He Thought the AA Meeting Was a Cult – Sterling H.

Hi, everybody. I'm Sterling. I'm an alcoholic. I promise I'm going to get that right at least once before I leave here this weekend it's good to see y'all through God's grace this program is a sponsorship I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since the 2nd of June 1981 and for that I am truly, truly grateful if you are new to Alcoholics Anonymous and you're wondering why they're applauding, they are not applauding for yours truly. Because after I'm done, you'll be convinced that I ain't no big deal. They're applauding because Alcoholics Anonymous has worked in my life for that period of time. And there are several people in this room that it's worked even longer than that. That is miraculous because we are people who normally would not mix. You know, somebody had to have told me 24 years ago when I was sitting on that bar stool in northern Japan that I'd be in a makeshift chapel in the middle of Montana about to tell people my intimate secrets. I would have had to finish that drink. You might have had another speaker here tonight. But I am really grateful to John and Cindy for asking me to come out and advising the committee on asking meto come out, and everybody's shown me every courtesy. And like I said, it's my first time in Montana. How many people have said first time at Beartooth? All right. All right. Cool. All right, well, I don't know about y'all, but I'm going to have a hell of a time this week. That's what I intend to do. I intend enjoy myself. There are some friends out here that I haven't seen in a little while. I got a brother pigeon that's up here that comes here regularly. He shall remain nameless, but if you see us together, you know, have some sympathy for me, okay? and some friends that I haven't seen. And I'm looking forward to hearing all the rest of the speakers this weekend. This is going to be a great, great, Great Weekend. I'm an alcoholic, and if you are an alcoholic you know what that means. And all I'm going to do is try to tell you a little bit about what I've come to experience in Alcoholics Anonymous and what I experienced before that. And if it makes sense to you, that's great, and if it doesn't, that' okay too. You know, I have come to understand that there is a wrench for every nut in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I ain't the wrench for you, that's fine, you know. But I'm here because I owe AlcoholicsAnonymous. I owe alcoholics anonymous my life. Everything that I have that is of any value in my life today can be directly attributed to the program and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous so when I'm asked to do things for Alcoholics Anonymous, I normally 99.9% of the time say yes unless I have another commitment because I owe that much and that still doesn't get me even. Even if I were to do it every day I'd still be grossly under what I should be giving Alcoholics Anonymous because there's no way I'd be here breathing in and out. Now I was, I grew up in New York City where they make the movies you know in the South Bronx right there not too far from Yankee Stadium And I always thought, as a kid, well, I'm a weird kid. I was always one of those kids that just didn't seem to get it. If everybody was going this way, I hesitated. I sort of looked that way. I was one of Those kind of kids that needed sponsorship in kindergarten. I'm saying because I'm A weird person. I think weird. I think Weird. I see weird. I translate stuff through this brain and it just doesn't come out right, you know. And I was in that room and everybody else was in the room and it was two groups as far as I was concerned, me and all of them, you now. And it would have been nice to have been able to make a phone call and ask what do I do, and that voice would have said eat the cookie, take the nap. That's all you got to do when you're in kindergarten. I wouldn't have paid any attention, you kno, because that's just the way I'm built, You know, but I'm strange. I'm a strange kind of kid. I've always thought different. I'm very self-aware. You know? I'm always thinking about me. I wake up in the morning. What about me? You know. You know and so I was growing up in this family you know and I watched a lot of television when I was a young person. I watched A Lot of Television that were like family oriented television was The Father Knows Best and Bachelor Father, Family Affair, Eight is Enough, Leave it to Beaver all those shows where you had your typical or somewhat atypical type of family and I grew up in the South Bronx in the projects and we didn't have a lawn to mow, you know, and our house wasn't split level or A-framed for that matter. And you can look at me and tell mom wasn't Donna Reed, okay? So there was no cookies being baked and dad was not an engineer. And I always thought that if I had, I felt weird as a kid, and I always thought that If I'd had that kind of lifestyle, If I had had that that eight is enough, leave it to beaver kind of lifestyle, I'd be better. I wouldn't be so weird. Well, I have been to thousands of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Easily. Thousands. And I've sat right next to people that had Ward Cleaver as a dad. You know? And they're just as screwed up as I am. So it would have made any difference whatsoever what my environment was. It is not because I'm from the South Bronx that I drank. It is now because my parents were a little weird that I drink. It is because I am weird. I suffer from what is characterized in our big book, in the doctor's opinion, of allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind, which means that when I drink, I break out in stuff like wrong places and inappropriate behavior and I have an obsession of the mind which tells me that that's okay it's okay for me to act up, drunk or sober so that's what I suffer from that's the disease working in my life and that disease was working I think long before I ever took my first drink because I felt weird in kindergarten I felt resentful at home my full name is Sterling David Holmes III now ain't that something? when you have a Roman numeral at the end of your name You're supposed to get a country to run. I was waiting for my country. All I got was a little sister that moved into my room. So I got resentments. I haven't even drank yet. Haven't even gotten through grammar school, and already I'm angry, irritable, and discontented. So that means when I took a tall can of Coke 45 on my 13th birthday in the South Bronx, things changed for me. I am grateful to alcohol because what I had going on up in here was a maelstrom. I was very frustrated and very self-aware and very scared of being found out that I wasn't enough. And if I hadn't found alcohol when I did, I wouldn't have been able to survive on this planet. So I'm grateful that alcohol came into my life when it did. Now, if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, I know how important drinking is to you, so much so that even when we say don't do it, you say, nah, I'm going to continue to do it. I understand that. But here's the deal for me. It was real important in the beginning. And when it started to get painful and when it started to be too much trouble for me, I couldn't put it down. If you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous and you still think that drinking is important to you, that's fine. But if it's causing you problems and pains and difficulties and screwing up your whole life all around you and you won't leave it alone, you might have a problem. And I would suggest you stick around with these people this weekend. Don't drive back down that dirt road. Stick around here and listen to what these people have to say. Whether you believe it or not, believe that they believe it because nobody, if they didn't believe it, would come here this weekend, okay? That's the deal, you know? So alcohol was working for me. When I took that tall can of Coke 45 down on a summer's day in the South Bronx, my perception of my life and the life that I had around me changed. I felt, when I took that drink, I felt like I could speak as well as Jesse Jackson, play sports as well as Reggie Jackson, or dance as well as Michael Jackson. It changed my perception. How I viewed the world was now with power where I was powerless before. I was always afraid of you finding out the secret. And now that I had this alcohol, I didn't care because I knew I was cool. I could talk to the girls. so I could do everything that I needed to do. Now, it was an interesting neighborhood. They had churches and schools, and they had liquor stores in my neighborhood. They also had some gangs, and I wanted to be a part of. I've always been on the outside looking in, and I have a real desire to be a part or something, and gangs looked very appealing in my neighbor because they had infrastructure and they support and all of that, and I admired that. I liked the way the guys looked out for one another, but the thing was, Because I was born on this planet with a certain amount of intelligence, I guess, and it was discovered early in school. If they had tested for common sense, they probably would have thrown me out that day. But, you know, it's said that he's got some sense, and I had that kind of reputation in my neighborhood. None of the gang members who were my friends would allow me to pledge into a gang because they thought that I might have talent enough to get out of that neighborhood. Back in the day, in the early days of gangs, you know, if you had any kind of talent that might have been able to get you out of that neighborhood, those people would not participate in your destruction. You had to do it yourself. And that's the difference between then and now. So I decided I was going to join a big gang, Department of Defense. Because when they go to a gang fight, somebody is going to get hurt because they got nuclear weapons. So I decided to join the United States Air Force, and I signed on the dotted line. And when I joined the Air Force nobody knew that they were getting a young and up-and-coming alcoholic. They didn't have any idea of that. My parents didn't. I didn't, nobody knew. Now my mother was a narcotics officer, you know. Yeah, it made me real popular in the neighborhood, real popular. But she didn't recognize alcoholism in her young son. Nobody did. Because at that time, alcoholism to many of the people in my family and many of the people that I ran around with was a bum that laid up against a building with a brown paper bag. I did not look like that, okay? We might have had exactly the same point of view and might have had the same emotional structure, might have been exactly the same in every other aspect. But from the outside, he was a bumb and an alcoholic, and I was just a troubled young man. And that was the way it went down. And so they thought the Air Force was going to fix me. And the Air Force thought they were going to fix me. And I thought the Air force was going to fix me, we were all very, very wrong, okay? Because you can't fix out an inside problem with outside stuff. I was gonna learn that the hard way in Alcoholics Anonymous, okay. Cause I always want to fix outside stuff, inside stuff with outside stuffs. I mean a new girl or a new car, some new clothes, you know that should work but it don't work it just maybe for 10 or 15 seconds. Because, you know, no matter how you wrap it, if it's garbage, you know, it's always going to be garbage. You can wrap it up in cute stuff, but it's still going to be garbage, and that was the way I went. I went into the Air Force, and what the Air Force provided me with, and it wasn't their fault, was what was the development that I needed to develop my alcoholism, because I believe that you need, well, you need three things, I think, to really do alcoholism right. Yeah, you need three You need an income. Doesn't necessarily have to be your income. You need a place to crash, okay? Again, doesn't necessarily have to your place to crack. And food is important in the beginning but not that big a deal towards the end. And what the military provided me with was three hots and a cot. So I had alcoholism start to develop quite rapidly because now because now I had a support system. I was underage, drinking in California, doing all kinds of strange things and getting in trouble. You know how we get in trouble? The initial stages, it's like maybe it was just slightly inappropriate, maybe an off-color joke, maybe just passing out where you maybe shouldn't have passed out, and people notice. And they kind of lean on you just a little casually. Hey, you really tied one on last night, that kind of thing. And you shine it on, you know, just say, oh, yeah, yeah. you know. But with us alcoholics, if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, you kind of remember every one of those deals. Whether you get mad at that person or not. And I was remembering them and I knew that I needed to kind of mellow out a little bit. But I was having too much fun. So again, being a chronically self-centered person selfish in the extreme, suffering from an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind, what do I think will solve all of my problems? A relationship. See, because I'm going to find somebody to help me love me. That's what I'm looking for. So I found the object of my obsession, you know, and we lock on. We target acquisition, and there we go, right there. And then we're just locked on, and I just boom, you know. And I have an opinion that there are people out there that come in contact with alcoholics, and they sense the danger, and they run. I also have an opinion that Al-Anons don't run all that fast. It's just a slow trot. Now, there are many people, I love the program of Al-Anon, I have many friends in the program, and I've come to understand over the years that maybe we ain't doing all the chasing, you know, which is interesting, very, very interesting. But I found the object of my obsession, and the thing that I'd like to tell you about that is, you know we don't date, we capture, that's true, but I promised her the world, and I was sincere, I promised that I was going to be a good and loving husband, and perhaps father, and I meant that. But the problem is, if you're new, I suffer from alcoholism. You cannot be a good husband and suffer from alcoholism, you cannot be a good father and suffer from alcohol, you can not be a good brother, uncle, friend, employee, employer, and suffer from alcohol because I have come to understand this disease is a rapacious creditor as it says in the 12th, It takes everything. It took my self-respect, it took my dignity, it took everything that I held most high. It took because it will take everything, including your sanity and perhaps even your life. And it not only will take what you have, it'll take whatever anybody else has around you. And that's the alcoholism that I suffer from. Now, I didn't learn that in a treatment center, unfortunately. I learned that sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous And more important, watching the people that left the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, this disease is serious. And when I married that lady, I was suffering from it seriously and we had no idea. And we went on our little dance of death. It was about a year. She went overseas. My mother passed away as a result of a tragic accident. And I had to go to the East Coast and bury my mother in 1978. and I had been in service just a couple of years or so, maybe a year or two. And it was a traumatic experience for me in the sense that I had to go home and try to be a loving son and a loving brother, and I Had no capacity for that because I was drinking and partying and doing things my way. And I came back home selfish and self-centered in the extreme, and I also came back Home guilty because there had been a lot of things I had done to my mom. My mom was a pretty interesting lady. a lady. She had lost her Mobile, Alabama accent at Howard University. She was the smartest woman I ever met. Taught me how to read before I got into the first grade. The deal was I treated her terribly. I was an awful son. Stole from her, insulted her, abused her in every way possible and blamed her for everything that didn't work right in my life. And when she went into the ground I had no way of being able to make that right. And I don't know how you do guilt, I know how a lot of my friends in this program do guilt. We swallow it and it festers. And it ate me up from the inside out. And you've got to drink a lot to fill a hole that's being eaten through with guilt, the shame or the problems or the difficulties. And you know, I don't know about y'all, but when I get into that self-pity trip, I start breaking out that cat of nine tails and I start beating myself with every mistake and every screw-up I ever made where she was concerned and a lot OF stuff that didn't even involve either one of us. I start getting into that, and that started the last two years of my drinking, and it was insane and crazy and painful and ugly drinking for me. That started it. I went overseas, and you know, I was stationed in northern Japan. In Japan, they drive on the wrong side of the road, you know? I'd get so drunk sometimes, I couldn't remember what side of road I was supposed to be on, so I'd drive right down the middle. That kind bizarre behavior worries people. You know, there were times when we used to heat our house with kerosene and you had to periodically pay for it in cash. They didn't trust us and believe in credit. And I would drink the kerosine money up and there would be many times that my daughter and my wife are freezing in the house, I'd come home with a funny joke that I had heard at the bar, and they didn't think it was all that funny. Our timing is awful when we drink, you know? And it was bad for me. Now, the thing is, society knows exactly what to do with people who have bizarre behavior like that. They fix them because they're frightened of us. You know, I don't know about y'all, but when you're careening down the street, you know, taking all the lanes, people get worried. And they know exactly what to do with folks like that, they put you in a room where there's a little doorknob on the other side, not on your side. And they got a little slap when they open it up periodically and they look in on you, you know, and they give you clothes that have long sleeves and a lot of belts. You know, that's what they do with us when we're doing our thing because they don't understand and neither do we. So my employer was starting to get a little worried. I mean, there were some times when I would just not show up at work. My attitude was starting to really become poor and they wanted to help me but it looked like to me that they were trying to attack me so I was uncooperative have you ever been that, unco operative I was uncomoperative and it got down to a point where I always say that the reason why I got to Alcoholics Anonymous is not because I saw the light I felt the heat and this was it they put an ultimatum to me either I go down to treatment or her, they were going to throw me out of the Air Force and I didn't want to get thrown out of Air Force. She was close to getting rid of me because she had had it. There were times when our young daughter was born and she'd need her 3 o'clock bottle and sometimes Sterling's bottle was more important than my daughter Tunisia's bottle and I would be trying to give her her bottle and every once in a while her mother would come into the wonderful scene of seeing the father of her child and her husband who just dropped his infant daughter because his bottle was more important than her bottle, you know and those kind of things really kind of tick you off so she was ready to leave and the Air Force was ready to put me out so of course you know what I did I said okay, okay, for you guys I'll go to treatment I don't think I got a problem but I'll do it to keep you guys quiet and I went down to the Philippines now I don' t know if anybody has been to the Phillipines But down in the Philippines at that time, you could buy a beer for a nickel. American. You could go out on the base, off the base and explore every demented fantasy you ever had with ten bucks and come home with change and a few diseases. So it was not a great place to send a young alcoholic, but they sent me there and in 40-something days they taught me everything you could possibly learn about alcoholism. You could put in one brain, they did it. I mean, I saw the pictures of Father Martin movie and the jelly neck chart of recovery and drunkenness, erotic livers. I saw The Movie, I'll Quit Tomorrow, Days of Wine and Rose. I felt so bad for you alcoholics. I did. Y'all were a sorry lot. I was willing to make a donation because y'all had problems. I didn't take none of this personally. I mean the day before we graduated from alcohol education. That's what the military called it, alcohol education. I'm edumacated about alcohol now. They asked who was most likely to drink six months into it. And if I had voted, it would have been unanimous because there was 12 of us, 12 angry men I like to call us. There was 12 OFUS. It would have be a unanimous vote for yours truly. The deal was I had 30-something to 40-something days of sobriety. I came back to this base and I was on fire and I knew I was in trouble and everybody was watching, and I went to this little room right next to the rec center where they had this little circle on it that had an A on a blue, on a silver background that had AA. And I'm being sentenced to alcoholic synopsis on this little installation in northern Japan. And I walked in that door, andI don't know if this was your experience. I hope it was, but it was mine. When I walked into that door I saw people smiling from ear to ear. Hi, how you doing? My name is so-and-so. This is Alcoholics Numb. We're going to start the meeting in a few minutes. Want a cup of coffee? Here, have a seat. Everything. Boo! And it pissed me off. How dare you feel that way about me when I don't feel that way about myself? They were so glad to see me. I know why now. But it baffled me then. Why are you so happy to see me? Because they were bouncing around the room and they started the meeting, and they were just happy, and everything was great. And I'm sitting there kind of perplexed. I'm looking around the room, and I'm seeing these things on the wall, these little slogans. And look around. First things first. That's deep. Easy does it. Okay, they stole that from Nike. All right. You know, I'm just wondering what all these things are. And I see this picture, these two old white guys looking at these pictures and there's another painting of a guy sitting on the bed with these two white guys talking to him. I'm just, what is, I don't know what all this is. And you know, I just kind of kept, I was sitting there watching and you started talking about yourselves and you were telling some terrible stuff about, and you would laugh. My goodness. I mean, And, you know, the guy said, I've been, I woke up naked on my front lawn. You know? And everybody else is laughing. I'm thinking about, you shouldn't be telling people this. I was embarrassed for you. You know, and you started talking about this stuff. And I'm think now, some of it I'm relating to and I'm going, I wonder if my wife called them. You know. But the thing you did that really clinched it, that made me very curious about you, was you started with a prayer, you ended with a pray, and you passed the basket. Now that I recognized. Ah-ha! I know what you guys are. You guys are a cult. Y'all gonna try to jump me to Jesus or make me shave my head and sell books at that damn airport. I know that. That's what y'all are about. I got it now. See, because I knew all about religion in my travels prior to getting into the military, I had done a lot to try to find the perfect religion that would allow me to be a complete jerk and still get into heaven. I had grown up a Catholic and had been the result of Catholic education through my first year of college. Had left Catholicism well before I ever got through high school and was, at one time, practicing Muslim. You know? I was looking for anything. There was a time in my underwear with a 36-bottle of Colt 45 I had an argument with a Jehovah's Witness and I won. She left. That's the deal. I knew all about God. I had the book, I had The Koran, I broke versions of the Bible. I had been doing the whole deal. There was one time there was a young lady that I knew. I wanted what she had and I was willing to go to any lengths to get it. And she was in this choir. So I joined the Baptist choir. And at the time, the Baptist Choir was a Young Adult Choir. This Methodist Church needed a Young Adults Choir, couldn't get one together. So they loaned us to the Methodist church. So at any given Sunday, I was a failed Catholic who was a practicing Muslim singing in a Baptist choir in a Methodist church. So by the time I got to you, I knew everything there was to know about God. And y'all started with a prayer and ended with a pray and passed the basket. And it had not been for you sharing your experience, strength, and hope with me. Had it not been f�r the light I saw in your eyes. Had it not been for the way you made me feel when I was with you, I would have walked out the door. Because it had just been one of those other places I would have failed at. That's what I would've thought. But you did those things. You talked to me. You smiled at me. You shook my hand. There was a guy in my home group, George. George is about 6'3", 6'4". Tall, Navy guy, big beard. He liked hugging people. Now, I'm from New York. You're another man. You ain't hugging me. George would chase me around a little room to hug me one day he caught me and I got hugged and I started liking the hugs I started covering the beats just for the hugs now I was thinking maybe six months over I might be gay now newcomers I'm talking to you if you ever get a crazy thought in your mind share that thought with somebody that's been here longer than you. You know, an old-timer, they ain't got nothing to do. You know? Just talk to them about it. Because once they'll start asking you questions, and as a result of getting those questions answered, you know, you'll come to understand that that was just a crazy thought. Because the question would be, I think I'm gay. Okay, do you like girls? Yeah. Okay, are you married? Yeah. You're not gay. Oh, okay. And then you can move on, you know? But if you spend time thinking about it, what's going to happen? You know, with me, I divorced my wife and bought a dress and left the city. You know? Because I'm stuck. I don't know if you think like that, but I think like them. Once I get a thought in my head, if I don'T get rid of it, either through doing something or saying, talking about it, it's going to stay up there and it's just going to drive me nuts. And that was the way it was. That first year I was sober, I was on fire. They just loved me, you know? And you've got to be careful when you love a newcomer. You know, because you make them too special, they get in a lot of trouble. Those people gave me a lot of love. There was a lady, Kathy, who I used to call at 3 o'clock in the morning. That was my suicide hour. I don't know when your suicide hour is, but 3 o�clock inthe morning is when I start thinking about the rope or the river. And I would call Kathy up at 3 in the mornin', you know, and all this stuff, and she was never, she never was mean to me. She would always just try to talk me through it, and he says, well, what we'll do is tomorrow when I see you at the meeting we'll talk about it later. Okay, Sterling? Okay. You know? And I'd hang up the phone And, you know, now I sponsor a lot of guys and I'm on hotline at my home group and I got and woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning. And out of what I owe Kathy, I'm not all that quick to tell you what time it is because I owe that lady. I owe George. I owe my first sponsor even though he didn't know it. He was my first sponsored because he was five years sober and he dumped that big book and he quit smoking and he lost 50 pounds and he was on fire about Alcoholics Anonymous. and that was the only meeting on the base and there wasn't another one for 50 miles. So I didn't do 90 in 90, but we met three times a week and my butt was dead three times a week. And the deal was those people loved me and I was in love with Alcoholics Anonymous as a direct result of participating and being given something for free that is very, very valuable. If you're new in Alcoholics Aanonymous what we are giving you for free is very valuable to us. So when you see the enthusiasm coming out of us When you see us get all worked up about it, it's because we really get off on this. This is important to us. A lot of us wouldn't be breathing if we didn't have it. So that's why we do it. We're not trying to sell you. We don't get stipends for how many people we convert. Those people were on fire to give me the message of Alcoholics Anonymous because they hadn't had a newcomer stick around for a while. And they were giving it away, Jack, because they were trying to save their own butts. And that's the deal. That's what I had to learn. They made me coffee maker. I make awful coffee for two weeks. I would get there an hour early for a 25-minute commitment. I would put, like, you know, you get those big tureens, and I would think there were 16, 17 people coming to the meeting, 16, 16, little yellow caps. I was making Starbucks is what I was doing. I was the first back in the 80s. And I tell you, they drank it. We used a lot of cream, you Know? And when we got that circle, they asked for a volunteer. Three or four people volunteered to be coffee makers, but they said, thank you Sterling, keep coming back, you know? They made me chairperson because I thought it was because I was so eloquent. No, they knew I was nuts. So they would put me at the front of the room because they knew my ego would not allow me to walk right past everybody and go out that door. So I would have to sit in the front and come up with topics. And I would come up avec sick topics. And they would spend the rest of the meeting 12-stepping me. So that's one of the reasons why I never give up a service gig, not because I get off on being in the front or whatever. No, because I'm in need. I'm a desperate need of being involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. Otherwise, I'm going to drift away, and I may never come back. And you all will be fine, but I never want this to precede my name. Whatever happened to, you know? Because we know, every one of us knows a whatever happened to. You know? And I don't want to be that person. After a year of dealing with those folks, and I was in love with Alcoholics Anonymous, I came back to the United States. I was on fire about being an AA. Only one small, well, a couple of small problems with AA because, you now, the first year you figure out all the things that are wrong with AA. You know, I knew that there were, there was a shortage of African Americans in AlcoholicsAnonymous. So I was going to take it upon myself to get thousands of black people in AA because I wanted another picture up on that wall. By this time, I figured out these two guys were in charge, you know, and I wanted to make a movie of the week out of it. You know, the next generation kind of thing. That's what I was thinking. You know. I got back to Washington, D.C., and it was a meeting on the southeast side. It was sort of like an Alano club, and there seemed like thousands of black people in AA out there. Many of them sober longer than me, which pissed me off, you know? But I got involved, and I�there's a lady in my home group that a lot of people here know, and she always says meeting makers make it. And I went to meetings. I wentto meetings maybe for all the wrong reasons, but I wenttomeetings. No matter what, I wento meetings, and as a result of going to meetings, I would like to say that the first five years of my sobriety was stellar, but as a result of going to meetings, the first 5 years of sobriete, I didn't drink. I didn t have a sponsor. I had only gotten up to about step 5, but I didn d drink. And by the time I got 5 years sober, I was crazy because I hated you, I hated me, I hated it, I hate them, didn't hate God yet, but I was crazy. And I knew that I would either have to get a sponsor or kill myself. Equally tragic decisions as far as I was concerned. I figured I'd go for the more temporary of the two. I'll get a sponsored now, I'll kill myself later if it doesn't work out. And that's when my God with his sense of humor sent me to Omaha, Nebraska which does not sound like AA Mecca but it was for me because when I walked into that meeting that I went to on a Tuesday night called the Fox Hall Group, what happened was I encountered the same thing I had encountered five years earlier. People smiling from ear to ear. Hi, how you doing? I need an influencer. We're about to start the meeting. Do you want to come for coffee? Okay. That was my experience. They were sober. I was sober. Now which do you prefer? You I wanted to have fun, but I didn't know what I needed to have structure in order for that to happen. These people had something going for them. They had the light in the eyes. They had this ease and comfort that I was looking for. And what I did was I asked a man there to sponsor me. Now, I had been to a lot of discussion meetings by this time, and I was of the opinion that the person who was helping was getting more help than the person who was actually getting the help. That's what I heard in a discussion meeting one time. You know, when we sponsor people, sometimes we benefit more than they do, you know. And so I was thinking that if I asked this guy to sponsor me, he would be so appreciative, you know, because the selection process had taken five years, you know what I mean? Come on. And I asked him and he made me say please. That pissed me off. But I thought, well, the thing was he kind of gave me a resentment. He made a meeting schedule. He circled meetings in the meeting schedule and he said, if you don't want to hide in Alcoholics Anonymous, you go to these meetings. Now it's five years old. You know, and I took his inventory that day. I took His inventory the next day. I took HIS inventory the day after. Now I'm going to tell you if you knew, if your taking somebody's inventory for three straight days, they're the same sex as you, get them for a sponsor. Because if they're going to spend that much time up in your head, at least they can clean some stuff up while they're up there. I asked him and he said yes, I said please and he gave me some rules and one of them was to attend his meeting dressed like this now I had worn ties throughout most of my Catholic school education, I'd worn ties in the military, I had wore ties when I was running the streets in New York, I wore a tie to a whorehouse and the deal was when he told me I had to wear a tie every Tuesday night you thought he'd have asked me to take another rib from my chest or something because I was every Tuesday night putting on this tag on these A.A. Nazis, I don't know what the heck is wrong with these people I get in the car and I go, I'm going to fire him I don' t need these big book thumping sons of guns making me do all this stuff I get down the stairs at the meeting and I shake a few hands and they go I'm gonna fire him, I'll fire, these people are crazy they just singing happy birthday and giving cakes to people and sponsorship who ever heard of this crap I'mma go to the meetings where everybody's pissed off where A. A. is supposed to be I'd sit down, and by the time they finished reading how it works, I was in love with everybody in the room. And over the years, I got to learn their stories and learn their names, and I fell in love avec Alcoholics Anonymous, and I learned how to be a structured and principled person in the program because my sponsor would not allow me to get away with anything. You know, and he put it to me. If I wanted to change my life, I was going to have to do something. It wasn't going to happen by osmosis. It wasn'T going to be a magical little fairy dust was going to fall on me during, you know, we were doing a tradition study and all of a sudden, bing, you know, Sterling Serene, you know, I mean, it wasn'T going to happen that way. I was going to have to work my butt off. I was going to have to be where I said I was going to be and do what I said I was going to do. He would force me to grow up. And it was sometimes when I thought this man had to be out of his mind because I would call him and tell him a problem and he would give me solution that, to me, did not sound like it was going to address this problem. I would call them up taking her inventory. You know, her inventory, which I thought I had the right to take. And I'd say, well, Reggie, this is what you're saying. This is what she means. And this is where I think I ought to do. And yada, yada. I think she's suffering from depression. That's what I think. I really do. I thinks that's what she's doing. Go mow the lawn. on it. And I go, is this the right? Is this Reggie? Did I hear you right? Go mow the lawn. I'd hang up the phone and I'd go, this man's crazy. I'd mow The Lawn. See, Reggie knew I had allergies. Fresh cut grass gives me allergies. And, I'd get so allergic that all I could do was take an aspirin and go lay down. I wouldn't fight. He taught me how to be a man in my own house by washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, saying good morning, please and thank you. Things that I would give common courtesies I would give to anybody out there but have forgotten how to do with the people that are really cared about because that's my nature. I take a lot of stuff for granted. I'm self-centered and what he was addressing was my self-centredness. He took me through the rest of the steps which was necessary in order for me to stay here or else I wouldn't have been around you all. I wouldn' t have felt like I was a part of. And I remember when we did the fifth, my fifth with him, when I did my fifth with Him I was very worried about some of the stuff that I had shared because a lot of that was in sobriety I had gotten rid of the drunk stuff with a priest but the sobriery stuff was the stuff I felt most ashamed of and I shared that with Him and that was on a Sunday and I had to work in the military still in the service. That Friday night I went to a meeting and my sponsor extended his hand to me. And that was the first time I can honestly say I felt completely welcomed in Alcoholics Anonymous. My stuff was out in the street and nobody made any judgments, particularly the one man that I was putting my trust in. And, that was turning point in how I lived my life in Alcoholic Anonymous I remember there were times on Tuesday night, my little girl, that little baby that I dropped was still with me. And she would say, Daddy, I want you to come play with me." Can you not go to the meeting tonight? Just stay home and play with me. And I would kiss her on the forehead and I would leave that house banging that steering wheel, pissed off because I knew that if I stayed and played with her, I'd lose whatever I was getting from here and I'd loose her as a result. So I left on those Tuesday nights because I needed to be in the place where I knew I could get it. Now, there were other meetings I attended. I was a meeting maker, but I knew on Tuesday nights sitting among those people that I had learned to love, I'd get it, and it's real necessary that I keep getting it because in order to give it away, I've got to have it, and I lose it. I don't know about y'all, but I wake up in the morning, it's gone, you know? I mean, an ATM machine into resentment, but I could be gone from here, you know. I ain't that far from Canada. Boom, I'm out of here, you know, so I need to keep getting it and I kept going and I keep going and you know as with sobriety life happens in sobriete life always happens in subriety I remember climbing the stairs one night one evening and asking my wife do you want to remain married to me and she said nope never ask a question you're not prepared for the answer so we ended up getting a divorce and I felt like I was humiliated. Humiliated. I felt like a complete failure. I was nine and a half years sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm supposed to be getting the AA brass ring. Now, I'm coming up on double-digit sobriety, Jack. I'm a holy man. And I've ended up with a divorce now, a failure as a husband and as a father. I was crushed. And my sponsor, the kind, loving man that he is, put his arm around me and said, you know, we're really blessed to have the only man ever to get a divorce in Alcoholic Anonymous See, these are not nice people you're dealing with. These are honest people you are dealing with, you know? And he was telling me the truth that that room was chock full of people who had gone through just as tough times. I mean they had lost family members. They had lost friends. They had come to grips with poverty the way they had never remembered it to be before. And they were still doing the deal, putting their phone number on a piece of paper, handing it to a newcomer, showing up at their service commitments, making the cake. You ever had a resentment you got to make the cake for the meeting? That's a tough cake to make, Jack. Even if it's only going to the grocery store and paying for it. It's just a tough deal. I had to go through all that and so did they. And they were sitting in them rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and they have continued to be an example to me. When I walk into my home group, I know some of the people in there are having a tough day. I know that. And there they are. And they're forcing the smile. and they're walking up to people who are new and they tell them this thing works. They ain't lying, it does because they're there standing right in front of them. You know, I can see the power of God going, happening in my home group when I know that there's stuff going on people are suffering and they still doing this deal living by these principles to the best of their ability. Man, that's invigorating. That's inspiring and it's humbling because when my problems are my problems They're my problems, you know, and I think they're most important. I got through that. Taking an inventory, I got Through That Divorce, and my God with a sense of humor sent me another relationship with a lovely woman that I'm still married to today. And the deal is I had to be the man that I was taught to be here in order to be that kind of husband that I am now. You know, I'm not too bad. The Al-Anons will report on me later, I know, but that's okay. I need a written copy. That's all. I just asked for a written copy. So we went through our deal. I mean, I've gone through disappointments in the military. I've gone through all of that. And what has happened is I've remained a grown-up. That little girl that I dropped several times and walked out on to go to meetings was still in my life. My sponsor would not allow me to be just a checkbook dad. My sponsor forced me to maintain contact with her and to be encouraging and to do all of the things I need to be over the phone. And on our high school graduation, I was there. On our grammar school graduation I was there. On our college graduation I was there and she's going to get married in about six weeks to this young man. I'm trying to change. I'm Trying to change and I'll be there. And the reason why is because of you, because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember when she was going through high school, she got her National Merit Scholarship in Washington, D.C., George Washington High School. Duke Ellington High School, not George Washington High School�it's in the Howard University area, George Washington area. And she got the chance to give a little valedictorian speech. And in front of all those people, she thanked her dad for his kindness and his encouragement. Now, y'all know me. I'm self-centered in the extreme. I'd lie as soon as look at you. I might even steal your wallet. And my daughter, in front of all those people, to include Eleanor Holmes Norton, the U.S. District Representative from the District of Columbia, in front Mary and Barry and all those other people, she thanked her father for his kindness and his encouragement. Now that's a testament to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're new in AlcoholicsAnonymous the things that you see these people walking around with don't belong to them. They belong to the collective people that have given them kindness that have worked them over in coffee shops until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. It belongs to everybody who made them fill out the pad from one end to the other made them sit down and read the book instead of talking about the book. You know, that's what all those things belong to and it belongs to a loving God that gave them that stuff even though they didn't deserve it. So when you think they're walking around here on an ego trip, the reality is that Alcoholics Anonymous has given them everything that has gotten their shoulders square and they're keeping them standing up and upright and clear-eyed and happy, joyous, and free. That's what you're seeing. The rest of it is just us and that's who we are. And that's hopefully you'll relate to And the two of them together will take you to places that you will never believe possible. That was the experience for me. When that little girl graduated from college, she came down the stairs after getting an honors in psychology and women's studies, but I'm not bragging. She came down those stairs and she looked at me in the eyes and with those little brown eyes that she did when she was a little one and she said, Did I do good, Daddy? You know, I'm a part of her life as a direct result of you being a part OF mine. I have a wonderful wife, and she has two children, one of whom has given us four grandchildren. And I'm paw-paw to them. The oldest one is 13, the youngest one is 3, and they come in, they raid my refrigerator, they hug me, and they leave. And I love it. And I loved it, and I loved them. I had my wife's son was living with us. When I retired out of the Air Force, I came back to Omaha to live, and he was like 13, 14 years old. He liked rap music, liked rap, loved rap music. And I was not a big proponent of rap music at that time. I ended up having an accident. I broke my ankle, and I was home on disability for three months. And we did a three-month symposium on rap music�thank you very much. But because of you, I learned how to be patient and understanding. I learned to be responsible. I learned how to tell the truth, even when it made me uncomfortable, even when It frightened me. And as a result, that young man who's in his 20s now can still come to me and feels like he can talk to me. I'm glad. I'm proud. I'm thankful for that because this young man might not have been in my life had it not been for you. I've done a lot of different jobs. I'm about to switch jobs again in sobriety. I've don't a lot different jobs, And you taught me that I was supposed to kind of get there early and I was supposed to leave late, that I'm supposed to give an honest day's work for an honest days pay. And I've had certain amount of successes as a direct result of that. I've Had certain disappointments, but there are a lot of people in my job today that I don't like. And what is a Testament to you? They don't know it. They have no earthly idea. My sponsors heard me call them everything, but a child of God every once in a while, but they don't know it because you taught me how to take actions towards people I don't like You taught me how to be spiritual and be a principled person, day in and day out When I decided to make the grand announcement that I quit smoking, my sponsor told me, he said, don't tell anybody And I said, why not? He says, because I'm not going to allow you to be an asshole just because you quit smoking You're going to have to be a loving member of this program. You're gonna have to be a consistent dad, a sponsor You're gunna have to a good employee and if I see you getting squirrely I'm going to tell you to have a smoke because I'd rather see you have a smok than to have beer and you know after about 6 weeks of doing that I didn't care if anybody knew or not I haven't had a cigarette in a long long long time and that's a testament to what I've been shown what I'm not the guy I'm just going I'm one beggar telling you where the bread's at And I'm eating my butt off because I believe strongly in staying in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's safe there. There are a lot of nutcases in the Middle of Alcoholic Anonymous, and I need to talk to them and share them and bore the living daylights out of them with my experience, strength, and hope because that's what's going to keep my butt in the seat. You know, the deal is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to you in Alcoholics Anonymous is if when you're in the room and somebody's talking and you're listening to room and you do this, you just got it. If you're ever in a room and somebody like me is talking and you did this, guess what? You're an alcoholic because only alcoholics do this when alcoholics are talking. Al-Anons do this. I love the comment between the difference between the programs is anybody can get in AA, but you've got to know somebody to get into Al-Anon. That is very, very true. I am grateful to both of those programs because my wife has a sponsor and I have a sponsor and they ain't each other. And we have a great life at Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm grateful for that. I'm telling you, if you're old at Alcoholic Anonymous, I know from time to time the fear kicks in and you stop growing and things get tough and you don't want to do this deal, if you ever have to chair another meeting when you're not feeling well, you think you'll scream and all of that. I know how that happens. I've had that happen to me. But I beg you, if you've got any kind of time in Alcoholics Anonymous, go find somebody that you can sit down with and get them to do this. Because that's where the real magic is in Alcoholic Anonymous. Look at somebody in the eye and they go, yeah, yeah. Be in there when they go what do I do? That's when the real magic of Alcoholics Anonymous happens. That's what has been given to us freely for the last 70 years takes hold, takes root and has no danger whatsoever of ever going away. If we remember that what we're supposed to do is one-to-one meet in groups, travel in pairs That kind of thing. We trust God, clean house, help others. Ain't no way any of the stuff that we worry about messing us up is going to mess us up because only Alcoholics Anonymous can only be destroyed from within Alcoholics Anonymous. And as long as we put God first and our own needs second, ain't no way it's going to happen. Ain't a way it'm going to have them because there's going to be hundreds of people coming in the door with problems. Some of them we can help with, some of them maybe we can't. What we're supposed to do is share our experience, strength and hope as enthusiastically and as consistently as we possibly can. Because it's important. It's valuable. It''s wonderful. It's an expression of God's love for us. And I don't know of anything that is as close to divinity as love is. Because it''s limitless. It knows no respecter of persons. It'''s everywhere. It '''s all the time. It.'''s perfect. and we have tapped into love, hope and tolerance here and we need to practice it because that's the thing that turns the head. That's the things that draws them in that's what carries our message that is the ship we put our whole deal on and that's responsibility of me because I've been around here a little while and seen how it's supposed to be done I would recommend strongly that you find some crusty old timer and go on a 12 step call Ain't nothing like a rip-roaring, rim-snucking 12-step call. I just love them, boy, when you got the house and you got the kids and you've got him and they ain't doing nothing and I don't want to go to no meeting and y'all can take that book and shove it. I like that because when I walk out of there I'm grateful. I'm thankful as hell. I'm faithful for what God has given me that I didn't deserve. I'm grateful that y'all put up with me I'm thankful that Alcoholics Anonymous is big enough to allow me to hang out in it I'm Grateful that God is magnanimous enough to give me the gifts that he's given me because I do not deserve them I'm grateful that he has given me friends and family I'm grateful that he is giving me challenges failures and successes I'm gratful that he has givin me life and I didn't get on the planet that way y'al done changed me without my permission you know and I thank you for it. I'll close with a story a guy was trying to paint his house he had a two year old hip in him he always has a two, you know two year olds are never any hip, if you have any two year olds in your life they're not, they're no hip so he found a picture of all the continents the oceans and everything like that, tore it up into pieces said go in the room put this puzzle together thinking that he'd have some time three or four minutes the little child comes out, finished. What? How did you do it? Wait a minute. There's some places I'm not sure where it was supposed to go. How did You do that? There was a man on the other side. Put the man together the world comes together. I came in Alcoholics Anonymous with a lot of problems, issues, difficulties, deals. I had a lot of stuff going on in his head. And y'all told me that yeah well that's very compelling Sterling but let's set all that for a side. Let's give you a God that loves you unconditionally. Let us provide you with a place where you can practice trying to live one day at a time with spiritual principles on a regular basis and not get laughed at. Let's give you steps, traditions, concepts. Let's give you some things to do. And armed with that, let's see Dan if you can go out and tackle those problems. Now I defy anybody to try it the way I've tried it. If you can, as it's been quoted in the book in Dr. Bob's Nightmare, If you can bring to it any of the enthusiasm you have for destroying your life, you will be amazed at the results that will take place. And if they don't, call me up and call me a liar. I'm grateful to be here in Sober. Thank you. Thanks for listening.