Emotional Sobriety: Why Not Drinking Is So Little to Settle For – Don P.

and now it is my pleasure and privilege and honor to introduce Don P from Aurora Colorado Colorado. Just give me a minute. My name is Don and I am an alcoholic. And I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my home group is simply known as an AA group. We, well, we were trying to name it. We were going through the traditions and the long form of the tradition says that any two or more alcoholics gathered for sobriety may call themselves an AA group. So our central office told us we couldn't register under that name. And we reminded them they worked for us, not the other way around. We meet at the Exempla St. Joseph Hospital in the Alpine room, or the Aspen room, at 6 o'clock every Friday morning. We don't have a lot of dead weight at our meeting. We don'T want a lot of dead weight at our meeting. Our format is very simple. We talk about a step, a tradition, or a concept back to back, and it may take one meeting or it may take weeks we really don't care following that little gathering oh by the way our second meeting of the month belongs to our GSR and our central office rep we are part of Alcoholics Anonymous and our business meeting is one of our regular meetings you can bring new people there if we're talking about the tense concept we won't hurt them they don't hear anything anyway. Following that gathering, we all go into the cafeteria and have breakfast together where the real meeting takes place. I hate to admit it to you, but in any formal meeting I'm only partly listening. Part of my mind is working out what I'm going to say when it's my turn. And I wish it weren't so, but it is so. But over breakfast, we just chit chat. We have a favorite. We've been 12-stepping for about a year and a half now. A little Mexican fellow that has been in an accident, has some brain damage and some other things and he has to show up at the hospital regularly for therapy. Well, we know who he is. All you got to do is look in his eyes and you know why he had that accident. So we started and quietly 12-stepped on him. Sure enough, he was drunk. He still, after a year and a half, has not come over and sat with us at the table. But he likes to have us come and visit with him two or three at a time. And he'll stop and say goodbye. But of more importance, people watch us, you know. So, people don't hear much what we say, but they watch us. Whether you like it or not, anytime you are identified as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you are AlcoholicsAnonymous to whoever's watching. About six months ago, our little fella had a grand mal seizure right there in the cafeteria, right over on his head. Blood everywhere. You know, head wounds aren't really bad, but taste sure look ugly. and I've never seen such response from a hospital staff everybody from the administrator to the blue cart people were just there we are reasonably sane in our group and though we love this guy we knew don't try to help we're in a hospital for God's sake stand back and wait and let the experts do it and after he'd been cared for three of the nurses came over to make sure we were okay They watch us, you know. The neighbors watch us. My next door neighbor. I'm from the old time AA. In addition to meetings out here, we have a meeting in our home every Wednesday night. A little potluck and a meeting. Because we used to meet at homes. And we still do. We were having a meeting one summer Goodwin, over 40 or 50 people showed up. The next day my neighbor's kid came over and he said, Mr. Pritch, you seem to know something about alcoholism. I have some friends who are in trouble. This is the same kid that went out in my backyard one day to pull some weeds and some of them were weeds. weeds. And I quit growing that stuff years ago, so I just pulled them up. We had a big black lab at the time. I just pull them up, you know, they're just weeds. A few days later he approached me and said, Mr. Prince, if I came into your yard, would your dog bite me? See, I know he's thinking, I've got to replant that stuff and I don't want it in my backyard. So I said, no, Chris, he wouldn't bite you. I think what he'd probably do is eat you and bury your bones under the apple tree. They watch us, you know. Everybody's been double thanked, but we missed one guy. I need to thank Reed. I come to these things to learn. He very kindly taught me how I identify the solid fork from the regular fork. I've been years waiting for someone to understand that I don't know the difference. In fact, I don' t really care but it was nice of you anyway. I've been profoundly moved by this weekend if this is your first one you have been privileged by the program not just the speakers the workshops and the speakers and the spirit of this gathering I have been continuously sober since December 26th of 1967 and I'm profoundly grateful for that it's due to the power of God and because everything I was asked to do here in AA was the truth and it worked I talk about my sobriety date because it's time we dispel a rumor that crept in and became kind of a myth in Alcoholics Anonymous us. For you new folks, relapse is not a necessary part of recovery. It does occur and it will continue to occur. One of the facts of life is that alcoholics drink alcohol. But it need need not happen. If you're an alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink again. Ever. And if it weren't for that kind of promises, I would not be here. I must also tell you, AA did not get me sober and AA does not keep me sober. God got me me sober. God keeps me sober, AA keeps reminding me of that. I did not know I was alcoholic when I got here. I was certified by one government agency as a sociopath type 2. My federal parole officer said I was a psychopath and the doctor said I'm a manic depressive drug addict. So See, I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real high drama. You can get past one or two of them, but not all of them. Manic-depressive is one of my better games. And please understand, I'm not demeaning that. My son is a truly diagnosed, treatable manic-depressant. But for me, it was defense. fence. When people start getting too close, the easiest way to hold them back is just throw a few mood swings. They tend to leave you alone. You have to get really good at it, and I was. If you do it too much, they put you away somewhere. And if you don't do it but just a little bit, you become the entertainment at the party, and Iím trying to avoid crowds anyway. So in my alcoholism, I became a surprise. Now surprises are supposed to come in packages with ribbons on them. I became the surprise. You never knew for sure when I showed up who the hell was that masked man. And that caused grave, grave damage to my family and the people who loved me most. I come from a functional home I'm sorry, but I do. If I were to be asked today to write down the qualities of the home I wish I would have been raised in, that is the home I was raised in. My parents were married 66 years when Dad left. And I can describe functional by my father's death. Having made amends to him, we had a 27-year relationship. Father and son, man to man. Nothing undone, nothing unsaid. So I know that about six months before he died, he wanted to leave this planet. He was tired. He had dry gangrene in one leg and he was losing his memory. And for my dad, that was bad news. My dad was an unmeasured genius. Truly, at the time of his death, they didn't have a test that marked where he was. But he never lost his sense of humor. He told me right near the end, he said, you know Don, there's a great benefit to this memory loss deal. I only have to rent one movie for the rest of my life. They celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary on a Saturday. On Tuesday, Dad went into a coma and a few days later left the planet. Now, the opportunity to have rebuilt a relationship with Him was brought to my attention. my function for the rest of my life from the day I got sober is to fit myself to be of maximum service to God and those about me. There was no grieving for my dad. It was a good death. It was done. He was ready to go and we were all current, if you will. What it did was make me available to the nieces and the nephews and the grandchildren children who didn't know what was going on. I could walk them over to him and say, talk to him. He can't talk back to you, but if you have anything to say, get it said. Do it. He stayed around for that party. That's why he stayed because he knew how important that was to my mother. That is functional. My brother is a professor of music at the the University of Colorado. Pardon me, I'm going through some physical things that just make me whine like a baby. Life touches me right in the morning. Now he and I grew up in the same house. He lived in the next room over right down the hall and we petted the the same dog and everything. And when he was 19, he was writing music with Stan Kenton. When I was 19 I was in my first federal penitentiary in Tokyo, Japan. Somehow the contrast does not escape me. My brother's a marvel. They take him to Russia in the Scandinavian countries every summer to teach. He's probably the world's foremost synthesizer musician. Quite a guy. Let me tell you what he and I have together. We made amends. It took 22 years to do it, by the way. He couldn't trust me. For 22 years, he could not trust me, so when you get around to trying to clean it up, Remember, the damage we do to people sometimes lasts a long, long time. And they watch us. My words mean nothing. It's my actions. When we finally got it done, one of the things my brother gave me as a gift, he said, I've discovered you and I are doing the same thing. With my music, I'm trying to reach people deep, deep in their souls so they can change if they need to. and have a new experience with life. He said, I'd watch you. You'd do the same thing. He said I use a trombone. You use your mouth. You don't want to miss that. That's what sobriety is about. Sobriety so far beyond not drinking. It just irritates the hell out of me and today's AA, that we think not drinking is more important than recovery from alcoholism. I'll tell you new people something. If you recover from alcoholics, you won't drink. Now it's a pretty good idea to stop drinking for a few days before you get recovered. But don't settle for sobriety. That is the worst possible state an alcoholic can be in, is sober. The main reason I drank is because I can't stand being sober. But meaningful sobrietry, now that's worth having. Part of my emotional difficulties in life is that I am a passionate man and I think life means something. thing. It just doesn't pass by. I want to get in the heart of it, and it means it's important. My goodness. But I was a sprinter in the game of life and not a long-distance runner. When we played football, I was fairly good athlete. I was quarterback at one time and I'll never forget the day I made a quarterback sneak and it worked. There's nothing between between me and the goal post, but air. My emotional state was, what the hell just happened? And so I slowed down and turned around to see what had just happened. They creamed me. I was a Golden Gloves boxer when I was younger. I trained with Tommy Golden in Denver. Made it all the way to the finals. It was a little three-round finals. In two rounds, I had the thing. It was mine. The problem was I knew it, so I relaxed. He had a motivation I didn't know about. He had two brothers up in the stands who had told him if you lose this one you got two more coming as soon as you get home. He beat the hell out of me in that third round because I was a sprinter not a long distance runner. I played trumpet, trombone, harmonicas right now all I'm playing is the lap dulcimer and you're not going to hear that, it's too pretty for you. It's one of the examples of the lessons I've learned about love from my wife. We were in Silver City, Arkansas and young Tom Coburn was playing Scotland the Brave on the 120-string hammered dulcimer. and I knew before I die I must be able to play just once Scotland the Brave on a dulcimer my wife who is sane knows that I will probably not get around to learning how to hit 120 strings so she bought me a little four string lap dulcifer because she loves me and I play Scotland the brave and Tom Iverson told me if I ever play it again in his presence he'll break it I think it's pretty this is a sponsorship conference And I hate definitions because they lock things in. But descriptions are good. I want to do something for you new people. This is not about me. Please understand this. One person sponsors another and they sponsor another and the circle goes out. And as a result of that, I have a family. AA is a big family. But as in all families, there are immediate family and there's kissing cousins. and I love my kissing cousins for a little while but I need to be around my immediate family they are all over the world for you new people with those of of you who are in my immediate family. You don't want to miss that. Several of these people are insane. Two of them are stark, raving mad. When there's nothing good on television, I just think of the last time I was with Brendan. When I got here, I didn't have a name. I was 38-984. No one would talk to me. Rightly so. And my alcoholism has taken me some strange places, and I almost hate to talk about some of them because somehow the sicker you are, the higher your status is here. And the worse places you've been, the better you are. But Christmas week in 1967 was a bitch for me. I was on federal parole for a little mistake I had made in 1966. I got in with bad company. Well, my job was to smuggle marijuana from Juarez to Albuquerque. Not a bad job. A little tense at times, but it paid well. But the fellow who hired me to do one of those jobs turned around and turned us all in so he wouldn't have to go to prison. He made my inventory, by the way. So I was on federal parole. I had two little boys whose mother had abandoned ship years before. She also is alcoholic. So I Was a single parent, homeless for about four and a half years, and that was before it became fashionable to be that. we finally had to land and the boys and I lived in a basement apartment between an old lady who raised cats I was down to about 133 pounds I am not a drug addict but I'd come from the generation where I used a lot of speed it made it possible to drink longer and better and it made It possible to get the hell out of town faster caster. And it quieted the imperious urge. So I'm going to talk a little about that, but understand I'm not a drug addict. If you think you are, please find that out. Just because you use drugs doesn't make you a drug ethic and just because you drank doesn't make you an alcoholic. You need to find out what the problem really is so you can take Take care of it. Anyway, I want to tell you about that week so I can get to what I came here for. I think Sean was about five, five and a half, and Terry was around eight. I couldn't work. I was on federal parole. We were on ADC and was running near the end of the road. I have come to bottom many, many times. Bottom for me is easily describable. Bottom is any morning I wake up and understand clearly whatever I have in mind for my life isn't going to happen. And so I pick up a new set of dreams. New girl, new car, new town, new job. We start all over again. And because I'm a sprinter that falls apart and I hit bottom again. Well, this was near the end of the last bottom for me. We didn't have a Christmas tree because the ADC check hadn't gotten there yet, and I was too tired to go out and steal anything. I just, man, was I tired. But when I get in distress, I walk. I'm a traveler. So the boys and I took a walk, and we found a dollar in the snow. And with that dollar, we went to the Christmas tree lot a couple blocks away and got the biggest tree on the lot for a dollar. And I'm thinking, I've still got it. When I look back over there, what I realize is I had encountered genuine kindness. This guy saw this 133-pound Auschwitz survivor with these two little boys who had nothing. He'd have given me the tree. but he let me save face by paying him the dollar so we took it home and I keep the memory clear because we had a 9 foot tree and a 7 foot ceiling and I didn't have the wit to cut the top off and we dressed it with garbage and junk and stuff and we didn't have any presents either so we took another walk and we got to the public merchandise mart in Denver and that very kind man gave me a pair of cowboy boots and a little cowboy shirt uh oh here he comes I'm having some minor medical problems and it sometimes drives me out thank you oh that's good that's one of yours he saved my life more than once so the boys each had a present they wrapped up everything in the house for me that would fit into blue paper towel and put under the tree and I started dying I'm not here today because of the truth I'm here today because I finally ran out of lies my lie was we're okay the boys and I are intact we're a little family we have a place to stay and food and that was a lie we were not an intact family there were two little boys living with a madman and we had nothing we went down to my folks house on Christmas day and I've told you my family is the kind of family that no matter what you've done and you can always go home. It may smack you alongside the head, but you've got a bed. My dad met us at the door and he said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother said I can't let you in here anymore. She can't stand watching you die. And my lie was, leave me the hell alone. I'm not hurting anybody but me. And by some kind of grace, I got to see who I was really hurting. Everybody. particularly the people I love the most. Then Dad snuck us into the basement, and my last lie died. Nobody loves us. Nobody cares. He did. He jeopardized the peace of his own home that day by sneaking us in. So I went home that Christmas Day of 1967 1967, with no lies left, a heart full of self-pity. And moved from the lies into the truth and I've got to tell you, it's sad as hell, but I finally understood I had become completely useless. There was no reason for me to be on the planet. I couldn't find one. Kids would be better off, folks would be besser off, and it was the truth. Everybody would be bitter off. I think uselessness is the absolute rock bottom of all human pain. At the point of uselessness, you either surrender or die. And I had nothing to surrender to. So I took a two-month supply of amphetamines and shot them up in my arm and laid down and died. Drank everything in the house and died, and I really think I died. I haven't had a drink since. woke up in the morning didn't feel too good well hell the police were at the door and I knew I wasn't dead what a day I hope if you try it you make it there's nothing more disappointing than waking up after you've killed yourself but I was in a wondrous state I was now ready for you I'm a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying I don't have any options left without knowing it I had become willing to go anywhere anyone said and do anything anyone said but man I didn't have to be that creature anymore that's all I came here with was a willingness to change totally I didn'T care what what I changed into, just whatever. Anyway, I laid in jail for five and a half months and healed up. What they had was nine charges. First one called for three years to life in the penitentiary and the DA promised me he'd bring the others one at a time if I beat that but I was through. I really didn't care. I know I was true. We came to trial and they took me in a room with my attorney and said we've been talking to the federal people because they really are the ones who still own me. Owe them five more years. We've all concluded you're really sick. I knew that. I said, here's the deal. If you'll plead guilty to a reduced charge we have ready, we can give you one and a half to three and we won't have to have this big trial. We'll give you two days. We'll take you one-and-a-half to three and suspend it and give you back to the feds and they've already agreed to take you to Fort Worth, Texas to the mental hospital and fix what's wrong with you. I'm an alcoholic, not an idiot. And I signed right there. I signed up for Federal Mental Hospital. And five days later, I was in the fish tank of the Colorado State Penitentiary. I can't even get locked up in the right place. And I believe that's by the grace of God and because I had done the one thing that's required here. Surrendered. Totally. No reservations. observations. Didn't even know I'd done it. I believe I came to you spiritually awake. I didn't know that. I came through pretty fragile, but spiritually awakened people are pretty fragile. So when you're working with people and they awaken, be kind, be gentle. They're really fragile. They've just been reborn. They don't know what the hell is going going on. And since you don't either, be kind. I don't believe for a second that God will mess your life up just to make mine better. I believe God uses whatever is at hand. And in that knowing of what I really needed, which was Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm an alcoholic, if you'd have put me in that hospital, I'd have been out in six months. That's one of the reasons I signed the paper. I know how to play a hospital game, a mental health game. I woke up in the padded cell of the Boulder County Jail one morning and couldn't remember how the hell I'd gotten there and neither could anybody else. It scared me a little bit. The parole officer was put in a position where he had three choices. Send me back to prison, send me to some sort of mental hospital, or get me outpatient treatment. Well, I voted for outpatient of course and I knew I was going to have to take a battery of tests I know how to play that game I went down honestly went to the library and studied the Rorschach because I knew that was going to be one of the big ones the inkblot test they evaluate you got to be sick enough to need help but not so sick that they need to lock you up I passed it I got my own psychiatrist lovely man three weeks after we started meeting he started smoking marijuana with me Now, I'm not saying I turned him on. He was ready. But the game is, if you can't beat them, get them to join you. Anyway, I was brought to you in the third week in the fish tank. A fish tank, for those of you who haven't been there, is a one-month orientation where you learn how to live in your new community. They test you and thump you and bump you and find out where you're going to go to work and kind of teach you who the players are and who not to play with and what not to do. In the third week, I can still hear it. The guard called out to us, You people will come down and you will listen. Well, I didn't have anything else to do, so I went down and I did the first thing that I had ever done right I listened just listen they had three guys ugly convicts with numbers on it well two of them were ugly Bruce was really kind of cute well he was one of the ugly ones got up looked a little like Chuck short my name's doc i'm an alcoholic and that means that i'm powerless over alcohol and drugs and all the other circumstances in my life my life has become unmanageable and if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your lives look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing because I was listening and I heard him he said your very best thinking got you to the penitentiary you're not doing too good are you well no that's where I am then he did what he does if it's working right he went one step past that it isn't what happened what I was like he said but we can show you a new way of thinking we can show you how to learn to live a way of life that will make sense to you and that was a new idea to me I've been trying to live my life so it made sense to me and my life didn't make sense to anybody my life makes a lot of sense to me today it still doesn't make a lot of sense to other people but I don't care when you start buying my groceries you can tell me how to live Makes sense to my wife We've been married 27 and a half years now We haven't had a fight yet That's the truth We don't always agree But why would I want to fight with the person I love the most And besides, she's right most of the time anyway Let me give you guys I'm a terrible sponsor when it comes to personal relationships Relationships, because I've never figured out how to have a successful sick relationship, so I'm no good to you. But I can tell you how to have a success. Successful marriage. How many of you have seen The Princess Bride? Okay. That's my relationship with God. And all my others are based on that. Remember, the little farm boy is completely dottie over the little girl. And she takes advantage of that. Oh, farm boy, fetch me that bucket, as you wish. Farm boy, do this, as your wish. As you wish is the relationship with God. So be careful what you pray for. If I ask, that's what God says, as You wish. I must also reciprocate whatever He asks, as Your wish. So you want a successful marriage? Just say, as you wish. Now my wife tells me that there are inflection differences she's been picked up over time. Rather than fight if I think Do you think there's something not quite right that she said? As you wish. But that works just as well. Our 12-step work is based on that, you know. We ought to find out, first of all, if the people want to recover. You want to quit drinking. Are you wanting to go to Anne Lang's to do so? Would you like to work with me? As you wish. If you don't want to get sober, have a good time. If you do, whatever we need to do, as you wish, if you want to stop right in the middle, as you wish you'll be back. The best friend we've alcoholics anonymous have is alcohol. It brings more people to us than anything else. Good friend. Oh yeah. Don't hate it. somebody wants to drink buy them one one then I got to go before we were one of the things that I want to share with you again is in developing my relationship with God because that whole idea is beyond my capacity I have to look at the people involved now the three people that helped me most we had to go through a 12-step study school before we were allowed to go to the AA meeting. The regular meeting happened on Friday night and they let real people in from the outside, and it was a two and a half hour meeting where we did half of it, had coffee and cake and cookies, then they did half it. We weren't allowed to do that for five weeks. Every Saturday and every Sunday afternoon we gave up our yard privileges, our movies, everything, and went to what they They called the school, three or four hours. And all it was was they took the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and read it out loud to us, shared their experience with it and of it, and gave us the assignments that come out of there, asked us those questions. First thing they said when I got in there, by the way, because Jim and I decided, let's go. Those same three guys were there. And Bruce said, now you new guys for the next five weeks have nothing to say. If you knew anything at all, you wouldn't be here. So during that time we were not allowed to talk even. Unless we had a question. Outside of that particular gathering, we talked all the time to them and to us. Most of us worked in the dish room so we... and then at night, Bruce or Roy or Phil would come by and visit with us. Now my experience is a little different to the beginning. I couldn't call my sponsor when I needed him. He didn't have a phone, neither did I. He lived on the other tier. I couldn'T get to a meeting when I need one. We had one. So my experience has been it had to go in here first. he was visiting me on one of those times I'm locked down and he's on the tier visiting with me when it hit me he's getting out of his cell anytime he wants I want what he has this is a man doing a natural life sentence for a double murder he committed one day in an alcoholic outrage in a stick-up and he was free that's what I wanted to be free and one of our first prayers is relieve me of bondage of self set me free from the bondage of self why don't you have a good trip taught the boy everything he knows he knows I waited until he got out of the room before I said that And they showed us precisely what they had. They could describe it, and they could tell us precisely how they got it. And all I had to do was what they did. I learned about alcoholism. I was in my first federal penitentiary at 19 because of alcoholism, not because of gangsterism. When I drink alcohol, I get lost, and I can't find my way home. Did that happen to you? And when you're in the Navy, that's a felony. And I was. I'd get a 24-hour liberty and be back in 26 or 28. Get a captain's mask and we'd go to sea, and that's all there was to that. The last time I did that, I had a 24 hour liberty in Long Beach, California, and 23 days later when I got back to the ship, it was gone. and was going to a war zone and I was in deep, deep trouble. And in the doctor's opinion in the book Alcoholics Anonymous he talks about working with men who had a business deal or a personal deal that would be settled favorably to them on a certain date but they took a drink a day or so before and they missed their appointment and I began to see oh yeah I took a drunk in Long Beach it's the first time I'd ever linked these consequences with a drink drink. See, these consequences do not define alcoholism. That drink does. I got to sponsor a psychiatrist once. I love that. He was smarter than anybody else. He's the founding psychiatrist of one of the finest alcohol and drug treatment programs in the world. He just couldn't stay stay sober. And I like working with new people because you teach me effective prayer. Oh God. Oh God. What am I going to say to this one? And I'm reading the doctor's opinion to him, because I understand as smart as he is, the main problem most alcoholics have is they can't read. They either read above the line or below the line. They just can't seem to get the line or they interpret what they read i know i do that i don't know how many hours i've spent in a meetings deciding what do you really mean by that words like immediately well it means immediately that's what it means but we'll discuss it york street midnight meeting over and over and over again we talked about any lengths what does any lengths mean and we talk about that it means any lengths oh my and i'm reading the doctor's opinion to him and i am watching it go in his head and get lost among everything he knows about alcoholism. And I'm praying, what can I say that's even simpler than this? I heard this come out of my mouth. I said, Don, what happens to you after the first drink? Well, he says around the fourth or fifth or sixth drink I tend to forget where I'm supposed to be next and what I'm doing and I end up getting drunk. I said well what happens to you after the fifth or fifth drink? What happens to me after the sixth drink? Oh, around the forth or fifth or sixth drank. What happens to me after the the first drink is the second drink. And if you're new, that's all you need to know about alcoholism. If that happens to you, don't go anywhere. What happens to me after the first drink, is the 2nd drink. It may not be this afternoon but it will be there and that leads then to the spree and the consequences and I can hide behind all the drama. It's It's that first drink that starts it all. I have a condition of my body, which for some reason compels me to have another drink after I take one. And I don't have any choice in the matter. I can't stop it from then on. It has to run its cycle. And I've got an even worse problem. I've Got a Mind that just can't seem to remember that. It'll be different this time. We didn't get sick because we drank too much. It was bad chili. and on and on so I've got a body that condemns me to die if I drink and a mind that condemms me to drink against my own will I can give you a hundred reasons why I drank and every one of them is valid but the main reason I drank was no reason at all no reason at all and that problem rests in my mind and I can't solve the problem with the problem. Thank God mine was destroyed when I got here. After I learned about alcoholism, Bruce said, now we're going to assume that you went insane about two seconds after birth so that we don't have to track anything. Fine with me. He said, we don'T even think the truth's going to work for you. You take the truth into your head and your ego catches it. And it says something like, uh-huh, I can use that later. So by the time I do use it, it's not the truth anymore. It's my warped version of it. He said, we suggest you forget everything you think you know about anything, particularly about God. And I rebelled. I said, come on, surely I've learned some truth. He said it's doubtful, but it is possible. And granting that it is impossible, here's the deal. anything that's really true will still be true when we're all through and the rest of it is garbage, just drop it and by some form of grace I was able to do that to this day if I'm doing battle with you please understand it's my opinion which means it's automatically warped even if it's the truth, it's warped if I have to convince you of something I'm in trouble No, because I will not listen to you. And if I don't listen to You, I won't know what You need. And as a sponsor, I need to know what you need, not what I think you need. So when we both get lost and neither one of us know, we just open the big book and read it out loud and suddenly we find out what we need. I came to believe in the power of God God, and I came to believe that this could work for me by watching three absolute total failures who had been changed. Bruce was a killer who couldn't kill anymore. Couldn't. He was a different person. The guy telling him the story could not have committed the act he was telling me about. And I asked him about it. He said, that's right, I've been changed, God changed me. Roy Nichols, God love him, he was a stick-up man. Not a very good one, obviously, What a stick-up man. And he didn't do it for the money. Roy liked going to supermarkets and going from station to station to station. He liked the adrenaline rush he got knowing every second you're there, you're closer to getting busted. What he really liked was the look on your face when you put a gun to your head and took your stuff. I heard that. I smuggled a load of marijuana across the border one time. I'm trying to get my life back together at my dad's house when Albert called me from Albuquerque and said, We've got a problem. I've got these two little kids. I'm tryng to get them alive back together. Albert says, We've go a load as far as Juarez and our driver got arrested and we need a driver. Do you want the job? Well, I drive. I'm tryin' to get him alive back in order. So I said, Of course. Did the deal. and I didn't do it for money I did it for prestige I was the only one in the United States they could think of to call to go into old Mexico and save the day you think your ego won't get you in trouble man Man, that put me in a federal penitentiary because Albert's a snake. Bit me. This has to be real and I needed sanity and insanity to be real for me. I've been studying it for years and playing it for years. And in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the story of Jim the car salesman, I found a working description of my kind of insanity. Read the story. I don't have time to tell it to you. I love to tell them. Jim was here and ate six times. Kept drinking. Last time he drank, he nearly killed him. Bill says that what he did was insane how can anything be less than insane insanity is described there as lack of proportion and the ability to think straight and that's the kind of insanity I have I have no proportion in my life if one works take ten Again, fear is for sissies. Pay 50 cents and get on the roller coaster and get scared. I like raw terror, man. That's good stuff. That'll get you out of bed. Make you feel useful. I don't know much about anger. I know about calm and I know About Killer Rage. And I go from one to the other just like that. Over really important stuff. Like getting cut off on the freeway or dinner wasn't hot, break something. No proportion. And I can't think straight. I do not see what this action will cause later. I'm warped. I'm rubber-minded. I'm self-centered. It's all about me. How can I think straight? It goes out and comes right back. It's a loop. I've got to get over that to restore me to sanity was important now these three guys please understand the reason I was listening to them is they took me as I was where I was no name living in a cage which was appropriate and they accepted me as it was where it was I didn't have to clean up for them and they kept talking about this God God. And I got thinking one day, my experience was if they can take me as I am, as flawed as they are, maybe this God that they're talking about can too. And it opened that door. We got to the third step and I had a real dilemma. I have never been afraid of the unknown. I love the unknown, that's where all the action is. I get bored with with the regular stuff. What I'm afraid of is always what I think is going to happen. I created up in here, I've got a manufacturing plant for high-grade fear. Well, we came to the third step and I had one left. I admit I'm able to forget everything, but I had on left. I was afraid if I really turned my life and went over the care of God completely that He'd put me on the corner of Colfax and Broadway handing out watchtower magazines and asking strangers, have you been saved, brother? I've got this palatial suite in cell B49 right in the Colorado State Penitentiary. I just couldn't see me lowering myself to that. Lacker proportionate in the ability to think straight. See, I had a model for that when I was in high school in Denver on the corner of Colafax and On Broadway, it was a fellow we called the brown man. Lovely man. Brown suit, brown shoes, brown tie, brown shirt, brown hat, brown attitude. And as people walked by, he'd hand them a watchtower and ask them, have you been saved, brother? And we used to drive by and make fun of him. And that's what I was afraid of. That if I turned my life over to God and did God's work, He'd make fun on me and I'd rather die than feel like a fool. And I had a very wise sponsor. He said, oh, well, let's talk about that. Now for you new folks, please understand, let's-talk-about-that does not mean let us talk about anything. It means if you'll be quiet for a minute, we'll see if we can drill through that hard head of yours. Truth without love is cruelty. And confrontation without a real answer is brutality. hospitality, but he loved me and he had a real answer. So he said, Don, do you suppose that the guy that's handing out watchtowers down there today had breakfast where he wanted to? And I said, well, yeah. He said, Well, you didn't. Do you suppose that that fellow who's making a fool of himself asking strangers if they've been saved is wearing the clothes that he picked out to do it in? I said, well, yeah, probably. He says, you're not. Do you suppose that when he's all through humiliating himself today that he gets to go home? And he had me. What he did for me was to hand carry me into the new mind that Dr. Silkworth promises us. The foundation of my life life is simply this anything at all that god has in mind for me is better than anything at all that i will ever have in mind from me period and i do live that way and i get willful sometimes what the hell i'm just a kid but that is how i live and since I started living that way the contrast is magnificent I'm a traveler when I live my life by my way I end up in an 8x10 toilet it actually was 7x9 I thought it was 8x 10 I took my grandson down to the prison the other day and they have some of the cells on display 7x 9 and my little grandson son got in there and made a profound statement. He said, Grandpa, I don't understand. How can they put people in these things? They're too small. Well, they don't put people in those things. People put themselves in those things. My world had gotten that small. And I opened it up to eight by ten up here. I had to. Seven by nine is too tight for me. I'm a traveler. Since I started working for God, I've been all over the world, literally. U.S., Canada, Russia, Japan, Puerto Rico. All over where the hell am I today? See, if I'd have only gone to the places I'd of thought of, I'd a missed all the great places. I couldn't have a lasting relationship with anyone. And when Jackie begged me to marry her, I said, as you wish. Well, she didn't hear her. My children were afraid of me. nobody's afraid of me these days nobody my granddaughter came to me the other day little Gianna said grandpa you're the best grandpa in the whole world and I'm a curious fellow I said well why do you think that honey she said oh because you love us so much she also described the alcoholic mental process one afternoon I sit on the back porch and swing and watch them and that's one of the great things about being my age. You get to sit on the back porch and swing and watch things, and nobody bothers you. Kids were all playing with the balls out in the back. Our yard is always full of kids because they're the real lesson givers of this planet. And she wanted the green ball, and the minute the boys discovered she wanted a green ball there wasn't a chance in hell she'd ever get close to that green ball. And I watched her go through her gyrations. She's brilliant. Nothing she could do would bring it about. And she ran up on the porch and sat on the swing next to me and was quiet for a minute. She says, Grandpa, they won't give me the green ball. They have ruined my life. That's the kind of insanity I suffer from. She said to me a while back, Grandpa how come it is that you know everything? everything. Because I understand the grandpa role. I do. I'm selective in what I show you. But what I said to her is, honey, it's simple. I've lived a long time and I pay attention. And this is about paying attention. Recovery is about paying attention to what's going on about me and what's going on within me. We're promised in the big book not only will Will I be able to utilize my past? I will see how my experience can help others if I'm paying attention. Very important in sponsorship. I need to see what you need. And to do that, I have to learn to listen to you. What you're really saying because you don't know how to talk yet either. You can't read and you can't talk. What do we got? 60. Good. 65 is it. Well, 68. What the hell? I get frustrated, but I've been doing this for 33 years. And I've bee living with a sense that where I am, God is, for 36 years. And so I have miraculous stories to tell you, and I've run out of time here. But there are a couple I do want to share with you about setting straight the crooked path. I come from the old school of amends where if you did something wrong, you must do something about it. There's no slack. Unless it's going to harm somebody. I had the opportunity, my last nine years of my work life, I worked for the Department of Corrections in North Carolina and then came to Colorado and worked in corrections there for seven years. When God has work for you to do, nothing gets in the way. Nothing. When I was about three years sober, I'm still on federal parole and my memories began to come back. They will do that new people. God's very merciful. You don't get to remember all the bad shit you did because it will kill you. It will come slowly as you get better. And one of my memories came back in December before I got hit in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I had used a bad check to pick up a prescription I had written myself so I can write as good as any doctor so we could get out of town. Now that I remember it, I've got to do something about it. We're given pretty simple directions. It says in the big book if others are going to be involved, we talk to them about it and secure their consent. The only person who would really be bothered by me going to Wyoming and confessing two more felonies would be my parole officer. So my sponsor and I talked it over, and it got clear I had to go to my parole office and confess two more Felonies. It made me a little nervous. But I needed his permission to leave the state. And he listened to the story and said, you're right, you have to do something about it. Here's the deal. If they arrest you, I will not violate you. You have my permission to Leave the State and go. so on the way home gary and i talked about it he said it also says in here we're not to be the foolish martyr and just throw ourselves into the lion's cage others will be involved he says you're active in aa they're letting you visit your kids again there's a lot of people will be changed by this he said i come from cheyenne let's do this i know the guy at drexel he's a decent man let's write him a letter lay the whole thing out and ask him how he would like you to handle it Well, that's consistent with my spiritual experience. I got freed, locked up in a penitentiary cell one night working on the eight step with the suggestion that my sponsor said, can you look them all in the eye, picture them in front of you, if you can look them in the eyes and say to them, I've been wrong and I've harmed you, would you please tell me what I have to do so we can get the books to balance? And I was set free that night, lifted from that chair and set free. So now I'm really nervous. I've got to confess two felonies on paper and sign it and mail it. And I don't have a high drama ending for you because the letter came back. The man had died, and the place was shut down. And then I got to thinking, well, now, don't I owe Wyoming something? Back to the parole officer. He said, don's do that. Here's what's going to happen. and you're going to go into Wyoming and confess two more felonies they can't prove because the records are all gone. You'll have to deal with confused police officers. And I don't want you dealing with confused peace officers. He knew about it. He said, you just keep doing what you're doing and an opportunity will be made for you. Three, four, five years ago while I was still working in corrections in Colorado, I was sent to Cheyenne to open an alcohol and drug treatment program in a facility. I got it up and running and came back and about six weeks after I got back it hit me. It's over. I'm clean. an opportunity will be made the minute you get willing it may not happen today but an opportunity will be made it took 22 years to make amends with my brother because he's a decent man stand up guy and he had watched me betray our dreams all the promises break the family's heart it's a long time before he could really trust me again And when I was in North Carolina, one of the ways I make amends to my mother is I go see her on a regular basis. She said, honey, all I've ever wanted for you is that you be happy, so I go by happy all the time. Drag happiness with me, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, stories about you. And I was visiting her from North Carolina and my brother came in and sat down. And I had my leg crossed over like that. And all of a sudden he kicked me on the bottom of the shoe. And he said, you know, Don, I'm really glad to see you. And he was shocked because he was glad to see me. He hadn't felt that for a long time. Blew him away. And because he's completely straight, he said listen next time you're in town let you and I go up to the cabin and do a little fishing. Now God's made me a listener. When you ask people what do I have to do, you shut up and listen while they tell you. What he really said is that you and i need a whole day by ourselves with no interruptions so we did didn't do a whole lot of fishing played a little cribbage but we talked and we got it all shook out and my brother said to me now there's one last thing you need to know he said I'm 58 years old now and I believe I've been able to make a decent contribution to life now you don't just tell anybody that that's your soul it only goes to people you really really care about you really love deeply my heart soared we're back my brother and I are buddies again but the great thing he did for me that day he not only gave me that gift he gave me the gift I'd looked for for years years. To tell you how I feel about you. So you didn't get me sober, but I was brought to you to learn about love and service and how to be part of a family. I've used the story of the statue of David and Michelangelo and the anvil in the lake and all that, and We're all insufficient. Well, from my brother to you, here it is. I'm 70 now. Now, because of you, I've been able to make a decent contribution. That's very important. important. We're all on notice. One day at a time doesn't mean just live one day at a time, that's all we got. And if we have anything to do with each other it must be done now. See I will never be by this way again and neither will you. Even if we meet again I won't be the same and neither would you. So we need to transact our business and and get it done. Be kind. Nothing works better than kindness. The people coming to us are badly wounded. Self-inflicted wounds most of the time, but wounds nevertheless. They don't need to be yelled at, pushed around, beaten up, or pampered. they need to be told the truth if you are alcoholic you don't ever have to drink again you don�t ever have to live in the kind of pain you've been living in ever again we do not promise you a pain free life but the pain of active alcoholism need never be yours and the pain of active alcoholism is that I'm different and I don't belong here well if you're an alcoholic you belong here you're sicker than hell and so are we and we're all going to get well together and I love you very much thank you