Dr. S. and the Allergy Manifested by Mental Compulsion – Marco W.

I drove down yesterday, and if any of you travel up to that part of the country, I certainly understand why anybody would—a little slower pace, maybe. But with that, I'm going to introduce to you our speaker, Marco W., and it's yours. This is quite an amazing thing here. I hope I don't do the same thing I did over in prison one time. In my vote, we don't need speakers. And I wasn't thinking about the speaker on up there at the podium, and I sneezed in that thing. Way back in the back of the room, about 400 guys in there, this great big dude jumped up and said, What the hell? I thought for a minute that was a sneezed part of going back to sleep, it's okay And he did I'm very grateful for that too But I am Mark O. Wood and I am not a pholic And I give my full name in regards to the way Dr. Bates' interpretation of the Lent tradition If you don't use your full name inside the circle of AA You're as much a violation as you are if you get on the air and broadcast it And I kind of believe that's right Some of you are kind of wondering probably where Live Oak, Florida is. The only thing I can tell you to do is go to Lake City and turn left. We're about 30 miles from Georgia. Now, actually we don't live in Live Oak. We live down in a little community 15 miles south called McAlpin. We have a federal building which is a post office and a convenience store And a sweet corn processing plant Actually, I don't live in McAlpin either I live three miles east of McAlpine On what used to be McAlpen Road And I'm sure that makes a great deal of interest to each and every one of you because you know exactly where I'm at now. I was standing out there a while ago, minding my own business, and another fellow comes by, and he's got Marco W. on his shirt. And I said, hey, the speaker has arrived. And he looked at mine, and He said, no, you're the speaker. And we flipped the call on, and as you can see, I lost. We attend a lot of meetings in Georgia, being so close to Him. And we have a Baptist minister in the program there, and he's full of dog stories. I'd like to share a couple of them with you because I think they're pretty humorous. And everywhere he goes, he tells these things. We never had a convention or anything in Georgia up until he got drunk this last time. He was always the boss of a convention because he just crazed a loony bug. And it tells about this fellow who had a big, bad Doberman. It says if you went to the dictionary and looked up the word bad, there'd be a picture of this Dobermann right beside that word. And one day he went down to the barbershop and he tied the big, fat Dober man out back in our alley and we didn't have a haircut. And pretty soon this little meek fellow comes in the door and says, Who's that big, dober man outside belong to? The guy says, mine. What about it? He says, well, he's dead. The guy jumped out the other chair and ran out there and looked, and sure enough that Doberman leg straight up in the air just did as a toenail. He said, you see what happened? He said yes, sir, I did. He said what happened. My dog killed it. He said my God, what kind of dog do you have that killed this big bad Dobermann? He says a chihuahua. How in the world did that chihuahu kill this DoberMAN? He says, I think it's when he got caught in his throat. And another one that I like is not his, but I like it real well. This fellow was out selling vacuum cleaners door to door. And I imagine some of those little minors in this building have done something very similar to that. He used to sell encyclopedias, but you know how heavy a set of encyclopedias are. And he went up to this door and he knocked. He heard a little bloody voice inside that says, come on in. Shook his head and he nodded again. This voice says, Come on in! So he opened the door and stepped into the foyer. He says, Where are you? The little voice says Come on In! He walked over to the living room and said, I still don't see you. The little boy says, C'mon in! and he walked on back into the kitchen and up on the table countertop there sat a parrot in a cage. Looked at the parrot and says, are you what's been calling me? Says, come on in. He looked around for a minute and said, my God, I'm in somebody's house with nobody here except me. The way I'm dressed and everything else is surely a charge of breaking and entering. I better get out of here. And he turned around to go and it was one of those seven-foot German shepherds with a tail straight up in the air and a hackle valve standing up. He thought to himself, my God, what am I going to do now? He looked back around at that car and he says, this is a fine mess you got me into. What have you got to say about this? The car looked at the guy, looked down at the dog, and said, sick him. You know, I'm a firm believer in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been firmly convinced that all answers are there. It's up to me what use I make of it. We were meeting in Georgia one night and Rose Perry was talking to a fellow who says, All the answers are in the big book. Why don't you just look in there for them? And the guy says, Tell me something. What does it say in the Big Book what to fix for supper? She thought about it a minute and she says, It doesn't tell me what to do to fix the supper but it gives me the willingness to fix something. And I think that's the entire purpose of the book. of the book. It teaches us how to do things. This little doctor, Silkworth, is one of the people that I have a great deal respect for. If you don't know about Dr. Silkworth it's said he treated around 40 to 50 thousand alcoholics in his lifetime. He was not an alcoholic himself, he was just crazy as a loony bug to work with that many alcoholics. But Dr. silk work gave us the one thing that made this disease of alcoholism acceptable to me it said i had an allergy manifested by mental compulsion physical craving and once i got to where i could understand what analogy was i could see where it worked that way and you think back in your own life you'll see it too but all of a sudden i discovered that if i didn't take a drink i didn't have the problem but when i took one drink or two drinks the allergy developed itself the mental obsession and physical craving took over and i was often doomed again i'm always being very grateful that he put his little forward in here he's got one little simple paragraph here it tells my story just as good as anything in the world says many women drank essentially because of like the effect produced by alcohol and that was me i would drink anything there was it didn't make any difference to me you know it's amazing when you think back on some of the things we drink like homemade peach brandy dipping a book and worms out of it so you can drink it and saying ah that's good stuff buying moonshine if you spill some on the car or rustic paint and you sit there and drink it what we were looking for what i was looking for was the effect produced by alcohol that's the only thing i care about Since they so lose it while they admit his injuries, they cannot have the time to break the truth from the false. I knew it was harming me, but I didn't care. You see, I was different. It wouldn't happen to me. And not know the truth and the false? How many times did we, when we were having blackouts, somebody tell us we did something, we just agreed with them? Relative harder. We didn't know. I remember towards the end of my drink and we had a radio on top of the headboard of the bed now Rosemary was in the program three years before I was so she's supposed to have a little sanity and I wake her up one night and I say that damn radio is playing she got up looked at it and says the radio is not playing and went back to sleep I woke her up again and I said that radio is a plan I can hear she got out of bed unplugged it got back in bed went to sleep I woke her up a little bit later and I said that damn radio is playing classical music now she got it out of the bed took the radio in the kitchen and left it in there went back to sleep and I wanted desperately to tell her one more time I could still hear that radio but I didn't dare and that was the end of that And if I was only a one-tay case thing, it wouldn't be so bad. But it wasn't the only time. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. Would you trust someone that didn't drink? I'd get all of my business down at the bar. That's the only place I had to get in business. You know, I think back when I got in the program, I got a lot of business in the bar, but I don't remember ever getting any money. Maybe a few beers or a fifth of whiskey to drink while we're doing the work, and that was it. But it was the only normal way to live. I didn't know any other way of living. It was the way to live. They are restless, irritable, and discontented unless they can again experience a sense of ease and comfort once comes at once by taking a few drinks. Drinks which you see always taken with impunity like that restless irritable discontent is called the RID disease and you see somebody well I have to be a disease around most of them frozen mariposa sure he'll tell us what's wrong with you got the Ridd disease your rest was irritable and discontented and the only way to rid yourself other when I was drinking was to take a couple more drinks and it seemed to go away and then was we assumed to desire again and phenomenal craving developed in the past three well-known stages of supreme very remorseful firm resolution not to bring again and this repeated over and over unless this person can experience an entire second change there is very little hope of his recovery an entire psychic change i wasn't i was an alcoholic's anonymous almost six months before i began to have this entire psychic changed it took me that long to begin to develop and until until that happened. I had nothing at all I liked. I liked the dictionary's definition of psychic, pertained to mind, body and soul. Then I came to AA out of the hills of Virginia where moonshine was very popular. It was the only income a lot of people up there had. And if you chop a little firewood for them when you were a boy and do some other errands for them, you could have all you wanted to to drink. So actually I broke in on Moonshine, and it moved on to other things. I came out of a good family. It's the kind that breeds alcoholics, it seems like. Have you ever heard anyone get up there and say I came out of bad family? But I did come out of good family, we went to church every Sunday. And until I got too big for the peach tree to convince me to go, I went but I soon found out about booze and girls that makes a world of difference but growing up I had brought up a lot of behavioral principles which I considered if I would do these things I won't ever do it that way again I'll stop right then and there and I think all of us have always said one time in all if I were to drink like old Joe I'd stop drinking tomorrow and if you're like me you became old Joe i always said if i lose time on a job i'll stop drinking tomorrow if i ever lose a job from drinking i'll start drinking tomorrow well i lost time on the job but it was all right because i worked daggone hard when i was there and i was entitled to it i lost two jobs from drinking and i wasn't proven about three years before i could accept the fact that i had lost jobs i know it was far it just jobs wouldn't have been more paychecks the first one was from Paramount Theatres and that was a sense of omission that got me out of that one and if I hadn't been drinking I wouldn't have allowed things to happen that happened the second one I'd gotten a job as night fire chief in Fulton, Kentucky and I slept through a fire call one night I'm going to tell you, they get huffy as hell about that. You see, I was down there by myself. And what amazes me to this day, there was a six-inch siren about three foot away from my head of bed, and I don't know how I missed that thing, but I did. I'll never forget that the mayor the next morning told the fire chief, he said, you tell that guy he will stay up all night with those fire trucks so he can go find himself another job. But I want to tell you, I taught him a lesson right then and there. I moved out that very day. So I'm very big in teaching lessons to somebody. But Friday would have been payday, and I went by there, and I didn't have any paycheck, and there was an old guy sitting out there with those fire engines. Now, who got taught the lesson? I did. If I lose my personal cleanliness, I'll stop drinking tomorrow. I'm not Mr. Clean today, but I'm a whole lot better than I used to be, I wantto tell you that. I used to carry my clothes to a little laundromat down in Dunedin, and they would throw them up and put them in a little package for me and I'd come pick them up. And I went in one day and there was a note on top of it. Mr. Wood, if you can't manage to change your underwear more often, you must refuse to do your laundry. I taught them a lesson too, I didn't carry my laundry there anymore. I was very new in the program and thinking I was entirely different from everybody. I heard a lady speaking one night that she had been in a drying out place, you might say, in someone's bedroom. That's where you dry it out in someone bedroom in those days. And she saw something over the corner standing up, and she couldn't figure out what in the world that was. She didn't know what it looked like. It was her bra. It was so filled with dirt that it was standing up in the corner, and I thought to myself, uh-huh, there's somebody I can relate to. I understand what they're talking about. If I ever go to jail, I'll stop drinking tomorrow. You know, after the first time, it ain't so bad. You go on to the routine, you know all the things that are going to happen. There's only one thing I don't understand. I haven't been in jail now in a long time, 30-some years. and i hope they're a lot better than what they used to be i never understood the philosophy of locking up a guy who was drunk and he would get sober and be thirsty as hell there's no drinking water except in a commode i never understand that philosophy i never get the first time first or second time i had to go and i started over that commode and let's get out of the damn water fountain so i knew what was going on in there and i hope they have corrected that if i will take the morning drink i'll stop drinking tomorrow that was one of the last principles i let go of because i knew about these people took morning drinks they were alcoholics bad drunks and the morning i took that drink i had to take two or three times to get it stay down but when it stayed down i felt so fine so good i wasn't restless irritable and discontented anymore even And I went around all day kicking myself. Why in the hell have I been depriving myself of this? Well, how about that time someone told me, says you take a beer and open it and set it in the truck overnight and the next morning you drink that and you won't have a hangover. And I did that a couple times. I did it about five or six times. six times. I got two roaches and that ended at that. But they were happy roaches, I want you to know that. If I'll drink below my social level, I'll stop drinking tomorrow. That wasn't where my social love was. I can't tell you what the heck it was. But any of you from Clearwater, I'd like to know one thing. I've got a bar, the nastiest bar on the north side cool water that there is and you know what kind of bars are up in that end of town and i never knew what i did about six or seven years ago i found out those merc finally got honest enough to talk one time talked about being kicked out of that place and all right away i figured out i was part of the package deal but we do keep drinking with somebody that we can feel superior to and that's what i was looking for someone i could feel superior too it didn't matter who were if i would drink wine i'll stop drinking tomorrow right this minute i had a brother drank wine many of you know my brother he was woody woods and i knew what wine did to you and so i tried a little bit of it and it did exactly what i thought it did it made you drunk and it cost a whole lot less than whiskey and so i became a good wine drinker i don't want any of you in the room to get the idea i was a wino because i was not i never bought cheap wine in my entire life i never paid less than 59 cents a fifth in my life I've tried your exotic drinks. I don't think there's any way in hell you can make canned heat or sterno fit in a drink. But it'll do for you anything you want it to do, plus some. I drank vanilla extract, and I never understood why the manufacturers didn't put it up in bigger bottles than they did because it just wasn't big enough that way. I didn't like hair tonic. I tried it a few times. I never could stomp that. That was just too slippery and slimy going down. I didn' t know about mouthwash. I didn''t know about shoe polish. But if I had known it, I would have drank it. You see, I drank vanilla and sterno because I could steal it. You don' t want to open a grocery store and stick that stuff in your pocket and walk out. I've been debating with myself whether I should mention vanilla extract in talking now. There's a little girl up in Georgia just coming off of a drunk. And just before she went on this drug, she'd been in the program several years and she had some personal problems and gave into them. I was giving her talk when I was talking about drinking vanilla extract And when she came back off this drunk in a meeting one night, I heard her saying, I've never done a lot of things that I've heard people talking about. She says, I have drank vanilla extract now. I hope it won't give anyone the idea that it's a good thing to drink. But there's a hell of a lot better than sterno if you've got to drink some of that stuff. Post-life went on and all these behavioral principles went away. They all changed. I had changed, so therefore these things no longer applied in my life. And besides, I wasn't near as bad as my brother. I wasn'T near as old Joe over there or anybody else. We moved to Florida to buy a bar in Arizona with my brother We figured we'd get it wholesale. It was just a beer bar. And that's a very clever thing, isn't it? If somebody can't find a place to stop drinking, you're going to buy the bar. I drove down from Kentucky into O'Zona and asked my brother, he says, where are we getting the down payment for this thing? He says, how much money you got? And I says, none. How much you got, he said, the same amount. He said, you see that little fat yank that's sitting on the end of the bar? Well, he did put down payment down on all of it. And I stayed in there for a year in that bar. And this was a honky-tonk. It was not anything but a honky-tonk. That's all it was. But at the end of the year, I had to quit because I couldn't stand working with a drunk. And I considered him a fine drunk, and I didn't have to work around his foolishness. And I began the migratory system again. I've always experienced the geographical tours all of my life. I'd move one side of town or the other just to get away from where I was at. You move out on one side of town from Joe's Bar, you get on the other side of town, you found that Brother Tom's got one over there. And I'd have moved from town to town and those dudes was following me. And i took that up down in from Ozark. Safety Harbor, Clearwater, I don't know this name, Oldsmark, every little town around there until my welcome was worn out. And it seemed like the local police all around had taken a great liking to my vehicle as a matter of fact is what you might call a drunk car if i hadn't had a group car i could have probably drank several more years you know what a drunk card is don't you every time you see your tool down the street i had a 54 cadillac every time i see a pit bull cadillack i just imagine all radios in county hopping on the cat max out just watching let's get him i got stopped three times in two weeks Fortunately back then we didn't get charged like you do today. I only got one reckless driving out of the whole deal. And it was because I knew somebody, they knew somebody and we knew somebody. And they'd either take me home or send me home. But I got to thinking this is not good. What I need to do, I'm 32 years old, what I need is a bride. And so I went out looking for a bride I don't know where you people would go looking for a wife at, but I went to the bar. I walked into Woody's place one night, and over top of the jukebox was a real tight pair of green pants. A whispered wind couldn't have gotten in those pants. And I asked my brother, I says, who in the world is that? He knows I didn't make that same mistake again. One time I said, what is that thing? And I never lived that down. Who is that? She says, I don't know what her name is, but she comes up here and she's with so-and-so. And being as I'm very honorable to those drunks, all honorable, I wouldn't say anything to her at night because she was with somebody else. But life has a way of getting us together. A couple weeks later we were having a barbecue up at the house. And we decided to drive down to Woodies Bell a few beers about five miles down there while the fire was getting hot. you know we drive down have a couple of beers and drive back if i'd be just right by the way the fire was just right it had gone out completely and while he's down there the fellows with nick kept asking rosemary and the fellow she was whipped says come on up meet some steak moves and i kept telling us not enough and he got kind of listening here listen to that he says if it isn't enough i'll stop preparing get something i said i'm not worried about the damn steaks i'm worried about whiskey we don't have enough but they came they came and you know alcohol has a strange way of changing the person's personality it wasn't long before her boyfriend wanted to go and rosemary didn't want to go i was later to find out that she didn't go nowhere until she was completely satisfied saturated well whatever you said you know full saturated that's what it is and i lean over to him and says let him go and i'll take you home and i did four months later we got married and not for the reason y'all are thinking either it's so we could get some rest We were staying out until 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning drinking And now I was getting up at 7 o' clock to go to work And we had to get married or else I would have died We were married in November On New Year's Eve Rosemary announced that she was going to stop drinking Because she conceded her drinking Was going to interfere with our marriage and i said what about me she says you can go ahead and drink it you want to and i drank for two more weeks and i stayed stopped for six and a half years not in aa but just stopped and i thought that's all it was to it you don't drink i didn't know that i had to have a personality change a psychic change for anything good to happen to come out of it i want to tell you that was six and quarter years the worst misery i've had in my life how can you tell somebody a crazy as hell to drink that stuff i came home one night and she was up in the beer i came on and earlier she says i don't know what it was none anyway she said came home really she just opened the beer she turns out and then says i just put this down the store i wonder what it tastes like do you want some of it i said yeah she went back still and got us one piece she went went back to the store and got a six-pack. And by that time, she would drink Bush, and I would drink Budweiser. She brought us a six pack of each. And I'll never forget the night because we were sitting there talking that, you know, we've been a little bit stiff and formal in our marriage. I said, what we need is just a few drinks of alcohol to get things back like they used to be. And we agreed on that. And tonight's the night, friends. The only thing I remember about the night was that we had a fight I got drunk and passed out. If you don't believe in the absence of alcohol continuing to grow in your system, believe me it does. It is very progressive. The book tells us that alcohol isn't as progressive as it is. And I continued to deteriorate. In about two years Rosemary decided she'd had enough she was gonna go to AA and I think it was time she was going because she had decided to kill me. And so I went along with that decision very well. I never forget that night. She was mad because I wasn't home when I was supposed to be or something. I don't know. I wasn' t somewhere, no. And she comes in later and we had a big rip-roaring fight and she told me she was going to AA and I told her I didn' t give a damn. She went to hell in a rowboat. And I didn't. The next morning I got up and she was sitting in the chair and said didn't you go to bed last night she says no i was afraid to go to bed i'm afraid i wouldn't know where i was when i woke up this morning that's part of her story but it's also part of mine and i said well okay and i went to work and she did go to aa a few people wasn't going to wasn't her mind down there and accused me of being an alcoholic she called my brother to go i knew he'd bring her home i went down to the store and i got me a a quart of beer. I never drank quarts in my life, but I got a quart and frosted up some glasses. And when she came in, I'd be sitting there drinking out of a frosted glass, and she'd already told my brother all this stuff, and he'd look at me and say, I don't see any problem here, go home. But you people don't know when to end the damn meetings. About 11.30, here they come dragging up to the house. There's a couple quart bottles laying around on the floor, some tin cans, and half a bottle of whiskey, I believe it was, sitting there. My brother sticks his head in and says, how are you doing? I said, I'm doing fine. He said, well, I can see that. Turned around and left. I thought, uh-huh. They told her what to say. And I turned around and gave her my best glare. She yawned right in my face and says I'm tired. I'm going to bed. I stayed up all damn night worrying about that. and she went to the meeting and one night she came home and told me when I went to AA I thought it was because of you that you were an alcoholic I said hey tell me down there I'm the alcoholic and you're probably just a heavy drinker and I agreed with her wholeheartedly but it's just like being in a car race you ever notice at a car racing after the wreck everybody's running around the track very peacefully on yellow and as soon as the wreck is cleared away they drop the green flag and all hell breaks loose again and when she told me that that was my green flag and everything went up in a hurry things happened to be in that the next two years that had never ever happened to me before the progressives of alcoholism have been too fierce for me all the way through we moved to pasco county from blue water we were having a family discussion one night i don't know how y'all have family discussions but the only way i know to do them is have them wide open whoever yells the loudest wins and she said something about she had to go to a meeting and i said i think i'll go with you have you ever said anything that you just like to reach out and grab your words and pull them back in and i couldn't quite reach them and i went to the meeting and when i had the white chips passed time, I wouldn't take one. But I want you people to know that I was a great intellect anyway because I said, I want to think about it for a week and see if I'm really an alcoholic or not. And they all thought that was a splendid idea except Rosemary. And what I was going to think of is if I didn't drink all week, I didn' t eat come this damn thing. And I made the Tuesday from Friday to Tuesday and I had to come and I began a six month so darn in drinking it and going to meetings I don't advise anyone to do it but I did this is part of my story I didn't get a thing out about how looks enormous you might say the only thing I learned has say with a I learned how spell they ate, you might say. Rosemary was searching for things, and she found out about a meeting down here in Tampa. What's that? Port Hatton Street? Poptown Street? And we went down there, and the two people that talked that night were here. They were not married at the time. Very shortly after that, they got married, and I heard them talking. And they were talking about being from Brooksville, and they went to meetings in Dade City. And I didn't put two and two together, but very shortly I did because come Monday night, Rosemary decided we ought to go to Dade City to a meeting. That one of the people is one I could relate to real well. The other one I thought was an egotistical SO, you know what I mean. But I'll tell you what this fellow did for me. He made me get sober to spying. Him and an old fellow by the name of Pete who had moved down here from up north. That was the morning we were going across the St. Leo's. Beautiful hilly spot up that way. It was really early one Sunday morning. The fire was rising up that little pond. And it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. The sun coming up over the citrus trees. And I stopped the car and I very silently said to myself, God, either let me drink in peace or else let me quit. I don't know if I quit that day, the next day or not, but it was right then and there that I quit. And I took August 17, 1972 as my date to begin AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. You see, that's the first time that I had a knowledge to God. Then I had to begin studying this book, get out what you people had in this program. You know, I don't think the first group we went to is the best group there is in A.A., and I guess it is because of one that finally got us sober, but I found out three years that all groups are good if my mind is right. This program was expressed to me in terms of the Big Probe. We didn't talk about opinions and things like that. to talk about solutions. And they told me that my problem was my sanity, and I think that they were right on that. You see, I had to admit that I was an alcoholic and was powerless over alcohol, and my life had become unmanageable. And this unmanagability of my life is what created the insanity in me, and how long it took me to solve that problem. There's a lot things that i learned from the book but i'm not alone it tells me in there about we're people who would not normally mix and i think it's very true most rooms if you look at the person next to you would you drink about rascal most of us wouldn't have drank that person next to us but in aaa we have a common bond a common grid and we work from that i didn't believe i have any more belief in god because i made a deal with god years ago leave me alone i'll leave you alone and it's still an effect in the egg and someone told me let's go home and read the chapter to the agnostic he said if you don't find your higher power of god there you'll never find it anywhere and then studying that chapter i found one paragraph on page 47 that talks about says we're going to call it god you can call it anything you want to more or less but we're gonna call it God and it made a lot of sense to me i can call it everything i want to and i called it higher power for a long time and to build up came on speaking terms with God a little bit forward tells us that the great reality is deep down within each and every one of us only there you may be found it was just so with us. And that's exactly where my God resides today, is deep down within me. The God in me slips the God inside of you and that's the way everything works for that. If you're new in the program and you're just starting out with a big book, may I suggest you only read the black part. Don't do like me and waste years reading the white part it doesn't change any at all. They tell me the problem was I was drunk and my life was screwed up, and the solution was in the second step. I came to believe a pyrogram was going to restore me to sanity. And I found the solution right there. I didn't realize it was going to take me all the way down through nine steps to get it solved and get that unmanaged built out of my life, but it did. I have a little thing in there they call the fourth step. Everyone who's done the fourth step thinks how easy and simple it is after you have done it. And I'm the same way. But it was the most fearful thing I ever faced, I think, was having to think about that fourth step. I finally wound up doing it the way the book talks about. I tried every way in the world. I wrote out long essays. I made little outlines of it. I did everything you can and all of it was lies. I know I'd write the first step out and I'd look at it and read it and I said, Marco, that's you exactly. And I'd lay it up. I'd pull it down in about two weeks and look at It and say, my God, what a crock of lies this thing is. I must have written seven or eight of those things and did the same thing to all of them. I've been pulling them almost five years before I got a full step that I considered honest enough that I could take into life. And I'm sure there's some stuff left out of that, but it doesn't matter. You see, it doesn'T matter how many times I stole. I'm a thief anyway. If I steal one time or a thousand times, I'm still a damn thief. If you run around once, you're just as good as any other time. You're unfaithful. So it doesn' t make any difference at all. It's not a ballpark scorecard, and that's what I had to overcome. and the big book described very well exactly what I had to end it for but I wanted to make all kinds of things because I was different we come along and get to the fifth step and I didn't mind telling myself it sounded a lot different when I read it out loud to myself than it did when I was pregnant and I still agreed that it was okay and I told God I know that God knows everything that goes on but when I told God then God knows that I know and to me that was important but I wasn't going to ever tell a non-human being when they had discussion of the fifth step what I would do is I'd talk about the first two parts and pass on because it was getting late God doesn't work that way he put me in a position of having to do the fifth steps I was working in a church one day the preacher came in and said Marco come down here I want to talk to you I went down and talked to him. Before I knew it, I was doing the fifth step with the man. Then I stopped and told him what I was going to do and asked him if he was okay. He says, fine. I knew you wanted to talk about something. I just didn't know what. And I just knew it was going shot this man something fierce. And I'll tell you, it kind of upset him for a little while. Either he didn't show a little regret or remorse about it somewhere along the way, but he just looked at me like it was an everyday event. And thinking back on it today, it wasn't an everyday even because it was my life. that's all there was to it and so therefore i did the fifth step this gave me the word works to go into the six and seven eight from nine today i try to live on 10th 11th and 12th i've been around 23 years i want to tell you i can still step on toes sometimes and i think the worst sin that i can make these days and one that i most frequently make it's a sin of omission i'm not doing something that i should have and to me that's an amendment needs to be made because i was expected to do this now i like the way they put this test step made amends immediately at once i don't mean go home think about them for a week or two but we'll do them do them now now. It's a hard pill to take, but it's necessary. The 11-step prayer and meditation, as soon as the fellows explained to me exactly what meditation was, I was all right there. He told me, this fellow is not polite like most of y'all that are in here. He says, you dumb idiot, all you got to do is sit down and be quiet and listen. Shut up that big trap of yours. Maybe you'll learn something." And I started meditating by just listening, and I can hear. You see, God greatly alters deep down inside of me, and my conscious talks to me. I want to tell you, if you don't believe in it, just try your conscious one time. Do something a little bit around to see what your conscious tells you. It gets my attention real, real quick. The 12-step is not as popular as it once was because now we have become taxi drivers. We've given up our birthright, friends. Not too long ago, a fellow came to a meeting and says, I had a 12-stepped call last night. He said, why don't you bring me to the meeting tonight? He said we don't give out a detox in three more days. We're taxi cab drivers, but we wouldn't always that way. We used to go out and physically seat people. If it ever comes back that way, which it might in the state of Florida be because they're cutting out an awful lot of funding, I want all of you to remember one thing that this old coot's going to tell you. Always have someone that you're working with, a pigeon, because when a 12-step call comes in, you call him up and tell him to come over and get you, and we'll go out in 12 12-step this fall. Because you don't want nobody puking in your car. And I want to tell you one thing, that's one of the better things they do. I wish we still had the 12-step call, because I think people need to hear people that have played the game describe how it was and what it was. One of those things, a lot of soapboxes, a whole lot of young people in the program here today. I'm on a soapbox with one thing right now. Let's keep the old timer involved. How many meetings do you go through if the old-timer is not there? Friends, this is Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a primary purpose to carry the message to other alcoholics. Give the old-timers something to do and keep them in there because we need them. And I come here and see all these people that 37, 38, 40 years on their chest makes me think, thank my God, I've got something to shoot for. It's going to be there. Today, I am capable and able to do anything that I want to. I could load up in my little fine little truck yesterday and drive down to Tampa. I was going to stop in Ocala for the car races last night, but it looked like God had other plans for me. He thought I needed to be in Tampa, I guess, because it looked blacker and all get out of there and I guess they had a pretty good storm up there, so I came over here to camp. And you know, we never know when we don't plan what's going to happen because anything can happen. Last night we went to a fine meeting up at the Flannan Lakes. We had extra excitement of the fire alarm going off. I mean, the burglar alarm going out and couldn't anyone turn it off. The lights went out, and I only felt two hands on me while the light was out. But we've got to do the things that we like to do these days. We went to the Greek Fest yesterday afternoon. Last night after the meeting, we had some Italian food. And this morning, we have some Spanish food. And now we go back to grits. But this is what this program will allow you to do. Anything that it is. Capital AA Alcoholics Anonymous Smell AA Attitude Adjustment and that's exactly what this program does you know it's a big thick book we've got here and you think it'd be four five six chapters devoted on how not to drink you ever thought about the fact there's only one placement book tells you what to do about drinking doctor tells you don't don't do it told absence is only cure no place to talk a little bit about it and what this entire book is based on is a plan to live a plan of recovery a plan up life and that's what i like about the program we get many many rewards that we do not deserve i heard heard ken talking about he took amtrak to san diego He took Amtrak back home. Had a wonderful time doing that. We had the opportunity to visit Dr. Baum's house up in Akron, Ohio. If you ever get the opportunity please go up there because if you get the same feeling I got it'll make your trip work well. The Baum's House, and I want to tell you that was a night that I'll never forget. We were upstairs near Fibonacci trying to sleep. I couldn't sleep and I went downstairs I read everything in that building that I could find to read. I'm a history nut anyway, I'm bluffing it. And I found things that I never knew existed in Alcoholics Anonymous. This is just some of the fringe benefits. It's funny how these days work out. We went in there and they volunteered us a man-in-house that day. They told him, says, we need three things. We need a meeting for the night. We need good place to eat tonight. And we need to see Dr. Bob's historic trail. He said, I'll tell you what we'll do. He says, I'm going to close up here in a couple of hours and just hang around. And I'll take you around and show you Dr. Bob's places. So I call up my wife and we'll go out and eat tonight. And I call out my pigeon and he'll take me to a meeting. And how would you like to stay here? I couldn't get over the feeling of that. We didn't have the police in the least place that we expected to find him. His pigeon was a nice little Jewish lawyer for a nice present person. and he gave me some things on the history of AA that are probably available absolutely nowhere else except after a while. It was a fine trip. This is the things that happens just because I'm sober. Can you imagine what would happen if I were doing that drunk? They probably wouldn't let me in, would they? Today Rosemary and I will be married 33 years for a very few days. And I would have been on two days, two years back in the beginning. And I don't think she would have either. AA has made it possible. We have done a lot of institutional work down through the years. And I met a fellow today that was in one of the institutions that we worked in, Hamilton County, Florida. and he comes up and tells me I've got over three years in the program doesn't that make it worthwhile you see what our program has done, he found a solution he's no longer a minister to society he's not a burden on society he's a taxpaying citizen and so am I but it took me a long time to get around that this program will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Because God will do it if you allow him to be part of your program. For my God, I am nothing. But with God, I can do anything that's necessary. What I'm going to do now is I'm gonna sit down and maybe we'll get something to eat. Thank you.