Fourth and Fifth Step Kicked My Past into the Past — the Film Festival in My Head Finally Stopped – Don L.

If you would please join me in welcoming our speaker tonight, Don L. from Bellingham, Washington.
Hi, everybody. I'm Don Landis. I'm an alcoholic.
And I want to thank the group and Chris in particular for extending the invitation to come out and share my experience, strength, and hope tonight.
I want to thank my host, Dave, for being right on time. That always impresses me.
He says, I'll be there at 5, right outside your hotel. There he is, you know.
And he took me out, and he fed me.
And I'll tell you, all you've got to do is take one glance at a guy like me, and you know, if you want to get to my heart, it's through my stomach.
So Dave took the perfect route there. Thanks for the meal. Thanks for the hospitality.
And I've got to tell you, it's an honor and a privilege to be with you tonight.
It's an honor and a privilege to stand in a podium, Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's just my turn in the barrel.
I get to tell my story tonight.
But as much as this is an honor and a privilege, the truth for me is I think it's an honor and a privilege just to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, just to come to rooms like this with people like you and enjoy the gift of sobriety one more day,
a gift that for a long time I didn't think I wanted, and then once I wanted it, I knew I'd never make it in Alcoholics Anonymous.
There's no way.
There's too much evidence in my story that a guy like me can have every reason in the world to put down the drink,
and I may even do that, and I may even walk away from the drink.
But, you know, then life starts to happen, that day in, day out, trying to be good.
It's just too much work.
And I know what makes the big hurt go away, and I always return to drinking.
So when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous September 16, 1991, I wasn't coming here to get sober.
I was coming in here to buy some time, get the heat off, and figure out my next move.
Because I was in trouble. Imagine that.
It's shocking.
It's shocking.
When I'm standing in front of you sober for that time, I'm not just grateful, I'm kind of amazed.
And I think we're fortunate that we have rooms like this to come to.
And we get to, and congratulations to all the chip takers and the birthday people, and welcome to our new friends.
You know, whether you know it or not, you've stumbled into a pocket of enthusiasm.
You look around here, there's a lot of evidence that tells you, contrary to what your head's telling you,
and if your head's anything like mine was when I was new, it's telling you you've made a horrible mistake.
With this A.
They're far too happy, they're too glad to see you, they're too convinced everything's going to work out, and you're not.
But the fact is, if you look around, there's a lot of people here that have found a new way of living.
And I'll tell you the good news about Alcoholics Anonymous.
You don't have to be bigger, faster, and stronger than the next guy to make it here.
It don't take much of a man to make it in Alcoholics Anonymous.
It does take all of that man, though.
That's what they told me.
And so thank you for allowing me to come out here.
And thank you to my...
Thank you to my beautiful wife, Eileen, my road mate, for keeping me humble and crazy all the way up here,
or all the way down here from Bellingham.
We live in Bellingham, Washington.
We're about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
We play a very intricate part in national defense.
We're the first line of defense against the evil Canadians.
And so when Canada makes their move, you'll be looking for me to take care of business.
We'll be there.
But we're having a very good time.
We moved from Los Angeles and the Pacific Group a couple of years ago to Bellingham
and really didn't know what to expect.
And it's been a wonderful move for us.
And we're blessed in our sobriety.
I'm going to tell you tonight in a general way what I used to be like, what happened, and what I'm like today.
I'm going to tell you that I was born and raised in Hollywood, California.
And Hollywood's a fascinating town.
There's a lot of money in that town.
I mean, there's mansions built up.
There's mansions built up on the cliff sides with 360-degree views of the ocean and the valley behind you,
cantilevered pools built out, Bentleys in the driveway, and live-in maids and live-in gardeners.
And that wasn't the part of Hollywood we grew up in.
We were down in the lowlands, and it was pimps and hustlers and drug addicts and alcoholics.
And I've got to tell you, it was wonderful.
It was great.
I ran the streets, ran Hollywood Boulevard, and was sneaking into theaters when I was 8, 9 years old.
And, you know, I really got two childhood stories I could tell you tonight.
I got the one I dragged into Alcoholics Anonymous with me, and it's very tragic.
And if I tell it just right, hopefully somebody in the room will feel sorry for me.
And that was always my intention when I told that story.
And that story is about how when I was 2 years old, my dad got up off the couch, said he was going out for a pack of smokes, and we never saw him again.
It's about my mother's alcoholism and the physical abuse.
It's about growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood.
It's about never getting a fair chance at the game of life, never getting a leg up on things.
And then, of course, I could tell you the story I know to be true today.
Because the funny thing happens when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you get a sponsor,
and they take you kicking and screaming through the steps, and you get to the fourth and fifth step of the inventory process.
And what happened for me is what it talks about in the book.
I just got down in black and white what really happened.
And it's funny, the things I conveniently forgot on my way to Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, there was love in that home.
I had a mom that got up early, got three kids off for school, took two buses to work and two buses back home, never took a dime of welfare.
Taught me a work ethic.
Taught me the difference between right and wrong.
You know, I had athletic coaches that took an interest in me, were there for me when I was growing up.
What I found out through that inventory process is I wasn't a victim.
And when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I talked to you about these things in my past, I wasn't being delusional.
And I wasn't in denial.
It was my treatment.
It was my truth.
I had been telling that story of victimization, how it wasn't my fault, you don't understand, you would drink the way I drank if you came from where I came from.
I had been telling that story for so long, it had become my reality.
It had become my truth.
And if I get nothing else from Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous has corrected the only mistake I see that a loving God ever made for a guy like me.
You see, he made my eyes looking outward instead of inward.
And Alcoholics Anonymous, through the steps and the inventory process in particular, the first big chunk of the wall came down
when I was able to take my eyes out.
I was able to take my eyes off of them and turn them on me.
And the reason that's so important, you've got to understand, I was so convinced it was their fault when I got here and I read your book
and I'm skimming through the chapters and I'm looking for the chapter entitled,
What to Do When You Know It's Their Fault.
And it's not in there.
I mean, we got a chapter to the family afterwards, but that's basically warning the family they're going to have to really be patient
why I'm getting my head together because I'm going to be a bit wacky when I get sober.
So there's nothing in there about that victimization.
The reason it was important for me to stop being a victim in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous,
if it really is that dad that left, my mom's alcoholism, that poverty, I'll never make it in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'll go out and I'll drink myself to death.
And every drink I take won't have to be my fault.
I won't have to take responsibility for any of it.
So I'm glad I know what's wrong with me today and I'm glad I know that the problem resides in the mirror.
We've met the enemy and he lives in the mirror and he's out to kill us.
And I'm glad that I know that today.
And I didn't know that before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm a goofy kid growing up.
I have alcoholic tendencies, I guess they call them now.
I don't know any of that stuff.
I don't know if I was born an alcoholic.
I haven't had my genes tested.
And my buddy Cliff R. says that he knows there's an alcoholic chromosome.
It's right down there at the end of the chain.
It's going, hey, let's party, you know.
And I don't know any of that, but I know I was weird from the gate, you know.
I'm sure when I came out of the womb,
my first words were, it's not my fault, it's just the way I'm cut.
I'm a victim and I'm a pessimist, which means the glass is half empty and it's your fault.
It's just the way I'm caught.
I mean, people around Alcoholics Anonymous, we talk about being self-obsessed.
We talk about selfishness and self-centeredness being the root of our problems.
You see, and you might think that these are things that happen because we drink alcoholically.
That's not the case.
You see, for me, out of the chute, I know how I look in 17 different angles at all times.
I don't have to go to Alcoholics Anonymous to learn to do a 10th and 11th step.
I'm 8 years old and I'm reviewing my day at night.
Oh, I should have said that.
I'm completely overly concerned with myself.
I'm the kind of guy that will corner you and talk incessantly about myself for half an hour
and realize I'm doing that and go, oh, wait a minute, enough about me.
What do you think of me?
And these are things that are not produced by me drinking alcohol.
These are things that go away when I drink alcohol.
You see, there's a wall between me.
I can't see it, but I can't touch you.
I can't connect with you.
I always feel like I'm a step late or a step early.
I'm a dime short and a dollar late.
I'm just not right in my own skin.
It's either too tight and I'm constricted.
Or it's too loose and I feel goofy.
I never felt like I hit my pace in life until I drank.
And when I drink, that goes away.
I can connect with you.
I feel a sense of ease and comfort enter me.
I don't worry about the things that I obsess about constantly.
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I hear one of the forms of our insanity,
the desperate experiment of the first drink,
as guys like me take the same actions over and over again, expecting different results.
I write my inventory.
When I see that, I'm six years old.
Long before I took the first drink.
I'm sitting in the sewing room in the little apartment that we're renting.
And I got a bobby pin and I'm just this goofy selfless six-year-old.
And I look to my right and there's an electrical outlet.
Looked like it would fit to me.
Bam!
And I got shot across the room and my fingers are smoking
and my hair's standing straight up.
And I remember thinking, did that just happen?
Did that hurt as bad as I think it did?
Bam!
Now, based on the way that I lived my life
until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous,
I guarantee you I would have went for three,
but I was unconscious.
And don't we do that with our lives?
Don't we take the vehicle of our lives
and slam into the same walls,
drop it in reverse, back up, slam it into the same wall?
I know there's a hole here somewhere.
And I did that with my drinking.
I tried to change everything but the consumption of whiskey.
Just completely avoid going to jail, wrecking cars,
broken promises, broken romances, broken hearts.
Never figured out it was the whiskey for a long time.
Having too much fun with it.
If I had any more fun, you'd have a different speaker tonight,
I'll tell you.
And I'm self-obsessed and I don't know what's wrong with me
and I'm trying to do it by society's rules.
You know, when you're a young man and you're growing up,
they lay out this plan for you and they tell you certain things
and they tell you, if you do these things,
you're going to be fulfilled, it's going to be great.
You get good grades, you play sports, you date the right girls,
and I did it. I did it their way.
I went to their schools and I took their tests
and I played their sports and I got to tell you,
I excelled at all of it.
And I did it with the guys that were doing that kind of stuff
and they were happy and they were fulfilled
and isn't this great, Donnie? Isn't it wonderful to be us?
And I got to tell you, I wanted to believe that,
but in here where my soul lives and all those things,
they leave me feeling strangely hollow.
And I don't know how to explain it.
Like an itch I can't scratch and I got nothing to compare it to
and I'm trying to do it their way and it's not getting it for me
and I don't know what's missing
until I get drunk.
And I'm not talking about my first drink.
I mean, I don't really know when my first drink was.
I'm not really interested in that.
I am interested in my first drunk.
You know, when you get enough alcohol on board
in one setting to get there.
You see, alcohol, as much as anything, it transports me.
It takes me to the land of I don't care.
And the rough edges get smooth and I can step out easy
and now I can feel you and the wall goes down
and we can party and I can care about you.
And for lack of another explanation,
it's a spiritual experience and it's wonderful.
And it happened for me when I was 17 years old.
And I'm not drinking to get drunk.
I'm drinking to fit in.
I'm with the guys I play high school basketball with
and we're heading up to the Hollywood Reservoir
which is a concrete pond on top of the city with a city view
and what's on tap that night is Old English 800.
And yeah, that's a fine malt beverage if there ever was one.
And I don't know if I'm on my first tall can or my second tall can
but I'm sitting there with the guys I play basketball with
and I had a feeling come over me from my toes to my head
that filled me from the inside out
and in that moment, everything changed.
Yet everything stayed the same.
I looked at these guys. These were my friends.
I liked these guys. I played ball with them every day.
And suddenly, I loved these guys.
And I started telling them about it.
We're going to be together forever, man.
And just listening to that rock and roll
coming out of that cheap stereo in that rickety car we drove up there
and I'm listening to it and it's the greatest song I've ever heard in my life.
And I look at the sun shimmering on that water in that concrete pond
down in the Hollywood Reservoir and I'm looking at it
and I thought, I got all choked up.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
And then I experienced something that I experience every time I drink.
Once I start to drink, I start to think.
And I thought, I should get down to that water.
We're up on this hill. It's on a 45 degree grade.
And I start walking down this hill and it's all chaparral and scrub oaks
and walking down and I'm walking kind of fast
and then I'm walking real fast.
And I'm kind of jogging.
And then I'm running and my feet are windmilling behind my ears like Bugs Bunny.
And then I fell.
And it was like sky, earth, sky, earth, sky, earth.
All the way down.
And I slam into this scrub oak.
And I'm an athlete. I play ball and I hit this oak with tremendous force.
I remember thinking, I'm going to be hurt.
And I got up on this oak. No pain. Nothing.
My first drunk, and I'm already acquiring valuable information
that's going to serve me for many years.
Many, many years.
When you drink, no pain.
You know you guys in the gym that you say, no pain, no gain?
I have my own expression.
No pain, no pain.
You know?
I like that.
And I didn't set off for Alcoholics Anonymous.
For God's sake, I'm 17 years old.
But my life is shot through with fear.
And alcohol starts telling me things
and allowing me to tell myself lies that I need to believe to keep the fear alive.
I want to believe I don't want to go to college.
I don't want to go on that scholarship.
I'll take a year off, but I'll do it later.
I want to believe I'm really not interested in dating that girl.
I want to believe that I really don't need to make anything of myself.
I want to believe that it's okay to just party every night.
I want to believe this stuff.
And I don't know what alcohol does for you,
but one of the things it does for me that's miraculous
is it allows me to believe my own BS.
Where I think it's a really good idea.
Where it's not Plan B.
It's like, yeah, why would you make something of yourself?
And I know it's a progressive disease.
And in my case, the progression was very quick.
I mean, I left high school.
I was a graduating class athlete.
I had these scholarship offers.
I had a 3.5 grade point average.
And by 19 years old, I'm drinking drunk on a daily basis.
I'm doing a lot of other things.
And I'm having an absolute wonderful time with it.
It was free.
I wasn't picking up any tab.
I mean, the first years of my drinking,
18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,
there was no tab.
I wasn't getting in any trouble.
I mean, it was working so well for me.
I wasn't standing in courtrooms in front of judges
trying to explain my latest event of outrageous behavior.
I didn't have my mom standing in front of me crying,
going, don't you know you're killing yourself?
I didn't have girlfriends hiding in closets
because they were afraid they were going to get smacked around
in my latest drunken rage.
At 23 years old, I guess we could have taken all of those things
and labeled them, yet to be added to my story.
And when I was 23,
I had such a good time with the drink
that if God Almighty had walked into the bar,
sat down on the bar stool next to me and said,
Don, the next drink, the next one,
it's going to pass you into a region
where there's no return through human aid.
You're going to have to go to Alcoholics Anonymous
for the rest of your life or die a horrible alcoholic death.
I'd have told God Almighty, he got the wrong guy.
Because it was working for me from the inside out.
It's allowing me to believe the lies I need to tell myself
to do the things I need to do.
It allows me to treat people poorly and think that it's their fault.
It allows me to justify and rationalize all my bad behavior
because, hey, don't you know where I came from?
And the whiskey is the glue for that spiritual malady.
It allows me to keep that sick motor running every day.
And it doesn't matter what I have to get through at work
and it doesn't matter what I have to get through.
All I got to think about is at 5 o'clock I'm at the liquor store
and I'm going to have my reward and it's all going to be okay.
And every night is the 4th of July
and every day is New Year's Eve.
I mean, it's just wonderful.
Now, this doesn't mean that it wasn't a problem for the people around me.
It may have been a problem for my landlord who's not getting his rent on time.
It may be a problem for my girlfriend who I can't stay faithful to.
It may be a problem for my employer who I'm not showing up five days a week.
But the thing is, it's not a problem for me until it's a problem for me.
I can't tell you how many times I had a girlfriend standing in front of me
crying her eyes out saying,
Don't you know how I feel?
And you're like, Not really.
I told this one girl, I said,
Look, I'm drinking.
You're watching.
And one's more fun than the other.
And that made complete sense to me.
I have no...
I have no ability to form a true partnership with another human being.
I want to have people in my life.
I want to care about you.
I want to be normal.
But the truth of the matter is I can't feel you.
I can't connect with you.
I'm obsessed.
You're like bit players in this strange movie of my life.
You're easily replaced.
There's so many of you.
If it doesn't work out, I'll just get another.
If the job doesn't work out, I found this one, didn't I?
If the girl doesn't work out, I found this one, didn't I?
It's not a problem for me as long as I can drink.
But I'll tell you,
they started showing up in my life,
and you've all had them in yours,
you know, the well-meaning people,
the family members,
the employers,
the girlfriends, the husbands, the wives,
the district attorneys,
and they started talking to me about my drinking.
And they were kind, and they weren't belligerent,
but they just couldn't get through.
I just thought they had the wrong guy.
But I'll tell you, by the time I was 25,
the light went on.
Every negative aspect of my life,
every heartache, every failure,
every plan I put into action and failed to hit the finish line,
right alongside that was a drink of alcohol.
And I got it.
I thought, oh my God, it's the booze.
For years, they've been talking to me about this,
and I thought they were wrong.
It's the booze.
And I do what a lot of alcoholics do
the first time they figure out that it's the booze.
And by the way, in the big book,
that's described as self-knowledge.
No justification, no rationalization,
with no framing, no props, no nothing.
I have self-knowledge that alcohol is the problem.
But there's a bigger problem,
and that's that I haven't been to Alcoholics Anonymous,
and I haven't read your book,
and I certainly haven't got to the part that says
for the real alcoholic,
he will absolutely be unable to stop drinking
on the basis of self-knowledge.
And that's just crazy, isn't it?
And you know why?
Because I'm a man.
And you know what a man does when he finds out
he has a problem with something?
You just knock it off, okay?
Just knock it off.
Okay, so drinking's a problem, don't drink.
Sounds so simple.
And I did what a lot of us do.
I made the declaration, I'm not drinking,
so don't try to tempt me.
And I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous,
and I didn't get a sponsor,
and I didn't get service commitments,
and I didn't work your 12 golden steps
wrapped in a ribbon of promise,
and I quit drinking.
I quit drinking.
For two weeks.
And the funny thing about that two weeks
is the outside stuff that they can see
starts looking better, doesn't it?
The laundry starts getting done.
I start showing up to work five days a week,
which was kind of new for me then.
And I'm getting all the support
and all the affirmation from the people
who really love me the most.
Family members and friends and my girlfriend
and my employer, and they're all saying the right things.
They're saying, Jesus, Don,
we're so glad you quit drinking.
We thought you were going to die.
It's going to be okay, kid.
And man, I want to believe that.
And I'm saying that kind of stuff back to them.
Yeah, I don't know what that was about.
Thanks for hanging in there with me.
You know, I don't miss it at all.
I'm working out again, getting plenty of exercise,
going into work early.
You know, don't miss it at all.
Since my last drunk,
I'm getting more irritable and restless
and discontent and confused and baffled
because for years you've been telling me
drinking is my problem.
You know what? I agree with you and I'm not drinking.
So why do I want to kill myself
or kill somebody else?
You see, and I don't know what I suffer from.
I have no idea of the trouble I'm in
at this point in my life.
I think it's a moral issue.
I think it's a self-will issue.
I don't know that when I picked up that drink
after two short weeks of my own recovery,
I was drinking to overcome
a mental obsession beyond my own understanding.
That for an alcoholic of my type,
giving up drinking,
even with all the best reasons in the world,
will only serve to make me slowly crazy
if I don't put something in my body
to make that stop.
You see, with no recovery, no God,
no steps, no sponsor,
I'm doomed to die an alcoholic death.
But I don't know that when I'm 25 years old.
And what started for me was a six-year odyssey
until I made it to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Doing all the things you read about in Chapter 3.
Various vain attempts to control and enjoy my drinking.
Brief periods of recovery
followed by a still worse relapse.
Thinking I was regaining control
just to find out I'd lost even more control.
And the big splashes, the big explosions
that used to be years apart
are now coming closer together.
You know, the things I got used to
while I was out there drinking,
the things that were appalling to me
the first time they happened,
I came out of a blackout and I was in jail.
I was just shocked.
I was like, my God, I'm not this guy.
You know, I work.
I've got brains.
I wasn't raised this way.
How did this happen?
This will never happen again.
I was just disgusted with myself.
But the tenth time I came out of a blackout
and I was in jail,
it's a completely different vibe.
You come to and you're like,
oh, this is jail.
Oh, yeah, I recognize it.
I don't know what jail.
And you just wonder how much trouble you're in.
You wonder what you did that time.
And you start peeling back things.
You stop going out at night.
You stop driving the car
because it's too dangerous.
And you start whittling your life down
until it gets more manageable.
And what you're really trying to do is,
my God, I can't let anything get between me and the drink.
My life is so bad.
I know it's because of the drinking,
but I can't stop drinking right now.
I've got to drink at night.
And I wake up every day.
Every day I've got those hangover mornings
and I tell myself, I'm not going to drink tonight.
Not tonight. I'm not going to do it.
And I get up and my head goes,
that's a really good idea.
And I make it to work
and I can't look anybody in the eye
and I don't feel good.
And I make it till 10 o'clock
and I choke some food down
and I make it to noon
and I choke a little bit more food down.
And I'm thinking how I'm not going to drink that night.
We're dying, man. We're dying.
We've just got to go home.
We've got to get some sleep.
This is no way to live.
And this voice is talking to me in my head
and it's talking about all the failure.
And the IRS is going to find me
and she's going to leave me.
And you've done nothing with your life
and you're such a loser.
And you're like, God, what am I going to do?
But I can't drink tonight.
I can't drink tonight.
And every day at 3 o'clock,
I experience the miracle of 3 o'clock.
And the miracle of 3 o'clock
is after waking up with an incredible hangover
and going my whole day promising myself
that just tonight, just tonight,
I'm not going to drink.
At 3 o'clock, I think I'm just going to have a couple.
And the side of my brain that thought
it was a really good idea for me not to drink
gets all excited like, hey, we're not drinking.
Where's our plan? We're not drinking.
And the other side of my head talking about all the failure
and I'm a big loser
and I took every chance I ever had
and I flushed it down the toilet.
They start slugging it out.
And at 5 o'clock, I'm driving in a liquor store.
And I'm pointing at the bottle.
And the bottle's next to me in the passenger seat
and I'm driving home and I'm glancing at the bottle
like it's a devil riding shotgun
because now I'm not drinking for fun.
I'm not drinking so my friends mean something.
I don't have a choice in the matter.
And my head is loud and I know it's going to be
just like it always is.
And I got to make my head quiet
and I pour four to six ounces of whiskey in a glass of ice
and I swirl it twice and I take about half of that down.
It'll take the air right out of your lungs.
You get some air pumped in there
and you finish that four to six ounces.
And you do it two or three times as recommended.
And...
And you wait.
And you wait for the magic.
And you sit back on the couch.
And it's not that I can't think about all the things
that have been chewing me all day long,
taking any serenity, any hope from me.
Those things are right in front of my head again
but slowly they begin to change.
And suddenly I don't care if the IRS finds me.
Suddenly I don't care if they fire me.
Suddenly I don't care if she leaves.
Suddenly I experience the relief produced by alcohol.
And the doctor's opinion that says guys like me drink
and drink essentially for the effect produced by alcohol.
What is the effect?
It's relief in a word.
It's relief in what swirls around in my head when I'm untreated.
When I don't have a treatment for my alcoholism,
one of the most effective treatments
other than Alcoholics Anonymous for me
is the consumption of whiskey.
It will eventually kill me.
It'll take a large bite out of anyone
that has a misfortune of caring about me.
It'll wring all the good and promise from my life slowly
and leave me a shell and broken man.
But it's a treatment
because it makes the voices go away.
And I know what makes the big hurt go away.
And I don't have any Alcoholics Anonymous
in that point of my life.
And I couldn't take the pain.
I couldn't take the pain of alcoholism
without taking another drink
because I hadn't found you yet.
I pulled a geographic.
I go to Boston for three years.
Found out much to my chagrin,
they drink in Boston.
Tore that to the walls.
Came home, got the best,
did a great job of lying,
got a great job.
Lost that job
because of my drinking.
Shocking.
Called up my sister in Simi Valley,
California and said,
Pat, they done me wrong
because I play the victim card like a dealer in Vegas.
It's not a big deal.
And she said, Don,
you can come stay at my house,
but if you drink,
you're out of my house.
And I told my sister,
who I love as much as anything in the world,
Pat, I won't drink.
I promise.
Because I can lie to the Pope by this time.
It's not a big deal.
And I was in that house for eight months
until I got sober and I drank every day in that house.
And if you don't know how you do that
when they're watching you,
well, maybe you're not a sneaky rat like I am.
I got no problem drinking around your schedule.
I'm unemployed.
What time do you go to work?
7 a.m.?
Bar's open.
And you need to hear this.
I'm not drinking for fun.
I'm drinking for oblivion.
I'm doing light switch drinking.
I'm getting the whiskey on board hard enough
and fast enough to get drunk,
to shut off the head so I can go into a blackout,
so I can pass out in this room.
I'm mooching off of my sister
so I can come to the face
of the hideous four horsemen.
Terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair.
They sat on the end of this bed.
I'm mooching off of my sister
and they watched me pass out
and they waited for me to come up from my latest drunk.
And then they talked to me in my voice about my life
and they said, who are you going to hurt today, Don?
Who are you going to rip off today, Don?
What are you going to do to drink today, Don?
And I don't know what you do with a hangover morning head like that,
but I just took another pull off the bottle
and I swore it was going to go down that way.
I went up to my brother-in-law in September of 91
and I asked him if I could borrow his car.
I had gotten an unemployment check
and I wanted to go cash it.
And he asked me a very unusual question.
He said, Don, will you be coming back?
And the reason he asked me that,
I had borrowed his car a few times that summer
and gone out on little vacations, we'll call them.
And I'm an alcoholic.
Defiance is my outstanding characteristic.
I got right in Larry's face.
Larry, how dare you?
You know, the last time this happened, Larry,
I opened my heart to you.
I told you how sorry I was.
I'm not having a good time here, Larry.
I don't really need this crap.
And Larry felt bad.
He said, hey, I'm sorry.
You gave me the keys.
I grabbed the keys.
I remember thinking there better be gas in it.
I went down to the liquor store
where alcoholics of my type cash unemployment checks.
And while I was standing in line to cash the check,
I had what the big book describes
as the thought that precedes the first drink,
which in my head always sounds like,
what's in a half a pint?
I got the half a pint.
I drank that.
The half pint got lonely.
We got another one and I thought,
you know, I can go visit those friends in the valley
and back in 45 minutes.
And I'm gone.
Three days later,
I'm driving up the hill to face that family.
To face that family I'd done over one more time.
One more time I've taken their hope,
their faith, and their trust,
and I've torn it to shreds.
And you need to hear this.
Driving up the hill to face that family,
I'd done over one more time.
I loved them no less than I love them at this very moment.
And I love my family tremendously,
but I got a problem.
I can't serve two masters.
I only got time to serve one.
And that's king alcohol.
And if you get between me and a drink,
it's nothing personal.
It's almost businesslike.
I'm getting to the drink.
I'm going around you.
I'm going through you.
I'm manipulating you.
I'm lying to you.
But bet your bottom dollar I'm getting to the drink.
But I don't know anything of alcoholism.
I don't know how to explain that to you.
So what do I say?
I say things like,
I love you.
I don't know why I do it.
Man, I don't want to hurt you this way.
Can you see your way clear giving me another chance?
I'm so sorry.
And I mean that inside.
And it's tearing me apart.
And it's tearing them apart.
And I don't know what's happening to me.
I mean, I feel like I'm losing my mind.
I'm hurting the people I care about the most.
I never wanted that to happen.
I come back and I find out my brother-in-law wanted to report the car stolen.
And my sisters negotiated him down to a missing persons report,
which is why guys like me steal from family.
It gets you a little break.
And the Simi Valley police are on their way up to do the follow-up work.
Now, I don't know if you've ever been up for three days drinking and doing other things.
But the police usually aren't who you want to talk to.
I got warrants for my arrest in two counties.
So I start yelling at my sister.
I got warrants.
I'm going to jail.
Thanks a lot.
Because now it's their fault, you know.
And I go outside to wait for the cop because I don't want the interview to go on in front of the family
because I have no idea what I'm going to be saying.
But I'm fairly certain I'm going to be lying, right?
And the black and white rolls up.
And on the side of the black and white, it says canine unit.
And I thought, great.
They brought the dog.
Like I'm in any shape to make a run for it.
And the cop gets out and he starts asking me those hard, tough questions like, where were you?
And most of what I remember is illegal.
So I'm lying.
And he's looking at my eyes really hard because they're like Chinese roadmaps.
And they're rolling up in my head and he's leaning in.
And I pick that up and I break his gaze.
So he breaks with me.
So now we're talking.
My hands are getting wet.
I'm getting nervous.
And I just want to divert his attention.
And I see the dog in the backseat.
And I go, hey, is that your partner?
And he goes, why, yes, it is.
And he walks over and he opens the back door.
And this dog gets out, German Shepherd, not a hair out of place, like a Rin Tin Tin reincarnate, right?
And with no prompting on my part, he starts to relay facts to me about the dog's life.
The dog is three years past mandatory retirement.
They can't retire him.
He's too good.
The dog has participated in more arrests than any dog in the history of Ventura County.
The dog has participated in more arrests and rescues than any dog in the history of Ventura or Los Angeles County.
This dog was so phenomenal that the officers took a collection out of pocket to send him over to Europe for international competition,
where he kicked butt on German German Shepherds, right?
Yeah.
And I say to the officer, I go, that's a phenomenal dog you have there, sir.
And this thought lies in the back of my mind.
It sticks like a dart.
The kind of thought, the minute you think it, you know it's the truth.
You may want to deny it, but you know it's the truth.
And what the truth was is this dog had done significantly more with his life than I had done with mine.
I hated that dog.
And I'd love to tell you I had some kind of a spiritual awakening.
And something broke open.
It was something inside me that I realized I suffered from a spiritual deficiency.
And Alcoholics Anonymous was a spiritual answer.
And there was nothing like that going on that day.
My family was going to throw me out.
I'm a big guy, but I'm not a tough guy.
The idea of being homeless, I'm like, cold, no.
And I played the recovery card.
I figured if my family bought my story, it would buy me some time.
I said, please don't throw me out.
I got nowhere to go.
I'll go to AA and everything.
And they said, well, we'll see how it goes.
And it's not like they really believed me.
My first two weeks in Alcoholics Anonymous,
they were taking me to meetings and picking me up from meetings.
You know what that's like when you're 31 years old and you look the way I look
and you get in your older sister's car at the end of the night and she says,
oh, Donald, what'd you learn in AA tonight?
I walk into an Alano club in Simi Valley, California,
and there's a couple of old timers holed up in there with some old copies of the big book.
And they get a lot of new guys and they descended on me like apes from the trees.
And I'll tell you, they saved my life.
And they were mean.
This is my perception.
They were mean and they were grumpy and they didn't care how I felt.
They had Alcoholics Anonymous.
They absolutely believed in it.
They absolutely were not going to dilute it for me or any other loser.
And they were giving it away that night.
I made it through.
My first evening in Alcoholics Anonymous, and only because I didn't want to be homeless,
I went back when my family dropped me off there the next evening.
And my second night in Alcoholics Anonymous, the most important thing happened to me.
It's more important than anything's happened to me in the almost 15 years I've been here since.
My second night in Alcoholics Anonymous, a guy named Lou, Big Lou, walked up to me.
And Big Lou had a little skinny guy with wire rimmed glasses and a bald head weighed about $1.50.
I could spin him on my finger if I wanted.
And he said, hey, Don, this is Mark.
Mark's going to be your sponsor.
You see, in my first home group, they thought that a sponsor and choosing a sponsor was far too important a decision for a newcomer to make.
They said that the newcomer is the worst guy in the room to pick a sponsor.
Nobody said to me, hey, Don, you need to get a sponsor.
Why don't you find somebody that has what you want?
Because when I'm new, what I want is a guy with a spare Cadillac who's a narcotic salesman.
That's what I want.
So I got a sponsor assigned to me because I need somebody assigned to me.
All my life they've been assigning people to me.
And we sit down and we have the first baby sponsor interview.
And I'm a street guy.
I kind of size Mark up.
I go, I'm going to have this guy wrapped around my finger two, maybe three days max.
And Mark says something right off the bat.
I really like it.
He said, Don.
I'm not going to ask you to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm not doing myself.
Sounded very reasonable until I found out he went to 14 meetings a week.
Never said no to an AA request.
His idea of a good time was one of you hits a rough spot in the road.
You call him up about 2 a.m.
and he'll go down to local Denny's and talk with you about it.
He used to say to the extent that I'm willing to be inconvenienced for my fellow alcoholic.
That's the extent that I walk with God.
So I got a spiritual zealot on me.
On my hands and he got me busy in Alcoholics Anonymous.
But I'll tell you my first 30 days.
Easy peasy didn't put a lot of constraints on me.
Just wanted me at the meetings.
These are the means you're going to go to.
You're going to go to two meetings a night.
Two means and I know he goes to to me.
Did you drink all night?
Did you drink every night?
Yes.
Within you're going to go to AA every night.
You're going to go to AA all night.
Okay.
Like, where's the nice meat guy?
But he didn't say much to me.
You know, I complain and I'd whine, but he lets me first 30 days.
Not much.
You know, and after 30 days, he comes up to me and he's been pretty good to me.
And I'm I'm learning the AA lingo and I got 30 days under my belt.
I'm just amazed.
30 days haven't drank any whiskey.
I mean, I got a head like a beehive and it's a horror show and I'm not meetings,
but I haven't drank any whiskey in 30 days and I'm impressed.
And he comes up to me and he goes, hey, by the way, slick.
We work in this group and you need to go get a job.
And, you know, in the first 30 days,
you really come to trust the guy.
I mean, if I had time to think it over and do it differently,
I would have said something else to him.
But I, you know, I build a report the guy and I said,
am I go, Mark, I don't have to get a job.
I'm collecting unemployment.
Wow.
His eyes got real red and his head dropped down.
His neck disappeared.
And you ever seen somebody so angry that everything that comes to mind is
inappropriate, so they can't say it.
So they just keep starting and stopping like, whoa.
Yeah.
He just he did that for about 15 seconds.
And finally, he said, is there any reason other than sheer laziness that you can't
get a job?
And I thought about it and went, nope.
And he said, tomorrow, you're going to call the state of California.
You're going to thank them for their help.
You're going to tell them it's no longer required that you're able to body to go
find a job.
I said, but I don't have a job yet.
I won't have any income.
He goes, guys like you won't get a job as long as you have the unemployment.
I won't tell you the rest of what he said.
But it was.
It was very cruel.
So I called up the state of California the next day and I surrendered.
I took an action I absolutely didn't believe in.
I was getting $440 every two weeks and I thought, this is absolutely wrong.
I worked hard.
I've never taken unemployment before.
I'm a victim.
I deserve that money.
But he told me he would fire me.
He didn't tell me that.
Well, you know, this is what I suggest you do.
And if you don't do it, well, you know, I just wish you the best.
He said, I will not sponsor you if you don't take this action.
It was non-negotiable.
First time I had heard that word in a long time.
And I learned it from my sponsor in that moment in Alcoholics Anonymous.
He says non-negotiable.
And I liked the guy and I was afraid to mess with the gift.
I hadn't drank whiskey in 30 days.
I was out of my mind.
I couldn't sleep at night.
My life was a crap sandwich.
But I was afraid to let go of that guy.
I was afraid.
I knew I was given one gift when I got here.
The very first gift I got was I knew I didn't
have the luxury of picking and choosing what I did around here.
I just knew it intuitively.
And I'm not that smart.
I was scared to death not to do what this guy told me.
So I took that action and we sat down to plan my financial future.
I'm telling about all my problems.
You know, I'm 80 grand in debt to the IRS.
I got warrants for my arrest in two counties.
I haven't worked in a year.
I haven't had a valid driver's license in 10 years.
I've never had a checking account.
I'm an alcoholic slash loser.
And he said the funny thing to me, he goes, so these are your
problems, huh?
I said, yeah, I think they're fairly significant.
He goes, you're wrong.
He goes, you only got one problem, Don.
He goes, I'll keep it simple.
Your only problem is you suffer from a disease called alcoholism.
And let me keep it really plain.
That means you got something that wants to kill you slowly and take
a large bite out of anyone that has the misfortune of caring
about a loser like you.
And we'll let you know when these other things are problems.
And what I heard is I didn't have to pay back the IRS.
I was wrong.
So I'd worked in the aerospace industry for years and I had some
contacts left and I started telling them about these phone calls I
was going to make and maybe I can get a job here and maybe I can
get a job there and we'll get all this money because we got to
make those amends, Spence, like I may have any intention of ever
paying back this money at 30 days over.
And he says, no, no, no, no.
We're not going to let you go back into that.
No, we need something more humbling for you, Don.
.
You know, back in the industry, you're going to make a lot of money
and then your ego won't be smashed and then you'll drink and you'll
die and it won't matter anyway.
No.
He said, now, I see here you've never worked with your hands.
And I go, no, I barely know which end to hold a hammer.
He goes, interesting.
And he comes into the clubhouse the next day and he's got me a job
as a laborer on a framing crew.
Now, I'd love to tell you some spiritual story about how at that
moment I discovered that my true calling in life was to work with
these and nothing could be further from the truth.
I was terrible at that job.
I was horrible.
Let me tell you how bad I was.
I had a nickname on the job site, the bleeder.
.
Hey, bleeder, you want to grab that wood?
I'm on it, boss.
.
Let me tell you, if he wanted it to be humbling, it was.
We'd had a safety meeting every morning at 630.
They'd tell us what we were going to do that day and the last thing the
foreman always said, okay, guys, go have a good, safe day.
Don, try not to cut anything off.
.
Now is it.
.
So I got a sponsor I'm beginning to think doesn't understand me and
maybe doesn't have my best interest at heart, but he's got me busy in
Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm about two months sober and this poor old guy comes in.
He's got a bunch of time and, you know, he says one of those cliches
that you really shouldn't say to new people.
You know, if you're saying this to new people, knock it off.
It's painful.
And the guy came up to me and he said, and I told him what was going on.
I said, man, I'm having a really tough time.
You know, I don't know if I'm going to make it here.
I'm just full of fear and I just, my head just won't turn off.
And he says, well, kid, you're right where you're supposed to be.
He's lucky he didn't end up right at the dentist's office.
And I said, right where I'm supposed to be.
And he goes, oh, I know just how you feel.
And I said, you know, I feel you really do.
You know what it's like to work 12 hours at a job you're no good at.
Go home, change clothes, go to two AA meetings where you're drinking
coffee to stay awake in the second meeting because your sponsor won't let
you miss the second meeting.
So you go home and you're so tired, you're thinking, God, I get four
hours sleep before I go back to that job.
I'm terrible at it.
And you lay down and every night your eyes roll up like shades.
It's the Don Landis film.
Festival and you sit there and you hold yourself all night and you rock
back and forth and you go, oh, I remember when I did that.
Oh, fifth grade.
Jesus, I thought that was over and you don't sleep and you get up and you
do it again and again and again.
And I'm so tired.
I'm psychotic.
And you know just how I feel.
Easy does it.
Yeah.
I mean, where do we come up with these slogans?
If you don't drink, you won't get drunk.
Oh, you.
Be the president.
Tell the new guy the truth.
This is terrible at first.
Hey, we're going to resurrect and change your life.
You're going to have a complete psychic change.
You're going to have to learn everything over.
Everything, you know, is wrong, but your head's going to tell you you're
right and it's going to be uncomfortable and you're not going to sleep a lot.
You're going to make lots of mistakes and it's going to be really hard.
And then it's going to get better.
And it's going to get sweet and you're going to wake up one day and there won't
be anything special going on.
Maybe you'll be taking the trash out.
Maybe you'll be driving to work.
Maybe you'll see a kid running across the playground and you'll have a feeling
come over you and you'll say, God, I didn't know I could feel like this.
Just being in my own skin being sober and then you'll know it was worth everything
you're asked to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is tough.
And if you're sitting here tonight and you're in your first 30,
60, 90, six months, nine months, 15 months of sobriety and the hounds of hell
tear at your throat at night sometimes and you've been through the steps.
Why aren't you perfect yet?
You're still making mistakes and your alcoholism is still kicking you.
I need to tell you, you're not doing anything wrong.
They're dying out on the streets tonight.
Most of us die from this disease.
You're not doing anything wrong.
Don't give up the fight.
It's going to always get better if you stay here.
And it gets better in a way.
You get the own.
It gets better the way the whiskey used to make it better from the inside out.
But this isn't a scam.
This is for real.
This changes your reaction to life.
Just changes your relationship with your
neighbor, with your lover, with your employer, with the whole world.
This gives you arms that can wrap around
this room and hold everybody close to your heart.
And if you don't have that, it'll happen.
And if you don't think you want that, you don't have to want it.
But if you stay,
you're going to get stuff that you never knew made you happy.
And all the stuff that you think makes you happy,
you're going to find out it was a bill of sale.
It was a scam.
It never made you happy.
Guys like me spend my whole life trying to make myself happy.
That's all I did.
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm 31 years old.
All my attention to make myself happy.
And I still hadn't done it yet.
And it was the hardest surrender in my life to finally let a man
that I call sponsor intercede on my behalf and start teaching me what really
made me happy, because it's crazy talk when you first hear it.
You come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you go, are these people on crazy pills?
What the hell is this?
Do a little bit more for the other guy, a little bit less for yourself.
That's just nuts.
I'm four months sober.
My sponsor comes up to me and says, oh, by the way, you got
the day off tomorrow.
I got the day off.
We're going to court, which is no big deal.
We're always going to court in AA.
We're always going to support somebody.
We're standing up for somebody.
We're waving goodbye to somebody.
And I say to my sponsor, who we going for?
And he goes, we're going for you.
And I go, me?
They don't even know where I'm at.
He goes, Don.
He says, if we're going to live free, we got to live free of
our wreckage.
We got to be willing to stand up and whatever it makes it right
to clean that up.
You can't have people give you rides your whole life.
You got to clean up your warrants.
You got to get a driver's license.
You got to get a little car.
You got to start giving the next guy a ride to a meeting.
It's your part in the chain.
He didn't make it about me.
He made it about me giving the newcomer a ride to a meeting.
That's why I'm going to court.
And I bought it.
It was a great line.
Plus, I had a non-negotiable sponsor.
When my sponsor said, be outside at 8 AM.
I'll be in the truck waiting.
I knew he meant it.
And I knew if I didn't come out,
he would have just driven away.
And it was unspoken.
I'd have to get another sponsor.
He never gave me any rope to hang myself with.
You know, he said, I'll be doing the hanging.
So I don't sleep all night because I know I'm going to jail.
And I'm trying to figure out what I did to piss him off
because I'm like the best AA baby that I know.
I'm doing everything I'm asked.
I go out and I'm just, yeah, I'm going to jail.
What kind of mood would you be in?
And I go and I get in my sponsor's truck.
And he, on the other hand, is in the best mood I've ever seen him in.
He's smiling and he's whistling.
And we're driving down to Van Nuys Court.
And he looks over and he goes, you know, Don, I used to be in trouble.
Now you're in trouble.
This is much better.
That's a short form message of Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you want to know why we're so happy to see you,
it's because we know you're in trouble.
And we used to be in trouble, too.
You know?
We were sponsors.
We cleaned up the wreckage of our past.
We found a different way to live.
This is better.
That's all.
We'd still be out there, but this is better.
That's why we stay.
So I show up in court.
And it's the same thing in both courts that I had to go to.
You get your name on the docket and you wait there.
And they call your name.
You stand up in front of the judge and you rustle some paperwork.
And he said, you're late.
Four years.
And they ask for an explanation.
And the beautiful thing about sponsored direction is even in that situation,
I'm removed.
Because I just told the judge what my sponsor told me to say.
I squared my shoulders.
I looked that judge right in the eye and I said, Your Honor,
until four months ago, I was drinking myself to death on a daily basis.
And I've been fortunate enough to become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I haven't had a drink in four months.
And I'm here through sponsored direction to clean up the wreckage of my past.
And whatever the court deems necessary for that to occur, I will do so willingly.
Because in my mind all night, I got a picture of a judge grabbing a gavel and going,
We've been waiting for you, boy.
Because I'm grandiose.
You know, it's only a big deal because it's happening to me.
And I didn't get off.
You know, I had to pay back a lot of money.
And I had to do a ludicrous, obscene amount of community service at the Salvation Army.
I did so much service at the Salvation Army that when I was done, the lady who ran it cried.
And they threw me a party.
It was...
And you think that the gift in that situation was I started to clean up some of my wreckage.
I started to stand up straight.
I was so bent over with the wreckage of my life.
I felt like such a loser.
I started to confront some of these things and clean up some of this stuff
and get back into the stream of life and not be so depressed about everything.
Because at least I was doing something about it.
But that's not the real gift.
The real gift is I walked into a situation with a guy called Sponsor, absolutely convinced he was wrong.
Absolutely convinced he had...
He didn't have my best interests at heart.
And I walked out of that situation a couple hours later realizing I didn't know everything
and maybe he was smarter than I gave him credit for.
And it gave me a little hope and it gave me a little momentum
and it gave me a little consistency to start rolling down the road with this guy.
And it allowed me to be a little bit more transparent with him.
So when I was able to do my fourth and fifth step, I didn't have to hold anything back.
Because these little actions I had taken that he dictated, it did a couple of things.
One thing it built trust in me for him.
The other thing is it allowed me to realize I could trust another man.
You know, it's a huge issue for us when we get in here because we're already in so much trouble.
We feel like we can't afford to make a mistake.
What if I trust the wrong person?
What if they throw me under the bus?
I just can't afford another hit.
And by taking the actions that were dictated by my Sponsor, it allowed me to feel better
and my life to get better and for me to start to trust him.
So when I got into the meat of the program, when I started working the steps in earnest
and my very life depended on how willing I was to be honest with another human being,
I was able to take those actions based on things like going to court.
And helping people move couches.
Hey, Dom, we're going to go move Smitty's couch.
I go, Smitty's a jerk.
He goes, yeah, he is.
And we're going to go move his couch.
And we move Smitty's couch and I'd be going home with my Sponsor and I go,
there's something weird going on.
I feel good. He goes, yeah, ain't it great?
He goes, isn't God a jokester?
I take these mechanical actions and they produce spiritual results.
And I learned to walk in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I come in here broken down, absolutely convinced your way isn't going to work.
And through sheer desperation, the consequences of the actions I took while I was out there,
I start to take actions I don't believe in.
And they start to change my life.
The film festival stops in my head when I complete my fourth and fifth step.
Because the biggest gift I get out of that is really I got something now I can take to six and seven.
Now I got something to work on.
I can see it on a piece of paper.
This is me.
This is what I got to do.
Now I can go to God and when I say he can have all of me, good and bad,
I know what I'm talking about.
It's not ambivalent.
I get that information.
And the fourth and fifth step, the best thing it does is when it gives me that information to go to six and seven,
it turns around and it kicks my past into the past.
And I don't have to close the door and it becomes my experience.
And I can help another alcoholic with it, but I'm not walking with it every day,
holding hands with it, having it tear me apart.
It becomes right size.
It becomes my greatest asset.
But only if I'm willing to go into six and seven.
Four.
Four and five give us the stuff we need to go into six and seven.
And I find out I am in a mess and I got a lot of stuff to do, but I'm not going to have to do it
because it's not about me again.
You see, I'm not going to God and say, my creator, I know you have all of me,
good and bad, so I can make a lot of money, so I can drive the big iron and live in the big house,
so I can get the right chick, so everybody thinks I'm cool.
My God, this is not a self-help program.
This is not Tony Robbins.
This is not 12 steps to greater financial security and feeling good.
This is not hug your inner child.
No, this is beat your inner child, if anything.
I'm asking God in the seventh step to give me strength.
Grant it to me.
I'm not demanding, grant it to me, please.
So I can go out and do your bidding because there's a contract here
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you're new, don't get too worried about this.
You get to settle into it slow, but you need to know there's a contract.
If you're tired of living the way you're living and feeling the way you're feeling,
you're tired of drinking the way you're drinking.
If you've made a million promises and a million pledges and you haven't been able
to stay away from the first drink, we got a way that you can stay away from the first drink.
But you got to empty yourself of self and you got to sign up with our team.
You got to find a higher power of your own understanding.
You got to make a commitment.
I'm willing to do anything.
I want to go help you and your kids.
It ain't about me anymore, but geez, don't make it hurt like that no more.
I just can't take it no more.
I don't want to break their hearts anymore.
I don't want to break my heart anymore.
I'll do anything.
There's a contract here.
The seventh step, I start to execute my part in the contract.
Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.
Let me go help them.
I don't even care if you deserve it anymore.
I got to go love you for the sake of loving you.
I got to give for the sake of giving.
That's just crazy.
But I get to fulfill my end of the contract.
I don't have to drink that whiskey anymore.
I start to find out I was wrong about what I thought made me happy.
And I'm always wrong in Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know why I got a great life?
Because I've been wrong so often in Alcoholics Anonymous.
If I was right about everything I thought, oh, it would be terrible.
But I'm always wrong.
And it's always the things I'm wrong about that changed my life.
Years ago, God, about seven years ago, Eileen and I, we were married.
We're paying back the wreckage.
We're paying back the IRS, my favorite thing to do.
Paying back student loans, saving for a house.
And this crazy program she got involved in and work.
They got us a loan and we got a house.
It was like two alcoholic losers with this.
I mean, our credit report, people used to just like at banks would get your credit
report and they walk out and go, you've got a lot of nerve coming in here and making us run this.
Get out.
What, 420 is a bad score?
You get 400 for filling it out.
And we get this house, right?
And I'm active in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm real spiritual.
I sponsor guys who do all this stuff.
This is seven years ago.
I'd have never told anybody that inside here where the devil still lives, I thought to myself, my reward.
You work the steps, you work good, you pay back the money, look at us homeowners.
And I'm making it about Tony Robbins and I'm making it a self-help program.
And I don't even know I'm doing that.
And I don't think it's bad to feel good.
I'm good about our successes in the real world.
But we don't live in the real world.
We live in the realm of the spirit.
We're bodily, mentally different from our fellows.
That stuff will kill us.
It's okay to have it, but don't have your heart set on it.
My heart was set on this a little bit too much.
And I found out 30 days later, I was wrong.
30 days later, Eileen's father, who I hate with poetic passion,
takes a turn for the worse.
We find out he's got cancer all through his body and they're going to put him in a warehouse,
hospice him and let him die alone.
And my wife cries and says, I don't want him to die alone.
And this guy refused to be at our wedding.
This guy, when Eileen went through her own life-threatening situation,
she wrote him a letter because they were so estranged they couldn't talk on the phone.
She said, Dad, I'm having this surgery.
I want you to know there's a slight chance I won't come through it.
He writes back, what do you expect after your kinky lifestyle?
My sponsor says I can't go to Bakersfield and explain things to him, so I didn't go to Bakersfield.
Because I don't live that way anymore, my sponsor says.
And now he's dying.
He's got six to eight weeks to live and my wife is crying.
And I love my wife and I'm in AA and I say, I don't know how we'll figure this out, honey,
but we're members of Alcoholics Anonymous, let's bring him home.
The home we wouldn't have had 30 days earlier.
The home I thought was about Tony Robbins.
The home I thought was my reward.
Now we've got a place to bring her father, that I hate, home,
and I want to die with some dignity.
I guess I'm wrong.
And we bring him into the house and we're trading off time at meetings
and she's going to meetings and I'm staying home with him and she's staying home with him
and I'm going to meetings and I got nothing for the guy.
I got nothing.
And I feel like a spiritual phony and I'm talking to my sponsor and I go, I got nothing.
I care less if this guy dies.
I feel nothing.
I'm doing everything, you know.
I'm feeding him, I'm in there, I'm cleaning him, I spend time with him.
I got nothing.
I said, why does it have to be so hard?
Robert goes, I don't know, Don, maybe you'll figure it out in the process.
How are your actions?
I go, my actions are clean.
I'm there for my wife.
I'm there for him, but I just don't feel it and I feel phony.
He goes, well, just keep the actions clean.
And the same thing used to happen.
He'd be quiet all day.
He's down towards the end.
He's got three weeks to live.
He's all strung out on morphine.
He's quiet all day.
Eileen goes to a meeting.
Eileen closes the door and, Don!
I'm like, son of a .
One day I go in the room and he's sitting up on the bed.
And I mean, he was at death.
He had three weeks to live.
I couldn't believe he could even sit up on the bed.
And he's patting the bed.
I'm sitting next to him.
He wants me to sit down next to him.
And I'm thinking, oh, no, no, this isn't going to happen.
And I start thinking of you.
I start thinking of all the people I know on Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I think of Alcoholics Anonymous and what do we do?
What do we do?
We act loving.
We act kind.
OK, you know, and I sit down.
I sit down.
He reaches over and he grabs my thigh with the strength I didn't know he had left.
And it's like a death grip.
You could just feel the fear going through him.
I mean, it just made me stiff.
And he drops his head in my shoulder.
And now I'm really thinking about you like, oh, Jesus.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous.
I rub his back, rub his back.
That's kind and loving action.
I'll rub his back.
I start rubbing his back.
His breathing is real erratic, you know.
I start stroking his back.
His breathing settles down.
And I'm thinking about you.
And I'm thinking about Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm thinking about how did I get here and all the kindness you showed me.
And, man, I sure didn't deserve it.
And I was so unlikable when I got here.
And I was so crazy.
And I was so violent and so tough guy.
And you were so nice to me.
And I got this guy in my arms.
And I'm rubbing his back.
And I just hate him.
And I hate that resentment about myself.
And I can't get rid of it.
And his breathing settles down.
And he falls asleep against my shoulder.
And as my hand slides down his back, every time my hand goes down just a little bit,
just a little bit of the resentment goes away, just a little bit.
And a little bit of compassion comes in.
And I'm thinking about Alcoholics Anonymous.
And this goes on for about 20 minutes until he's dead asleep.
And I grab John by the shoulders.
And I bring him back down on the bed.
And whatever was wrong between me and John was gone in that moment and would never return.
And I walked out of that room changed by that experience.
And I even got that wrong because I talked to my sponsor about it.
And I thought, thank God, thank God I got to put this away
and let John know that things were okay with us before he had to leave.
And he laughed.
And I said, Don, that wasn't your gift to John.
That was John's gift to you that I got to walk free of that resentment while he was still here.
And there's a hundred stories in Alcoholics Anonymous I can tell you about a guy named Don
who's been wrong about this thing called life.
And because of a sponsor who doesn't have that veil of perception in front of his life about my life,
I've been able to take counsel with him and other men I respect.
And they've been able to change my life.
They've been able to tell me how to fight the good fight.
They've been able to keep this thing pure and undiluted.
And realize this is about service to God and the people about us.
This isn't Tony Robbins.
You can buy a book and read about that.
And here we learn how to love each other just for the sake of loving each other.
You've given me the biggest honor and privilege I ever had in my life,
which was simply I get to love you today.
And because of that, I don't need to ask.
I know I'm loved by you.
Thanks for listening.