Getting Out of the Will and Out of Yourself – Bob D.

Hi, I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm real happy to be here tonight and I'd like to thank Norman, the committee or whatever made it possible for me to be here with my wife. Always like to start my talk out by telling you that when I was a couple years sober People used to ask me to do things in Alcoholics Anonymous. My life was going real, real good since I'd been in the program, and people began to ask мне to do various things, make coffee or whatever. That wasn't too bad, but when they started asking me to come and share at their meeting, it was just a little too much for me. And, you know, the fear became so bad that I found that it was easier to lie to somebody on a telephone or lie to somebody in a meeting when they'd ask me to come and share I'd give them some phony excuse and you know, eventually I began to feel very guilty about this and finally I went to my sponsor and I told him what I'd been doing. And he said, Bob, he said if you're asked to do anything at Alcoholics Anonymous, you go do it. Whether it be making coffee, setting up chairs or whatever. He said if your asked to speak at a meeting, you go to that meeting and speak. He said, if you don't do a good job, you won't even have to worry about speaking anymore because they won't ask you back, you know. And what that did for me, I guess, is it made me realize that I'm not in competition with anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have my own life today. I had my own life before. When I'm asked to come somewhere and share, I'm asked to come and tell you a little bit what I was like and what happened to me and what I'm like now. And that's what I'm here tonight to do, to tell you my story. Each one of us in this audience has our own story. And if we're asked to share it, we've got to put our hands in the hands of God. And, you know, I'm real, real grateful. I've been in the hands of God for over 17 years since I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I can tell you my life is just unbelievable. There's no way you can live the way I'm living. And, you know, I was married for 10 years before I got to Alcoholic Anonymous and my wife and I drank together and did everything wrong together. And I was in jail doing time and I found AlcoholicsAnonymous and I was willing to let my wife go to try to find another way of living. And today, my wife's sitting right down here in the front row. We've been able to share this beautiful life together. And if that isn't a God-given thing, I don't know what is. I'm extremely grateful to be here. I am extremely grateful that I'm my worst enemy, that I was before and I still today. You know, that's one of the first things I realized when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous is that as long as I stayed out of what I thought I wanted to do, I was okay. And as time has went on, you know, I thought that was just before. But as I've been sober and time has gone on, I realized that I can take things back. And, you know it's very important that I get out of my will and ask some other power, whatever it may be for you, just to get out of yourself. You know, just to do things another way. And I do that on a daily basis now. And my life is real, real good. I was raised in downtown Long Beach, California. It's a town similar to this with a little amusement park. And at that time, Long Beach, it was like a Navy town when I was a kid. Probably a lot of men here have been there when they went through the service or whatever, but it had a lot bars and it had what they called the Pike, which was an amusement zone. And there was a lot action in this town. I was raised with my mother and my brother. We lived in an apartment building. My mother was a drunk, and my brother was a gambler. He was about 10 years older than me. At an early age, I realized that when I grew up, I didn't want to drink or gamble. To describe what our living situation was, it was just a dog-eat-dog situation. I don't know how to describe it any other way. My mom was always hustling my brother for money to drink with, and my brother was hustling my mother for money to gamble with. And I got real smart as a kid at an early age. And while my mother was still passed out, I'd crawl around the bed and get in her closet where her purse was, and I'd take some money out of there. My mother was a drunk. I knew when I went to school that day and I came home, my mother wasn't going to be there with a homemade cake or whatever for me. Mymotherwasadrunk. I knew where to find my mother. She was at the corner bar almost all the time. Sometimes she would come home, sometimes she wouldn't. As a kid, I always felt less than other people. I always needed a haircut. I always had holes in my jeans. Everybody else just looked like they were something, you know. And just seeing the way other people looked and just feeling the way I felt at that young age, it just made me know that when I grew up, things weren't going to be this way. Things weren't gonna be this bad, rotten dilemma that I was in of living. And I knew as soon as I could get old enough to take control of things and get out there and get a job, that things were going to do well. And so I knew that I had to make sure that I things were gonna be good. I knew when I went to work that I'd be a good worker and I'd be a Good husband when I got married and a good father. And those are all of the things I really wanted inside of me. And, you know, I had a lot of feelings as a kid like that. And I know there's other children that are raised in bad homes and whatever, and they don't have those thoughts. They just turn out being real bad and resentful and hateful. And it wasn't that way with me. But anyway, I head one friend that I used to go over to his house a lot. And I would usually show up there after school right around dinner time and his mother would always say Bob would you like to have dinner with us and I'd say oh I guess you know and God I just love to be over there at dinner time. His mother had like fresh peas and you know stuff that I never got at home because usually when I was at home my mother when we did have money she'd go to the store and buy Campbell's soup and she'd buy you know bean and bacon and vegetable and beef and she's say a different one for each night, you know. So when I was over there, I kind of got some fresh food and it was really nice. I'd have dinner there. And after we ate, I'd lay on the floor in front of the television with my friend and just his mother was there. His father had been killed in the service. And, you Know, there was some warmth and some feeling in that room. And you know, wanted it. I just wanted whatever was there. Whatever was there, I didn't have it in my house and I wanted it and I knew I wanted It and I didn t quite know what it was but I just felt that gentleness and caring and a loving feeling and I Wanted It and you know, I d stay there many times 8, 9 o clock at night. I d get on my bicycle and go home and the fear would grip me of when I got home. My mother would be there. A lot of times when she was drunk, she was violent and she d kind of bang me around. Or worse yet, I'd get at home and nobody would be at home. And as a kid, I spent many, many nights just terrified in this apartment building that we lived in. I'd always hear footsteps outside the door. And a lot of times I'd stand behind the door with a butcher knife or I'd sit down and I'd go to bed and cover up my head just praying that I'd wake up the next day because I just knew somebody or something was going to come in there and get me. And these are the kind of feelings I had as a child. And this apartment built when we lived in was, like I say, it was down in an area that wasn't real good and there was prostitution going on in this building. And, you know, it just was no place for a kid. And anyway, as I got into my teen years, I started going with different girls. Every girl that I'd go with, I'd be madly in love with. I think, yeah, well, this is a girl we'll get married and I can move away and everything will be okay. When I was 15 years old, I was going with a girl that was 13 and we decided that on our birthdays we'd get married. We found out that we could go to Utah and the boy could be 16 and the girl 14 and you could legally get married and after our birthdays, we got on the Greyhound bus and we took the Greyhounds bus to Utah, St. George, Utah. We got buried. We came back. We had both quit school. I got a job. We got a little apartment, and I knew everything was going to be okay. You know, we had this little apartment. I'd go to work in the daytime, and my wife would go over to her mother's house. And you know, I guess we were married about 10, 11 months. Iíd go to works. Sheíd goto her motherís house. One day, I went to work. She went to her mother's house, and I've never seen her to this day. It took me a long time in Alcoholics Anonymous to realize how sick I must have been. If your wife left, you would go looking for her. I really didn't go looking. I've seen her mother one time, and some of my friends had seen her, but it's kind of funny to live in the same town all those years. But what happened to me is I ended up moving back with my mother, and by this time my brother had gotten married, and something happened to be. I guess I kind of realized that all those dreams I had as a kid of when I got things in my hands, that things were going to be different and I was going to be able to live a clean, decent life. Those things kind of just drifted away from me and I guess I realized that they weren't really possible. And I started running around with some of my old school friends that I used to run around with, the one guy that I used go there and have dinner with. You know, I'd been at a circulation with these guys for a while since I'd Been dating girls and got married. So when I started running around with them, by this time they were all drinking and smoking marijuana and taking pills. And you know, when I first found out what they were doing, it kind of scared me. But you know I just started going around with them. And before long, you know i was doing everything. And I can describe in one incident really just what alcohol did for me. You know I found myself night after night riding around with these guys. We had about a three mile strip we drove in Long beach on pacific coast highway we drive about three miles one way and turn around and come back and that's all we did all night we were riding around in this 55 lowered buick with the music going real good i can remember this one incident of being at a stop sign with these four or five of my righteous partners by then music going good we're all smoking a little weed and drinking have a quart of beer in our lap or passing around a bottle of wine and you know maybe taking a couple of bennies or something and waiting at this stoplight and looking over at the car next to me and kind of leaving my mind, taking my mind away from the car and the situation I was in for a minute, looking at these other people and I thought, you know, these people in this other car don't know what we got. These stupid people, I thought. If they only knew what was going on in here. And, you know, the feeling I had of what alcohol gave me, it was just everything was working 100% is the only way I know how to describe it. The bennies were, you Know, just kind of popping and they were my skin was just had like goosebumps on it and the music was playing and this weed was hitting and, and this drinking the beer, wine, whatever it was, all of that stuff was working that 100%. And that's the feeling I tried to capture till the very end. Just trying to have that feeling one more time. I had that feeling and it worked 100% for, really, it was a very short period of time. I found myself drinking and taking anything. That's the way I started out. I didn't just start drinking. I didn'T just get into drugs. It's always been whatever was available, that's what I took. But I had never got arrested as a juvenile. I always knew with my mother being a drunk, if I would have ever got into trouble, that my mother would have left me in juvenile hall. That would have been the easiest thing for a drunk woman to do. And so I was always super cautious. And my other friends had been in trouble when they were in juvenile. But anyway, my first arrest, I was an adult. We made the headlines of the newspaper in Long Beach. It said, Narcotic Agents, NAB 4. They shot one of my friends in the back with a .357 Magnum when he was running away from the police. And it sounds like a big narcotic bust or something, but all we had was three marijuana cigarettes, you know. It just shows you how much the laws have changed since then. But, you Know, if you smoked weed or any of that then, you were being watched by the narcotic officers and you could do some time behind it. That was my first arrest. My friends, they had been arrested for it before. In fact, that's why we got stopped. They had been watching them. They'd already been known as a user of marijuana or whatever, and as it turned out, they were sent away to prison, and I was given three years probation, and it scared me so bad of them going away that I cleaned up my act. I quit drinking. I quit doing anything. And I just, I got a job at General Motors in Southgate at an assembly plant and I just more or less took care of my mother and I would just went back to dating a lot of girls again, you know. And that's just about all that was happening. And one night I was at my mother's house and this girl came and knocked on my door and it was a girl that I used to go study with when I was 11 and 12 years old, and you know, I'd known her for, knew all about her, known her. She was a real good friend of mine, and she came in, and we started laughing that night, and he told me that she had left her husband, and that they'd been married for a few years, and heard that I was split up with mine. We laughed and talked that night for about a half hour or so, and then we decided to go take a ride. That night, we took a ride, and I think she had some drugs or whatever, and we got something to drink. And we started doing that night after night. And I can tell you that I found myself with a girl that I always wanted to be with. I was totally happy. I WAS DRINKING AND TAKING DRUGS AGAIN. AND I COULD TELL YOU THAT WE JUST, I DIDN'T KNOW MY MOTHER EXISTED. I DID NOT KNOW I HAD A JOB. I did not know anything. I was having fun. I was doing my thing. And, you know, I'm the kind of drunk that if I'm at a party and maybe on Sunday night or something, somebody might say, you know, God, it's 12 o'clock. Don't you have to go to work tomorrow? I just say, oh, forget that job. You know, I'll get another job. That's the way my drinking was. Nothing was important except what I was doing. I wasn't totally full of self and there was never enough of anything. I couldn't get enough of anything. But I found myself with this girl, and we went night after night to different nightclubs and whatever. And after about five months, you know, we used to ride around and laugh because we had both been married, and we'd say, isn't this neat? We've both been buried, and we know we don't want to do this again. And we'd just ride around getting loaded together and having a good time. And, you Know, it was really a lot of fun. And one night, by this time, she had an apartment, and we'd been going together for about five months and we've been taking a lot of drugs and drinking for days and been up for days and we ran out of money and didn't have anything to drink or anything to take and just out of despair we decided that maybe we should get married and this is how we decided and by this time I didn't have a job I didn' t have anything of value I had worked for a man years before. He left me in his will. He left his fishing pole to me when he died. And it was a real nice surf outfit and everything, and it was the only thing I had of value. I took it down and hawked it, and that's how we got the marriage license money. And this is the way we started out. I can tell you along the way, she had a child from another marriage, and we ended up having a boy and a girl of our own. And I can just briefly tell you that that marriage of us drinking, we lived on welfare. We did whatever we had to do not to work. You know, I tried to work when I was first married and she didn't want me to work so I didn't push the issue, you know. So I learned to go down to her families with her and hustle them for money and I learned to go out and turn the gas meter and the light meter on when the guy came and turned it off and I began to learn how to lie and to cheat and to steal from people and that's exactly the way we lived. We had these two children and we lived just a life of pure living hell. Our life was me going in and out of jail, coming out of prison and coming out of jail. You know, I'd get into jail first it was for four or five days or ten days and then pretty soon it was for 30 days. And, you know, when I was out on the streets drinking, I just totally kept drinking until I was stopped. And usually the only way I would quit is if I was locked up in jail. And once I was in jail for a while, I'd be able to see myself and be able to take a little bit of a look at me. And,you know, I kind of revert back to that Bob when Iwas a kid and,youknow,get back to the values that I really wanted,the values that were really important in my life that God made for me,for Bob. And, you know, those things would come back and I'd get a little glimpse of them. And I'd think, hey, when I come out of here, I'm going to quit hanging around with these guys. And I'm not quit drinking. I'm gonna do real good. And I've come out and I get my wife and the kids back together and and, you know, I do real good. I get a job and I tell him, hey I'll work overtime and I buy us some little furniture in a car and everything would be going real good and pretty soon I just find myself with money in my pocket. i didn't know how to be around anybody we had to totally isolate ourselves my wife and i from any friends any other kind of activity because we had nothing going for us we had no way to stay sober it was either you don't do nothing or you know you do it all and that's the way it was and uh You know, Clancy says it real good in our area that the alcoholic stays sober till he can't stand it anymore. And then, you know, then he starts drinking and then he drinks till he cant drink anymore and you get sober. And it's just an endless cycle. And it talks about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Jekyll and Hyde. And that's just the kind of person I became. I fit that description to a T. I look like a real nice, kind person up here tonight. And that's the way I appeared on the street when I wasn't drinking for the employers and the people that I worked for. And I did real good and always showed up at work. And all of a sudden, I just wasn't at work anymore. Or maybe they had a burglary and somebody busted in in the middle of the night and stole a bunch of stuff or whatever. That was me. That was me when I started drinking. I completely turned into a complete animal, and that's the way it was. I have went in and out of jail several times just and did real good, like I'm telling you, come out, got the family back together. Once I started drinkin', my cycle ended up in the Los Angeles County Jail. And then I would come out and do real good again. And to make a long story short, I did that four or five times. I came out of that county jail, got my family back together, did as good as I could until maybe I ran into an old friend, maybe the nicest guy of the bunch that had a girlfriend and maybe just drank beer, a guy that we'd invite him over to dinner and he'd sit there and bring just a six-pack. And he'd say, Bob, you can have one beer, just don't take any of those reds or any of this other stuff, you know. Or you can just smoke a joint and I might join in with him that night or I might not. But it was just a matter of time until I finally did. And see, once if I did, if I had a beer with that guy or said something that night, I remember him leaving and saying goodbye and not letting him know. And as soon as my wife went to sleep or maybe I just continually kept drinking with her and then I just took off and may have been gone for days, came back. Well, one time my wife was at home with the kids. I took off on a run was gone for several days, came in with some guys with a pickup truck and knocked her down at the door when she finally, her husband finally came home after several days. She's been totally worried. And I came in and knocked Her down and started selling furniture and the ice box to a guy for $20. I know what it is to be an alcoholic and just be totally self-will. This is the kind of person I had become. I always thought my mother was so bad because she was a drunk, and you know, my mother wouldn't even allow me in her house. That's the kind of human being I had become. When people saw me and knew I was drinking, they didn't want anything to do with me. They knew I Was trouble. I was very obnoxious. I Was a very violent person. Now that I look back on it today, I realize why I was so violent, because I was living totally the opposite of the way that I really am inside. And I was just so full of anger and hate, and once I started drinking, I was always in a fight. I was going to jail. And, you know, the last five years of my drinking, three years of that time I was in the Los Angeles County Jail from various offenses, from armed robbery to burglary to drunk in public, you name it. Just the various things that I did while drinking. And the other two years of that five years, one day we went into a bar after I'd been out of jail for a short time and already had been, you know, out doing a lot of things wrong. And my wife and I went into the bar one day and the bartender said the vice squad was in there looking for me. And I told her, I said, we better get out of town. And as it turned out, we left town and we went down and got on a Greyhound bus and we Went all the way up to organ. But in those two years, we lived just about totally on alcohol. There was no drugs, nothing. When you're on the road and living the way we were living like a couple of bums, we were in our mid-twenties and there was nothing left. I thought I was an old man. Our kids, my wife left our children with my mother and she went to find me when I was on to run one weekend. And as it turned out, when we got together, we started drinking together and we never did go back. And, you know, I know what it is to be in a rescue mission and me staying downstairs and my wife being upstairs. And we live like that a lot and going to blood banks and staying in little wino motels. And you know it's alcohol is so cunning and baffling. I can remember being in the rescue mission, and they gave my wife and I a spaghetti dinner, and we both took a shower and a bath, and they gave us some little pajamas, and they even gave us a room together with a bed, and we got up there after we'd had our little spaghetti dinner and our baths, and we got in bed together, and you know, she pulled out a little stubby bottle of wine, and we both chuckled like, aren't we putting it over on the world? You know, that's the sickness of the alcoholic. You know the insanity to think that we're putting anything over two young people that have everything in front of them in life totally living against any way they were ever made by God to be living like that and to think That we were putting it over on somebody My wife and I when we were drinking we had we just had a ball together we you know we could be totally broke and on the road somewhere and maybe steal some money from somebody or something but i remember she was serving kentucky chicken on the greyhound bus one time and the bus driver almost threw us off and we were just laughing and having a lot of fun you know i remember when we had a little wino motel room up in san jose california and the manager come and said hey we told you there's no parties here get those people out of here and it was just my wife and I in there drinking. We were having a ball, you know. We loved, we've always just loved each other, and we've also had a good time together, and that was the problem. That was the problems that I ended up with when we'd been married 10 years. And when I started coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to stay with my wife. I loved her too much. We had too much fun together, we were still trying to capture that feeling just one more time, you know. And, you know, I came back to Long Beach and finally I was arrested after we lived on Skid Row. And you know when I came, back I like to remember when I came back, we came back there. We left Sacramento, California and we got on a bus and we're headed south and we couldn't even stay on the bus. It wasn't even a regular stop, to load people on. The bus driver just stopped to pick something up and we started to get off to go get something to drink and he said, don't get off, we're not stopping. And of course, we went and got something to drank. When we came back, all our stuff was gone on the bus and we stated walking around in Skid Row and buying some little winos, some wine and as it turned out, those two guys, they ended up taking us out somewhere and they practically killed us almost. They tried to rape my wife and they took our food stamps from us And they just practically beat me to death with the back of a hoe And as it turned out, I was all bloody and full of mud And I lost one of my shoes in the mud I stuck it down in the wood and came up with one shoe gone And this is the way we were left and walking this town And I called my mother and I had called her several times that night Trying to get her to send some money And by this time, we had been gone a long time. And my mother didn't want anything to do with us. She knew we were incapable of taking care of any kids. And it had been close to two years, I guess, that we had been gone. Two years, we left those kids and were just running like total drunks. And finally, my mother sent us enough money to get to Long Beach. And my mother met us at the bus depot, and I came walking out just bloody and muddy. And, of course, we were skinny and all red-purple faces from drinking all this time. And we just looked like derelicts, my wife and I. And I can remember my daughter being in the back seat of that car, just totally terrified, I guess, when her grandma says, there's your mother and father. She couldn't even recognize us. She didn't know who we were. We didn't know who our own kids were. We never knew who our children were. The way we lived all that time, we never bought our kids any clothes or anything my kids ever got was given by some friend or some friend of the family that was just taking pity on us and that's just the way it was. And we were picked up that day by my mother and we stayed at our house until we got a little better and then we were off and running again. And those kids remained there and we got a job at this little coffee shop. I was a cook, and she was a waitress. By this time, we had learned how to do this little deal. We could get off a bus and get money when we were on the road, so to speak. And, you know, anyway, we were both working at this little coffee stop this one weekend. It was our day off, and we both had the same day off together. And the kids were still at my mother's. and we were just doing our thing. And I went over to the liquor store, I got up and I got a six-pack and a bottle of whiskey and I was already drinking that when my wife woke up. I used to get drunk a lot before she'd ever wake up, especially if we were tight on money. I could get up and go drink and get back in bed. She'd never know the difference. But, you know, when you're sick, you've got to take care of yourself. It's a selfish program. But, you know she woke up that morning and it was in November In fact, November 6th, it'll be 18 years this November. That day I sat on the side of that bed and I was drinking and I told my wife, I said, you know, I said after today let's quit drinking. And I said we'll save up some money and buy our kids a Christmas present. It had been a long time. And, you Know, I had thoughts of doing right that day And as it turned out, we went over to Wilmington, a little neighboring town, over to her ex-husband's house. And we used to run around with him a lot because he had drugs and stuff. And that day we were over there drinking and taking drugs. And that night when we came back in this little junk car, my wife was passed out of my lap and I ran into a telephone pole. And as It Turned Out, the police came and they let her walk away and they took me away because the police had a warrant. They had been looking for me. And I thought that was the end. I can remember looking at my wife walk away that night, drunk, and I was drunk, and I thought I'll probably never ever see her again. And as it turned out, I was in the old Los Angeles County Jail and I remained in there for a long time. I'd been in there before. I had done time in there a lot of times and all I can tell you is one night a guy got bit in the head by a rat. Somebody said, I don't know, sleeping on a mattress floor. And I was on a, uh, a mattress on the floor in the cell next to me. Uh, when it got all quiet, somebody said that it happened. I don't know if that was really true or not, but that night I was in the old Los Angeles County jail. I was 29 years old and, uh. I could just see my whole life, uh right in front of me. And I just didn't want to be Bob anymore. It was just that simple. Something happened to me that night. My life has been in a different direction. I just got to a state of total despair that night, and I didn't want anything I had. I didn'T know where my wife was again. My kids were over at my mother's. Everything was just bad. And, you know, a probation man came to interview me days later and he wanted to find out what he was going to do, what he Was going to recommend to the judge. And I told him that I was an alcoholic and I said, you know, if I'm given probation I'll go to Alcoholics Anonymous and I know I can stay sober. You know, when I got back to my bunk I heard myself telling this man this and I knew it without a doubt that I Was an alcoholic. I had been to Alcoholic Anonymous one time before, a few years before for a drunk driving or something and the seed was planted at that time. We went there, my wife and I both went. She says she went with because she didn't want me to start drinking again. She didn't have a problem she thought at that time but you know I remember going and I thought I was sober. I used to go to these meetings and I would take a few Valium before I went. I always thought well you know i don't want to get nervous if somebody calls on me to talk or something, you know. And we used to smoke a lot of weed. We bought a lot of weed and I thought I was sober. You know, it was in the summertime in Long Beach, they have little ice cream trucks come by for the kids with the little bells and you can go out and get banana splits and hot fudge sundaes. And, you now, I can remember being out there one night, we got a big banana split and we went and were sitting on our porch and after the little ice-cream truck left and we're sitting there looking up at the stars and I told her, I said, God, you know, we were just loaded on weed. And I just says, you Know, isn't this sobriety fantastic? You know, what a good way to live. You know. I don't know if you're taking anything, but sobriery is just what it says. Sobriety. And thank God I took all the stuff. I know I can't take anything. It's not sober. You know? Alcohol, drugs, marijuana, LSD, whatever, heroin. I've taken them all. And I've abused them all And, you know, the funny thing about it is I never had any peace of mind or any comfort until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and this surrender that I talk about came about. Because there was never enough. If I was at a party with all my best friends, had all the money in my pocket, all the booze, you now, had alcohol, had all of the drugs, everything, maybe my wife was there and stuff, and everything would just be a perfect setting that you could think of, you kno. I'd get to thinking maybe a little bit later in the kitchen or something and start thinking, you know, I ought to slide out of here and go see what some girl down the street's doing or something. You know, just totally full of self, selfishness, self-centered. That was me to the T. There was never enough. Nothing was ever enough. And that's the way I lived just until I was locked up once I was drinking. But anyway, I was sent to road camp for a burglary that they'd been looking for me for. And I was given three years probation and I was giving six months in the county jail. I ended up being sent back to the same road camp that I served a year in for a robbery almost five years before. At this road camp, I was a cook. There was maybe 100 men at this. They fought fires and stuff and did road work. The prisoners did, and there was about 100 men there. And I was the cook and the baker in this camp. I did all the baking, and I cooked for the police. And I had this little room that I was baker. And when I went back there five years later, I ended up with my same job back at this same road camp, which is unbelievable. The county jail system has camps and jails all over. I mean, they house thousands and thousands of men. And to end up five years late or going back to the exact place where you were, you know, it's just unreal. When I got off of the bus from the county jail, they took me up to this road camp. I walked into this little office where the sheriff's officers were and the same three police that were there five years before, they said, hey, welcome back, Bob, you know. And I ended up back with my same job. I went into this Little Bakery where I did all the baking and when I was there before, the little library truck would come and I'd get cookbooks to find out how to, you know, make Napoleons and cream puffs. And I really spoiled these police. They didn't want me to go before. That's why they remembered me. But, you Know, I ended up back, opened up my recipe book. I had these Navy recipes, and I had recipes that I had handwritten that were still in this recipe book from five years before. And, You know, I can tell you last time I left, I took them with me, the rest of the recipes. I didn't plan on going back, I'll tell you. But, you know, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in this rogue camp. On Thursday night, men would come from the outside the streets and there'd be three or four of them and they'd come up there and they bring in a meeting. And I started go into AlcoholicsAnonymous meetings there and I began to listen to these guys and I begin to talk to these men and I would tell him different situations of what was going on in my life and I'd say, do you think I can stay sober? And they say, hey, if you want this thing more than anything in the world and you want it for you and you wants your life to change, you can have it and it'll work for you. And I believe those men. And, you know, my wife and I, whenever I went to jail, I went into jail so much that whenever I was in prison, whenever I would go to jail my wife or I never corresponded. I might see her once or twice when I was first arrested and then we just like broke it off. It was just easier for me to go ahead and do my time in there and not know what she was doing, who she was with, whatever. You know, I just, you know, those were probably all selfish motives. But, you Know, that's just, I didn't want to know about it. She didn't write, and she went and did whatever she had to do on the streets to live, and that's Just the way it was. And usually when I got out of jail, maybe we'd get back together right away or might be later. I mean, nobody knew anything. I might be out for a couple of months and run into her on the street at a party or something, and we might end up getting together. And that's usually how it happened. And anyway, my mother had my children, and she would come and see me now and then on a Sunday, and she'd bring my kids up with my brother, and sheíd tell me different things. Mother-in-laws always like to tell on their daughter-in laws, you know, and sheís let me know all of the things that she heard she was doing wrong, you Know. And she told me that my wife was running with some of my old friends that had got out of San Quentin, and they were using heroin and robbing places. And I just knew in my life that I had to let her go, and I loved her, and I had allowed her to do what she had to do, and I tried to find something for myself. And it wasn't long before my mother came again, and she told me that my wife was in the Harbor General Hospital and that she had hepatitis and that he was dying. She had it twice before, and the doctor said that if she ever got it again, she'd die. And one day I was serving food in the mess hall there at dinnertime, and I just broke down crying, and there was this black man, a friend of mine, he came out and put his arm around me, and I Just bawled like a baby to that guy. And I said, How did this all happen? And I said, all I wanted to do was just be married, be a good man, a good husband, live out in suburbia somewhere with a little house. How come I couldn't just have a job? And I could just look over my whole life and it just had been a total living hell is what it had been. And, you know, I was able to see and feel all that and I thought I'd never see my wife again. I thought she'd be dead before I ever got out of jail. And it was just a real heavy, sad thing. And, you know, after that happened, maybe a few months went by or whatever, but maybe it was a month or so. But one day I came in from working in the bakery and there was a letter laying on my bed. When you had mail, they just put it on your bed. And it Was a letter from my wife. And she wrote and told me that she'd been real sick and that she just wanted to write. And, God, it was good to hear from her. And like I said, we never ever corresponded. And, you know, I began to write to her and by this time she had went to another hospital and what had happened is that she was in this hospital and one of these little AA guys was wandering around the hospital I guess came into her room and got her to a meeting. He pushed her down there in a wheelchair you know to a meet-up and that's how my wife went to her first meeting but it was just so coincidental that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous and my wife started going to meetings and we began to write and you know after she was in this this hospital she started getting better and she met a little man in there that told her about this woman's recovery house that she could go to and and back in those days we had never heard of anything like that my wife and I we used to go to hospitals a lot of time and we wouldn't dare let anybody a welfare worker or a hospital know that we were drunk we had to hide it that was the thing about an alcoholic back then you know you couldn't go to a hospital and check in and there was no alcoholic Ward or any of that you know if we've been thrown out of emergency wards because they said you guys are just drunks you know and but Anyway, somebody had told my wife about this woman's recovery house and she went to it. And we began to correspond and I would go to these meetings in the jail and I'd lay on my bunk at night and I got the 12 and 12 and the big book off of the library truck when it came. And I'd lie there and I read about this program. And you know, I'm not much of a reader and I have to read things several times to get it in my head. but I, you know, I would do that and I'd study the book and God, one day I was looking at the 12 and 12 and I looked, I was reading this page and it just came so clear to me that this is why my wife couldn't stay sober you know and I wrote and told her I found on page so-and-so in the 12 and 12 why you can't stay sober and she wrote back and said the house mother there told me to take my own inventory so this is kind of how it started you know so anyway um you know like i say uh we'd been married a long time 10 years i didn't know whether i was going to be with my wife again or not i was glad to know she was alive the time come and it was time for me to get released from the county jail my wife was still in this recovery house i can remember getting released from that county jail I was sober that day. Always before I had, I'd been released a lot of times. I always knew what I was going to do, like I told you. Wasn't going to hang around with these guys and going to get out and get that job, going to give them money. Going to get things back together. It wasn't that way the last time. The last time I had no idea what was going happen to me in life. The only thing I knew is that I was an alcoholic and that I had found Alcoholics Anonymous in that county jail and all I knew is that I was supposed to go to an AA meeting. And, you know, I was sober when I walked out. In a couple months that'll be 18 years that I've been sober and all that I'm going to do and all they've been doing is going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Isn't that amazing? My whole life has just totally changed. Everything that I was willing to give up, I have. Plus more. If I would have figured out, wrote down anything at that county jail that day before I went over to the Greyhound bus depot with my sandals and a t-shirt and a pair of Levi's on, that's what I owned if I would have wrote them down I could have never come up with what I got today I could never feel the way I feel I feel good because I found out in Alcoholics Anonymous the best thing that I could ever do would be to be me just the way God made me and that's why I feel good. I don't always be me, but I found out that when I've tapped into this thing and I get out of my own will and I don' t run things, that I feel g ood and I can be just what God wants me to be. I've done a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've made mistakes, but I've learned from my mistakes. you can't get 17 years sober and feel the way i'm feeling without going through the things being sober 17 years in mind i was going to alcoholics anonymous and i just wanted to go over there to this woman's recovery house and see my wife and i didn't know if she was really my wife you know we were married on paper and whatever but i didnít know whether we were was going to be together or not. And I took that bus to Long Beach from Los Angeles. I went over to this woman's recovery house and I knocked on the door and this lady came and I told her that who I was, that I was Bob Decker and I wanted to see my wife Gloria. And she told me to step in and wait. And i waited in this room and there was nobody in there. And it seemed like quite a long time i waited. You know it was just a few minutes but my wife come walking through that door and she was sober and I was sober. And I'll tell you, I don't know if you've ever had known anybody most of your life and knew all about them as a little girl. I knew everything about my wife. We'd been friends long before we were ever married or whatever. And, you know, I was just glad to see her alive and sober. And God, it was good to see here. And we, you Know, any other time when we made that eye contact we used to like beat somebody for some money and leave town you know and it was different this time she began to tell me about this woman's recovery house and how nice it was and how god they have clean sheets and pretty little curtains and the women are real nice and little things that we hadn't been around in a long long time you know it was a big deal for us to have toilet paper in our house, you know. There was no money. The sickness was so heavy, there was no, no money for nothing. Just a life of courtrooms, probation officers and hospitals and emergency wards and that's the way it was. And that day she began to tell me about this woman's recovery house and, and she asked me if I'd like to come over and have dinner with them and go to a meeting with them. And I thought, hey, I'm in, you know, and it felt good. And I went over, I said, I'd love to. And i went over and to my mother's and took whatever I had over there and left it. And then I came back that night and had dinner with these women and went to a meet him with them and I found myself night after night the first week riding around with these women four or five six women from this woman's recovery house in this backseat of this car with all these women and you know whenever I was in jail, I'd always lift weights and get all big and buffed up and all this stuff. And here I am riding around with these women. You know, I can remember looking out at the freeway at the lights at night and the women would all be talking and I'd be sitting there quiet and I look and I see all these lights and stuff and people living out there in homes. And I think, I wonder what's going to happen in life, you know? What's going to happened now? You know I just knew I didn't want to drink, and I didn't want to take anything. And I felt like I was in some kind of hands, you know, God's hands. I felt Like I'd really found something that, you know, as long as I stayed out of the way, I would be okay. And my wife and I, we take little walks when she was in this place. And one day we were walking, and we were walk along talking. And I started telling her how slick I was in jail. I wanted to let her know that I was still a good con and that I Was selling sandwiches in jail for sick to get cigarettes. And, you know, came out with a little bit of money. And you know it's funny how God works in our life because just that day just walking along brand new sober. She looked over at me and she says, Bob, she says you know we don't have to live like that anymore. You know, I don't know if she said it in those exact words but she just, you know, whatever she said that day, I thought, yeah, I don't have to do that anymore. That cheating and sneaking and hiding. And since that day I've tried to do better on it. And I started beginning to find out what this program was about. And the program for me, I was a thief. I used to steal a lot. If I had money in my pocket, I'd go in and steal some garlic powder or something just to cut down on the bill, you now. And for me getting honest meant cash register honesty at first. I started paying for newspapers, that was before they had these plastic racks, you know, you could just take a paper and, and, uh, you know, I quit nickel and dime compromising with people and what happened to me is I always used to notice police cars going by and pretty soon I wasn't worried about police cars anymore and, you know, we got a little place to live right behind this house of hope, this recovery house and we got back together and we had I went down and got welfare at first. And, you know, we've got welfare a lot of times, but it seemed to be different this time because we got this little place and I got this job and I Got a paycheck and we even had some food stamps left and we took them back and gave them back to him. I says I got a job now. But this is a difference I'm talking about. I started riding a bus to work. I was a cook and I worked on weekends and my wife and I would go to, she'd go to meetings when I was at work at night and all these AAs would come in on Friday and Saturday night and they'd all wave to me and having fun and I'd stand back behind the grill and a lot of times I had tears in my eyes. I Was just like full of self-pity I guess that that I had to work and you know I couldn't be with them and I, my first sponsor was a painter and he used to work through the, you know, Monday through Friday till three, four o'clock and had weekends off. And I thought, God, I want to do something like that, you knows. And pretty soon somebody sold us a little car for $50 and we didn't have any money. And he gave us a car anyway. And we wondered, we laid and wondered why God gave us this car, you now. We thought, God, we might get drunk with the car. You know, we were real scared and, you know, when I came home my wife had been in a lot of trouble and she'd been running around and she had to go back to court and the day, you know, I'd been home for several months and the date came that we had to go down to court. And there was a possibility that she might have to go to prison or whatever for a year. And it was a real touchy scary thing and we just went down there and, you know, nobody said much. It was just kind of in God's hands. And that day we went down to that courthouse on a sunny, beautiful day. And my wife, the judge called her up and she got up in front of the judge. And he looked at a lot of papers and he looked down at my wife and he says, you knows, I have a lot people who wrote letters from Alcoholics Anonymous saying that you've had some kind of change in your life. And he says, I'm going to give you one more chance and I'm gonna reinstate your probation. And that day my wife and I ran out of that courtroom on a sunny, beautiful day down Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach like two little kids knowing that everything was going to be all right. And that's just kind of the way it's been up to this point. It's unbelievable. We laid in that little apartment with a pull-down bed in there. And I can remember laying in that bed talking about the miracles of this program. And we were just within our first year of sobriety, of how things were happening. And my wife was always totally amazed. She'd always ask her sponsor, well, how could she tell her things how good things was? And her sponsor would always say, oh, they're going to get better. And she'd say, how can they get better than this? You know, and we didn't have our kids back or anything. We were just grateful to have a new blanket with flowers on it and a coffee pot and a telephone. When we got a telephone, it was $4.85 a month, and I told my wife, I said, hey, we'll probably keep it one month, and that's it. I said so I won't be able to afford it, you know. But God has given us everything we need. I rode that bus, and we had this little car, and I never drove the car. They told me an alcoholic, anonymous different people told me that, you now, I had to do things right, and I just knew within myself that I couldn't drive that car because I didn't have a license because I had it taken away from me and I had to wait like a year or whatever it was. The time came when I was able to get that license and I waited the time out and any other time I would have drove a car it just meant if you get caught you might drive for several years you get 15, 20 days in jail and I was always willing to pay that price and I wasn't living like that anymore And, you know, the time came when I got that license and I was able to get insurance and everything I needed. And it was a good feeling. When I was about 11 months sober one day, it was on a beautiful Sunday morning. And it's about 11 o'clock in the morning. And there was a man and a woman going to church. And she had on a pretty flower dress and he had on gray suit. And I looked at those people and I thought, you know I'm sick and tired of being good. And right after I had that thought, I thought, no, wait a minute. I haven't been living the way the structure of religion or society wants me to live. I've been living by this little meter that I found inside of me that I've found in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, just being honest with myself. Just using this little meteor of doing right. Before, I always did what I wanted, what would benefit me for the time, whether it be a feeling or to steal or money or whatever. and since I had been in Alcoholics Anonymous I realized that I had just been trying to do the right thing. And that day I realized that by me just trying to live the good way, I realized that that was my God. And up to that point I had never had any understanding about God. I was my wife's God before. And that day i was able to realize that God is within all of us and that was my meter and I've been using that meter for you know close to 18 years I know when I'm doing right I know when I'm nickel and dime compromising as long as I do what is right I'm okay and I'm able to be happy and you know the longer I'm sober I have to realize I've given so much in Alcoholics Anonymous it's crazy there's no way I could steal anything the way I'm living now today I've been given so much, there's no way. And just to harbor any of those thoughts of doing wrong or cheating or that, it just shorts me from the source of the good that's coming in. And as long as I leave this open, my life just keeps getting better. I worked for a while at this restaurant and eventually one day my sponsor came. He was a painter and he says, bob he says uh by this time we had our children back and my mother finally got told my wife you're going to take those kids back or else and she was scared and of us being newly sober and whatever but it is worked out and you know my sponsor came to me one day and he said how would you like to go to work for me and learn how to paint and i was willing to quit that job and by thistime we had our children, and I started working for him. He had this great big motel to paint, and it was real hard. It was a lot of physical work, and uh, it was a big adjustment from cooking, but I learned, and i began to like it, and after about three months of doing this one day, he told me, he says, well, he said, that's it, we finished up here. He says, I guess you better go look for another job, and what are you talking about? I thought you had a lot of work. He said, oh no, just go tell people you're a painter, and And I went, oh my God. And I come home and told my wife and we decided that I should have a real solid job, maybe a civil service job or something. And so I went down and tried to get a civil service job with Los Angeles County and they wouldn't have anything to do with me with my record and everything. I couldn't get anybody to listen to me. So finally, I just kept insisting. And one day I went downstairs and I had an appointment scheduled with three supervisors in this room. I was about a year and a half sober. I went in there, and I told these people what I was like, what happened to me, and what I Was like then. And they put me on on a temporary basis with Los Angeles County. I ended up working for the Los Angeles County doing the same thing that I was doing when I was in jail, practically. I was working in kitchens. I was a cook there. I started out as a pot washer. Actually, I probably knew how to cook better than the cooks that were working in there. Eventually, they moved me into the cooking. But it wasn't long before I became a permanent employee there, and I started doing this little painting on the side, painting the little old lady's bathroom across the street from our house for extra money. And my wife was working at a restaurant on graveyard shift as a waitress, and we had these kids. And you know, I was making very little money, and things were real hard. And we were trying to go to meetings, and it wasn't easy. And this is what I try to tell the new people, you know. You do what you have to do, and you just keep walking forward. And my sponsor told me one time, you know, you just if you get knocked down, you just keep get up and keep going again. And I've took that as advice. And I've seen him get up a lot of times. And that's what it's all about. That's what this program is about. Life is up and down. It's just not going to be a smooth deal. But every time you are in trouble, it's going to make you a little bit stronger. And it's gonna be a little bit easier to walk through something similar to that the next time. You know, one day I was working at this civil service deal and this little old lady had me come and look at this house and it was a great big house. It was a lot of painting work and I still have my civil service job as a cook. And I came home in the afternoon and we were broke and my wife was sleeping. She worked of night, and it was in the afternoon. She was in bed, and I come busting in. I woke her up. I had a couple hundred dollars, and i said, hey get up. i said i got a couple thousand dollars. i said this little old lady wants me to do all this painting. i have like a month's work besides my other job, and you know everything's going to be okay, and l laid on the bed with my wife that afternoon, and we began to you know just looking up at the ceiling, just felt like i was high on something or something, just talking about the miracles of Alcoholics Anonymous, and how things work, if we just keep going on, you know, and just have faith and know, you know, whatever you're asked to do, you do it. Whether it be something in Alcoholics Anonymous or just something in life out there, you know. And, you know, that day my wife and I talked and I was telling her about this work and got all this extra painting. And she says, you know, I think God wants you to be a painter. and you know that day I made a decision to quit that solid civil service job with those kids and everything go out on my own with three months experience as a painter knew very little bit about it whatever I'd run into how to paint a pipe I'd go ask the guy at the paint store I got a pipe what'll I do with it he'd say we'll use a wire brush and put some red primer on it and and I did you know but that's how I learned and uh you know I started out painting knowing that if that didn't work, I could always go back and be a cook. And I've been painting for over 16 years now, you know. It's unbelievable. I worked for almost nine years, never advertised, ended up having men working for me, was never out of work. And it's because I did what I told people I told them I would do. Honesty for a painter is painting behind the toilet, you know. You never want to paint behind the toilet, but you better do it. I've been real, real blessed, you know. I worked for nine years and finally I would go into meetings and I'd have different men working for me and I began to feel guilty. You know, any of the steps here, I've never really rushed into any of the 12 steps. I've done all of the steps when it was time for me to do them. I took my fourth and fifth step when I was almost two years sober because my first sponsor, he went out and got drunk. And I knew he had taken his fourth and sixth step. And I identified with that guy so much. He'd been in trouble. He was kind of a quiet guy. And I thought, you know, if I don't do mine, I'm going to be next. And i was so full of fear that I did it. And that's basically how I've done most of the things and the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. But that's how I learned everything in my living situation. I was working all this time as a painter, had men working for me, and I began to go to different meetings and I'd run into different guys that were maybe painting contractors or contractors. And in California, you have to have a license to be a contractor, to be doing what I was doing. And, you know, once the men in these meetings made me aware that, hey, you're doing something wrong, I began to duck and dodge. And God, I'd be painting on jobs, and I'd see a city car go by or a county card with the emblem, and i'd kind of hide and stuff. And you know the guilt began to get bad. And I finally went to school and did something about it. And uh you know I finally went and took the estate test. And the day came that I got my contractor's license. And, you know, that just kind of lifted my whole life into a different living situation materially. You know, I live real, real good today. God has just moved my wife and I just to just fantasy island, I guess you'd call it. I don't know how to describe it. It's just unbelievable the way we live today. When I was a year sober, my birthday, I asked my mother if she would come for my birthday to celebrate my one-year birthday. And she said she would. And by this time, my mother had already quit drinking for maybe three or four months. She quit drinking just from the example of my wife and I not drinking. And she came to my one‑year birthday, and God, it was real good. She came, it Was on a Sunday morning at our regular home group and at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning she came there and she looked around at the people and she felt like she belonged and she said, hey, I want to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was a real neat deal. My mother was doing what we were doing and you know how you're new and God, you just, you want everybody to have what you have and God for her to do that and she asked my wife to be her sponsor they rode around in the car they rode around on the car buying her new curtains and drapes and she was fixing up her house and God everything was just real good and you know my mother kept coming to the meetings and she began, she's a real nervous person and she begun to get real nervous and she Was afraid they were going to call on her on meetings to talk and one day she told me, she says Bob I'm so nervous, she said I'm going to go to the doctor and tell him And I said, Mom, you can't go to the doctor. I said all they're going to do is give you pills. And she said, Bob, you're the one that had the problem with the pills. She says, I've never taken any pills. And I say, if you go, you better tell them you're an alcoholic. And as it turned out, she went to the Doctor and she didn't tell him. And they started giving her Librium and Valium. And then pretty soon it was like Stelazine. And after about nine months, they were giving her like Thorazine and one day I went over to see her on a Saturday morning on my day off And my mother says, turn the television off. And I kind of looked at her and the TV was off and I realized my mother had lost her mind. And here's a lady that has drank all those years, found a good way to live in Alcoholics Anonymous, goes to a doctor and starts taking some medication and she like snaps out. And it was real, real sad. I went home and told my mother and we took her to the Memorial Hospital in Long Beach at the psychiatric ward. I told them that she was an alcoholic and that she Was taking these pills, and they took her off those pills and gave her some other ones. And she was there for a long time, and she never got any better. And it was at the point where they were going to have to send her to, like, Camarillo or something, and it was just a real, real sad thing to happen. And one day my wife and I were talking, And it was just such a dilemma. And I just, we didn't know what to do. And my wife one day, she said, hey, I know what we can do with your mother. Let's take her to a woman's recovery house. We went over there and took her out of that psychiatric ward, took her to the woman's recover house. And those women in there that were sober a few days or a week or a month or whatever, they love my mother back to being well. And I can tell you that my mother is alive and well today. She's sober. and so many things have happened in my life. So many people have been touched just from me being sober. Just think how many people's lives you can touch if you stay sober. You'll touch everybody around you in one way or another. Before I close, I just want to tell you that I had a stepson and a boy and a girl of my own And I can tell you today that they're members of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of them has four years. The other two have two years. And my daughter's eight months pregnant, and she's married to a member of Alcoholic Anonymous, and I'm going to be a grandpa here in another month. and live a real, real good life. My stepson is a journeyman painter, works for me. My son-in-law quit his job of nine years with Texaco and came to work for me and got a couple more AA guys working and a lot of other men. And, you know, it's unbelievable. we live real good real good we were married 24 years before we bought our first home and I always thought we were going to have to try we've always had trouble with money we always spend money and stuff and always you know have trouble saving and I just didn't know if we'd ever own our own place and it just turned out that we got our own house our own home and I was in my own place and well I always thought we'd have to have like this starter house and work up to living where we really wanted to live And I guess when God does things, He puts you where He wants you to be. We ended up living right in a real nice neighborhood down by a marina and a real Nice Home. And it all worked out real good. And that was our first home. We ended Up selling that house and we bought another house. You just never know what's going to happen to you. All you've got to do is stay sober and trust in God and, you know, just do what you say you're going to do. Whatever you tell somebody you're gonna do, do it because that's been basically my deal. Before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had no structure for living. I had No Standards, No Morals, nothing. All I've been doing is going to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings. Today, I feel that I have standards for living, I have morals. I have a structure in my life today. I'm not here by accident this weekend. I'm here for a reason. Today, in closing, I'd just like to tell you that the way I always wanted to live when I was young, all those thoughts I had of laying there as a little kid when Iwas full of fear and just thinking, God, just let me grow up and let me get out there. Let me just be the person that I really want to be and what you made me to be, just to be a good husband a good father and a good man and Alcoholics Anonymous has given that to me. Thank you I want to thank Bob for a real, real beautiful message. And if you don't believe it works, you have to hear the story. And I don't know what's wrong because he has quite a story. And if he will, we'll close in the usual manner. Will you join me please in praying the Lord's Prayer? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen keep coming back