Fourth and Eighth Step Said the Underlying Cause of All Our Woes Is Our Inability to Form a True Partnership with Another Human Being – John K.

I'm an alcoholic. My name is John Kane. By the grace of God, I haven't had anything to drink since St. Patrick's Day, 1985. I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous who says he knows it works because he knows an Irishman got sober on St. Patrick's Day. I'd really like to thank the committee for having me here. And this has been a wonderful conference, and they attend to every need. It's really tough to figure out whether that's good for your ego or whether you should not be so attentive. But it's just been a wonderful weekend. I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I wanted to stop drinking. I came because everybody else wanted me to stop drinking. And I have a large family. We have ten children. That's why there's now 17 grandchildren. The oldest is eight. When... With the family that I've got, they were the ones that got sick of my drinking. And I've done the same things that everybody else has probably done. The stupid things that you do when you're drunk. And, you know, I went up in Bermuda once. They wouldn't let me in, made me go back home. I didn't know how I got there when they wouldn't let me in. And so I just flew to Bermuda, got on a plane and flew back. I... But the worst thing I did, I guess, was that our youngest was five months old. And he was being operated on for interception of the large intestine. And he was... They said that he was... He had a chance of dying. And I was checking on him from a salon. We... After that, my oldest son, who was 15 at the time, said... He went to get a Catholic priest and said, We got to do something about my father. So St. Patrick's Day in 1985 was a Sunday and we had a priest to dinner. My wife asked if we could excuse the younger children because... There was a show on TV and... I said, sure. And we sat down for dessert and the priest said, We have to talk to you about a problem you have called alcoholism. Now, prior to this dinner, back in mid-1984, my wife's sister invited us down to Roanoke, Virginia for Thanksgiving. And my wife said, we're invited and we're going to go, but you're not going to go unless you do something about your drinking. As we got closer to that time, she said, Have you done anything about your drinking? I said, I did. I called Alcoholics Anonymous. And she said, oh, well, that's good. And what did they say? I said, they said I should go to one of their meetings. And she said, and you responded? I said, I said I would go. She said, that's wonderful. You can come with us down to Roanoke. She said, when's the meeting? I said, sometime next summer. It's a family disease. So we went down to Roanoke. But now we're back at St. Patrick's Day. And they went around the room and did my fifth step for me. They were very upset. I was mad. I was sitting there saying, you had to bring an outsider in to do this. Because, you know. So my wife said, your bags are packed and you're leaving. You're either going to a place that we've arranged for you to go or you can go wherever you want to go, but you're not staying in this house. I said, there has to be an alternative. And she said, there is. Alcoholics Anonymous is your last chance. And I said, okay, I'll go. And she said, there are 500 meetings a week in this area. And we're all in. But we don't get paid. I won't come to a meeting with you all. One skulle von mir Panzel hunt. Hi guys. It's Jack bumping up for smarterivot. He's still laughing now but not very confident right now. Not going to talk about it with you guys if the last one doesn't speak. I'm just kidding. They've said he will get me then. It's been a very hard time. I mean, like some fans know in America, A couple of times I went through the shakes, the heebie-jeebies. And when I came out on the other side, it was at the end of March, and I was convinced that all I wanted to do was drink. So I went back to the priest and said, I can't find Jack. And he said, come to church tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock, and I'll introduce you to Jack. So I did, and Jack took me to his home. He heard what I just told you. He said, you've got to do this on your own. You can't do it for somebody else. That doesn't make any sense to me at the time. But he said, and here, here's a book I want you to read. And he gave me a copy of the big book. And he said, but what you really need is a meeting, and there's a meeting in town tonight, but I have to wait. I have to work, so I'll get a friend. He picked up the phone, and the guy answered the phone on the other end, and he said, Brother Bill. And I thought, uh-oh. These guys call each other brother. But I met Bill in the same church parking lot, and he took me to Collingswood Monday night. Now, I live in Collingswood. I was the town drunk, but I didn't know anybody knew that. And on the way to the meeting, Bill said, if you see anybody there you know, they'll be there for the same reason that you are. Well, I thought I would jump out of the car at that point, because it never occurred to me that I'd meet somebody in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I thought going to Alcoholics Anonymous was the end of life as I knew it. And when we got there, we walked down to this church basement, and there were about six guys there, and they all came up and said, Brother Bill, and they hugged him. I said, uh-oh. These guys call each other brother, and they hug. This is a cult. The guy who chaired the meeting that night said, I'm an alcoholic, and my name is Peter, and the reason why I say it, that way is because if I forget that I'm an alcoholic, I can't remember my name or anything else about my life. And that's the first thing I heard in AA, and it stuck with me. The first meeting that I went to was April 1st. So I stopped drinking on St. Paddy's Day. I went to my first meeting on April Fool's Day. I got great dates. It's one of the ones that I don't want to give up. But shortly thereafter, at the end of April, I was going away on a sales meeting. And I said to Jack and Bill, suppose somebody asks me out to go with them in the evening. I mean, this is my livelihood. They said, well, you tell that guy that you can't go because you're sick, and then you go to your room and lock the door and stay in. And the national sales manager for this organization asked me to go down with him to the Whistling Swan. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm sick. Even though the Whistling Swan had a great attraction for me. He turned his car over on the way home from that and was killed that night. And I wasn't in that car because I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I believe that we all get sober just in time. And that kept me coming because I love the stories. I love hearing the stories. I didn't get much out of talking about the steps. But in August, my cousin was murdered. They beat him back into the house with a baseball bat. They stabbed him to death. And then they put his body on the couch in the living room, poured gasoline on him, set him on fire. And when I went to the funeral, this big Irish family, of which I'm a member, was told by the priest that revenge was a waste of time because they had just gotten the fellow who had done it to my cousin. And at that funeral, in telling us to, to forget about revenge, he said, the only way to change the world is to change yourself. And the only time to do that is right now because for the young man in the coffin, there is no more change. And there's no more now. Now, Jack and Bill had taken me to about 400,000 meetings in my first 90 days. And they used to call me on the phone and say, are you going to a meeting tonight? And I'd say, I hadn't planned on it. And Bill would say, well, my car broke down. Would you pick me up? Then Jack would call and say, are you going to a meeting tonight? I'd say, yes, sir. And he'd say, good, we'll pick you up. When I came back from this funeral, on the way back, I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember exactly what I'd heard in Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't remember how it works. And that's what I seemed to focus on. When I got home, I said to Jack, I don't think I've been listening. And he said, why? I said, I can't even remember how it works. He said, remember when we first met? I said, yes, sir. He said, the book I gave you, how much of it have you read? I said, none. He said, well, why don't you pick up the book and read Chapter 5? And then, after you finish Chapter 5, go back to the beginning and read the book. So I don't think I'll ever forget that rarely have we seen a person fail who's thoroughly followed our path. And I went into my home group and I said, you know, I think I finally got it. I said to this fellow they called Preacher Fred. I said, rarely have we seen a person fail who's thoroughly followed our path. That's terrific. And he said, yes, John, but thoroughly have we seen a person fail who's rarely followed our path. I said, geez, I'm just getting it frontwards and he's got it frontwards and backwards. We're crazy about words. So I started to get a lot more out of what Alcoholics Anonymous meetings could do for you. I started to listen to not just the stories but to the discussion of the steps. And Jack and Bill, I asked to sponsor me on July 10th, June 10th, 1985, which was the 50th anniversary of the Alcoholics Anonymous. So, Bill passed on about five years ago and Jack just died on December 23rd this past. And I miss those guys. If you stay around long enough, you know, you see a lot of death, but you don't get used to the people that you love. And those two guys, really did change my life. And they did it so graciously. You know, I think that that one of the best stories is on Memorial Day one year, we were having a cookout and Jack and Bill were there. And my daughter borrowed my car to go get something and she, the car was 10 days old and she had an accident. And the police, when you have 10 kids and you're the town drunk, you get to know the police pretty well. The police stopped by and said, John, your car's been in an accident. Do you want to come with us? And I said, oh yeah. And Bill said, I'll go with you. And we got to the accident. My daughter had run into a Mercedes, you know. And I'm saying, oh my Lord, what am I going to do to get to work? What am I going to do to this? What am I going to do to that? And I'm just thinking about all the problems that this has caused me. And Bill says, when are you going to check on your daughter? Well, I got mad at Bill right away. Sponsor telling me what to do. But I walked across because, you know, I couldn't make a fool out of myself and say, I'm not worried about my daughter. I'm worried about me. But she was holding on to the wheel and she came out of that car and she hugged me, hung on to me for, and I forgot about the car. She was shaking like a leaf. And I became aware of the fact that I needed a sponsor to tell me how to treat somebody that I proposed to love. And it says in our literature about the love of God and man, we know nothing at all. And it's absolutely true that without sponsorship, I would never have learned anything about love. We, I've, I'm of the opinion that every alcoholic I've met is a multi-talented, multi-talented, multi-talented, multi-faceted person. That they have absolutely fantastic gifts, but what they do is pile them in the corner, don't even unwrap them. I sponsored several fellas who've died. One fella took his life with a gun outside the Silver Saddle Saloon in Camden, New Jersey. He made his living as a research chemist at Campbell's Soup Company. He could carve wood so that you'd think it was a bird sitting on your hand. He played seven or eight musical instruments. He was an amazing guy. And in, between 1959 when he first came to Alcoholics Anonymous and 1989 when he killed himself, he never got more than seven months continuous support. He never got more than seven months continuous support. He never got more than seven months continuous support. sobriety. And what he, at that saloon, he had come with a gun and without any identification. And I got to identify his body in the morgue. And the police told me that people had come in and bought him a drink and he said to the barmaid, why would anybody buy me a drink? Nobody cares about me. And he went outside and shot himself in the head. There were 300 people at his funeral. One fellow had bailed him out from drunk driving on his bicycle. But I think that what his remarks were were the essence of the disease. That we can't stand ourselves. And it says, that, we can't give away what we don't have. And until we learn how to love, then we can't love anybody else. And in the scriptures it says that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Well, we're the ones that have to learn how to love ourselves. I, I've, as proof positive that we have special gifts. Since I've gotten sober, financial insecurity has left me. It's not been because of anything I did. I always used to worry about these kids. When I first came in, my daughter was a, my oldest child was a senior in high school. And my youngest was six months old. The, how am I going to, well, you know, buy food, buy shoes. That was ongoing. But it consumed so much that I thought that I'd never be able to educate them. And, it was just an incredible thing that it just happened if you lived a day at a time and didn't worry about it. I've gotten, all those kids have gone to college. I just paid my last college tuition December 15th. The kid who was five months old, graduates from Georgetown University in May. And, that, that gets all my kids working the way they're supposed to be for themselves. And I keep thinking, you know, if I had a brain in my head in the beginning, I would have gotten them to give 10% of everything they earned to their parents. Laughter Laughter Laughter You know, my, my son that went to, that went to the priest, when he left the house to go away to college, got arrested for being drunk and disorderly twice. In the first week he was out of the house. You know, if there's anybody who would avoid alcoholism, it's somebody who was raised by an alcoholic. I think that, uh, uh, uh, uh, that, when we, we try to figure out how this works, there is no way but the grace of God. I've been traveling quite a bit. And I was to China, and I was, uh, visiting with a, a member of the Chinese government. And when we sat down to dinner, we, we had an interpreter. And over here, was a big lazy Susan that had every form of alcohol that I had ever seen, and some that I hadn't seen. There was Wu Yang Yi, there was, you know, Jack, Dan, there was every kind of booze there was. And then in the front of us, we had the food table. We went to, uh, we went through dinner, and when we were finished and our business was conducted, I asked to be excused. And when I went to the elevator, suddenly he caught up with me. And he said, you know, I don't know anything about the West. You're the first Westerner that I ever met. Everything I know I learned about from TV. And you, your people always drinking. He said, I noticed that you didn't touch the alcohol through the whole meal. And he said, I'm quite amazed. I have to, to change my whole thinking about the West. I said, you can't imagine how amazed I am. You know, it's, uh, I think that all of life is like a photograph that there are equal, equal parts, positive and negative. And how we live our lives depends on how we direct our focus. We can look at the sepia toned images, or we can look at the color photo. I think that, uh, that given that I've, I've seen it happen in my own life. On September 2nd, 1998, my first grandchild was born. And, uh, what a day on that day I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. And it, it's, uh, it's, how do you want to remember that day? They're probably inextricably wound together in my mind, but, but I think it's, uh, if I'm going to focus on the positive, I focus on the birth of a grandchild. I don't, I don't know why I get nervous when I get up here. But, uh, whenever I come to one of these things, and I think that I've got to say something that has some meaning, the only thing I can do is to put myself in the hands of God. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. And hope that he uses me as his instrument. I think that, uh, when in my home group, they came to me, I was about three years sober, and they said, you've got to do something about a problem you have other than alcohol. And I said, well, what's the problem? They said, well, you have to figure that out. But we hear your sharing, and we want you to do something about it. So I decided that the problem was my wife. We went, so I went home and said to my wife, we need counseling. And she said, what makes you say that? I said, my home group told me. So she set up the, uh, counseling session with, uh, with a psychiatrist, a lady psychiatrist who was a marriage counselor. And we went together. And then we went individually. And then for our fourth visit, we came together again. And the doctor said to us, after having briefly, uh, had sessions with you, I want you to go into individual therapy because you don't have the basis for a relationship. I said, we're, we're married 20 years. We have 10 children. She said, that is not the basis for a relationship. Jeez. So I went to a psychiatrist that, uh, I had the people in my home group helped me pick out. And when I got there, uh, he prescribed some medication for me, told me to come back in six weeks and said, but I want you to double your AA meetings. I said, I'm going to seven a week. He said, go to 14. He said, because only alcoholics anonymous is the only thing that I know that can, uh, keep you sober when we go through what we're going to go through. So, and my wife went to, uh, a different person. She was discharged within nine months. I was there for three years, but it says in our literature in the fourth and the eighth step that the underlying cause of all our woes, even our alcoholism is our inability to, um, to form a good relationship or a true partnership with another human being. And here again, I proposed to my wife that we go to this counseling because she was the problem. And I got a kick out of hearing the sharing here this weekend because I am the problem. And, uh, I'm not going to lie. I've never been so happy about it. I've never been so happy about it. I've never been so happy about it. I've never been so happy about it. I've never been so happy about it. I've never been so happy about it. And, uh, that's what I learned. And, you know, the depression that I was in, which is what he diagnosed me as was because I missed booze. And now after that was 20 years ago, we, uh, just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. And, uh, I just recently, had somebody asked me how much younger than me was my wife. I said, how old do you think I am? He said, well, you're about mid 60. I said, how old do you think she is? He said, he's, she's in her mid to late thirties. I said, boy, is that, is that, that she's a year younger than I am, but she doesn't drink. And she never did except to try and keep me company. And, and it's one of the things that I can see when, about us alcoholics is that a long time after we stopped drinking, and there's a lot of people in this room who stopped drinking a long time ago. And not drinking is not the essence of our recovery. It's important to remove the symptoms, but we have to treat the disease. And the only way to treat that for me, is that, through Alcoholics Anonymous. And the examination of those relationships are the best way to find out what's wrong with me. So, you know, when I look at how I treat people, and I, I wonder how anybody ever put up with me at all. I mean, when, when, when they intervene, when they intervene me, my wife had been living with me, and we've never had an argument, never raised our voices with each other. And when, when you guys were talking about that, I was saying to myself, you know, we haven't either in 40 years. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Because I believe that when we say the serenity prayer, what we need is, in order to do things that require courage, and acceptance and wisdom, is that we need serenity. And serenity is the gift of God, that allows us to recognize what, what we need to do with ourselves. I, as I said, I was the town drunk. And, today I'm the director of community development, for the town in which I live. And, it's, it's just, it's just a miracle. I've, I've had that job for 11 years. We've gotten a lot of national recognition. And, I work for a great team. And it's because I've learned how to put into practice, what I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, and how a group works well, works well is the same way that traditions work. You know, our common welfare comes first. I think that the 36 principles that make the three-legged stool, and I think that recovery is a three-legged stool. We have unity, service, and recovery. And if we try to sit that stool with one of the legs missing, we have a great deal of difficulty. I don't know why, but I wound up with this disease. And I really, really had nothing in my life when I came here except alcohol. And now it's the only thing I don't have. It's the only thing. It's the only thing that I don't have. I don't know why God picked me, picked you, but I do think that this is the disease that God reserves to himself. And he's not going to come down and drive us to a meeting. You know, he's just not going to do that. But you guys are the ones who tell me exactly what I have to do. And what you've done. What you've done over the years has been to trust me with some service positions that have been just wonderful. Just wonderful. I've had some mountaintop experiences. The last one, the one at the International in Minneapolis, was just a fantastic experience. I get ego in reverse, though. I spent the whole week worrying about what I was going to say and worrying about what I was going to say. And worrying about the number of people that were there. And when I stepped up, they gave us a practice session, which made it worse for me, because when I looked at that huge stadium, I said, gee whiz, how did I get myself into this? And yet, on the morning, on the Sunday morning, when I stepped up into the lights were so blinding, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see anybody. It was wonderful. I was thrilled. And right after I finished, these wonderful guys behind me started playing this music passing on. And I was jumping around. Everybody else was crying. But boy, was I happy to be through what I was through. The... And... And... You know, again, I come back to love. And the... That I've learned to love here. And I've learned how to treat other people. I... I got to serve on the literature committee of the... at the General Service Conference. And that got me to read every piece of literature that we've ever published. And one of the things that I learned, one of the things that I truly love, is in the little red book, Came to Believe. It's evidence of a miracle in 97. And I paraphrase it because it's... It's the way that I see it. It says, I sought my soul. My soul I could not see. I sought my God. And my God eluded me. I sought another alcoholic. And I found all three. And that's what's happened for me. I have found myself in you. And you are the way that God speaks to me. When... When He speaks to me, there's a... There's an Irish song. And as I said, I'm... I'm... I'm from the Irish persuasion. But when... There's a song that says, How you speak to me. And it's sung by Ronan Tynan. And I just love the... The stanza for the words. It's, you've raised me up. So I can walk on mountains. You've raised me up. To walk on stormy seas. And I am strong. When I am on your shoulders. You've raised me up. To more than I could ever be. And I thank you very much. .