Give Them a Loaf, Give Them a Fish, Don’t Look in the Basket — the Twelfth Step Has an Unending Source of Power Behind It – Roger M.

It's April 5th of last year, it's our very first meeting, and from the beginning, you all have been very, very supportive of us. We've had very good attendance right from the get-go, and we had people join the home group within three months. We had other people joining up, so I really appreciate the fact that you all have been so supportive and so helpful. Without the help of my sponsor, we wouldn't have been able to get the meeting going. He and I were able to meet with the pastor, and without your all's consistent attendance, we wouldn't be here tonight, so thank you all very much. Tonight, we wanted a speaker, and there's a lot of people locally who have wonderful recovery, long-term recovery, and it was suggested we invite someone who does have a lot of recovery, has been very helpful over the years, and who's never been to the church. So, we're going to have this meeting. And with that, I'll turn it over to Roger. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Mike. My name's Roger McMahon. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is December the 18th, 1982. I say that because sometimes when you've got a speaker, you're trying to guess, well, did he get sober here, did he not? The first time I went out to have a drink, nothing big happened, you know. I was about 17 years old. I had a cold drink, and everything was fine. Nothing particular, you know. By the time I was 17, though, I was out one night, and I was at the Bayview Club in Greyneck, Long Island. And the bartender said, what do you have? And I said, I'll have a screwdriver. Well, I took that baby, it went down, it went around, smoke came out of my ears, lightning came out of my tail, and I wanted another one. I was 17. I was 17 years old. And by the time I was 21 years old, I was invited to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. That was in April of 1960. All right? Now, a lot of people say April of 1960, that might have been nice. Last week, I went to the mailbox, and I opened it up, and I used to play in the Notre Dame band. And I opened this letter up and said, hey, we're having a reunion. We're having a reunion in September, the Stanford game. We want you to run around and do all kinds of crazy formations. Now, I emailed them. And they sent a picture of the 1959 Georgia Tech Notre Dame program that featured the drum line. And there's a picture of me in it. And the interesting thing is that it was six months before the episode I just told you about. So six months prior to me coming to AA, there's a note on the letter that says, from a guy I haven't seen since then, you know, 1961 is when we graduated, a guy named Tom. And Tom sent a letter and said, Roger, I've enclosed your picture with your smiling face on it. Now, obviously, I fooled a lot of people back then. Because I was six months away from Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had a smiling face. Okay? I'd like to say that I walked into AA. I walked into AA that April in Mishawaka, Indiana. You know, there were a whole bunch of people sitting around. They all had gray hair. They made bad coffee. Some people don't change. And, you know, they were saying things like God. And they had the steps. They didn't have any of these fancy rollers back then. But they had them in some kind of plaque that somebody labored over and put on the wall. And a speaker that night got up, and he talked about putting his hand on the railroad tracks. And the train running over, and he took one joint off his finger. And he sued the railroad for $1,000. And he told the story of how he drank up that $1,000. And I looked over and went, you know, strange cadets here. They're all oohing and aahing over him getting a railroad over his finger. See, I didn't identify with the feelings. I was in trouble on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. I was not allowed to leave the campus. The only way I could leave the campus is the guard in our hall who I had identified. Right? And I was the only boy and girl going through that monument. No rest here. I cleaned up and surrounded the campus. Of course I had to go to a place, you know, that SpongeBob, and we got to meet that sports article, who was one of the bartenders, three members of our class as future members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And to this day, two of them are in it. You know? I said, this is the strangest thing I'd ever want to see. Went on through my life, you know, went into the Navy, did all kinds of things in the Navy, get out, went to work for Pricewaterhouse in New York as an accountant. I was doing tax returns. This is tax time. I was doing tax returns of all these guys on Wall Street. And I looked down and I said, oh, my, look at these numbers. You know, and I knew what I was making and I could see what they were making. And I said, I'm smarter than they are. I'm going for what they've got. You see, so what happened then is in my little head, I said, the material things are going to make me happy. I said, if I only get there, then I'll be happy. If I only get here, then I'll be happy. Now, I started out with a whole bunch of principles at first. A lot of people start out with a whole bunch of principles. Some places you never want to go. Some barriers you never want to pass. I slowly but surely, I crept up to each one of those and then some. And in some cases, I went beyond those things and violated my own principles in pursuit of those material things that were going to make me happy. I was successful. You know, got into Wall Street, got away from the accounting, got over on Wall Street, and we sold bonds. You know, we got up in the morning and, you know, they gave us credit cards and we ran around, entertained people, and we got them to buy things from us. And if they bought things from us, that was always your top out. See, people would come up to me all during my career, on Wall Street, and say, why do you drink so much? You know, why do you drink so much? And, you know, I didn't have an answer. You know, I just looked at them funny. It made me feel better. I thought it was my solution. But they were looking at it like it was affecting what I was doing. I said it was affecting what I'm doing, but it makes me feel better. And anything that makes me feel like that is really great. See, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a chronic alcoholic. And the difference between me and a hard drinker and a moderate drinker, I may have been, a moderate drinker or a hard drinker years ago, but I passed through that stage. See, I, you know, I've known to identify that feeling flying into New York City. There are a number of approaches you can take, right? One of it's called Empire One Approach. Basically, where you come up the Hudson River, you make a Roscoe at the Empire State Building, you turn on final, and you're landing, and you come into LaGuardia straight in, landing to the east, and that's it. Well, as we were passing by Manhattan Island, I'm looking down at Manhattan and I'm going, yeah, like I can't wait. See, I know that there's liquor there. I know that there's a lot of liquor there. I know that, you know, they should never run out if I get there. Now, I tried to get them to run out, but they never did. See, now, I'm talking about the kind of liquor that you can get in Manhattan. I'm talking about the kind of drinking where St. Patrick's Day Parade was recently, okay? St. Patrick's Day Parade, you come up and everybody says, oh, let's go to the St. Patrick's today. They put green hats on, they look foolish, they wear these idiot pins, and they walk all around the place. They seem to know they're going to identify with the green. I'm Irish 365 days a year. March the 18th, I was Irish when they went back to wherever they were going. Now, if you're Irish and you're in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York, you're going to march from Fort Worth to Manhattan. You're going to march from Fort Worth to Manhattan. You're going to march from 42nd Street all the way up in those days to 86th Street. Then you make a rostro there, go on over to 2nd Avenue, and they disperse. They disperse. Firemen, you know, in high school, I did this in a military school, and they dispersed us. And we started at 82nd Street, and it was always a challenge to see how far down 2nd Avenue we could come hitting every bar along the way. We call that an old-fashioned Irish pub crawl, right? And, you know, you start out. It's the first bar. You go, yeah. You start out at 2nd Place, yeah. You know, by the time you get down to 18th Street from 86th Street, and you hit all the Irish barters coming down 2nd Avenue, you're schnockered, you know? And it's a little hazy. You don't know where you've been, you know? You may or may not tell people you're in the Swedish Navy or something. You know, a lot of stories. So I relate to those feelings that I got. It made me, it was a, you know, every night was Friday night, and Friday night was New Year's Eve. Hats and horns every Friday night. I'd tear it up. And I went out to get drunk. I didn't go out to mess around. And slowly but surely, I passed through moderate drinker, hard drinker, and I made my way to chronic alcoholic. Chronic alcoholic means I can't live without it. I can't live with it, and I can't live without it. You know, in this book that they gave us when we come in here and we study, and I know that this is one of the groups that study the big book, it tells us that, I just have a brain for this. All right, just a second. We'll get back to it. It's important it'll come around again. It tells us about the feeling, that we've got to identify with those feelings of the chronic alcoholic. We can't live without it. All right? That means that my body is craving. It starts to affect me in a crazy way. My brain keeps telling me. Hey, I want that feeling. I want that feeling. It also tells me that with regards to alcohol, I'm strangely insane. With regards to everything else, I may look okay. So I may be a smiling member of the Notre Dame drum line. But when it comes to alcohol, even then, I was strangely insane. You know, because I had passed that way. I was one of those guys that they always talked about. No matter where I was, they talked about me. They had meetings about me. What are we going to do about Roger? Why does he drink so much? You know, he has such potential. If only he would do this. You know, and it's all an intellectual solution. And I'm walking around and nothing they're telling me is going to work. Because nothing they're going to tell me is going to attack the feeling that I've got going on inside of me. I enjoy alcohol. I like the effect produced by alcohol. You know, you take alcohol away from me. I get restless. I get restless, irritable, and discontented. You know, I got sober many times. I put the drinks down. I got sober many times. But then again, what could I do with it? I couldn't do with anything because I'd always go back to it. I'd always go back to it. I'd always go back to it. It kept telling me message after message that this was my solution. I got married to the outside world, you know, while I looked a little active. You know, to the outside world. You know, I did all of these things. I achieved. I got promoted. See, my... My out was always, if you came to me on Wall Street, and we had a stack of tickets on our desk back in the day. Now they hit these little machines and they go away. Back then we had a physical, you know, we had something physical right on our desk. You know, and you could always tell because you come into an office, there were a whole bunch of guys. The guys that weren't producing didn't have a stack of tickets on their desk. The guys that were producing was a stack of tickets on their desk. So every time they came to me and said things like, why do you drink so much? It's beginning to affect you. It's working. I'd look at the stack of tickets and point to it. I'd say, that's the last analysis. That's the last thing you want from me. Right? It is that stack of tickets. So the end justifies the means I've heard. Right? So I kept doing it. I kept doing it. I kept doing it. And I kept achieving. You know, if only I made this amount of money, it's going to work. I made that amount of money. I got there and I said, is that all there is? Then up the end, right? If only I made this amount of money, right? If X was going to stop. If X was going to solve me, 2X would be even better. 3X was better. By the time I get to 80X or 100X, you know, every time I got there, I said, is that all there is? Right? And, you know, we're going to talk about this later on. When you get out of this material world and you get into the spiritual world, it's not this driving force that constantly lets me down no matter where I go. So I'd move toward it, achieve it, didn't satisfy me. Move toward something else, achieve it. Didn't satisfy me. All right? All achieving along the way. Now, to the outside world, they'll say, rather intense guy. He's achieving. He's doing this. He's doing that. One of my jobs was, you know, after you achieve so much, they keep kicking you upstairs and kick you upstairs. They sit around the table and they find jobs for you. Now, my job was to go around the country and find out what's going to happen next. All right? So I just sat around the table and I said, well, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. They find jobs for you. Now, my job was to go around the country and find out what's going to happen next. All right? So I spent a number of years just going around the country to find out what's going to happen next. Look for trends. Look for where we can cash in. Materialistic viewers. So constantly I'm always out there and I'm looking. I can't help myself. I go out there and I look. You know, recently with this all kinds of stuff, and we'll get to this later on where we talk about the internet and everything else. It's affecting all of our lives. You know, and I'm like the guy in the wagon train going out there looking, going out there looking. I'd come back to New York City, sit around the table, you know, we'd have cocktails and then we'd have dinner and then we'd discuss what's going to happen next. So as long as I kept coming up with ideas, you know, as long as I had my name associated with a number of tickets, as long as I had my name associated with a number of people who could write a lot of business, I was okay. But in any downturn, they get rid of problems. The problems are the first to go. When I went to Notre Dame, a guy came walking into a finance class and he wrote on a board, in times of crises, the marginally capitalized are the first to go. And he put a period. And I went, oh. In times of crises, the marginally spiritual are the first to go. Okay. See? I can do that, but from a different point of view. Right? In times of crises, what are we looking at here? We're in crises right now. You know, I turn on television, I see the Fox Business Channel and I see Dave Ramsey come on, it's people exceeding their debts, I see exceeding this. And he's talking about a spiritual solution to a material, you know, he's trying to convince them, hey, stay with the spiritual. So the spiritual is the answer to everything. I couldn't understand that when I was 21. I couldn't understand that until I was ready. Until God made me ready, I wasn't ready. Until I had absolutely exhausted everything material and everything intellectual, I was not to get the spiritual. All right? You can only drink so long. You can only go out so many times and then it catches up to you. It reminds me of the old cartoons, the Tom and Jerry cartoon, you know, where the mouse is running and the cat comes out and goes like this and the cat's paw just misses the mouse's tail and the mouse gets away. That's the story of my life. It's like running in front of a bullet, you know, they're all coming to get your job and you're running fast, running fast. You know, I'm the Savannah, everybody's running in the morning because if you slow down, somebody's going to chew on you. Now, during this, people come up and they start talking about being happy, joyous and free. Yeah, I'm in the middle of this track meet, the bullets coming at me, the Savannah's running and they're telling me I'm going to be happy, joyous and free. So it can't. You know, as long as you have this set of values, it's not going to work. Now, where I can't reconcile something, I'm going to turn to my solution. Now, what's my solution? My solution was alcohol, maybe feel better. And I started drinking and I started to have a good time. And I said, hey, this is the greatest thing since sneakers. And I told you my principles started going away and going away and going away. And you can only drink so, you know, one of my jobs was to train all the young people. All right. And one day they wake up and they look over and the guy training all the young people has got a problem with alcohol. So he's training them the wrong way. Right. Great talent, but training them the wrong way. So they invited me to go for help. They tapped me on the shoulder and said, we want you to go for help. And I'm looking and said, what do you mean you want me to go for help? You know, the day you hired me, you were drunk, I was drunk. You know, what's the surprise here? There's no surprise. I'm what you bargained for. Right. You're what I bargained for. Right. As I stood there and talked, and well, be that as it may, they finally, I reached too many things. One night I was home. I'm still at home, you know, in a strange situation, living out over the garage. And I sat there that night and I had a bottle of vodka. And it's crying inside of me and this ache inside of me, this depression. They talk about it in the big board. The Four Horsemen, the absolute depression, the fear, depression, all these things, sense of impending doom, all of those things gone. And I took the vodka down and it didn't work. Right. I took some more vodka down. It didn't work. Right. It didn't take that feeling away. Also, I couldn't get drunk. And I was in that part where I was. I couldn't get sober and I couldn't get drunk. Right. And when they talk about we stood at the turning point, that's a euphemism for a set of feelings that I had. Right. And I experienced that. I experienced right at that junction where I was. And all I could do was yell out, right? My first wife said to me, you know, things were so out of control last night that you howled like an animal in pain. Well, I'd like to tell you that I was an animal in pain. I was an animal that had no solution. I myself and own devices had no solution. There was no human way I could reason to it. There was nothing that I could get in my grasp to put to it, to make it work, to make it go away, to get rid of these feelings. Lo and behold, you know, and I'm rolling around, rolling around. They called me in and they sent me out to this place called the Long Island Council on Alcoholism. I had worked for a firm that wasn't big enough to have EAP departments and all the rest of them. But I was an executive vice president of this firm. You know, my bottom happened on the 60th floor of 40 Wall Street. Now, overlooking the harbor where you could see the EAP. Right. You could see all the ships coming. That's where my bottom happened. You know, when somebody said, we want you to talk to these people. And off I go to the Long Island Council on Alcoholism. I drive out there and there's a guy named Jim. Jim's sitting there and he's a retired postman. And I'm, you know, and we're having this conversation. Here I am, executive vice president of this firm on Wall Street. He's a retired colonel from the army and he's a postman. And the priest that I was supposed to see was at a funeral that day because his friend had committed suicide. And I was talking to Jim. And Jim's going, they want you to go for help. And I was going, who's they? You know, I'm the Philadelphia lawyer. I'm going to argue every point all the way. The firm you work for wants you to go for help. Right. Now, by this time, I have left my first wife and, you know, I am living over at my mother's house. Now, I don't know about you, but when you're 45 and a half years old and you arrive at your front door. Your mother's house and you knock on the door and you say those immortal words, Ma, you got a bed. Right. And she looks out and is a Volkswagen. Right. There's a television set and a bed. And that's all I got. Right. But I'm the executive vice president of this firm on Wall Street. So I'm sitting there and they're telling me that I got to go for help. So over at the Long Island Council on Alcoholism, I'm listening to this. And I said, I'll tell you what, let me call you back in a few minutes. And I got in the car and I drove over to my mother's house. Now, this is this goose pimply stuff. This is the time when you can identify when it happens. Now, what's it? What it is when you've had enough. It is when you're not going to go any further. It is when you've exhausted every physical, every intellectual, every material, every, every solution that you've thrown at this. And it was, you know, to my own self be true. I knew I had a problem. I got over to my mother's house. I called Jim up. I said, Jim, I'm willing to go see if I can look for help. I see if I have a problem. I want to see if I have a problem. So he said, fine, we've got a bed for you up at a place called Chit Chat in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. And I look at the phone. Chit Chat in Wernersville. Yeah, come on. You're serious. You're serious. So he said, yeah. He says, we'll have some people take you. We'll do this. See, he's trying to run an intervention on me. And of course, I'm controlling until the last minute. And I said, tell me where it is and I'll be there. Well, he's running an intervention. I'm telling him I'm going to get there. But for some reason, I got in the car and I drove to Wernersville, Pennsylvania. Drove up to the gates with the car, you know, turn the keys, turn the keys over to the person. Sat there for 28 days. I sat in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. And for the first days, you know, they look at people and they go, oh, Bill, you know, and Bill was going through what they go through as they're going around group therapy. Bill, tell the group how things are going. Bill's going, I've been through this and I've talked to my therapist and he said, come back to the group. And I'm asking for the group's input on this. He thinks I should go to five meetings a week and I want to go to three meetings a week. What should the group do here? Right? And they all look around the group like, what should the group do? Now, you're going to understand the group, you know, pragmatists, all, they look and they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, here's the solution. Tell them you're going to five and go to three. You know, all you want to do is show enough to win to get down a hill. You know, you just want to get down a hill. Okay. And see, that's the mentality. I want to identify that mentality. Right? So I'm sitting there. They said, Roger, what do you think of this? I go, eh. Then they said, Roger, what do you think of this? Eh. I said, this is lame. This is lame. You know? In the meantime, they got me working in the kitchen. I'm scrubbing pots. You know, I got the different kinds of water and I'm the most expensive pot scrubber they got here. And I'm scrubbing away and I'm rinsing away and I'm hanging the racks up and I'm doing all these things. And I go to therapy and they're sitting around the group and they're going, what do you think of this? Well, I'll marry Susan Pink. And then about 10 or 11 days into it, the guns come around and it's your party. Right? And they bring the big guns around, they point them right at you and they say, Roger, tell us about yourself. Right? So ultimate huckster, born here, did this, that, that, that, material, material, material. And they kept saying, but Roger, you haven't mentioned drinking. Right? You see? I had a slight problem with drinking. All right? Now, whenever they came near me and said, you had a slight problem with drinking, let me tell you from my side of it, what it looked like. Anytime anybody... You see, inside, I knew I had a problem. Inside, I was violating all my standards. You see, about a week before this episode, they had a Christmas party and it was at the White Ball Club in New York City. And this firm had this thing. And they invited all their friends over and they had this great old big Christmas party at the White Hall Club. And we're sitting at the White Hall Club and we're all drinking and we're doing lines. Yeah. It's in my story. What can I tell you? And I'm throwing them down and I'm doing a line and I look up and here's an oil painting of my grandfather. Right? My grandfather used to be the president of the White Hall Club. Right? And he's sitting there looking at me. It's just me and this portrait of my grandfather hanging on a wall. You know? And my heart sinks. You see? Because inside of me, there's something that wants to be honest, that wants to be true. Right? And I'm living a lie. And I know it. Right? So I'm reckless, irritable, and discontented. At no time can I have peace and joy. All right? So that's what's happening now. Meanwhile, back... Fast forward three weeks and we're down to the end of this. So, I'm going to do a little bit of a... I'm going to do a little bit of a... I'm going to do a little bit of a... I'm going to do a little bit of a... I'm going to do a little bit of a... You know, fast forward three weeks and we're down in Wintersville, Pennsylvania, and all pot scrubbing, you know, and doing this, and doing Roger's story. You know? And I went back to the room one night and I had the big book with me. And I sat on the bed of the big book and I looked around and, you know, my roommate who was there... My roommate, when I got there, had a shiny suit on. He had the answers to everything. I was hurt, but he had all the answers. He was going to tell me how to do this. He was going to tell me how to do that. Bottom line was he got out of chit chat and died of a drug overdose within a year. So he had all the answers. So he had gone by this time and I'm sitting on the bed and I've got this big book in my hand. And again, here's one of those moments. Okay? One of those moments. See, I made the choice to come here and I'm sitting alone on the bed with a big book in my hand. And all of a sudden this thought comes into my head. Maybe they're right. Nothing more and nothing less. Maybe they're right. With the benefit of hindsight, I can look back at that and say, that was my spiritual awakening here. Maybe they're right. Maybe they... It opened the door just a little bit. And I started to see things. I... They... You know, I started to do these things, these exercises where we're doing the first five steps. I started to see the family that I grew up in. I started to see my brother John, who was 14 months younger than I. And I started to see... I started to see... I started to see John. Right? Who, 10 years before this, had taken a gun and blown his head off because of, you know, the addiction of drugs and alcohol. And he ended up in the nut house up in New York City. Great sense of humor. Right? He was 14 months my junior. We dressed alike. We had the same education. We did everything. Except John was a little mixed up. Great sense of humor, though. He comes out of the nut house. I said, John, how are you doing? He shakes hands with me and goes... And I said, John, how are you doing? He said, John, how are you doing? He said, John, how are you doing? I said, oh. He goes, yeah, it was happening. Right? So what's going on is, you know, I started to see, you know, how different things were happening in the family, how different things were going. And basically what I came to, I came to the conclusion that I might have screwed up my whole entire life. Right? I might have screwed up everything that there was to screw up. But I had a chance to do one thing right. And if I had... You know. I was always in my category. Do it right or do it wrong. You can do AA right. Okay? What's AA right? Now I've got to find out what AA right is. Right? They send me my 28 days are over, you know. These guys... There's another subplot going on here. I'm the executive vice president of this firm. The president of this division that I was in was stealing money from the company. Now we found out this out. They found out this whole plot years later. He was stealing money. I caught him. I confronted him. And because I drank so much, he threw the rehab at me. Funny how God works, isn't it? Right? Years later when they discovered what he was doing in the firm, they went to the controller of the company and said, why didn't you say something? He wouldn't say something. He said, only honest guy you had here was Roger McMahon. He said something. Look what happened to him. I wasn't going to open my mouth. So what happens is they come up. And they're going to be in the office. And they're going to be in the office. And they're going to be in the office. And they're going to be in the office. And the problem happens. They come up at the end of this 28-day period and they say, okay, it's an employer's conference. Does Roger have it? That's the magic question. Does Roger have the program? So they drive up in this limousine. And they've got this driver and they've got the bar all in the back. And the limousine driver jumps out and sees me. He says, hey, Mr. McMahon, have you been driving me all around town? You've been in every gin mill I ever was. Now, here he comes walking. He comes driving up with this big old showboat and everything going on. He's ready to give me a cocktail and take me here. And I'm in a rehab. But they had this conference. And they said, what should we do? And there were a whole bunch of people saying, oh, he hasn't got it. He hasn't changed enough. Hey, we've got to send him for a long-term treatment. And all the people that I work with wanted to keep sending me off for longer-term treatment. They wanted to send me to a place called Alina Lodge. I said, what? And they said that you can save me in there. Let's see how you love me. And not only were they busy talking about him, but the last few minutes they turned like they were entire people were saying, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Let's go fix this. And so I said, all right, let's take care of it. Um-hm. And that's the selling, the reuse of him whole thing. Billed dates. They told me talent. amplifier. They called him Antonio Michele, Lös. I go to an aquarium. Yo the guy's on the end of the line. He's leading me. And he said, if you sell the whole thing, if you sell tegoah to this guy, we copy it. He's going to Gaucho the scientist. We can do this. I'd have a fox one day, and I'd have a skunk another day, or this day, or that day. I just remember the hats. And John said, he called me in alone, one-on-one. And he did a masterful thing. He said to me, Roger, I think you got it. But they don't. They want me to send you to Lena Lodge, but I think you've got this program. And he said, don't let me down. And see, what John was doing is drawing a line in the sand. The guy sitting on the bed with the big book in his hand said, I'm going to do AA Wright. John is issuing me the challenge. The bad guys are still after me. Now I'm going to go down to New York City. Go back to New York City. I'm crossing Broadway as I'm coming from my home group then. It was the Exchange Views group. Met every morning at 7 o'clock. We met at noontime and at 6 o'clock at night. Met later on at night. And it was right next to the American Stock Exchange. So I had all the home group members and they were doing this, they were doing that. I was walking across the street. Now everybody knows who you are in New York City if you're in the bond business. Because we're all up at these phones and turrets and they're hitting bells and they're looking. So everybody's, you know, somebody's missing in action. They go, where's their, there's a communications net that's going on. I disappear from this net. You know? I'm walking along. You know, when they told me, hey, you're going off to, you're going off to Wernersville. You chit-chat. Nobody's going to know. Now I get back to Broadway and I'm crossing Broadway and somebody yells out, yo, Eagle. My nickname's Eagle. They go, hey, Eagle. How was vodka college? And I come back and I say, nobody's going to know. Now the reason I'm telling you all of this, okay, is that there's no... There's no reason why I should get this program. Intellectually, if you were to look at this and build a case for me getting this program, I shouldn't have gotten it. Guys, stealing blames me. Right? Vodka college, nobody's going to know. And then they did know. And this, what's that? Everything they told me, and it was the opposite. They tell me something, it was the opposite. The reality was the opposite. And I kept going to meetings. And I kept going to meetings. And I sat down. And I did the steps. And I listened. Right? And there was a guy, I'll never forget. It was a Russian cook. You know? We had a lunch. A lunchtime meeting. You know, I was working at this company. And I said, hey, I'd love to work here. I'd love to break my tail for you. But you've got to give me at least an hour off doing the workday so I can get to a meeting. Okay. You're not going to drink? Yeah. Right. All you want to do is go to a meeting? I said, yeah. You can do that. You can do that. So I got a free pass. You know, I could come and go while the day's on. And everybody's screaming. And everybody... And I'd go to this noontime meeting. I walked in. There's a Russian standing there. And he starts to go down the promises on pages 84, 83, and 84 of the big book. And I'm sitting there in rapt attention. And I'm saying, this guy's life is changing. This guy's life is changing. And he said, anybody want a copy of the promises? I'll be right up here. And he's talking with a heavy, sick Russian accent. And they brought this guy in from Brighton Beach to tell his story. I walked up to him and I said, you've got a copy of those? And he gives me a copy of the promises. You know, I still have them. You know, it's 28 years later and I still got them. I got them folded up. Right? And, you know, he hands them to me and he says, this can work for you too. You know? He would go through with his whole routine and explain it all. And I filed that away. There was a coffee broker there named Sean. Sean O'Flaherty. All right? He talked with an Irish broke. You know, he lived up near me. He was a member of the home group. We used to go to exchange views in the morning. We'd come down. I lived in northern New Jersey when I got the apartment. We'd drive down. We'd get on the tubes. We'd come into the World Trade Center. And then we'd walk over to exchange views and go to our meeting. And Sean O'Flaherty was from Limerick Island. Oops. Phew. You know. And he's standing there and he's giving me the program in one of the two. He's hanging on to a strap. And he's going, you know, like, you know, here's what you've got to do. You've got to do the steps. He didn't care who was listening. He didn't care who was talking. Nobody was reading traditions to Sean. Sean was giving me the program, holding on to a strap. Last December, Sean died. You know, recently, on Easter Sunday, I called my cousin Helen and I said, How's Sean O'Flaherty doing? Oh, didn't you hear? He died. I go in. I Google Sean O'Flaherty. And up comes the smiling Irish face with the big grin. You know. And it's got his obit from Limerick Island. And, you know, here comes his face. And here comes his voice. And here comes his face. And here comes his face. And the videotape in my head of his sobriety being given to me, it starts playing. You know. And people come up to me and say, How's your day? You know, I can't put into words what's going on inside of me. So many people come on the face of the earth. They die and then they leave. Right? And everybody says, Oh, they have a party. He's gone. You know. They bury him and he's gone. Sean O'Flaherty is alive inside of me. My sponsor, Barney, is alive inside of me. Right? The videotape of these guys handed me the program. And they're telling me, My lad, you don't want to go here. No, watch that. Watch that. Stay away from that one. She's a 13-stepper, she is. And so what happens is we're building, you see. And I'm building this whole thing up. And they're walking around and they're saying, You know, tell me, how are things going? And I go, Oh, the kids aren't talking to me, Sean. Oh, you selfish bastard. You ask me how I'm doing. I'm telling you, the kids aren't talking to me. Oh, you selfish. What are you going to do? Sit around and feel sorry for yourself. Good Lord, man. We've got to get up to the interview group. And we've got to be sitting. You've got to take a course on this one. He said, What do you mean? He says, You're a computer geek, aren't you? I said, Yeah. He says, Well, in New York City, you know. You've got to operate a computer. When they call in and say, I have a friend who's sitting on my couch for like a meeting. And say, Where did your friend live? You know, and you've got to hit the computers and you've got to go. So you've got to go through two-night training class. On how to look up meetings in New York City. All over in all five boroughs. And he looked at me and he says, You know what? When you're operating in the community, you won't be worried about the wee folks that aren't talking. Now, he wasn't my sponsor, you know. Again, I went over to New Jersey. And, you know, I went to a night meeting over in Fort Lee. And a guy walks, you know, second time you come into a meeting. We've got these, the old timers. You know, they just sort of. They're flying around the meeting. They're swooping around. You know, they see you come in for the first time. They go, How are you? And there's coffee, cookies. Second time. They come right over. And tell me, how's it going? I said, You realize they're not talking to me? The kids aren't talking to me. You know, and this guy, Kenny Pilot. Back then we smoked, you know. And he had this cigarette hanging out. And I've got to tell you, back in 1983, tats weren't as fashionable. Right? But Kenny had everything. And I'm not saying that he was. I mean, he had the arms on. And they scared the day out. I'd show up in a business suit. And he's looking at me with a cigarette. He was a maintenance man in an apartment building over in Fort Lee, New Jersey. And he says to me, You're looking around that book. And he says, You know what the purpose of the big book? You know what the main object of the big book? And I said, I read it. He says, Dig them out, son. It'll be back to me tomorrow. Okay, I come back. Okay, it's page, you know, Roman numeral 13. And it's page 45. Here's what it says. And he says, Okay. You're on your way. Now we've got to start. He says, How'd you get to this meeting? I said, I drove to Dennis Vogt's. It's the only thing I got left out of the magazine. He says, You whining son of a bitch. He says, You're picking me up. All right. And he said, Two other guys. We're going to put four people in your car. And you're going to the Bergen-Bainz Hospital. And we go to the Bergen-Bainz Hospital and go to the alcoholic ward. Now, Bergen-Bainz Hospital is not a fancy place. You know, they identify the various areas of the hospital by the color of the blood. By the color of the blood. They have big blue balls that they have on the wall. And they have big blue balls painted on this wall. So they go blue, blue. And they're all walking around with Thursday. We walked in. He sits down and he says, Sit on the bed. Tell them your story. And I'd sit down on the bed and tell them, You know, my children aren't talking to me. My aunt lets me in. And one night I was telling the story and the guy goes, And he keels over and he drops dead. You know, Kenny walks in. He says, Nice job, kid. And I said, But he's dead. He said, You're sober. Step over the body and let's go get another one. So, you see, all of these slang terms that I'm throwing, you know, I got from these guys. I got terms over, Step over the bodies and let's go for the next guy. All right? Thing was, we went to meetings. We put together our lives. And we did a whole bunch of things. Now, you know, our stories are supposed to, they break into three parts. What we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. I've managed to go through what I was like and what happened. And now I'd like to talk about what it's like now. What it's like now is, you know, I'm retired. I've got a lot of chance. I have a lot of time in my hands. And I got a lot of time to do a lot of good things. Right? And the good things to me are, what I try and point out is, I always want to learn. I want to learn something new every day. Something that I haven't seen before. You know, I'm 71 years old. If I learn something new every day and all the days that I've been on the face of the earth, I can know a hell of a lot. See, whether it's my opinion, but someday somebody's going to say to me, I put you on the face of the earth. What'd you get out of it? And, you know, so, in the past couple of days, what I've been doing, and it's really exciting, is I went on YouTube and I went, Bill's story. And on YouTube, on Bill's story, I went, Bill's story, and I came back for eight different, about 10 to 12 minute videos of Bill sitting with Lois in his backyard at Stepping Zone talking about his story. You know? And you can see the movement of his body. You can see his body language. You can see the action. You see the way it feels. Now, I realize that, you know, the AA police are going to run in and go, Hey, you shouldn't have a press radio and TV. Hey, the guy's dead since 1971 and he's got a chance to be. I don't care. In this particular instance, I think it's Bill and Lois and talking about, you know, I can read, you know, War Fever Ran High in the quiet New England town to which we young officers, you know, those are words on a page. But when he's saying it, when he's talking about it, when he's talking about the deaths that he went to, you know, in the first couple of these, he talks about, and way back in 1934, here's where I was. And I went to him and this is what Silky said. And this is what Ebi said. And I can see his face and I can see his emphasis. You know, when these guys sat down and the preface to this book that you guys study here every Sunday night and tell the history of how AA was passed on from one person to another, all right, and you study it, you know, I get to see it. I get to see his face and I get to match the results of what you're doing and what you're getting here. I mean, look at this meeting tonight. Aside from, you know, a whole bunch of people that swooped down on the food, you know, you can sit down and you can say, hey, we've got one year of sobriety. We've got one year of people advancing in this book. Right? Now, well, what does that mean? It means simply that our groups are charged to be, there's only one charge that we have. In any group, we're told that our main mission is an adequate presentation of the steps. So after a year, we can look back and we can look at all these people and we can say, they're studying the steps out of the big book, right? They're told when to do it, they're told what to do and they're told what the results will be. And isn't it great that it is put in their lives? So I get to see it. So you see the contrast of I'm sitting here looking at this thing on YouTube and I'm getting to see the results tonight at this meeting. Now my wife comes in and she sits down next to me and she says, Roger, what are you doing? I said, I'm looking at Bill and Lois here. Now my wife's a 38-year member of Al-Anon. And I said, here's Lois and here's Bill. And I don't know about you, but when I read the big book, I said, isn't it kind of condescending of Bill to lecture the wives? Isn't it kind of condescending to tell the wives how they're going to feel? When I look at this YouTube and I see them sitting in their yard in Stepping Stone and I see a much kinder Bill who's saying, and Lois, what do you think about that? You know, and it was almost this day, 1934. And I went out and I got drunk and I tried to overtake Walter Hagen. You know, and I came home and all of a sudden the camera pans over to Lois and Lois in this little voice says, yes, Bill, and you've fallen down. And I'll never forget, you had cut your face. Right? And I tried, you know, and when she said, cut your face, she said, tears were coming down my face. Because nowhere in the literature does that come through. Nowhere between the sentences and the words does that come through. And I get to see it. So what happens is, you know, I look over and my wife's got this funny looking thing. I'm like, okay, look at this. You know, and it also comes up that you can't explain to somebody that the thing that saved your life, you just want to explore and explore and explore. You want to go deeper and you want to find out where it came from. How'd they get it? Well, you know, what a brass pair they had to say it's going to go all over the world. Right? What a brass pair. I mean, if Bill were to come back today, right? Yo, Bill, come on. I want to show you some things. What? Oh, here's one of your talks on MP3. Right? Yo, Bill, let's go down the boardwalk. See those kids with those iPods on? Right? Yeah, what the hell are they doing? They're listening to you. Right? They're listening to all the guys that all the talks, you know, Norm Alfie from 1975. They're listening to the 90,000 that Sandy B. has done, that this guy's done, that that guy's done. These guys who are dead now, their sobriety lives on. Bill! Bill! And Bill, here's you on YouTube. YouTube? What's that? You know? I mean, all right. So now, now I take it. And now I take it into a super, super computer. And now I take it into a thing called Camtasia Studio. Right? And I go to get this thing and I start adding in different things into Camtasia Studio. And then I pump it out and it comes out in high depth and so clear that it's absolutely unbelievable. And I can see the depth and sure, the films of Bill and Loris are a little grainy. Right? But where they talk about and if you, you know, I'll never forget you got drunk playing golf and you cut your face. Well, I go over to Google and I go, I Google image, drunk, golf. What comes up? Picture John Daly with this big cut and a star. Bring that over to Camtasia Studio, wheel that bad boy in there and as they mention it, in comes a call out and the thing comes on. And, I don't know whether I'm going to produce it. I don't know whether some fool's going to knock on my front door and tell me I've got to have a copyright, I've got to do this, I've got to do that. I'm not interested in selling it. I'm interested in living it. I'm interested in putting it all together and using the tools that we've got today for that same message that people look at it like it's old and distilled and should be changed and the words have no meaning. You know, how can they talk about threadbare ideas? You know, how can they talk about some of these other things? Well, that's the way these guys thought. You know, threadbare ideas, you didn't have to tell them about threadbare, they lived it. You know, we're talking about 1934. These guys had shoes that didn't match. You know, these guys had suits that were raggy-tagged. These guys had dinner. They didn't have dinner from Emmings. In 1934, in the Depression in these countries, they didn't invite you over to do the steps to have dinner with them and they had a piece of bread floating in milk. So when they asked you for dinner, it was a piece of bread floating in milk. Right? They show us the greatest generation right? Who was the greatest generation? For me, Alcoholics Anonymous, the greatest generation were the pioneers. The guys who were up against it. The shysters. The promoters. Right? The Hank Farkers that got the book you know, printed. That got the book printed. You know, here we go. We take Bill down the street again. Yo, Bill. Oh, well. Should have been with us in Toronto, Bill. Fine. You won't believe this, but they gave the 25 millionth copy of the big book, to the head of San Quentin. Bill would look and say, 25 million copies? And I was supposed to get, how much? 10%? You see what I mean? It's still living. It's still going. Yeah, Bill, here, do you want to sign up? Watch this. Well, we're signing up for San Antonio. He had big doings to get everybody together in 1950. Right? If you go on and Google who attended the first international conference in St. Louis, they got the attendance sheets there. And they were lucky to have a thousand of them. Right? By name, where they came from. Now, you go back to 1950 and say, what meetings were around here? And you just draw, because the closest meeting we got is in Baltimore, when Fitz Mayall brought meetings to Baltimore. So, what happens is that we got this, you know, we don't have to go to the Library of Congress. We don't have to go here. We don't have to go there. We got the tools right in our hands to dig this stuff out, to put, to work together and to enjoy it. Right? It makes it so much bigger and better. Right? It makes it just so grand. Right? I can't wait till I hit the keyboard again. I can't wait till the next indicated thing comes out over the keyboard for me. Right? What am I looking for? You ask me, you're kind enough to say, come on down here. Let's talk about this meeting. Let's talk about study. Well, let's look at some of the people that have attended this meeting. Let's look at some of the groups. What do we see? Well, when we talk about the 12th step, okay, we talk about the 12th step, our 12th step, and I, just bear with me while I read this to you. In the, in the 12 and 12, it says, our 12th step also says that as a result of practicing these steps, we've each found something called a spiritual awakening. To new AAs, this often seems like a very dubious and improbable state of affairs. We've each found a spiritual awakening. What do you mean when you talk about a spiritual awakening, they ask? Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them, but certainly each genuine one has something in common with all others, and these things which they have in common are not too hard to understand. When a man or woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. You look around the meetings, okay? I mention sponsors to you. So often people come up and they go, you got a sponsor? Yeah, him. It's the Hedo. But if you stop there, you don't understand what's going on. Look at your sponsor. Look at your sponsor's tree. Where does your sponsor come from? Who else does your sponsor sponsor? Are those people in your group moving along with you all together? You know, they're active cells. They're just not him. Right? They're not him. And you can see twos and threes and fours of them growing up everywhere. You know, we come down here, we start a meeting, but what happens? Somebody else goes somewhere, they take a CD that we've burned, they go up to this town, they start a meeting. They go to the next town, they start a meeting. They go to the next town, they start a meeting. I am experiencing what they talk about in the preface to the second edition where it's all the history. They talk about, we went from 200 to 800 to 900. The same thing is happening as here. Why? Because our message has depth and weight. Where do we get the message of depth and weight? From the big boss. Oh. So you're telling me, well, you know, I love it when newcomers come over to me and they say, Roger, what meetings do you go to? And I go, everything I go to is literature based. Right? The real secret is, that way I don't get to resent it. Ha. Ha. It's literature based. It's based on, you know, studying what they did before, how it's going. Now, you know, in every course that I ever took in life, I studied it and kicked it back to them. I studied it and kicked it back to them. Now, we tell you we have a spiritual message here. What does that mean? That means, study this and see what happens. And then you study it again and you see what happens. And then you study it again and then see what happens. You go, whoa. Whoa. Wait, what do you mean? It's dynamic. It's alive. It's real. Right? Every time you think you got it figured out, somebody comes along and in a fit of temper or something, words something out and you go, that is great. Get that down on paper. Right? I tried this and it's working. Go, go, go. Right? So, you're like a coach where you're just saying, hey, let's everybody get together and just see where this thing takes us. Right? How big this is going to get? I don't know. Right? Somebody once told me, hey, you know, in another book that they used to study, they talked about the loaves and the fishes. They talked about somebody having a basket and in that basket they had X number of loaves and Y number of fishes. Dean, how many were there? Seven and fifteen or something? Seven and seven? All right. Now, when they come along and they said, all right, there are 5,000 people up here and they kept taking the stuff out of the basket and take something out of the basket and take something out of the basket. And you go, it doesn't make sense. And then you add it all up and the crumb, and you add it all up. And the crumbs were bigger than this. And they go, oh, nice story. Nice story? Or does it really apply to us? Do we walk along with a program on our shoulders in a basket? Somebody comes up to you and says, how'd you get sober? We tell them. Could you take me through the steps? Give them a loaf, give them a fish. Don't look in a basket. All right? Next person comes up, give them a loaf, give them a fish, don't look in the basket. All right? Intellectually, you say, you are nuts. Yeah? Well, we have an unending source of power coming from a higher power that can arrest the disease of alcoholism. Right? And it's contingent on one thing, the maintenance of your spiritual condition. Oh. Well, just how bad is this maintenance of your spiritual condition anyway? Put very simply, Roger, it's this. Would you like to sit on your tuchus tonight and watch Tiger Wood try to get next to Phil Mickelson, try to get to Choi, or are you going to get in the old Camry and go down to 611 and deliver a message at Debson Lake? And tell your experienced friends and help. Contingent. Every Wednesday night would be real easy to stay at home and watch the latest chapter of this, chapter of that. But I know that there are people incarcerated at the Sussex Correctional Institute. And when I walk in there and I get 10 and 12 and 14 guys that are sitting in their pajamas and, you know, I'm the lucky guy. Everybody throws their money in the basket and they say, oh, we give to this, we give to this, we give to that. They give to the Southern Delaware and a group who gives us books. I'm the guy that gets to carry them in and hand them to them in the prison. I'm the guy that gets to see their faces. And they come up to me and they say, oh, Roger, thank you so much, thank you. And I say, don't thank me. Go to a meeting in AA on the outside. They're the people that threw it in the basket. They're the people that are getting into the book. And they're saying, explain it to us, explain it to us. All right? I'm sitting in a jail full of people and I got 30 people and I'm trying to explain some truest apartment. To 30 guys in white pajamas with DOC written on them. And they're going, sumptuous apartment? What's a sumptuous apartment? I said, the man had a lot of bling. Oh! So, you know, rather than attack the book and saying that it's old fashioned, I get the principles of the book, I put it in today's lexicon and I give it to the boys. My boys. And I refer to them as my boys with a personal program. Because they are mine. And I get the principles of the book. I get to see them. I get to see them come out. I get to see things that nobody else gets to see. That second paragraph of chapter 7, working with others, all the stuff that you get to see, you don't want to miss it. You know? It's 7 o'clock. When I go out to the car, there's probably a message coming from the keys. All right? A guy took his open water qualification. Where's Jeremiah? All right. A guy took his open water qualification for now. Okay? Three years ago he was in a prison. Satisfied. All his debts did this, did that. And Key West today, the man's going to be certified. Because he wants to be an underwater videographer. I get to see that. I get to see a guy sweeping out elevators. That gets to be the assistant district attorney for the state of Maryland in Wicomico County. I get to see, you know, I get to see a guy who is kicked in the teeth, who is knocked down. Who comes to me with a gleam in his eye and says to me, my favorite sentence of the big book is, Chris, what at first appeared to be what at first seemed to be loving, powerful, and good. And I smile. Right? Because he's got it. All right? Gave him a fish, I gave him a loaf, and he wants to look in the bed. And you see, that's what I see. It, you know, the greatest sentence of the book, and it happens twice in the book. It says, amid all the bullshit and all the nonsense and all the interpretation, the simplest, greatest conclusion there could be. It works. And then it comes back and it says, it works. It really does. Right? And it's got to be faith. It can't be faith without works. We've got to have the works that go along with it. Right? We've got to maintain our spiritual condition. You know? And all of these people that are sitting around and say, oh, let's recite this responsibility pledge. And anyone, everyone, it rings us out. Hey, I googled it. 1962, this guy decides to write the responsibility pledge. Now he's got a whole bunch of people reciting this thing. It's not what I'm after. What I'm after is what these guys did. What the guys in the thread bear suits did. How did they do it? What was their mission? Right? See, because it's the same old story. It's not what it appears to be. Right? So if you're going through tragedy, if you're going, kids aren't, you know, talking to you. And you're, you've got to knock on mama's door and say, mama, give me a bed. And you've got to ask this and you've got to ask, things aren't what they appear to be. The higher power is getting you ready. Right? Because the deal here is, just like every other literature-based meeting, we'll give you this program and we'll lay it all out for you, right, at your feet. And you get to pick it up and you get to experience it. And then all you have to do is report that, what you got. You see what I mean? Now, now, what saddens me is, you know, the people that you take through the steps, you give them things and they disappear. Right? They disappear. Now, I'd like to be nice and kind and understanding. I like to pet people on the head and go, nicey-nice. That's not the way I am. See, what Kenny Pilate did and what the rest of these guys did is they loved me enough to tell me the truth. They looked me right in the eye and they told me that God's honest truth and it saved my life. So, recently, when a young girl came walking into a meeting and said, I'm back, I looked at her. I said, go ahead and see her alive. And she said, well, you don't seem happy that I'm back. And I go, why'd you stop coming to me? She said, oh, I had to go to school. I said, oh. I said, is there coffee on that table tonight? Yeah. I said, is there sugar there? Huh? I said, guess what? We get to take the deposits to the bank, put them in the bank and we get to buy groceries. And we get to lug them here and as beginners, we get there early so we can stand at the door and shake the hands and smile and pat people on the back. Now, the reason why I'm not exactly, you know, ebullient tonight is that you didn't help AA in the six months you went to college. You just thought it was going to be there. Now, I have three grandchildren and those three grandchildren are liable to need AA. And if you don't show up, right, why are you going to school? And you don't add to AA and you don't build on it, my grandchildren might not have AA. Right? And the passion and the exuberance, I see it, you know, there's one expression that they say in the book and every time we study it, they go, there's something about their eyes. All right? There's something about their eyes. Back in 1960, drunk as a hoot owl, I staggered in, we had a sign in at night and all my caballeros as we got off the bus and staggered into it, Notre Dame, there was John, the night watchman, a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you looked into his eyes, you saw his passion. He loved us enough to tell the truth. Hey kids, you got a problem and I'm going to take you to AA meetings. You know? Sean O'Flaherty, he had that look in his eye. All right? Barney, when I got Barney, I not only got Barney, his sponsor Johnny and Johnny's sponsor Clancy came with it. So I got a whole chain of these people that were interested in where I sat, what I did, right? And if I got up and left, left the meeting early, I damn well better have an excuse. All right? I just didn't get up and walk out. All right? I still got a piece of paper that I carry in my other wallet. All right? It says on a piece of paper, permission to leave the meeting early, no spiritual penalties, Clancy I. All right? That was in 1989 when I was going out to get a flight at the airport and I was trying to get back to Phoenix for a day's work and I had to leave the Pacific group early. That's what these guys did. They held me to a standard. So, if you're pissed off at me, I feel sorry. If you have a resentment, I feel sorry. It's not that I'm picking on you, it's just that I'm passing along to you the standard that was given to me. Now, when did I get this standard? I got this standard when I said those magic words the first time. My name is Roger McMahon and I'm an alcoholic. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.