Gene D. at the Dog Retreat – 1986

My name is Gene, and I, too, am an alcoholic. I remember that day very well up there in the ship, man. He was... He could have teared the fucking ship apart. He was so goddamn mad over some petty shit. Boy, she had big tits. Boy, they really did have them. I had a pair of glasses. I don't know what you call them, glasses. because you wear them and nobody can tell where you're looking, you know what I mean? Man, I had zeroed in on her the whole cruise. Well, you know, a guy asked me once, and others have asked me thousands and thousands of times, and I guess you have been asked the same thing, why don't you drink, you now? I mentioned here Friday night or sometime or another, I eat lunch about three or four times a week in the same restaurant. It's an Italian-type restaurant in a city called St. Helena, right in the middle of the wine country up in the Napa Valley. And I'm a resident of that valley for 20 years now, just about, and I'm an old native sort of. And in this dining room where we eat, We have a round table that seats 12. Twelve guys can sit at it, and us twelve have been sitting at this table as far as I can remember, you know, and we get the same waitress, and we're all sort of chums. Now, most of the guys who are at this tabloid are highly visible, successful members of the wine industry, industry guys like robert mondavi peter mondavi louis martini and the people that are big big you know in in the wine industry but they're as common as the day is long you know just good people some of them are my neighbors and uh the reason we were talking about him last night was somebody asked me if i ever get a compulsion or desire to drink again and i said no i don't really get a desire to drink again but but sometimes i wonder if i could and and i go as far as uh if i could this would be what i'd drink because these uh wine these vintners is the correct name for them uh bring their own wines to the lunch they call that corkage they have to pay but they still bring their old wines but it's served to them by the staff and obviously they always bring the very best that they've ever made you know and we've been eating lunch together so long the same guy's sitting the same goddamn chairs all the time and louis martini always sits on my right then there's a priest from the christian brothers winery brother albert who's on my left and louie is world renowned his specialty has always been ports, port wines. The big grape, of course, up in our area is the Cabernet Sauvignon and that's the most popular but Louis is always so proud of these ports that he brings you know, and of course I drank port wine on Skid Row, certainly not Louis' kind you know and I always amuse him sometime in asking if he's ever going to start making white port or something like that he gives me a dirty look and occasionally you know he'll pour a glass of of port and jesus it's the most beautiful thing i've ever seen in my life you know it's just as clear and you can almost feel it you know and it's true wine and and it times like that that i i say well if i ever drank again you know i'd have a glass of louie's wine and sometimes these guys say to me why don't you drink anymore and they're just normal people and they say them same normal things that others have said to you surely you can drink now after so many years or what the hell is one glass of wine gonna do you know have one and and of course they all now due to our long association know why i can't do that but occasionally they bring foreigners in from mostly frenchmen who are over here studying the wine industry who don't know me and don't know that and then they say it over again they say well why don't you drink you know and i can remember how i used to have such a difficulty in telling people why i didn't drink because I've always known once I got sober why I didn't drink but I've never been able to tell people why you know I don't drink because I'm an alcoholic shit I drank more as an alcoholic than I drank before I was an alcoholic and I don t really because it put me into the situations that i wound up in uh in my gut i'd know why but if i had to tell you a few years ago i would would be very difficult i never used to say to people well it's because i'm an alcoholic and i can't drink because that's not true i can drink any goddamn time i choose to drink so i would lie about it i'd say things like well i'm going to the dentist and i don't want to have booze on my breath, or I'm going over to my mother-in-law's and she don't drink, or I gave it up for a wince, or some bullshit like that. And I was always uncomfortable with that. And so I went through a long period in my sobriety hoping the Christ people would stop asking me that question because I didn't know how to tell you why I didn' t drink. And one weekend, a good thing happened to me. I was invited to participate in an AA activity in Stockton, California. Now, I don't know if you've ever been in Stockdon, but Jesus Christ, you know? Yeah, the most... Stockton is like an empty paint can, you Know? It's about how fucking exciting it is, You know? The most exciting thing you can do there Saturday is go through the work clothes department of pennies you know and it's hot and it was warm in Stockton and this AA thing was going to take place at night and so I was holed up in the motel in the afternoon and then I was watching one of them Saturday afternoon classics on TV you know Godzilla rapes Shirley temple or something like that and i don't generally watch tv all of that often you know and but when you're in stockton you know you got to change your values when all of a sudden a commercial came on and i'm quite sure every one of you in this room has seen this commercial and ironically after a lot of research i found out that this was actually filmed in san francisco bay and the commercial shows a beautiful summer type day in san francisco and it shows the bay and water is blue as it can get and all the little sailing boats are out on the bay looks like a bunch of little butterflies flicking around out there and the sun is shining and then they zoomed in on one of these sailing schooners and on a schooner was about 10 or 12 young lads you know about the age of some of you guys in here 18 19 20 year old kids and they had cut off blue jeans on and weird t-shirts and crazy hats and and they were doing crazy things they were swinging from the lines and dropping into the bay and they weren't diving off of the yard arms just jack assing around having a hell of a time and then the punch line came on and it was ironic again it was advertising a beer and the punchline for the commercial said you only go around once grab all of the gusto you can and i didn't know what the hell gusto meant and so I went to the desk of this hotel and I borrowed a dictionary and I looked it up and it said gusto slang expression for living you only go around once grab all of the living you can that's why I don't drink you know in this room true but outside there is life Every one of us knows that. That's life out there. Only a total idiot would think or believe that he or she is going to get more than one shot at that thing out there one time through. That's the rules of the game. That's all you get, no matter who you are. One time is all you're going to gain at that things called life out here. And there's some awful, cold facts about life. Think of them for a minute. Did you ever realize that from the moment life begins, it begins to get shorter? Every unit of time that you can measure, every unit that goes by is a part of your life that is over. done and finished. Life isn't a VCR, you know. You can't put it on rewind. I wish you guys would either fart or shit or do something legitimate. Christ almighty. Sounds like 76 trombones up there. This is horrible. It's on the tape. Better be careful where you send this tape. This front row is notorious there. What I'm trying to tell you, as sad as it might be, you have to look at it this way. When you go home tomorrow night and tuck yourself in at 11 o'clock As a result of this retreat You will have to move three days closer to the end of your life You will be able to get out of bed You will use up a portion of your time It's the brass section over here How the hell can you be serious with this? Let's start all over. My name is Gene, and I'm a psychologist. We get out something else, you know. sometimes people try to measure life the length of life by age they think age has something to do with life that you know you get old and then life is over well that's not true there's no way measuring life because you have no control over that. You see, some lives end in three days. I'm quite sure that yesterday, Friday, many places in the United States children were born who will die tomorrow, whose life will have only been measured by three days. Sadly there's probably teenagers this very moment being killed on the highway, whose life will have only been 16 years. New mothers will die tonight at childbirth whose life would probably have only be 21 years. It has nothing to do with how old you are. Life is nothing more than a heartbeat contract if you want to know how long your life is just listen for a minute and just as soon as that stops that's the end of your life and that can stop any time anytime regardless of who you are now I don't know about you but I don t think you re any different than me if I m only going to get one shot at that thing out there I want it all man I'm a pig I want to go every place there is to go I want do everything there is to do i want to sing every song that was ever written read every book that was ever written see every picture that was never painted i want the whole goddamn thing now there's really nothing wrong with thinking like that as long as i'm sensible enough to realize that i can't have it all and i can accept that that i can't have it all but you know i know some things as a result of my own personal experiences and by being fortunate enough to have shared in your personal experiences that tell me i can get a hell of a lot more of life clean and sober and straight than i'll ever get drinking and using I've found that out for myself already, and so have you. So have you! I don't think there's anybody in this room that doubts for one second that life is better and has been better. No matter how short your sobriety or your being clean has been, you have experienced a better life. You know that. You know that. So if the requirement for that is abstinence, then this is what I want, what you people have. I want that way of life. Now, I have no guarantee, of course, that I'm going to get it. And when I was thinking before this meeting and talking about life and recalling how I tried to tell you this afternoon how important this program is to me for giving me the opportunity for this life, I decided to tell you about some of the things that happen in my AA activities that I get upset about that I think should often be clarified better and are not. And there we go again. Somebody get him some toilet paper. You surely have to wipe your ass by now. and let me tell you something i was telling a few guys last night of something that really upsets me and i find it almost necessary to say these things now because i realize now after having been here a day that some of you are very new and i certainly wouldn't want you to fall victim to these things. Or maybe you don't have these problems in Southern California. I should think about that for a minute. You guys are a little bit smarter than most places in the United States, you know. You probably don't have assholes running around AA meetings in Southern California saying idiotic things like there are no musts in this program. Every time I hear that I want to scream And I want to strike. I get as violent, I guess, as Keith does sometimes. I want a strike. I want you to tear somebody's skin right off, you know. And I'm not talking about newcomers saying this. I'm talking about old-timers saying these things. And new people sit there and listen and hear that and understandably believe it. There are no musts. Well, I'll guarantee you something. in the book Alcoholics Anonymous if you want to take time this evening we can go through it I'll point out 57 times in the book Alcoholic Anonymous where it says must M U S T it doesn't say you had better or if you choose or when you're ready it says you must and the basic concept of this whole program is one of the musts i don't recall the exact page it's on says but sponsorship is an experience that the member must not miss it's a consensus of opinion that if you miss the experience of sponsorship you have missed the program you have not been involved in any of the sharing process you know you have not been involved in any of the giving of yourself or the working with others titles of chapters in the book. Working with others was a whole chapter to show you how important sponsorship is and yet people go around saying there are no musts. I'll tell you a little embarrassing situation I got into once And I still think about it, and sure, the amends have been made and the apologies have been said, but sometimes I wonder how many people got fucked up on account of guys saying these things. You know, when you get invited to be part of an AA conference sometime in a faraway place, in order to save money, these faraway places might use you twice, we'll say. Let me give you an example. Some years ago, I was invited to talk at the banquet in Indianapolis, Indiana, of the anniversary of AA in Indiana, which was on a Saturday night. Now, it generally costs about $450 for a plane ticket to Chicago and back, you know. And that's a lot of money. So in order for a group to cut it down a little bit, they might call up a neighboring community. And they might say, hey, have you got anything planned? Or do you want a big meeting? We're going to have a speaker come in from California on Saturday night. But if you want to split the plane ticket, we'll tell him to come on Friday and he can speak at your group too and then come on over to ours. They do that a lot. So I was invited to speak in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a Friday night. And the deal was I was to stay overnight in Milwaukee and Saturday morning a young lad would come and pick me up to drive me to Indianapolis, which wasn't so far away at that. I was sort of reminded of it yesterday with Mark because this kid came to pick me in a pickup truck. So I spoke Friday night and all went well and this kid showed up in the morning and picked me up and we left for Indianapolis. And we chatted all the way down as you would chat And the boy was sober about seven months or eight months, excuse me. And we got to talking. And all of a sudden he said, boy, he says, the sponsor I had was great. He says, because, you know, he wasn't hard on me. And the best thing that I learned was when he told me there was no musts on this program. Well, he never got a chance to open his mouth for the next four hours, you You know, going to Indianapolis because I went into a tirade, you know, over this. And unfortunately, I carried the feeling right into the banquet, right into the meeting, and I never really know what the hell I'm going to say anyplace, you know? Until maybe two or three minutes before I'm introduced. And I had no idea, really, what I was going to talk about. So I carried that theme right into my talk about the assholes, I said, and the idiots that run around and abound in AA that make these damn statements that probably have killed many people. There are no musts, you know. And I ran and raved, you now, and I finished my talk and I don't care who you are or how bad you are, somebody will clap usually. When I got finished, for Christ's sake, it was like a funeral, you kno. Hardly anybody said anything And I quickly stopped to think, did I use any four-letter words? Did I say something to offend somebody? And I sat down and I was sitting right alongside of the chairman and another guy got up to carry on some part of the meeting. And I said to the chairman, I said, I don't really know what I said. I says, I hope I didn't offend anybody. And I says I'm sorry for what's ever happened. And I says, because I see I've disturbed the group. And he says, disturbed them? He says, boy, you got more goddamn guts than any son of a bitch I know. And I said, what do you mean? He says well for talking about what you talked tonight. He says you're right. He says but boy to give a talk like that after what was said last night, you know, takes courage. and I said what do you mean what was said last night I said I wasn't here last night I was in Milwaukee this guy started to laugh a little bit he says no wonder he says last night the speaker here is the oldest living member of AA in Indiana and you know what his topic was there are no musts in this program well I I made it a point, of course, to... And this guy's name is Frazier and he's still alive. Frazier McCullough. And I made It a point to look him up, you know. And Frazier, you Know, was an old-time member of A.A. And he said the same stupid Friggin' excuse That they all say. He says, well, shit, you Understand what the hell I meant. And I says, I understand But the new people don't, so don't Say it! Must! Big word! must. And you have to be independent, you have to be open-minded, I guess, before you blow your cool sometimes. And I tried that for a while and I got to thinking about must, you know? And I looked it up in the dictionary and so many times in the English language we have words that have multiple definitions. The same word could mean three or four different things. And damn it all, must is one of them. There's three definitions in most dictionaries for the word must. There's the must as the demand, the most common way we use it. And I really should have known the other one anyhow, because must is also how you describe the juice of the unfermented grape. the first crush of the grapes in the fall before the ferment starts is referred to as the must of the grape now living in the wine country I probably have heard that but you know what the other definition is must is how you describe the male elephant when it is in sexual heat it's in the state of must hey that's right but I've tried to think for many years now and try to be honest and open minded and try to convince myself that when those men and women were writing this book they put must in there because of the sexual problems of elephants but I know they didn't they put must in there for exactly what must is in there for. If you want what we have, you must. Sure, I know, we close many meetings especially here in Southern California and you say, our program is only meant to be suggestive. If this building was on fire, I would suggest you get out of it. That's how our program is suggestive, you know. And then there are other things that bother me, and we talked about them last night, you know. Don't listen to any of these jackasses that come along and tell you things like this program is free. This program is not free. It never was free. think of the serenity prayer for a moment the second word in the serentity prayer is grant God grant me not God give me grant now you might be saying well what the fuck they mean the same thing and I thought they meant the same things but there's a world of difference between those two words. And any of you who be native of California or work in the Civil Service Commission should be familiar with the word grant and why it differs from give. You see, to give means to pass on unconditionally as a Christmas present, a birthday present. To grant means to pass on and it is only yours to keep as long as you adhere to certain conditions. That is a grant. That's how this entire state was settled under the grant system. Big leaders in those days were given or granted huge acreages to develop. They were granted lands and said, here, here's 5,000 acres. Now we're going to let you run this and we're gonna let you keep it as long as you do what we tell you to do because you're only a small part of a much larger plan. Let me give you an example of the area where I live. Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Marin, and Lake Counties. That area of land was given to a general by the name of Vallejo who was sent up there to Sonoma to develop that land. And he took his troops out at first and scoured the whole land to see what was there. He went up as far north as Humboldt County and he discovered lots of lumber, and he recovered lots of fishing in Eureka and crabs. And as he came down the coast to Marin County around Petaluma in Novato, he noticed a huge field for the dairy herds and the ideal conditions to raise the dairy cow. And he came further on down to Solano County along the seacoast and the border of the bay, natural harbors for shipbuilding. And he must have come on up through Napa County and discovered the fertility and the climate was right for grapes. And he went all over his area, finding out which area could furnish what the best. And now he had a plan. So he called certain individuals in and said, here, now here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna send you over to the Napa Valley. And because I've already checked it out, the best thing to grow in the Napa Valley is grapes. Now, I'm going to give you 1,000 acres and you can keep them as long as you grow grapes. If you go fucking around putting something else in there, I'm gonna come over and take that land back. Now, don't be worried about the other stuff you need because I'll show you what we can do. And I want you to go down there to Petaluma and raise dairy cows. all you can raise and that's all don't you be fucking around with grapes because we'll get the grapes from him and in exchange for the grapes you give him some of your milk and you go down to Vallejo and you start developing that coastline because I want to put a shipyard there that's where we're going to build up fishing boats that we can send up to Eureka to get the fish now whenever you need some grapes or you need some milk give them a boat and they'll give you some the grapes and the milk. And when you go up to Eureka to sell a boat, trade one of the boats for some of the fish and some of lumber. In other words my master plan if worked by my plan we're all going to survive as long as you do it the way I tell you to do it. And that's why I'm gonna grant you these things. And in AA it's the same thing. Here's sobriety. Here it is fellas, it's yours to keep. If if you adhere to certain conditions. I don't want any of you drinking. As soon as you're drinking, I'm going to take the sobriety away. And in order to keep the sobrietty, I want you to give it away. I want você de ir lá e ajudar outras pessoas. Se você não quer fazer isso, fuck it, I'm gonna take it away." And they listed a lot of conditions, a lot o condições. Some of the conditions were those musts. Other conditions are those 12 suggested steps of recovery. Those steps weren't written just to cover up a hole in the wall. Those steps are a guideline to living. Take a look at them tonight if you can. If you've got an opportunity, put the first step aside. As I said last night, that's the only one that deals with dying because it mentions alcohol. Only time alcohol is mentioned That's in the first step. The next 11 are a gorgeous plan for living. Look at them steps tonight and say to yourself, leave yourself out of it, say, would I really like to know somebody who lived that way? And then you'll see how beautiful those steps are and what a fantastic way of life they become. Those steps will be uncomfortable, of course, if you still want to drink, the steps will always be uncomfortable as long as your desire to drink is stronger than your desire to stay sober. But the minute that the desire to stay sober becomes stronger than the desire to drink the steps become very simple and very understandable. And that's why you find old timers saying, shit, why the hell did I have so much trouble with them? Because now you look at them, and that's the way you want to live. Now, in the beginning, when you and I first see them steps, we rebel. Because that's in direct conflict to how we want to life. I don't want to leave that way. Bullshit. And so we start to fight the steps. And we say, God damn, them steps are hard. you know we take just about half of the steps before we ever even get here think about it for a minute steps one two and three you have taken them a thousand times long before you went to your first day a meeting you usually take them in the morning i call them the morning steps and you usually Take Them in the bathroom and you got your head down on that porcelain you know and you're looking at american standard you know you see it you see it so much you think it's your name you know and there you are you don't know you're dying a thousand deaths you're freezing to death and you're sweating and every nerve in your body is about ready to leap right out of your skin and you try to throw up and you can't throw up when you're crying and the snot is running down and you're urching and aching and you are saying either vocally or consciously Jesus Christ good God I can't get off of this son of a bitch it's driving me out of my fucking mind God damn it I'll do anything to get sober for Christ's sake God help me that's step one two and three of this program that's admitting that you're powerless over alcohol, your life has become unmanageable, you're blowing your mind, you're going crazy, and you're calling out for God for help. No big deal. The fourth step is what got us all here. Inventory step. You don't get to AA unless you take an inventory. You don'T wake up in the morning feeling good with a pocket full of money and a good job and a loving wife in a brand new car you go outside and say things are so fucking great I'm going to join AA no, no you have taken time to look at your life and you've examined your life and you're wondering why you're still in hock why you divorced why you ain't got a job why things is fucked up inventory and you say I don't like what's going on in my life I'm going to do something about it. That's the fourth step of this program, made a searching, fearless, moral inventory of ourselves. The fifth step, you've told every bartender in Southern California your fucking story. What's the matter with telling somebody else, you know? No big deal. And then, of course, the rest of the steps are all the maintenance steps. They're the steps that keep you alive, that they get you off the hook. making amends making direct amends that's the forgiving of yourself that's how you forgive yourself you've heard it a million times forgive yourself first get rid of the guilt let me tell you how that came about with my late mother who just passed away a year and a half ago you know in 87 a wonderful woman who was as active and vital full of vitality the day she died as the day she was born I guess you know never required any hospitalization or anything like that. A fantastic woman who, I'll tell you another little incident in her life that just came to my mind because it has bearing on something I said yesterday that when my mother died, obviously you've picked up a little bit on what I've talked about on the outside. My father, you know, was a criminal figure in New York City. Not worth mentioning because it had nothing to do with sobriety. and I was raised in a highly criminal-oriented family, you know. I told last night about how I was taught rationalization about the first time in my life when my Uncle Sarchie was buried. My Uncle Surchie was the assassin for the Irish gang that my father was a part of. He was one of the guys that did the killing, you know. And he was eventually gunned down in a taxi cab in Miami Beach. He ran the biggest floating crab game in the East Coast. And at the time he was doing that, my father and uncle's factions were literally at war with the Jewish gangs in New York who were seeking control of the Prohibition and the loan sharking. And they got him in a cab and they killed him. and when his body was brought back to New York to wake him, to have to wake and the night came for us to go to the funeral home of course whole families never traveled as a unit because that was very risky so I went to the funereal home early in the evening with my grandmother and my mother now my grandmother it was her son who they were burying, Sarchie Now, I had been taunted and teased by kids in school for years about a lot of our family's activities and reading newspaper accounts or hearing radio reports. I knew that my Uncle Sachi had killed at least seven people. I knew dat. It was probably much more. But you know what I remember the most at that funeral home? As we walked up to the casket and stood before the casket getting ready to kneel down, I looked into the casget and there was my uncle laying in there fully dressed out in the Knights of Columbus suits with a big fucking saber across his chest and his hands wrapped with a rosary bead, you know. And all I can see is a murderer. I know he's a murderer and you know what my grandmother says through her tears poor sarchie he was so good to the church that's all that counted that made everything else all right and us alcoholics sort of carry that right through life you know we fuck a kid around all year long and at christmas we give them a football, and we think that squares the accounts. We tell them lies all year long. Hey. What barracks do you guys sleep in? Oh, boy, isn't that going to be lovely over there, huh? So, you know, I almost lost my chain of thought now when I was talking about there with the rationalization part for what I was going to say even prior to that. i think i was trying to how was i zeroing in on when i was talking a part of something maybe i'll think of it huh oh yeah my mother and how how this came about when she used to come to california my mother old line irish roman catholic native new yorker who as far as she's concerned there's only one place in the whole world, and that was New York City. And California's a weird place because they have earthquakes and it's falling into the ocean. She believed all that shit, you know. Now, undoubtedly my mother was tickled to death, of course, that I was sober. No doubt about that. Although she never saw me drink. All of my activities happened after I left home, but she suffered probably more than anybody else because she was always next of kin, you know, person to be notified. Whenever I was incarcerated, it was her who was notified. whenever I was gone into a mental institution, it was her, who was notified or, or sheriffs or somebody who always calling her, you know, in the middle of the night and my mother's convinced today because she knows very little about AA or was until she died, that I'm sober because she made a lot of novenas. And she's probably right, you know. I would not want to argue with it. But she loved you people because she'd come out here every summer for a month. And you're beautiful people. We are beautiful people when we're sober. And my mother was astounded at that and how nice everybody was so she loved you loved you you know but still she didn't understand you and she didn'T understand me the only time I've ever had a real cross argument with my mother was one day I innocently enough slipped when when somebody in her presence said well well how did you change and I said well I learned a little bit of difference about God and jesus christ she turned she said what do you mean you learn different about god what was wrong with the god i taught you about and the god that you learned in the parochial school she didn't understand that i i look now at god as an alcoholic not as an altar boy you know but anyhow this this one particular time when she was here visiting I was making what I think were the last two financial amends that I had to make. They were over 25 years old. And I had just come back from Reno, and I had hit a couple of good licks up there, so I had a couple extra bucks, and so I was getting a little frivolous with these amends, you know. One of them was the dental bill that I knew was in between $175, $185 some ways. But it was almost 30 years old. And the other was a grocery bill at a little neighborhood grocery store that, again, was $150 to $175. I didn't know. But I wrote out two checks, each for $200. And I had located where this dentist was and where the widow or the wife of the guy who had owned the grocery store was. And I was going to send them the checks that would have cleared me. Now, my mother used to stay in, I wasn't married at the time, and I have a little bachelor sort of a house right alongside of my institution. And I used to say, I used stay there so when Mother would come, she would stay there and I'd go get a motel in town. And she used to sit out on the porch just opposite my office and I could look out the window at her. And she use to love to drink tea and just to sit out there all day in the sun and that was how old people liked it. And I had a dog that used to seat there with her. And whenever she wanted a cup of tea, she used to ring a little bell that I had rigged up. And I would go get her or have the cooks make her a pot of tea and then I would bring it over there. So I had just finished writing these two checks when the little bell rang. So I didn't realize it, but I was holding the two checks in my hand and I went and got the tea and I brought it over to her and she saw the two cheques and made some crack about what's today, payday or something. And I said, no, Mom, those are the last two financial amends that I have to make. And I went on to explain it to her. Now, my mother is a good Catholic, but she's pretty frugal, too. She said, those bills are how old? She said、Geez, they've forgotten about them by now, you know. Certainly have written them off. You're better off buying your grandson something with them, you Know. And I said, no, my, I said you don't understand, you know. I'm not making these amends for them. I'm making them for myself. I'm quite sure they can live without this $200, but it's important for me to pay it. And as I said that, it dawned on me that I had made amends to everybody except my mother. I had never made any amends there. So I started to tell her about that, you know. I said, you Know, and I got material things involved. I got it all fucked up, you now. I was saying things like, Let me bring you out to California. Get you out of New York City. That's a hell hole, you Now. You're stepping over knocks, for Christ's sake, to get in your apartment every night. You've got nine padlocks. I'll buy you any kind of a mobile home you want, you Know. I'll Buy you a car. I'll BuY you everything material. And like a wise mother, she just let me rant and rave like a sick hippo, you know. And then finally, and my mother wasn't even five foot tall, she just looked at me and she says, shut up. Sit down. And I sat down just like I would have if I was only eight years old. And she said these words, and I want to pass them on to you because they might mean something to you. she says, I'm going to tell you something about these things that you call amends. She says, I love you more today than the day you were born. And the reason I love you so much today is for what you are today. And all of those things that you want to apologize to me for, were all necessary for you to be what you are today. Now I know that's a cop out, but it's true. You see, I can't say that I regret any drink that I ever took. And I can'T say thatI'm sorry for anything that I've ever done. Obviously, everything that took place in my drinking career, the harm, the hurt, the shame, all of that was necessary for me to be here in Idlewild, California on a Saturday night on February, whatever the hell it is. January. And this is the best place in the world for meto be right this minute, best possible place. And if anything had been different in my past, I wouldn't be here. I have no idea where I would have been, but I wouldn�t have been here because the events preceding getting here would have changed. So when they say forgive yourself first, that's what they're talking about. You can do more now for your children even though you don't have them, than you ever could have done drunk. You can do more for your parents now than you never could have before. Now you can become the man that they wanted you to become and expected you to be come. Now, you can be the father that you've always wanted to be and never could be. Now the promises don't have to be empty false promises that you know you were never going to fulfill. Now when you say, I'm going to take you to the zoo, you can take them to the Zoo. And when you say next week we're going to see the Dodgers play, you go see the dodgers play. How many times in our past have we made them empty promises, you know, and let a kid stay home crying because my father's full of shit. And that was true, that was true. Life is no longer empty because I've forgiven myself for this and as a result of learning from a liability, and that's the best thing you can do with the liability, is to learn from it and take the lesson because that's what liabilities are there for. Liabilities are there to show you the wrong side of something. You know, if we didn't make mistakes, we'd all be eating raw meat. I was telling Mark that yesterday. But way back in them prehistoric days, some clumsy fucking caveman come into the cave and drop the meat into the fire and they kill them for it. That's what the myth says, but they were so hungry they said, well, fuck it. We got to eat it anyhow. And they decided it tasted better cooked. And that's how you learn. You learn from them mistakes. Sure, rationalization at its best, you know. But God grants. He told me to go out and get a sponsor. to be led, to be willing to be led. You have to be lead in the beginning because you can stumble and make so many mistakes you know. So many mistakes that can be fatal. Let me tell you one that we have made and I know we have made it in my area you know and why it's necessary to have a sponsor or somebody to guide you. Don't just tell a newcomer to go to a meeting and hand them a book, Christ, you could be killing them. We had an instance, and I was involved in it, and I'm not proud of it, you know. I used to. I don't anymore. I'm getting a little old for this, but I used give one day a week in the central office and make 12-step calls in the daytime at night. And so I would sit down there for about seven hours every day, and when the calls come in, like they come into your offices, I'd go out. Well, just as I was getting ready to go home one day And I was going to be chairing a meeting that night So I was running in a hurry to get the hell out of there And the phone rang as usual And it was somebody inquiring about AA and all that And I went like that to this girl, Jen I said, no, no I'm going home, you know And here's what happened I guess This guy called up And it finally made up his mind To try AA You know, he was going to give it a try. And it turned out he was a pretty macho guy and one of the boys were the night, you know, and a two-fisted, stevedore-type drinker, you know. So the girl asked him innocently enough, you know. Where are you right now? And he says, well, I'm up here in the corner of Washington and Van Ness. He says, I got a girlfriend that lives up here. And the secretary said, well how lucky you are. there's a meeting at 8 o'clock two blocks down from you on the corner of Van Ness and Clay now if you don't know San Francisco Van Nesse Street is one block up from Polk Street and Polk's Street is Polk Gulch that's the second biggest gay community in San Francisco outside of Castro Street the meeting she had recommended to this guy is a dominantly gay group it's a group where they dress in women's clothes and they wear the lipstick you know, the whole scene now this guy innocently enough because I met him later on got down there because the secretary had told him don't be afraid just go on in the first person you see introduce them yourself and say you're new to the program and your first meeting and he was willing to do that and he walked into that place