I Chose Not to Drink Every Morning and Drank Every Night – Bart R.

Good morning. My name is Bart and I am a recovered alcoholic. My sober date is June 12th, 1995. My home group is the Gulfstream Group in Stuart, Florida and we meet at Serenity Hall. We have nine meetings a week. I don't make all of them but I make a few of them a week and I I am a grateful alcoholic and I Doug talked about that last night and if the two of us have gotten together and when we were new and heard people saying grateful they would have been in a lot of trouble because I hated head to I heard a lot things this weekend that really touched my spirit the laughter last night I heard some tools that I was reminded of that I need to put into my life again so I want to thank all the speakers this weekend I got a lot out of it the reason that I'm a grateful alcoholic is when I got here I did not believe in God in any way shape or form and today God is the central fact of my life my whole life depends on God had I not been an alcoholic I never would have had a God in my life, and that was pretty miserable. I was violently anti-God. I want to thank Eric and the committee. They did a great job, and more importantly, I can't believe 120 volunteers. Give them a round of applause. Since my early sobriety, I've been involved in conferences, and I know it's a lot of work, and minnesota is awesome because man we stretch to get 10. so to get 120 here says a lot for minnesota recovery that's for sure um i also have to thank dixie for putting my name in there to get me to come here and also importantly this weekend when i was on my way here i had checked my email and got an email that gave me a incredible resentment that i couldn't shake the entire time I was on those planes coming here and I reminded myself that my main purpose to fit myself to be of maximum service to God and you people and I can't get up here with that resentment so I went back to my room when I got quiet and I wrote some inventory and then I asked Dixie if I could share it with him and I want to thank them for doing that so I could be up here free because that's important I can serve God or you people if I'm not free if we're not free were useless this program is life and death so I'll tell you about myself I grew up in Queens New York I lived in an apartment building on the fifth floor and I would look out the window and I would see the older guys passing the bottle and they were my heroes I wanted her to be just like them fifth grade I was in school and we go out for lunch in the schoolyard the teacher would tell us to not go on the other side of the schooleyard because there's bad people over there and as soon as she was turned her back I would beeline it for those people and I learned how to smoke weed and drink and at the end of fifth grade i actually was almost got left back which Georgia was talking about that like we think I'm a dad and I look at my daughter go what a punk I was like how could that have been possible but it is my story and it just blows my mind my parents were moving so they was the first meeting of many about me they decided they would promote me and give me a chance in the new school so we moved and it wasn't really that far away um this is not unlike doug this this is not my comfort zone and i can't say i hate doing this and i can't saying i love doing this because there's a battle i hate doing this, and i love doing this so but it's not my comfort zone so so and that's just always been me so when we moved into that new neighborhood i didn't really want to i was scared to go meet new new friends so I would ride my bicycle back to the old neighborhood all the time and continue to drink and smoke weed and do those things and the end of that summer it was the first day of school and I was scared to death to go to the new school and my parents had a closet there was a closet at the front door and it was filled with liquor my parents are not alcoholic but they had a so the bottles were always full and they didn't notice that they were were getting emptied I would take a few slugs and get some nerve up to go to school it worked really well so I kept doing that and I started getting in a lot of trouble in school really quick I found the other kids that were doing those kind of things and started getting into a whole lot of trouble and there was a woman who came from a place called project 25 and that that was a school for bad kids and I would have to go sit with her once a week instead of one of the classes and they told me if I continue to get in trouble in this school if I get caught drinking again you know you know hanging around at the handball court smoking weed that I was going to be thrown out of this school and put in project 25 as a full-time student and that really scared the hell out of me because all that meant to me was I got to meet new new friends again, and that really scared me. But I didn't stop drinking, and I didn�t stop getting in trouble, so I became a full-time student of Project 25. All Project 25 really did was start educating my parents because as all this is going on, my disease is getting worse and worse, and the consequences are getting worse and worse and eventually they would tell my parents that if I continue to get in trouble and you know I started getting arrested a lot and if I continued you know when I get arrested don't bail them out just let them send them to spa food and well you know so that's what started happening I started becoming what's in New York it's called the pins petition person need a supervision and every place that I went they told me the same thing that if i just didn't drink and do these things i probably wouldn't get into the trouble that i'm getting into and i'd be okay because i seemed like a really nice guy because i was really quiet so i became a part of that that that pins petition and and i could you know looking back i hated my parents for doing that and you know my mom would dad would come down and they had been separated and my mom and dad would comes down to the precinct and my mum would say you know I can't take him lock him up he's an animal because after my mother was 120 pounds soaking wet and she would stand in front of the door the front door crying hysterical I had a sister who died and she was standing at the door crying hysterically please don't leave this house and I know physically push her away from the door so I can go out and get drunk and get into the trouble and stuff so today I understand she had no choice but I hated her for years for saying lock him up and my dad would just say your mother's got custody there's nothing I could do and that's just who he was and I'll get a lot into that as my story goes on so it was most of my most of my youth was in and out of juvenile detention centers and youth correctional facilities and shelters and the shelters were the best because the shelters it just shows where my alcoholism was progressing um weren't lockups and i would actually most of them were in brooklyn new york and i Would actually sneak out of the shelters and go drink night train with the bums in the street on the corners and stuff and then try to sneak back into the shelters and they would try to put me on clothes restrictions so i couldn't go back out so i would just run out and i'd live on the streets and continue to drink and i would go to pay phones and call my parents and just say you know just i'll be at my next court date and then i would get sent someplace and so so i really didn't i you know in the beginning like this time of the year was the work when i first came to aa in 1987. so it took me a while to get this um my original sober date was 1987. um so from 87 to 95 with no god no program i hated the holiday season because I would just think back and say you know how many holidays did I spend and birthdays my birthday's in October that I spent locked up when I looked back to see my alcoholism I think it's important for us to see that we have no choice whether we drink or not and I think that was the the one thing that I had to admit to my innermost self, that I never chose to drink. I don't understand people who, they probably just don't know, that sit in an AA meeting and say I choose not to drink today because that was very frustrating to me because I would become suicidal because I'd choose not drink and drink anyway. And that's the dilemma of alcoholism is that we drink against our own will. And the first time thinking back when I was doing my first step i could remember that when i got out of being locked up for 18 months almost 18 months i came home and while i was there i said you know when i come home i'm not going to drink the way i was drinking anymore i'm i'm Not going to get in any more trouble because you know all my friends are starting to have like steady girlfriends and you know graduating school and getting jobs and their lives were going places and mine was just going into institutions so i was getting really tired of that so I went to school for high school for the first day and I was in the homeroom and I was called out a home room when I was pulled into the Dean's office and they took out my records and the Dean said you know we don't want your trouble here and we're gonna be watching you and if you get into any trouble in this school then you're immediately thrown out and I looked at him and I said you known to myself you got to be kidding like I'm not going to be a saint you're not giving me half a chance and the truth is really since fifth grade i really didn't have any real education because these places really didn't teach you much they just kind of locked you away and pretended that they were giving you an education so i knew i wasn't going to do good there so i got up and i walked out and i went home and my dad was a fairly successful businessman you know he was partners in some stores and i asked my mother if she would um talk to my dad about maybe they would sign me out of school and I can go work for the family business. And so there was some discussions and my dad had to have some discussions with his business partners because everybody knew about me, and so they had to decide that they really want me involved. And they all agreed to do that. So they signed me out of the school, and the first day of work it was a cold October – probably not as cold as it gets here, but it was cold October morning, the week of my birthday and I woke up that day and I felt like I had arrived. I'm gonna be a working man, I'm going to change my life. I am going to go in a new direction and I went out to the bus stop and I was standing at the busstop and a buddy of mine came over and he gave me a little bottle of Jack Daniels as a birthday present and I put it in my coat and I said this weekend I'm going to celebrate my birthday. And it started to get a little cold at the bus stop. I figured just a slug will warm me up and then the bus came and I got on the bus and I really scared about going to work for the first day so I polished off that little bottle of Jack and I walked into work and made a complete ass of myself and my father who really fought hard to get me to work through the business. I didn't drink that morning because I chose to get drunk, I drank that morning cause I had no choice, I was an alcoholic and i have a lot of those stories and i'm sure we all do and it's important to remember those things because i did not wake up this morning and say i choose not to drink today everybody in my a family knows if you ever hear me say i'm just going to choose not to drink that they please put a bullet in my head because i know where that's heading that means i no longer think i'm powerless that i don't have to depend on god i could just choose not to drink my number one priority from 1987 to 1995 was to not pick up a drink and i couldn't pull it off because that means that i tried with every fiber of my existence to not picked up that drink not understanding that i couldn t do that my number 1 priority today is my relationship with God that's the only reason that I m sober today that That was the first thing that my sponsor told me when we got together was, I never want you to wake up in the morning and say you're not going to drink today or do anything else. And I thought that was absolutely insane. Why wouldn't I do that? And he started laughing, and he said, well, how many times have you done that? And I told him, for the last seven-plus years and prior to that. And he asked me how it worked, and I said, not too good. And he said exactly. So what do I got to do? He said, I'm going to show you this, and then I'll get into that story. I tried a lot of insane ways to get sober when it was my number one priority. In 1986 or so, whatever it was, I met a detox nurse and married her. I thought that was going to keep me sober. She was 10 years older than me, she had a son that was 10-years younger, it was an automatic family, she's a detox-nurse, she knows all about this shit, so didn't work too good because What ended up happening was I became really good friends with her ex-husband and all his friends, and we hung out in the garage and smoked crack and drank. When they talk about other methods that failed, I got a list of them, and they're pretty amusing today, but they weren't then. then. Sometime in 1987, I was hanging out with those people, my ex-wife's ex-husband and friends, and we all hung out at this house. We all had Hollies, none of them ever left the garage because all we did was sat in the backyard of this house, there were four brothers that own the house two of them have passed on already from cirrhosis of the liver one of them just went back to prison has spent probably three quarters of his life and the other one is like my brother and I just heard from him about two weeks ago and got a sponsee with a month sober to get him into detox I don't but I haven't heard from them since we hung out at their house all the time and Warren the oldest brother wasn't waking up in the morning and hanging out with us anymore and I guys would pull up on bikes in front of the house and he'd get his out of the garage and he would take off and one morning I said Warren what's up where you been going and he said I had it I had to change my life and I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I laughed at him and I said that's nice I had heard about alcoholics and honors because many of my attempts to get sober was checking myself into outpatient programs or places I was at would suggest it and I would see God on the little pamphlets that they handed me and ain't going there that's the most all about God no way they would promise me it's not and how you're lying look god god god so I wouldn't go so I didn't really give it much thought when Warren suggests that that's when he said that's where he was going but it was it was January of 1987 when I called up Warren one morning and I said I'm dying and I'm willing to do anything take me to one of these stupid meetings you're going to I'll give it a shot and he wasn't going to meeting that night but he told me where there was a really good meeting he said when you get there there's a bunch of great guys and they'll make you real feel comfortable and just just go to make the first move and just go so that day I didn't do anything and was struggling and and decided to to go and it was in a big high school and I got there really early and so I started walking around the school do I really want to go into this meeting I have no idea what these things are about other than God and and I started getting really nervous about it and a guy walked up to me they said I've seen you walk around the block a couple of times are you looking for the AA meeting and I said yeah he says come with me I'm setting it up so I said great so I followed him into the school we went through down some hallways and stuff and say go into this room and he starts rearranging the chairs and putting out little pamphlets and hanging up some shades and I'm just watching them do all of this and still just all in my head and he walks over to me and hands me this little blue card and he says do you want to read this and i said sure thanks now the room is starting to fill up and i can't look anybody in the eye so i just kept reading this little Blue Card and it was it was the closed statement and i just keep reading it and reading it and then he started the meeting and he said to read the close statement i've asked bart and my heart jumped right out of my toes i turned bright red i had no idea he wanted me to read this shit out loud i thought he was just giving me something to do and so i mumbled this thing and then i spent what i swear to god felt like five hours but i guarantee it was no longer than five minutes planning my escape and i walked out of the meeting and i got lost in the building and i swore i was going to jail because i was a mess and you guys were all cleaned up and i was gonna get arrested for trespassing or something i found my way back to the meeting and i said you know i'm not getting lost again i'm just going to hang out in the hallway when everybody leaves i'll just follow them out and go drink myself to death because that's a lot easier than reading out loud in front of a bunch of people for me so when they ended the meeting i started to follow them and a bunch of guys practically pinned me up against the wall and said hey you know what's going on and just talking to me and said we're all going out to the diner do you want to go and I have a thousand reasons why I couldn't go with them and they wouldn't accept one of them so I ended up going out to the Dinah with them. And I joined AA that night, the Fellowship of AA and I would go to meetings and they would give me lots of suggestions. We could smoke in meetings back then and they said hey Bart why don't you take a commitment why don't you clean the ashtrays after the meeting and i said i got a better idea why don't just clip the cigarette put it in your pocket and when you go outside flick it out and then nobody has to worry about cleaning up and they said all right bad idea why don t you make coffee and i have never drank a conscious cup of coffee in my life so i am not making coffee all right, bad idea. Why don t stand at the front door and greet people when When they came in, I said, I really can't stand people. I can't imagine why I couldn't get sober. Joined the Sober Motorcycle Club and it had the Bart Clause in it because you had to be involved in AA. And I said my involvement is I show up for an entire meeting when one of you guys are celebrating an anniversary or a birthday, whatever you guys call it. So they had to make me join, I mean allow me to join. I was miserable to be around and miserable inside I put almost seven years together so I told you guys but when I had first gotten sober the day barmaid and me were really really good friends because I was in the bar every day and when I got sober her sister suggested who was in a that the two of of us should hook up so she did and we ended up getting married and we had a beautiful daughter together and I was staying dry through that time but she wasn't one of us and she would smoke weed and I would convince oh let me just give you a shotgun so that I could a little bit and not tell everybody and I'm still sober I would go into the supermarkets and empty out the whipped cream cans and like any little thing to not send me back out there but I was as far as I was concerned I was still sober that's how delusional I was and that's I think that's my favorite word in a my two favorite words to understand my first step is delusion and illusion you know we hear everybody say that we suffer from denial and I've read this big book a few times quite a few times and I've never seen that word. Denial is to know that I have a problem but not admit it. But when I'm about to pick up that first one, I'm in a delusion that I absolutely need that first drink. There's no thought that it's not a good idea for me. And once I'm intoxicated, I suffer from this illusion that everything is great. Everybody around me sees sees my life falling to pieces, but I see it as being great. And that's why this is such a deadly illness, because we can't see the truth. We have these moments of clarity, but when do we actually grab onto them is what matters. Because sometimes they're really just fleeting. Anyway, a buddy of mine had relapsed and I had just pretty much been doing doing a lot, a lot of drinking. Alcohol had me by the...had me. And prior to that when I was younger, I was a heroin addict and I had stopped doing the heroin and became just a raging alcoholic. And then I had this dry time where I was just doing little things that I didn't think mattered. And a buddy of mine had been sober for a while with me. he was part of our, you know, sober motorcycle club and he had relapsed. And there was nothing that I wanted more than for this guy to get sober. I loved him. He's like a brother. And he called me up one morning and he said, I need to get sober. Can you take me to detox? And I absolutely, man, there's nothing I want to do more. And I went and picked him up and he said you know I've got a really bad habit and they're not going to give me nothing tonight night, and can you just take me into Brooklyn? I just want to get one bag to get me through the night because they're not going to medicate me. And I've been there. I said, absolutely. I'll drop you off a couple of blocks away, go do what you got to do, come back to the car, and I'll take you to detox. Drove into Brooklyn, and as he got out of the car I reached in my pocket, I got 100 bucks, and said, get me a bundle. I knew one bag wasn't going to do it. I And I woke up the next morning and I couldn't believe, because I still thought that I was living a good life. Even though I was miserable. I was married to a great woman. We were just about to buy a house. We had this little girl. I was never going to not be a sober dad. And actually, let me rewind. We weren't just about the buy house. house. They were already in the house, but I had left them because I was so miserable. I didn't know how to enjoy these good things, so I actually left them, my wife and my daughter, for a while. So we were on and off together three times before we finally did get divorced. So this time it was just that I was living separately from them. And I woke up the next morning and I couldn't believe what I had just done that you know and and what am I gonna do with the rest of this this these drugs that I have you know as such guilt shame and remorse and so I ain't never doing this again and I called up my boss and I said I can't come into work today I had a really rough day yesterday and but I didn't throw those other nine bags away and the next morning I woke up and I said you know what two days ago wasn't so bad let me indulge in that a little more you know and then I was just off to the races you know there was no coming back I started to get desire to stop again and my wife knew what was going on we We were separated, but she knew what was going on. And she said, if you can stop, we can give it another shot. And this was on a Monday and I said, can we go as a family to the movies on Sunday? And she says, stay sober all week and we can go to the movie's on Sunday. So Monday there was a thought in my mind about picking up. Tuesday, I don't know. I don' think there was thought in mind. mind Wednesday how am I gonna pull this off I really want to get high but I want my family back more Thursday it was getting really rough Friday I'll just get high tonight and I'll sober up on Saturday and Sunday she will never know And I had an old Bronco, and I pulled that Bronco up right on the front lawn and staggered into the house and said, baby, I'm home. And she said, get the hell out of here. There was nothing that I wanted to do than stay sober for that little girl and that woman. So I understand what it is to be beyond human aid. I love all you guys, but you can't keep me sober. That little girl couldn't keep me sober. That woman who I married, who I loved, couldn't keep me sober beyond human aid. The run continued and one day I was in a neighborhood that obviously I had no business being in as a white boy and I went into a bodega I don't know if you're familiar with the Spanish delis and in New York those bottle Spanish deli's have nothing but expired food on the shelves but behind the counter they got what you want and I asked them for some and they wouldn't give it to me and this was that dope run in that morning I woke up and I said, you know what? I'm just going to get a needle, get a set of works and a few bags and because I had been just sniffing it and do it right for a day and then get sober. And they wouldn't give me what I needed and I started knocking all that shit off the shelves and are you you got to be kidding me and I was lucky they didn't cut me up and put me in a dumpster because I was really going ballistic. And I don't remember what happened after that from point A to point B, but somehow that night I ended up back in a meeting with you guys, and I swear to God I don'T remember driving from that bodega back into a meeting With You Guys. And I know today that God brought me there. I didn't see it then, but I know it today. And I went into that meeting, and it was the Utopia Young People's Group, and there was a bunch of young people and they were just having a blast and laughing and just loving life and enjoying sobriety and talking about things in aa that i never heard in aa and i had been in aa for a long time and they would just talk about doing things that i never heard but all of a sudden i'm hearing this and i keep going back to that meeting and they had a friday night beginners meeting and after the meeting they would go into new york city and they Would go to clubs and they would start dancing and you know i would go with them and i'd be real uncomfortable like Like, how are they not ordering a drink? How can you be like, I'm seeing all this booze. I want a drink. And I would just say, oh, they're just not as alcoholic as I am so they can be here, you know. And I was really uncomfortable. And one night this guy already had his sponsor come speak for him. And his sponsor, it was the beginner's meeting. No, he was telling his whole story that night. and he described alcoholism like I had never heard it before absolutely hysterical and laughed as important and that won me over like I was really laughing but I also noticed that he said he was a recovered alcoholic and that pissed me off that really pissed me because I had been trying this shit today working and I would hurt and I also heard that you can never be recovered that you'll be in recovery for the rest of your life so he started talking about this way of life that you just I didn't believe you can do and be sober so I looked at Artie and I said Artie isn't that your sponsor and he said yeah why and I said I think tonight you better find a new one and he said why and i said because I'm gonna kill him I mean he had me really pissed and Artie had a big smile on his face and And he said, Bart, I guarantee he would love to talk to you. So they set it up that the next day I can go down to the guy's place of business and talk to him. So I couldn't wait that morning to go talk to them and see where this conversation is going to go, but I know what I want to do. And I pulled up across the street from his store and he saw me getting out of the car and he walked back into his store and he went behind the counter because he heard I was coming to put a hurtin' on him so he figured he better have something between us. and he spent what probably was about two hours talking about his war stories that's the place for the war stories and mostly what he was stressing was how being sober was his priority for so many years and all the attempts that he made to get sober and failed and how many mornings he woke up and promised that he wasn't going to pick up the first one and failed I was going man that's me and how he was would have a little bit of sobriety and how life was even worse sober and I went oh I've really experienced that and after about two hours I said what the hell do I have to do to be as happy and laugh like you did last night and have that life and he went man I'm glad you finally asked and And he said, all I had to do was read the first 164 pages and the doctor's opinion of this book followed as a way of life and that I could have that life too. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I've never read a book in my life. I've heard that's a really hard book to read, but thanks anyway. And I started to walk out. And he walked around that counter because he knew he had me and he grabbed me at the shoulder and he said not so fast. I'll tell you what, we will read that book together and the only stupid question is the one that you don't ask. And I was full of questions, and I learned what it was to be an alcoholic. You know if you had asked me what an alcoholic was prior to that, I would have told you all the arrests and all the stupid things I did and today I know those are the consequences of my alcoholism. What makes us alcoholic is that we choose not to do it and we do it anyway that we drink against our own will I was in a strange place one day and I got quiet and I was questioning God to God I was questioning him and why do I need you so much in my life why do what what why do do I really why do you have to be the most important thing in my life why do every why do I have to bring you into all my thoughts why do i have to bring you everywhere I go and I gotta tell you that's the only reason you got me speaking here tonight and not shaking like this and mumbling is because in ninth in 1995 in that third step I said take away my difficulty so victory over them will bear witness to your power your love and your way of life and shortly after that in the seventh step i asked god to grant me strength as i go out to do your bidding and i go get quiet and i remind myself of that and god comes in and speaks through me and i believe if that wasn't the case if i forgot to do that you'd be in a lot of trouble and i'd be embarrassed but i was in that I was I was getting quiet and doing that meditation and I had this thought come to my head what's the definition of obsession this thing that we we suffer from I have a 1930s Webster's dictionary in my room and I looked it up The state of a person vexed or besieged by an evil spirit from without that causes us to do irrational, repetitive motives against our own will. Man, if that ain't alcoholism, I don't know what is. If that ain'T a reason to need God, I don'T know what IS. I work in treatment and I read that a lot to the clients and they say, well, that's old. What about a new definition? and we happen to have a 2003 dictionary so I said look it up the act of an evil spirit in possessing or ruling a person such a persistent idea desire emotion etc especially one that cannot be gotten rid of by reasoning again if that ain't alcoholism I don't know what is because I know I can't reason my way out of that first drink I can think my way at that that first drink. I can't depend on my sponsor to convince me not to pick up that first drink. I sponsor a lot of men today. I have a sponsor today. I am very grateful that I've had two sponsors. That man that showed me this way of life was my first sponsor. He was my sponsor for the first 11 years until he left us, and today jerry elkins is my sponsor and we stay in close contact by phone i live in florida he lives in kansas but both of them have never let me be dependent on them and that's what i do with my sponsees if i ask my sponsor and it's the same way i sponsor what do i have to do i don't know get quiet ask god Had that not been shown to me, I wouldn't depend on God the way I do today. Had I done that with my first sponsor when he left this earth after 11 years, I would have been a shit of trouble because I wouldn t have had a dependence on God. I would've had a dependent on Eric. Today, God is everything to me. Do I make mistakes? Yeah, the book tells us we're going to make lots of mistakes and we're gonna pay for them in lots of absurd ways and I still today make lots lots of mistakes and pay for them in all absurd ways, but then I ask God please help me get through this. We do share with each other our, you know, I also besides talking with Dick, I called Jerry last night and read the inventory with him as well, and you know Jerry's been around a long time, he's an older gentleman and has a lot of great life experiences, and he shared had some of his life experiences with me. And then he said, now Bart, with you hearing my life experiences, go spend that hour with God. And that's what I did. He didn't tell me what I need to do, what I should do, and I'm grateful for that. I trust my God today only because of that. I totally forgot where I was in my life. I was talking a little bit about the third step. I had a recent third step Eric took me through this book when it got to the third step I still didn't believe in God and I think that's important I told him what I wanted God to be because he asked me if there was a God, what do you want God to being? And I told them love and I had been separated from my wife who I was madly in love with. I was involved with a young lady who I madly loved, and I was sleeping with a girl who was 13 step in me for a while who I loved. My sponsor said if that's your idea of love God better not be love. So I said then Then what is God? And he said, what else do you want to be? And I said, I have no idea. And he says, perfect. And that's what I started with. God is, I don't understand him. I have No Idea. Today, I Have No Idea What God Is. I Just Know God Is Everything. And I Mean Everything. I was driving to work last week, and the alcoholic mind or the human mind, the human mind, I'm not going to blame it on alcoholism, is an insane thing. And on my birthday, October 15th this year, I had a bunch of friends over for my birthday and I had been having some pains so I always ignore pains on my birthday though it got so bad I said to my wife you need to tell everybody they got to go I gotta go the emergency room so I went to the emergency room and they took a cat scan and they found that my gallbladder was extremely infected and pussy and needed to come out right away and that they found that it also started to infect my liver so they took it out i stayed a few extra days and they put me on antibiotics and everything was fine and the surgeon came in and he said you know we saw on the cat scan we saw a large cyst on your pancreas so you need to go get some further tests so i called another doctor now this is just a couple weeks ago i called another doctor and i made an appointment they said we can't have an appointment with you until and it was it was a long way out but go get the mri and have it sent to us so i went and got the mRI and they called me up and said we got the results of your mri and by the way we can see you tomorrow i was like oh you know where that mind goes somebody canceled that's all it was and they could squeeze me in but you know where that mind goes so today you know so I was driving that day and and I was struggling with either God is everything or God is nothing like I need to stop worrying about this my life is in God's hand it's none of my business my dad died of pancreatic cancer then I watched that so it was it's kicking up up some stuff, you know. So a sponsee calls because God has such a great sense of humor and says, Vaughn, I'm reading the agnostics and I'm having some trouble. And I just started laughing. I said, by the way, I am not reading it but I'm having some troubles too. And we just had a great discussion about the third step. And I retook the third-step and I've been at absolute peace with this Thursday I'll go for a biopsy and I'm totally at peace with whatever the results are. Totally at peace. I pray for the people that love me, and I believe it's going to be okay anyway. So Eric continued, I'll go back to Eric continued to take me through the steps. We did that third step together and we were done. He handed me a pen. He said write everybody that you hate. So I made that list. Spent a few more days, a couple of days, writing a list. The fear inventory, the sex inventory, shared it with him. Had a good experience. I got to see how I was playing God in my own life and that there probably is something other than me. I don't think I had, I didn't have like a white light experience or a total belief in God. But I was starting to believe in the possibility of there's a God. And then he told me to go home and make a list of everybody I've ever met. And I said why he says cuz then you're gonna figure out how you screwed him And that was my ace that list if I met you, I screwed you so you're on it So it's really not that difficult to make an amends list. Just think of every place you've ever gone or everybody you've never met And then I started heading out to make that those men's I went to the old schools and you know those teachers were gone and I sent letters and And it got time to make the amends to my mom. My dad, I still needed to pray. I knew I had to do it because he's part of all. But my dad was not a kind man. My dad was a guy who I swear if he was lying dead on the street, I would have walked by, spit on him and kept walking. I had no love for my father. So we went, both my parents living separately but were living in Florida and my wife at the time and I decided we wanted to go to the Bahamas and we were going to drop my daughter off with her grandmother and go to The Bahamas. While we were in The Bahanas, we got a phone call that my mom had died. And my plan was to make that amend when I came back. And my mom was a saint. I loved my mom. so I didn't get to make that amends and I got quiet and I said how do I make this amends to my mother and I heard as loud as day it's time to make the amends dear father for the things you've done and you can talk about your mom to him because he knew her real well even though they were divorced so I did when I was making the amens to my dad my mom was married to remarried to a horrible man. She had a broken picker, I guess. And he was emotionally abusive. And somehow that conversation came up how I was talking about how this man Danny treated my mother. And my father said, Danny probably loved your mother with all of his heart, but but maybe his heart is only that big. And he put his fingers really close together. And I said to myself, I got it, Dad. You've loved me my whole life. Your heart's only that large. And from that day on, I called my father every once in a while and said, hey, Dad, how you doing? I'm good. I listened to him talk all about himself for an hour. Never asked how I was again. Never asked what his granddaughter was. Never asked who my wife was. But I was the son that God intended me to be, whether he could be the father I wanted or not. And that's what you guys taught me here. That's what this way of life teaches us. A few years later, my dad got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. and I was married to wife number three who's an amazing woman 31 years in this program has the same exact passion for this way of life and God just like I do different gods but doesn't matter and and she has a great daughter and they They said, your dad needs to come live with us. Man, I need to sit with that because I hated this man, but he's my father. So he left Florida and he came to live with us in New York, but we were planning on moving to Arizona. So he was living with us for a while and he wasn't feeling sick and he was given a really, really short time to live, but but he wasn't feeling sick. So he said, you know what? I'm feeling pretty good. I'm going to go back to Florida with my friends and when I start feeling sick, I'll come back. Typical selfishness of him. He's opposed to style for the bedevilments, but he was an alcoholic. And I said, Dad, is it possible that God is keeping you healthy for a little while so you can get to know your son while he's sober? And the woman who he's going to spend the rest of his life with, your granddaughter and tara's daughter and he said i gotta go pack all right and he did then he got sick and he came to live with us and then we took him to arizona and he was in ari zona for about two weeks a week in the hospital not even know where he was and a week at the house i i got to give him the morphine every day and you know just take care of him until he left us one of the regrets i had that you know what one of the spiritual pride every once in a while comes in and i always hear the aa stories and i've always loved the aa's stories of it was a good death you know we were there with him and and i blew that one and i'm okay with it today but it was a good depth because i let him come live with us and took care of him and but I didn't realize this until I went on a four-day men's rites of passage and it came to me but I remember the night he died right before he died I was walking out of his room and he called me back into the room and I said nope I'm not letting you off the hook and I walked out I thought he maybe was was going to make the amends and I wasn't letting him off the hook and I regret that today I probably should have but it's okay we make mistakes you know just because we're practicing this we don't do it perfectly I do know that I was the best son that I could possibly be rather than just giving him what he probably well not what he deserved he got everything he deserved me to treat like a dad. I started practicing 10 and 11 and it became really important in that ninth step by the way, that's where I found God. When I started hearing that strange sound at people's doors that I thought I would never show up to say I was wrong and I'm sorry and how can I set it right? I knew God was working in my life and I also was extremely happy about living that way and I hadn't thought about picking up a drink or anything else in a couple of months and that was never the case and Eric and I had just finished reading step 12 working with others and he said you know what I'm gonna go to utopia group with you tonight I was like sponsors coming we don't mean he never came back other than that night that he was speaking there so he went to the meeting and it And it was a beginner's meeting, speaker shares for 15 minutes and then they open it up to anybody new just coming back. And the first guy to raise his hand was a guy who was about 6'4 or so, shaved head, no teeth, completely tattooed. And all he had to share was how much he hated all of us, that we're all full of it. The judge told him that it was go to the Creedmoor Rehab or jail and he wasn't stupid, he went to the rehab but they make them come to these stupid meetings and just rageful and eric said but after the meeting i want you to go up to that guy and see if you can help him i was like what are you nuts and it wasn't because of the way he looked at what he had to say i said eric what do i have to offer I'm less than three months sober and he turned to a vision for you where it says you're one man with this book in your hand and you just tapped into a power greater than yourself and I had been practicing these first 11 steps and my life was different so why can't that be true too so I didn't hear another thing that was shared the rest of the meeting, because I was just going, what am I going to do? How the hell am I gonna do this? What am I gotta say to this guy? Ah, I know the perfect thing to say. No, that ain't gonna work. And just rattling around. The meeting's coming to an end, and I remembered, ask God. God, what do I do? And instantly I was given, when everybody circles up to pray, just go outside and stand at the band. So that's what I did. Guess what? Young guy Gene didn't want to pray either. It was just the two of us. And I don't remember how the whole conversation went, but I know that I offered him a solution. I told him how I was living. I told them I understood exactly where he was at. And I told em I was willing to come visit him on Sundays at the Creedmoor Rehab and show him what was shown to me. And he said, really you're willing to come to visit me every Sunday? I said yeah, he says you can come visit me just make sure you bring a sandwich or don't bother. I said, you got it. I'm gonna show up with a sandwich and a big book. And I showed up every Sunday with the sandwich and the big book and he was willing to sit down and talk and I didn't read it word for word. We just kind of breezed through it and got him to experience some of it and he came home and finished learning how to practice these steps. He had a son in foster care in pennsylvania's the mom was still running the streets and he got supervised visits with that kid and then eventually he was able to bring that kid home and be a sober single dad and i knew there was a god i watched him help others and i watched them recover cover. And that's what this program is all about. Just passing on this message. None of us ever get it perfect. Knowing that we ain't God, first requirement or third step is we had to quit playing God because it doesn't work. I have no idea what anybody in this room needs to do. I just know that I do what's in this book and it works for me and I'm willing to pass it on to anybody that's willing to listen. I've sponsored people who were still actively using and in the third step and then they started writing inventory and having had a spiritual awakening as a result of all twelve steps they continued to stay sober and help others I don't know when you I don' know when you're gonna get it if you're willing to show up it was taught to me by my grand sponsor Don P if they show up we have to care if they don't we can't I've seen people in meetings that man it gets me when people die and they say they just didn't want it bullshit they didn't want it they wouldn't be here it's up to us to carry the message in an attractive way that they might understand it and all of us understand it in a different way but I don't know which way that's gonna be I do know that the first way I tried it like I shared the tradition thing nobody's writing F you in the big book on steps anymore people that used to hate me love me today because I try to carry it a little gentler but that doesn't mean it's always gonna work that's none of my business I'll end with this whenever it was dying we asked him if he'd come share a meeting and he was really sick and we got him his his wheelchair, we carried him down the steps and we got him to speak. And at the beginning of the meeting our friend Luis said would everybody who's been sponsored by Eric please stand up? And there was about 100 people in this room. And a bunch of us stood up. And he said please remain standing. Would everybody that's been sponsor by the people who just stood up please stand up. A bunch more people stood up and he continued to do that until everybody in that room except for a few newcomers were standing. And it all started with that that one man. Every one of you newcomers, every person in this room has the opportunity to be Dr. Bob or Bill Wilson. It's just passing on this message. That's it. God bless you all. I love you.