Humorous Storyteller – the Phenomenon of Craving – Karl M.

Good evening. My name's Carl. I'm an alcoholic. Good to meet you, Carl. I'd like to thank David. Where'd you go, David? There you are. I'd also like to think Bush for picking me up at the airport, and it's true. The plane was an hour late. You wouldn't believe this. In Dallas, we get onto the little puddle jumper plane to get out to Midland-Odessa, and the plane goes out on the runway, and they stop. And they say, we've got to change pilots. The pilot gets up out of his seat, gets shuttled out of there, and we sit there for 45 minutes waiting for another pilot. And I was telling Sue about that, and she was going, what was the matter with the pilot? I go, I don't know. She goes, probably drunk. Probably drunk. That's probably what the problem was. I'm grateful to be here. I don' t know where I am, but I'm thankful to be her. You know, being an alcoholic, I should be comfortable not knowing where I'm at. But Butch said, you know, when I got off the plane, I said, boy, we're an hour late. Are we going to make it in time? He said, well, I don't know. My wife wouldn't let me have the Cadillac, so I have a 1942 pickup that goes 30 miles an hour. But he was lying. And he did. I mean, he was wheeling through back roads and taking corners. And it was really quite an experience. It is better sometimes to get picked up by the newest guy in the group that needs a commitment, right? Who doesn't even have his license, right? And they figure maybe you might have a good time picking a guy up at the airport. They forget about us and it's paralyzed in the car. Anyway, I'm going to rifle right into this. I didn't start drinking until I was 11. It's kind of late these days. I don't know about you, but in our neck of the woods, sometimes you might be at a meeting and a guy 12 years old is taking a one-year cake. Got one hell of a story going on already. I'm not kidding. Now, I didn't know this at the time, but I believe I was an alcoholic right from the gate once I started drinking. And the reason I believe that is what happened to me within 12 hours of taking my first drink. And what happened was my parents were out of town for the weekend. I stole a bottle of wine from my father. I locked myself into his study and I proceeded to drink. Just out of curiosity. Nothing else. Didn't have a giant spiritual void. Didn't even have a whole in my gut that I was trying to cover up. Just out of curiosity, I just locked myself in his study. Parents were out of town, proceeded to drink on this bottle of wine. And halfway through that first bottle of win, notice I said first bottle of wine, I got this feeling that was just amazing. Just amazing. I remember taking this big deep breath, just Now I didn't know I'd been short of breath for the first 11 years of my life. But man, I was breathing easier now. Wow, that was just an amazing feeling. And that's the last thing that I remember of that night was that feeling that I got. The next thing thatI remember is I came to my bedroom the next morning and there was puke everywhere, all over the walls, all of the floor, in the pillowcase. It was in my underwear, I mean everywhere. And I knew I was going to have to puke again. I made it into the bathroom, realized I puked all overthe bathroom floor. I slipped on the bathroom floor, hit my head on the toilet bowl going down. And as I crawled back up to get my head back in the toilet ball, I felt that wonderful, wonderful feeling thatI would feel many times later in my life and that is how nice and cold that porcelain feels on the side of your face. And I got my head back in that toilet bowl and I started to heave and I made it into the dry heave stage, you know where nothing's coming out but you're still whipping back and forth. And I'm doing that and all of a sudden I hear my own voice. My lips aren't moving. And I hear myself in my own head say this is alright. We're going to do this again. So right there within 12 hours of taking my first drink everything that makes me alcoholic had happened. Halfway through that first bottle of wine I got an abnormal, or the book calls it, Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous calls it an allergic reaction to alcohol. This strange thing they call the phenomenon of craving kicked in and I lost control over the amount that I drank. Now that phenomenon of craving thing baffled me my whole life. The best way I can describe that thing they called the phenomenon of craving in the big book is that when I drink booze, I seem to get thirstier the more I drink. It's just absolutely bizarre. It happens with nothing else but booze. Proof of that? I've got a reasonably large cup of water here. And I'm probably going to finish about half of that, maybe all of it in the next 45 minutes to an hour that I'm talking to you. But I can guarantee you that when I finish this cup of Water, I'm not going to go buy a case of Water to get me through the rest of the night. I'm Not Going To Do That. But with booze, I get thirstier the more I drink. But if that's the only thing that made me alcoholic is once I would drink that I would lose all control and that's the only thing that would happen to me, well then just say no would have been a very successful thing. Back in the early 80s Nancy Reagan would have said just say no. I would have and I imagine you would have gone and we would have just said no. Wouldn't come to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wouldn't get in the truck with Butch I know that to come out to a meeting here. You know I'd just be at home just saying no. David would have called me and said want to come up to Hobbs New Mexico? I would say no. no. I'd say, why not? Well, I'm just at home just saying no. What are you doing? That's what I would do. Maybe once a year we'd get together for a just-say-no convention, high-five each other a little bit and go back to successful lives. But that's not the truth because I got this other thing going on and it established itself right there with my head in the toilet bowl and they call this thing the mental obsession. Right? I seem to have this mind that will rationalize and justify my way back to the next drink at all costs. No matter what you say, no matter what I promise, I'm going to be drinking again. And it's, you know, my mind there at 11 years old puking my guts out, I mean, you Know, a little puky, and that's really not that big of a price. My mind was easily able to rationalize and justify that. But, you Now, this same alcoholic mind 15 years later when I made it to Alcoholics Anonymous was easily Able to Rationalize and Justify Handcuffs as a Minor and Temporary Inconvenience. See, I didn't know it until I made it into Alcoholics Anonymous that handcuffs are actually a symbol from society saying, we don't even trust you with your own hands. I didn' t know that. I had no idea. And so right there at 11 years old, when I drank, I would lose control and when I would not be drinking and paying a price for it, I had this mind that would mask it over one way or another and lie my way back into the next drink. And right there at 11, I started drinking as often as I could, as much as I could. And we lived in Seattle, and a typical morning in seventh grade for me would be I'd show up early for school, not for study hall or anything, but to meet my new friends at the edge of the school property. Loser's corner. Every school has got a loser's corner out there. We'd all hang out and try to act cool, smoke cigarettes. And there'd be about four or five of us, 11- and 12-year-olds, even away from the guys that were just smoking, and we would have a jar full of the parents' liquor cabinet mixture, right? We'd call it the playground cocktail. You know, some kid would have ripped off his dad's liquor cabinet the night night before. Now, none of us had been to bartending school yet. So there would be equal amounts of whiskey, vodka, creme de menthe, vermouth all in that same jar. There'd be green things floating around in that. And you can imagine about five of us trying to choke that down and we'd be choking it down. And of course it was the early 70s so we were smoking that commercial pot. Anybody remember that stuff? Four finger lids, $10 a bag, seeds and stems and the whole bit. And it was even before Ziploc days when it would just be a regular glad bag and as you'd roll it up there'd be about nine people spit on it. You're like, I'm like, oh, man. And we'd pack all those seeds and stems and leaves into a homemade pipe, maybe made out of plumbing fittings and a screen. Or if we were really desperate that morning, it would be a toilet paper roll with aluminum foil and pinholes in it. We'd pack All Those Seeds and Stems and Leaves in there. We'd hit that lighter, and the seeds and stem would be popping. We'd be burning holes in our clothes. And then we'd look at each other and go like, are we going to school today? I don't ever remember anybody saying, yeah, we're late for math. We better hurry up. I don'T remember that. Now, it's at this point that many people that speak in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous often interrupt themselves and say something like this. I don't mean to offend anybody, but drugs are part of my story. Now, I think it's a bizarre thing for alcoholics to apologize to other alcoholics for doing drugs while drinking or in between drunks. I understand apologizing to judges and police officers, but I don' t know why we apologize to each other. In fact, the most bizarre example I've ever seen of that, it was a number of years ago, I was in a speaker meeting much like this, And the speaker that night was just up there giving one of the most ugly, heinous, blow-by-blow drunkologues I've ever heard. And I've got to tell you, when I'm in a speaker meeting and the drunkologue gets ugly, the uglier it gets, the more excited I get. And that night, I think I was in the front row drooling at the guy going, Go! Go! go! go-go-go! And at one point in this ugly story, this guy said, You know, I had four DUIs, and the judge said if I get one more DUI, I'm going to prison for sure. And sure enough, two weeks later, I am on the freeway. I am in a blackout. I hit a family of four. They all wound up in the hospital and I wound up in prison. In prison, I sodomized men. I was sodomizing. Oh, I don't mean to offend anybody, but I did some drugs too. So anyway, by the time I was 14 there in Seattle, I was a neighborhood drunk and a neighborhood drug dealer. I forgot to mention, but my father was a neighbor Lutheran minister. I wish he would have had your reaction. My dad wasn't laughing about any of this. You know, my parents, very good people. Non-alcoholics, solid people in the community, living a good life. And it was no secret to them that I was withering away in front of their eyes. It was no Secret. And they always tried to help me, you know? But you see, the thing is, they always blame my problems on people, places, and things. They always thought if we can get him away from those damn group of kids he's hanging out with, things would get better. If we can get them out of that damn public school system, things would get better. They tried all of the above. But you see, I'm an alcoholic. My problems are not based upon people placing things. My problems Are based upon my physical and mental relationship with alcohol. See, if you change the people placing Things in somebody's life like mine, All that happens is that I'm loaded with different people In different places ruining different things. That's all that happens. See, they tried all Of the above, And when I was about 17 or 18, I barely scraped out of the public school System there in Seattle. My parents decided that Seattle was the problem. If we can get them out of Seattle, things will get better. So they sent me 300 miles away to Washington State University. I spent three years at that university on my parents' money. And in that three years, I got about 10 credits. At any given time, my grade point average matched my blood alcohol content about a .25. I'm not talking 2.5. I'd be proud of that. That would be a C average. I'm talking .25。 That's withdrawals, incompletes, Fs, and maybe an occasional D like in a bowling class or something. And by the time I was 22, this little story I'm about to tell you will let you know exactly where I stood with my family. Now, my father was Swedish. My mother is Icelandic. Therefore, I look like a polar bear. And I don't know whether this customer I'm About to Tell You About is Scandinavian or whether it's Lutheran. I don' t know. But at Christmas time, my parents wouldn't just send out Christmas cards to their friends and relatives. they would send out this big, long Christmas letter that said everything the family had been doing that year. And when I was about 22, I got a hold of one of these letters that had been sent out the previous Christmas, and as I read it, it let me know exactly where I stood with my family. First paragraph talked about what my parents had beendoing that year, and the second paragraph talkedabout what the Morris children had beendoing that year., and that paragraph went something like this. Our oldest daughter, Christina, just graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with a master's degree in marketing. She's now working for a large pharmaceutical company in the Midwest. West. She traveled to Europe this summer. She saw this, she saw that. Her hobbies are this, this and this. She volunteers here and does this and she's a very happy young woman with a very full life. We're very proud of her. Our oldest son Eric just graduated from Western Washington State University with a degree in advertising. He's now working for a large advertising firm in downtown Seattle. He loves to golf. He loves the travel. He is engaged to be married to this wonderful woman named Mary Lou who works for a very small company here in Seattle named Microsoft. That was a while ago. And they love to to golf together. They love to travel together. He's a very happy young man. We're very proud of him. Our youngest son, Carl, just turned 22. I was looking at that thing going. It's about this same time. You know, I don't know whether it was just one more time in jail. And you know, every time I'd wind up in jail for these little petty things and Mom would come down in my teenage years, maybe into my early 20s, and Mom Would Come Down, and she'd give me that look. How did it happen again? You know? And I would look at her, and I would want to say, I know it looks bad now. I can see it looks good. had now. But the other day when I started drinking, it seemed like a good idea. And you know, I couldn't, I didn't know what to say to her. You know, and it was one more time and my folks just said, you know what? We've had it. Every time we try to help you, you just spit in our face. And if you're going to live that way, go ahead. But not around here. Take that car in the driveway and do whatever you're gonna do and just go. And my cars, I'd had a lot of cars ever since I'd been 16 years old. And they always started out as perfectly good-to-use cars. But they would die of alcoholism. I don't know if yours did that, but mine did that. And this will tell you exactly why I drank. If I are physically sober on any given morning, meaning I just haven't had a drink yet that day and I happen to be coming out of wherever I happen to be living, whether it be my parents' basement or a park, depending on what part of my life we're talking about, and I haven't had a drinking, I'm in a little restless and discontent, just twitching a little bit and I walk up to a car that I've owned for a while and I see the dents and the broken windows and I say, damn, I deserve better than this! And I'd get in and I'd smell I'd smell the rancid smell of stale alcohol and I'd see the cigarette and hot box burns on the seats and I get madder by the second. And I turn that key and it's only hitting on one or two cylinders and I'm looking through a cracked windshield, rear view mirrors hanging off to the side and I am driving down the road. Some young guy blazes by in a nice car honking at me like I am in his way and I, damn it, what do I got to do? You are the head of this world! Just a little edgy here. And all I have to do is go drink for a couple of hours. And after I would drink for several hours, I would walk back up to that very same car. Now as it approached that car, I'd say to myself, well, that's 62 Dodge Coronet. That's a classic. And I'd get in and it wouldn't smell bad anymore. Then the most miraculous thing I ever experienced prior to coming to Alcoholics Anonymous would happen when I turned that key. Now after drinking for a couple of hours, I would turn that key and it's like... It's like a mechanic had been working on my car while I'd been drinking. Literally the same corners at 70 miles an hour. And I had no idea that the ability for alcohol to totally change my perception of my reality gave me three options, jails, insanity, death, or here. And I've got to tell you, at 11 years old, when I set that relationship up with alcohol, that physical and mental relationship with alcohol my choices from that day forward were jails and sanity, death or Alcoholics Anonymous. Five minutes after I walked through the doors of AlcoholicsAnonymous at 25 years old my choices were jails, insanity, death or Alcoholics Anonymous today at 15 years and 8 months clean and sober in AlcoholicsAnonymous that has not changed my choices are still jails insanity, deaf or Alcoholic Anonymous and if that's true which I truly believe is my choices today are jails insanity, depth or Alcoholice Anonymous then the best if I were to leave AlcoholicsAnenomous the best thing that could happen to me is I'd make it back so why would I leave in the first place okay So I pack up that car. I head south. I lived on the streets of Portland, Santa Cruz, streets of Hollywood. The words are demoralizing. That's the only words to use for that year and a half. Long story short, I'm back up in the Seattle area. A drug deal goes very, very badly. I join the Navy. I would love to tell you that I took a look at my life, saw what a taker I'd been, and thought maybe I ought to serve my country and get an education. That's not the truth. I was on the run from drug dealers and was under suspicion by the police, and I thought, you know what? Five years down on a nuclear submarine is a good place for me. And so what I'm about to tell you should scare the daylights out of you, but on my way into the Navy I passed a potential test that qualified me to become a nuclear engineer. That should scare they daylights of you that the Navy was even thinking maybe, possibly, or even remotely having any idea of putting a guy like me near anything nuclear. However, they made me take another test when I showed up at that base and I could not pass that particular test. It's called a urinalysis test is what it's called. And I was immediately kicked out of the nuclear engineering group and transferred to this group they called Nuclear Waste, is what they called us. And I'll never forget the day. Two weeks into boot camp, they're in the barracks, and a master-at-arms walks in, and he's got that list. And the guys that were on that list knew they were onthat list. I knew I was going to be on thatlist. And he came in,and he read off these names, and we were yanked out of that barracks and thrown into this van and taken to another area of the Great Lakes Naval Station. And we pull up in front of this one administrative building, The other four or five guys that were on that list were told to get out, and they were taken to this building. I was told to stay in the van. That driver took me to another building. He marched me right into the commanding office. The guy who ran the whole Great Lakes Naval Station. I was marched right into his office. Big plush office carpeting, big oak desk, pictures of naval vessels all around. I mean, he had so much gold on, you know, if you've got a hangover, it really is hurting you. And I'm standing there. I haven't had a drink in a couple of weeks. And I's standing there, he asked me my name. I tell him my name. He's got this speaker, this telephone on his desk with a speakerphone on it. Now he pushes a button on that and into that telephone he says, Walt, that's my father's name. My father had been a reservist chaplain for 40 years in the U.S. Navy. This was an old World War II buddy of my father'S. So he says into the telephone, I'm standing there shaking like this and he says in the telephone Walt, you know I didn't know I didn't know that your son was coming into the Navy, but I saw the way he spelled the last name. Saw he was from Seattle. I put two and two together. Figured he was your son. And out of respect for our long-term friendship, I wanted to call you and tell you what was going on. He's gone positive for cocaine on his very first year analysis. Technically, we should be discharging him for fraudulent enlistment. I thought out of disrespect for our friendship, I ought to ask you what do you feel we ought to do with him? I heard my father's voice come through that speakerphone, and it said, That is none of my concern. Click. Dial tone. tone. If I could have just slithered out of that office, I would have. I'll never forget that feeling. You know, I now know I've been embarrassing my family in the north end of Seattle for years and now I'm embarrassing my father on a national level. And I know what that tone of voice that he had there was just resignation. It was actually the resignation of I'm not going to fight alcohol anymore. I'm just, you know, that's what it was. He told me years later, that's just what it was. Just an absolute resignation. And they kept me in the Navy as a regular electrician. As I said, took away that nuclear status and supposedly I'm an electrician, I've got to tell you, they wouldn't even let me stand watch on a light switch. A year and a half later, I'm a lower rank than when I first came in. It's like this, you know, when I'd be out at sea, I'd been on this big gray ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I'm in a uniform. I'd look around, and the other guys are in uniform. I'd looked down, I'm wearing a uniform! We're on a gray ship in the center of the ocean. of the pacific ocean. There's no amount of denial that can mask the fact that I'm in the United States Navy. Right? However, that ship would pull into a port. I would leave that ship and take a drink. I would totally forget that I was in the Navy. And I would come back to where I had last seen the ship when the drunk was over. And it's, you know, sometimes that ship was no longer there. It's a very lonely feeling in a foreign country on this big pier, and you're thinking, you know, there was a destroyer here the other day. And how do you explain that to people? This one morning I was driving my car into the base. I'd been drinking all weekend. I was already in a lot of trouble with the Navy. I'm just hanging on by a thread. And I'd be drinking all week, and I got this bottle between my legs. And at every military base there is a guard shack. At every Navy base, there's a guard shack where a Marine will stand guard. And if you're going to bring your car onto the base, you have to slowly pull up. He'll check your military ID. He'll take the sticker on your car. If everything is in order, he will allow you on the base. This particular morning, I guess there was a depth perception problem going on. They still insist it was on my part. I'll never forget. I still remember seeing – I saw this Marine sticking his head out of the guard shack. I could see the whites of his eyes. And I looked down. I'm going like 35, 40 miles an hour. I tried to swerve. The car hit this median on the right-hand side. So I flipped up on its side and bam, right through that guard check. I can still see that Marine doing this big dive out of there. And it was one of those scenes, you know, that happens to us about every 90 days. Cars upside down, there's smoke, wheels are spinning. I'm half in the car, half out of the car. And now my thought process that particular morning was not, oh my God, what have I done? Is that Marine okay? That wasn't going through my mind. What was going through mi mind was, where's that bottle? Now, I'm not thinking I need to get to that bottle because I need to throw it in the bushes because it might be evidence to incriminate me. I'm thinking I needs to get to that model because of this. I knew that in my experience in these types of situations that is anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes that the authorities are going arrive on a situation like this and in my experiencing situations like this when the authorities arrived and see what kind of scene is going on and they figure out what's really going going on, it's going to be a while until I get a drink. I just know that. I know it's going to take me a while to get a bottle down me. Anyway, they were patching me up at the hospital. The Marine was okay. They were patched me up to the hospital. I had new charges on me. This was nothing new. But the most significant thing that happened that morning at that hospital is the Navy doctors prescribed medical science's best shot at the alcoholic, Antabuse. They They prescribed this Antabuse for me. They sent this prescription back to the ship's doctor, and every single morning at 7 a.m., 645, I would have to show up at sick bay. The corpsman would put this little white pill on my tongue and make me sit there for a half an hour. And over the next seven to ten days, I started to experience the most cunning, baffling, and powerful side of this disease called alcoholism, and that is that there I was as the days ticked by and I'm on this Antibuse and supposedly can't drink. I think I had developed a mental obsession and a spiritual malady so severe that no amount of discipline from the military was going to overcome that. No amount of well-meaning love from anybody that may have still cared about me was goingto change that. No amountof anythingwas going to change what was happening with me except for,and I didn't know it at the time, except for what was available for me here in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'll never forget those first few days on Antabuse. I just remember counting the days, just, it's been about four days, and I'm on Anabuse. Now it's Now it's been about eight days, six hours, and 15 minutes. And I'm on interviews. I started to look around that ship and the other men, they're talking behind my back. All 300 of them. Have you ever felt that way in AA? The only difference is that in AA, we are talking behind your back. Only with love and tolerance in New Mexico, I'm sure though. After about 10 days of this, I just snapped. I went AWOL from my ship. I locked myself in a little hotel room in downtown San Diego. Got a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. I sat on the edge of this little bed and put the bottle of vodka and the shot glass on this rickety little end table, and I stared at it, and I remembered as I was staring at the bottle of vodka, I remembered that the Navy doctors had given me a warning when they prescribed the antabuse for me. They had told me, son, if you drink on top of antabuses, you're going to get one of two reactions. One reaction is you will get violently ill. The other reaction is you might die. I remember sitting on the edge of that bed looking at a bottle of vodka thinking, hmm, well, wonder which reaction I'm going to get. Took one shot and nothing happened. Authority had lied to me again as far as I was concerned. I waited about two minutes just to make sure and I took another shot. All of a sudden I felt tingly in the face so I looked in this cracked little mirror that was in this hotel room and I was like bright red, blotchy and purple in places. Hmm. Took another shot. All of a sudden, I could feel my heart going boom, boom, boom. Looked at my shirt. I was drenched in sweat. And all of a second, I was like hyperventilating. We're doing all right so far. This is all right. I've got to tell you, any of you that are laughing, very sick. Very, very, sick if you think that's funny. Take another shot boom, up it came my late sponsor Eddie C God rest his soul he used to call this next thing that happened to me projectile regurgitation just straight up and out thank God I was in the type of hotel room where the toilet's in the same room as the bed now this is a different type of puking than I've been used to you see one of the tools for living that I've gotten through the 15 years that I was drinking and using is what I like to call socially throwing up you can be anywhere or you can be at your grandmother's birthday party if necessary. You can be At Your Job if you happen to have one. You can Be Driving. You can BE At The Park. You can B E At A Bar, whatever. And you've got a little buzz ongoing, you get that little sour taste in the back of your throat. Maybe a little bit comes up. That's the warning. We all know what the warning is. You kind of go, and then you find a place to puke. You know, if there's a bathroom, you use it. If you're driving, you just got to get the window down. If all you got is your friend's shoe, all right, that's what we got. But you get that warning. But here on this Antabuse, no warning. Just, whoo! Boom. But I found the magic of drinking on top of Antabuses is that if you don't die and hang in there, you've got to get those two things going on at the same time. Don't die, hang in There. And with me, if I kept drinking and kept puking and kept drinking for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, enough of the Antabusing would kick out of my system and I would quit throwing up and I'd just be left with red face, hyperventilating and sweating. And I already told her, I'm alright with that. I'll tell you, about a year later I'm a few months sober in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm sitting in a meeting and they're talking about turning to lower companions now I'm not saying anything at a meeting I'm just sitting there I'm too scared to raise my hand and I knew I really didn't have anything to say because for months I didn't even know what I was doing here but they were talking about turning to low companions so after at the coffee shop You know, there's some guys sitting around and they were discussing the meeting and I kind of chime in and I go, you know, I really identified at that meeting with that turning to lower companions thing. And they go, oh yeah? How's that? And I said, well, you know I used to lock myself in this plaza hotel in downtown San Diego and I'd be in the same room every time I'd do that. Room number 10. You know and I would be AWOL from my ship and I was locked down there for a few days trying to get enough interviews out of my system to go on a drunk. And in room number 10, I'd be there for about two hours late at night, you know, barking and puking and barking and puke and down and more. Over in room no. 9, there was this pregnant hooker. And while I'm barking and puping, she has sailors coming and going and coming and doing and coming all night long. And over in room No. 11 on the other side, there was a nickel-and-dime crack dealer. And guys were coming and gong and coming. And I'm in room nr. 10 just barking and peaking and barking. Really quite a scene there on that floor. But I told him, you know, and after, you know, late at night when I get enough interviews out of my system, I get a drunk going and when they had enough of what they were doing, we'd all get together and party. And so I was telling him, I guess I was turning to lower companions. Now, they never let you get away with a dang thing here in Alcoholics' Notice because one of the guys at that coffee table turned to me and said, and you were AWOL from your ship when he did that? I said, well, yeah. He said, Well, then they were not your lower companion. You were their lower companion because at least they could could show up to work. It's like, man, man oh man. I drank on top of interviews for the last seven months of my drinking. My second to my last drunk, I was left for dead in a little town called National City, just south of San Diego, it's right where the Navy base is and three guys, I Was just in a blackout and was wandering the streets and three Three guys decided they needed my military ID, and they opened up my face for me and left me in a pool of blood. I remember laying in that motel parking lot in that pool of mud, and I didn't even know how bad it was, but I just remembered that I couldn't move, and there was this warm fluid just running all down, all over me. I remember hearing a siren in the background, and for the first time in my life thinking, hoping that siren was from me. That morning they had to do reconstructive surgery on my face and a plastic surgery afterwards to reset my jaw, put my face back in a spot and stitches all the way through here and then they had to do plastic surgery after that. Here's an example of my alcoholic mind. Five days later I'm being let out of the hospital. My jaw is wired shut. I'm fully medically detoxed. IVs, the whole bit. I'm not craving a drink. There's no physical craving. I don't need a drink but I'm left with the alcoholic mind and as I'm being helped down the stairs by a guy from my ship and I'm in a world of trouble with my ship by now and as i'm being held walked down the the stairs I turn to the guy that's helping me down and I say to him if there's any time I need to drink it's now I could not differentiate the true from the false I couldnot connect the fact that I was in the there in the hospital having my whole face reconstructed as a result of drinking it was them If those guys wouldn't have been there that night, if they wouldn't Have done that to me, you know, it's just baffling the way this mind of mine is able to rationalize and justify the truth. My last night of drinking, I'm being let out of the San Diego jail in handcuffs and I was standing on the quarter deck after being in jail the night before and the shore patrol is having me at the, standing to me at The Quarter Deck and they won't allow me on the ship. The officer of the deck that morning says, wrong answer, he's not coming aboard this ship, orders have been processed on this guy. 90 days in the brig, bad conduct discharge. Or, and then he got this disgusted look on his face. Or, he said, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, we cannot discharge him for alcohol-related offenses without offering him treatment first. Now, the significant thing going on there is that it wasn't like I had a moment of clarity and thought, you know what, today's a good day to get sober. Didn't even think, I'll go get sober to get them happy. Because it wasn'T my choice. If any of you remember being in handcuffs, It's not your choice as to where you're going. I don't ever remember being there in handcuffs and authority figures standing around. I've never remembered them turning to me and saying, what would you like to do? You're going where they say. I was taken up to a treatment center and put into this treatment center. The doors were locked behind me before the handcuffs were taken off. And I'm in this treatment centre and everybody that shows up, it was up at the Miramar, Miramar is where that top gun pilot school is. Our little section was called Top Drunk, is what they called us. And, you know, I'm just sitting there shuffling around and they're asking questions and giving me anti-convulsant medications, I guess. I don't know. And everybody that showed up in the same week, we're going to go do this 45-day thing together, right? And they had us in these group sessions, I think. And there was an assistant facilitator looking out for us for the first few days in case one of us threw a seizure, then somebody would call somebody, I guess. And we're just sitting there and nobody's saying nothing. We're all looking down at the floor and nobody is saying anything. But this one guy, his name was Paco, he was from some other base somewhere. He raised his hand. And he says, I hear I'm supposed to be rigorously honest with you guys. I want you guys to know that Paco is not my real name. Paco's just a street name I've had ever since I've been a young kid. My real name is Randy. I want to do this staying sober thing. I want to be honest with you guys. Will you guys call me Randy from now on? We all kind of look up from the floor just enough time to say, Great, nice to meet you, Randy. You know, none of us were too excited about Randy's honesty. But this assistant facilitator who was looking out for us got really excited and said, Oh my God, this is the first breakthrough of any honesty of any of you SOBs. Later that afternoon, Randy was paraded in front of us. They slapped a gold name tag on him that said Randy. And then we were all informed that whenever staff was not around, Randy's in charge. We loved this guy. On about the seventh day in this place, they took us all to our first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. At least it was my first meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous I don't... You know, I'd never... As far as I know, I had never been to a meeting of Alcoholice Anonymous I had no prior opinion as to what AlcoholicsAnonymous was or was not. All I know is we were in there about a week, about seven days they said 6 p.m. parking lot civilian clothes and we're out there about five white vans pull up names are read off We're thrown into various vans, and boom, out in town we go. Next thing I remember, I'm sitting in a room like this, and there's a podium up there, and people are talking from this podium. People are reading it at first. Then some people get up. I didn't know there were different types of meetings. I now look back. This must have been a participation meeting because a bunch of people got up and talked for a short period of time and got down. I only remember a couple of things that night. The first thing that I remember of that night was that I was sitting there and as they did the reading and as those various people talked for a few minutes each I got this feeling deep in my gut of oh my God they know they know now I don't know what it was that you knew that I thought I knew but I knew that you new and I now know what it was there had been something that had been killing me for years now it wasn't one of those deep dark ugly secrets that we all come into Alcoholics Anonymous with you know that secret secret. You know those secrets. We all come to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know that thing that happened in the middle of that night where you know that just being in the same room fundamentally changed you as a human being? We all came to Alcoholic Anonymous with that stuff. We do. But there's something else that just killed me inside for years, and that is that whenever authority would be yelling at me about my drinking, if I could have said this to them, I would have. They'd be yelling at my drinking and I would say, yeah, I know, I know, it looks bad. Yes, yes, I know. I see that burning car over there. I know it looks bad. But if I could have verbalized this to them, I would have. I would have said, but if you knew how I felt when I wasn't drinking, you wouldn't be asking me why I drink. And for the first time in my life, I heard people talking about that in that very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard people talking about the insanity of the alcoholic with no alcohol or drugs in their system that restlessness, irritability and discontentment that frustration that we feel that big lead ball in the bottom of our belly and we got no alcohol in our system and the only relief is to take another drink I had never heard that in the bars I'd never heard dat on the streets never heard det anywhere and I remember hearing dat on one level or another next thing I remember is that this one guy got called out and he walked all the way to the front He said one sentence, and he sat down. I have never heard a better explanation of the alcoholic mind than that night, my very first meeting. This guy got called on. He walked all the way to the front, introduced himself, said one sentance. He said, My name's Jack. I'm an alcoholic. My mind would have killed my body a long time ago, except it needed it for transportation. Sat right down. It's like, whoa. Whoa. Next night, I went to another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Actually, I don't know whether it was an AA meeting or not. It was some 12-step meeting. I don' t remember. But all I know is I got very confused at that meeting because everybody at that meeti ng was talking about something called a drug of choice. I'd never heard that term before and people were up there saying, Well, my drug of choic e is. And somebody else would say, My drug of ch oice is. And the more they said that, the more confused I got. God, I was sitting in the back thinking, was I supposed to be choosing out there? Do they want me to choose now? What are they talking about? So I'm back at the treatment center the next morning and I asked the counselor that had been assigned to us. Her name was Mary Weber, a wonderful woman, non-alcoholic, very devoted to working with alcoholics. In my life, you've got to regard her as a saint because, you know, a non-alkoholic devoted to working without alcoholics? You know, we all got to work with each other because we have to or we die. She was doing it just out of some sort of love or devotion. I don't know. But I say to Mary, last night in the meeting they were talking about something called a drug of choice. What on earth do they mean by that? Now Mary turns to me and she said, let's play a game. Now I'm still on these anti-convulsant medications. I'm seeing things out the side of my eyes that when I turn they're not there. And I'm like, and she wants to play a gang. So I try to focus my eyes and I go, okay. She says, imagine this Carl, imagine I walk into this room and I had a tray. And on that tray I had an ounce of Jack Daniels, an ounce of cocaine and an ounce of tie sticks, which one would you take? I started to drool immediately. I take them all! She starts to snap her fingers, settle down, settle down. My eyes came back into focus and she looks at me and she says, you can only have one. Which one would you take?" And I thought for a second, I said, well, if I can only had one, I guess I'd take the ounce of cocaine. She said, Well then maybe cocaine is your drug of choice. Do you understand? stand? I said, no. She said, what's the problem? I said, well, Mary, the only reason I take the ounce of cocaine over the other two is, well I take that ounce of cocaine, I get the hell out of here and I sell two eight balls. Now I have enough money to buy a quarter pounder tie six in the case of Jack Daniels. That's what I would do. Now the only reason I bring that up is to talk about a very important aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that And that is sobriety dates. Very, very important, sobriery dates are. And if you're new, no matter what you may think at this point your drug of choice is, there's only one sobrietry date. If you work with lots of new people, as I'm sure a lot of you do, I'm certain you run across this type of scenario. Some new guy around my home group, walk up to him and say hi to him, and I say, hey, good to see you, how long have you got? Every once in a while, I get this type of response. Well, my drinking sobriety date is January 4th. My pot clean date is May 3rd. I blew my methamphetamine date last night. I was in Walmart all night long. Trying to juggle three different... One sobriery day. Funniest thing I ever heard about sobrietry day. Same scenario. Saw this guy around my home group for a while. Went up to him and said, Hey, good to see you. How long have you got? And he said, Well, I had 90 days, but I drank last night, so now I have 89 days. I didn't quite know what to say to him. I thought, hmm. I think that falls in the same category as being down in Mexico looking at the tequila going, would that affect my U.S. sobriety date? Yes, if your new sobrietry dates are international. So anyway, they're going to let us out after 45 days. They're goingto let us all out on this Friday. and on Wednesday they gathered all 35 of us that were going to get out and they put us in this room and they brought in the biggest, meanest counselor from this place. He was a Marine. He came in in his full dress uniform. I've got to tell you a Marine in his full dress unicorn very impressive very intimidating walked up in front of the room grabbed this podium right in front and stared us all down and we're all sitting there and he just panned the room and stared at every single one of us for what seemed like an eternity. And after what seemed like forever, he spoke. He says, you 35 have been through one of the finest treatment centers in the world for alcoholism and drug addiction. This treatment center has been here for many, many years. And the statistics for this treatment center are that out of you 35, only one of you will stay continuously sober from this day forward. Many of you who die, go insane, wind up in prison. That's a nice little exit pep talk they're giving us. Many of you will relapse once, twice, maybe 20 times and then make it back into long-term sobriety. But according to our statistics over the years, only one of you will stay continuously sober from this day forward. Man, when he said that, if you thought it was quiet in that room beforehand, it was dead silent now. You could hear a pin drop. The only thing you could hear was me going, shit. because I knew if only one of us was going to make it, it wasn't going to be me. We all knew who it was going to be. It was going to be Randy over here. Guaranteed by now he's the poster boy of the treatment center. Man. So on this Friday afternoon they're letting us all out and there was about four or five of us that had been arrested the night before we were thrown in there in vehicles so our cars were in an impound lot so we had to stand there and wait for our cars to be brought out of impound and we're standing on the front doorstep to this treatment center sea bags at our feet and various other guys The guys were picked up by their commands and by their ship and other bases, and they were sent in various ways back across the country to where they're supposed to be. We were standing there, and one of the guys points to the other edge of the parking lot. There's a car slowly coming across the parking lots. He goes, hey, is that Randy in that car? We look, yeah, sure enough, that's Randy. One of the other guys points again. He goes... He's drinking already! Sure enough, he's got himself a half a pint. He's just finishing it off. He rolls right in front of the front of treatment center, throws the empty right at our feet, CRASH! We look up, he gives us all the finger and driving right off. I guess his name was Paco again. I don't know. Next thing that I remember of that day is I show up at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, North Shore Lotto Club, Pacific Beach, Friday night gong show meeting. Remember that TV show, The Gong Show? Well, they apparently thought it was a good idea to run an AA meeting like that. And what they do is they have a table up in front, podium up here. Anybody they want, raise their hand. They've got to come to the front, and they're facing this way, and four of, I guess, the people that know what's going on are sitting at this table. And they've got a mallet and a gong there. If you're talking about Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're talkng about the big book or something that's legitimate, they sit there, just no problem. But if you start sniveling, you start talking about something these guys don't think is okay, they start whispering. If you still so self-obsessed that you don't notice them whispering, out comes a mallette. BONG! Man, that's the best way to stop new people from raising their hand at meetings I've ever seen. I've just never seen anything better. I never raised my hand at them. I wasn't going up there. Anyway, I'm sitting there that first night fresh out of the treatment center, maybe six hours out of that treatment center. I'm sit in the back of that meeting. Truth about my life is I'm 45 days without a drink. I'm in the best physical condition I've been in in years. And I got a lot of information. There had been no spiritual awakening, spiritual experience, or even a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. It had not happened in that treatment center. That treatment center was a very good treatment center as far as treatment centers go for one reason, one reason only. They exposed us to Alcoholics Anonymous. They were taking us out to meetings of AlcoholicsAnonymous. However, because of certain logistics and liabilities that treatment centers have, I didn't know anything about what AlcoholicsAnalymous really was about because you know what? They pull up in the van five minutes before the meeting. We shuffle into the back. back. 30 seconds after the meeting is out, we are shuffled out. I never got to talk to you. I didn't know anything about what you guys did in between meetings. I didn't know anything about that. But they did expose us to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I show up at that 6 o'clock meeting. I'm sitting in the back. Whenever I left the Navy base for the last couple years of my drinking and the first few years of my sobriety, I would put on my other uniform. And that is I would stop by a gas station, get rid of other clothes that they wouldn't allow me to wear on the basin. I'd put on leather pants, black leather jacket, black tank top, black boots. I'd stand in front of this wall blow dryer and a gas shaker. Boom! Put a bunch of mousse in my hair, stand it all up. I wore long dangly earrings and sunglasses at night. A friend of mine told me at that point in my life I was suffering from what he calls IRS problems. That's imaginary rock star is what that is. So I'm sitting in the back of the meeting dressed like that. I don't even have a Harley or a guitar, right? So I mean, what's up? One guy that night, operating on his primary purpose, leaned over me and said, Hey, never seen you here before. What are you doing? I didn't think quick enough to lie to him because I promised you if I would have thought for a second, I would've lied to this guy. But I didnít. I just said, You know what? I don't know. I just got out of this Navy treatment center and you caught me. I donít know what Iím doing. This guyís eyes went BANG! Big smile went across his face and Iím wondering, What is he so excited about? Is he misinterpreting these leather pants? What area of town am I in here? Whatís going on? See, I didní know there were guys in AA that would lurk around the backs of AA meetings He's looking for new guys that don't know what they're doing and when they find one, they bounce on him. And this guy was fighting his friends off that night. He's mine! He's my guy! But there was something else going on in this guy's life that particular night that made him especially glad to meet me that particular day. This guy's girlfriend had left him the night before for one of his friends in his home group. So he's wondering what to do with his weekend. Homicide? Suicide? Get loaded or grab this newcomer. He's like all over me all weekend. We went to like 18 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous that weekend. This guy was just crazy over this woman, just crazy. I mean, just insane over this women. In between meetings, he'd throw him in the passenger side of his car and he'd start driving to the next meeting and he started yelling. He wouldn't even look at the road. He had like one of those AA radar cars that just made it to the next meeting, I guess, and he would start yelling at me. You've got to go to Means, you've got read the book, you've gotta get a sponsor. Damn her! Gotta go to means, you gotta read the books. Damn her. Now, I didn't know it, but I was getting a very early introduction to your typical AA relationship breakup is what I was getting. But I'm so glad that that guy that night who scooped me up was a guy in AA who had done the work of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had taken the steps of Alcoholic Anonymous and he knew that the solution to his pain was out of self, out of cell, out of sell. I am very, very glad that that guys that night was not locked in his bedroom at home under his covers like calling Keith. Keith, she left! Right? I'm still glad he's out there dragging my sorry ass around. See, I was just You know, he didn't know whether I would stay sober or not stay sober. It really didn't matter to him, I imagine. I was just a prop in his weekend for him not to do something really stupid. But you know what? By him dragging me to so many meetings that night, that weekend, all over that weekend. 18 meetings. I learned something really valuable about how we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous that I didn't known. Now like I said, that treatment center exposed me to AA but I didn' t know what AA was about at all. by going to so many meetings in the same area of town over that weekend I saw other people that were at multiple meetings over that weekend now I didn't see anybody else doing 18 meetings just me and that guy but I didn' t know you guys went to like more than one meeting a week or a month I didn''t have any idea that you guys might go to a meeting every day but I saw another people over that weekend that were out two or three meetings over the weekend and they were claiming they had some serious time in sobriety And what I learned about how we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when we're new, and even certainly like I do today, I'm going to correlate what I learn that weekend about how We Go to Meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous. I'm gonna compare it to a football game. Now a football team is out there on the field for one reason and one reason only, to win the game. And how do they win that game? They will huddle up, they will make a plan, and they will do one play. Then they will hUDDLE UP again, they will MAKE A NEW PLAN, and they WILL DO ONE PLAY. Well that's exactly what we do here in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And the game around here is, one day without a drink or a drug, you're a big winner. And how do we do that one day? We run in here and we huddle up. We go, remember, bodily, mentally different from our fellows. Break! We go out there and we try a little of this, try a lot of that, and we run right back in here, and we cuddle up and we go, Remember, bodily and mentally different for our fellows." And just before we break, some guy in the corner might go, Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. Before we break... I've been here for six months. I'm sober, but I'm broke and I'm bored. What do I do? Somebody like Butch will get up and say, I say, get a job, son. Break! And we go out there and we try a little of this, try a lot of that, and we run right back in here. So I get back to my ship after that weekend and the one other recovering alcoholic, now there's lots of other alcoholics on that ship, but there was one sober one at that time. His name was Bob W. He was waiting for me, man. He was just another one of those guys in AA that's just all excited about a new guy. And, I mean, he was just loving the idea. He had somebody to work with. And he started to drag me to meetings also. And he was always checking on me when I'd be down in my workstation, down in the electrical shop. And he'd come by and say, hey, how are you doing? You know, and he'd say, 4.30, right at Liberty, we're off to the meeting. Meet me at the quarterdeck. I mean there he'd be. Off to the meet-up. At the meeting we'd go. He wouldn't even allow me to even think about what I was going to do after we get off that ship. You know? He understood. stood. And it was also, he was just trying to work with me himself. He was trying to stay sober. He didn't know whether I was going to stay sober or not. And he kept on hounding me about this book, you know, for months. And I'd avoid it as best I could. I was one of those guys who would go to lots and lots of meetings. Meetings, meetings, coffee shop, meetings, meetings. Coffee shop, dance. Coffee Shop, meetings meetings. And you might find me locked in a hotel room at three in the morning. Oh my God, it's back. You know that sick feeling one inch behind your belly. But I'm an AA. I feel better when I'm at those meetings and somebody says something really clever or funny from the podium. But man, it creeps back in the middle of the night. And Bob would keep hounding me about this book and I would avoid it. Six, seven months Once sober, ship had to go out to sea for 21 days. And he said, Carl, we're going to meet right in the little battery shop, way in the aft end of the ship, every night at 630. Be there. First night I show up there and he had this book in his hand. It wasn't the fourth edition. Plopped it down on the table and he said look it, I've been hounding you up for a long time about reading this book. We've been to lots and lots of meetings. Have you read it? He's like well, yeah, there's like how it works. works, we antagonists, there's some doctor with some opinion about something. You could have cornered me at any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, six, seven months sober, cornered you and said, hey, what does it mean to be powerless over alcohol? Your life would become unmanageable. And you could have followed that up with, your life depends on your answer to this question. And it would have been true. And I would have stuttered and stammered and tried to make something up and I wouldn't have had any concept of allergy to the body, obsession of the mind, and the fact that because of the allergy to body I cannot drink successfully. Because of the mental obsession I cannot not drink successfully I'm in the ultimate catch-22 I can't drink successfully I cannot NOT drink successfully In which way do I turn? Powerless over alcohol because of these two conditions of my mind and body I would have had no concept of that I would've just stuttered and stammered and talked about the crazy things I did while drinking. And I wouldn't have understood that there at six or seven months sober with no alcohol in my system, sitting in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was dying of the disease of alcoholism. And what he did was he opened up the book and he said, we're going to start reading. And he would read and then when he got tired he'd hand it to me and I'd read. And then he would rea and I would read. And he started to share with me what his sponsor had shared with him. And he took me through and explained as best we could And it's so too bad these days that what I'm going to say, the next thing he did is unique. It's not unique, but it just doesn't happen that much anymore and it's too bad. When we got to a part of the book where it told us to do something, he would close the book and we would do it before we continued to read. And in that way, he tricked me in that 21 days of working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't even know I was working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous because if he would have said, we're now going to work the steps of Alcoholic Anonymous, I would have started to set up a series of lies for him as to how I'm going to lie about this and not work that and well, I'm thinking about step three now and you know what? I really am, you know, four-step, I've been struggling on that. He tricked me. And by the end of that 21 days when that shit pulled back into port, I had this list. I hated this list He was ecstatic about this list He just loved this list I looked at this list, and this list which we know is the amends list represented years and years of poverty and humiliation as far as I was concerned but he was just very excited about this list always referring to how are you doing with that list what happened as a result of him taking me through the steps is that I had the appendices in the back of the book under spiritual awakening I had a personality change sufficient to bring about out the recovery from alcoholism. I did not get, this may sound strange at first, I did not get what is promised in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't have a spiritual awakening, a fundamental rearrangement of my ideas and emotions. I could not get healing at the level of my soul which I needed to have until I did something else other than work the steps myself. And that was until I started to do for others what had been done done for me. That's when that level of healing at the level of my soul took place. That's what happened to me. And I learned in the most crazy, crazy way of how valuable it is for us as sober alcoholics to keep doing this work and to be there for each other no matter whether we think the other person is going to stay sober or not. And that we're the only ones that can. Doctors, psychiatrists, all of the things that society has to offer to help various people in a crisis situation situation, do not do it for us. We're the only ones that can do it. And this is how I learned that. Whenever my first sponsor and I, Bob, would show up in a foreign town or country when the ship would pull in, we would always go and share a hotel room just to get off the ship so we could get away from those barracks. I mean, they got 60 guys in a barrack stacked three high, right? We would want to get away From that for a day or so. We would share a hotel room and we'd go out and find the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in town. And we would He'll go find the AA-ers, hook up with them. And this particular time we were in Victoria, B.C. We were there in Victoria. We got in a hotel room. We went out and found the AA meetings. And Bob got a little tired right after the meeting, so he went back to the hotel room, and I stayed out with the AAers for a few hours later. We went off to coffee or just something to eat. I don't really remember. And I came back tothe hotel room a few hour later, and there's Bob. And he's got this other guy from our ship named Blair, and he'sgot Blair propped up on the bed with pillows. Now, Blair is like so drunk. He's in a blackout. He's fallen over, but Bob's got him propped up. I think he even had a chair wedged up against Blair to keep him sitting up. And there's Bob reading the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous to Blair. Now I look at this scene and I think, Bob, you are really desperate tonight to stay sober. Maybe you should have stayed out with some of the A-ers. And I just didn't even bother. I just kind of look atthis situation. Blair is falling over and Bob's reading thebig book to him. And I'm thinking, I go over to my side of the room. I roll over, turn the light out, and go to bed. A few weeks later, shift's back in San Diego. It's 3 a.m. I'm in my bunk. All of a sudden, bam, bam. Call. Wake up. It's Bob. I pull the curtain back and there he is. He goes, come on. We're going to get Blair. He's on the Coronado Bridge. Come on. Well, apparently what had happened was earlier that night, Blair had had it up to here with that ultimate catch 22. Can't drink successfully. Cannot not drink successfully, and he decided, I've had it. Now, if you don't know, the Coronato Bridge in San Diego was a very popular suicide spot. Very big bridge. It's very popular for suicide. In fact, it's so popular that at the top of the bridge they have a suicide hotline phone. Just in case you got a little change of mind, right? Apparently Blair was standing up there, had a little changed of mind. He picked up the suicide hot line phone. And apparently this is what had been going on for the last hour before Bob was called. Blair was talking to the people on the suicide Hotline phone or wasn't talking and this is all he was saying. I will only talk to Bob W. Now these suicide hotline phone people are saying, well who in the hell is Bob W? Blair is saying, it's anonymous. Anyway, apparently one of those people on the suicide hot line phone somehow got out of him what ship he was from. So they call down to the quarter deck of our ship, it's two in the morning. The guy on duty that night, They say, hey, is there a Bob W. on that ship? Now my first sponsor, Bob, did not guard his own anonymity at the level of that ship. He always wanted to be available to be of service at any time. He did not Guard his anonymity. He'd Guard yours, but he didn't Guard his. So, of course, the guy on duty that night said, yeah, yeah. Bob W., Mr. 12 Steps, sure we know who he is. They ran down to get him. Then Bob comes in my bunk. Bam, bam, bam. Carl, come on. The boy was on the Coronado Bridge. We're going to get them. And I'm like, oh, okay. So we hop in Bob's car. He starts driving. He says, grab the big book out of the glove box. Read Working With Others. Let's bone up on it on the way down there. So I'm going, all right. Get the flashlight out. And it says, see your man alone if possible. He said, he's alone up there, all Right? We'll get him up there. He says. Oh, forget it. We're going to wing it. We arrive down there at the bottom of the Coronado Bridge. Everything that San Diego County has available for a situation is there. Paramedics. Fire department. On-duty psychiatrists. They're all there. Blair isn't budging. Bob and I walk up on this scene. Fire chief turns over and says, Is one of you Bob W.? Bob goes, Yeah, that's me. He goes, Well, we've been at it for an hour, hour and a half. He ain't budgin'. I don't know what you're going to do, but here. Hands him the speakerphone. Bob says in there, Blair? And you can hear Blair's voiceover go, Bob, is that you? Bob says, Yes, Blair, it's me, and I'll get the hell down from that bridge. And you hear Blair's voice. Okay. One alcoholic can affect another alcoholic like nobody else can. What I learned that night is, no matter whether I feel like going to a meeting, whether I feels like answering that phone, whether I feeling like being active in Alcoholics Anonymous or not, it is vitally important that I do my part because we can only help each other. I've reached this point in my sobriety before where like, oh man, is this all there is? I'm just at another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I forget how valuable it is that my body is in that chair. So that the new person who might not even be saying a word, who saw me there the other day, sees me there again. Two years sober, I got an honorable discharge out of the Navy. First thing I ever accomplished, I even got kicked out of Cub Scouts. First thing I ever accomplished in my whole life as a result of loving God, programming with Alcoholics Anonymous, and you guys teaching me how to show up every day in the same place in a uniform. I didn't know this. It's really all I had to do. At least I needed to start there. And honorable discharge out of the Navy. One of those things on that amends list was that my parents had paid for a bachelor's degree back when I was like 17 to 20, and I had squandered that. So I either had to pay them back all that money or I had to go get what they had paid for. So, got out of the Navy, packed up, you know, through having to make financial amends in the first two years of my sobriety, Navy paycheck every month, still push-starting the same car that I had when I got sober. Little 68 Volkswagen hole in the floorboard, had to push-start the thing. Used to call it my Rolls-Canardly. It would roll down one hill and canardly make it up the next, you now? Two years sober, I still got this Volkswagen, I'm push-standing it, hole in the floorboard. I got everything I own, my sea bag in there and I'm puttering on up. I've signed up for this school up in the eastern San Gabriel Valley part of Los Angeles and puttered on up and I called AA's central office and said where is there a noon meeting and I pulled into Covina. Just only meant to pull into Coivina. This was 13 years ago. Only meant to pulling for a noon meet. I'm still there 13 years later. The reason is that I met a man there at that very first noon meeting. A guy named Eddie Cochran. Wonderful wonderful man. He was pouring coffee at a noon meeting. He was 10 years sober when I was born. And, you know, I met him and he saw that he hadn't seen me at that meeting before and he came up and he poured a cup of coffee for me and said, just like that guy on that first night, hey, haven't seen you here before. What's up? This is what I tried to tell him. I said, you know, thank you very much for welcoming me. I'm two years sober, been to lots of meetings, worked the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, had some wonderful experiences in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I am on the the right track very nice to meet you but you know what i need to get a life i'm going to be going to school i'm gonna be going to work i gotta you know i have no other way to support myself i'm to be getting this job and i got to go to school I got to make amends here and you know what I'm very happy to find out where this meeting hall is so I know where there's a meeting when I need one but you won't see me very much because I'm gonna to be busy getting a life and he just chuckled in the way that he did he just chuckled and he said son that's wonderful school and work Great things for a young guy recovering from alcoholism. Great thing for anybody. But that's what we do in between meetings, son. He was giving me the secret to long-term sobriety, and that is that I need to live in Alcoholics Anonymous and visit the world. So many of my friends over the years have tried to live out there in the world and visit AlcoholicsAnonymous when convenient, and they're not here anymore. That's been the secret. You know, and the very first thing he told me to do is I needed to put newcomers in that car. And I was saying, oh, come on. I got a hole in the floorboard, Eddie. One of them's going to fall through the floorboards. He said, look, you seem to be really worried about the condition of your life and how you've got nothing going on, so put some newcomers into your car and your life will get better. Now, I didn't see how my life was going to get better by doing this, but you know, he was 10 years sober when I was born. I'll try it. Very first night I put new guys in that care, my life got better. The new guys could first start my car. He didn't say how much better. He just said better. I still remember struggling with the idea of God, right? Because I came in and I misperceived that, you know what? I kept on thinking, you now, the more I tried to figure out what God was, the more confused I got. I'll never forget that, you know, I'd ask people in AA and they would have that perception and I'd ask another guy and he'd have that perception. You know, that's the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous is everybody has their own perception of a power greater than themselves. But I kept getting more and more confused and I called up my father one time and it finally dawned on me, why don't I ask my dad? Been a minister and a theologian his whole life. Maybe he can tell me who God is. A couple years sober and I call up my dad and I go, now he's still kind of, you know, iffy about whether I'm going to be staying sober or not. I go dad, I'm getting really confused about this God thing. You've been a minister and a theologian for 40 years. You've spent your whole life talking about God, seeking God, talking about Him. Please tell me. I'm confused. What's God? And he said, how long has it been since you had a drink? He said, it's been a couple of years. He said well then God is whatever got you to those people in Alcoholics Anonymous. For Christ's sake do what they say. Click. It's that simple. For me it's that simply. simple. I'm going to finish it with this little story, and that is a couple of years ago I was asked to go to Nogales, Arizona to talk at this camp out, and I carry this nationwide pager, and whenever I'm gonna be out of town, I always call my mom to tell her that I'm gonna be outta town, and if I think that maybe my pager might not work, that I especially let her know that, that you know what, if you try to page me while I'm out of town, it may not work in that area, even though it's a nationwide panger, and I thought if there's ever an area that's not gonna work, probably Nogalis, Arizona. So I call up my mom and tell her that, that I'm going to be in Nogales, Arizona and if she tries to page me, don't get worried if I don't call her back. And she said, Nogalis? That's wonderful! That's beautiful! Don and Leona live down there. You must visit them. You've got to go visit them. We haven't seen them in years. I had to say, you're right, I haven't see them in year. I don' t remember who you're talking about. Remind me. Who are they? I hadn't seen them since I was a little kid. Don was the best man at my parents wedding. They were lifelong friends of my parents and so I said, sure, sure. Sure, I'll give him a call. And Don said, hey, that would be great for you to come to visit. You know, do you like to golf? And I mean, that's the trigger for me. I'll golf anywhere with anybody at any time. I'm kind of like a golf whore. I'll just go anywhere. Right? I'm just obsessed with that game. So I say, sure, I'd love to golf with you, Don. So we show up and we start golfing. And we're walking along through the first couple of holes. And he's talking to me and he's asking me questions. And the more questions he asks, the more baffled I get. Because he's asked me questions like he knows a lot about my life. He's asking me very specific, pertinent questions about my life as if he knows. I look at him and I go, you know, he knew what school I graduated from. He knows what my degree was in. He knows which companies I've been with. He knows that I'm doing today with everything that is going on in my life today. And I go... Don, I'm confused. I haven't seen you since I was like nine years old. And yet you know all this about my wife. And I got to admit, I am embarrassed. I don't know much about your life. But I am confused. How do you know this about all my life? And he said, well, Carl, there's two reasons why I know a lot about your life. And the first one is before your father died back in 1996, he was always talking about what you were doing in your life." Now that was nice to hear, but my father never hid that, that he was very proud of what I was doing in Alcoholics Anonymous and the rest of my life. He never hid. That we established a great relationship as a result of AlcoholicsAnonymous. And I'm very, very glad I got to do that before he died because I'm convinced I would be half a man if I had neglected to reestablish my relationship with my father. The second thing that he said floored me. me. It did it for me. Couldn't even golf the rest of the day. He said, the second reason I always know what's going on in your life, Carl, is because every year I get the Christmas letter. I'm like, yes! I'm finally in that thing. Yes! Yes! I want to tell you that I'm very, very grateful to be here this weekend. You're going to have a great time listening to Keith and Sue over the weekend and the other speakers. I am sure it's going to be fantastic. Really, be good to each other over the week. God bless.