfered with your work, so I never took it upon myself to tell you anything. But if you're in here telling me you have a problem, I agree with you, and I'm willing to do anything you want me to do to help you out. What do you want? And I said, I don't know. And he said, I hear that they have a good chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Homer. I think you should go to AlcoholicsAnonymous. And I says, Man, I went to one of those meetings one time, and there was a bunch of older guys, and I said I just don't think that's going to work for me. He said, Well, what do you mean? And I said, well, I need a couple days off of work to figure this out. And he said, you got it. So I left. It was payday. I picked up my check. I went home and I took a shower and got cleaned up. You know, I went to the bank and I cashed my check and I went through the bar I had drank at the night before and paid off, I had borrowed $20. So I went and paid that off and a lady gave me a free complimentary beer for paying my tab off and I drank that beer and I didn't know it but that's the last beer I drank to this day thank God and I drink that beer and I just kind of hung around all day and I remember to go talk to my uncle and I left and I missed the ferry so I went to see my mother-in-law and my little sister-in law was there she was young at that time and I told them what happened and she said I thought you was going to quit all that and I said well I thought so too but i fell short and uh i caught the next ferry and i went to my uncle's house and he wasn't home so i left and was coming back through town and i was on front street and my daddy's pickup truck was parked at a ballroom so i parked right along his truck and i was going in to talk to him and when i locked the door and i turned around my uncle was across the railroad track of this drive-in restaurant and i got in my truck and I went back and saw him and And we went to his house, and we started talking. And he suggested that I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, I went to an AA meeting one time, and I said I don't think that's going to work for me. And he said, do you remember the first step? And I says, yeah, it easily doesn't. And he says, no, that's not it. But we talked, and he said you know, I think maybe you need to go to treatment. And I didn't know what treatment was, but somehow I knew AA was forever, and treatment was easier and uh i figured i'd go to treatment for five or six days and find out what's wrong with me and go on my life and that's better than going to a meetings every night and so i said okay i'll go to so uh he uh called my boss that i made him call my boss to ask him if it'd be all right for me to take off of work and uh I was on another phone and he was doing a talking and that was the first time that I heard 28 days and boy I was on the other side hoping that they said they couldn't do without me for 28 days because i wanted out of that one but uh they said well i think he's just using alcohol as a crutch i don't really think he'd got a drinking problem but if that's what he wants to do he can go so i had no way of backing out i went and uh that was the longest ride in the world it's only about an hour but from lucky to baton rouge and i had this pamphlet in my hand and on it was talking about all the goals of treatment center and one of the things said goal and there was only a couple words under that and I said total affinite and then mr. all the trouble I was in I was trying to figure out here I am 25 years old how am i ever gonna live without drinking again how many ball crawfish how I'ma go to weddings how I go to family unions how am I going road jobs I'm a drive back from Venice I couldn't imagine life without alcohol but I went in this treatment center and and you know found out about alcoholism I found out that alcohol was a disease and that I had a disease and I found all that there once an alcoholic was had the disease he couldn't change that and what he had was a phenomenon of craving and once he took the first drink he couldn't drink anymore and it didn't matter if you drank every day if you drank once a week or once a month but once you started drinking if you couldn't quit then you're probably an alcoholic and i i agreed with that and has never disagreed with that since the day i got here you know i knew right then and there that's what my problem was that's why i was promised not to get drunk at a wedding but i drank two or three beers and i was off to the races i go to a mardi gras parade and say i wouldn't get drunk and i'd go four or five hours without drinking i take one drink and i wasn't drunk no i go out of family reunion and say I wouldn't be drunk and I wouldn' t get in trouble wouldn't embarrass nobody and i'd do all right for a couple hours and take one drink and then i was drunk over and over my life was all the willpower in the world it would last a while i would take the first drink then i was strong and i identified with that you know i knew then and there that i had the disease and they told me that treatment was discovery and a was recovery and when i got out of that treatment center if i didn't go to aa i wasn't going to stay sober and uh and that i had to learn everything i could while i was in treatment so that when i got back out into the real world that i can stay sober and uh yeah from that point on i listened to everything that i could listen to and read everything that I could read and tried to learn everything that could learn and uh after 28 days they let me out of this place and i drove back to home louisiana and when i came out of the other side of that tunnel and i hit grand cayenne road i had this feeling inside of me that was the scariest feeling i ever know about being back into the real world and i left that night and went back to my first meeting in home at the easy desert club it was on main street right across from the bank and all those old people that were there a couple years before were still there i guess but it didn't matter what they looked like how old they were and uh i started going to meetings there and i got a sponsor and uh i picked this guy i was looking around they had all these old bumps so i picked up this one guy he would come for every night he would call me he was dressed in his big blue suit three-piece suit if he wasn't in that he had a one of them jogging suits on and he was always dressed to the tee his hair was always called straight back hollywood joke those of you who's around no hollywood joke and i said surely this is a church gone uh religious guy with a wife and some kids and boy that's the kind of sponsor i need and i asked this guy to be my sponsor and well when i got to know him he had been sober about a year and a half he was a street drunk from miami he was the car salesman that's why he was dressed like that uh he was uh in a relationship with his other girl in her program he's been in and out a bunch and this guy still sober today but still living that kind of life. I talked to him a couple weeks ago, and he's still. But he was my sponsor. And the first night I talked, it was a Monday night beginners' meeting. I asked him to be my sponsor, and I had been sober, I guess, three weeks, and he had heard me say some things, and asked him To be my Sponsor. The first thing he told me was, Throw all that treatment garbage out of the window and start all over anew. He said, I want you to read The Doctor's Opinion. It's about 10 pages long. I'll give you 10 days to read it. I want you to write a short essay of what it means to you. It doesn't matter if it's 50 words, 500 words, 5,000 words. Don't worry about spelling, penmanship, or punctuation. Just read it and write it down. Okay? So I went home, and I started reading. A few weeks later, I was waiting to have a bad day because that's what people talked about, how they had a bad day, and they called their sponsor. And I wanted an excuse to call my sponsor. So one day, I kind of semi-made something up that I was having a bad date because I was on a pink cloud, And when I quit drinking, everything seemed to be all right. Just by removing alcohol, my grace period lasted quite a while. And my wife wasn't mad at me anymore, and my boss was happy, and I was happy and I knew God loved me and everything was okay. And then one day this little deal had happened. I don't remember what it was. And I told him and he said, where's that essay? I said, what essay? He said, the deal on a doctor's opinion. I said well, I didn't do it yet. He said, until you're willing to do that, I won't help you at all. So I went home and I read it. And from that point on, I've been a student of the big book because this guy took me through the big books chapter by chapter and taught me what was in that book. And we learned together about the disease of alcoholism. We learned about, in Bill's story, about a guy who had that disease and how he recovered, even though the steps wasn't in that form, how he recovered using the steps we went through the next chapters are more about alcoholism and there is a solution and we learned about people who had that disease and all the loopholes of their tribe and i related to things like jim storing and about the jay walker and about we're like men who lost their legs we never grew new ones i knew that i was an alcoholic and that even though i was 25 years old and i wasn't broke and my wife hadn't left me and i still had children and I had a job, and I had money in the bank, I knew that if I drank again where I was headed. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was an alcoholic, but I also knew without the shadow of doubt that if I didn't stay active in Alcoholics Anonymous for the rest of my life, one day at a time, that I wouldn't stay sober. And I wish I could stay here, stand up here today, and tell you that I quit drinking in 1984, and everything has been a bed of roses. I wish that I could tell you that those little girls who were not even around to see me drinking has never been exposed to the ism of alcoholism but I can't say that you know I've went into rage in sobriety as worse than I ever did in drunkenness you know no matter how hard I try to practice the principle this program stay active with my sponsor sponsor people attend meetings on a regular basis there's been many times that I fell short but I keep coming back you know and I look back today and I say if i would have came to alcoholics anonymous in 1984 and did what y'all told me to do perfect and would have never had a bad day with a boring life you know every day is a day that i'll learn a little bit more how to apply these principles to my life you knows every day of the day you know and uh you know i promised that i wouldn't run overtime and it's about five minutes till and I'm going to try to wrap all this up and I'll just cover a few things that have been instrumental in my life and this is my experience and this was what I've learned and I've learn as much from other people's failures as I've learnt from my own I've leant as much form other people successes as I learned from my on I've always tried to keep an open mind and to listen to what people have to say and I try to learn and apply those things to my life and I tried to pass those things on to other people that i sponsor and share those things in meetings and uh you know one of those things is is a home group you know, one of the most important things for me is to have a home group. You know I uh I became a casual AA member somewhere around seven eight five six seven years of sobriety. I don't know I came to AA meetings when it was convenient. I came into AA meetings whenever it was I felt I had to. I wasn't committed to a home group i wasn't sharing meetings on a regular basis i wasn t attending business meetings i didn't uh attend meetings with the same group of people i was always here but i was never with the same groups of people and what happened was i was uh i started accumulating secrets in my life because if you're not around the same people you can tell secrets live with secrets and get away with them and uh at seven years sobriety uh i almost got drunk i was off on this uh platform offshore it was the 22nd of uh february they had a big book study going on at the holiday inn joe and charlie was there i was there friday night i went offshore saturday uh it was a beautiful starlit clear night i wasn't able to come here and pick up my seven-year chip i missed the birthday supper but i was so full of gratitude and so full of all what god gave to me that it was all right and i left the next morning i flew into leave ill and i drove back to homer and and uh i saw my wife's van parked at church she was at mass and i say well i'm gonna get dressed and i'm going to the big book study and let everybody know where i was at it was over at 12 o'clock and and i was all dressed and she came home from church and she passed a remark something to the extent of you know you're going to aa again you've been going all weekend why don't you spend some time with us and uh and she was right but i figured You don't appreciate what AA is for me. I want to go where I want to go and I got into this big raging argument and said, I'm going to show you what it was like when I was drinking and I pulled this bottle of booze out the cabin and I took the top off and I put it up to my lips and she just, it didn't bother her, she just walked the other way and I was like, who am I going to prove this to? And I put the cap back on and I went back and went outside and cried and started thinking And I made a decision at that point, not because of my home group and not because it either does the club, that I had to start attending meetings somewhere else. And I found another home group that met two days a week and I was attending meetings there and the same 10 or 15 people were there at just about every meeting and I started becoming rigorously honest. You know, I told people everything that happened. And I try not to keep any secrets. If I went home and threw a bag of potatoes at my wife, I had to share that. And I'm not proud of these things, but Flo knows. She calls Flo. You know, if I got angry and pushed and she tripped over the dishwasher, I had say those things. And there's a lot of things that I did in sobriety that I'm now proud of. But until I started letting these things out of the bag, You know, it says admit to God, ourselves, and another human being. You know it's easy to admit to myself and to admit to God but if that other human being is not in there I'm not doing it the way the program says and the other human thing is the whole thing and it could be my sponsor, it could me my home group, it can be another drunk but it can't be an Eskimo who doesn't speak English. I have to say that to somebody who knows who I am and what I am and uh from that point on my life has began to change and day by day it gets better and better and there's a lot of days when i still fall short i still get into these rages and stuff and uh you know i had an episode this past uh i don't know this past spring when uh i allow myself to get all worked up it's easy for me to drown myself in work and not have to face the real world you know if i work 24 hours a day boy i don't get mad at my wife i don' t get mad in my kids everything as long as i'm occupied all day long everything is okay and that's the kind of guy i am and i'll stay busy stay busy stay busy i'll go to a meetings i'll do this work with other people ba-ba-ba, ba-bu-ba. Missed AA and all of a sudden I'm so worn out that I snapped. And it may be some socks on the floor. It may be a...I don't know what it is but it's always at home it seems and I'll just blow up and I was literally losing and holler and scream and rage and And on this particular time, I just flung a bowl of Kellogg's Special K all over the kitchen because I drank the rest of the milk and was asked why I did that. And it's not about my wife, and it's nicht über die Milch. It's about where I was at and what I did. and uh and by that time uh those of you who know me i get picked on and because i speak in parables and i share in parable they nickname me monsignor and they go in my home group and they call me monsigneur and and uh people say they like what i say and people ask me to be their sponsor and i'll sponsor people and i'm supposed to be this guy and here i am doing these things and uh but knew i had to come to meet me and i had to do that and uh and in the way god worked in my life was about a month later this guy and i was fighting with this thing how long do i have to live when everything's going to go okay for months and then i'm going to break and raise 10 kind of hells and have this temper tantrum and do all these things that i regret and uh and and pass this disease on and on and on to my wife and children and uh this guy called me up one sunday morning he said uh david we're putting together this men's group and we're going to have outside therapists it's not a a it's a therapy group and we have an opening and uh and i wish you would come and uh but how much does it cost and he said uh he told me how much it cost him and i was at that point that it didn't matter how much he called it wouldn't have mattered if it cost a thousand dollars a month you know i knew that something was wrong with me that if i uh i practiced the principles of alcohol is anonymous to the best of my ability i can look back in my sobriety yeah i took easier softer ways all the way through but each particular time i think that i was working the best i can you know at the time i was one year sober they asked me how good i practice i think that i was probably eight or nine i look back now i was father two or three but i always did what was necessary and did the best that i could do and uh and i knew at that time that i was going to a meetings on a regular basis i was active with the byland jamboree i was sharing meetings i was sponsoring people i talked to my sponsor i read the big book i listened to tapes i did all these things yet these things still kept happening and uh and I knew that possibly something else was wrong with me so i went and i've been in and outside therapy one night a week for the last five or six months and uh i was the kind of guy that always said aa in itself is sufficient and uh I think aa in himself was sufficient and aa in its self can be sufficient but for me it took something else and uh and what I've learned is that uh is that one day at a time there are things even though I think that i had the best parents in the world and i had the best relatives and teachers and nuns and priests and everybody that's been involved in my life for the last 39 years that people act a certain way and i react a certain way and my defects of character is not defects but my character made did what it had to do for me to survive in this world and uh for some reason i keep trying the same things that i've learned as a child and all through my life to cope with life one day at a time you know and i think because they don't talk about it in a and it ain't about ego and it ain't above fear and it's about this that i don't have it but there are some things that that are defeated that i'm finding out about myself today and uh and i've made great strides and uh you know i just want to share that because i was the guy if you go to the body black group they got people talking about outside help and uh almost every day and uh And, boy, I was sitting over there like, yeah, big deal. You know, if my wife don't go to Al-Anon, I don't need outside help. We got all shit together, you know. But I found that out, and I just want to share that. And it's time. Like I said, I've told the truth, and I've been as honest as I can be, and that's what it's all about. You know when I went into that treatment center, and every Saturday, Sunday morning, Sunday night, they would have a speaker meeting. And these guys would come in, and they would tell this big old drunk log about all what they did. And I was sitting in that chair, and I said, you know, one day I want to get up before a group of people and tell my story, but I just ain't did enough. My wife never left me. I've never been to jail. I never had a DWI. You know, I ain't been beat up. You know I never did drugs. I never hit a needle in my arm. I hadn't done all these things. And I figured, you know, I'll never have a story to tell. I'm cheating. And today I know that my story is what I've learned in sobriety. Thank God that Alcoholics Anonymous was here when this little Catholic river rat was ready for help. And it doesn't matter what stage of drinking you're at, whether you've been all the way down or you're out the top. You know, if you want what we have and you're willing to go to any length to get it, you can have it. But you have to be honest. You have to be consistent. And I'm not telling you that you can just automatically be honest You know if we can automatically be honest, if we could automatically do this program, boy this room would be full, full, filled But on the other hand thank God it ain't automatic Thank God I have to work Thank God i have to learn one day at a time Thank God, I have the fall down get back up ask for help You know every day is a day when I learned something and if I'm open minded and I'm willing to listen I can learn and it doesn't matter anything else as long as I know that I don't know at all as long as I know that I don't know at all I just like the end by saying that that I owe my whole life to Alcoholics Anonymous there's no way that I could have ever made a list of things of what I wanted at the age of 25 when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and had nearly what I have today. You know, so many opportunities have presented themselves and I've made the right decisions and things have worked out for me. So many things have happened in my life. I made the wrong decisions. It didn't work out, but it was what was right for me, you know. And every day is a day that one day at a time i get what i have to have and uh everything i have is because of god and i know that god doesn't love me more than anybody else just because i've been sober since the first go around just because i still have my wife and i have two beautiful children and have a guy like you'll be working for me and i had my own business and and all these things are going good in my life it's not because god loves me more Than anybody else you know it's because alcoholics anonymous has given me the willingness and the open-mindedness and gave me the effort required to work the steps and that comes from hope you know we share our experience strength and hope hope comes from people coming to meetings and sharing you know telling me it's okay and i say to you now if you're here in the beginning if you have hope and i hope i touch at least one person here today if you just have hope that if i do what i'm supposed to do one day at a time that going to be all right then i did my job here today i'm sorry i talked longer than i was supposed to i said before the meeting that i believe in starting promptly and ending promptly but somehow i think this is what god wanted me to do love you all and thank you