Four Years Sober and Face-Down on a Dark Living Room Floor — That Was My Real Bottom – Dick G.

Hey-oh, we've clearly followed our path.
Oh, Jack.
Welcome to Darby.
My pappy told me one time that there are certain situations in life
which you can only handle by not thinking to their level by...
The way he said that was, he said,
Son, if you're walking down the road and it looks like a cow pie
and it smells like a cow pie, you don't necessarily have to step in it.
My name is Dick Grant, and I am an alcoholic.
Connie and I decided that we're going to get a T-shirt with bleeding red letters
that says Captain Humility.
And on the back it's going to say this space for rent.
There goes the plane ticket.
I really appreciate being here tonight.
I appreciate being asked back to a place where I've spoken before.
That always surprises the hell out of you.
I mean, there was a long time where I wasn't asked anywhere in the first place.
So it is good to be back here.
It is very much, and it is so good to have the opportunity to travel
and to get around the country and see AA at work and all these different places
because there are...
There are...
There are...
There are three people back in Parker, Colorado and myself
who have bet our lives on this deal.
And to see it working so beautifully is always comforting
to find out that no matter where you go and no matter what the situation is,
that this damn thing really works.
And so it's good to be here.
I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to say tonight.
I really try hard not to say the same thing over
because I think that if we did...
If we did the same talk, then we haven't come anywhere from where we were before.
But I would like to share with you tonight what it was like
and what happened and what it's like today and particularly on the ladder.
I have to prove to you that I got here, you know, by drinking
and I'm not just a flaming neurotic.
So we'll get that part out of the way early.
I would like to, and I guess just off the top of my head,
and I think they...
Back in my pseudo-intellectual days, we used to call this stream of consciousness, right?
And I think that's what I'm going to do.
But just to give you a few glimpses of what I remember of what it was like.
I remember as a young child
watching my two alcoholic parents come home from the country club at night
and hoping like crazy that it wouldn't go on for more than two or three days.
I remember the smell of rotten Chinese food
that had been delivered in those white cartons
and the dirty dishes.
I remember the smell of paraldehyde,
the chemical that's the derivative of formaldehyde,
that they use to bring alcoholics off bad drunks.
And my parents, I think, were as addicted to that as they were to martinis.
I remember the feeling as a young man
being afraid to walk home from school at night
because you never knew if there was a cop car or an ambulance in front of our house.
I remember fearing Christmas time.
I remember how much I used to dread Christmas.
This year, I was sitting in our front room
with my children and wife as we were opening presents
and I just broke down,
and I started crying.
And my children are seven and ten,
and they have a little bit of an idea.
We've been able to give them some idea
of what it is that their mother and I have been rescued from.
It's hard for them to understand that, you know,
because they'll never know, by the grace of God in this program,
what it's like to feel Christmas
because Christmas was good for two weeks that I had.
It was a two-week thing.
I remember the feeling of always being separated
from the rest of the world by a pane of glass
and always wondering why.
They seemed to know,
something that I didn't know.
That they had read a chapter in the book of life
that I had missed
and they all shared a secret
and whenever I wasn't around,
they were talking about it behind my back.
I remember the feeling in my first drink of alcohol
that for the first time in my life,
I felt like the pieces fit together.
Do you know the fact that no one remembers
their first drink of kumquat juice?
Why is it Alkies always remember
their first drink?
Must have been important.
Maybe more important than it should have been.
I remember the desperate feeling of knowing
that I was somehow completely different
than all the rest of the people around me
and not having any idea what to do about it.
I remember the young man always sitting over in the corner
by myself during lunch hours, school, and reading books
and pretending like that's what I wanted to do.
I remember the terrible desperation
of having whatever current authority figure in my life there was
ask me that stupid, stupid question.
Why did you do what you did?
That has to be the absolute bottom of stupidity.
And then the other half of that conversation always was,
don't you care what you're doing to yourself?
I remember what it felt like to wake up in the morning
and before I could even open my eyes
to be completely locked in terror and bewilderment.
I remember what it was like as a 23-year-old to 24-year-old man
to lay on a bed with a butcher knife
with a point sticking in my heart
and wishing I had the nerve to shove it in.
I remember what it feels like to wake up
from my other fatal, near-fatal suicide attempt
when I turned all the gas on and it didn't work.
Well, that's what I remember about alcoholism.
I remember one time thinking that I had to get on
some kind of a self-improvement program.
It occurred to me that not exactly was I able to keep up
with what I was doing.
Was I able to carry out that with which I was attempting
to impress the world my potential was going to carry me?
So I remember thinking about I was going to go on
a physical fitness campaign,
and I was going to get my life together,
and I was going to read some good books,
and I was going to change the kind of people
that I ran around with.
Now, do you know I was practically the only freshman
in college who had to do that?
I remember that very Christmas when I was a freshman in college.
Three of my buddies came back from going to school back east,
and they came up to pick me up because we ran a week later than they did.
They came up and picked me up to come back to Denver
from where I went to school.
Now, I went to school 35 miles from Denver.
In the 35 miles from Denver in a rented car,
we managed to consume between the three of us
two quarts of tequila.
That was the days where we were into the thing
with the salts and the lemon juice,
and remember all the straight shots of tequila?
That was terribly big milk tea.
And in 35 miles, we managed to drink two quarts of tequila that way.
We wrecked the rented car in the middle of a viaduct
and stopped all the traffic during rush hour.
I was due home because my family and I
were leaving on a vacation.
Somehow they got me to Denver,
so I went to the front porch
I will to the end of my days have a resentment
that he is a practicing alcoholic,
knew enough about Al-Anon
that the family stepped over me and left.
. . .
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. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
I spent ten days in alcohol withdrawal all by myself while they were off skiing.
I got even with him once, Joe.
He and my stepmother went on a vacation one winter, was doing regular school time,
and they were up in Aspen, and they were heading down to the slopes one morning,
and they were going to have an early breakfast, and this was probably 6.30 in the morning.
They drove by the Red Onion Bar in Aspen, which if any of you who were ever there, that's where it all goes on,
and guessed who was passed out in the street in front of the Red Onion.
This time he stopped.
And that's what I remember about the good old days.
Never could understand.
Now I could start out to just have some fun and wind up in all that trouble.
I was 30 years old when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I did not come here to stop drinking.
I did not come here to become a spiritual person.
I did not come here to find a better way of life.
I did not come here to save my marriage or my job or any of those other things that I had not lost yet.
I'm one of those alcoholics who was a not-yet-drunk, because all those things had not happened to me.
And it took me some enormous emotional pain and some very tough sponsors to convince me that I was just a few drinks away from that.
Because I came in here with about the humility of a pressing general.
I was here to simply find a way where I could cut down on the amount of grief in my life.
That was my only reason.
My only reason for being here.
And you know what? It worked.
Little did I know, though, for you newcomers, you know, all those people, I've got to hand it.
How about those people that stood up for the book?
Let's give them a hand.
Boy, this is a brutal group.
Let's make those new.
Come on, stand up like that.
Let me tell you how well I came into AA.
I mean, the zeal with which I plunged into this program.
I have been going to meetings in Santa Barbara, California for over two months when I made the mistake of going to one of those dumb meetings where they go around the room and introduce themselves.
First time I'd been to one of those, and it would have been never if I'd known.
So they go around, and they're all saying my name and so-and-so, and I'm an alcoholic, and they get to me.
My name is Dick, and I'm a whore.
But they figured that was close enough, and they came up to me afterwards.
And they said, that's very interesting that you introduced yourself that way.
We thought you were a college student doing a paper.
So those of you who are sobering up in Bellevue, Nebraska, are lucky, because apparently you're not going to get away with that around here.
When I came here, I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol.
That was one of those things where I could intellectually understand something.
And even if I didn't understand it, I figured, well, if I took the time, I would anyway, so I would go ahead and discuss it.
There are a few of us who understand that.
Generally unburdened with that.
I was able to hold forth on anything in life.
Always on the assumption that, well, if I took the time, I could have understood it anyway.
You secretly harbor the thought that you're the turning point in human intellectual development anyway.
Sort of a blip on the radar screen of humanity.
But I knew that they didn't understand me when they got to this part about being life becoming unmanageable.
Now, I understood, first of all, that as a teenager and as a young child, I was powerless over the alcohol that my parents drank.
And fortunately, I had that little glimmer of reality.
You see, I had a parent who'd been sober in AA for eight years when I came here, and I'd never made the connection.
That's called a denial system for those of you.
And the best definition of a denial system is when John Paul Jones, with his ship on fire and being boarded by the Royal Navy, said,
I have not yet begun to fight.
He was one of our early alcoholics.
Bloody but unbowed.
Often in error, but never in doubt.
I had managed to arrange my life in such a successful manner, as at age 30, I wound up in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Unable to realize that my life was unmanageable.
Because, you see, some very authoritative sources were telling me that I was doing just fine.
Number one was this vast corporation, for whom I worked, who even put it on my card.
I mean, it said manager right on the card.
Who am I?
The one time that my parent, who was in AA, mentioned the possibility to my wife, she became lightly indignant.
The second time that I was in AA, she was mad.
So my wife didn't think I was an alcoholic.
Little immature maybe.
Oh, I got to tell you, one of the things I do for my birthday every year is try to make up a new definition of alcoholism.
Don't ask me why.
I am getting to the point where thinking like this and having this number of years of sobriety to beginning to say,
Dick, don't tell the newcomers how long you've been here.
Anyway, one of my favorites was terminal uniqueness.
I really liked that.
But I was trying to explain now that having been sober...
Oh, you're supposed to do the whole thing here, aren't you?
Is that because you don't trust one another?
What is that?
Having been sober since February 16th, 1969,
I have attempted to...
The funny thing about that is that that happens to be my wife's natal birthday.
You know, we just never give them a let-up, do we?
She can't even celebrate her birthday alone.
I was trying to come up with a definition of how you explain the fact,
now that I'm coming up on 13 years of sobriety next year,
and I don't quite have it all together yet.
Now, I'm one of those rare...
Normally, speakers have it all together.
You know, the typical AA speaker that you will hear, of course,
has it all together,
is emerging into millions,
sponsors 127 people,
has a family that just falls down on the floor in gratitude when he walks in the door,
and, well, I am your token flake.
So, I tried to come up with a definition of, you know,
how can you describe this condition from which I suffer after almost 13 years,
you know, without the excuse of ethanol,
and I began to sense an area, you know,
and I was trying to work on it.
Well, fortunately, a guy from Oklahoma called me,
and he came up with part of the answer,
and I was talking to another guy from another state,
and we came up with it.
The definition of alcoholism, as it exists in my life today,
is latent immaturity.
That's about the whole pot, folks.
Well, having absolutely no identification with step one,
I moved on to step two.
When I first came in AA,
they always had the dumb steps and traditions hanging on the wall.
I always figured it was just something you had to agree with.
And then move on to become an old-timer.
Sort of like the Boy Scout Oats, you know.
Unfortunately, I became aware of a terrible reality at about this time.
Now, I didn't do the first step for about a year,
but I didn't drink,
which is a testimonial to the power of Alcoholics Anonymous.
After over a year of not drinking,
we shall not confuse that with sobriety,
and we shall not confuse that with the power of alcoholism.
I was in the middle of what I consider to be, in all humility,
one of the world's great dry drunks.
Now, there are a couple of things about dry drunks
that we all have to understand.
Like wet drunks, dry drunks are the last person to find out they've got it.
Like wet drunks, dry drunks are the last person to find out they've got it.
Like wet drunks, dry drunks are endowed with an enormous sense
of being the only one in a crowd who is right.
And like wet drunks, dry drunks are some of the few people
who can intellectually rationalize rage and anger.
all I was was a worsening case of problem
who had now for over 365 days
not been blessed with the sedative alcohol.
So I had a temper tantrum at work one day.
Not unusual.
Left early and went to a movie.
Again, not unusual.
Went to a clean movie.
Very unusual.
Traffic had been bad along Hollywood Boulevard anyway
and so I thought I'd go to Pasadena.
Well, they don't have dirty movies in Pasadena.
So I wound up in a Jack Lemmon movie
and this is the story of a nifty guy.
Clever, urbane, witty, intellectual.
Kind of cute.
Young, dynamic.
Who was married to a nagging, whiny, bitchy woman
working for a large, heartless, nowhere corporation
caught in the treadmill of society
with a commuting back and forth.
Who one night at a cocktail party
meets the woman who wonders down.
And the end of the movie,
that he is running down the concourse at JFK
to meet her on the plane
and they're going to fly off to Europe
to the good life.
And the senior citizens club is enjoying the movie
and I was the only one who was standing and cheering.
This somewhat oblique and backwards introduction to step two
caused me a tantrum.
But I had to take that moment
to make a conscious, rational decision
that a God in whom I did not believe
and who did not exist
was talking to me.
So I went home,
endowed
with divine wisdom,
having everything finally in perspective,
finally found out what they meant with the big picture,
and informed my wife that I was leaving home.
It was at this point
that the stark reality
of the infiltration process
that had begun by her beginning to attend meetings
of Retribution Anonymous
became painfully clear to me.
Here I was,
doing one of my very best emotional intimidation tricks,
and they have so hardened her heart
as to cause her to look at me and say,
OK, big boy, do you want the color TV?
Thank God for a year's sobriety.
Next morning woke up
in a furnished swinging singles apartment complex
in West L.A.
Notice we don't move into a regular apartment house.
We move into a swinging singles complex
in West L.A.
because we're about to emerge.
Very likely
that in all the years
that that massive complex has been there,
with the thousands of people who have come and gone,
that I am probably the only one
who lived there for any length of time
and remained a virgin.
I hit upon the answer to my problem,
and some of you may have done this also.
When you are really hurting
and you really need to get it all together,
whatever it is and wherever it is,
why not go to a lot of meetings?
Right?
That's going to fix everything.
We're going to feel good if we go to a lot of meetings.
Still given to typical alcoholic imbeciles.
In moderation,
I went to at least one a day, usually two.
About a month of this
created a state wherein
I have never felt worse in my life.
What it didn't enable me to do
was to build up the head on a resentment
toward everybody in AA.
Decided that despite the fact
that I wouldn't talk to you
or let you know how I was,
you weren't helping me.
One night made the mistake
of going to a meeting in Beverly Hills.
And I left the meeting before it started
because, again,
you weren't noting my presence.
This goes to show about
all you brain-damaged people anyway.
And I got halfway across a dark park
and I got scared to death.
And something told me
that there was a power back in that meeting
that I needed.
And that's when I took the second step
for the first time.
And I went back in there
and I sat in the back of that meeting
and prayed to a God
whom I had insulted all my life.
Whose face I had slapped as regularly as I could.
And I had the guts
to sit in the back of that meeting
and pray to Him and ask Him to help me.
And I said the alcoholic prayer.
And I said,
And I think that this is a prayer
that every one of us
who are ever going to make it,
despite the odds we have against it,
that unless we say this prayer
we aren't going to this much sin.
And that is a simple prayer
that simply says,
God help me.
That's all it takes.
Because when you think about...
When you think about
the implication of those three words
to an alcoholic,
first of all,
if you're talking to him,
he must be there.
Secondly,
it is based on the premise
that I can no longer do for myself
what needs to be done.
And thirdly,
that it is he doing for me.
Don't straighten my wife out.
Don't straighten my boss out.
Don't straighten the world out.
God, please straighten me out.
And that was the first time
I had a glimpse
of what it was
you all were talking about.
The reason I believe
that for people like me
that it is so hard
to make a decision
to turn my will and life
away to care of God
as I understand it is
that deep down
I have absolutely no reason
to believe,
based on my experience
and based on the absolutely
backward thinking
that I brought here,
that God would do for me
what I really wanted him to do.
You see, I was one of those
who grudgingly dared
to commit intellectual suicide
by admitting the existence of God
only on the premise
that I would only allow him
to do in my life
that which I thought he should,
which would agree with
and arrive at
the ultimate destination
which I had secretly figured out
all for myself in the good place.
Now, I had alcoholic parents,
so I did not have
a real swift attitude
toward parents.
So for you to tell me
that a Heavenly Father
whom I couldn't even see
was going to do for me
in a way that I would not understand
and cause me to arrive at
where I was supposed to be
was a little tough for me to swallow.
I tried to manipulate God
for quite a few years in the program.
You see, somewhere I got this idea
that what I was supposed
to turn out to be
was this dashing, dynamic,
man-about-town,
involved in civic affairs,
later with a little element
of spirituality added,
obviously materially successful,
appreciated by all,
dispensing the largesse
of his presence
as he wandered through life.
And that's really,
you know I haven't
the faintest idea
when in hell I got that idea,
because my hero
when I was growing up
was Ernest Hemingway.
Still he blew his brains out.
I thought that was
a little tacky of Ernest.
But then I found out about
Jean-Paul Sartre
and we were okay.
So for me to say
you got it,
I have no idea
what you're going to do with it,
and thank you ahead of time
was a little tough
for me to accept.
I believe for you newcomers
that there are some
well-meaning people in A.A.
who will refer to
the spiritual part
of the program.
I'm sure they are well-meaning,
but I also am sure
that they are denying you
of the realization
that there is no
spiritual part
of the A.A. program.
If there is something
that is not spiritual,
I honestly do not believe
that there is.
And the basis for my believing
is that at this point
in my walk,
on my particular path,
coming from where I have been,
heading toward what I think
we all have as a common goal,
I cannot find an issue
in my life
which is not a spiritual issue.
That's my family,
that's my job,
that's my neighbor,
that's my car,
that's my money,
that's my leisure,
that's everything in my life
I have found
is a spiritual issue.
Now you know what I thought
that would mean to me
if I ever arrived
at a place like that?
That I would be
as a big picture
in the world
a big picture
of what I was doing
but I would be
as the big book says
one of those stupid,
boring and glum people.
Because if you make
everything spiritual
doesn't that mean
you're going to be pious
and you know
look like you've been
eating lemons all the time?
I was so happy
to find out that God
has a sense of humor.
And if you really think
about the condition
in which you are sitting tonight
you might wonder
if he doesn't have
a sense of humor
about all of it.
Well I made the mistake
of getting a sponsor.
I forgot to ask
for his diploma.
So what kind of a sponsor
he was going to be.
Big mistake.
You're going to ask him
to be your sponsor.
You're going to ask somebody
to be your sponsor
to check their background.
Do you know
that somewhere
I'm not sure
where it is right now
but somewhere
there's a school
they all go to.
And they teach them
classes like
callousness
rudeness
two semesters of smart ass.
And you know
they make them stand
for two hours a day
in front of a mirror
and practice that
damned smirk.
I wouldn't get
half way through my sentence
and he'd start to smirk.
Finally he interrupted
me one day
and he said Dick
I don't think
we touched
on one basic thing
in our relationship.
So let's discuss it now.
Anyway I was stuck
in the car
so I had to listen anyway.
And I said yeah
what's that?
He said Dick
when you arrived
at Alcoholics Anonymous
and right up
until today.
You brought with you
not one damn thing
I want.
He said
you don't seem
to understand
I'm the one
who's got it
and you're the one
who's looking for it.
Well I had begun
to glimpse
the spirituality
of this program
and I decided
that I'd stay around
and straighten him out.
He said one night
are you going to do it
like the rest of us?
What do you mean by that?
He said
well we have these things
that we hang on the wall.
They're called steps.
In case you hadn't noticed.
You have heard us
talk about them a lot
but I don't think
you understand.
You see the other thing
they do is
they've got a network.
Because this guy
happened
he got to the guy
in Seattle
I moved from Los Angeles
to Seattle now
and I've got a sponsor
in Seattle now
and you know what
he said to me?
And I'm three years sober
by this stuff.
He said
Grant your problem is
the hum
of your self-awareness
is so loud in your ears
you don't hear
what's going on around here.
He said
you're so busy
sitting there thinking
about what you're going to say
that you may blow
this whole deal.
So I said well
if it's okay
for the minions
I'll go ahead
and write an inventory
just to show
that I'm willing
to become a part of it.
So I went home one night
wrote my inventory
called him up
about two o'clock in the morning
woke him up
said well it's done
he said no it's not.
I said how do you know?
You haven't seen it.
He said I don't have to
I know you.
I said what do you mean by that?
He said you go
look at it right now
whiz kid.
And you start writing down
all the things you left out.
So I hung up the phone
and went to bed.
A few weeks later
in the midst of great
emotional pain
I said how do you do it?
He said I thought
you'd never asked.
So I did it.
So now I got it done
burning a hole
in the drawer
in my you know
desk.
So I told him
it's time
to take the fifth step.
And he said fine
and he chose
I'll never forget
it was a Tuesday
no Monday night or Tuesday
whatever they called it.
Anyway it was the night
that they had
the academy awards on.
Now my sponsor
was an actor.
Guess what he made me do.
He made me do
when he came over
to take my fifth step.
I had to sit and wait
until the academy awards were over.
There is justifiable homicide.
There may not be
justifiable anger
but by damn
there's justifiable homicide.
Coincidentally
I began looking it over
and finding that I had
again omitted a few things
and wrote in some stuff
in the line.
And I
I decided
this guy
is such a smart aleck
you know what I'm going to do
just to get him
I'm going to tell him
the whole truth.
I'm going to tell him
all that stuff.
So I did.
I told him
what a gal
in our part of the world
calls
the take it to the grave stuff.
I even told him that.
And then he told me
those blessed words.
Because I told him
about everything
that I had ever done.
I told him
that I was going
to take him
to the grave.
I told him
that I was going
to take him
to the grave.
Every thing
that I had ever done.
Every immoral
every disgusting
every illegal
every cowardly
and I did a lot
of cowardly things.
I told him
all that stuff.
Every secret
little dirty thing
that I had ever done
that I thought
was in the closet
of my life.
And after I got through
he told me
a few one ups
and deals
that really
would curl your hair.
And he looked at me
and he said
you now
share
a very rare
privilege
with those of us
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
He said
you're a long way
from having finished
the steps.
He said
at this moment
you are blessed
with knowing
that you can walk
into a room
and see me
and I will know
every dirty
and crummy
and rotten thing
you've ever done.
And I love you.
And I will never forget
hearing those words
for the first time.
That was the first
real glimpse
that I ever
allowed myself
of what I feel
to be
the rare
joy
of non-judgmental
love
that we share
with one another.
About that time
I moved to Seattle
and I began
to become aware
that the harder
I worked
on my character
defects
the worse
they got.
I've had a hard
time keeping
the word
me
out of those steps.
I do not believe
that God requires
anything of me
to work steps
except just
to be there
willing to do them.
There's a great
philosopher
who said
a very wise
thing.
Woody Allen
once said
80% of life
is just
showing up.
And I believe
that's very
true.
Just show up.
Have you ever
noticed
that you
don't
have
any
chance
to show up?
You don't have
to tell them
very long
where the
meetings
are.
They just
show up.
And then
you realize
that once
they glimpse
this thing
you couldn't
drive them
away
with a
pickaxe.
Well,
the harder
I worked
on my character
defects
the worse
they got.
I started
stealing
things
out of
them.
The anger
and the rage
at home
was getting
worse.
My wife
and I
at this
time
were in
the program
three years.
Just had
our first
child,
a real
age
and cute.
Oh,
we were
a cute
couple.
Young
and so
fortunate
in the
world.
She
nudged
him.
We
will
now
have
five
minutes
on
relief.
And
five
minutes
on
forgiveness.
No,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
that reader. I don't want my group to find out, but is there a curfew in this town? Are
we supposed to, what time, what time is it? Did you throw something? I asked the wrong
guy. Okay, Captain. I hope I leave that as my legacy. One night I got home from a meeting
and I had had in the car, you know, I've had two kinds of people who weren't there travel
with me.
Three kinds. Back when I was drinking, I used to wonder if there wasn't someone in the back
seat. Did you ever have that sensation when you were driving home drunk? You wondered
if maybe there wasn't somebody in the back seat and every time you looked around, they
ducked. Might have been the guy who was painting the other white line on the windshield. The
next one was, the first four or five years, I don't want you newcomers to get all caught
up in this pink cloud.
So I'm going to tell you like it is. About the first four or five years of sobriety, I used to have
depressions that were so deep that it felt like somebody in the car with me with their arm around
me. But then I began to have another visitor in the car. I have been driving along, I don't have
to tell the people on the road, but I have been driving along at times when my car,
has lit up from the inside. Have you ever had that happen? Have you ever had your car
light up? Well, I was driving home from a meeting one night when the car lit up on the
inside. When that flood of warmth and that absolute love just completely filled my car.
And you know what that did for me? It didn't make me happy. It didn't make me feel safe.
It didn't give me a lot of joy. It didn't give me a lot of joy. It didn't give me a
lot of joy. It made me very, very sad. And I'm very glad for that. Because when I became aware
of the power of that love that was riding me with me in the car that night, when I got home,
I laid down in the floor in the middle of my dark living room with my face down on the floor and
cried like a baby. And I said, Oh God, I don't want to be like this anymore. And that was around
four or five years sober. And I believe that that was a night
that I finally hit my bottom. And I will be eternally grateful to the Eternal for finally
having found my bottom in this program. For those of you who have stopped drinking, or the drinking
has stopped in your home, and the things are still going on, the anger and the fights and the hurt,
please understand that not drinking does not cure our illness, whether it's the drinker,
or the one affected by it. I honestly believe that the not drinking simply allows us to become
aware of what needs to be done. And those things are wrapped up in those 36 things that you heard
tonight. Not 12, and not 24, but 36. I think it's a whole deal. Interesting, 36. There are
366 things that you heard tonight. And I think that's a whole deal. And I think that's a whole deal.
I think that's a whole deal. And I think that's a whole deal. And I think that's a whole deal.
I guess we could mystify that, couldn't we?
So I got down on that floor that night with my face down in the dark living room. And I cried
like a baby. And I said, Oh God, I'm sick of being like I am. And I'm a long way from where
I want to be. But you know, I've never been that same person since. I still have my worries,
and I still have my set, my emotional,
downs. I still have my days of fear. I still have my days of anger. I still have all those
things. But I had never lost the sense of being protected and being held up that I gained
that night when I finally hit my real final bottom. I had begun to work the eight to nine
steps. I had the list from the inventory, which is essential, I believe. I had added
the other people on it. There were, out of probably the 41,000 people in whom I had come
in contact in my life, there were two or three whom I didn't resent. So I put them down on
the list, too. And I made some amends, and I did the best I could. But you know, after
some years of sobriety, I couldn't understand.
I couldn't understand why I had recurring relapses of the same character defects. And
I finally realized it was because my eighth step list did not stop when I quit drinking.
I'm very sorry to say that I continue to add to that more frequently than I care to.
But I've learned a thing about amends now, and I'll try to share it quickly with you.
First of all,
I believe the most important amends that I make are the direct amends, because it causes
me to have to be humble enough to go to somebody and say, boy, did I screw up. But you know,
there's another kind of amend that I love to make. And those are the kind of amends,
and it can be to the same person to whom I've made direct amends. And the ones that, for
me, really count are when I can make amends to someone and they don't know about it, and
no one else knows about it either.
You see, I've always had a sick need, a very immature, sick need for recognition. If I
ever did anything right, and later if I did anything wrong, you would know about it because
I at least wanted to be terribly interesting and clever. And you know, when I finally came
to understand what anonymity means, which in my opinion means that the only things that
really count in Dick's changing are the things that only Dick and God know about. Now I must
share as openly and honestly as I possibly can, willing to withhold nothing from my sponsor.
By the way, I got one now that graduated summa cum laude from that school. I'll give you
an idea. He called me up the other day on a Saturday and he said, well, what are you
doing today? And I said, I'm playing in a tennis tournament. And he said, well, really?
How much of your weekend will that take? I said, well, if I go on to the finals, I will
play two or three matches today and a couple of matches tomorrow. He said, well, that takes
a lot of time, doesn't it? And I said, well, yeah, it does. I said, but you know.
I'm really enjoying playing the tennis tournament. And he said, I want you to be at our restaurant.
We have our restaurant now. He says, I want you to be at our restaurant at noon Monday.
And I said, what if I got an appointment? He said, cancel it. I said, well, why are
we having lunch Monday? He said, it's going to take at least a couple hours for us to
talk about where your screwed up set of priorities are.
So to humor the poor,
old fellow.
If anybody who doesn't know what the promises are that begin on the bottom of page 83 and
over on 84 in the AA book, I think you missed a lot, even if you're not there yet. I don't
believe that I could stay sober for a negative reason. I don't believe that I am here because
I'm just afraid of alcohol.
I really, frankly, I wasn't afraid of alcohol. I mean, I knew everything alcohol would do
to me. It still didn't scare me, did it? I mean, you ever seen a drunk that you could
say, boy, will booze get you next time? Never. You know, the insanity said, next time it
will be different.
I don't really think drunks are afraid of alcohol. I think we're afraid of what it causes
in our lives after a while. But I couldn't stay sober just out of fear of alcohol. The
reason I believe that I'm here tonight and today is because I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm
afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm
afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol. I'm afraid of alcohol.
And wherever I am and whatever I'm doing is because I fell in love with a program with
Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, when you love somebody, you just want to be with them.
And if I want to be with you, there's a great truth I must share with you newcomers. We
have found in Colorado, I don't know how it works in Nebraska, but we have found in
Colorado that staying sober has a lot to do with not drinking.
So if I want to stay with you, I've got to be willing not to drink one day at a time.
You see, because I'm in love with Alcoholics Anonymous, I am absolutely in awe of this
thing. You know, we shouldn't exist. We should not be here tonight in any number, much less
this. Boy, what a sick town this must be.
I haven't even found a downtown here.
And there's this many drinks. Maybe it's the water.
But you see, if I want to be with someone I love, I found out a little trick about love.
Your welfare comes before mine if I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And I love you.
And we shouldn't exist.
We go against everything in society.
You know?
How did we get here?
Because we were losers.
That's how.
Well, I'm really proud of this group I belong to because we all managed to get to be losers
in our life.
Who's in charge?
Nobody.
Well, from time to time we have a few bob up, but we have a way of cutting them back
down again.
How much money do you have?
Nothing.
Let's see.
Well, what are your rules?
Don't have any.
How do you pick your members?
We don't.
They pick us.
Well, what if somebody comes and they're terribly obnoxious?
No, we try to love them.
I honestly believe God had nothing to prove in sobering me up.
I think he's already made his point.
I don't think his building his case depends upon the fact that he's a loser.
I don't think his building his case depends upon Dick getting sober.
So I wonder why he got Dick sober.
I have a theory about that.
The way I have a theory about that is that by working the tenth step of the program of
Alcoholics Anonymous, I have found out.
Now, one of the curses of Alcoholics Anonymous, I want you to know, newcomers, it isn't all
sweetness and light.
It isn't all sweetness and light.
They fib to you a little bit.
They don't lie to you.
They just don't tell you everything.
Like, the first thing they tell you is, well, just don't drink.
That's the truth.
They've got 164 pages full of stuff that you're going to have to do.
And then they've got the other books.
One of the big curses is that Alcoholics Anonymous, knowing full well that they're not going to
help, that smart-aleck similar intellectuals like me were going to come along, is wrote
the book in simple sentences.
Now, I was given to compound, complex, terribly involved, agonized rhetoric.
And this dumb place writes short, simple sentences.
And there's another secret.
It means exactly what it's saying.
And I finally found my simple sentence that covers it all.
And it's in the 12 by 12, and it's in step 10.
It's on the third page.
It is a spiritual axiom that any time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, it means
there is something.
There is something wrong with us.
Now, I would like a little more to it to be able to maneuver.
Fortunately, they put a period there.
If the hell it was only 100 drunks, what do they know?
Well, that is precisely the condition under which God operates with me today.
In my life, that it is a spiritual axiom.
It is not an emotional axiom.
It is not a mental axiom.
It is not a physical axiom.
It is a spiritual axiom that any time little Dickie is pounding on his high chair again,
no matter what she did,
I am wrong.
Well, I began to look around to see if maybe there was any way they could back that up.
Tricky devils that they were, they came up with their traditions.
And what they did in the traditions was, they took all these narrow-minded concepts that
they have for the individual.
And rewrote them for the group.
And one of them says, every group is independent, autonomous.
You know what that means?
If I want to form a group and go down to the stockyards and make love to zebras, it is okay.
Provided that I do not let anyone else on the outside come in.
And then to the idea that other AA groups make love to zebras.
Which means I can be just as wrong as I want to be.
Do you know I found out that no matter how sincere your misconception is,
it is still the wrong idea.
But I am supposed to tell you that you are entitled to that, and I love you, just don't
mention it outside the group.
But that also means that there is a condition, called the world of the spirit in the big
book, toward which I am moving.
That if I am not aware of it, I am not moving.
I am not moving.
I am not moving.
I am my only problem.
Like the man said, we have met the enemy and we are they.
There really is a God.
His existence does not depend upon any one of us agreeing with it.
Our choosing not to participate in that reality is our God-given right.
But if you should desire to have everything in your life better than you could have ever
imagined it, then I would suggest taking a long look at the 11th step.
The 11th step is sought through prayer and meditation.
Now, I am the kind of guy...
I am the kind of drunk that goes right on by the key words for a long time.
And I had to go back and it is the first word is sought.
It is the act of seeking.
Prayer and meditation is a good place to bring all your religious prejudices, because you
can do a number on that, until another one of these hard-hearted types explain it to
me.
After I have gone through Zen.
I taught myself.
Zen teaching.
P.M.
I don't know what else.
And he said, No Dik!
That's not it.
I said, Well I suppose you can tell me what it is.
And he said, Yea, yea.
He said, Prayer is talking to God, which you're probably doing a lot of, aren't you?
Yes, I pray a great deal!
He said, that figures you love to talk !
He said...
Meditation is shutting up!
I said you mean you just shut up
he said yes
and if you possibly could
drive the level of your self-awareness
down a little bit
he might be able to talk to you
I said that's it
he said that's it
that's all you have to know
I said yeah but what about all this other stuff
he says is it in the big book
don't remember Zen being mentioned in there
but maybe they were just trying to be non-affiliated
now isn't it funny
that a 43 year old insurance salesman
can stand up in front of a bunch of people
in a place in this world
and tell you
that the almighty God
who created heavens and earth
actually talks to me
and you understand
because you're not
because he does
God actually talks to insurance salesmen
which again brings up the point of the sense of humor
he not only talks
to insurance salesmen
he talks
every time he's allowed to
every time he's allowed to
in fact he said
he's a tax lawyer
and he thinks $100 houseautre
is out of his mind
and he went around
calling them
he never stopped
and I went and wrote
and he got annoyed
and I said
do something
he didn't reply
he didn't ask
he got angry
he just got a heart attack
he didn't ask
he just was
over crypto
for that
another comment
he just said
yeah I don't know
I don't see
that he's pouv있는
not only
and we know
and yet
he's able to
and yet
he has the ability
to
to
get
Yeah
I don't know what you're looking for here.
I would suggest you stay around
and do it our way long enough
to have at least had that experience
than should you choose
to search for something else
that's your business.
I've got to be running too long.
I apologize if I am.
But I'd like to tell you a 12-step story.
Now, I believe that the 12-step,
again, I went right on by the conditioning,
you know, the qualifying conditioning there.
Just, you know, about two or three years into it,
boy, I'm out there
and I'm laying big books on drunks
and I'm on Skid Row
and I'm hauling them out of hotels
and they're thrown up in my car
and all those wonderful things that they do.
You wonder why they call them pigeons.
Except the guy pointed out to me,
he said, you know,
that may very well be true.
But it's, you know,
but now we've got the good side of it.
He says, better to be the puke-or
than the pukey.
Got that backwards.
Better to be the pukey than the puke-or.
So I,
except there's some wise people,
my story of my soul-saving period,
ran into the central office of Los Angeles one day
and there's this beautiful gal
who's worked in there about 111 years
and she's mean.
But I run in there
and I,
and I,
and I,
and I let him know I need a big book
because I'm going out to Soborn right now, boy.
And she waited until I was going out the door
and just as I hit the door with my back to her,
she said,
it's a wonderful thing you're doing.
Dick.
That's all she said.
I was about three feet tall when I got to the car.
In the event.
Twelve,
twelve step.
I,
I,
I honestly pray and covet newcomers.
Pray for and covet newcomers.
Unfortunately,
we've got this treatment industry
that's making it tougher to get them.
But I am here to tell you
I'm attempting to undermine the treatment industry
by working with newcomers.
Thank you.
I will even go talk to one in trouble
without him asking me to come.
But this goes to show you what a fanatic I am.
I seem to get, however,
guys who have been sober about a year
and wouldn't recognize a step of a bitum,
so they have that sensation
like the flaps down on their long johns,
you know,
that sensation.
I may be sober,
but things are drafting.
But every once in a while,
I get lucky.
I got one now.
Oh, and he's my kind.
Mercedes 450.
Still got the family
and the bank account.
Well, they're separated temporarily.
Really?
I told him the other morning,
he asked me to be a sponsor, poor devil.
And we had what I refer to
as our orientation session.
I never accept being anybody's sponsor
until we have our orientation session.
And that's where I say,
let me tell you a couple of things
that I have found to be true.
One, you brought nothing I want or need.
Secondly, I have it.
You don't.
Third, we are in a game of tennis
and the ball is always in your court.
Fourth, I am generally going to be right
and you are generally going to be wrong.
And let me tell you another thing.
You are my favorite kind.
You are the greatest challenge
that we have here.
Because you think
that all those things
that you still have
mean something.
He did call me the day afterwards
so we may have a good time.
Well, I'd like to tell you a 12-step story.
What matters
is not just what I do
when that person in AA asks for help
or the newcomer or the wet one asks for help.
I believe that fundamentally
more important than that is
what I am doing in my daily life
and practicing these principles
in all my affairs.
And for those of you from Southern California
and other places,
that word affairs,
we take a very limited meaning to that.
Because the day the wet one calls
and I go to see him,
it's too late for me to work my program.
So I must have done
that which I need to have done
in order to be of service.
And we were talking about
the reasons for God sobering me up.
I found out there are two.
Number one,
he loves me beyond my wildest comprehension.
And secondly,
he has something for me to do.
And it is not to acquire or consume.
I had the privilege
of speaking at your
Cornhusker
Roundup.
And I had the privilege
of walking around one night,
late at night.
And I did...
I didn't want to be up.
I was tired.
It was very late at night.
And I happened to run across
a fellow sitting in a booth
all by himself.
And this guy had pain
written on his face
like it was neon lights.
And so I sat down
feeling kind of self-righteous
for doing it.
God takes us
however we arrive, folks.
I sat down and began sharing
with that guy
and he unloaded to me
a story of emotional pain
that was exactly like mine.
And I knew where he was coming from
because he was a year or so sober
and he wanted to be
a young lion in the program.
And he wanted to have it all together
and didn't know where to find it.
And he had all those things going.
And I guess the format was that
I was here one time as a chairman
and I came back a year later.
And I had a chance to talk with him again.
And we talked at some great length.
And we got to know one another.
He subsequently moved away
from this part of the country.
He went on to move nearby.
Moved to a town where there was not
real active step working.
So we were in communication
as he was with others.
And I tried to share with him
how to bring the simple
unadulterated program of AA
to an area where they
had somehow gotten away from it.
And he went through
all those kinds of things.
And then he saw fit
as he evolved in his process
because he had to.
He moved quite a long way away.
And he began calling me
and he always calls at midnight.
I don't know why.
It's one o'clock in Texas
and it's twelve in Colorado
and he calls.
I'm sharing this with you
and I trust that he won't mind.
Because I want you to know
what the 12-step does for you.
He fell upon
very difficult times financially.
He and his wife had had
the same kinds of problems
of growing up together.
You know, when you put
two squirrels in the same cage
it gets a little dicey sometimes.
Until we get de-squirreled.
And he and his wife
were going through that
and they had a child
with him who was having
some problems.
And he would call at midnight
and tell me how things were going.
And isn't that funny
that we would belong
to a fellowship
where a man with whom
I may have spent
five or six hours
of my whole life
would see fit to call me
and share everything
in his life with me
as completely honest
as he can be.
Now where else
would you find that?
Where else but here?
You know, I have just
gone through a phase of life
where I became
very heavily involved
in organized religion
and I'm very grateful for it.
I've learned a great deal
from that.
I've learned that
not all the heroes
in the world are here.
That there are
spiritual heroes
all over the world.
All over life.
That there are
many, many people.
But I was suffering
recently from a bad case
of ingratitude.
I was beginning to say,
you know,
well God,
I prayed for my own business
and now I own it.
Watch out for that
prayer stuff,
I'll tell you.
Now I'm the one
who's got to worry
about making the payroll
and all this stuff.
You know,
and well God,
why isn't it going right
and why isn't this,
you know,
just a bad,
bad case of ingratitude.
So this week
I got over
a letter
from Bernard
and in it
he began talking
about how tough
it had gotten.
It talked about
how hard it was
for he
and his wife
and their boy
financially
but how beautifully
their marriage
was growing.
And do you know
that kid who had
all those problems
was almost an overachiever
in school now.
You know why?
Simply,
because love
exists in that home now.
Just plain love.
Unadulterated,
unvarnished.
And that kid's
doing great.
And at the end
of the letters
he got through it.
He said,
I have found
complete peace.
Finally.
I no longer ask God
why I am in the condition
I am.
I have found
absolute and total peace
with my existence
as it is today.
If I never have
more than enough
oatmeal for tomorrow,
I have finally come
to understand
what God means by that.
And he signed
the end of the letter.
And then in an ink
of a different color
it said over.
And on the back
a few days later
was a postscript written
and it said
since I wrote that letter
and was ready
to send it off to you
I just happened
to do something
that I didn't feel
like doing one day
which was to go
ask somebody for a job.
And it just so happens
that I have been given
a job that I've always wanted
and you know
they insisted on paying me
50% more than I asked for.
And here I am sitting
in my nice suburb of Denver
owning my own business
in a beautiful home
blessed beyond
my wildest imagination
and he had to write me
that letter
to teach me
a little something
about gratitude.
That I believe
as well as anything
sums up
the program
of Alcoholics Anonymous
in the 12th step.
I would like to mention
something
that I have before me
and I would covet
your prayers.
I am going to
specifically on this tape
mention
my oldest son.
His mother and I
were married
as a result of my alcoholism.
He was born
he didn't see his father
until he was 10.
He was a young boy
and he was on the run
He was a young boy
and he was a young boy
and he was a young boy
because he was only good
at running away in those days.
I've seen him
occasionally
since that time.
Right now
he's angry at me
and he feels
rightfully cheated
of a proper childhood.
He doesn't know it
but I've prayed for him
as often as I could
in these years.
But you know
one of the reasons
why I want to stay sober
is it isn't just
to be a servant of God
service to you
and it isn't just
to be a service
to my wife
and my two
children at home
but there's
going to come
a day I pray
that that young
man is going
to want
something
from his
father
and I just
pray that you
all will allow
me to stay
around here
long enough
that when that
day comes
that I will
have something
with which
I can share
with him
that's the
reason I'm
sold in the
program with
Alcoholics Anonymous
and that's the
reason why I
so desperately
need you
I so desperately
need that big
book
my sponsor
and those who
are willing to
share
the pain
and the joy
of life
that's Alcoholics
Anonymous
to me
something must
be going very
well
in Bellevue
Nebraska
because if you
could see
yourself
there you
sit
in your
beauty
and in the
fact that
each and every
one of you
is blessed
and loved
by a power
greater than
your imagination
and we had
to get sick
to do it
and I thank
you for sharing
that with me
thank you