Ethanol Drip Saved My Body. Step 3 Saved the Rest. – Nick M.

Good evening. This is Saturday Night Live, birthday meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous held at Westgate West in San Jose, California on January 26, 2002. Our speaker this evening is Hawaiian Nick of San Ramon. The original recording for this meeting is kept in the SNL tape library. Please observe our traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for commercial or entertainment purposes. Please do not break the anonymity of the speaker or any other AA member at the public level. Thank you. Thank you. My name's Nick. I'm an alcoholic. It's a privilege and an honor to be clean and sober in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. At any level of participation or any level of service, it is, you know, I'm overpaid in this program. I don't know about you. It's always nice standing in front of one of these things and not having to enter a plea. You relate, huh? Totally. You know, if you're new here, I'd like to welcome you. If you've been around here for a while, I'd like to welcome you. And if you've been out there, and you know what that is like, and you're in here, and you know what it's like, you know how truly blessed we are. I am truly blessed, and I know you are. It's good to have our visitor from L.A. and the meetings in Los Angeles, great brand of Sprite. Meetings all over the world in Alcoholics Anonymous. What a privilege to be part of this. You know, you slowly come to the room and slowly get up and wake up and begin to live life on life's terms. You know, my sponsor calls it sobrietyism. The work it takes to stay here, it's an incredible thing. So it's a privilege to be here. It's good to see some familiar faces, some old friends. It's good to see Mickey here, who is actually responsible for getting me here. Here she is. I know she broke her foot and was questionable, but she said she would get here, and she's here. And it's good to see her. Good to see my friend Bruce. And it's a privilege to have a very incredible human being in my life. My wife Robbie's here, and I'm from New Jersey. Marcia's here, so it's really a privilege to be here. Let me tell you briefly, I was born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands, and everything in my life was... wonderful until I was two. And it was then I began to realize I was being raised in what is called, the Hawaiian word is papuli. This means insanity. We call it dysfunctional. And I was raised in an incredibly dysfunctional family. I mean, we would sit around in a large group and sit around and psychologically abuse each other until somebody had a seizure, and then we would have pie. Everything is fine here. Now, I have a couple of memories of growing up. I know you do too. Some things stick with you, some don't. And what impressed me about growing up, about my mother, was of all things, her hair. And my mother would, I mean, she would cut it and dyed it and permed it and cut it and dyed it and permed it and permed it and cut it and dyed it and dyed it and cut it and permed it. I mean, most women just teased their hair. My mother was pissing hers off. I remember walking into the bathroom there. It's like 45 pounds of hairspray in the bathroom. I walk in, I see a fly stuck in midair, you know. And my mother's there with a glass of wine, you know, doing her hair off. I don't know why I remember about that, about my mother, but that's, you know, what I remember, her hair. And she's still doing it. She's alive and well in Kane'ohe, Hawaii, and I think this week she's brunette, I don't know. But interesting. I don't know what I can tell you about my father growing up. He was, you know, he was an alcoholic, periodic alcoholic. And what can you say about that? You know, stay sober as long as they can, and then when they get drunk, there's nothing in the world that's going to stop them from taking the next drink until it's done. And if he never made it home by, you know, 4.30 or 5 o'clock on Thursday, we knew. And he would show up sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday. Now, this was a good man. His heart was in the right place. He had a drinking problem. He tried to do the things the father would do, provide, you know, clothes, and spend quality time. I remember we would go for walks on Saturday morning, go look for the car. What a guy. These are memories. And the Hawaiian Islands, it's party consciousness. It's a great place to drink. Everybody goes to the island to drink. I mean, there's a kind of a culture, a drinking culture in the islands. Yeah. You grow up with it. When I grew up, 18 years old, you could drink in the bar. If you looked 16 and told them you were 18, you'd be drinking. So I got a great start. And my family is a, I mean, my uncle owned a bar in Skid Row, to tell you a little bit about my family. And I want to tell you how I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in November of 1969, a place called Hotel Street. This is the part of Honolulu that nobody sees, unless you're part of that crowd. Hotel Street is where the, just that part of town, junkies and prostitutes and winos and just thriving spiritual community there. And great place to learn and grow up there. And I was on a park bench one morning, after a three-, four-day run. You know, I'd lose jobs constantly. I tried to be responsible about this. I don't know about you. I was, you know, I'd be drinking. I'd call up, even when I was drinking, I'd call up. I'd give two weeks' notice, you know. You guys notice I've been gone for two weeks? Yeah, you're fired, you know. So come get your check. I got a check, and I'd run down drinking money. But in November of 1969, I was on a park bench. And a wonderful man, they call him Chinaman Charlie, longtime sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, found me on a park bench. And he tapped me. He tapped me on the shoulder. And he had been sober long enough. It wasn't an act of intuition to know what was wrong with me. He knew exactly what was wrong with me. And he did not say any words. He did not judge me. There was no critique. There was no pity. It was just a gentle smile on his face, and a kind of a radiance in his eyes. And he just tapped me like that. And I looked up at him from the park bench, sick and miserable. In the morning. And he just did this. And I got up off the bench, and I followed him up Hotel Street past the 6 o'clock bars, you know, the Swing Club and the Hubba Hubba. And he kept like 10 feet or so ahead of me, and just kept... And I followed him. Where's this guy? You know, he was going to buy me something to drink, obviously, or get me something to eat. Where is he? Oh, now it must be the next block. There's a liquor store on the corner. And he went past that. I go, where is this guy going? And he kept going. And that little hook with no words just was like a magnet, because I thought he was going to get me something to drink. Maybe he's going to the bank to get some money out. And he made a turn and followed me. I followed him up a set of stairs. And I walked in a room similar to this. And I walked into the room, and I saw the 12 steps and the 12 traditions on the wall. And it was a room of a meeting in the morning in downtown Honolulu. So I walked in. Someday, November 1969, I was a young guy, it was a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know how it is before a meeting, I mean, back then I walked in the room, I saw all these people. They're standing around. They're kissing and hugging on each other. I thought it was an orgy with morals. I don't know how to judge these people. But I sat down quietly. And I don't remember what I heard except three very powerful words. I don't know how to judge these people, but I sat down quietly. And I don't remember what I heard except three very powerful words. I don't remember what I heard except three very powerful words. And I don't remember what I heard except three very powerful words. And I don't remember what I heard except three very powerful words. So this is the only thing I heard. And I would keep coming back. And you know, Chinaman Charley in his own inimitable way, he gave me a copy of the big book. And he said it was a very powerful book. It was a very powerful book. And he served words in his own way that I will never forget. He looked at me affectionately. And he said, don't drink. The big book. Go to meetings. Now, he gave me this book. I lived on the other side of the island, the windward side. I took the book with me home. Now, one of the things that I found in it was the importance of having the right to read. impressed me about that meeting of alcoholics anonymous was there was a presence in the room it was a powerful and attractive presence i feel the presence in the room when i came here this evening i feel it in every room of every meeting where drunks collect and on the other side of the island as a young man you know you heal up youth health and wealth are the three things that have a tendency to keep us out there for a long time well i had two out of the three i didn't have the wealth but i certainly had a fair measure of health and youth and i was a part-time genius i read the book pretty quickly you know got back to the meeting couple of days later charlie came up to me and said what do you think a big book and i said well charlie's not a really very big book average size seems to display a conspicuous absence of intelligence it manifests unmitigated infantile ism most of it is irresponsible and incompetent and i noted charlie there's a salient lack of perspicuity charlie went don't drink go to meeting read the big book again i took the book home and i read it again and as they say more will be revealed and i read in that book again you know i opened it to them where it said what about the real alcoholic i really didn't want to know so i turned the page and the next thing it said once in a while he may even tell the truth and i began reading in that book how did those people how did that writing how did that consciousness how did that message know so much about how i felt what an incredible connection words on the written page and then i went to meetings and you know they'll those old-timers in those rooms they put their arms around me they called me the kid i was one of the original young people in alcoholics anonymous in the rooms of honolulu and i made a lot of friends and i got into the rhythm of sober living i want to tell you if you knew and you come to meetings often enough you're going to hear stories similar to mine if you don't hear any similarities tonight don't worry about it come back hear another speaker and you may connect there but what i did is i did a geographical went to southern california and through a long set of circumstances i introduced myself as i was told to do to a room of alcoholics anonymous as i relocated get connected right get phone numbers well see i had something called alcoholism now i don't know about what your alcoholism is like but i'll tell you what mine is like when i went to a brand new room of strange people that did not come up to me and put their arms around me and welcomed me and loved me which i thrived on in those rooms in the room in los angeles i was just another drunk and my alcoholism tells me this it says if you treat me special then i can feel average but if you treat me average i feel rejected don't know why that is and i went into those rooms and i didn't connect and the love and the resonance was there in the room and the laughter was there in the room and i slowly began to fade away from meetings of alcoholics anonymous worked for a large company working my way up the steps of the ladder money property and on the way to work one morning after 11 months away from a meeting i was totaled out in a car wreck taken to a hospital a wife i had a child a daughter and a wife that was pregnant ready to give birth to another girl and i had no job and i had no this and all that and i was edgy and have any drinks and this is a period of time collected together that the collective experience was this that being away from meetings having a new child that was born calling my mother giving her that great news and her saying to me I've been trying to get a hold of you. Your father just died. My daughter was born within an hour and a half of my father's death. I was up here in Elation with a beautiful girl that was born death of my father down there. And no meeting. And no connection. And no way to get synchronized and into the rhythm of integrating what the hell was going on in my life, you see. Because alcoholics are just, in my humble opinion, we're either a doormat or a steamroller. We're either way up here in grandiosity or just out here in feigned humility, low self-esteem. And don't know how to be average human beings. Don't know how to join the human race. And then another event happened in my life that put me over the edge. A call in the morning that said, you know, are you Nick McComb? I said, yeah. Dr. Richard Smith calling from Dunn. County Riverside Hospital. And your sister was thrown from the fourth floor of the hospital. She landed on concrete, shattered her right leg, broke her back in two places, fractured her skull, and she's in a coma. I turned around to go to that spiritual bank account that we talk about in this program. And when I turned around to go to that spiritual bank account, no connection. And the hell am I doing? Look at the clock. That's why it's called alcoholism. It's not alcoholism. It's not alcoholism. It's not alcoholism. It's not alcoholism. And in wait. The dilemma of feelings that were too difficult and harsh to feel. I just didn't want to go crazy. I didn't want to go over the edge. Just wanted to take the edge off. You know how that is. Just a couple, right? And I had enough program to know better to make a phone call. And the long and short of this, if you're new here, is I went to a bar and I ordered a double shot. I had enough sanity to turn around, to go out of the room, get the hell out of my body. I recovered and said, what the hell are you doing here? Get the hell out of here. And I turned around to go out the door and my alcoholism reared its head and said, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. You're not thinking clearly here. Very, very deceptive. And it said, listen, you don't want to hurt anybody, yourself, anything. But if you go out there with nothing and no buffer, you are going to break. You're going to crash. Just take the edge off. So I turned around and I picked up those two drinks. Actually, it was one drink, a double, and I drank it down. And then what I lost is I lost what was the most precious thing in my life. And in an instant, and in the next minute, alcoholism really began to rear its head by saying, well, you know, you had a double, you know, it's not quite there, you know. Somatic memory. You know, no, you need another double. And pretty soon I have three drinks and four drinks. I'll have seven drinks. I'll just get drunk tonight. I'll just get drunk this week. I'll get drunk this month. And that attitude of who cares took me to numerous hospital programs. That is a whole other talk I do. I was gone for seven and a half, eight years. That's a whole other talk of insanity. Fifty-seven drunken publics winding up in the streets. In San Francisco. A periodic, hopeless drunk. No matter what transpired in my life, good, bad, or indifferent, I wound up picking up a drink. In and out of the rooms, in and out of meetings, in and out of programs, in and out of hospitals. I met Dr. Paul, whose stories in the big book went through his treatment program. I met a lot of people. Dr. Purse, the admiral from the Navy that sobered up Betty Ford and all the senators, on and on. And I had volunteers standing in line. They were trying to help me. Policemen on the street saying, listen, man. And I remember being in the streets in San Francisco after doing the geographical. Being in the streets of the city, cold winter, wandering out of my element from 6th and Howard. I'm down in Fisherman's Wharf in the fog, so heavy and dense, with a coat and a bottle. I could barely see three feet in front of me because of the fog. And I'd take that thing out and I'd take a hit. And then, you know, they'd have the foghorns out there. Go for another drink. Through a set of circumstances, May 23rd, I wound up in Highland Hospital of Alcoholism. This was not a program. It was a save your life program. I was in the emergency room for a couple of hours. I vomited blood on my shirt and they wrestled away a quart of Kester whiskey that I had. Smooth as silk, remember that stuff? Burned a couple of holes in me. Fighting with them. And they do, you know, they're emergency measures. They stop my bleeding and I'm settled in there for four and a half hours in the emergency room. They put me upstairs. And in 24 hours, I have a grand mal seizure. A series of seizures. And they shoot me with Dilantin. In 72 hours, where you normally get better, I took a turn for the worse. I went into what's called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. It's a medical condition of alcoholics. It's called... I'm talking about true delirium treatments. Not the kind you think you're having and you're shaking out a drunk and you feel like... And you're dying and you have diarrhea and you're vomiting. I've done a lot of that in drunk tanks. I was a drunk tank drunk. I'm talking about true delirium treatments where they strap me down in four-point restraints. And thank God they had an expert on the floor there in addictions. And he came by and he said, this is... They shot me with Librium. 125 milligrams of Librium. And 45 minutes, an hour later, I was still out of it. Dying in this delirium treatment. And they shot me with 125 milligrams of Valium. And that didn't pull me out of it. And thank God there was an expert on the floor there. Beautiful, beautiful African-American doctor. Dr. Warren. He said, you better hook him up with an ethanol drip or you're going to lose him. And I remember the emphasis and the urgency. And they hooked me up with an alcohol drip. This is pharmaceutically pure alcohol. And they hooked me up with that. And I could feel... My body knew that feeling. And that is what pulled me out of the delirium treatment. Auditory and visual hallucinations. And saved my life. I got to tell you, I met along this road an incredible human being. Whom I married. And she was there fighting with the doctor. Fighting in the hallway. Why are you hooking him up with alcohol? And she didn't understand the idea. She understood. You know, because she hated alcohol all her life. What it did in her family and what it did in ours. And you see, as I began to feel this in my body. Coming back. I woke up laying on the table. I want to tell you about alcohol. I began looking at the bottle. If you've been in enough emergency rooms and you're a part-time genius. You kind of know these things. And I was looking for that ethanol drip. Because I know that feeling. And I saw it on the very end. It said ethanol dextrose solution. And, you know, I had a lot of wires and a lot of tubes. And I followed that very carefully. To the dripper that it was. And it was going way too slow. So I broke up loose enough to turn the thing up. And I remember the nurse came in and she just looked at that. She slapped me. Like that. She slapped me. Isn't life sacred? Isn't life sacred? And I was in this place, you see. We call it a moment of clarity. Dying on the streets. Dying of alcoholism. A beautiful wife and children at home. Everything to live for. A Nissan pickup truck. There I was. Trying to cope with life events. And in my life events at that time I was dying. But when I heard her say in that moment of clarity, You're throwing your life away. It affected me. Then I had more physical things going on. My fever went up to 104. I was dying of alcoholism. I had varices that were leaking into my system. I had a liver that was failing. My kidneys were hemorrhaging. I had blood in my urine. I was dying. I wasn't out of the water here. And they collected and did a lot of tests and found that during the surgery I had a broken appendix was leaking into my system. I needed emergency surgery. And if I had any family, any friends, I ought to call somebody because I may not get out of here. Dr. Ellis giving me a lecture. Giving me a lecture. And he said, this is the direct result of your alcoholic lifestyle. You know what? I was dying from hardening of the attitude. I looked up and said, hey, doc, doc. It would be a tragedy if I lived because I'd just be back here next month. See, I was in a place where I really didn't want to live. And I didn't want to die. I sure the hell couldn't get sober and I couldn't drink anymore. Been there? Deep. And this incredible surgery team, incredible physicians, trauma, the best, took me up into this incredible surgery program. And on the other side of surgery, on May 23, 1982, I had what our book talks about, what I neglected, didn't care about, an out-of-body experience, a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening. There are a lot of words to describe. It's in the big book, the appendix. You can read about it. It's a tremendous mystery. It won't give you much information. I cannot transmit the transcendent experience. It is not about words. I can tell you this much. It shifted my perception from where I lived in problem consciousness. I hate you. I hate me. And I don't care. I used to tell judges that. There were policemen on the street that were throwing me in the paddy wagon. That's where I lived, problem consciousness. My whole life was a problem. It wasn't me. It was you. And really, if it wasn't you, then it was me. And then who cares? Problem consciousness. May 23, 1982, I went to solution consciousness. No other word. Grace of life, given by the power of life, power that created it all. May 23, 1982, through that mysterious divine intervention, I shifted consciousness, solution consciousness. I went from problem consciousness to solution consciousness. Let me tell you about solution consciousness. Real simple. Thank you, God. How can I serve? Thank you for the grant of life. Thank you for your love. How can I serve? You know, when I come into this room, when I go to meetings, this is what we talk about, love and service here. You know what our program is about? One beggar talking to another beggar about where the bread is. Step one is the problem. Step two is the solution. Step three is the commitment to pursue the solution. What is that solution? God is our solution. God is or He isn't. You either go with God or you don't. God is everything or He's nothing. Choice is ours. Every day in whatever God is or either let Him or you. I got to Tri-Valley Fellowship. I could not walk across the room. My beloved wife allowed me the privilege to come back into our home, into the back room just to heal up and to move on. Two men from Alcoholics Anonymous came. I could barely walk across the room. Ten days later I had a tube training, physically, mentally, emotionally. It damaged human beings. I know what worthlessness is. I know what ego deflation is. Granted that gift. Two men from Alcoholics Anonymous Tri-Valley Fellowship came. They helped me into a car and they put me in the backseat of this car and they drove me down to a meeting. And I had been to a lot of meetings in those eight years, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, trying to get this message, wanting to get this message. And I sat in the back of the room with these two men, one on each side of me. Sometime in June, I don't even know what day it was, 1982, for the first time I could hear with my ears, I could hear with my hearing, and I could see with my seeing. And what I could hear and what I could see was an incredible message, a message of hope. There's hope in these rooms. If you're hurting, if you're hurting, like I am, whatever's going on in your life, I want to welcome you. If you're hurting, if you've been here a while and you're hurting, I'll tell you that we love you. There's hope in these rooms. You know what hope is? Hearing other people's experiences. You know, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I got sober, not because I thought I could get sober. I did it because you thought I could do it. I had no belief in me. I had no power. You led me to the power. You know, they say when you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, move, hold your hand out if you're new here. You got to learn to ask for help. You have to learn to ask for help. I used to like to look good, you know. Stand by the coffee bar and look good. Hey, Nick, tell us about yourself, you know. Oh, yeah, I'm a man of great learning whose veneration for truth is only exceeded by my high moral character and my majestic presence. Oh, gee, I heard you were separated. You lost your car, you got no job, and you were dying a couple weeks ago. Oh, yeah, that was then. This is now. I'm doing good now, you know. Don't you think you got to get in that meeting? Oh, no, no, those people need it. You know, newcomers. I've been around here before. Alcoholism. And I would go into those meetings, and I learned to ask for help. So if you're new here, put your hand out. Ask for help. What we do is we break bread and we nourish each other. And after you've been here for a while, after you get a taste of what Alcoholics Anonymous really is, put your hand out. Extend it out to somebody coming in after you. Because I promise you, if you're holding on with both hands, you're not going to fall down. That's our program. We hold each other. This is a we program. The we contingent upon the power who gave it to us through a stockbroker, drunken doctor. Hopeless stockbroker, dying of alcoholism, six months dry, needed to talk to another alcoholic somewhere in Akron, Ohio, on a business deal that fell through, who was ready to get drunk, and went to any lengths, getting nickels out of the bar and putting it in a telephone, going down the list, calling churches just to talk to another drunk. That's our program. Going to any lengths. And he found Dr. Bob. You know, and he went to Dr. Bob's house. And this is a doctor. This is a medical doctor. What are you going to tell him about alcoholism and addiction? And he granted Bill, you know, okay, I'll come here in five minutes. You know, he's heard this before. And Bill came in and sat him down. Bill came in and sat in that room with Dr. Bob. And that is where it began for us. Just being polite. And Bill said, I'm not here for you. I'm here for me. He looked at him and said, what? You're not here to preach to me? You're not here to talk to me? He said, no, I'm here for me. That's how we get well in here. By getting what we have to give to each other. He who gives here receives. Our program, our steps one through twelve, is designed simply to introduce us to a power greater than ourselves. I have no definition of God. God fundamentally is a mystery. You either go with God or you don't. I love there's a great hermetic definition. God is an intelligible energy whose circumference is nowhere but whose center is everywhere. That center is in you and that center is in me. Now, 97 days sober, introduced me to the book again and told me about, we absolutely insist on enjoying life. Okay, what are we going to do? We're going water skiing. It's over. Water skiing drunk. I'm out there. I'll never forget this. I'm out there in the water. My feet are in the boards. I'm holding on to the stick that's attached to the rope that's attached to the boat that Jack built. This is not a normal boat. I mean, this engine is like eight foot high with chrome wires over pipes, you know, twin carbine engines and huge scoop on the top. This thing is sucking in birds and babies and houses, you know. And I'm in the water holding on to this thing for recreational purposes. I am a little concerned about my personal safety here, but these guys in the boat, you know, they can't hear me. They just see my face, which seems to be saying, please abuse me at a high rate of speed. I have no common sense. Or the shirt version, hit it. That thing pulled me out of the water with such force, it separated my entire skeletal system free from the remainder of my body. I swear to God, you could look back and see a Caucasian wetsuit floating where I used to be, you know. And they're dragging me around the lake. There's Alan up there. Hey, look, he got up on his stomach this time, you know. I mean, water's going through my nostrils, exiting my lower orifices. I'm talking reverse enema colon holiday time here. And they're dragging me around the lake for half an hour. You know what? I'm an alcoholic. I don't know how to let go. They pull me up in the boat, and they go, hey, dude, you did good, you did good. You feel clean? I said, hey, I wouldn't have been any cleaner if I was Freebase and Metamucil here, you know. I'd eat a six-pack of bran muffins and not land a scratch for two weeks the last time I went water skiing. I'm a little suspicious about that line. We absolutely insist on enjoying life. What a program. I love the people on the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, because they lifted me up out of myself. I was sober 10 years just cruising along having more and more and more incredible experiences in the living, being of love and service. I had the great opportunity, the great privilege to run one of the largest social model detoxes in Northern California in Hayward. Halfway houses, you know, 25-bed detox. Incredible program. And, you know, drunks would come up to the door and ring the doorbell, and they would come, and I'd open the door. You know, after a couple of years I became the director of this program, and I would go to court and get drunks, just like myself, you know, to the program sentenced in lieu of going to jail. And people would ring, drunks would ring the doorbell, you know, broken down from the street, and nothing, just deplorable, unemployable, dying. And they'd be at the door, you know, and I'd be kind of dressed like this after coming back from court, and the guy would go, hey, hey, what do you know? What do you know? I said, here, man, let's get a cup of coffee, sit down, and roll up my sleeves, man, and talk to them. You know, one drunk talking to another, one beggar telling another beggar about where the bread is, what a privilege that is, what a gift that is. Ten years sober, Christmas Eve, I get up enjoying life. The joy of living, I get up and I start bleeding Christmas Eve morning. You know how Christmas Eve, you make plans, right? Family, friends, recovery, life, meetings, loved ones, and I'm bleeding. You know, God, now what? And I go up to the hospital and they do all these tests, and they find, they send me over to my doctor at the next building over, and I walk into the doctor's office, and he sent all his help home, the sun was setting, Christmas Eve, he's alone in his back room, not in the examining rooms, not in, you know, the patient rooms, this is his office with his library, and the lights are turned low, and I go back there, and there he is, you know. This is a beautiful man, a beautiful doctor. You know, and he had tears welling up in his eyes. He said, Nick, you have a large malignant tumor. In your right kidney. It needs to come out. And I put my arm around this man, and I said, you know, doc, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And he looked up at me like, you know, reality check. Like, what planet did you say you were from here? But he put it in a marvelous way. He said, I'll never forget, he said, where do you get the spiritual fortitude? And I said, doc, you know, it's a spiritual path. A program called Alcoholics Anonymous. And he just looked at me and shook my head. January 1st, 1992, after more examination, they found a spot in my liver the size of a grape. I went in. I did this incredible surgery. I had a right radical nephrectomy. They took my right kidney, my adrenal glands, my lymph nodes. I didn't do any chemotherapy. I didn't let them cut my liver. I had to get second and third opinions. You know, I had to do an informed, I had made an informed decision on what I wanted to do. And I turned my life over to the care of God as I understand Him. And slowly and gradually, that growth in my liver dissipated within six months. And I was in that hospital and you showed up. Every time I opened my eyes, I had people in the room, 30, 40 people at a time. My wife was putting cards all over the walls. I had flowers. It was like a flower shop with plants. It was incredible. It's one thing to be of love and service. It's another thing being on the receiving end. You love me back to health. I had to live. You wouldn't let me go anywhere. And people kept coming up and coming up. I couldn't get any sleep. They took the phone away. They took me out of the room. They hid me. Put me in another room. It was bad up there. The nurse said, Hey, are you in the soaps? Are you a royalty from some other country? Where are all these people coming from? Who are you? You're not drunk. You had surgery. You had bad surgery. You're not drunk. I said, No. I'm an alcoholic. These are my friends. She was blown away. My friend, Big Tim from Tri-Valley Fellowship, I'll never forget. He's coming up there with a plant and a little flower and a card, you know, and he comes up. I'm gone out of the room. So he goes up to the nurse's station over there and he goes, Hey, where's Nick? The nurse asked him, Hey, is that guy famous or something? Tim said, Oh, yes. But we don't know his last name. What a privilege it is being here. We're so blessed, so blessed to be in this room. In 1999, I had a recurrence in my left kidney. Blessed with many years. But in 1999, I had a tumor accidentally, coincidentally found going out with people in the program having pizza, getting an upset stomach, having some kind of intestinal problem. I go to the emergency room. My wife drives me up there late one night. And they don't let me go home. And then the next day, this whole thing goes through. Everything's fine. My intestines. But guess what? I got this track record. So they did a checkup on one of the x-rays that they did. And they found a large tumor on my left kidney. I don't have any more kidneys left. I can't get on a transplant list. They don't give kidney patients or cancer patients any transplant. I went to UCSF. They were going to do an auto plant where they take my kidney out and they bench it and cut it and put it in my hip. I mean, a lot of complications with surgery. A lot of things. I may bleed to death because it's so close to the portal vein in my kidney. A lot of complications. My wife, God bless her, she puts a call out for help. Because there's nothing here that works. There's no chemotherapy that works for the type of cancer that I have. She put a call out on the internet. And some lady from New York said, My mother had the same thing that happened to your husband. And she went to this incredible new place. It was on 60 Minutes. It's called biotactic radial surgery. And they do it at University of Staten Island in New York City. But do they do things for kidneys? And I remember my wife and I going down the list and there it was. Kidneys. And we sent my things there. You see, they're very selective. They're one of the top five cancer centers in the world. Like 3% to get in. I figured we're 3% group here. I got in here. I figured my chances would go there too, you know. I got in there. And flew to New York. Flew to New York. And Marcia, who's here tonight. I never met Marcia until I flew to New York City. Total stranger. Takes me into her house. I stay there for a month. What a program. What a gift. And there I'm laying on the table, you know. They make you a body suit, a space suit. And they hook you up to the high float. What the hell do I know? I'm just a drunk. High floatation table. Big, huge, like linear accelerator. Four million volts. Okay. Now they tell me my tumor is so close to my spine I have to lay absolutely still. Breathe in the top 16th part of my lungs. So as not to move. And he says, if you move. He says, it's so close we have to bend some of these beams around. Your spine. If you move or we miss. You will not get up off that table. I said, how long do I have to stay still like this? He said, 45 minutes. How many times do I have to do that? Five times. And I laid on that table and I promise you. From the bottom of my heart, I know what step three is about. I know it. Turn my life and my will over to the care of God as I understood him. God is or he isn't. You either go with God or you don't. God is everything or he's nothing. And in my life, God is everything. And I know in your life, God has put his arm around you. God has touched your life because you're in this room tonight. I'm going to close. I close with several different stories, but I love this story. I see my friend Bruce here. And it's a story about these very, very poor sharecroppers. Sharecroppers have nothing. They work the soil. They plant seeds. They grow a crop. They gather the harvest. They take it into town. And they're able to buy new seeds for the next harvest. Buy groceries, food, supplies. Just eek out a poverty. A poverty-level living. One year, for some reason, the seed grew a little extra. Just a little bit. So when they sold it, they had a little gain. Just a little bit of money left over. Never happened before. And John looked at his wife. Her name was Marsha. Marsha, what are we going to do? He said, I don't know. This never happened. They found an old Sears catalog. You know, it's a few years back. Found an old Sears catalog. They had just enough money for a hand-held mirror. A mirror. They had no mirrors in their house. They didn't have screens. A dilapidated shack way out there. So poor. So they ordered it. A few days later, the horse comes, the mailman comes, delivers the package. And Marsha opens it up. And she looks at herself in a mirror for the first time and sees clearly herself. And she says, And she says, John. God, John. You always told me I was beautiful. I never believed it. God, my eyes are beautiful. My hair. Because I told you, Marsha. I told you you're gorgeous. You're beautiful. I love you. You're so beautiful. And he took the mirror. He looked at himself. And he said, God. Kind of ruggedly answered myself, you know. He said I was, you know. Then the nine-year-old girl. The little girl. She runs up. Grabs the mirror out of her father's hands. And she looks at herself. And she says, Mommy. Mommy. I have your eyes. I have your eyes. I'm pretty too. I'm beautiful too. And they said, yes. And they're hugging her. And they had just so much love in this family. What they didn't want to happen was the little boy. Six years old now. Six and a half. When he was three, he was kicked by the family mule. Kicked in his face. There's no doctors out there. He was disfigured. Fractured his nose. His eye. He lost his eye. He's disfigured. He's grotesque. And you know little boys have so much energy. So much energy. Came whipping around the corner. Jumped in and grabbed the mirror. And with that one eye that he had, he looked at himself. And he said, ugly. I'm ugly. And he said, Dad. Dad, I'm ugly. Have I always been like this? His father looked at him and he said, yes, son, you have. And he says, you love me? As ugly as I am, you love me, Dad? And his father said, yes, I love you, son. He said, why? Why do you love me? And his father said it. He said, because you're mine. Because you're mine. And I promise you. I promise you from the bottom of my heart. Every morning when I get up. These 12 steps which are so much part of my life. That's my mirror. And every morning I get up. And I look into those 12 steps. And that's my mirror. And I said, God. I am so ugly. I have so many defects. So many shortcomings. I said, Father, have I always been like this? He says, yes. And every morning I ask him, and you love me. And he says, yes. And I ask him, why? Why do you love me with my faults? My shortcomings? How I entangle my life and nearly destroy it? How? Why? You love me? He says, yes. And I ask him, why? And he says, because you're mine. I really believe you and I. We're all sons and daughters of the same Father. We all came from the same place. And I'm going to sit down with what my spiritual sponsor asked me to try to live up to. And I'll pass it on to you. Try to live up to it. We need it today. We need it. He said, love everyone. OK? Let me say it again. Love everyone to the very best of your ability. And if you're not able to do that, then in the very least, do not harm them. It's been a privilege being here tonight. God bless. Thank you. 1