He Cracked Up Laughing at My Worst Amends — ‘Oh, That’s a Good One’ 🤣 – Bill S.

Alright, my name is Chris Ward and I'm a Grateful Recovered Alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the Napa Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts a bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, Yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. And tonight's speaker is from the Bridge Builders Group right here at Napa, Bill S., and we had a little moment in the hallway. When he came in, I called him, so we got our little thing together here. So, I'm looking forward to a good story, and with that, I'll give you Bill S. I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is September 3, 2010. It's an honor to be up here. Really, you know, I started coming here seven years ago, just about, and I spend a lot of time in this room, and it's been tremendously beneficial to me. And hopefully, somebody will get something out of my story tonight. I'm a little bit nervous, but, you know, I started coming to Napa. I came here on a Sunday, and it was back when the chairs were different colors, and I sat in the second row, and I happened to sit behind Ann McDonald, and I didn't know her, but I knew her after the meeting, that's for sure. Well, she was hot stuff. I left here. I have no idea what the meeting was about, but I remembered her. I kind of got the gift of wanting to do this thing. I came here because I remembered her. So it's nice to take a minute and, I guess, in a way, thank her. You know, she was kind of a character, and I guess we need some folks like that. Anyway, I'll get into the story. It's kind of long because I'm kind of old, and I started drinking young, and I came to AA first meeting. I think I was 28. I think I was 28 years old, so it's been quite a trek for me. I grew up in Connecticut. I have three older brothers, just the middle class, lower middle class, dying mill town. Everyone was in the same boat. We all wore hand-me-downs and ate leftovers. Nobody cared. A lot of kids around, a lot of fun stuff to do, you know, catching frogs and snakes and going fishing and that kind of stuff. So there was a lot of good stuff to do, and, you know, the family life was pretty messed up. My parents provided well. For the most part, they meant well. It just wasn't a happy home. My parents had very difficult upbringings. My mother was born in 1933, Irish Roman Catholic, and her father was on a drunk when she was born, and when my grandmother came out of the hospital, he was still on a drunk, so she packed up the family and moved back to Connecticut. My mother never saw her father. He came back to town. He was a bum on the town green, just a bum back then. There was no AA, and eventually he died in a flophouse in Sacramento. But I asked her once what she told the other kids about her father, and she said she told them he was dead. You know, so there was a lot of shame around that, and they were very, very poor, very poor. My father was also... very poor. He grew up in a tenement building, and he had no shower. When he wanted to take a shower, he went to the boys' club. And they both had, you know, doubts about three meals a day. So they provided, you know, and that was a big thing for them. Making money, earning a living, and being secure financially to them was a key to happiness, and that's what they imparted that to us. You know, work hard, make money, you'll be happy. It didn't work that way for me. But it did for them, and I guess it still does. You know, my father had some skeletons, too. He didn't tell me until I was much older, but he would come home from school, he said, and he would find my grandmother, you know, Italian Roman Catholics. He'd find her in bed with the Iceman or the grocer or something, you know. She was kind of crazy, my grandmother. She was real crazy. Let's get to it. She didn't talk to her own sister for 70 years. 70 years. They didn't speak. So my father had this shame thing going on, too. So we grew up in this house, which is about making money, image, and not really getting to know people because they might find out about things, you know, and that was dangerous. But I did have a lot of fun, too. So it was just real mixed bag. When I was 12 years old, I was coming home from school on the bus, and this kid, David, pulled out these old gym bags, you know, the green ones with the yellow strings on them. And he pulled a bottle of whiskey out. He said, you know, you want to drink this today? I said, oh, yeah, yeah, sure. It was a Tuesday in the winter. So we met at the local pond that they would fill in, and you could skate in the winter. It used to get cold back then. They had ice, and you could skate. So we met there, myself, David, and his kid, Michael, and we drank the bottle. And I remember the first drink very clearly. Everyone has a different story. That first drink for me, that first pull on that whiskey bottle was a game-changer. It changed everything in an instant. I took that pull, and that fire and lightning went shooting through me, and I got loose, and I felt different, very different. And what I felt was I felt – I remember thinking, like, so this is what the other kids feel like. I felt normal. They're like, okay, this is normal. I'm not afraid anymore. I just – It was like the rest of the kids because I had ingested this chemical. And I drank hard that day, and I remember David taking a pull on the bottle and me looking at him and having a panicked feeling in his thought came racing into my head. Is there going to be enough for me? It was my first time drinking, and I was 12. So my family's loaded with alcoholism. Basically, you're either – you're sober or you're dead, except for my father. Just about every one of my family's an alcoholic. So, you know, even if I had been raised – I'm going to leave it to Beaver kind of atmosphere. If I ever took a drink of alcohol, I was going to be alcoholic. I'm convinced of that. I was a sitting duck no matter what. But those problems that I had deep inside me, even at that young age, were the crux of the problem. That never changed. It never changed until I got really into the step work, really. And then it changed. So I started drinking at 12. By the time I was 14, I could get hold of booze pretty easily. So I was drinking once or twice a week, and I was having blackouts. When I was 15, I could buy. The drinking age was 18. And this guy, George, he was 18. His license expired. It was before photo IDs. So I said, Hey, George, can I have your license there? The expired one. He said, Sure. And one morning, I went into the Paramount package store, Broad and Ann Street, Marion, Connecticut. And I was scared. I was just a little 15-year-old kid. And I walked in, and I must have been the dude's first, first customer of the day. I'd say an old guy. He was probably my age. I think he was an old alky. I think he owned the place. And he was just busting to talk to somebody. And he had found this bird, and he had it in a shoebox. And he just wanted to tell someone about this bird in the shoebox. And I was a 15-year-old boy, and a bird in a shoebox was cool by me. I want to talk about that, too. So we bonded over this bird in the shoebox. And then I grabbed a six-pack of beer and a pint of Blackberry Brandy, put it on the counter. He asked for the ID. I threw it on. I threw it on that expired thing. He said, sure. And that was it. I could buy myself from that day forward. And I did. I was drinking, at that point, probably like three or four times a week, a couple of blackouts a week. And I was having fun for the most part. And then one night, just a little more than a year later, I was 16 years old, and I was out drinking with the boys and driving around, which was about all we did. At that point, just a regular night. And we had a lot of booze, and I couldn't get drunk. And it doesn't seem like it's scientifically possible, but I was trying to get drunk, and I just couldn't get drunk. And I was trying this and that one, and different stuff we had, and nothing was working. And something came to me, and I said, I had this girlfriend, my first girlfriend, Lucy. I said, I was crazy about Lucy. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Puppy love. It was sweet. I said, take me to Lucy's house. And Lucy was a long walk home for me, but I went to Lucy's house, and she came outside, and we sat in the grass, and it just poured out of me. I don't know where it came from. She wanted to know it was up. And I told her I was tired of drinking, and that I didn't want to drink anymore, that I wanted something different in life, and I just wasn't happy with the drinking. And, uh, you know, so when I see young people in the meetings today, it's like, yeah, I mean, that spikes me up. I mean, somebody's 16, 18, 20 years old coming in here. Absolutely. We got a seat for you. I mean, I was in a bad way. And, uh, you know, I've been drinking for four years. Um, I just got my driver's license, and I, and I wanted out. Um, and she told me the truth, and it was harsh. Um, but she looked me in the eye, and she said, if you stop drinking, I'm not going to see you anymore, because you're a drag when you're not drinking. And, uh, and it was the truth. It was the truth, and I knew it. And I didn't protest or anything like that. I mean, it felt bad. It still kind of feels bad. Um, but she was spot on. She was spot on. I was a drag when I wasn't drinking, and that was the whole problem. That was the whole problem. Um, and after that, uh, my drinking just exploded. And I, uh, I just became an animal with it. And, uh, you know, my parents thought I was messed up when I wasn't. You know, because then that's when I was kind of freaky and all that, when I wasn't messed up. I said, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know, it's like, I'm not doing anything, which was the truth. You know, it was normal when I had a buzz on. Um, so, anyway, I, I got out of high school and went to college and fell into, with the kind of crowd you would expect. Um, it was a very intense college. Um, very competitive. I, I loved it. I really did. I did well. I drank extremely heavily. Um, I discovered the, uh, three or four times a day, drunk, get drunk in the morning. Then you could pass out and I could get drunk in the afternoon. Then I could pass out and then I could get drunk around dinner time. I could pass out and then I could go out at night and get drunk again. So, I was getting drunk sometimes, four times in a day. And it, it affected me greatly. Um, you know, my, uh, social world was very small. Um, my grades, my grades were good but they could have been much better. Uh, I got a lot out of college but I could have got a lot more. There was this gap between what I could have got out of life and what I was getting out of life. And it was growing. Growing. And each year went by, that gap got bigger and bigger and bigger. Um, but I finished college and, uh, my friends just kind of moved on. Um, they had dreams and goals. I had none. I, I didn't know what a dream was. Goals, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, So, I got a job. It was a decent job. And I began to get into, uh, some real trouble with, with alcohol, um, in the real world, not college world. I had difficulty, uh, getting to work on time. I had difficulty keeping up with my laundry even though I paid the Chinese laundry to do it for me. You know, all I had to do was bring it there. And, I couldn't do that, you know? So, there were, I took probably transit to, uh, to work in Philadelphia's decent public transportation. And, and I'd get on the trolley in the morning sometimes and, I lived in an integrated neighborhood and these church ladies would be looking at me and my clothes would be wrinkled and dirty and I, I reeked of booze, you know, and I'd get the evil eye, you know. It was like a daily occurrence, you know. Um, and this was my swearing off period. I did. Where, I would come two in the morning and I meant it. I, I'd say with everything I had, you know, I'm not going to drink today. And I meant it. I really did. I wasn't fooling around. I wasn't playing games. I really did not want to drink that day. And then by, like, ten in the morning, ten thirty, my head would get all jammed up and like, I couldn't think and, uh, things would get fuzzy and something was wrong, you know, and I, I couldn't figure out what it was and then the clock would move along a little bit and we'd get close to noon and then all I could think about was getting a couple of beers at lunch. You know, and that, that resolution which I meant with all my heart and soul in the morning, I, the book says we couldn't bring it into our mind and that's the truth. It wasn't like I was actively denying it. It just, it couldn't get into my brain. It was, I couldn't do it. Um, yeah, so I was really in, in a bad way. Uh, so I did what, what a lot of people do in the program that I've heard anyway. You get married, you know, that seems to be the thing to do from the, it's hitting the fan and you're young, just, hey, get a spouse. Um, so this woman pursued me and she really had her act together seemingly, except apparently in the romance department because, uh, two separate people said to me, they didn't even know each other, said, what is she doing with you? And I said, I don't know, man, I don't know. I had no idea. But, uh, we got married. I never even really liked her to tell you the truth. but, and, on the second day I was, on our honeymoon, she asked me if I could drink less. Not like less right now, like, generally less. And I, I said nothing. I, I, I was dumbfounded. Like, what, what, what? I said, silence, you know. She left me speechless. Could you drink less? The truth is, I couldn't. And, you know, I just, I had no idea, but I couldn't. So anyway, we moved to Boston and then we moved to Manhattan and, um, you know, I had, uh, I had a really bad drunk on a New Year's Eve in Manhattan. It was, uh, a night when I was determined not to get drunk. I really didn't want to get drunk. I had no idea that meant that I couldn't have a single drink. Um, and it was just a hellacious night. Um, in and out of blackout and it, I ended up coming to, I was on 86th Street. I was screaming at my wife and some homeless dude was pushing me away from her. And, I came out of a blackout and, and this is what was going on. And, you know, I was really down. I was really demoralized. Like, this is what it's come to. You know, this is what I am. Um, and soon after, uh, I went to my first AA meeting. Um, I called AA. They said, make sure you tell someone it's your first meeting, which of course I didn't. And, I went to the meeting and, um, I didn't know. They do this qualification thing. Someone tells their story for a bit and then, uh, and then people share. And it turned out this woman told her story is one of the worst I ever heard in AA. To this day. But I had no idea, you know, and then they're all identifying and I said, these people are, crazy. You know? So I left and I, I called my, my then wife and, uh, told her I wasn't an alcoholic and of course she said, well, I'm so glad. I know you're not an alcoholic but who the hell wants to be married to an alcoholic, you know? Not me. Um, but like a couple months later I was packed off to a rehab. I was, I weighed like 130 pounds and, you know, it just, I was a mess. Um, I was supposed to be going to graduate school. I showed up once in a while but I really wasn't going. Um, and, uh, my, my former wife went to their family program which was a real smart thing to do because when I came back to New York within three weeks I was doing the same thing I was doing before and she threw me out like she had learned in the family program. Um, and the only people foolish enough to take me in were my parents. I don't know. My parents do crazy stuff. So I went back to Connecticut and I entered this period of drinking and going to meetings. Um, you know, I went to a lot of meetings um, some of their meetings they have breaks in Connecticut in the middle and I, one meeting in particular I could run up the hill to, uh, Milner's Tavern Coles Beer in town and I'd have a few drinks and I'd go back to the rest of the meeting. You know. Um, and I was miserable. I mean, it was, it was miserable. In the middle of that one day I, uh, I went into a, a bar that, I wouldn't call it a dive bar. That sounds too glamorous. I mean, CD, it was a dump. And, uh, and not a nice part of town. It was a really nice day and I, it's that insanity, you know, I said, I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna have a couple of cold beers. That'd be nice. Now, what in my history would ever indicate that I could have a couple of cold beers? Nothing. But in my mind I, I was completely, there was no doubt that this was what I was gonna do and no one could have talked me out of it. So I went in this bar and, uh, stood at the bar ordered a beer, a Budweiser and he put it down in the bar and I drank the whole thing down and one, you know, I just chugged the thing down and put it down on the bar and said, give me another and the second one took me two or three pulls and then get me another and he gave me the third and I drank that down and immediately, you know, I had no control. I drank the whole bottle of beer. It hit the bar, you know, the bottle hit the bar and the bartender just said, get out. It was, they needed the business, you know, I mean, so how could I throw it out of this place? I couldn't believe it, you know, and I walked outside and, uh, you know, you know, I've been going to a lot of AA and, uh, a lot of AA and I said, this is what it's come to. This is who I am. This is, this is what I've, what happened to me. What happened to the kid that was climbing the apple trees and, you know, picking apples off the tree and going fishing and playing golf and Boy Scouts and all that stuff. It was all gone. It was all gone. That little bit of light, you know, little flicker of light was pretty much out. Um, I really didn't care whether I lived or died. I had nothing going on. Nothing at all. And, um, some people got together and they, they did a nice job. They planned an intervention. Um, it's been a long road. A lot of people had a hand and saved my life. And, uh, I told them all to go screw themselves, including my mother. I didn't say screw. And, um, they papered me. You know, they got a psychiatrist and I was going somewhere. What they had arranged for me to go was to a state nuthouse for a few weeks. Um, so I did. Um, and I had a non-alcoholic counselor in there. She wasn't an alcoholic. I went to see her. Um, and she gave me some pamphlets to read. And she said, I'm not going to bother with that 12-step stuff with you. She said, you already know all that. She said, something's bothering you. You're going to read these things and come back and tell me what it is. And, uh, for the first time, um, I got honest. You know, I did that. I read the things and I came back and I told her, truthfully, um, without any, you know, shiny image stuff, the real crap inside of me that was eating me up and was killing me and that, uh, was just eliminated any kind of desire to live. I really didn't care whether I lived or died. I really didn't. And that talk with her, uh, we had a few more and, um, I got a little spark. A little something was happening. Um, and once a week in the nuthouse, they would bring in, uh, a 12-step meeting. So I was there for three weeks. I got, they had three of them. And one of them was a cocaine anonymous, which I've never been to a CA meeting, never been to one since. Um, so these two people came in, a man and a woman, and the dude told my story. And I was blown away. Um, blown away. And, uh, after the meeting, uh, somehow I ended up with these two people and, uh, I told them another piece of truth that I had been afraid to say, um, which was that I really, uh, didn't believe I could get sober. I thought it was too late and I was too far gone and, uh, it just wasn't going to happen for me. And it wasn't me feeling sorry for myself. I really meant it. I mean, I thought I was toast. And, boy, they stayed and they, uh, they, they just got so, uh, excited and enthusiastic. They latched on to me and they told me that is not true. That is not true. Anyone can get sober. They said. And, uh, the guy had told my story and I believed him. And, uh, I got a little something going. You know, I was, I was 30 years old at that point in the psych ward again. I'd been to other psych wards and I started, I got a little bit of interest in doing this thing. Um, so, when the three weeks were up, I went to a halfway house in northwest Connecticut in the woods. And, um, I started going to meetings and I got a sponsor. And, uh, I was scared shitless, man. It was my first time living since I was 12 years old without a crutch. And I was wound so tight. My body ached all the time. I was full of stress and tension and just fear. I was just totally dominated by fear. I found out later that people were just waiting for me to snap. Um, I was trying. I mean, I, I went to a ton of meetings. I, I was very sick and I did the best I could at that time. And I snapped after nine months. That was in the spring of 1991. After three days, uh, my sponsor Jim came knocking on my door and, uh, he said through the door, he said, okay, that's enough. That's all he said. He said, okay, that's enough. And, uh, he knew what was going on. So I opened the door and, uh, damned if I didn't get sober. You know, um, he was young. He was really young. He got sober at 16. Uh, he, uh, had been through it all by then. Just like I had said, I want to stop drinking at 16. He got sober. He quit high school because that's where his drinking buddies were and he'd show up at high school and they wanted him to drink. They didn't want him sober. So he quit high school so he could stay sober going to any lengths. And he was an excellent sponsor. We went all over the place. We drove everywhere. We went to meetings all over New England, Rochester, conventions. Um, we had a really good time. Um, I got in with a group of people that he knew and we, uh, we would get together on Tuesday nights and play set back, which is, uh, the card game is popular in New England. You play with teams and we would laugh and laugh and laugh and we'd be crying from laughing so hard. Um, a lot of golf with people in the program. Um, these, these folks really went out of their way to help me. Um, and one day I, I went to, uh, see my, my parents and I came back, back to the woods and, this woman, Leslie, she's, uh, quite a bit older than me. Um, she's been sober a while. She was, she helped me tremendously. She pulled me aside and, and I was, I was, I was a basket case because I spent like a day with my parents, you know. Um, she pulled me aside and she said in earnest and lovingly, she looked me in the eye and she said, you have to remember that's the place you got sick. And, you know, that's my story. It's not everybody's story but it was the truth. You know, I got sick in the family atmosphere with, with people who just weren't well. You know, they didn't have much going on spiritually at all. Um, and that's the place I got sick. And, um, I, I carry that with me to this day. I, I need to be careful, um, about certain things. And, you know, family is messy. Everyone's family is messy and those gears grind a certain way and they chewed me up when I was younger and they spit me out. Um, and I don't want any part of that anymore. and thankfully I don't have to be, uh, part of it anymore and I'm not. Um, so, you know, life went on and, uh, it was in the woods and, you know, it was, they wanted me to go ice fishing. I said, I'm not going freaking ice fishing, man. It's freaking cold out there. Oh, but you catch a lot of fish because they're hungry. I said, I don't care. I'll go to the supermarket and catch some fish, you know. But, uh, you know, it was cool, you know, I had a good time. But, you know, I met a woman. I fell head over heels in love. We were crazy about each other. So, I got married and moved to a different part of the state and I hooked in with AA again. and I had a, had about five good years in the marriage and then, you know, things got really dicey. Um, you know, there was things missing from my program. Practice these principles in all my affairs. I did not do that. I definitely did not do that. And it was very evident in the workplace where, you know, I had one approach to life outside of work and a different approach to life at work. At work, it was all about me and chasing the dollar. And I made a lot of money and it never made me happy. I just had to make more. I was a pain in the ass to work with. I did really good work and I did huge volumes of work. I worked all the time, but, I was a pain in the ass. I would not have wanted to work with me. You know, and it was a sign that things weren't quite right. And after a number of years, I mean, uh, in 1996, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, 2006. So, I got, yeah, I got sober in the spring of 1991. So, it was 15 years later, 2006. I had, I hurt my back. I really hurt it. And my regular doctor was on vacation. So, they had this fill-in doctor and I was stressed out of my gourd. Really, the last couple of years I had just been dry. So, this fill-in doctor gave me, uh, pills, you know, Percocets and muscle relaxants. And I was not a pill guy. I hated pills. You had to take them and wait, you know, and wait to see what would happen. Like, I liked that way you said, I don't want to nap. Give me a nap. You know, give me a shot of bourbon and nap. Um, I wasn't a pill guy, but I took these pills and it was like, hey, this is alright. You know, it was kind of, it was very relaxing and I needed to relax. I was stressed out of my mind. And very shortly, I, I started abusing the hell out of the pills. Um, and then I, I found somewhere I could steal them from, so I stole the pills. Um, but they, that was the chemical relapse how it started. But the, you know, the relapse happened a couple years earlier, really, when I started to become dry. Um, and stopped telling the truth in meetings. You know, I didn't come into meetings and say, boy, my marriage sucks and I'm really unhappy and my wife's a pain in the ass and I really want to get divorced. You know, I didn't say that, but I, I sure thought it. Um, you know, I'm as sick as my secrets. Um, that stuff was eating me up. Um, and the pills were giving me some relief. Um, and it just took a couple of months before I was back to my old habits. Um, and so it began four years of hell. It was bad. I, uh, I never turned my back on AA. Um, I would have periods of sobriety and then a binge. And the periods of sobriety got shorter and shorter and the binges got longer and longer. And it was back to the nut houses and the rehabs and all that stuff again. And, I was scared and I just couldn't get back. I just couldn't, um, it wasn't from lack of effort. It just wasn't happening. And, uh, I gave up. Man, I thought I was going to die. And I think everybody thought I was going to die. It had been four years, really. Um, and then out of the blue, I, I had a brother here in Atlanta and he had gotten sober. Um, and he was, he was, he was very well to do. And, uh, I was on his amends list and he got word to me that if I would come to Atlanta, I could go to rehab and he'd pay for me to go to rehab here. So things weren't looking too bright in Connecticut, you know, homelessness and couch surfing and it was getting cold. It was September and like summer was over and I, my options were none. So, uh, I got on a plane and came to Atlanta and I went to treatment. Um, and I was in treatment a long time and my brother, uh, bailed me out. You know, he saved my ass. Um, I got out of treatment and things just went wrong. Um, things weren't quite right and within a month I was right back to it again. And in the summer of 2010, I was in Atlanta. I was homeless and, uh, running around some pretty rough areas and, uh, you know, I ate garbage. I stole money. I stole food. I stayed in the Atlanta Union Mission. I slept in, in cat shit. I, uh, slept in abandoned places, rats crawling in the walls. Um, I had no food for days at times. I knew what it was like not just to be hungry because I missed lunch but to be hungry because I hadn't eaten for a few days. And, uh, you know, yeah. I know what it feels like to go in a garbage can and find a half-eaten Chick-fil-A and be really happy about it. Um, that might be all I would get for the day. It was very difficult. And, uh, one day I was, I was sitting somewhere and I don't know how many hours I was just sitting there. And then, uh, I got up and got a phone and I called my brother and I told him what was going on. And then he said, get to this nut house. Back to the nut house. That was, uh, September 3rd. And, uh, boy was I happy to get there. And they gave me a pill because I was out of my mind. Um, I don't know what it was but to calm me down. Um, and when I got out of the nut house I went back and treated him for like six weeks. But that was just to get me settled down. Really. And, um, and things started happening. Um, Grace, you know, what happened? That's the big thing to me. What I was like. Okay, well that's pretty apparent. What I'm like now, well, that's not too hard to figure out. But it's just, what happened thing? Like, what happened? What happened? Huh? I had nothing to do with it. You know. One day, I was walking along. It was like two weeks. It was like mid-September. And something just came to me. It was Fred, the second step. And just this awareness. I hate to call it a thought. I certainly wasn't doing any thinking. But it came to me. It just, this voice was so clear. If I do what the AAs do, I'm going to be okay. And, you know, I had a measure of peace. And I started doing it. You know, I got a sponsor. Got a home group. Got a great sponsor. You know, we did some step work. One, two, three. I already had three. I didn't know it. We did three. Again, what Fred had said, it's been a meeting one day. It really, it really got me. Am I willing to do what AA tells me to do regardless of what I think? There was no thinking going on. So it was just the doing part. It was obvious, you know, that. And I'd never been one to really follow the rules against that practice, these principles in all my affairs. There was always this little bit of me where I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. And I was this weird mix of a human being. On the one hand, I would do what I wanted to do. On the other hand, I was a doormat. You know, what's up with that? I had a lot of problems, you know. But, but AA has the solution to that. And it all goes back to Lucy when I was 16 years old telling me I was a drag when I wasn't drinking. Nothing had changed. It was the same problem. You know, it was me. I was the problem. I couldn't live sober. I was not capable of doing it. You know, I was alcoholic and I could not live sober because the person I was was incapable of doing it. And I needed a massive change. So we got into the steps and, you know, we did the first step prayer. I felt nothing. I didn't, you know, I didn't have any higher power thing going on. I mean, I was mush. I mean, I just find your own, find your own God. It's like I could find my shoes and, you know, I was, I was working as a delivery guy for Jason's Deli part time and it was all I could handle, man. You know, it's just like getting those sandwiches to where they were supposed to be. And that was a great job because work was messing me up before. I had a bad relationship with work. And, by delivering sandwiches for Jason's Deli, you know, when I left Jason's Deli, I didn't give a crap about work. I was done. And I needed that change. And I'm still that way today. You know, I have like a real job. When I leave work, I'm done. I did my job. I have a real life now. Before, I was always working. In my head, I was always working. And I'm not like that anymore. Step four, the big thing for me was the fear inventory. As I was loaded with fear, I got a little bit of professional help with that in that writing it. And, you know, the book says we asked our staff why we had these fears. So I wrote it down. And I'm like, well, why do I have this fear? And lo and behold, there were reasons. A lot of those reasons were, you know, silly or meaningless today. But I saw in black and white, it's like, well, there's a reason that I have this fear. And then, my sponsor had me write down what I was going to do about it. And not like, I'm going to pray to this guy in the clouds, higher power, but like, what am I going to do? What action am I going to take about this? Fear. And I wrote the stuff down and I did it. I did it. And one day, I was in a meeting here and somebody shared something and I guess Sam Harrison and Jim Harp didn't take much of a liking to it. And they both shared, we don't get to hide behind our alcoholism anymore. I remember both of them saying that. And that was four and five for me. It's like, this is who I am. If I'm selfish, it's because I'm selfish. It's not because I'm an alcoholic. It's, if I'm an idiot, it's because I'm an idiot, not because I have the disease of alcoholism. And I could take ownership of this stuff. It wasn't about the disease. It was about the person at that point. It was a tremendous help to me, that meeting. I came to a ton of meetings. I heard a lot of good stuff. Mostly get out of the results business was a big help. After five, I really didn't feel much at five. But when I came home and I did that six step, it was really powerful. That was a huge change for me. I remember sitting down and just so clearly feeling in my heart that I just didn't want to be who I used to be. And I really didn't care what became of me. As long as I wasn't what I, the person I was before, I didn't care. And I meant it. I meant it. Some people say you can't be entirely ready to have all these defects removed. I think I differ on that. At that moment, there with my higher power, which now I was beginning to have a connection, I was ready. I really didn't care what became of me. And I remember thinking about that hole in the donut thing. It says, oh, I might be a hole in the donut. And I said, I'll sign up for the hole in the donut right now. I'll take it. It's better than what I was. So, yeah. So that was powerful. And the next day I called my sponsor. So let's go. Step A. Whoa. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa. But we moved right on. And the amends were a big, big thing for me. When I talk about what happened, I got to talk about the steps because that's what happened. That's what happened. I did them and I changed. I had this list of people I had harmed and it became really apparent that there wasn't much I could do about most of it. And then I've been living in some fantasy world where I would do unto others and then I tell myself, I'll just fix that later. Well, this shit can't be fixed. You know, life doesn't work that way. I didn't know that. I was living in some kind of crazy, crazy world. And now I knew, you know, it was in black and white. I do something today, for the most part, it's not going to be fixable. You know, am I going to live that way? Am I willing to live with that? And I don't want to be that person. I had, you know, this one guy, it was the worst thing I did in my life, without a doubt. It was horrible. So I'm telling him I sponsored his thing, you know, and it was embarrassing even to say it. It was awful. And he had me say it three times because he couldn't quite capture what I was saying. It was really bad. And then he started laughing, you know. He's laughing and laughing. The tears come out of his eyes. Oh, that's a good one, he says. That's a good one. And, you know, if I go into the steps thinking I know what's going to happen, I'm going to kill it, you know. Who would have thought that when I told somebody about this horrible thing, which I never told anybody, that he would have thought it was the funniest thing going, you know. He got a big laugh out of it. But I ended up with a bunch, of letters to write. And his was one of the letters, this guy. And, you know, I was taught to pray before writing. Never write without praying. So I was writing this letter to this guy, Kevin, and something came over me and I put the pen down and I had this realization. I was drunk at the time I did this thing and I became very aware that the fact that I was drunk had absolutely nothing to do with it. That I was a person who was capable of doing that and I did it. It was me. It had nothing to do with the booze. It was me. So I went to see my sponsor with these letters and he had me do two piles. Mail them and burn them. So I read this letter and he said, mail it. I looked at him, you know, I don't want to mail this fucking letter. It was horrible. And so I, all right, but I was doing what they told me to do. I threw it in the mail, mail it pile. And then he started laughing again. He said, I got you, I got you, I got you. He said, no, burn that one. So, he was a great sponsor. He ran into a little bit of difficulty along the way, but he was a tremendous sponsor. A tremendous, he put a lot into it and I got a lot out of it. So anyway, he told me to burn these letters and I'll wrap up shortly. You know, it's just so important to do what AA tells you to do. You know, he said burn the letters. I could have gone home and thrown them out, but you know, Wes said to burn them. So I'm going to burn the letters because he said so. So I got a metal can and I put the letters in the can and I burnt them. And as the ashes were going up into the sky, I felt a tremendous release. It was like God saying to me, enough, enough, Bill, enough. I needed to be free from the past. And I think I just got a lot of love right at that moment burning those things. And things, things really changed then. I did the amends that I could do. And one day, I was standing right back here and Wes asked me, how you doing? I said, I don't know, man. I think something's wrong. Things are really weird. Things don't seem right. Everything's quiet all the time. He got this big smile and he said, we call that serenity. And I had never known serenity. Even in all those years that I've been sober before, I'd never really known it. So today, you know, I've had some rough stuff happen. Two of my brothers died. My brother here in Atlanta, he started drinking again and he died from alcoholism. My oldest brother reached out to me when I was on vacation in Columbia. He was afraid he was going to hurt himself. He and I were very close and he committed suicide. I'm the only one in the family who knows that, that he did that. But AA has been there all along. Never felt like drinking. And, you know, those happenings, really, I ended up going back into, some therapy and it was a big help to me. And I spent a lot of time with my parents, which is not pleasant. But they were on my list. They were on my men's list. I owed them. I owed them. And then one day, I was talking something about going to see my parents and Wes said to me, you don't owe them anything anymore. He said, you did it. You're done. And, you know, it's the kind of thing I was afraid to say to myself. I thought, you hear about these life amends, lifetime amends. I'm going to be doing this crap with my parents forever. No, I can tell you no. I'm done. I'm even with them. I don't owe them anything anymore. And, you know, there was a time when I, when it was nice that I could be there for them. And now it's really nice that I can not be there for them, you know. So, and I've really turned a page in a lot of ways. And I know freedom in a different way that I could ever have imagined. You know, this May, I went on a trip to Iceland by myself. And, I had a great trip. I went to AA meetings, made friends, got together with them, had dinner. It was cool. Got friends all over the world. And, I ended up on a black sand beach by myself with nobody around for miles. The only footprints in the sand were mine. And, things happened out on that beach for me. A lot of, a lot of good stuff. Some time alone with a higher power. And with my brothers who meant a lot to me. So, today, you know, I have a lot of fun. You know, instead of being dominated by fear, I have a good time. And, I know that the best is yet to come. And, I owe everything, everything to Alcoholics Anonymous. If I only did one thing right in my life, and I may have only done one thing right, is I never gave up on AA. I never turned my back on AA. I never said, oh, those AA people are jerks or AA sucks. I never said that. And, that's why I'm standing here today. And, I have a great life. I had a shitty life for a long time. And, now I have a great life. So, thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. That was really good. I appreciate what you shared about Step 6. That was spot on. That's a big end. Thank you. Let's give Bill another round of applause. Thank you. Oh, we have a chip. I'm Kat. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Kat. We have a chip system just like pretty much almost everywhere else. If you're coming in or coming back, we have a white chip. Any other takers? Thank you. But, you're coming up here, Chris. After 30 days and 30 nights, we have a silver chip. After 90 days or three months, we have a red chip. Six months, yellow chip. Nine months, green chip. Any birthdays? I'm Richard. I'm an alcoholic. In May, I made 39 years. And, that was a real important part of it. Thank you a lot for being here. Any other birthdays? All right. All right. We offer the white chip one more time. All right. Thank God for the chips you hold. Thank you, Kat. All right. Thank you, one and all, for joining the blue chip speakers meeting tonight and finishing.