He Needed a Sponsor in Kindergarten – Sandy B.

So, I give you Chuck from Caring. My name's Chuck Hartley. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. By the grace of God and the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous and a good sponsor, I've been sober since December 16th of 1988. I have a home group. We're a Fox Hall speaker meeting group. We meet every Wednesday at 7 o'clock. The format is very similar to this. We have a 10-minute speaker, and we take a little break, get some coffee, and have cake. John was real interested in that when I told him that tonight. We have Cake Babes, a couple of folks, men or women, volunteer to bring cake every week. He thought that was something he might could do. so y'all probably on track for cake babes down here so we have a cake and then we round back up and we raffle off a piece of AA literature and raffle tickets are high dollar they're a quarter a piece or five for a dollar and we have a 30 minute speaker gather it up at the end and go home Say the Lord's Prayer and then Amen. I have a sponsor, he has a sponsor. I sponsor other men. So I imagine that makes me a member in good standing of AA. That and I drank like a pig. I don't know how much John had to do with putting this together. I met him tonight, and he bought me dinner. I'll mention his name several times. If you buy me dinner, you're all right. Kathy stayed in constant contact with me. She's actually a Facebook buddy of mine now. Thank you for asking me to come down here and share my experience, strength, and hope with you all. Anytime I can travel with my wife, it's a plus weekend for me. She travels a lot on her own, and I enjoy her company. She appears like most of the time. She enjoys mine. She's my best friend. She ran me down when I was new and wouldn't let any of the other girls talk to me. Here we are. Usually, when we go somewhere together, we're both talking, and she's got a rebuttal slot, but she doesn't have one tonight, so I pretty much say whatever comes to mind. I won't have to fess up till tomorrow on the way home. I needed a sponsor in kindergarten. And I was just, you know, I was one of those goofy, squirrely kind of kids. Needed someone older, probably a third grader that I could have called and they would have just said, oh, Chuck, for God's sakes. so you eat the cookies and drink the milk and take the nap. Hang up on me. I didn't have one. I didn' t have a sponsor in kindergarten. I ran around pretty crazy and off the hook. Many years later, I met and married Beth and she had a couple of children and they ran around crazy and off-the-hook. Our crazy, off-The-Hook kids were given Ritalin. They didn't have Ritalin when I was a boy. They had paddling. Got OD'd on that outside issue, let me tell you all about it. They wore me out. I was that teenager before I could sit right. So there we go, you know, a child in kindergarten in need of a sponsor could have used some Ritaling, all he got was paddling And I was destined for failure and needed a drink and didn't take one. I white-knuckled it until I was about 12. When I was 12 years old, I got in my father's stash. My dad and mom, neither one of them drank. I come from good drunken stock, though. You don't have to worry about that. but my family tree has many people at the bottom of it that are drunks. They're not getting up in the tree. Kind of like Laura, somebody would have mitt-dropped them. And my father was a personnel director of a fairly large company in Cincinnati that I grew up in. You did a good job there every year. They gave you a nice bottle of liquor and it didn't mean anything to my dad, so he hid it down in the basement. He hid it because my mom's drunken family would have found it if he hadn't. His spudding pre-alcoholic son found his stash. My father had that job before he met my mother. They were married four years before I was born and then 12 years of white knuckling it. So I had 20 years or so of liquor down in that basement to work my way through. Oh, God, I decided to take that drink and I went down there. I didn't know what to get so I got the prettiest bottle I could find. I called a couple of buddies and we went out in the woods together and gave my buddy Greg a drink and he took a big drink and he passed my buddy Don and he did a good job. He took a good big drink and he got back to me and I looked at the bottle I looked at my two Bogart friends and did a couple of quick little calculations, you know, that little fast AA math we do, and drank the rest straight down. Punched my ticket for AA right then and there. Should have just came the next day. I mean, what happened then happened almost every single time I drank. I drank as much as I could for as long as I Could. Stuff hit bottom, curled up my toes, came about halfway up. Felt like a member of the human race. Told some really good jokes. I was the life of the party for about an hour. Then it came up the rest of the way and I started acting the fool. Went into a blackout. Don't know what I said or did in that blackout but my friends beat me up and took me home and set me on my front stoop, rang our doorbell and ran away into the night like the cowards that they were. And parents came and saw their oldest son drunk in a heap on the front porch. And they drug me inside and left me on the living room floor. And they went to bed. Sometime during the night, somebody snuck downstairs and threw up all over me. I don't know who that guy was. That was my first experience with alcohol. and pretty much every single one from then for the next 20 years was exactly like that. My life never got any better. I've always been, I don't know, bewildered, I guess, by these smart alcoholics that came in here, went to high school, graduated from high school all the time getting drunk. Then you went to college and you drank your way through straight A's in college and you got a nice professional job and you drank your way through that and married several times and drank yourway through all of that with kids in each stop and drankyourwaythroughtheirlives. I never lost a daggone thing drinking because I stayed that crazy little kid that parents found on their front porch. I quit going to school. It was 1968 when I started drinking. There were a lot of race riots going on in Cincinnati. I went to a fairly large inner-city high school, probably not large in Atlanta. There was only about 5,000 students or so. It was about 80% black, and so I had armed National Guardsmen walking the halls. There was always some sort of trouble breaking out. and nobody really paid any whole lot of close attention to the comings and goings of the students at that high school. It was large, and the teachers were overworked. There were too many kids in the classroom, and you know, had your percentages of misfits and kids that were going to do well and kidsthat weren't going todo well no matter what. Kids like me that just didn't come. They never bothered to take attendance or anything. They took it first thing in the morning, and I always made sure to show up for that. And then everybody else would go to school, and I'd go to the woods and get drunk, go to railroad tracks and hop trains, break into trains. I was a rising junior before someone figured out I hadn't been to school in a while. They didn't have computers in there and track everybody, and the teachers, like I said, were overworked so they just passed you along. They figured you must be there if they didn't know who you were. The outstanding kids they knew and the real troublemakers they knew and the rest of us they just assumed, you know. So they figured out that I hadn't been to school in a while I was really under no compulsion to go, so I quit. I was old enough and I did. When I was 15 years old, I got a hold of a fake ID. A buddy of mine was in the printing class at school and he made me a fake draft card. I took that draft card to a bar that doesn't check draft cards too closely. Started drinking there as a big kid. and I had money to pay for the drinks. The ID was good enough for the old guy at the bar. I started drinking in there quite a bit. Started working with men that were old enough to be my father, working like a man and earning money and getting into fights and losing jobs because even as a teenager I didn't have a real good show or upper. Sitting in that bar one day drinking and a fella came in and started giving the bartender a hard way to go and so I beat him up and showed him the door and told him don't come back there anymore because I didn't want anybody bothering the barteller that didn't check my ID too close. And it turned out that the bartenger was the owner of the bar. Just like the previous speaker said she had arrived, I had arrived. Lonnie's Lounge. I just saved the bartender's owner from a beating, and he rewarded me by giving me a bar tab. Some of you younger folks might not know what a bar tap is, but you guys that are my age and older know what it is. It's a credit card without a background check. You can drink as much as you wanted all week long as long as you paid on Friday. The rent might not get paid, but the bar tab did. and uh i had a ride i was 15 year old with a bar tab and that meant a whole lot you know because well i was 16 i was starting to date and so were my buddies my buddies were taking girls and asking them out taking them down to the movie theater and they'd see a movie they were lucky they got to hold the girl's hand in the movie and they walk her down to The 60 Second Shop and have a cheeseburger. They were lucky they'd get a little kiss at the end of the night. I found girls that wanted to go to Lonnie's Lounge and drink double shots of Jack Daniels. Best dating tool I ever had. I wasn't very smooth, but I paid my bar tab. So that's how I learned had a date until I got to you folks, and you told me I was doing it all wrong. And I probably would have stayed in Lonnie's Lounge, but something horrible happened. I turned 18, and my father gave me a job. It's not good for me to have a lot of money, especially when I'm drinking. Dad gave me the job, and that meant I was making a little bit of money. and I had a little bit of money. That meant I had to get a little place to stay. Had to get an automobile because, well, when I drink, I get itchy feet. And I like to go places because I just know that folks are just waiting to meet me. So off I go to make that happen. I don't go anywhere without a drink. So I got a DUI. In 1974, And the judge made me an offer. He said, you can go to jail for a year because the DUI was his platform and it was an election year. He didn't care if it was a first offense. Or you can join the Army. I told him I'd need a little while to think about that offer. He thought I was insane. But I needed to talk to the old-timers, just like we do here, except I went down to Lonnie's Lounge and talked to the Old-Timers. He was probably 35 years old or so, an old-timer. They made a decision for me then. They said, we think you should join the Army. I said, why? They said because you can drink in the Army and not drink in prison. And the Army will pay you. And armed with that knowledge, I went and did my patriotic duty. You know, I needed that time to think because, you know, in my neighborhood, this was a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood. It was a shot-in-a-beer neighborhood, and kids in my neighbourhood were doing one of two things. They were joining the Army and going to Vietnam, or they were going to the penitentiary. Every single kid in my neighbourhood that went to the PenitentiARY came home, and that was not so with all the kids that went from Vietnam to my neighbourhood. so i needed that time to think about that but the old timers convinced me off i went um i help veterans today i help patrons get their benefits that's what i do for a living i uh i help vets apply for their benefits and man i hear some of the best war stories from veterans in my office and i'd like to be able to tell you guys a couple but I'm a blackout drinker. They sent me to Germany for two years. They have really good beer in Germany. And they have really good outside issues there too. So I smoked outside issues, drank beer and came home. That's my war story. And I came home to a company that had doubled in size from when I'd left. And they were paying appropriate wages. And so now I have good fortune yet again with a job. And I go out and, well, now I'm 20 years old and I buy a brand new Corvette is what I did. We were having pretty bad winters in Cincinnati that year. You know, it was below zero consistently and there's usually six inches or more snow on the ground. And I've got a Corvette that I'm driving around town, taking the T-tops off, smoking outside issues and drinking whiskey by the half gallon. wondering why I'm getting DUIs. So I start taking my show on the road. I know Cincinnati is my problem. I start going to California. And the only problem with California is my father is not a personnel director there. So I come back to Ohio and dad puts me back to work. That went on for a while, Three times, I think, I went to California. And that was my life. I worked or didn't work, and I drank all the time, and I drove if I could. And I pretty much ran over anything or anybody that was in my way that bothered my drinking. And one day my mother came to me and she said, you know, your father's had some health problems. And I said, yeah, I know. And she goes, he's going to have to take an early retirement and his dream has been to retire to Florida, so we're going to do that. And I says, that's great, Mom. You guys should do that, you've worked hard, you guys should go to Florida. She said, I want you to just promise me one thing before we go. And I say, sure, what is it, Mom? She said son, don't ever come to Florida we'd like to enjoy our few years left. And I said, okay, you know, I won't go to Florida, that's fine, go ahead. And off they went. And, you now, they were gone for a little while and off I went. And I'm driving around one day and I went into a blackout and I came out of this blackout surrounded by police. It wasn't anything really new, I'd been surrounded more cops than I was used to usually just two or three and now there's like a dozen apparently I'd uh and had gone into this blackout and driven my car into the back of a Mercedes Benz it was a graduation present the local police captain had bought for his daughter and uh I was in a lot of trouble uh heard somebody not tonight at dinner bragging about they're having four DUIs. That was my ninth DUI. If I could have stopped at four, I never came to AA. That was my ninth DUI, so I'm in trouble. And when you got nine DUIs, you don't have no driver's license, so I got another ticket there, no license. And when you got none DUIs and no license, you got no insurance, nobody will insure you. So there's another ticket. Apparently, I tried to leave the scene in an accident. So there is another ticket and the big one, the one that really got me taken to jail real fast besides that bleeding on the sidewalk thing. Oh, I run my mouth when I drink a lot. The police doesn't care for it. When you have nine DUIs, you're on probation and uh and in Ohio if you commit a offense similar in nature to the offense that you're on probation for you go to jail and sit there and wait for your court date you don't get any bail so they took me off the local jail house and set me up and I waited to go to the penitentiary and while I was there someone made a mistake seems like people are always making mistakes in the lives of alcoholics My wife calls it the safe syndrome. You know, the cartoons where the safe is always falling out of the window and the dog or the cat or whoever is walking along and the safe goes boom behind him and boom behind them. That's always happening to alcoholics in one way, shape, or form except for the ones that don't make it here. They get nipped by that safe. Somebody put me on the bond board for $100. There goes a safe. I didn't have any money. So I went to the telephone, and I called my youngest brother. I have two younger brothers. My mother had five children. Two died in childhood, and then the three of us. And I'm the oldest. So I called the youngest one because my parents loved their children. There are three alcoholic boys, and I'm not calling them out of turn. One brother's been here before, and the other one's two years sober now. And so they loved their three alcoholic boys and tried to keep us out of the penitentiary, so they spent a lot of money on us because we were hell-bound to go. And so I called John, the youngest, and I said, I need you to get some money from Mom and Dad. Get $100 and come bail me out of jail because I knew that Mom and dad felt guilty because John had to go to the penITENTiARY. They ran out of money by the time they got to the youngest. And they felt bad, and so if John needed some money, If they had it, they sent it to him. So he called. They felt bad. They sent him $200. John came and bailed me out of jail. I met him at his car, and he handed me the other $100, and he said, I'll see you later. And I said, hold on because I don't know about you guys, but when stuff's going down like that, I need a backup plan. I need an A plan B and a plan C and a Plan D. I just need backup plans. I do. And I still like to have backup plans I was looking for the back door when I got here. In case this talk didn't go well. And John gave me that $100, said, I'll see you later. And I said, hold on, take me to your house. And he said, no, you can't come to my house. And I says, why not? He said, my wife hates you. Okay, I don't like your wife either. Take me to Bill's house. That's the brother in the middle. He said I was talking to Bill before I came down here. And Bill said you can't go to his house neither. I said, why can't I go to Bill's house? Him and his wife hate you. Now, I was telling you all about all those rascals in my family tree that aren't going to climb up in it. They're just going to lay around the bottom and get drunk. My mother is the youngest of ten children. My mother's the youngest to ten children by seven years. My mother had five children. of those ten children. The five she had is the least amount of children. My mother has nieces and nephews older than she is, and they were making babies long before my mother got married. I don't know. The last time we had a family reunion, we had to rent an amusement park. I have over a thousand cousins, and I wasn't welcome in any of their homes. None. Not a one. And most of them live in Cincinnati. Beth didn't believe me either until we got married. And they kept coming in and handing me envelopes and coming in handin' me envelops, and she's lookin' over at the piano and there's no gifts goin' on there because her family's a big show-off family and they've got big gifts piled on the piano and my family's got no gifts going on the Piano but I've got a pocket full of envelopes. She's like, God, these cheap people. I said, No, they're not cheap. I said, didn't you see those envelopes? And our family's a big greeting card, folks. So you get greeting cards, you know, congratulations for this and happy birthday for that. Yeah, my family's the big money card. So we were almost rich after we got done opening up those cards. That's how many cousins I got. You can get rich off of them just bringing five bucks apiece. Anyhow, I couldn't go to none of their homes because I'm a thief. Long before I was a drunk, I wasa thief. And I'mabadthief. So about the only smart thing I ever did while I was drinking was I stole from my cousins because, see, I don't know John. And if I break into John's house, chances are he may shoot me. But I know my cousin Skip. And ifI break into Skip's house and he catches me, he's just going to beat me up and tell me I can't come to his house anymore. All right, I've got 999 more cousins. I'll see you later, Skip. It's the only smart thing I ever did drinking. Wasn't welcome in any of their homes. So, I did what any good drunk would do. I took that $100 and went and got me a bottle of liquor and a bus ticket to Florida. And the next day, I was knocking on Mom's door and my mom loved me to death and she took me in, she cleaned me up. My dad didn't know anybody, and he got me a job. I don't know how he did it. I couldn't work, and we went back and forth. One of us was going to die, and my dad died. We brought him back to Ohio to bury him. My mother's best friend had just died, my mom's lover and father of her children. she needed her oldest son to help her and I couldn't I was too drunk but one of them cats that I drank in the woods with that very first time was sober and he stepped in and he helped my mother bury her husband and he talked to me that week talked to me about his drinking not about mine and I listened to him and I said it sounded like you need to stop drinking and uh off i went you know i heard him that was all like but you know like we hear here uh quite a bit that uh you know we need to uh watch what we say and how we act because we may very well be the only copy of the big book that someone ever sees and uh i guarantee if greg would have told me was sober in AA and acted the fool that week, I would have never gone to AA later on. But it wasn't time yet, and so I started drinking a lot pretty much to cut it short. I stayed drunk and homeless for the next couple of years. And for me, homeless was homeless. I lived in an abandoned shack on the Little Miami River. I didn't bathe. I didn't shave. I didn't get haircuts. I didn't have any teeth because I ran my mouth and I can't fight. I drank so much and hadn't been to school in so long and the outside issues just piled up because I'm a child of the 70s. I couldn't read. I couldn'T do basic math. I had that same sixth grade education that I started drinking with and I drank and just blew that all to hell anyway. I couldn'T think my way straight, you know. And I weighed over 300 pounds and my blood pressure was so high, I passed out just trying to tie my shoes. I didn't sleep anymore. I drank and I passed out. While I was passed out, my body would go into DTs and the DTs would jerk me awake and I'd drink. And when I ran out of booze, I'd go down to the local 7-Eleven and I tell the girl behind the counter i need to take this stuff you go ahead and call the police if you need to call the police but the jails are crowded they'll only keep me a couple of days and i'll get out of jail and you'll still be working here alone so go ahead and call them that's the kind of animal that you guys got one day i came off the riverbank i had a little change in my pocket and i went over this knife and gun club that i like to drink in and sat down out front to finish a 40 before i went in and I thought, you know, Chuck, if you go in there today, you're going to die. You know, it was just one of those feelings that you get. You all know. Every once in a while we just tune in to what's going on around us and I knew that that was probably my last day if I'd have gone into that bar. And another thought said, I don't want to die today. I wonder if Greg's still sober. I took the change in my pocket, and I called him up. He said, where are you? And I told him. He went, oh shit. I figured I was in a bad place when he started talking to me like that. And he said, stay there. I'll be right down. And 10 minutes later, he pulled up, and he had a 1973 LTD. And the reason I remember that, and the reason i mentioned it, is because if he would have showed up in that little tiny Honda that John brought us over here in tonight, y'all to have a different speaker that 1973 ltd you could have sublet the trunk to a family of four i'll tell you what that thing was huge and he took one look at his lifetime friend sitting on that bar stoop and he started crying i knew i was in trouble then because greg was a tough man and he picked me up all 307 pounds of me and he threw me in the back of that car had been that little tiny Honda I wouldn't be here but it wasn't, it was that LTD and he took me to his house and he was married, he had two small children well they weren't little kids, they were 12 and 10 when I got sober and he rocked me to sleep I hadn't had a sleep in a long time and it was safe at his house he closed both eyes and his wife kept me pumped full of sugar because somebody told her that's what you should give a detoxing alcoholic. So anything that had sugar in it, I got. Candy, orange juice, carrot syrup, pancake syrup, anything that Had Sugar In It. She was jamming it down my throat. About 10 years ago, I Got Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes. I Called Edie Up. I Said, Look What You Did. I slept on Greg's couch until Greg got tired of watching me lay there and he came home from work one day and he said, go get in the car. I said, where are we going? He said, don't worry about it. Checked your date calendar. There's nothing in it. We're going to Alcoholics Anonymous. And he took me to AA. He never asked me to get in a car. He never told me to go to AA or ask me to work a step. I asked him once, you know, why he was doing this. He said, I'm your sponsor. I said, i thought you were supposed to ask. He said well, you're a special case when you came in. We drew straws, I lost. Shut up. That's what I got. Shut up, get in the car. Do you believe your power is over alcohol? I don't know. When you take a drink, can you stop? Sometimes. I could tell he was getting mad. I said, when I take two or three drinks, I can't tell you what state I'll come to in. He said, good, your power is over alcohol. Do you believe your life's unmanageable? And he got tired of the I don't knows, and so he just said, wait, you're sleeping on my couch. That's un manageable life. He said now step two says, you are crazy. Chuck, you have the craziest man I've ever met. You better hope there is a power greater than you out there because you're nuts. now get on your knees. And I said, Greg, I'm not that kind of guy. Now you guys got to remember, I'd never been to detox or AA or nothing. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, we're going to pray. And you know what? That scared me worse than the getting on your knee part did. Because I don't know about you guys, but I didn't want anything to do with the God that I was brought up with. My life sucked. And if he had anything at all to do with it, that meant he didn't like me. And I didn' t want nothing to do with him. And I sure as heck wasn' t going to give him a sitting target by getting down on my knees and going, oh you who God, here I am. I just soon not. and i told greg that i said you know i don't really want anything to do with a god he said uh i said i don'T even know that there is one i said if there is he's pretty mean he said do you believe that i believe he said i said well yeah you're a nut i mean look at you every time you turn around you're praying for this and praying for that they open the church stores, and there you are, giving them money. You're a nut. He said, good Chuck, just pray to my God. I'll tell you guys what, for a couple of years that was how I prayed. Dear Craig's God. Because Chuck didn't have one. And the one he started with wasn't big enough to help anyway. I just used his. Our book says all we have to do is make a start. That's been my experience. Greg told me early on that if I gave 100% of what I had to anything I wanted done, even if it was only 10% of what was needed, God would make up the rest every single time and from that day to this it's been true in my life so i prayed to his god and he took me to aa meetings i do not recommend taking newcomers to a discussion meeting greg took meto uh a meeting it was not a discussion meeting but there was two meetings going on at the same time one was a meeting something like this and the other one down the hall was a discussion meeting and he didn't watch me real close so i snuck off into that discussion meeting and while i was there we were up on the second floor of this big church and uh while i Was in there of course i decided like any good newcomer that i would share my experience strength and hope with you people whatever the topic was at the time A well-meaning old-timer stood up and said, boy, that was his first mistake. And then he said, shut up and sit down. Now I love old-timers today, I really do, and I respect them and try to pay them all the respect that their years have earned. But when I was a couple of days sober, they didn't have that. So I said, old man, you're going out the window. And I made a move on him. and you guys gang-tackled me. All y'all gang-tagled me, and I'm at the bottom of this pile thrashing, cussing, trying to bite somebody, didn't have any teeth, else I would have left a mark. And the old-timer was laughing, going, keep coming back. By the time y'all got me calmed down, that's exactly what I decided to do, that I would keep coming back because I had showed my butt several places drinking and I never got invited back. And here I'd shown myself in the worst way at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and you guys are telling me to keep coming back and you meant it. And so I did. And I don't have enough time but I'm going to go into some of the Just, you know, Greg just took me through the steps like that and never asked my opinion on a thing, you know. He knew I didn't have one anyway. And he pretty much told me if I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. And I needed that kind of direction, that kindof loving firmness because I am a bully. And if he would have asked me nicely if I would have wanted to do things, probably have a different speaker because I would have bullied him into giving it to me instead of earning it, instead of doing the work, instead of dealing with it. Instead of doing the deal here, I would've just had him give it tome and that stuff just doesn't work. My mother came from Florida back to Ohio and we moved in together and actually became self-supporting for the first time And we shared rent, and I got to make living amends to my mother for almost 13 years before she died. And I cherish every moment of it because I about wore that woman out. And I got you guys to thank for it. My mother had to live in a robe because of her children. We'd steal from her. So she bought a house coat and sewed pockets all up and down it. And anything that meant anything of value to my mother went in that house coat. That's how she had to live. Credit cards, money, pictures, recipes, coupons, real jewelry, fake jewelry. If it meant something to my mom, it went in the robe. And that's how he had to go. That's what she had a self-defense. And one day I'm yakking with my ma. She gets up and goes to the bathroom. I'm thinking I'll do one of these nice AA things. Go get her coffee cup and fill it up with fresh coffee. looked down in her chair and there's her wallet now guys i hadn't seen my mom's wallet since i was like probably that kindergartner that needed a sponsor you know i've been stealing forever and she early on hid her wallet from me and uh there it was so i said i'm gonna get some good nature teasing in on my mother and she came back and i start teasing her about getting old forgetful and the mind being the first thing to go and i'll probably have to put her in an Alzheimer's unit soon, and that sort of thing. And she said, boy, what the heck are you talking about? I said, come on, Ma. I said. There's your wallet sitting there in the chair. You don't leave your wallet out. You had to forgot it. She said, I didn't forget it. I trust you. Now, I got to tell you guys something. I have had so many good things happen to me, and I tell that story every single time because it means the most. I'd still be sober today on that one. If that was the only good thing that ever happened to me is earning back my mom's trust, I'd still be coming to AA. But way more than that's happened. I started sniveling to my mother about not even having a high school diploma, not even a GED. She said you got a GD went in the row, pulled one out, had my name on it. I was many years sober before I figured out, you know, my youngest brother's five years younger than me, and when I joined, when I enlisted in the military, out of the goodness of my heart, I didn't want him to have to go to Lonnie's Lounge on a fake draft card, so I gave him my real one. Somewhere along the line, John needed a GED, so he signed up to take the test. And when he went down there, the only ID John had. Oh yeah. So I've got a GED with my name on it because John had a draft card with my name on it. God bless him. He was smart enough to pass the test think he could today and that was all I needed. I instantly got way smart and I hung out with young people when I got sober because people my age scared me and young people were cool and accepting and you could be weird and young People overlooked that stuff and they thought guys my age were old and cool because we were crazy stupid so I'm sniveling to one of them about him going to college and I'm glad he's going to college and I wished I could go to college like him. He said, why don't you? I said, Jeff, do you know how old I'd be in four years if I went to college? He said no, Einstein. How old will you be in 4 years if you don't? Well, I got that GED recently so I did that math real quick. Oh yeah. Okay. We got some other people like me in here. And I went off to the voc rehab people and told them my tale of woe. And when the lady got done crying, because, you know, normal people cry when we tell them about our story. She said, We'd just love to send someone like you to school, but you have to take some tests so we can see exactly what you should be because we don't want to just send you off to college with no goal in sight. So I said, Okay, give me the test. And we took some tests. and she said the tests say that you'd make a fine social worker i said the tests are wrong she said no the tests don't lie i said lady i don't like people she said the tests are not wrong i said ma'am i'm sitting in your office with two pistols the tests are not wrong if you don't want to go to school say so thank god for somebody with backbone you know so i thought for a second and thought well what the heck social worker huh so off i go to be a social worker and i go to school for four years and uh four years later we're graduating and we're sitting around and uh the dean of the college is going up to different people and he's going kathy you did a great job in undergraduate school you are you going to go to grad school Oh, sure, Dean. Good for you, good for you. Laura, are you going to go to grad school? Well, I'm not sure, dean. Well, you didn't do as good as some other folks. Maybe you shouldn't go to grade school right now, but maybe later. John, John, are we going to grad? Are you going go to graduate school? I'm no sure yet, dean, well give us some thought. Then he gets to me. Chuck, are are you gonna go to graduation school? I said, no, dean I can't afford to go. I can go to school. He said, Chuck, you did great. And I did pretty good. I got all A's and B's and stayed sober and went to meetings and sponsored other guys. Met a beautiful woman, the woman of my dreams. Fell in love, married her. She had two children. We raised those kids together all the time I'm going to college. Everybody kind of knew that. You know, social worker is one of those touchy-feely sharing kind of things. John wanted me to mention psychotherapy so he says you did really well and I said I can't afford to go Dean and he said will you go if I pay for it now I've got to tell you guys something I love to drink whiskey and I love the music and I do outside issues but my drug of choice is free and more and this guy was offering me both on a silver platter and I said, like any good alcoholic I said well heck yeah so two years later I get a graduate degree in social work administration from the University of Cincinnati I was 10 years sober you cannot do that anywhere else but Alcoholics Anonymous Because only alcoholics like us go and start something like that with the desperation of people like us and the willingness to be taught, directed, listened, flex our schedules, and have other people flex things for us. Only alcoholics as desperate as we are can rely on God, I think, with the way that... only the way to do it. The way that we can. I've never anyway never met another non-alcoholic that went from illiterate to graduate degree in 10 years. I've met many other alcoholics like myself that have, but never a non-alcoholic. I made my amends. You know, when you get the kind of reception I got from my mother that it just became easier to do. One that I left alone was the ninth DUI. Sponsor said, you better go make that or you'll drink. And so I did. and stood in front of a judge that had sentenced me on several other DUIs and sentenced me uncontempt to court before because I overshot the mark and called him out of his name. Long story short, the man refused to send me to prison like he had a right to do. He just said I'd be sending the wrong guy. Alcoholics Anonymous has had its way with you, and it shows. Keep doing it. Keep up the good work. found me guilty didn't sentence me at any time put me on probation told me when I made amends to the insurance company for the damages to the Mercedes Benz you know more will be revealed I thought the ninth UI was my last one he'd take me off and he took me off of probation when I made the last payment and helped me get my driver's license back I shouldn't have one but I do my name Greg ended up drinking again I have a sponsor today if he hadn't been in my life my life would be so much different my son ran through a tough part as a teenager like a lot of our children do and the man My sponsor today literally kept me from killing him because that was a real viable option that I thought long and hard about. My son was not a nice teenager. And I don't often talk about this one, but I made amends to my father kind of like a lot of people do, I think. Like, you know, my sponsor, my first sponsor, Wellmeaning, said go and go to his grave and write your amends and kneel down next to his gravestone. And make your amens, and when you're done, burn him. And I did that, and I've heard a lot of people have. I've got to tell you all, I didn't get any relief from that. I was not a nice son. It's no wonder I didn'T get a nice sun. I was NOT a nice sin. my father was a beautiful human being and really did not deserve me or the other two children that he had but it's my talk and he didn't deserve a son like me but he got me and he loved me anyway loved me in spite of me did everything that he could for me and set a good example for me just a wonderful human being who died way too young and it wasn't enough I got no relief from that and uh i heard an aa speaker once say uh when when it's bugging you like that chuck uh go and find somebody in aa that's uh that reminds you your father they don't have to look like your dad or be your dad's age but just something they say or do or remind you your father and ask them to fill the bill and you know their sobriety is worth a crap they'll fill in for you and uh so i saw this guy he was a taper i went up to him kind of reminded me of my dad because I always saw him where he was supposed to be when he was suppose to be there and he wore a shirt and a tie and doing a job that he didn't need to wear a shirt and tie for I think my dad would have worn a shirt and tied him over the line and so I went up to the fella and I talked to him and I said this is what's going on would you fill this bill for me would you help me make amends to my father and I tell y'all man I still get goosebumps because what the man did is what my father did when I would go to my dad as a young guy and go, Dad, I need to talk to you. And that's what this guy did. He did what my dad did. He took his tie and he straightened it up just like that. He took His glasses and he pushed them up onto His nose and He looked me dead in the eye and He said, What do you want to talk with Me about, Son? and that just changed my whole life. Being able to have someone fill in for an amends that was long overdue, that no amount of reading on a grave site would have, just didn't cut it. And this cat, man he could have been my dad the way that he went about receiving that from me. and since that time I've shared that story a few times from the podium but with all the guys that I sponsor and just a month ago I picked up a guy that I hadn't sponsored before but he was 10 years sober and we got to talking and he had a brother that died and I told him that story and he started to cry and I said what are you crying for Keith and he pulled a picture of his brother out of his pocket and me and his brother could have been twins so you know never know who needs to hear your stick he needs to hear what's going on so I don't always talk about what Dick Martin did for me 10 years ago when he played the role of my father and really didn't give it a whole lot of thought until recently when Keith came and said showed me that picture and said will you fill the role of my brother for me and I got to pay that back and how good that made me feel because as good as I felt after Dick let me make amends to him I felt a hundred times better being able to fill that role for Keith so you know you just never know who's supposed to hear that if somebody is tonight good and if nobody here is supposed to you've heard it maybe someone that you know needs to hear it worked for me I talked to you guys a little bit about Beth but not near enough she ran me down and jumped my bones she told her friends I want what he has and I'm willing to go to any length and i'm really glad because as you all can tell i'm very shy retiring kind of demure kind of guy you know and uh you know we did some things together that uh worked for us We dated. We courted. We kept our clothes on. I mean, we already knew how to have sex. She had two kids when I met her, so I knew she'd had sex twice. She took my word for it. Good thing. But we got to know each other. you know we got to fall into like before we got to fall in the lust it's a really good thing you know because you know what I've found through spending a lot of time with my wife is one I enjoy it I love spending time with my wife she's my best friend and you know if we would have just started off having sex we might not have ever gotten there and you know I'm all about having sex I love having sex. Nothing wrong with having sex, but as you guys know that aren't going to lie after you do have sex, well, what do you do the other 23 hours and 59 minutes? I have a friend that I can talk to and travel with who I love and I know that she loves me. She tells me on a daily basis that she loves me. We do a lot of AA together. She sponsors a lot of women and she has a sponsor and it's not me. I have a sponsor. It's not her. She's tried many times to be my sponsor and I won't let her. She's sober six months longer than me. I would encourage you men to find a woman sober not as long as you. Do it like John. Catch a 90-day wonder out of the herd. I mean, come on. There is no doubt in the morning who's going to get the coffee when there's that much time. Six months, we argue about it. I tell her it's quality, not quantity. She says, go get the copy, boy, new guy. you know one of the things that I like the most about being able to come to a place like this one is that I'm willing to come because I never would have been before I got sober somebody would have said hey you want to drive to Atlanta what are we going to do there we're going to go have a steak dinner and listen to some dude talk about himself for an hour. No, I don't think I do want to do that. But one of the things that you get from doing this deal is you get to visit pockets of enthusiasm throughout Alcoholics Anonymous. And one ofthe things that I know is that Atlanta has many, many pockets of enthusiasm. Beth and I got married, and we just celebrated last month 17 years. Is that 119 AA dog years? Yeah, it's 119 AAA years. It's like dogs, seven for one. So we came down here uh july of 1992 to the atlanta roundup and we got treated like royalty because we were kind of new in sobriety and we were brand new uh married and uh liz bailey was speaking that weekend and if any of you've ever heard liz speak you've been treated and uh that weekend 17 years ago she was celebrating her 40th aaa birthday same day that we got married so i know that july the 11th liz celebrated 57 years of sobriety the uh she took us under her wing and treated us really good so i Know that atlanta has many pockets of enthusiasm and i see it all over the country and it's really uh heartwarming to know that uh you know because you worry about things i mean i have a granddaughter now i mean my children are grown and they have children i have a granddaughter that's two and she needs a sponsor i know she's not going to get one until she drinks like a pig comes here to meet all of you and uh i know that through coming to places like this that she will be in good hands if and when that day ever happens and uh that makes uh getting up at well I didn't have to get up but I did that makes getting up at 4am and jumping into the car and driving for five and a half hours down here to speak with you guys worthwhile knowing that not only is AA alive and well in Atlanta but that because of the actions that you all take here that if and when my granddaughter needs to come to AA she'll be able to come here and she'll get exactly what she needs which is shut up and get in the car thank you for my life