I Was Looking for the One Religion That Would Let Me Be a Complete A**hole and Still Get Into Heaven 😂 – Sterling H.

Hi everybody, Sterling the Alcoholic.
God's Grace, this program is sponsored by
I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since the 2nd of June, 1981
and for that I'm truly, truly grateful.
My home group is the Fox Hall Group in Omaha, Nebraska, Bellevue, Nebraska.
You're all welcome, it's on Tuesday nights, 8 o'clock.
Get there early so you can get a seat.
Because we like to have some fun.
I am so thankful that Pat kept calling.
Sorry.
I'm telling you, I think at one time my wife thought I sponsored you.
I really did.
I would come in the door, Pat called again.
What are you going to do with sport?
I know that's what she was thinking.
But thank you so much for following up and staying on topic
because I've never been to Dayton.
This is my first time at Dayton.
But I just met, when we met at the airport, I knew I was in the right place.
And when we went to have dinner, the dinner at Rob's house was great last night.
I got to meet some folks I've never met before.
It's a beautiful place.
I'm staying with him.
He's been a great host, really, a great host.
I've had a wonderful time.
I am so glad to be here.
And I am so thankful that I'm here this morning.
And I'm glad I got a chance to hear you, Maria.
That was an outstanding job.
Thank you so much, darling.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I love Al-Anon to give talks like that, you know,
because it makes me, it just makes me aware of what alcoholism does to the family.
It also makes me grateful that I drank through most of the stuff that, you know.
Because that's what I kept you talking.
I'm going, have a drink, you know.
Old English 800 will fix all that, you know.
That'll work, Jack.
But my wife goes through stuff like that.
She'll tell me, what do I should do about my son?
I go, have a drink.
I love Al-Anon.
Y'all can do a fifth step with a bottle of Jack Daniels on the kitchen table.
If I wasn't an alcoholic, I'd be drinking right now.
So if you're new to AA, I'm telling you, if you're new to Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm glad to see you.
If you're hurting bad from this disease, stay here.
Just like Maria was talking about.
Stay here.
Don't go anywhere.
We're some weird people, but we'll grow on you.
We really will, you know.
I mean, really.
It's a really beautiful thing.
This is, this kind of stuff, if you're active in Alcoholics Anonymous, this is the icing on the cake.
This is the stuff, we have celebrations like this.
We have these weekend deals, and we talk to each other, and we have a good time.
We eat, do all this other wonderful stuff.
The part and parcel stuff that's done in Alcoholics Anonymous is carrying a message to another drunk.
That's done every single day.
So if you're new, I may look impressive.
I don't know.
Maybe I don't, but, you know.
I'm no big deal.
What's the big deal?
The big deal is the people that you see every week that you go.
The ones that are either mopping up or cleaning up or making the coffee.
Those are the heroes in Alcoholics Anonymous to me.
You know, because anybody can stand up here and be cute.
But the fact of the matter is, the ones that are doing the table work, the ones that are doing the monkey work,
the ones that are doing the work with, you know, Nameless, Anonymous, all of that,
that's where Alcoholics Anonymous gets the work done.
Those are the heroes in AA.
So if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, don't be impressed by what you hear up here.
Be impressed by what you see every Tuesday, Wednesday.
Thursday or Thursday or Friday night that you go to a meeting.
Because that's where it's really happening.
That's where it's happening for me anyway.
That's where it's getting done, you know.
I was born, my full name is Sterling David Holmes III.
Isn't that something?
Now, when you got a Roman numeral at the end of your name, you're supposed to get a country to run.
That's how I got on this planet, expecting to get a country.
George I, Louis XIV, Sterling III.
I figured I should be king or something.
And just like, just like when we were at seven, I got a little sister that moved into my room.
Pissed me off.
So I had resentments from the very beginning.
You know, I'm one of those kind of kids, I'm the kind of kid that needed sponsorship in kindergarten.
Because there was two groups when I was growing up, me and all y'all.
It would have been really nice to go into kindergarten and make that phone call, you know.
Go, I don't think they like me.
And, uh...
What do I do? What do I do?
You know?
It would have been great.
Here, eat the cookie, take the nap.
Yeah, call me later, okay?
That would have been great.
Have some answers, simple solutions to my major problems, you know.
I wouldn't have listened, but you know, at least I would have had a source, you know.
That's the way I got on the planet.
I was angry.
I was, uh, what about me?
What's going to happen to me?
That was what was in my head all the time.
I watched a lot of TV as a kid.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s.
I bought a Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
Oh, Brad, Air Force Brad.
And, um, we moved to New York soon, just before I started grammar school.
And I lived in New York most of my life, in Harlem and in the South Bronx, throughout most of my teenage years.
I joined the service at 19 myself.
So New York is really, New York City is really my home.
I grew up in the South Bronx, 40th Precinct.
The roughest, toughest precinct.
Police Precinct in New York.
You know, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
And, uh, you know, and it really doesn't, it, I'm the kind of kid, because I grew up at the time that I grew up and the place that I grew up, I was always comparing.
Now, there was really nothing wrong with my neighborhood.
I used to always like to use that as an excuse.
But my neighborhood was just like any other.
It had churches and schools, liquor stores.
I liked them liquor stores.
You know, I kind of liked those.
But it was no different than any other place.
If I could have grown up six blocks from here and still been racked with society.
The same kind of feelings and fear.
The same kind of self-centered thinking.
You know, so it really doesn't matter where I grew up.
I went to Catholic school all the way up through my first year of college.
And I don't have a problem with the Catholic doctrine.
Not one iota.
Now, some of them nuns that taught it to me weren't wrapped too tight.
But I don't have a problem with Catholicism.
You know?
The thing is, what's weird about me is how I think.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
I'm a thinker.
If you knew an alcoholic synonymous and you got like a...
I know there's somebody in here.
I'm not going to say her name so she can get embarrassed or nothing like that.
It'll feel special.
Either one.
But I know she's got about 90 days.
Nine months.
I'm sorry.
Not 90 days.
Nine months.
I know that's a long time to be sold.
If you got about that time or you got less time, you know, you're thinking about the
drink.
Okay?
Well, let me clue you in on something.
It ain't the drink.
It's the think.
See, it was my think.
What's keeping me coming to Alcoholics Anonymous is what's going on up in here.
See, because I still have those thoughts.
Just like you, Maria, I can get into resentment in a heartbeat.
You know?
All I used to say, all it takes is a resentment in an ATM machine, I could be in Canada.
Clean out the account.
I'm on my way, Jack.
You know?
Sometimes I have to consciously think in my mind, turn right, turn right, so I go to the,
you know, interstate to go to work as opposed to heading north.
You know?
Because it's just like that.
That's the way my head thinks.
And it goes like that all the time.
I just don't look like that.
I don't look like that on the outside.
The people that work with me don't know I'm nuts.
They just think I'm like, you know, I'm kind of weird, but they just, they don't know I'm nuts.
You know, because if they could hear what's going on in my head, thank God.
There's a guy in California who used to always talk about this.
He said, I may not walk my talk, but thank God I don't walk my think.
And I like that.
That is very, very true.
Because I'm still weird.
Now, I grew up in the 50s and 60s, like I said.
You know?
And I always compared myself to my family.
And everybody in my family to the ones on television.
You remember those, you know, in those 50s, you had eight is enough.
And following those best.
And bachelor father.
And family affair.
You know?
They were always cool.
You know?
And the kids would screw up and they'd always solve a problem in a half an hour.
You know?
Mom was always dressed.
You know?
And dad always came home at five o'clock.
Now, you can look at me and tell mom was not Donna Reed.
Okay?
You know that.
We lived in the South Bronx in the projects.
I lived on the 18th floor.
There was never no lawn to mow.
You know?
Or any of that.
The deal is, you know, I always thought that if I had that, I'd be okay.
Now, I have been to thousands of meetings of Alcoholics Novice.
And I sat right next to people that had that leave it to beaver kind of lifestyle.
And they're just as screwed up as I am.
So, I don't.
I don't.
So, it wasn't the environment.
It certainly wasn't, you know, where I was growing up or what it was.
Or it was all me.
So, if you're new at Alcoholics Novice and you're trying to, just like Maria was doing,
trying to blame.
All those other things on the reason why you drank.
It ain't going to work.
Because nobody twisted my arm to get me to the point where I was, when I was done with
drinking on the 2nd of June, 1981, I was done with drinking because of what I was on the
inside.
I was disgusted with who I was.
I was tired.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I did not know I had an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind.
I didn't understand that.
That didn't make any sense.
What I did know is that I felt terrible.
I was a failure.
And everything that I had attempted to try.
You know, it didn't take me very long.
I only drank for like 10 or 11 years.
But I got every bit out of that alcohol that I needed to get.
I got all of the shame, all the guilt, all the problems.
Don't matter how long you drank or how much you drank.
If you got that desired effect.
Now, the desired effect came for me at 13.
I started drinking at 13.
Because by that time, I was crazy on the inside.
You know, if you're chronically self-centered, chronically self-centered, what happens is
you're always thinking about you.
You know?
So I'm in school thinking about me.
And I'm trying to be in this family thinking about me.
And it's a long day.
It's a long day.
And when you're not satisfied with the way things are going.
You know, when I was in Catholic school, I remember raising my hand and asking Sister Francis Anthony.
Yeah, Sister Francis Anthony.
I raised my hand and asked her, how can you have a virgin birth?
Now, this woman who had committed herself to service in Harlem, New York, was not prepared to discuss that profound theological.
So she hit me and sent me to the principal.
Now, while I was sitting there waiting for the principal to come hit me some more.
I figured out you adults don't have all the answers.
Now, I'm riddled with fear.
I'm chronically self-centered.
And I just figured out grown-ups ain't got all the answers.
That sound familiar to you?
You know?
So I'm well on my way to alcoholism.
I ain't had no drink yet.
That's the deal.
I brought all of that stuff to AA.
So I quit drinking, yeah.
But I brought all those.
All the ideas.
And you had to peel them away like layers from an onion.
And that's the stuff that keeps me at Alcoholics Anonymous today.
Because when I respond to my natural state, I go back to those old ideas.
That you don't have the answers.
That I know what's best for me.
And screw you.
And then, you know, and then I get into the depression.
And then the depression kicks in.
And I go, ah, the hell with it.
I'm going to go get drunk.
That's the deal for me.
I don't know if that's the deal for you, but it is for me.
So I'm here so that I can be glad.
I'm here so that I can have the bright eyes.
So I can look people in the eye and not be afraid.
Because of all that stuff I came into drinking with.
It started for me at 13, on the summer's day in South Bronx.
I didn't want to have a soda or a drink or a chocolate drink.
And somebody said, well, why don't you try a Coke 45?
Tall can of Coke 45.
And it changed my perception.
Because I drank that down and I felt like I could speak as well as Jesse Jackson.
Play sports as well as Reggie Jackson.
Dance as well as Michael Jackson.
That's it.
It made me feel that way.
One can't, I hadn't even finished it.
One can't make me feel like that.
And you know, I don't know about y'all, but if one makes you feel that way.
Yeah, y'all can finish it.
I don't even have to finish it.
You know exactly what I'm talking about.
And that was the way it was for me.
Now, what makes me an alcoholic is when it stopped working like that.
I couldn't stop working it.
You know, there is no earthly way I can take one drink and expect not to take another.
I know that about me today.
I have an allergy to the body.
That craving is going to kick in according to the doctor.
That if I knock back one, I'm going to want another one.
And I'm convinced about that.
That's not something that's just theoretical.
I'm convinced.
Because I've been here long enough to see people that are just like me.
Go back out and have one.
And have another.
And have another.
And very many of them don't make it back.
So I'm convinced about that.
If you're new in alcoholics and I was just not convinced about that, you have to become convinced about that.
I don't know how you're going to do it.
It's suggested in the book that you go out and drink some more and try and control it.
You know, now, if you're an alcoholic like me, I wouldn't advise that.
Because you may not make it back.
People like me don't come back.
I got a big mouth and I like to be seen in alcoholics and I'm gone.
If I go back out, I'm gone.
I'm gone.
I am anchored in here because of my big mouth and the desire to stay well
and be able to look people in the eye and live and breathe in and out one day at a time.
I'm anchored right here because I am an alcoholic.
Make no mistake about that.
I am an alcoholic.
You know, so this is where I need to be.
I don't know about you, but this is where I need to be.
At 13 years old, that did not seem like it because now I'm cool.
I can talk to the girls.
I can play all these games and it's great.
Well, one of the problems.
I have with my drinking is I black out 15, 16 years old.
I'm trying to impress this young lady, you know, because her ex-boyfriend was at this party.
So I got to do something that you do best.
You know, you got a new girlfriend.
You got an old boy.
You got to show him up.
So I challenged him to a drinking contest because that's what I do best.
And I won, you know, but I also passed out.
So the party became a slumber party.
When I woke up, they told me what had happened and how embarrassing I had behaved and everything like that.
And I was really, really very embarrassed about it.
But I blamed the whole experience on bad onion dip.
Wasn't that hot, cheap gin I was drinking?
It had to be the onion dip.
That was the way my drinking was.
Now, I done discovered that this is my answer.
You're not going to take this away from me without some, you know, problems for me.
And I was blaming every other thing other than the alcohol.
I had to because it was my solution.
You don't understand.
This makes me fearless when I'm with you.
We just call it liquid courage.
You know, it makes me fearless.
When I'm with you, you can't take this away from me because then I'm back to the fear.
Then I'm back to the self-centeredness.
Then I'm back to the loneliness that I feel in crowds and all of that stuff.
The feeling of isolation.
You can't take this away from me.
You know, and the thing is, if you're going to do alcoholism right, you've got to learn how to lie.
The best way to lie is to believe the lie yourself.
I have told many lies that I got into the lie, you know, and I'm telling it.
This is a sad story.
Oh, my God.
It affects me.
I start crying.
You know?
I mean, that's how I got into Alcoholics Anonymous.
Not being able to differentiate what was real and what was unreal.
You know, that's how I got here.
And the thing was, you know, if you black out and you lie, you get in trouble.
Because people start asking you questions about what you told them.
You can't remember what you told them because you were blacked out when you told it to them.
So I knew that I was either going to have to learn how to tell the truth or move.
Now, you know which word I chose.
Tell the truth.
Tell the truth.
You know, no way.
So I decided to move.
Now, I always wanted to join a gang.
I always wanted to join.
In my neighborhood, if you had talent or you had something that was going to probably get you out of the neighborhood,
the gangs that were running around in the 60s and 70s would not allow you to get involved in a gang.
They didn't want you to see you take your life down.
That was kind of not that way so much today, but it was that way before.
So friends of mine who were in gangs would not allow me to get into a gang because I was going to these schools
and it seemed like I had some intelligence.
And so the thing was that I wanted to join a gang.
I decided to join a big gang, and that was the Department of Defense.
You know, if you're going to join a gang, join a gang that's got nuclear weapons, you know.
You know, when we sport our colors, people sit up and take notice, you know.
So I joined the service.
And at the time, the Air Force did not know they had an up-and-young coming alcoholic.
They didn't have a clue.
I didn't have a clue.
Mom didn't have a clue.
Dad didn't have a clue.
Mom was a narc.
Mom was an arachnid officer.
Made me real popular in the neighborhood, let me tell you.
But she had no idea that her young son was an alcoholic.
She had no idea, you know.
I don't know if Mom had a problem with drinking or anything like that, but she knew something was wrong with her kid.
And she was powerless to do anything about it, you know.
To all you alcoholic moms, I know what kind of pain I put my mom through.
The worry, the fear.
This is New York City.
You know, and I'm running the streets until 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning getting drunk and having a good time.
And I'm 14, 15, 16 years old.
I know what that did to her.
A lot of sleepless nights.
I know what that did to her today.
But at the time, there wasn't anything she could do about it.
And I know that that caused her a lot of pain.
That caused her a lot of pain.
But when I joined the service, nobody knew that I was an alcoholic.
They thought I was just reasonably sane and intelligent.
I was 19, 20 years old.
So we signed a contract.
And if your alcoholism is going to progress, I think you need three things.
You need an income.
You need a place to sleep.
And you need three meals a day.
At least in the beginning.
And that's what the military provided me with.
Now, they did not enable me.
Neither did my mom.
My mom or the military did not enable me.
But they provided me with a place for my alcoholism to grow.
That would have been anywhere.
Like I said, you need an income.
It don't have to be your income.
It just needs to be an income.
A place to crash.
It doesn't have to be your place to crash.
And that's it.
That's it.
And food in the beginning is important.
But towards the end, it's not that big a deal.
So, you know, the thing is, the military provided me with that Petri dish for me to develop my alcoholism.
And it bloomed.
You know, and I went out to California.
And I was underage drinking in California, having a wonderful time, terrorizing a little town called Monterey.
I spoke in Monterey.
And I had to say from the podium that if there was anybody that was in Round Table Pizza from 77 to 78,
when I was done, I would go in the corner and make my amends.
Because I used to go in there and just bother folks.
Drinking underage.
You know, that was the way I behaved.
I was really into misbehaving.
And I knew I was going to get in a lot of trouble.
So, you know how it is with us when we decide we're going to remake ourselves.
I'm going to straighten up.
I'm going to straighten up, damn it.
This is getting too ridiculous.
I'm going to straighten up.
So, I'm chronically self-centered.
What is the best thing for a chronically self-centered person to do?
Get a relationship.
I know.
I'm going to get somebody to help me love me.
That ought to fix me.
So, I just, you know, I scanned in my local little environment there.
And I locked on to the object of my obsession.
Because alcoholics don't date.
We hunt down and capture.
And I locked on, target acquired, boom.
You know, and I was relentless.
When we want something, we're relentless.
You know, they talk about we have weak will.
Just get an alcoholic when they want something.
I tell you.
And so, I probably...
I promised her everything.
And I truly meant...
I truly meant...
Because I loved her, you know.
But...
And I've always had a feeling that, you know, people that hang around us, they usually sense the danger.
You know, and they go, hmm.
I don't think I want to get involved with all this drama.
You know, that's what most normal folks say.
So, you know, so they run away.
Al-Anons don't run all that fast.
They kind of just slowly trot.
Now, I've heard it from an Al-Anon.
That, you know, when...
In nature, the weak one is the one that gets caught.
Okay?
You know?
The sick or the weakly.
You know?
That's the one that gets caught.
So, and it's great.
I pursued this lady.
And I promised her the world.
And she did.
And next thing you know, we were on our way getting married.
And we were overseas in Japan.
I got out of a job that I was doing for the military.
Cross-trained so that I could be with her in Japan.
And before you know it, we had a little girl born.
En route to go to Japan, something tragic happened to my mom.
She was hit by a car and knocked about 50-55.
Put into a coma in two and a half weeks.
She was in that coma.
And she finally succumbed to it.
And in 1978, she passed away.
Now, I'll tell you something about me and my mom.
There's a lot of people that feel that, you know, our parents and our family members and our friends
enable us when we're in our disease.
My mother never did that.
My mother just loved me.
She was my mom.
And she loved me desperately.
She was probably the smartest woman I ever met.
Graduated from Howard University.
Wanted to be a teacher.
Ended up in NARC.
There was a lot of things in my mom's life that didn't quite go her way.
And she was a great woman.
And every once in a while on Saturday nights, I would come home and mom would be laying there
on the floor, passed out, after drinking some vodka and orange juice for quite a long time,
playing those old blues, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Otis Redding.
Oh, they were some old, sad, bluesy songs on this record player.
Oh, you have the newcomers.
Record player is a thing.
It's sort of like a CD.
It's got a little hole in the middle.
You put it on there and it makes music.
And she would be playing these records over and over and over again, you know.
And I would turn the stereo off and I'd put her to bed and I'd say to myself, that's disgusting.
I'll never do that, you know.
And I never did.
I passed out on the couch and I'd play Earth, Wind and Fire records.
So it was completely a different deal.
But, you know, mom never said she was an alcoholic.
Mom never told anybody in the family.
To my knowledge, I'm the only alcoholic in recovery in my family.
They're not dysfunctional.
I am.
So when I'm in the family, it's different.
It's dysfunctional.
But, you know, so since she never called herself an alcoholic, I can't.
So that doesn't make me an adult child of an alcoholic.
It just makes me an adult that tends to be childish, you know.
But she passed away.
And, you know, all the guilt, you know, I stole from her many, many, many times to be cool in the street.
And all of that guilt came when I was at that burial site.
It came right here.
And a drunk drinking on guilt is a tough drunk.
And it's a crazy drunk.
And I spent the last two years of my drinking doing a lot of silly, insane stuff.
They sent me to Japan.
That's where my wife was.
And I went there to follow her.
And in Japan, they drive on the wrong side of the road.
And when I got so drunk, I couldn't remember which side of the road I was supposed to be on.
So I drive right down the middle.
That's bizarre behavior.
And you know how society reacts to bizarre behavior.
They want to fix it.
They don't care how they fix it.
They just want to fix it.
You know, they just, you can't do it.
When we're doing our thing, everybody seems to be concerned.
Isn't that something?
People are always reacting to stuff that we do.
You know, so what if we're naked on the lawn?
It's our lawn.
You know, but people have problems with that kind of stuff.
You know, and they always react.
And they always ask that question.
Every alcoholic in here has been asked that question at least once.
Why did you do what you just did?
And most alcoholics I know really don't have much of an explanation for why they just did what it seemed like a good idea at the time.
You know?
And that's what I would do.
You know, I would be, and we were trying to put together this young family.
And I would go out to work.
I would go out and exercise because I'm going to try to revamp myself again, you know, because I've been drinking all week.
So I'm going to go work out and get this alcohol out of my system.
And I'd be back three days later, you know, without the car or, you know.
I remember one time where I reported it stolen and it was the only one in the parking lot of the club that night.
And they'd take a real dim view of that kind of stuff.
You can't find it.
You can't drive it.
They made me take a cab home.
Took my keys, you know.
I was pissed.
But that kind of behavior.
You know, I was pissed.
You know, I was pissed.
It gets people to respond to you and they start doing things like intervening in your life.
I love alcoholics and alcoholics hate this idea of being sponsored.
I don't want to be told what to do.
And how you ever got here was by being in the back of a police car in the first place.
Obviously, you got somebody that's now the power greater than yourself in your life.
When they put them cuffs on you, you can't go nowhere.
You can't do nothing.
And when you're standing before a judge, he gets to decide what you, how you're going to spend the rest of your days, you know.
Those are powers greater than me.
And that's something that I don't want in my life anymore.
So I don't mind having a sponsor today.
Because it's the lesser of the two evils.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, that's the way I see it today, you know.
But at that point, the military was trying to get me to behave and act right.
So they sent me to group.
Yeah, to group.
And we sit around.
Three times a week, we group one another.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Yeah, did you use?
Nope.
Did you drink?
Nope.
You know, lying.
You know, lying.
Monday through Friday, I was pretty good.
I did not drink it.
But, you know, I was a joy to be around.
And that's, you know, just spreading warmth and sunshine everywhere I went.
You know it.
Because I was happy.
Not drinking five or six days a week.
So I would go in the club and get some of that funny money.
And I was going to take, you know, take my family out to Japan, the night on the town kind of thing, be a good dad.
And I'd go into that bar and there'd be some guys in there that, you know, my friends.
My best friends whose names I can't remember.
And, you know, we're all GIs.
And they would be sitting around and they'd be drinking beer and rum and Cokes.
And I'd have a Coke.
And they'd be telling Vietnam stories.
And some time over the course of that evening, I'd have a rum and Coke.
And I'd start telling Vietnam stories.
And I joined in 77.
It was over.
I'd leave my car somewhere and I'd wake up.
And, you know, one time I woke up in Sapporo, which is about 200 miles from my base.
Laying next to.
Well, just sitting next to this guy.
Came to.
And he was a rather big Japanese gentleman singing.
He was singing New York, New York.
And I didn't know where I was.
And I had to be at work in five hours.
You know, that's the kind of behavior.
They were 22, 23 years old.
And so the military decided they're going to have to intensify my treatment.
So they were going to send me to treatment.
And my commander called me in and said, Sterling, you're a good worker.
And we like you.
You're a good troop and all that.
But you have a problem.
And we're going to send you.
We're going to send you down to the Philippines to get this problem taken care of.
Now, you can either volunteer for this or what I will do is send you by my order.
And if you don't make it through that thing successfully, you're out of the Air Force.
Now, I was pissed.
How dare you?
You know?
But you know how long it took me to decide to volunteer for that thing?
Two weeks.
That's the great thing about alcoholics.
We got the gun to our head.
You know what I'm saying?
They tell you insanity or death.
That's what you got to look forward to.
You got to look forward to it.
You got to look forward to it.
You got to look forward to it.
You got to look forward to it.
You got to look forward to it.
You got to look forward to it.
You're going to end up losing your mind or you're going to end up in a place where the
doorknobs on the other side and they got a little slat in the window where they look
at you periodically or it's got them big bars and they got a lot of people in uniform who
really want to tell you what to do every day.
That's what you got to look forward to or you can have a life where you can be useful.
You can be a part of a family again.
It may be your own and it's certainly going to be this fellowship.
You can have everything that anybody on this planet can get because you get all of the
tools that God gave you when you got here back.
Now, that's the choices you have and you know every one of us has to go, hmm, okay, usefulness
and happiness, insanity or death.
Can I get back to you on that?
You know, that takes a lot of ego.
That takes an awful lot of ego.
God is holding salvation in his hand right out to you and in this hand is tragedy and
misery and everything like that.
And we go, man, well, I got caught.
I like that.
It's cute.
Yeah, you know, falling asleep in my own urine sounds appealing.
That's what we do.
That's what we do.
And it took me two weeks and in two weeks' time, I went down to the Philippines.
I didn't know they had seen a drunk before I got down there because I thought I was just
going to pretend and run that, you know, I'm from the ghetto and my parents are divorced
and, you know, if you live the life I live, then it's a black thing and yada, yada, yada.
And they weren't buying any of that.
There was a guy down there who was an ex-heroin addict from Brooklyn.
And I didn't like people from Brooklyn anyway.
And this guy, he stayed in my case the whole time I was down there.
In 30-something days, they taught me everything you could possibly learn about alcoholics.
They showed me all the movies.
Father Martin did the jelly neck chart of recovery and drunkenness and all of the cirrhotic
livers and I did questionnaires and I filled out forms and everything.
You know, they just opened my head, put all this stuff in it and closed it up and gave
me a little diploma saying I successfully graduated.
I felt so sorry for you people.
I did.
After I got through that thing, I felt so sorry for alcoholics.
I was willing to make a donation after, you know, because y'all were a sorry lot, you know.
I wasn't convinced.
I didn't take none of that stuff personal, you know.
I was just in there to get out from under.
Now, I went back to my base and I got, I'm on follow-up and follow-up means they watch you.
So, I had to pretend like I was in recovery.
And the best way to pretend like you're in recovery is to go to a meeting, you know.
So, I went to this meeting and I walked in the door and there was this little room.
There was a little room.
There was a little room.
There was a little room.
There was a little room.
There was a little room.
There was a picture of these two old white guys up on the wall.
First things first.
Easy does it.
This too shall pass.
Think, think, think.
Another picture of these three white guys.
One on the bed and the other two with the Bible.
I walk in there and these people, like seven or eight of them, were just immediately happy to see me.
Hi, how you doing?
Want a cup of coffee?
Here, have a seat.
We're about to party.
Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.
You know?
Now, that pissed me off.
Now, that pissed me off.
How dare you be so happy to see me?
You're alcoholics.
As far as I know, this is AA.
I got that little silver blue AA thing on the, it's right next to the club, too.
And I was not impressed at all.
I was wondering what was wrong with you folks.
Especially after the meeting started.
Because, see, you started talking about stuff that you shouldn't be talking about in public.
I thought my wife had called you.
You know?
And told you some stuff.
And told you some stuff that I was doing.
But I secretly felt, I was very impressed by the way you, I mean, there were guys in there that I've been, I've had shock treatment seven times.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
You know?
I grabbed my car out of a pole 15 times.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
You know?
And they're just laughing.
Having a one, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm embarrassed for them.
You know?
How can you do this?
You know?
I was very impressed by it.
But you did something that was a little disconcerting.
And that's what you started with a prayer.
You ended with a prayer.
And you passed the basket.
And that's when I realized, oh, I know what this is.
This is a cult.
Y'all going to try to jump me to Jesus.
Or make me shave my head and sell books at the airport.
Yep.
That's what this is all about.
See, because I done been through the scams.
I'm from New York.
I done run a few scams myself in the past.
So I know this has got to be some kind of play.
You're going to hit me up for a contribution or something.
You know?
I was waiting for that to happen.
But it never happened.
You know?
Because you were sharing your experience, strength, and hope with me.
You know, I knew all about God.
And I didn't know that you knew all about God.
See, because I grew up in, like I said, a Catholic school all the way up to my first year of college.
Quit Catholicism very early.
Was a practicing Muslim for a little while.
And discovered a religion called Yoruba from the reflective of the African peoples in the western portion of Africa.
Was doing that for a little bit.
Was into the booth.
I, at home, before I joined the service, I had the Book of Mormon, the Koran, Bible, both versions.
I was the kind of person that would argue with a Jehovah's Witness in my underwear with a bottle of Colt 45 and win.
They would leave.
I was proud of stuff like that.
I was always looking for the one religion that would allow me in to be a complete asshole and still get into heaven.
You know?
So my religious experience was extensive.
At one time, I was trying to pursue this young lady because I wanted what she had.
And I was willing to go to any lengths to get it.
And she was in this Baptist choir.
And so I joined the Baptist choir.
And they got loaned out to a Methodist church.
So on any given Sunday, I was a failed Catholic who was a practicing Muslim singing in a Baptist choir in a Methodist church.
So I knew all about God.
You couldn't tell me about God.
So here I am with you people.
And you're starting with a prayer, ending with a prayer, and passing this basket.
And you sound like you know something.
You know something about God I don't know.
And it was attractive.
I loved you.
I started to learn to love you.
There was this big guy, George.
George liked hugging folks.
George was 6'2", 7'2", 6'2".
I don't know.
He was huge.
The boy was big.
Big beard and everything.
He was in the Navy.
And I later learned that he was teaching self-defense to the Navy.
He could have broke people in half.
But he liked hugging everybody.
Now, I'm from New York.
You're another man.
You don't be hugging me.
Sorry.
And he would chase me around a little room.
To hug me.
And one day he caught me.
And I was hugged.
Now, I started thinking after, you know, because I really started enjoying these hugs.
I mean, he was such a big guy that you felt like really safe in this guy's arms.
And now I'm thinking I'm gay.
I'm six months sober.
If you knew an alcoholic's non-business, you have crazy thoughts.
That's fine.
Share them with somebody.
You know, just go out to coffee one day and sit next to the resident old-timer.
And just while you're eating the ice cream or drinking the coffee, just go, uh, Joe, I think I'm gay.
And what the old-timer will tell you will be pearls of wisdom.
Like, are you married?
Yeah.
To a woman?
Yeah.
Do you love her?
Yeah.
Well, you're not gay.
And you can finish your ice cream and coffee and go, oh, okay.
Because you got to get rid of these crazy thoughts.
You still have more crazy thinking to do.
It never ends.
It just changes.
And if you work hard in this program, you can be very entertained by some of your crazy thoughts.
You can find them quite here.
I mean, I start breaking out of laughter at lights, at traffic lights, people looking over, you know, because I just had a crazy thought.
It was very entertaining, you know.
When you spend too much time with it, you'll start thinking about acting on it.
That's dangerous.
That's why I told, I said, drunks should not watch the Home Shopping Network.
We're too impressionable.
Because after a while, you can't live without that slicer or dicer, you know.
You buy six of them, you know.
So, you know, that's the way I am anyway.
But, you know, George would follow me around.
There was a lady, Kathy, that used to take all my suicide calls at 3 o'clock in the morning, you know.
And they loved me.
That first year I was in AA was just a loving.
They spoon-fed me this program.
Now, I came back to the United States on fire about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Just had one small problem.
One small, just wasn't enough African Americans in AA as far as I was concerned.
So I took a part of my life.
I was going to dedicate my life to getting thousands of black folks into AA.
There was going to be another picture up on that wall, you know.
I got a little ego problem, you know what I'm saying.
I was going to rewrite the book later, but, you know.
I went to a meeting in the southeast side of D.C.
Thousands of black people in alcoholism.
Thousands of black people in Alcoholics Anonymous, at least as far as I could see.
And they all had been sober longer than me.
Pissed me off.
But I'm going to tell you, the thing that I think saved my bacon.
I would like to say that the first five years of my sobriety were really stellar, but it wasn't.
Not by a long shot.
I wasn't taking this thing home at all.
One thing that saved my bacon, when I finally came to that pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization again,
was the fact that I went to meetings.
I was a member of the dedication group in Florida, Fort Long Beach, Florida, on Eglin Air Force Base.
I was a member of the Masawa group in northern Japan, where I first came.
I was a member in good standing of the Rantoul family group in Rantoul, Illinois.
I was a member of the Overtimers group in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
I'm presently a member of the Foxall group in Bellevue, Nebraska.
And I'm a member of the McClellan Thursday night group in Sacramento, California.
I never give up a home group because it's important to me.
And I'll tell you, if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous and wondering whether or not you have a home group,
if you walk into your home group meeting and the old timer that's there, the resident old timer, the group of old timers look at you and go,
Oh, Jesus.
That's your home group.
Be there long enough to be a burden to the people that are there before you.
If the resident old timer walks up to you and hands you his card or gives you his phone number, he don't know you.
That ain't your home group.
You're not there enough for them to get really pissed off at you.
The deal was I was going to meetings.
That's what saved my bacon during that five years.
I got to a point where I was five years sober.
And wasn't nothing funny anymore.
I wasn't having any fun.
I hated you.
And I hated myself.
And I hated the job.
And I hated her.
And, you know, she wasn't thrilled.
Two months out of treatment, I told her how sick she was for being with me.
This is a wonderful thing that an Al-Anon leads to here when they're balancing the checkbook and trying to manage the kid and be a father and a mother and all of this stuff.
And then I come back home fresh out of treatment telling her how weird she is.
She was really pleased.
You know?
And then I'm gallivanting all over town being big AA guy about campus.
And she's sitting at home.
She was not happy.
You know?
So our relationship was terrible.
It was tragic.
And it was, to me, I was going nuts.
I was not satisfied.
I was getting to five years sober and you're supposed to get the AA brass ring at five years.
That's what I was thinking.
And it wasn't happening.
I wasn't happy.
And I wasn't growing and all of that stuff.
So I got to a point where I was almost ready to kill myself or get a sponsor.
Equally tragic decisions.
I decided that I would get a sponsor.
And I could kill myself later if it didn't work out.
And that's when my God with a sense of humor sent me to Bellevue, Nebraska.
Now, they don't sound like AA Mecca to me.
You know?
But I went there and I met a man who looked at me.
Looked me right in the eye.
Looked through me.
And said to me, if you want to hide in AA, go to these meetings.
But if you want to get in the middle of alcoholism, come to this one.
Now, I got a resentment over that.
About five years sober.
I was walking around looking at all these people.
And they're dressed in shirt and tie.
And they're .
You know, they're doing all that stuff.
They're just having a good time.
It pissed me off again.
How dare you?
I got five years sobriety.
But I decided I opted to go along with what this guy says.
For the basic reason because I took his inventory that day.
I took his inventory the next day.
I took his inventory the third day.
Now, I'm going to give you a little hint.
If you take somebody's inventory that many days and they're the same sex as you and you don't have a sponsor, get them for a sponsor.
Because if they're going to spend that much time in your head, at least they can do some cleaning while they're up there.
So, I asked them, you know, and I heard in many discussion meetings that, you know, often the person doing the helping is getting more help than the person they're helping.
You know, I heard this stuff, you know.
So, I figured if I asked Reggie to sponsor me, he would be pleased.
Because the selection process had taken so long.
And in Village Inn, I remember in the booth, I can still see that booth when I go to that Village Inn in Bellevue.
He made me say, please.
I was not happy.
I was not happy.
I was not happy.
But I said, please.
And he asked me.
And he said he would sponsor me.
And then he told me that there was some requirements he had.
And that was new to me.
Requirements.
What the heck.
This is AA.
I don't know.
Rules.
You know.
And he asked me to wear a shirt and tie to the meeting, the home group meeting that he attended.
And to do a couple of other things.
Not lie.
You know.
And I was mad.
I said, okay.
All right.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
Because I was desperate.
You know, when you're desperate, you'll do it.
Whatever it is.
You know.
But I'm like a year.
I think I would always be in the mirror putting a tie on going, there's AA Nazis here.
I'm going, .
You know.
There's 500 meetings in Omaha.
I can go to any meeting where they're sitting around pissed off where AA's supposed to be.
You know.
I'm going with these.
They're all enthusiastic.
You know.
And I was hating it.
And I would get in the car and I'd complain about it.
I said, I'm going to fire him.
And I'm going to get rid of him.
I'm going to go to some other meetings where they all sit around pissed off.
You know.
I get in the parking lot.
And I go, yup.
That's what I'm going to do.
do when i get down the stairs and say reggie you're fired that's what i'm gonna do and i get
down i shake the hands of the greeters and i'd sit down and by the time how it works was read
i was in love with you it took me about three or four years but i learned just my home group's got
a few folks about 400 people it's speaker meeting obviously you know i got to learn all those
people's names and i got to learn something about their story and i became i got in the middle of
alcoholic synonymous as a result of hanging out with them folks they taught me some things
one of the basic things they taught me was is that you can do it even if you don't want to do it
and it can be done now i how reggie did it he wasn't like he beat brawl beat me with the big
book or passages or anything like that he showed me by his life he was surrendered to his sponsor
and he would do what his sponsor asked of him and that's all he asked of me but i often thought that
he wasn't paying any attention to my problems because i would call him up and he would give
me solutions that made no sense i'd call him up about her you know because i'm gonna
fix her i'd always been my dream to fix her so if i fixed her then we were the a couple
and we could be famous you know because we're a famous a couple you know honey stand up and
you know i mean that's what i wanted but she wouldn't go along with the program so i was
always looking for a way to get her fixed and we'd have these arguments and i knew i was right
because i could read her mind and i knew what i was thinking too i called reggie up and i said
well she said this and she said that and i said this and i said that and she said that and i said
that and everything like that and so now what i got to do is this and that the other right and he
go go mow the lawn i said is this reggie alvear uh did i get the right number you know i mean
it didn't make any sense but what he understood was he knew that i had allergies i go mow the
lawn that cut grass messes with me i gotta take time on laid out i can't fight so there's peace
in my house you know that i became a man as a result to learn how to do dishes
and take care of myself and i'm a man as a result of learning how to do dishes
it
of society at large and i did not know how to behave like a grown-up person in those fellowships
i did not know how to commit to being of service to my fellow man
or to taking care of God's kids.
And what my sponsor and the traditions and the group that I was in
and all the service work I was doing was teaching me how to do
was to step out of my own little needs and desires and plans and programs
and put first something that was to be the charter for the rest of my life.
How can I be of maximum service to you so that I can breathe and live a free man one day at a time?
That's what it was all about.
He was laying the foundation for that.
And my whole life is centered around that.
That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is for me today.
And a way in which I can learn how to be of maximum service
to people that don't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous and could care less.
All they have is the misfortune of having to meet me at whatever point in time in their lives.
And what I'm supposed to do is show them the best that you have given me,
which was given to me freely.
And all of the instructions are in the 12 and 12 and in the book
and in the experience of these old.
And that's what I got involved in.
And I loved it.
I was moving and shaking at Alcoholics Anonymous.
That relationship went south.
I mean, relationships do that.
After 10 years of sobriety, I got an award from the military for being an outstanding military member.
Thank you very much.
And I climbed the stairs one evening and asked her,
you know, because she had moved out of the big bed.
And I wondered why, because I'm so wonderful.
And I asked her, did you want to remain married to me?
And I expected to hear some, you know, tirade about what kind of idiot I was or something.
But she said no.
She was done.
And that it was over.
And I was mortified.
I really was.
This was the second failure as far as I was concerned.
I was a failure as a man, failure as a husband, failure as a father.
She was taking my daughter and she was going back to the East Coast.
She was taking the kid that was really important to me, this little girl, you know,
because she had never, I had dropped her a couple of times when my bottle was more important than hers
when she was coming up.
You know, and I was going to try, I was trying to make that living a man's.
And I was trying to do the best I could, but I was falling way short, way short.
And that.
That family decided to leave.
And, you know, you know how we do pain in the fellowship.
We walk around like we'd have been shot in the butt by an arrow, you know, something like that.
And then when somebody asked, we said nothing, you know.
And I have I have very wise people in my life.
My sponsor came up to me and he said, you know, we're very blessed to have the only man ever to get a divorce
and alcoholics.
I had to pay in that room.
There were a couple of hundred guys in there that all had second marriages or third, some of them fourth and fifth, you know.
So I was not unique.
See, the thing is, when you when you do that to me, when you tell me about me, you make me not unique.
And when I'm not unique, that means there's a solution for me when I'm unique.
There is no hope.
But when I become one of the many and I got so many people in here that have done it that way, too, that means I can do it.
And I walked through that with dignity.
I took an inventory on that relationship.
And lo and behold, as soon as I was resolved to do things different in my next one, my higher power gave me another relationship, a relationship.
A relationship with a woman and then took took away from me being with that fellowship.
I mean, just as soon as I started dating her and things were coming together and I got an opportunity, I was a weather forecaster in the military and I got an opportunity to do weather on television.
So now I am a world famous weather forecaster.
Hi, how you doing?
I'm moving and shaking and I am dating this wonderful girl.
I'm having a good time.
And then the Air Force kicks up and goes, we want you to go out west.
I want to go out west.
I got a good here.
Well, you don't understand.
We pay.
Your.
Salary.
We said, you where the hell we want to send you.
So they sent me out west and I figured out what if I got to do this, you know, and then I came up because I got a little ego problem.
I figured out that there must be thousands of people dying in Sacramento.
And, you know, I got I got this program.
I know true.
I must have a message of salvation for so I did a tearful goodbye to my girlfriend and my fellowship in Omaha, Nebraska.
And I got in the Nissan stands and I drove I was going to go over the Rocky Mountains, come out of Reno and say everybody in Sacramento.
Because I got a message for him.
Well, the transmission fell out of that Nissan stands in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I found an Amco station, a La Quinta Inn, and right down the end of Main Street and right next to Pizza Hut is this Alano Club.
And I walked in there, pictured them two old white guys.
And first things first, easy does it.
Guy named Jim.
Always a guy named Jim.
Always a guy named Jim.
Always.
You know, and I spent a couple of meetings there and then they sent me down to Sacramento and my sponsor gave me numbers of three people that were active.
People and alcoholics and I have been sober longer than men.
You would think with almost 11 years of sobriety, I would have called them, but fear kicked in.
They weren't doing the meetings the way I like them to be done and fear kicked in.
And when fear kicks in, whatever growth you have been on or whatever track you're on stops.
It just completely stops when fear kicks in.
The most respect I have for people are those that can walk courageously through things that are scaring the living daylights out of them.
I see that on a regular basis in my home group.
Sometimes I'm the person that's doing it.
But most of the time, I get to see other people.
Go with dignity through tough times that would scare me to death.
And they do it as a result of just hanging out with us.
See, I don't have any courage.
I don't have any of the ability to go through the tough things in my life that I have gone through.
But I know when I hang with you, you give me the inspiration on how to do other things while that works itself out.
God works wonders in my life as long as I ain't heaven.
When I happen, it goes to shit.
But if I ain't heaven, it's fine.
And that was the deal.
I had to, you know, I had come to that situation.
And it was heart-rendering to me.
It was truly heart-rendering to me.
But the fact of the matter is I had to go through it.
So I wanted to get back into the middle of alcoholics and I didn't know how the opportunity presented itself.
And what happened was I ended up doing vacuum in this meeting on a Saturday night.
Then this guy calls me and decides he wants to commit suicide.
So he's going to call me to say goodbye.
So I told him, hang up.
So I could, you know.
He ended up being so needy that I ended up taking him to meetings.
And it happened for me just like it happened for you.
I was taking somebody else, you know.
I'm trying to help somebody else.
And I got help because I got back in the middle of alcoholics and I started sponsoring guys
in Sacramento.
Weird guys.
Weird, sick, weird guys.
Just nuts, you know.
I got embroiled in controversy and somebody walked up to me and asked me that question
that I know people with a long time in sobriety hate.
Would you like to perform a service function for us?
You know, my mind says, no.
My mouth says, certainly, I would be honored.
You know?
I got involved in a group.
I really didn't want to be involved in a group.
And I had to learn how to put principles ahead of personalities.
Not theirs, mine.
All my cognitive defects came out of it.
If you have a problem with the six step, if you are really having a problem with the six
step.
My recommendation to you is get in the group.
Get in the group.
you have a list this long jack because first you'll take everybody else's inventory
then just turn over the other side and say that's me
done you got all the stuff you got to work on that six ten now you can humbly ask
you know because that's what i had to do i had to work through traditions big time
i had to look at me and i had to take some inventory get some help listen to old timers
do the whole deal and what happened is i got back in the middle of alcoholics and
i started moving and shaking i could go to meetings i didn't feel different i could look
people in the eye and not be afraid it was great i even got an opportunity to do some
more television work a guy called and said we need a weekend weather guy so hey i'm back
on tv hi how you doing partly cloudy you know i'm maintaining this long distance relationship
with this girl back in omaha i'm still keeping i've got my sponsor long distance things are
going well you know i'm developing a relationship with my daughter i'm not just sending the
checkbook the the the child support
i'm sending i'm sending cards and i'm talking to her on the phone and we're maintaining
a relationship not a perfect one but pretty good everything is coming together the air
force comes back and says we want to send you to the far east i don't want to go to
the far east perhaps you don't understand i had three more years left in the air force
and i i didn't want to go to the far east but i said okay if that's the way it's got
to be that's the way it's got to be i decided to marry her roxanne weaver and go to the
far east you know that's the way i do things you know alcohol y'all know you're out now
and you know how we do things
you know last minute gotta get it done now you know you know so so let's do it now you
know and i married her they canceled the assignment sent me back to sacramento
what's this the fact of the matter was i didn't want to be back in sacramento i wanted to
be back in omaha and i sent in an applique i wanted special dispensation they refused
it i got angry i called my sponsor i was pissed the air force has turned on me betrayed me
how dare they you know and he goes he says well what
are you going to do and i told him i said i'm going to a meeting i'm going to help somebody
he goes don't go to a meeting i said why don't you want me to go to a meeting because i read
the book you know nothing will shield you more from intensive work with them so i was
gonna go hit somebody come here come here let me help you come on sit down read this
book you're getting sober damn it you know because i'm angry you know that was the way
i was going to do it and he knew that so he said he told me why don't you go to a movie
So I went to see Die Hard 3.
It worked.
You know, I did those last two years in Sacramento and came home to a wife, a young son, a teenage son, stepson, who liked rap music.
You know, and I was trying to, I'm trying to do, I've got to get a job, you know, and all of that stuff that life puts in front of us.
It was just life stuff.
But, you know, I'm an alcoholic.
I'm chronically self-centered.
You know, and I'm always thinking about me.
And what my sponsor has to constantly do and what you constantly make me do is step out of that, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, and help you.
And when I help you, opportunities present themselves.
I got a job, of course.
I had that job for about a year, and then they decided they wanted to let me go.
It was that anniversary where I turned, I forget what year of sobriety it was, but it was 98, so I guess I was 17 years old.
Yeah, I was 17 years old.
So I turned 17.
I turned whatever age I was, because the 1st of June is my belly button birthday.
I got two pigeons firing me, you know, so it was a good week.
You know, it was a really good week.
I was feeling really good about myself.
A week later, I went to Washington, D.C. with my wife and got to sit in a hall right near, in Georgetown, when George Washington, Duke Ellington High School is.
My daughter was graduating from high school.
She was graduating the valedictorian of her class.
She was graduating the Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's the district representative for Washington, D.C., put the National Merit Scholarship around her neck.
And she got five minutes to do a little sharing, thanking, you know, doing that valedictorian speech.
And what my little girl said to that whole audience, all these folks, was she wanted to thank her dad for his kindness and his encouragement.
Now, my daughter thinks I'm kind and encouraging.
I'm the one that used to criticize the little hand puppet drawings that she made in the first and second grade.
I'm the one that was always forcing her to read stuff so that she would expand her mind.
I mean, I'm the one that was dictatorial, dominating, authoritarian, and judgmental.
But she thinks I'm kind and encouraging.
As a direct result of all the service work and all the 12-step calls and all of the stuff, you made me do what I didn't want to do.
Because when I got on the phone with her, I knew my primary purpose was to be, to treat her like a newcomer.
And if I can sit there.
At 4 o'clock in the morning, listen to some newcomer go on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
I can spend at least a half an hour with this person that's the most important thing in the world to me.
And that's what she saw.
Those were the actions that she saw.
And that was what she was commenting on.
I was very proud of my daughter.
I was even more proud when she came out to a place in Maryland where I got an opportunity to speak.
And she sat right in the front row and listened to me give a talk.
And she said to me when it was all over, she said, I think they saved the best for last, Daddy.
You know?
And she was with you alcoholics and now and now it's that whole weekend and you were on your best behavior.
You made me proud.
This is why I'm a part of this thing.
And this is why it will never leave me because I've had these experiences.
There's no way you can take this away from me.
I have a relationship with my son.
And my stepdaughter.
I've got four little grandkids.
They are the treasures.
One's only four weeks old.
Brielle is four weeks old this week.
The oldest one is seven.
Chronically self-centered.
We're saving bail money for the two-year-old.
And his little brother is right behind him.
They interrupt my life all the time.
They interrupt my life all the time.
I'm about to watch A&E.
Here comes the grandchildren.
And they want to talk to Papa.
And everyone has to tell me a story at exactly the same time.
It's like being in a meeting.
It truly is.
I was working as a salesman when I got fired from that job because I don't like asking for money.
I started working for a hotel.
I'm an assistant manager of a hotel.
And I...
I have a lot of people that work up under me.
I work for...
Work for me.
And it's a hard job.
It takes a lot of my time sometimes.
And what I've discovered is...
Is that when I apply to traditions in that job, it goes a lot easier.
Because traditions to me are ego deflation.
The less of me you have to deal with, the better.
The less of me you have to...
You can deal with me all day.
But the less of me you have to deal with, the better.
And when I put those traditions ahead of my personality,
what happens is...
I have a good day at work.
But many times I think in my head, you know, I want to fix it.
And that's what I have to learn today is to try to keep from fixing it.
Try to keep from controlling it or managing it or manipulating it.
Because I don't have that capacity.
If you're new at Alcoholics Anonymous, you may not understand what I'm talking about.
That's fine.
I don't care.
I really don't.
But you stay around here long enough, you'll get it.
You'll get it.
And I'll tell you how you're going to get it.
If you're wondering whether or not you're an alcoholic,
you're wondering whether or not you suffer from this illness,
if you have been anywhere, anytime,
in the last whatever,
listening to somebody who is an admitted alcoholic
and they've been talking about their golf game or their wife or their sobriety or whatever,
and you do this,
give up.
Quit the fight.
You be a drunk.
Because only a drunk does this
when another drunk's talking.
Al and I do this.
I love both programs.
I really do.
I love the Al and I program because they got a book and we got a book.
And this will tell you the difference between the two programs.
We got a book, As Bill Sees It,
and they got a book, Lois Remembers.
Okay?
That's the program right there.
Because, see, she was the only one paying taxes.
You know what I'm saying?
He was doing this.
Stuff for fun and for free,
but she was the one paying taxes.
So, you know, I got a lot of respect for the Al and I program.
It's done wonders with my wife.
It really has.
It's done wonders with our family.
Because we're developing towards a recovering family.
And I like so much what you said,
that if somebody's in recovery in that family,
that family's in recovery.
And it's true.
I heard from an old-timer back out in Sacramento
that, you know, when I was drinking,
at least seven other people were affected by my disease.
And not that I'm sober and alcoholic,
but at least seven other people should be affected by my sobriety.
By recovery.
And that's why it's service to my fellow man
that is the principle that I have to live by.
Because I owe.
Alcoholics and Amas has given me freely a life today.
A life that has come full circle.
I feel like a man today.
I do like a man does today
as a direct result of men teaching me how to do that
for fun and for free.
So I owe them.
And I can never pay them back
other than to be willing to share it
with anybody that walks in my line of sight.
That's what it's about.
That's what it's about.
I gotta be principled on I-80.
I gotta be principled in the grocery store
when the person in front of me has 16 items
and there is no cash register in the country.
There's a quick express line that has 16 as the minimum.
I gotta do it when the check don't come
the way it's supposed to come
or when the bills come
and I got more bills than I got money.
I gotta be principled
in practicing these principles in all my affairs.
That's what it says.
That's what it says at that 12th step.
And that's a hard thing to do
for a person that's chronically self-centered.
But I get so much encouragement
and an inspiration from you all
because I watch you struggle with it
and I'm no longer different.
I'm accountable to you.
And I'm so grateful for that.
So I hope to God that I remain in the middle of Alcoholics Now.
It's hard to fall out of the cart when you're in the middle.
It's real easy to fall when you're hanging on the end.
But I want to stay in the middle
because I got a big mouth
and I like to be seen.
And this is the way I'm going to do it.
I'll close with a little story
that encapsulates what I'm about,
what Alcoholics Now has done for me.
God's trying to paint his house.
He's trying to paint his house.
He's got a two-year-old hip in him.
And you know, as you may know,
two-year-olds are no hip.
Absolutely no hip.
So to keep the kid occupied,
he decides he sees a magazine
and has a picture of all the continents on it.
And he tears it up into pieces
and he tells the little girl
to go in the next room
and put this puzzle together.
So she goes scampering off
and he figures he can get some work done.
About five minutes later,
she walks right back out.
Finished.
How did you do that so quick?
You know, because he's thinking
there's some places on there
I'm not sure where they were supposed to go.
You know, and how did you do it so quick?
Well, there was a man on the other side.
I put the man together,
the world came together.
I came into Alcoholics Now
with a lot of old ideas,
problems, difficulties,
all that stuff.
And you said to me,
the message you gave to me was,
that's all well and fine.
We'll take care of that.
But first,
what we want to do
is separate you from something
that's killing you
day by day.
What we want to do
to substitute for that thing
that you think is so important
in your life,
what we want to do
is give you a relationship
with a higher power that loves you.
We want to give you principles
that we have documented
that work.
And we want to help you
teach you how to practice
those principles.
And once you've got all that down,
then you can go out into the world
and see if it's a different place.
And it truly is a different place
for me today.
It's a wonderful place
whether the sun is shining
or it's raining.
It's a great day
to celebrate.
I have enthusiasm
for my life today
as a direct result
of the love,
the attention,
the stern
and honest criticism
I've gotten
from the old timers,
the endless,
relentless questions
that are mostly crazy,
I think,
from newcomers.
The hours and hours
of service
that I've had to do.
But most important,
the hours and hours
and hours of service
that has been done to me.
That's the deal.
That's why
I am here.
I am the man
I am today before you.
I'm not a great guy.
I'm still the same asshole
I was when I got here.
But I just don't look like
and act like it
because you've done
a great job
in teaching me
how to act
into a new way of thinking.
And I'm so grateful for that.
I'm grateful that you
asked me to come out
and I'm done.
Thank you.