Dr. S. and the Humility of the DTs – Keith L.

Thank you. My name is Keith Lewis. I'm an alcoholic. I really want to thank Cliff and Steve and Jim and everybody who had anything to do with inviting me here. It's really something to be a star in an anonymous organization. It doesn't count for much, does it? uh i um i really look forward to doing this um step studies and step retreats have been very important to me in my my time in the fellowship i uh uh i got sober in washington dc and uh and they have a particular type of meeting there that i always found useful and that is uh they would have one person who was sober five years or longer drone on about one step for an hour. They'd go about 50 minutes, and then they would take questions for about 10 minutes. And it was really nice because it was the kind of meeting that you could go to or if you were sponsoring a new guy, you could take a new guys to and just sit and listen. And they had a couple meetings like that, and they were always like six steps apart. So you could call around and say, what's going on at the Presbyterian Center or, you know, what's gone on out at College Park or what step are they on? And if you had a new guy and they were in the first couple steps, you could drag them out there and get them started. And there's something nice about sitting there being able to listen and not have to think about what you might want to say so that you'll appear to be brilliant. Of course, that wouldn't happen here because I can tell already there's too much humility in this room for something like that. How many guys we have in the First Year of Sobriety? Can I ask? Good. That's really, really great. I congratulate you. Of course, there's probably not a lot of congratulations necessary. You've probably been run out every place else, haven't you? You know, when the good brother was talking, I was struck by the fact that they opened this place before our big book was published. And I'm always reminded that people carried these messages long before it came together in something called Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's one of the things that I like to think about a lot, that this all didn't happen in 1935, really. It had been happening for hundreds and maybe thousands of years before that. But the miracle that happened in 1936 was that two guys got together and needed one another. And that's what's sort of interesting about knowledge. You know, we can have the knowledge, But one day, we need another human being. And that's when it happened. You know, everybody knows this story, but Bill W. had a profound spiritual awakening. I mean, he's laying in bed. You know? He's been in DTs. I mean? It has not been a good week. And his wife and her brother are making plans to lock him up for the rest of his life. And he has a spiritual awakening! I mean, God comes in the form of a bright light. And when the light left, Bill was at peace. And he called Dr. Silkworth in. Dr. silkworth must have been an amazing man. Talk about humility, you know? Can you imagine a guy calling me in and saying, I've been in DTs for a week. And he says, I think God visited me. I'd say, right, keep coming back or something like that. But, you know, Dr. Silkworth was great. He said the only thing that you could say to someone who's an alcoholic and that is that, you're better than you were. You're better then you were and I think that as much as anything that's the basis of Alcoholics Anonymous. But, Bill had this thing. It was given to him. He had a profound spiritual awakening and it resulted in a personality change. Now, you can argue whether or not you'd want the personality to change to. I mean, there's a lot of controversy about that. But the fact remains is that something very special happened to him and he had it and he was going to go out and give it away and he tried to give it away for about six months. You know this story. The only guy who stopped drinking was the guy who stuffed his head in Bill's oven and committed suicide. All the rest of them kept drinking and then one day in Ohio, in Akron, Ohio where life begins is in Ohio But the Garden of Eden was in Ohio. You probably don't know that. It was. But I'll tell you where I'm from later. But that day, Bill didn't have anything to give away. But Bill needed another alcoholic. And that's when Alcoholics Anonymous began. When a guy who had his spiritual awakening needed another guy. And I always think about that. I did a 12-step call on a guy in a hospital a week ago Friday. And it always astounds me when I watch that thing happen to a new guy. Here's a guy laying in bed. It was really good for me for a number of reasons, but I never get tired of watching that thing happening in people's eyes. Not when you're telling them about them, but when you tell them about you. And I was telling him about me. And he just came alive. And, you know, a couple days later I drove him home. I visit him every day. And then a couple of days later, I drove them home. You know, he's living in a house with no electricity. You know the usual stuff. Just a good drunk ready to get sober. And he's the same age I am. I'm 52 years old and he's 52 years. And at the same time, I was a student at Georgetown University. He was a students at Howard University. We lived in the same city. we drank in the same bootleg joints on 14th street I mean we had so much in common and for some reason 22 almost 23 years ago I needed you and you were there and he didn't I mean I don't understand that and I don' t know if he'll stay sober or not I hope he will I've taken him to a bunch of meetings and other people have too and I really hope he'll say he'll be sober but then again that's not up to me that's up to God But one day I needed you desperately. And I needed him. You know, I needed to... I had a lot of other things I'd rather have been doing but nothing that I needed to do but pick him up and take him to meetings and that sort of thing. And that's where the whole thing comes from. But, you know, if you look back and I'm going to get to this chapter pretty soon honestly, but I just think that the background and the foundation of this is so very important that it happened when it happened where it happened. And the people who knew nothing about alcoholism who put the bricks in. There's a guy named Ambrose Bierce. Anybody ever heard of AmbrOSE Bierce? An amazing man, Bierce, he was a father of pragmatic philosophy. I used to go up to Hopkins where they have all his papers and I'd read his papers. And AmbrOS Bierce came up with a philosophy that William James jumped on. You know, and William James wrote the book Varieties of Religious Experiences with Bill Wilson and the Oxford group members, early Oxford group numbers seized upon. We said that there's a lot of ways to get there. And all these things sort of fell together. Ambrose Bierce, for those of you who don't know him, was an interesting man. He used to... I think he might have been one of us because he used to go up this mountain every day to write. And evidently there were a variety of ways you could go upthis mountain. and what he'd do is he'd take a little vino up there so we'd know he at least drank alone and he'd take his cheese and bread and wine up there and one night he fell asleep and woke up and it was dark and he said I better get off this mountain and then he said but if I go the wrong way I'll step off the side of this cliff and I'll die and then He said I'm not going anywhere I'm going to stay right here and then he realized the truth of his situation and that is if he made no decision he'd decide to die evidently he made a right decision because he got back and wrote about it but he made the decision that day that to make no decision would be to die and I can't tell you how many guys in the 20 plus years I've been around who I've watched not make a decision and and and i like to say to them that and if you're if somebody here isn't going to make a decision i'd like to Say that to not make a decision is to make a decision to lose so i hope that one of the things that that we do this weekend is is make some decisions about some actions that we're going to take particularly the guys who are kind of new or the guys Who have been around for a while and haven't done anything with the 8th and 9th step. That's their big bugaboo for the people who have been around for a while. You know, the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous said that we came to believe we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. And that's really... If you read... If you go to The Doctor's Opinion and read In A Doctor's opinion it says a very, very important statement It talks about the necessity for us to have a profound spiritual awakening. And what it says is that we start off warped, to use Bill's terminology, warped as a result of this malay we have which damns us to continue to drink. It says, This repeated over and over and unless the person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. On the other hand and strange as it may seem to those who do not understand once a psychic change has occurred the very same person who seemed doomed who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol. The only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules. And that's the great miracle I think of Alcoholics Anonymous. Somewhere along the line, for everybody who's sober for any length of time, this miracle happens. This psychic change occurs. and I think of I was one of these people who quit drinking every morning anybody like that in there? I'd quit drinking every morning you know and I mean I'd drive down the southwest freeway headed into the hospital where I worked and there were some mornings I'd be so depressed I'd cry and I'd pound on a steering wheel and I would say tonight I'm not going to drink tonight I'm going to go right home from work I'm gonna play with the kids I'll take them to the playground and then I'm going to have dinner with the family like I've seen people do on TV. Tonight, I'm going to give the kids a bath and read them a bedtime story and say their prayers and I'll put them in bed and I'm not going to chase their mother around the apartment. Tonight, I'm not going to do what I do every other night. And I mean, I'd pound on the steering wheel and I'd cry and I swear and I do all sorts of things. And you know, at 430 or 5 o'clock that afternoon, I would be in Clyde's or Chadwick's or someplace I'd be working on my second or third drink wondering what I was so excited about that morning and I'd say things like your problem is you're working too hard they're killing you, you've got all this responsibility, you're workin', you're goin' to school, my god, you got two kids you got a wife who's nuts you'll go home tonight and she'll be crazy and then the next morning I'd been pounding on the steering wheel again and I did that year in and year out amazing phenomenon the only time I varied it at all was when I forgot to go home and then I'd wake up someplace else and swear I wasn't going to drink that day and in one day all that was changed one day I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's all changed and that can't happen but of course it did what had happened was as a result of just being with you 24, 48, 72 hours created the beginning of a psychic change in me which made changes that couldn't have been made before. It's an amazing phenomenon. And it all goes to, I think, one simple thing. And that's the first step. And that is complete powerlessness. Complete and utter powerlessness holding back nothing. It's amazing, amazing phenomenon You know, all my life I spent and people try to talk me into the fact that I was strong enough to not drink you were a marine I used to say I was a marine, I was six feet tall and I've been sick, it's a lie I was a little marine is what I was and people say to me you went through the Marine Corps and if you can do that you cannot drink and the whole idea was somehow if I can gather enough strength I can drive past Clyde's and Chadwick's. You know, at least for one day. I mean that was the whole idea was if I just get enough strength my car is going to zoom right past her and I'll give those bars a finger or something because I'll beat them. And the fact of the matter was that could never happen for me because I'm an alcoholic. And I'll tell you the way I envision the first step. Okay, and if this helps you, fine. I believe that being an alcoholic means that I have to drink again. That's what being an alcoholic means to me, okay? I have a disease called alcoholism and I must drink again unless there's a miracle. And that's where you come in. And the way this thing works is I kind of picture a drink out ahead of me. And if there's anybody here who's sort of in their first few days of recovery or something like that, if you're like me, the drink's about five minutes ahead of you. You know? and and uh but then there are some guys here who've been sober for three months well that drink might be a week out ahead of you you know and and the point is is that the longer you're sober the more meetings that we go to the more work that we do the further out we push that drink and this has sort of been my experience and you know when i came into this thing that drink was like five minutes ahead of me and if i ever catch up to the drink i'll drink it because you See, I'm powerless over alcohol. So out there is a drink with my name. It says Keith's Drink. I don't know what it is. Might be a martini. Could be a beer. Could be wine. A wine cooler. I never had one of those. I had Ripple. I never Had a Wine Cooler. But it's got my name on it. And you know, I go to a lot of hospitals and places and talk to guys and they'll say, I don' t know what happened. I don''t know what happend. I didn' t want a drink. I just drank. And I say, Well, I know exactly what happened You caught up to the drink with your name on it. Very, very simple. And if you catch up to their drink with their name on it, you'll drink it. If I catch up to the drinks with my name on them, I'll drink it. I went on a 12-step call not long ago. The old business, pouring out booze, 12-stepped call, one of those. I leave there and always feel like I ought to go to an Al-Anon meeting. But I wasn't interested in that booze because that boozy didn't have my name on it, that was his booze. But if I ever catch up to the drinking with my own name on it i'll drink it because and the reason i know that's true is i've watched hundreds of guys do maybe thousands of guys to it i 12 step a guy who's whose uh stories in a big book and i 12 stepped him so i know dat you catch up to a drink with your name on it you'll drink it that's what being powerless is all about and the only chance i have are to do the things that pushes that drink out ahead of me and you know for you guys have been around a fellowship for a couple of years or longer. You know how it works, you know? You really throw yourself into this thing and you work really hard and you read the book and you walk the steps and you go on 12-step calls and you got to prisons and you do all that stuff and you keep pushing a drink further and further ahead and you get comfortable. And then you stop and say, you know, what I need in my life is some balance. Balance is a euphemism for cutting back on meetings and finding a girlfriend. That's what balance is. Isn't that right? And so you cut back on meetings, and then you find a girlfriend. And then pretty soon you're going to meetings. But you have a different view of life now. Oh, there's Cliff. I know what he's going to say. Oh, here's Steve. Wonder who died and made him king. And then, pretty soon, you're criticizing everybody. Isn't that right? We call that a dry drunk. What I think that means is I'm beginning to catch up to my drink. and by the grace of God because I have a lot of forceful obnoxious friends who have no trouble at all telling me what they think and are not a bit worried about my feelings I've never had to catch up to that drink but let me tell you I am utterly powerless over that thing and that's what I think they mean when they talk about complete defeat it said beautifully you know in the book I brought the little book i can't find it as well as i can in the big book trust me it's there says why all this insistence that that every alcoholic must first hit bottom and what it says is that that we believe until you do you won't do the things that are necessary and anybody who's hung around alcoholics anonymous for a while and had a hard time doing the third or the fourth or the fifth or the eighth or the ninth step knows what that's like. You know, the other thing that I think about with the first step, and it was a big part of the thing for me, was great sponsorship. I had a wonderful sponsor. His name was Dan. My first sponsor's name was Dan, and you know how people will try to make it easy for you? They'll say things like, oh no, you're not that bad. Have you ever run into those kinds? And the minute they said that to me, they lost all credibility because i knew i was even worse than i was letting them know and and i'd say to dan i'd say boy dan i said i i was a really bad drunk and he said keith you're even a worse drunk than you know and i say not worse he said oh yeah yeah he said it's much worse oh and if you and then i'd tell him you know dan i really did i did a lot of damage drinking he said oh keith he said you did even more damage than you know he said if you knew how much damage you did drinking you go out there and throw yourself under the wheels of a truck really so yeah yeah yeah he said god's really kind he doesn't let you know just what a schmuck you are you know and and i remember going home thinking there's a guy who knows what he's talking about you know in in in the the sure way i found to lose a new guy is to tell him he's not so bad. Because the minute you tell him he's no longer a man, and he's still not so bad, you've lost all your credibility. Because he knows he is. He knows he's bad. Because I think inside of all of us are the seeds to the first step. And that is that I'm utterly powerless. I'm utterly and completely bankrupt. And I think that's what the first steps says. And it says left to my own devices I must drink again. It doesn't matter how long I'm away from that drink. You know, the man who I 12-stepped, whose story's in a big book, was sober about as long as me or a little bit longer when he drank again. I've watched a lot of people with 20 and 30 years drink. A lot of People. And anybody who's been around for a while has watched it happen. So time has nothing to do with it. There's a man, a dear, dear man in our neighborhood. He's passed away now, but my sponsor sponsored him. And my sponsor sponsoring him simply because the guy's sober longer than anybody else and and uh so he had to go to some new guy who only had like 35 years to sponsor him but sid had 48 years of sobriety and i'll never forget he always talked about the voice he said that that alcoholism has a voice and it talks to you and it tells you your difference in everybody else and it tell you you can have one drink and it it tells me you don't need to do the steps and it you don t need to go up get out of bed at night and go help the new guy and he talks to you and uh i was in a meeting one night and sid came in he was all bent over and everything he just had his gallbladder removed he was like 75 or 76 years old he had his Gallbladder Removed and stuff and he's at a meeting and they said sid why aren't you at home you're supposed to be at home resting and he said you know he said i was sitting at at home he said have my bathrobe on my slippers and he says i got one of those clickers you know he said rule the world from your chair with one of these clickers he said im just sitting there changing my channels and he said i'm thinking you know life's not so bad and he he said you know i had all that dope and everything when i had my surgery and he says i heard this voice say to me you know sid after all these years you could probably have a martini and he sad i hadn't heard that voice in a long time he said but i remember that voice and he said i know how to shut that voice up and he got up went to a meeting there's a guy who didn't have alcohol was him there's a guy who had alcoholism and he knows that he's one drink away from a drunk and the fact it had been 48 years since he had a drink was completely irrelevant and that's a critical piece of information and you know when i go particularly to prisons i don't know why prisons more than any other places have these guys in them who say i'll get it all put together and i can be stronger than this thing and i tell them you don't understand the first thing about the nature of the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous. The strong don't survive the first step of AlcoholicsAnonymous. The people who are utterly and completely powerless, who are at the end of the rope are the people who survive. You know, I used to always say that they met a lot of people who were too smart to get sober, never met anybody too dumb to get sober. Well, I met a whole lot of people too dumb to get sober. And the smart money really is the money that says I'm completely and utterly powerless. Left to my own devices, the only option for me is to drink. And I really believe that's true. I had my last drink May the 13th, 1973. I was living in a basement of a dive in Washington, D.C. I'd lost virtually everything I had. You know the story. and um and i called for help this morning because of what i looked back on now and it was a miracle it's a direct intervention of god in my life but i didn't believe in him so i had to come up with another excuse and um it's not that i didn'T believe him i DIDN'T want to think about him anymore you know and um i couldn't be an atheist it just took too much energy i didnT have the energy to do anything but drink so what i was was an agnostic and someone who won't make up their mind and and i uh i called for help and and and i hung up the telephone i turned around and looked and there was about a almost a full fifth of scotch on the draining board and i knew everything i knew i didn't know alcoholics anonymous existed i didn'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ALCOHOLISM i DIDN'T KNOW I WAS AN ALCOHOLE but i knew EVERYTHING i needed to know about my relationship to that stuff called alcohol and i KNEW THAT I'D DRINK IT AND I KNEWS IF I TOOK ONE MORE DRINK I'D DIE BECAUSE I CAME WITHIN A FRACTION OF committing suicide and i knew that that knowledge would never keep me from drinking you know i used to go to autopsies to uh at the hospital i worked at they had autopsys you know they would they would uh list the the things that people died from and if you were interested sort of like coming attractions and if and ifyou were interested you know and ifyou were interested in something you could sign you could go down and watch this post and i'd scrub in from time to time when they had somebody died of chronic acute alcoholism i'd scrub in to watch him and i hated those things it was just awful i could never be a doctor and touch those things and but i mean they take out parts that just looked awful i mean i didn't know what good ones look like but i knew these were bad ones i knew these these were broken parts i mean you could just look at a guy's liver when it looks like a lump of coal there's something wrong you know and when the brain's all pitted and stuff i mean there's something wrong it's about half the size of another guy's brain and uh and i remember and the reason i did that was so that i wouldn't drink as much and and i remembered i watched that as long as i could i couldn't stand it i'd get the hell out of there and i go to clyde's or chadwick's i go into chadwicks and i'd say oh vinnie you better give me a double you'll never guess what i just saw and then he'd say keith you always get a double i said well you better give me a triple and and then he gave me a triple and then the other guys are there saying well what's the matter with you my god you look terrible i say you'll never guess what i saw and i described the the condition of this guy's liver and stuff to these guys and they'd listen to it for a little while and they'd say vinnie you better gives us a triple too we can't stand to listen to things like this and and then we'd sit there and talk about how this guy had no self-respect and and on and on you know so i knew that i could never be scared sober i knew that i knew i could never be scared sober what i needed to understand was my relationship to that stuff and that's what the first step tells me i ran over and i started to pour that out and i knew I'd never poured out so i threw it in a sink and it broke and i'm not exaggerating one iota when i tell you if that bottle had bounced i wouldn't be here because i am powerless over alcohol. Now, I'm every bit as powerless this moment as I was almost 23 years ago. Now, i'm a lot further away from the drink with my name on it, but i'm every bit as powerless and that's the hard thing to understand. That's the hard thing to understand now. Twenty-two years and ten months ago or whatever it is, I had to do different things didn't I? I had to make sure I stayed away from slippery places. I had to drive a different way. I couldn't drive past Clyde's or Chadwick's because my car couldn't go past those places. My car was powerless over those places, so I'd have to drive the other way. I'd drive around. Now, I don't have to do that now, but I still have to be able to still have to do things that signify the fact that I'm powerless over alcohol and that my life's become unmanageable. The things I have to do now are different. I have to say yes when I'm asked to do things, whether I want to or don't want to. You don't have to get up in the middle of the night and i'm fortunate i'm married to a woman who understands that she understands it better than i do she's a member of al-anon and you know when that phone rings and my phone rings a lot at night when that bone rings she prays an amazing thing if i have to get up and go out uh she prayS while i'm out if i don't have to GET UP AND GO OUT if it's just somebody who's drunk and doesn't want to you know then she gets out of bed with me and we pray for whoever it is and we get back into bed and that's what i have to do now that's different than having to drive around clyde's and chadwick's but as every bit as necessary because i'm absolutely as powerless today as i was then so i haveto take my medicine today and where i see guys who've been around a while always get into trouble is they have alcohol wisdom and when i work with guys and you know some guys who are sober quite a while steve's over 20 years and david's over a long time we we often talk about the first step we don't talk about our drinking we talk about what am i doing now that signifies that i'm living my life in such a way that i accept that i am powerless over alcohol today what is it that iam doing am i making my home group you know am i actively involved in in service work? Do I hold an office in my home group? Or are they going to run me out if I try to hold another one? You know, but these are the questions that I have to ask myself. And these are the questions when we inventory our first step. These are the questions that we answer. Am I actively sponsoring guys? Not just guys who smell good. But guys who don't smell so good. I go down to get this guy whose electricity is turned off. you know, and I don't know if he's there or not. I just pull up and I'll shout because it's pitch black. I'll say, Harold? And his voice says, yes. He's sitting on a porch but you can't tell because, you know it's, it's pitch black and I know Harold wants me to give him enough money to get his electricity turned on and of course I'm not going to do it because if I do that I bought Harold his next trunk and I told him, I said, you know Harold, you work these steps and one day the light will come on. you know the second step is uh is the one that that i missed for so so long it's one of those throwaways you know what i mean it it's it's sort of a prudent man theory step you know you know if i believe i'm powerless over alcohol my life's becoming unmanageable of course i'll come to believe that power greater than me restore me to sin of course but you know there's a lot more to it than that in in over the years whenever i've gotten myself into any kind of trouble i always have to go back to the second step and again i'm a person because i've had so much brain damage i'm not a person who thinks in pictures you know so i always picture things uh that helps when you can't remember names and numbers and where you live and stuff um and yeah i tell you You know, this whole thing, if you're kind of new, if you are having some real mental problems, you have some brain function problems, don't worry about it. Because one of the good things about brain damage is you forget you have it. That's number one. But the other thing is if you stay sober, that will change. Either it will get a lot better or you'll learn to enjoy it. It's true. When I was sober, probably about 60 days, Have you had one of these things where there's something that's there, you just can't get a hold of it? You know, that happened to me. I'm sober for about 60 days. I'm all dressed up to go to work, and I go out and get in my car, and I start to drive. This is a true story. People won't believe this, but I forgot where I worked. You know? Here I am. I'm driving around Washington, D.C., trying to, you know, is there a street? Can I, you Know? Where do I work? What do I do? i've done it a long time uh and it was just awful and i used to carry a card in my pocket with a dime tape to it with my sponsors two phone numbers his office and his home and and i know what to do i didn't want to tell my sponsor i didn'T know where i worked i mean you know he wouldn't sponsor a guy who was sober 60 days and didn'T KNOW where he worked and uh but finally i called him and and i found a phone booth and i called them i was scared that you can imagine i was terrified and because i suspected i really wasn't an alcoholic i was really a head case and i mean i really secretly suspected that and uh so i said uh dan answered the phone and i said good morning dan he said good morning keith i said i he said how are you i said I'm fine i just called to see how you were and he said what's all that noise i said well i'm calling you from a phone booth and he said uh uh is the car broken down i said no dan car's fine i was just wondering how you're doing and uh he said he said what's the problem buddy and i said well it's not much of a problem dan i said i can't seem to remember where i work you know you know what he said he said oh you got the old i can'T remember where I work problem huh he said he said a lot of us have had that i tell you i've never met another guy who had that problem i mean i met guys who were impotent i met gays who did all sorts of stuff but never forgot where they worked and and uh so he said uh he told me where i work in a minute he said it i knew you know it's like boom i said well of course you know and then he said something very important to me he said is kind of scary when things like that happen huh and i said yeah he said you know he said, you're not sleeping well. You're not resting. He said, you're drinking enough coffee, you know, for the Northwest Washington. And he said you smoke a lot of cigarettes. He says, but none of that matters. He say, what matters is that you're not drinking and that's going to clear up one day. And then I said, well thanks. And you know that was really, I was scared. I mean stuff like that's scary. And then he said to me before he hung up, he said may I make a suggestion? I said well of course anything. And she said if you ever have this problem again he said if you can remember to look on the front bumper of your car you have a parking permit for the university you know and i remember thinking where do these guys learn these things brilliant where do they learn these thing and and that's really i think from my perspective that that's what the second step is all about it's all about learning these things it's it's all about recognizing that I'm part of a process. And it's a process, it's a fail-proof process. I can't fail if I stay close to you and God and continue to do the things. But you know every time I've ever been in trouble it's always been because I've outrun my faith. And I think that's what the second step is all about or my hope if you prefer. Have any of you gotten to the point where it gets so good you know it must be a mistake ever happened to you i mean you know i this morning i i got out my wife was still sleeping you know and i just looked at her and i often when i do that i'm just overwhelmed i mean i'm juste this woman loves me and i juste can't happen to me you know i spent my whole life trying to make myself you know suitable to get laid every once in a while yeah i mean you know just to have some sex from time to time for crying out loud and here's a woman who desperately loves me and she loves me very much it overwhelms me and and what the second step says to me about a situation like that or or that i'm sober almost 23 years or that I have a nice job and I have her profession and you know I'm completing a novel I mean I'm doing things that I used to dream about doing It could never happen to me. And they're happening to me, they're just happening to me because you live a day at a time, you know, you write 100 words a day, you write a novel, if you live enough days, you know it's just that sort of thing. And, but all this is going on in my life and what I, the second step says that what I need to do is I need to go back and say, oh yeah, yeah, this is what God had in store for me, I mean, this was what he always wanted for me to live like this and even better than this. And I never believed it before. But now I believe it. And the only reason I can believe it is because I come and talk to you about it. You think God really wants me to enjoy life? Oh, yeah, yeah. God wants you to be happy. He wants you not always to be happy, but he wants you to be joyful. Yeah, that's really his plan for you. I sort of picture it like being on a limb. When I first got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, I was standing hanging on to the tree trunk, you know what I mean? And they'd say, look, you've got to let go of the trunk and you've gotta get out on a limb. I said, no, I'm fine, thanks, I'm just holding on to this. And they say, but you know, all the goodies are a little further out. Well, this is fine. I mean if I could just hold on to this trunk the rest of my life and not end up in the roots where I was headed, that's fine with me. And then pretty soon I let go of the truck and I go a step or two or three out and it's really, out on a limb. And I say to myself, they got the wrong guy. You ever had that thought? They got the wrong guys. I mean, they gave this good stuff to the wrong man. And then the second step says, no, no, you're the right guy. And this couldn't have happened to you last month because you weren't there yet. But you're in the right place. You're the one who's going to the right guide. This is what God has in store for you. And of course, the greatest example of for us is that we have the gift that nobody else in the world has. Bill Wilson talked about it. We have the gifts to make a difference in the life of another alcoholic. There's nothing I would rather do than sit at the bedside of a sick alcoholic. I have a run-in mate of mine. When I lived in Fayetteville, I now live in Wilmington, North Carolina, but I lived there for a number of years. Have a run in mate. Keep him in your prayers. Herb has some cancer problems. but guys used to say you know the the the greatest nightmare you could have is that you open your eyes and keith and herb are sitting by your bed because we get up early in the morning and we find one and somebody call and say so-and-so was very drunk last night and so we'd meet down at herb's club so he had to buy breakfast and and uh we'd be there like at six in the morn or something have breakfast i say you ready and i he said yeah i say get that shit eating grin on your face her but let's go and we go over and sit by this guy's bed just be smiling when he opened his little peepers yeah and they go oh no you know you know and and you know then you could spend a few minutes telling a guy when you're really ready to listen you can tell him spend a few minutes and and i think god gives everybody gifts and we all have gifts and i know everybody in this room has a lot of gifts and one of the great things about being a member of alcoholics synonymous is you continually discover gifts the greatest gift i'll ever have is the ability to make a difference in another alcoholic's life it's the greatest shift i'll never have and that's a result of the second step you know i i like to get people involved in in work and and like people will say to someone you should go answer the phones at intergroup i'm saying he doesn't believe he can go answerthe phones in a group he doesn' t believe he has anything i wouldn't say it in front of the guy. But I get the guy aside and say, he doesn't believe he has anything to say to anybody on the phone. Why don't you take him there and show him how to answer the phone and interview him? I mean, that's how they did it with me. You know, my sponsor answered the phones with his sponsor and then one day his sponsor said, I'm tired of hanging around here Monday night with you. That weird kid, that Keith, that new kid you're sponsoring now, why don't you get him and bring him here? So Dan called me up and said, meet me at 7 o'clock at the intergroup office he said to answer the phones well right away i got afraid so instead of saying i'm afraid i don't know what to say i said to him well i don' t know if i can do that monday night football wrong answer and dan said well what we're going to seek is balance keith and you know i was just too dumb to let it go i'd say what do you mean balance and he said well for the last 10 years you watched the first half of all the Monday night football games and you never saw the second half. He said, now for the next ten years, you're not going to see the first half and I'll let you out of here about ten o'clock and you can go home and watch the second half. So that's balance. But you know, I spent a year and a half answering the phones with Dan. And you know in the beginning he wouldn't let me answer the phones. But he'd let me get coffee for him while he answered the phones and then one day he let me give someone directions and uh and then i hung up the phone he said keith those directions were all wrong i said they were he said yeah he said but don't worry he's from out of town he said nobody knows where to go in washington dc anyway he said if god wants him in a meeting he'll find a meeting i said okay and then one day let me talk to a real live alcoholic and then he'd take me to jails and things and all that stuff but he taught me how to do these things and one day i really believed i had something to give and that's what the second step i think is all about it's realizing that god uses us that way and it really is a process and we really do come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can return us to sanity and sanity of course is usefulness you know the first time and i'll let this go the first Time he took me on a 12-step call was down at dc jail and that was a nasty place the new jail isn't great the old jail was terrible and we go in and we're going to talk to a guy and you know it's behind that big you've probably done it may have been on the other side of the glass you know the big thick glass and you talk through the phone well i'm hearing dan talk to this guy and dan's chirping away about 50 minutes and i got stuff to tell this guy i mean you know i'm sober like three months and i Got some stuff this guy needs to hear and and uh dan said uh he said well we better go now he said but i brought a friend with me keith he said keith sober about three months now he said he's doing a really great job and i'm going to let him talk to you for five minutes i'm thinking five minutes I got a lot to say I better get right on it so I grabbed the phone and I began telling this guy all this stuff he needed to do you know I mean it's just awful you know i'm preaching to him I'm doing all this stuff and I'm going about a mile a minute and the guy finally said wait wait wait he said all this crap's great for a loser like you he said but I'm a Fulbright scholar and I just lost it and i began to scream on the phone well mr fool bright scholar one of us is leaving here in a few minutes and the other one's going to go back to his cell in his little wrinkled blue pants and i'm screaming i'm down on the floor and my sponsor's trying to get the phone away from me and i'M SCREAMING HIS STUFF IN A PHONE AND EVERYTHING AND HE'S AND THE GUARDS CAME AND ALL THE OTHER GUESTS ARE ARE WATCHING AND EVERY THING AND THEY FINALLY GOT THE PHONE AWAY FROM ME AND DAN SAID TO THE GUY I'LL COME BACK SEE YOU AGAIN TOMORROW NO OKAY I WON'T BRING HIM and and uh and i and i just knew that i was going to be drummed out of alcoholics anonymous i mean i hadn't even gotten a good start and they were going to throw me out so so we left and we're walking over to the car and uhand i said to dan i said that was pretty bad wasn't it he already did he smiled and he looked at me he said you know keith he said most guys wouldn't have done it that way he said but you'll discover in alcoholics anonymous you'll discover that everybody develops their own technique and he said who knows maybe that's the only thing that guy will ever remember about two people from alcoholics anonymous who came to talk to him and maybe that is what he will need important thing and that is that all i have to bring here is who i am today you know i don't have to be anything other than i am if i truly believe that that god in the steps and you mold me a day at a time then all i have to do is bring who i am and i come to rely on that in the second step the the great term in the 12 and 12 is is reliance not defiance and i spent my whole life defying things everything i ever did i did it defiantly my my ex-wife uh maryland knew me perfectly she said to me one day she said you know i wish you'd die but we can't afford it and i said what do you mean i said i'm worth a lot more dead than i am alive she said but we couldn't afford to bury you and i say what do you mean she said well we couldn'T afford the special made coffin you know the one with the lid so you could lay through all eternity like this you know and she had me i mean that was it My whole approach to life was that I ran around with my little finger up. I mean, that was my whole approach life. It was all defiance. I did things because you told me I couldn't. You know, I went in the Marine Corps. I weighed 113 pounds. I was 5 feet 1 inches tall. I was a born killer. So I go off and join the Marine Corp. And my mother cries all night. All I heard her saying to my father was, Scott, they'll kill him. And my dad kept saying, don't worry, Pat, they won't take him. and I went off and of course you know I busted a kidney up in at Parris Island and I was and I sent me back and I came back the second time and they offered me a discharge I wouldn't take it there's no way defiant people can't do stuff like that so I went back and won Dress Blue's award an outstanding man's award the problem with doing it out of defiance is I never believed that I had the ability and that's the problem with defiance defiance teaches me that as long as I'm doing it at the system then it's really not working i'm getting over on somebody reliance means it's truly me and it's truly the power of god that's the great thing about the second step and so if you ever get into trouble let me recommend that you go back to the secondstepand take a look that's where i always go and of course there's a third step and that's the step that everybody I don't know why we all tarry on it but we seem to you know it's that step that just calls for a decision and that is all it just calls for a decission made a decision turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him and yet the fear the fear is that somehow I'll be reduced to nothing. It's an amazing phenomenon. You know, when I was kind of new, there was an old-timer who was always giving these smart-aleck answers. You know how old-timers will do, you know? And so I was always going through a lot of problems and he said to me, he said, Keith, what I want you to do... He said, I want você to do me a favor. I said, well, anything. And he said I wantyou to borrow some lipstick from one of the girls and go home and write on the mirror, Keith, you're wrong. I said... I said I can't do that. you see my problem is i need to be affirmed don't ever talk that way to a old-timer you know they haven't read any of those books and um and so i did what i was told i went home wrote on a mirror keith you were wrong and and and i was disgusted you know i mean it's just the stupidest thing i ever saw and i threw the through the lipstick in a trash can and and I went off to bed and I had a normal night remember 60 days remember a normal light you know I lay down and my my mind woke up for the first time that day. And it would take off. You know, and it would be talking to me. You're never going to make it. You're a loser. All this stuff, you know. And then I'd toss and turn all night and then the leg cramps. Remember the leg tramps? And then about 15 minutes before I was supposed to wake up I'd go sound asleep. Remember how that was? And it Would Take Three Clocks to Wake Me Up, You Know. And everybody in the neighborhood was up and I'm still sleeping. And thenI'd get up and the depression would be waiting on me. And the minute I opened my eyes depression would jump on me It would start all over. The voice was still active and it would say things like you know keith you're going to go to work today and they're going to find out you don't know how to do your job and you're gonna get fired what difference does it make you're hopelessly in debt anyway you know just you know and i went out and i started coffee remember those mornings i mean i just wanted to die and i was like oh my god i'm i went in the bathroom and i looked on a mirror and said keith your wrong i said well thank god because if i'm right i'm in a hell of a lot of trouble you know and you know i have not been wrong about anything that i ever wanted to be right about later you know but the next thing i'll argue with you about it oh it can't be wrong if i'm wrong what will happen to me and you knows what's a third step basically says is that somebody has a better plan for my life than i do that's all it says And I'm always reminded of that expression that they used to say to me all the time. This old timer, he used to put his arm around me. He'd say, we're really glad you're here. And he said, you know, you're the idiot that got you here. And then my second sponsor was a guy named Sandy Beach. And Sandy told me one time, I asked him to sponsor me. I served her about three and a half years. Boy, I was really successful in every way. I'm not kidding you. I mean, I studied in Europe. i picked up another couple degrees um i had a marvelous job i was running all over the country being an expert uh i mean i had everything i just wanted to die you know i had the house i always wanted i had to job i always want to had the social life i always wanted and i just didn't want to live and it's because i hadn't done a decent job with the steps and particularly the third step and and so i i knew this sandy character talked a lot about the steps and everything he was like a fanatic you know the kind and um but i was desperate and i went over to see sandy i've spoken like four packs of cigarettes a day unless i stayed up late and i smoked more and uh and and i called sandy up and said could i could i talk to you sometime he said yeah saturday morning bring your running shoes well i just didn't happen to have any running shoes i had a few cartons of cigarettes i did not have running shoes and uh but i went out and got some running shoes and went over, and I said to Sandy, why are we going to run? And he says, because then you'll get to the point. And you won't beat around the bush, because you don't have much wind. And he laughed, you know, and away we went. And he told me, he said, we're running along, and the reason I wanted to talk to you is I was wondering if you would consider sponsoring me. And he said... He said, well, I don't know. he said, tell me something. Do you believe in God? And, you know, it's crazy, but I don't know how to answer that question. You know, since I got sober, I'd gone and gotten a degree in theology and philosophy. I had gone and I lived in a monastery in Rome for a while. I mean, I did all these God things and I didn't know if I believed in God. I mean nobody had ever asked me anything quite that directly before. and um and i i remember you know the old ideas we have and i had an old idea was that if you if you doubt god at all it means you don't believe anybody hear that when they were did anybody ever hear that now i know that doubts an element of faith you know doubts proof that you have faith but i didn't know that i thought that any doubt meant you had no faith so i thought about this and i knew i certainly had some doubt i mean my life was dramatically different but i wasn't. And I said to him, I don't think I do believe in God. And he looked at me and was really sad. He said that's too bad. That means you're probably going to die. And I stopped. And I thought for just a few seconds and I caught up to him. And I says, you know, I'm willing to go home and reconsider my position. And he said, if you're willing to come home and consider your position, I'll sponsor you. And then he told me a very important thing. he said you i had mentioned to him that one of the things that scared me was i watched people getting drunk who were sober three years and six years in nine years and twelve years it would seem to me that drunkenness would sweep through alcoholics anonymous like a plague you know and uh and it scared me because i knew how close i was and um and he told me he said do you know keith he said he said a lot of guys have a lot more time to make these decisions than you do. He said, you can only hold your spiritual breath for about 12 years. He said, but you're already out of breath. He said you got to make some hard decisions and that's what the third step is really all about. It's about making hard decisions. You know? The second step is we, it doesn't say we believe in God does it? It says we believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. The third step is a much different decision than that. I mean the second step has to be made first but the third step is a step that says um that uh that you know i'm going to make a decision to turn my will in life over to the care of god as i understand it and that's the beginning of big lake spirituality and if you don't believe it read the words right after that in the big book on page 63 right after that it says we thought well before taking this step? Were we at last ready to abandon ourselves utterly to him? Those are heavy words. Those are heavy words, um, I told a guy, I was working with a guy who just had a terrible, a devil of a time with that and we do what I hope you do and I'm sure many of you do is, is that when we're ready for the third step, we get on our knees and if anybody wants to do that this weekend, I'll be glad to do it with you if you're ready for the third step when we get on our knees and pray the third step out of the book it's not a real big deal or anything uh but i would uh urge you to do that and uh and this guy uh i he really really fought it and i and then finally i understood why and i said to him i said you know i said this very moment there's a guy in africa who's sponsoring a guy. And he's telling this guy right now, don't worry if you take this third step you won't have to go to the United States and be a missionary. And He said, really? I said, yeah. I said He'll probably stay over there and do His work and you'll probably stay here. He said well if I don't have to go Africa or Asia or someplace. He says hell I'll take it. You know what we always I mean, how many people does God call to go someplace and be a missionary? And yet all of us are afraid it's going to happen. Isn't that amazing? Couldn't you see it? One year, 5,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous go to Africa. And 5,00 members of alcoholics anonymous in Africa come to the United States. That makes sense. God would probably, I mean God's pretty economical. He'd probably have us stay where we are and do his work. But the third step is a fascinating one. i uh want to wrap it up now i know it's kind of late um it's certainly late for me because i'm still on east coast time but but i i was going to say a few things about the fourth step and i'm not going to do that i'm gonna i want to wait till tomorrow if anybody is working on a fourth step and wants to spend a few minutes after the meeting talking about a really you know sort of easy way to do it and we'll go over it again tomorrow but sort of an easy way to do it you know that sandy told me one time i said to sandy how long does it take to do a four-step he said well it takes about four years and 45 minutes and i think that's about right and what i never did was have a i couldn't understand the way the book said it you Know I just couldn't Understand That so if anybody wants to stick around after the uh our little get together tonight and and ask some questions i i can tell you tonight and i'll tell you again tomorrow uh some of the way the way that i do it in a way i i did it in in a way I have the guys I work with to it it's a very very simple way and it's something you can get out of the away you know it's not the definitive fourth step you know It's not the last one you'll probably take if this is your first one uh Clarence Snyder who's now dead was one that was the I think the fifth member of Alcoholics Anonymous and Clarenced used to say you take the first nine steps one time. And people used to go crazy when he said it. But then he'd always laugh later and he'd say, but you take at it for a long time. So these steps are things you take out for a lot of time. For a long term. And then one day the work's done. But if you have any questions or anything when we're finished here. Are there any thoughts or questions about anything we covered tonight or talked about? Not at all? Okay. I'm delighted to be with you this weekend and we'll get started again tomorrow morning. Thank you. Could we begin this morning with a moment of silence followed by the serenity prayer? If you need an intention to pray for, the boiler in our building would be a good place to start. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know their difference. Amen. You know, I was just thinking you know, I still have North Carolina blood and it's awfully thin and I'm watching you guys run around in t-shirts and stuff and one of us is abnormal. we finished last night talking about the third step and I said that if anybody was interested I'd talk a little bit last night about how to construct a fourth step and of course there are a variety of ways of doing it there's the way that's described in the big book and of coarse that's the best way to do it There's no question in anybody's mind that death's the best way to do it. The problem was I wasn't getting it done that way. And my sponsor, who was then my sponsor Sandy, said to me, he said, you know, if you read the fourth step into 12 and 12, it tells you that failure to take this step results in death. And he said I don't think you have long to live if you don't get this thing taken. He said, and you're a special case, so I'm going to tell you how to do this. And I was a collector of books. I don't know if anybody knew that. I mean tablets, you know. And I knew that the reason I hadn't taken a good fourth step was I hadn'T found the right book to write it in yet. And I had about 200, 300 different books at home, all of them blank, of course. And then I thought, well, it's not the book. That's silly. It's the writing instrument. So I began collecting pens and pencils that each one I was sure would be the perfect one to write an inventory with. And then I end up with pens and pencil that I still have laying around that I haven't used. So Sandy made it easy for me. He said, and I'll just pass on to you what he told me. He said it's got to be a yellow pad. And I said why? He said because. He said you can't lie to yourself on a yellow Pad. and you need now I don't know, I'm just passing it on guys you need two number two pencils so he gave me two number two pencils and he gave me one yellow pad and on the first page of the yellow pad he wrote fears he said now I want you to list your fears I said well I don' t have any fears he said well you're afraid to do a fourth step he said that's one thing so i wrote fear of fourth step and then he said uh it seems to me somewhere in our discussions you said something about you were afraid of dogs i said big dogs i'm afraid of big dogs all right he said write down so i broke big dogs and then i thought for a minute i said you know i'm not really wild about little dogs either so that's how i wrote little dogs and and that began the process for me. And what I did was I just listed the fears I had. And I'll tell you why it was significant. It was significant because if we look at what Bill Wilson says about the fourth step inventory and his philosophy on what happens to us as a result of alcoholism and what happens spiritually, he says that what we do is we're filled with conflict. He said that we have all these God-given instincts that in us become warped it's an ugly word warped but it's a really effective word uh and he says for example he said you know the the uh the need for security becomes warped and then we can never get enough security so you know it's like me i jumped in and out of relationships i i you know i i would be in a relationship i liked and i'd be looking for the next one uh i uh i had a job i really liked doing it was a nice job and i enjoyed it very much and every morning i looked at the one ads because i knew that this job wouldn't be here and i'd need another job and i and on and on in in in and i get a little bit of affirmation was never enough so what he was saying was true uh was it that that my basic instincts my basic needs had become so warped that that i was filled with conflict and i began to see when i listed these fears the kinds of conflict i had i mean i was a guy who was afraid to be alone and i was afraid to be intimate that's conflict isn't it so what i did was i ran through life constantly giving two messages come close stay away and and the women in my life were so confused my wife uh before she threw me out when she threw me outside she was a lot less confused than before she threw him out But she was constantly confused. She'd say to me things like, I don't know which Keith's talking to me. I don'T know if it's the Keith who tells me he loves me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me or if it'S the Keith who calls me those names and tells me he never wants to see me again. Well, you know, all I was doing was reflecting two different fears I had. I had a fear of failure and I had fear of being too successful and that, of course, causes conflict and i never understood that about myself and i don't know if you can relate to this i talked to my now sponsor tom i about it one time about conflict i said can we talk a little bit about conflict he said yeah i said give me an example uh from you about conflict he said well he said conflict for me is is watching my mother-in-law go over a cliff in my brand new car so that's conflict but but as i listed these fears i saw that that in almost every case i had fear on both sides of the question and that's why i was always filled with conflict always filled with doubt never really knowing what i wanted to do when i grew up never really know what i like to do i got into the habit of doing the things i thought i was supposed to like to do i remember i wasn't sober very long and a guy's called me up and and and i got sober in washington dc and and I was a real baltimore oriole fan I just loved the orioles and and so a guy called me out and he said Keith we're going to go up to Baltimore to watch a game you want to go and I said no I can't I have to go to the theater he said why do you have to go tothe theater that's why I have season tickets he said well wouldn't you rather go to ball game i said of course i'd rather go to ball game but i have to go to the theater because that's what i'm supposed to like to do and uh he said keith this is very confusing uh why don't you call your sponsor so i called dan and i said dan i have tickets to the theatre but i want to go totheballgame what should i do he says very simple he said i just consulted god god wants you to give me the tickets to the theater and you go to the ball game so and and you know and i was a kid when i i'd write down these fears and you know i was afraid of poverty i grew up in poverty and somehow i had equated going to the theatre with never being poor again that that's what and i had season tickets to all these things and hell i have i'm hardy here and i don't do very well in the theatre uh i miss most of what's going on i do very well at the ball game i mean i can see it all uh and and i began to understand why there was so much conflict in my life i don't know if any of this makes sense to you but but that's what listing fears did for me and then he turned a page two pages and he wrote uh anger and then put in parentheses resentments and um and he sent me to the golden book by father john doe the goldenbook on resentments you don't see him around much anymore but but father john Doe had a whole series of writings, and he had me read this book on resentments. And it's just a marvelous little publication. And in it, Father John Doe said that resentment is from a Latin word resentos, which means to re-feel. And he said most of the things you'll discover that you're angry about or most of the things that that you resent are really things that cause are caused by re-feeling stuff and i give you an example of that when i was um when i wasn't a marine corps i was out in the mediterranean ocean and i get a dear john letter from my high school sweetheart now everybody got dear john letters from the high school sweetheart if you didn't get a dear john later when you're in a service you didn'T have a girlfriend before you went away I mean, it was just, it was automatic. I mean all the guys and everybody did the same thing. You know, everybody swore off women at least for a week or two and, and everybody would always get drunk. You know they'd get drunk and I've had enough with women, hell with women. Women are nothing but trouble. They're not worth it. And you know after about two weeks a young guy changes his mind and goes on with life unless he's an alcoholic. Now if he's a alcoholic like me, ten years later, ten years later i'm sitting in a bar making little circles on the bar with the bottom of the glass and uh and this thought would drift back into my mind and and i would and and and I'd picture myself and my high school sweetheart's name was Joanne now i'm married i got a wife and two children at home and i'm sittin' in this bar and it would start you know sort of like an instant replay you know i'd see myself in this club it looked a little bit like rick's place in casablanca and um i had a white jacket on looked a little like bogey and uh some guys playing a piano over there and uh and in watched joanne and and uh and she sat down at a table across from me she had great legs uh she was a dancer and her breasts were a little larger than i remembered them but it was my fantasy and and uh and then you know and then she'd look over and our eyes would meet and then She'd known what a mistake she made you know And uh, and and you know, and I played this out in a lot. I had a lot of different endings for this little little Uh play and sometimes she'd come over and look at me and say can you ever forgive me for writing that letter? And you know sometimes i'd forgive her and we'd go to the sack other times I'd just get up and say it's too bad, it's too late now and I'd walk out and have that tremendous satisfaction of having won other times i'd just hit her depending on how drunk I was at the time but that's what a resentment is calling that up and re-feeling all of that rejection and refeeling all that stuff again and the thing I discovered as I began to list the things I was angry about that they always hook together that's why towards the end of my drinking, if I was rejected by anybody or anything, it was the biggest deal in the world because it had hooked together with all the other resentments I'd ever had in my life. All the other rejections, all the things I'd never had in my life and so he had me for two page list the things that made me angry and not just incidents and people but institutions. I was extremely angry with the church I grew up with You know, the first two or three years I was around AA, I was one of those guys who is religiously anti-religious. You know the kind? Just waiting for somebody to say something that's smacked of organized religion. And I used to say things like, well, I don't like organized religion Well, the truth was I wasn't a pope. If I'd have been a pope, I would have loved organized religion My idea was I wanted to be in charge That's what it was all about It was all abut who was in charge and who was calling his shots Because I figured if I were calling his shorts I couldn't be rejected and disappointed anymore these are some of the things that i began to understand as i uh as i listed the things that i resented or the things i was angry about that's kind of interesting here uh this is different than than i had ever tried to approach it before and then he turned two pages and then she wrote at the top of the page sex and he said now i want you to write everything you ever knew about sex anything you ever felt about sex he said go back as far as you can in your mind and think of the very first things that that ever happened to you and i remember when i was like three years old my sister patty who was five years old dressed they used to play house and stuff and she dressed me up in a dress and i thought that maybe i was a repressed homosexual because when i Was three years old my Sister dressed me Up in a Dress i mean crazy kinds of thoughts that enter into the minds of alcoholics and and so so my bad or my inability to ever maintain a relationship like it says in the book was hooked to that some sort of fear of my sexuality that i carried well into my adult life it's crazy just crazy but all that stuff contrives and conspires and and so i listed everything i ever had every attitude i ever heard about sex everything and i find that the majority of of people when it comes to their inventory the thing the majority of people particularly men worry the most about is sex and and i have a friend and they're usually worried you know everybody does about the same things you know but i havea friend his name's ted c and ted's shrink he's been sober about 30 years he's one of the funniest people i ever met my life and we were talking one time he and i did a workshop one time about about sex and recovery and and uh and he told his story about a guy came to him he was the guy was just shaking and trembling and everything and uhand he said to ted ted said look he said let's start with the very worst thing you have and i often do that when i hear a fifth step if a guy's really nervous i say let's get the worst thing out of the way so this guy said to teddy said uh he said ted uh He said, I had sex with a chicken. And Ted says, well tell me, did yours die too? So what generally happens is we have something back there that we think somehow defines us. And it's usually some event that took place when we were drunk or something. You know, completely out of our minds. and because to us it's so heinous or it's so frightening or it is so repulsive or it' s so rejecting that we consider that to be the key factor in the truth of our life instead of seeing it as some sort of fringe weird drunk happening. We make that the central point of our lives. I was very, very drunk when I was 19 years old and I was homosexually raped and I Was absolutely drunk out of my mind And that became one of the key factors in my life for 15 years. That's crazy, isn't it? It's absolutely crazy. But it is very true. When I got sober, I was sexually impotent, which will really put a crimp in your sex life. I mean, I'm 29 years old and I'm sexually imponent. And I'm angry and I'M frustrated. I'M all these things. I mean sometimes I could function and sometimes I couldn't. It was a terrible thing. Just a terrible think. Just a terribly thing. And yet, I want to repress all that. I want act like none of that's true. I want walk around life like I'm functioning perfectly normally. And of course, I'm not. And it's real hard to talk about those things. You know, and I couldn't talk to my sponsor about that. I mean, would you want to sponsor a guy who was impotent? I mean that's my thing. I'm thinking what's the matter with me? But that's the way I thought. And so I go out and find an old timer which is a big mistake never tell old timers stay away from old timERS old timERs are not well people they're really not I'll tell you they lie a lot they say things like I come to AA because I need to they don't need to come to EA the only reason they come to AE is the only enjoyment they get out of life is watching guys like you and me suffer and if you don't believe me go find an old timer and tell them a problem and the first thing they do is laugh. You know what I'm saying? Oh, that's funny. So I go to see this old-timer and I tell him about my sexual impotence which I think is a big deal and the minute I tell them he starts to laugh. Oh, he's sexually impotent. He said, a lot of us had that problem. Don't worry, it'll go away. I said, well, when? I thought it was important and he said, well, what do you got, a full social calendar? Ah, you know. that's the same old fool who told me to write on my mirror Keith you were wrong and I told you about yesterday and what he did was he told me he said I want you to go borrow lipstick from one of the girls in the program and write on a mirror Keith you're wrong and he said I don't want you doing anything else with the girls in the programming and he says oh that's right you can't but you know for some reason sex is very very important to us you know and and sexual behavior in the past often defines our whole lives and it's really crazy it's a very small part of our existence and yet for some reason we give it tremendous power and the thing that writing everything there is to write about sex the thing about writing it all down is that it takes away that power if you write it all down and share it with yourself and god another human being it takes the way all that power and it doesn't play itself all those fears don't play themselves in every relationship you have you know when i was um i guess i was sober about uh oh about nine months something like that six eight nine months or something and uh and i was talking to my sponsor we used to monday night we'd answer the phones at the intergroup and And that sort of was our time between phone calls. And I was telling them about this girl I really found attractive. She was a nurse and worked up in the neonatal unit in the hospital, and I directed the genetics laboratories at the hospital. So I'd go up there and do tests, and I found myself going up there when there were no tests to do. And I wasn't talking to her. That's a bad word now, but you guys might have done it. You remember how you'd go and you'd look at a girl and then you'd see how she'd look at you and then he'd hint around a little bit and then it's like it took a computer to assemble all these facts. Well, the reason was you didn't want to be rejected so you eliminate all the possibilities of rejection and the way you do that is just by keep hinting and hinting and all that stuff and I used to call that stalking And finally, I'd end up asking a question like, you probably aren't busy Saturday night, are you? And even if you weren't, you probably wouldn't want to go out with me anyway. And then that way, if she says, no, I wouldn't wanna go out. I wouldn' want to get out with you. I was right. And so Dan said to me, he said, look, he says, I want you to ask her out. I said, well, I don't know if I like her. He said, you spend four hours a day sniffing around her. he said i i got a feeling you like her i said you really think so he said yeah i said i really think you might and so i said all right so i went and uh and i promised him the next time i saw her i was going to ask her out he said well if you don't i'm going to break your knees that was he's a very direct guy and um sorry i know that's not very funny to you but uh but he uh he used to say that to me all the time and and uh so then like the third time i sorry after that i saw in the hallway and uh and i said or hi i thought that was clever opening and uh and she said hi and i says are you busy saturday night and that old fear that was defined by all my character defects came over me and and i say uh you probably are busy if you weren't you wouldn't want to go out with me anyway i really said that i mean i'm 30 years old and i turned around it was like i was 14 again and i turn around started walking away and I could hear my sponsor's voice saying something about my knees. So I turned back around, and I said to her, I'd like to start over, and she's still got her mouth hanging open, and she said, that would be interesting. So I said, are you busy Saturday night? She said, no, I'm not, and we're going to do a show. And I said I'd love to go out. And so we went to the theater, and it was just a wonderful experience. Before we went through the theater we went by Chadwick's to get a bite to eat, and I had coffee and she had a glass of wine and then I had another cup of coffee and she Had another glass of wine and then about six glasses of wine later. I said to her, you know, if we're going to make make the curtain, we better get going. And she screamed at me, leave me alone, you obnoxious bastard. And and so I went to the phone and called my sponsor and my sponsor says it seems as though you've hooked a drunk, Keith. He said, I said, well, what do I do? He said well, he said go back and say to her would you like me to take you home or would you want me to leave you some cab fare so you could go home? He said then I want you to walk outside the place and wait. And I said wait for what? And he said wait from me. He said I'm going to pick you up. He said, it doesn't make any sense to waste a perfectly good theater ticket. So this, I went to the theater with my sponsor and had a wonderful time. But, you know, the point was, you Know, I was, of course, attracted to an alcoholic. I was like, You know, he explained to me that night. I said, What was that? I said, you know, I just picked her out of everybody. He said, well, Keith, you're like a gagger counter for sick broads. He said if there were 100 women in a room and 99 of them were healthy, you'd turn to the one who was sick and go off. And that was true. I mean, that had really been my pattern. And it had been my patterns because I hadn't done a good inventory. What I was was a series of reactions to life. And it were all the deteriorating reactions that had always taken place in my life as a result of my deteriorating lifestyle, as a resultado of the progressive illness of alcoholism. And these are some of the things that could be straightened out. And I'll give you one more outcome of these instincts gone awry. Anybody here ever end up dating the women you didn't want to date? I always did that. And I'd always say to my sponsor, I always end up with women I don't want to be with. And I couldn't figure out why and in the inventory I discovered why. It was because I was so afraid of women, afraid of rejection, that my defense was to appear angry. I was always angry. And only the ballsiest women could put up with that. So you know, I always wanted to date these sweet, nice, kind, gentle women. And I always ended up with a woman who's, you know they use their arm on a baking soda package or something, you know. You know, sort of take charge and, you Know, sort OF, you KNOW, domineering women and I never wanted to be around women like that but that's where I always ended up and I ended up because of these secrets, these things that I didn't even understand that had gone inside of my life, these conflicts that had happened to me, the things that Bill Wilson referred to as distortions of character and so I wrote all these things down and then I went to the 12 and 12 he took me to the 12 and12 and took me to that area the fourth step page 50 i believe it is yeah um and he said keith he said i want you to there are a series of questions are you familiar with these there's a series de questions on page 50 into 12 and 12 now this is after i've done these three things okay i listed the fears i listed angers and resentments and then i list and then I wrote out my sexual behaviors and particularly the things that worried me the most the homosexual rape the masturbation all the things that I ended up hating myself more and more for. And then perversion and pornography. I'll tell you, I work with an awful lot of guys. I never ever worked with a guy who once he began to work a spiritual program could stay with pornography. Maybe there are people who can do it. It's normally a contradiction in terms. It's a lot like fantasizing. You know, you can find psychologists. I'm cursed with a graduate degree in psychology and you can find psychologists who will tell you that fantasy is good for you and I say if you're an alcoholic I really disagree with that and I'll tell you why because I think fantasy is another form of self-will fantasy is a way of saying to God you know, if I had my way this is the way it would be you know I'm married to a perfectly lovely kind, gentle, beautiful woman But if I fantasize about Michelle Pfeiffer or something like that, my wife isn't nearly as beautiful as she was before. You know, I have a fine little car that takes me wherever I want to go. But if i fantasize about a new Mercedes-Benz or something, it's really easy to be disenchanted with what I have. You know I live in a nice comfortable house filled with a bunch of black and white cows and my wife, she has all these cows around there. They're all dating and stuff. It's really, you know, stuffed cows. strange she names everything she even names she names a vacuum cleaner and then thanks it for working it's not a well woman alan on long-term alan on something happens to those people but but it's a nice little house and and god gave it to me sober and i mean you know and he gave it to a guy who used to live in the basement of skid row section of washington dc but you know if i drive around my neighborhood and begin to fantasize about some of the houses i see there i can be pretty disappointed with my house so so i don't believe that fantasy is good for me i really don't i think fantasy is another form of self-will and self-willed is not good for this alcoholic because self-well is my way of telling god how it ought to be instead of being grateful for how it is um it's probably the only thing i disagree with psychology um uh page 50 He sent me to page 50. He said, now write down the question and then write down the answer. How, when, and how, and in just what instance did my selfish pursuit of this sex relation damage other people and me? What people were hurt? How badly? Did I spoil my marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my standing in a community? Just how did I react to these situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could extinguish? Or did I insist that I was pursued and not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity? And there's a whole series of questions. And he had me write each question down and write down the answer. and this is where the names began to emerge that were the later became the basis of my eighth step uh and i answered these questions very very carefully and i answer them very very thoroughly and i went from instance to instance to incidence and one of the things i discovered is i i have a dear friend who passed away recently uh bob brown he got sober down in atlanta and i knew him he moved to washington and then he came and worked with me down in north carolina and taught me to play golf and he's my dear dear friend and i was sort of his family and he didn't have any other family and uh he just died about about six months ago but bob used to tell me he said you know i always thought i had 20 different relationships he said what i've discovered is i had one relationship 20 different times and what as i filled out these answers i found it that my behavior my abnormal warped behavior was just repetitive behavior it was sort of like a greek tragedy i don't know if anybody ever watched great tragedies but the one thing you can rely on with a great tragedy is that on the third act there's going to be a lot of bodies on the stage and that's exactly what my life was like my life every relationship i ever had was exactly the same i would be madly in love i couldn't think of anything else i couldn'T imagine this woman even defecating i mean she was so special and so much on a pedestal and and my every waking thought was about her