Do the Steps Like a Child — Earnestly and Badly — Tom W.

And now I'd like to introduce our main speaker, Father Terry from L.A.
Hey!
Oh, come on.
Hello, my name is Terry and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi there, Terry.
Hey, this reminded me, I walked in the room and this looked like the politburo in Moscow to me, this thing up.
Somehow I've seen pictures of the...
Anyway, that's all it is, you know.
I'm an alcoholic, I'm sober tonight.
I'm deeply grateful to be sober.
I like to say that I'm not so surprised that I'm sober.
Because...
Because I like drinking so much right away
that the first reflection I had on drinking was
something's going to happen, this is too good to be true.
They don't let you keep doing this.
Anything this good, they do something to stop you.
And I was right.
So I'm not too surprised that I don't get to drink
or something like that.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I am surprised that I'm grateful.
I'm surprised that I'm relieved to be sober.
That was the part that was unimaginable.
And that, as I went through my own journey with this disease of alcoholism,
the progressive thing of getting sicker and sicker
and finally deciding that, yeah, I guess I'm an alcoholic
and kind of waiting for the right time.
And then I'm waiting to find out that I wouldn't drink anymore.
And then starting again.
And stopping again and starting again.
And having it really...
I was somebody who had it really figured out
that I should not drink.
That I didn't argue with anybody.
That's plain.
After the fifth hospitalization...
I agreed.
It just was a very bad idea.
It was a bad idea for me to drink.
And I wasn't showing any improvement
in my ability to function and drink at the same time.
But what would get me was this...
How would I put it?
Now, I guess we keep trying to describe what it is that seems to get us.
What would get me was
an awful, sinking feeling
that my choices were something like this.
I either...
was going to drink,
drink off and on,
and deteriorate into a
a pathetic,
embarrassing,
burdensome,
boring,
pain in the ass
to the world
and then die.
Or I would find a way not to drink
and never have any fun
for the rest of my life.
And it wouldn't be bad enough
that I wouldn't have any fun for the rest of my life.
I would have to pretend I liked it.
I would have to somehow give the impression
that I preferred this
because it made sense
and it's the way to go.
It's certainly responsible for me to
to not drink and to
fulfill my obligations and
to...
be a good guy
and do the things that I wanted to do.
The only thing I could imagine was
in order to do the things I wanted to do
and
kind of live with some kind of self-respect
and
live up to some ideals,
I would have to spend my life
hanging from a windowsill
by my fingers
on the outside
waiting
for time to be up.
Um...
And so there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm.
That seemed to be the two things.
And so I was careening between both
being good for a while
and then being bad
when I thought it was important for my sanity.
So this...
You know,
it isn't that I didn't think
this was a serious matter.
I know the way people talk to us sometimes
you'd think that we just...
You didn't notice that drinking's bad for us.
You know, I...
I got a good...
I think I started to notice drinking was bad for me
right away.
I'm somebody who didn't have any
social drinking to begin with.
I had drinking that looked like social drinking to begin with
because most of my drinking in my first few years
was not in fact terribly excessive.
The reason it wasn't excessive
is I couldn't get any.
I couldn't get very much.
I was a seminarian studying to be a priest.
I was poor.
I was going to a school that allowed no drinking.
I was in a religion, though,
that did not forbid drinking.
I want to point that out.
Um...
From the looks of this crowd here,
a lot of you were sinners from the start, weren't you?
You never were.
Never were supposed to start out.
Anyway, we were pretty tough on sex,
but they let us have a drink.
Um...
Anyway...
Well, I thought,
this is one of the things that's all right.
Right?
Um...
And so when I...
I began drinking.
I had my first drink when I was 21
after my confirmation pledge was up.
Um...
And I had done some reading of the big book already
because I had written...
I'd written a paper on alcoholism.
Uh...
And read the big book for the paper.
Uh...
And so I...
I was hyper-aware of alcoholism
and all the stuff about it.
And I thought, um...
Uh...
You know, you've got to be careful.
It runs in families.
You could become an alcoholic.
You might be an alcoholic right now
just waiting for the booze to get...
That crossed my mind before I drank.
And as I gave that some thought,
I thought,
if it turns out...
If it turns out to be that way,
it sure is good that I did all this studying
and reading
and going to meetings for research
because now I'm hip to this whole thing
and if I turn out to be an alcoholic,
I'll just quit fast.
I'll just quit right when I notice it.
I'll let you know how...
I'll let you know how deep my reading was.
Um...
And when I began to drink,
there was enough symptoms of alcoholism
the first day I drank
to put a person in treatment.
Um...
If there was someone there to discern the symptoms, you know.
But there was nobody there to discern the symptoms.
And one of the symptoms you'd think would be the first
wasn't there the first day.
And that is I did not get drunk.
There wasn't enough,
as was usually the case.
There wasn't enough.
But when I began to drink,
I drank with...
with an enthusiasm hard to describe.
Uh...
I had a couple of Manhattans
and I just loved them.
Oh!
That feeling.
That's wonderful.
The alcohol high.
Uh...
It almost made me think
that there was something to reincarnation.
It's as if, uh...
I had a feeling I remembered this
from some place before.
I thought it would be like this.
A couple of my uncles were alcoholic.
My father was.
And I gained a deeper respect
for all the alcoholics in my family.
The minute I had a drink,
I could kind of say,
Oh, well, at least they were...
You know, I kind of understand.
Um...
I looked forward to the next time I could drink.
Uh...
I was obsessed.
I was protecting my supply the first day
by taking care of...
The first thing...
The first urge I had,
the spontaneous urge,
was to
nudge somebody in the ribs
next to me.
The way you do it,
you make a great discovery.
You come to the...
You know, the edge of the Grand Canyon
and see this thing.
You say,
Hey, look at this.
Don't share this great discovery.
And I was looking for someone to nudge.
And, uh...
There were no alcoholics there that day.
They were all standing there
having a drink.
And they weren't making any big discovery.
Um...
There was no one to say,
Hey, isn't this great?
And...
So I didn't say it.
Um...
And very quickly it occurred to me
that not only shouldn't I say it,
I've got to be real careful
not to say anything remotely like that.
Uh...
That I...
My...
The instincts of a functioning alcoholic
clicked into action
the first day.
And that is
the basic rule for the functioning alky
is never let them know anything.
Um...
Never let them know how bad you want to drink.
You know.
Never let them know what you're ready to do
to get a drink.
Never let them know what you're ready to do
if the first plan falls through.
Never let them know you have another plan
or a third plan.
Never let them know
how much you like the drink you got.
And never let them know
how much it's affecting you.
Um...
Now, all of the...
The reason for not letting them know any of this
is very obvious.
Any alcoholic...
You may not even be able
to put it into words
but we all know what it is.
Just...
They're going to be after us
soon enough.
And don't give them any free ammunition.
You know.
Don't...
Uh...
It's going to be...
It's tough enough to get a drink
without people
looking over,
checking you out
for no good reason.
And so...
Or for a good reason.
I, um...
That was my reaction.
I...
I lied right away.
Didn't seem like lying
at the time.
It seemed like
exercising my constitutional right
to privacy.
Uh...
But, you know,
I think it deserves
the name lying
if we are careful
not to tell anybody
what's on our front burner.
If you...
You don't have to tell everybody
everything.
I don't...
I think everybody
hopes you don't tell them everything.
Um...
But if I'm not telling anybody,
what's...
What's going on?
My main thing?
What's...
What's got me worried,
excited,
looking forward to?
What's got the most
emotional energy
going for me?
If I don't tell that stuff,
I'm deceiving you.
You see.
As long as I tell a few people
to get this up,
then I'm in business
with the world.
But if I hide all that stuff,
I got a problem.
And when I drink,
I hide it all.
Because...
You...
Well...
I don't have to go into it a lot.
You know, we got a...
Everything's...
There's a lot of top secret material
when you're drinking.
There's a lot of...
A lot of guys in the service here.
I don't know if you understand that.
You don't...
You don't divulge that stuff.
You don't tell them
what your plans are.
Because our plans are
a drinking plan.
No?
And that's the main plan.
That's the...
You know, I'm not going to tell somebody
that I'll drive 50 more miles
to make sure we have lunch
at a place that serves drinks.
Drinks.
I will.
I would.
And you would, too.
And we'd both be happy we got there.
But we also know
that you got to be careful
not to tell that to very many people.
The majority of people don't understand
willing to spend government money
or your money
or someone else's money
for all...
You know what I mean.
So I covered up
and lied
and was obsessed
and was very excited.
That's enough.
You know.
And that's the way it started.
That's the way it stayed.
I went along through
the rest of my training
in the seminary.
I...
I liked it.
It wasn't a big suffering thing.
And funny,
because there was no drinking there,
of course, I'm an alcoholic,
so I didn't miss it very much.
You know?
I always...
I never...
Not in touch with my feelings very much.
So if I don't have anything to drink,
it's not so bad.
But...
I said, you know,
you just don't have anything day after day.
You know, you kind of forget about it.
So I went along.
I got pretty good marks
and I enjoyed it.
And I...
I did...
And I...
Just mention this training
because it...
There seems to be a contradiction,
but there really isn't.
You know, I was in a way of life
that really encouraged prayer and meditation.
And we had it built into the structure.
We'd get up at...
We'd get up...
We'd get up at 5.30
and report to chapel at 10 to 6.
Let's have some prayers out loud together.
At 6, we'd have silent meditation
that would last for a half hour.
We'd have mass that would last a half hour.
We'd have some more prayers.
Really.
And have breakfast around 7.15, 7.20.
And then study after that.
And I love...
It's nice.
Fine with me.
It's a nice way to start the day.
I remember getting a job for Hughes Aircraft
when I was a student.
A summertime job.
And after getting...
Going through the physical
because it was a federal contract company
and you had to get this physical.
And he checked me all out
and I was, you know, young
and did play a little football there
in the seminary.
I was very healthy.
And he said,
there's only one thing wrong.
I'll give you a little medication, though,
for that problem you've got on your knees.
I said, what do you mean a problem?
Well, that skin,
disease you've got in your...
He named some exotic thing.
I said, what do you mean?
Well, you're...
I said, those are calluses from...
We had wooden kneelers in our chapel.
It's been about...
I had some good calluses on my knees
that I could sleep very peacefully
kneeling straight up.
He took it a little convincing
for that particular doctor to buy that.
And I...
I went on and was ordained a priest.
I live and work as a Catholic priest
in a parish in Los Angeles right now.
And I like it.
I'm grateful for being in the way of life.
But I...
Once out of school,
the opportunities to drink increased.
Something like getting out of boot camp.
And so I took the opportunities
and went down the tubes quickly.
I'm very grateful to...
My heart goes out to those of us
who get enough willpower
or obsessive-compulsive work ethic
to keep it together
to drink a fifth a day for 20 years
before they notice something's wrong.
I...
I had the good fortune to be the type
that becomes a social menace early.
And I...
I got in and it was about a year.
I didn't get any trouble from them.
But I sure was self-conscious
and guilty and worried and trying.
I was a real booze fighter.
I had the two...
the two imperatives
of the beginning alcoholic who's functioning.
The two imperatives are one,
you get as much to drink as you possibly can.
And the other imperative is
make sure you never get drunk.
And if you pay attention to both of those things
all through the evening,
it keeps you very busy in your head.
And usually I had the good fortune
for one or the other of the imperatives
to recede a bit.
You see,
and then I could either get drunk
or do all right
and not be quite as zealous
for getting a drink.
But that was there.
And I think most of you know how that is.
I don't know.
And it's confusing for us poor alcoholics.
You know,
like the payoff
for really trying hard not to get into trouble
is that we imitate social drinkers.
We look like we're almost a social drinker
when we're good.
And isn't that confusing?
I mean,
I remember I wasn't too far into my drinking
when I began to get really down
whenever I drank moderately.
I felt guilty when I got drunk
and I felt depressed when I drank moderately.
The guilt of getting drunk is obvious enough.
But when I drank moderately,
I felt depressed
because,
well, I guess I can control it.
I guess that's what I'm going to have to do
for the rest of my natural life
if I'm not going to be a sinner
and irresponsible
and some self-sickness
centered, immature, pleasure-loving jerk
who endangers the life of everyone around him.
I'm going to have to keep trying hard
forever.
And I know usually I had that reflection
at the end of an evening of drinking
where I tried hard and did all right.
And usually at that stage of the game,
I was an absolutely nervous wreck
who had noticed
that he went through a lot of work,
and didn't have any fun.
Drinking right was no fun
and way too much work.
And so I was depressed with that
and guilty when I drank too much
and went along with that
for about a year,
finding out I was having short blackouts,
a little bit longer blackouts,
sneaking drinks,
trying to forget that I snuck them.
I tried...
I know that chaser after the 6.30 mass,
I really tried to forget I had that one.
You know, I have about a third of a bottle of Angelica.
19% dessert wine before breakfast.
And then try to smooth out for the morning.
I was one of those people
who discovered the morning drink
because I thought having a drink was a good idea
any time I could possibly get one.
Here are people that go on for years
having the shakes for years
and finally discover...
I don't know.
Well, I started drinking in the morning
long before I had the shakes.
I just thought it seemed like a good idea to me
if there was a bottle nearby.
Also, that one drink in the morning,
when I got more practice later on,
I would be drinking at night
and wake up in the morning
and they say, you know,
a little hair of the dog straightens you out.
Oh, it got me drunk.
I would...
I'd be drunk just like that
if I started drinking in the morning.
So, I thought after about a year
I was very concerned.
And I thought, well, this looks like it.
You know, you've got...
I was listing the symptoms.
Blackouts.
Heavy-duty obsession.
When I have one,
I'd not drink for a while
and have one drink.
And as soon as I had one drink,
I knew that I didn't know
what would happen next.
Really.
Unpredictable behavior.
I thought, well, I guess I'm an alcoholic.
Maybe I'm a beginning.
Maybe I'm a pre-alcoholic.
And if I am,
I guess I'm going to quit pretty soon.
I wonder when I'm going to quit.
It really had me in suspense.
And I...
I went along for almost two years
and I finally quit.
And I thought, well, by God,
look at that, I quit.
And I couldn't believe it.
I was waiting so long.
Actually, when I...
I noticed that when I did quit for...
I didn't consider myself quit
until I had about three or four weeks.
And then I realized
that I had been quitting a lot
in the previous year.
But I would start again
so soon after I quit
that I didn't want to count it.
I was quitting.
And then I went on...
I had about six months in the wagon.
Started drinking again.
With the thought that
anybody who could quit drinking
for almost six months
had proved they could quit.
And as long as you're sure you can quit,
you might as well start.
Because if there's...
If there's any trouble in the future,
you just have to quit fast.
I mean, you just quit fast.
That's all.
You nip it in the butt.
You know what I mean.
And so I resumed drinking
and got to quit a lot after that.
I quit every few days.
I quit so often
over the next few months
that if...
when someone would offer me a drink,
I'd say,
just a minute,
let me figure out
if I'm quitting or not.
I really didn't know
walking down the street
whether I was in one of my quit periods
or not
without giving it a little thought
and trying to rack my brain.
And then I decided,
you know,
your trouble is that you quit too much.
If you quit drinking for life
ten times a month,
it affects your self-esteem.
And I figured with my self-esteem
so battered
by quitting so much
that I naturally had a drink.
So I quit quitting
and thought if I just accepted myself
as a drinking person
and quit being such a perfectionist,
a neurotic, hung-up,
uptight perfectionist
and just smoothed out a little bit
and accepted life and myself,
I'd probably do a lot better.
And with that theory,
I drank a fifth of scotch a day.
And I always like to put in a few words
about the experience
of drinking a fifth a day.
It's serious drinking,
not record-breaking drinking.
I always like to point out
that when I mention drinking a fifth a day
in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous,
that's the only gathering in our society
that you can mention
drinking a fifth of booze a day.
And have nobody bat an eye in the room.
Nobody flinches.
Nobody even...
Not a sound, you know.
Any other...
Try it in any other group.
We know it's about half as much as two-fifths a day.
But drinking at that rate,
I felt very deprived.
I felt like I hardly ever got a drink.
I was...
Constantly spacing them out more.
Don't...
Come on, you can't finish too early.
You've got to make this last.
You can't get another bottle.
I was...
I used more willpower and self-control
keeping it down to a fifth a day
than any activity in my life
before or since.
I also was exhausted at all times.
I was tired when I was rested up.
I was bored by all activity.
All normal activity
was boredom.
It was boring.
The naturalness just drained out of life.
Everything had to be thought through
and decided on.
There was two things I could do spontaneously.
Collapse and split.
If you saw me suddenly leave the room
or collapse,
you knew I was being sincere.
Otherwise, it was kind of studied, you know.
Go through it slowly.
My attitude deteriorated.
I became deeply suspicious of cheerful people.
If anybody...
Remember those...
That's an image of these women
picking up their kids after school.
It's still in my mind.
I can just see them now.
Getting out of a station wagon and saying,
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
Hi, Father.
I figured that
anybody that cheerful
in the middle of the afternoon
was either so dumb
that they had no contact
with the tragic dimensions of life
or they were on speed.
Because life is tough.
And what's so funny anyway?
Anyway,
I didn't know.
I didn't know.
And the heaviness
and the emptiness,
you know.
There was...
And I didn't know.
I felt this terrible
lack of vitality,
you know,
lack of energy,
lack of interest
in doing anything.
And then thinking forward
to having to do stuff forever.
The only thing
that holds any promise
of relief to me
was a drink.
And that's drinking
on a good day,
day. That's when there's no trouble. You know, the pain of alcoholic drinking, when there's
no trouble, and we're good at it, is so extreme that getting into trouble is a relief. Isn't
it great to finally become a disgrace to your family and administer society? I mean, once
we go public, we can get help. Before that, it's very lonely. I mean, spending half the
day proving I'm all right. How can you go tell somebody, gee, I'm hurting, and what
can I do? We can't say that because we're all right. By golly, nobody can... That's
the way it was in the good old days. And I have the good fortune to start missing things.
That was what got me into trouble.
Mostly it was just missing. I had a pastor who was very good for me. He was the kind
of pastor every alcoholic should have, the kind of commanding officer that wants you
to do all his work, and just do some of it anyway. And I began to fall down on the job
and just not be there. I was there quite a bit, but I wasn't there when I was supposed
to, and when I didn't expect me, I'd show up. Mostly not be there.
And so we had this showdown business, and I agreed never to drink again. I thought, I
always do this when I was caught. I'd say, I have a suggestion. I'm just not going to
drink anymore. And they'd say, well, that's just what I was going to suggest. And I'd
say, fine, we have this thing. And I lasted a few weeks, and was drinking again, and got
into trouble again. I'd make my suggestion again, and then I got a little old. But then
he kicked me upstairs. I had to agree to work with the boss's boss about my trouble. And
then the boss's boss's boss...
The boss's boss.
The boss's boss.
The boss's boss.
The boss's boss. That's as high up as they go, locally.
And I was... I know that... It was after the last reprimand, I lasted several weeks
again, started drinking with a few of the men in the parish who were waiting for their
wives to get done with the parish fashion show, and decided to have a little double
scotch with the boys.
A lot of class to it. I came in with the schoolchildren. I kind of... I... I timed the
parish who were waiting for their wives to get done with the parish fashion show, and
decided to have a little double scotch with the boys of a Sunday afternoon. And I arrived
home about a quarter to eight in the morning. A lot of class. I was... I was... I was...
A lot of class to it. I came in with the schoolchildren. I kind of... I... I... I timed it to arrive
with the kids, and I kind of walked across the playground with all the children. A lot
of staggering, dragging my sweater on the ground.
Isn't this something... We do have a... We just have a knack for doing these things.
Anyway, I was fired, and I got to go in the hospital and marry around. And that was...
That was very instructive.
This was in the...
In the 60s... 67, that happened. And I was in aversion treatment. And I... If you have
a sense of good sportsmanship and any brains left, you're supposed to be able to stay sober
for the rest of your life. But if you've had five of these sessions in ten days... And
I had five in ten days. And I thought, well, they got me, fair and square. It's... It's
obvious now. I'm an alcoholic. The first drink gets me drunk. You bet. I... I was a very
good patient. I... I know how to make alcoholic counselors.
I know how to make them feel fulfilled. And I... So I got out, and I was just... I mean,
I was almost enthusiastic about the whole thing. It's fine with me. And I... I got down
to business, and they... I got another assignment, and I got settled down. And I thought, well,
this is it. It's, you know, a little tough, but that's clear. Don't get to drink anymore.
That's that.
And I had two kinds. I drank again. I think the first time I drank it was just the revelation
obsession, you know? The kind that is, we get the message, in 20 minutes you're going
to have a drink. And I said, well, I'll be damned.
I thought I'd last longer this time, you know? The hospital and everything, you know?
It's a lot of money for that hospital. I thought I'd have a little respect, you know, go at
least six months. That was on a Thursday. By that Sunday, I was... had a dinner appointment
to the... One of the pillars of the parish invited a few people over, invited the new
priest over to check him out. I started drinking three days before that dinner, and drank a
little wine during the day and through the night.
Three days. And when I got there, I was feeling kind of funny, but I thought I was doing all
right. And just had a little wine, and they called dinner, and I thought, good. And I
was feeling a little bad, a little under, and I... But I pictured my liver taking care
of this stuff. If you've been in treatment, you know, you've seen these charts of the
description of an ethyl alcohol molecule, you know, the CHO, all this stuff, and then
it breaks down into acetaldehyde and water, and then into sugar.
And I pictured my liver just taking care of all this alcohol, just breaking it down. But
I just heard I was going to be fine. And we, you know, put food... I was at the head of
the table, as a matter of fact. I mean, the people were kind of out sitting like that
for me. And they had roast beef and some red vegetable and mashed potatoes, as I recall,
and some gravy on the mashed potatoes. And the next thing I knew, I was down there.
And I came up hoping nobody had noticed. And I said, are you all right, Father? I said,
oh, just fine. I'm a little tired. I thought I'd take a little nap with the mashed potatoes.
And what made me mad is that I got all straightened up and woke up down there again. I never
remember going down. I was doing fine. I'd wake up with the mashed potatoes. I'd do fine
and wake up down there. I got to go back to the hospital and had version treatments over
again. The whole batch of them over. I was full of, I was contrite, and I figured, no
way am I going to drink again. No way. It's impossible. It's too embarrassing. Lasted
almost a year. Almost a year.
Almost a year.
Almost a year.
The only thing I drank out of sheer self-pity, just sheer, I mean, I was good so long, did
not occur to me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous because I already knew and agreed to everything
I figured they'd say in AA. That there's a disease, first drink gets you drunk, you need
God's help. I agreed to all that. And, of course, I was praying the way a self-will-run
riot immature alcoholic prays. I knew a lot about prayer, but I didn't know very much
about me.
I knew the right things to do in prayer, but I didn't know I was doing some of the wrong
things. Adding them on. What I was doing was praying like the man who had lost his legs.
I was praying to grow new ones. I wasn't exactly praying not to be an alcoholic because I knew
intellectually that you stayed an alcoholic, but I was praying in effect to feel like a
non-alcoholic.
I was, I was, I thought, you're supposed to be an alcoholic.
You're supposed to feel like a non-alcoholic. I thought, God help me, and the way I'll know
you're helping me is when I feel just fine, and smooth, and poised, and energized, and
cheerful, and helpful, and wonderful. And if I don't feel all that, screw it.
Very humble prayer.
And I didn't know my prayer was that willful or arrogant because I wasn't praying it in
an arrogant mood, you know. I think I've been more arrogant when I'm in a kind of a meek
and humble looking, kind of a beaten down thing. You ever talk to a skid row alky who's
really sick? Offer him some help to find out there's 13 conditions.
13 conditions, at least, before you're allowed to be of any help.
And I'm exact. I'm a skid row alky. I mean, that's who I am.
And I couldn't see that. I had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and have Protestants describe their
prayer for me to find out that I had self-will run riot in my prayer. And when you have that kind of
self-will prayer,
it gives prayer a bad name.
Because your batting average is always pretty low.
You figure, well, you know, all-powerful God, huh?
Not coming true very often as far as I can see.
Not according to the list I'm turning in to the heavenly pharmacist.
Anyway,
I had to go back to the hospital a lot.
The fifth time,
they asked me never, ever to call them up again.
And I didn't.
And the sixth time,
I was detoxed in a regular psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles.
And after that,
I was shipped back to New Jersey to a recovery house for priest alcoholics.
And the main thing we did in that place was go to AA meetings.
Thank God.
And I thought, well, I'll go to meetings.
I'm the compliant type.
I'll go along with it.
I didn't.
I didn't think for a minute the meetings were going to do any good.
Because I already knew all that stuff.
But as I went to the meetings,
I was touched almost immediately.
And I have this bias of a lot of people who go to school too long.
And even people who don't go to school too long.
We have the same kind of a thing where
I figured that I have to find something out.
I'm going to have to get a deeper insight.
I'm going to have to see around the next corner.
And then maybe if I really figure something out,
more completely,
something will click.
And I'll be all right.
Maybe.
That was...
And I figured there was little chance of that
with these amateurs in Protestant church basements
with no visual aids.
And I...
And I was touched.
I don't even know.
I didn't even know I was touched.
I didn't know what it meant.
I just...
I had a...
I was surprised that I liked going.
I was surprised that I even looked forward
when we got to go to the meeting.
And I was thinking,
well, we're going home.
We're going to Morristown again, huh?
Oh, good.
That's good.
Going into Summit, huh?
Let's go.
Of course, when I got to the meeting,
I could hardly wait to the meeting to get over.
You know, the...
I could hardly wait to get to the meeting.
And then when the meeting started,
I began to worry that they might talk overtime.
Over time.
If someone talked two or three minutes overtime,
I would go berserk
and twist the chair apart that I was sitting in
because the covenant is tell 10 or 9.30,
whatever, or 8.30 in this case,
because I've got to get back to my 12-step house
and sit there.
Anyway, I wish I could tell you
that I don't feel that way anymore.
I don't feel that way anymore.
However,
I'd be nervous.
These people that drive a long way to a meeting
think they can talk as long as they want sometimes.
Anyway,
I was touched and I was drawn.
And I picture it this way,
that my higher power decided...
My higher power drew me in this thing
because I'm not the type that lets down,
it seems to me.
My arrogance is pretty strong.
And he just drew me in
and I found myself
in the meeting like a child.
I was just going around to the meeting.
And being an alky,
hanging out with alkies
and talking to people
and saying hi
and reading the book.
And I didn't decide to be a good AA member.
I just didn't have any more tricks up my sleeve right then.
I just was fresh out of ideas.
And so I was still having wonderful insights, of course.
I could hardly wait to lay on you
at participation meetings.
And what I would get,
my wonderful insights
and share them,
that's part of the program,
but not too big of a part.
The big deal that was going on
was that I found my...
I discovered myself
being willing
to do AA like a child.
And somehow that image
is the key thing to me.
We do it like a child.
We just do it.
And it says, you know,
utilize, don't analyze.
Well, telling an alcoholic
not to analyze
is like what?
You know,
telling the Pope not to go to church or something.
We're going to analyze.
You know, if you're the analyzing type,
you just can't help it.
So analyze.
I don't...
I figure there's no way
I can keep myself from analyzing.
But the program,
it doesn't really matter.
It doesn't hurt you too much to analyze.
As long as you utilize first.
As long as we're utilizing
and then kind of noticing
what we're doing.
That's okay.
But we don't just...
If we only analyze,
then we're dead.
What we got to do is
just go along and say,
okay, you guys,
some of you stay sober
and you've got a look of relief
on your face.
You don't have to be loaded.
What do you do?
And boy, will you ever get
a bunch of suggestions
if you ever ask that question.
We get the suggestions of the 12th step
and all the particular suggestions
of the person you're talking to.
And we start doing this thing
and just doing stuff.
I didn't think I was doing anything special.
When I started doing...
writing my first inventory,
kind of a dumping the garbage inventory,
I felt pretty self-conscious.
And I felt...
I find it very difficult to write.
And I thought,
this isn't going to work.
I mean, this is not going to work.
I've been in therapy.
I paid good money
talking to a professional,
getting down to the deep things.
And I'm supposed to write
about three or four pages
and have some miracle thing?
Are you kidding?
I mean, with...
This isn't going to work.
But I wrote out what I could write out
and shared it.
And sure enough, it didn't work.
But by saying it didn't work,
I mean it didn't work my way.
It didn't resolve
all the conflicts,
all the conflicts of my life,
and send me soaring into the sunlight,
totally integrated,
and transcendently intelligent,
able to solve everyone else's problems on my own.
In that sense, it didn't work.
However, I haven't had a drink
since I wrote that inventory.
So you might say it worked, didn't it?
You know,
snuck some pills.
Which I changed my sobriety date for.
Later, a year later.
But that was the start of the real program.
And I noticed,
and as I went along,
and just did this thing,
and I didn't think of myself this thing,
doing it like a child.
That phrase occurred to me last week.
I don't usually use that.
But it seems to be a nice way to describe it right now.
As I went along,
and I felt a little bit better here,
and felt at home,
and going along,
then I didn't have a spiritual awakening
with the blinding light
or the Bill Wilson type.
But I had something
where it was,
I was still in a recovery house.
And it came,
it was like the whole atmosphere changed.
Something
very profound changed.
I
I discovered,
that I was being held up in sobriety.
I discovered that my sobriety
was not something that I was holding,
that I was doing,
but I was something
that I was being given.
And that it was,
and that I was a fortunate man.
That something's being given to me
beautiful and good,
and that I'm the same old
self-centered,
immature,
impractical,
frightened person,
who's being held up in sobriety,
and that I'm into something
different,
and it's the most exciting thing
that's ever happened to me in my life.
And it's still going on.
And once that started to become
a kind of a
a little more clear,
I won't even say it was so clear.
It was definite though. It took on some body,
you know. I went way past my
time to get drunk again.
I was a periodic on a three month cycle.
And I knew that
the old pressure wasn't
building up. And I was
hanging out with alcoholics, and I
was feeling
lucky to be sober. I was feeling
graced. And I
got interested on how to
keep
this thing going.
Now I knew I didn't get it going,
but you were telling me
if you happen to notice something
good starting going in your life,
being sober a day at a time,
we have some suggestions on how to
make sure it keeps going.
They're called 12 steps.
12 steps
and hang out with alcoholics.
And do them like a child.
That means you do them earnestly and badly.
Because
if you're any kind of an alcoholic,
you'll be able to criticize your performance
on anything.
You'll notice that you're not doing them perfectly,
and you'll feel terrible about that.
That's part of the therapy.
Um,
if we felt wonderful about every step we did,
we'd be as obnoxious as we were before,
probably, before we came in here.
You also would recover so completely
that newcomers would be afraid of you.
Nobody would talk to you.
But your character defects
are still so glaring that you don't scare
away newcomers for the most part.
You know what I mean.
And that's the most exciting thing
that's ever happened. And that's
basically what's going on right now.
I got to where I started participating
in the program.
And I want to participate in this program.
Uh, I like to go to meetings
and this is the
center of everything that makes sense to me.
It's the most interesting thing
in the world.
A lot of people have their thing about religion
and, um,
let me,
I'm not going to talk about religion,
but I want to talk about my experience
of
getting so excited about finding
really experiencing
God's touch,
as far as I can tell,
through Alcoholics Anonymous.
And people will ask me, well, didn't that kind of make you
feel that
your religion let you down
or isn't this better than church
or something like that?
And I'm sorry it doesn't strike me that way.
It strikes me that, uh,
my higher power
touches me through the 12 steps in this program
and lets me be in
good enough shape to go to church.
Um,
I'm not in good enough shape to go to church
unless I am doing the full program
and, in a sense,
putting it first.
See, when I put the program first,
then I don't have to twist
what I hear in other places.
Um, whenever I take
something back to my old,
to other priests and I'll, uh,
you know, make one of our
AA discoveries about the spiritual
way of life and I'll think, wow,
why didn't I think of this before?
Why, where do they hear about this?
And I go back and tell them.
You know what they always say?
Well, we've always said that.
Every time,
it seems like to me.
Uh, one of the times it tickled
me was that I, I decided there's no
such thing as punishment. I mean, a loving God
doesn't punish people later, do
things to them. Uh, that the
punishment metaphors in
Scripture are metaphors or similes, whatever.
For the,
the very real chaos and
pain and tragedy that results from,
result, the results of our behavior.
When I act in an unloving and destructive
way, it really hurts alright.
Hurts me worse. Uh,
and it puts me in a position where I'm
unable to welcome the good.
And, um, and I went on, I kind of
developed this a little bit and I, I have a
consulting theologian. His name is Frank.
Uh, he's my classmate.
He was the smart guy in class. They sent
to Rome and got a doctorate and taught.
Um, on a graduate level for
years. So I checked things out with Frank.
And I said, um, I
explained this thing where I, I
think there's no such thing as any added punishment later.
Anything that's punishment, it just arises
right out of what we do. And that
since, um, God is love, the only thing
he knows how to do is love. And of course
it's, love is terrible if you're not ready for it.
Ha! Um,
might say if there's anything,
hell is being loved by
somebody you're not, you're, you're
you're not ready to be honest with.
And, um,
I said, so I did this whole
thing and I said, so therefore, I don't think
there's anything, such thing as punishment laid on
somebody later. What do you think
of that?
No, he said,
anybody knows that.
So, I stopped announcing
these eternal truths
and trying to, um,
uh, and I said, come to an AMU
and I'll, I'll introduce you to a few people who don't
know that yet. Um,
uh, you know, a few,
the biggest subgroup in alcoholics,
none of us think of the ex-Catholics.
Anyway, um,
I'm very grateful to be sober.
And this, uh,
uh,
I promise to quit by the time that thing gets done, uh,
but I'm not gonna quit too,
any sooner than that.
Uh,
I wanna say
a thing about carrying the message.
Um,
and this is to, to my fellow
self-centered alcoholics.
If any of you identify with being self-centered
and immature,
I wanna say that
one of the most embarrassing things in the program
to me was finding out
that I wasn't interested in helping anybody.
I thought, you know, for someone
whose profession it is,
um,
we're gonna find out
every place in the big book it says,
you know, we took the steps so that we're
better, better fitted to be of service
to God and our neighbor.
Um, over and over again,
the big book is full of this.
And I thought, and I approve of that.
And I think that's the way to go.
And I was embarrassed to have to admit
that I'm not that interested in it.
Uh, I hope I am someday,
but right now at least I have to get my act together,
become happy, and if I have any time left over,
what the hell, I'll...
Um...
And then as I got in the program,
I noticed that you can,
if you participate in the program and go to meetings
and give your phone number out,
you can't help it, you see.
People will just get you involved somehow.
If you don't fight it off too much,
you will get involved.
And every time I get involved in being of service,
I love it. I like it.
And just hope they don't catch me again
very soon.
Um...
And then if you do more service,
you get hooked up with other people who are of service.
And they're always the ones you like more than them.
I mean, you get along better with people
who are of service,
because they've got kind of a generous spirit.
And they're the other self-centered people
who can't help it, giving service.
It agrees with me so deeply to be of service
that I'm really lucky.
It's so wonderful to be of service.
It makes me feel like a human being,
freed from my self-obsession for a few minutes anyway.
And I'm deeply grateful to my higher power
working with the program that I get to be of service.
And I just can't maintain interest
all by myself in being of service.
And I absolutely need
the structure of this fellowship.
To get trapped into it again.
And I hope I keep getting trapped.
And thank you very much.