Leave Out One Ingredient and the Cake Doesn’t Rise — Why ‘Take What You Want and Leave the Rest’ Is Killing People – Larry K.

There's a town in England that had a lot more foresight than most of America and saw 50 years ago that air pollution would be a serious problem and that the automobile was the single most dangerous cause of pollution itself. And so they had an all-day town meeting and banned the automobile. Now that was done real quickly. Most of the day was spent trying to decide what they would use as an alternate means of transportation. And they went through the pros and cons of getting around on this and that and this and that. And finally, they settled on the donkey as the most practical for everyone in town. From that day to this, you can't drive a car through the town, you can't drive a car in the town, you cannot own a car in the town. If you drive through, why, is it tourist? You've got to circle around the town if you want to stay with your car. So, since the donkey is the only way to get around, it's crucial. And everybody has one. And if you ever get to visit there and you look around, you'll see that every single old man has his own ass. And all the old ladies have their own asses. The young gals have their own asses and the young guys have their own asses. Now, since it is the only way to go, you drive your ass pretty hard if you're pushing it all the time. And if you're driving your ass hard enough, it's going to tend to break down on you. Well, you need an ass to get around. Just figure what life would be like without an ass, how uncomfortable it would be. So, you borrow somebody else's ass. Now, nobody else's ass is ever going to move fast enough for you. So, there are ways to prod it. You go, you know, you just, this leads to a lot of fights. You know, because nobody likes to have their ass kicked in public by a stranger just to make it push a little bit faster. People are the same everywhere and young gals will park their ass where it doesn't belong and the local cop, the local cop has to come around and pinch their ass for them. Yes. Just, just the way it happens. Once a year, they have a show to pick the best, you know, the best looking ass in town. And I don't know if you've ever made a study of asses. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Oh, in the course of this contest, proving that politicians are the same everywhere, you'll find the local mayor kissing ass for votes. Again, since they are so important, one of the greatest jobs in town is the guy who has the jobs of selling ass. You can imagine how popular he is. Come Sunday morning, everybody hauls their ass off to church and the particular Sunday morning that leads to the story. In the middle of the Catholic Mass, an earthquake struck the town, and everybody had ran out of just ran right out of the church to save their ass, except for the priest. He had parked his ass along the side of the church, and the windows there were all broken. And he just jumped through the window, hoping to land on his ass, but by accident fell into the main crevice of the earth. Uh, from the earthquake, proven that even a priest can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground. I'm Larry Kowalski, and I'm an alcoholic. I haven't found it necessary or desirable to take a drink or a mood-changing chemical of any type today or any today since May the 21st, 1972, and for that I'm very grateful. I happen also to be a functioning Roman Catholic priest, despite the outfit and despite the way my name is listed, and I do want to comment very briefly on that. Should you see me after the meeting or anywhere else, please do not do me the disfavor of using the word father. The reason I say that is where I sobered up, we had a Colonel John until he got drunk and came back as John, and in my life I have seen that anything that's going to separate me and really make me feel like I'm a Christian is going to separate me from the other than, apart from, is a threat to me, and I don't believe in having any Dr. Toms or Colonel so-and-sos or Father so-and-sos in our program. When I go in for surgery, and I had hemorrhoid surgery since I've sobered up, proving that I'm not a perfect ass anymore, when I go in for surgery I don't wear a Roman collar, and so I don't wear a Roman collar connected with my program at all. One other comment before I start, I want you to know that immediately after this meeting I'm going to leave this room. Now since I have come to the White House, they have raffled off every single thing possible. There have been raffles after raffles after raffles, and I'll bet you that damn Tom is printing up tickets on me right now. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be gone. I would like to start, and unless I forget, to close this meeting. I would like to close this meeting. I would like to close this meeting. I would like to close this meeting. I would like to close this meeting. I believe very sacredly in respecting God as we understand Him. Some people read the Bible one way, other people read it another way. Should you read it in a way that you feel there's nothing more there than any other book, I hope you'll find a lesson in the story anyway, because that's how I'm going to use this story. And the both of the stories I'm going to select are from the Gospel of John. The one I'm going to start off with is, I think, in the fifth chapter. There's a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years, lying beside a pool. Jesus walks up to him, and this is the part of the story that I'd like to share with you. He says, do you want to be healed? The man responds, I have no one to put me in the water. Jesus says, pick up your mat and walk. I heard that story for quite a long time, and it's been a long time since I've heard it. I've heard it for a long time, and it's been a long time since I've heard it. I've heard it for a long time, and it's Because I have a dual personality. I've got alcoholism and Al-a-nanism, and I think we need that word to describe whatever the disease is that characterizes those people who are functioning Al-a-nons. And the part of me that isn't Al-a-non really is the part of me that even more needs this story. Let me give it back to you. And I gave it to you exactly as it's in the gospel. Do you want to be healed? I have no one to put me in the water. The answer was not yes. It was an excuse for staying sick. Do you want to be happy today? Would you like to be at peace today? You don't understand how much my husband's drinking. You don't understand how serious my children's problems are. You don't understand how bad it is at work to transfer it over to alcoholics. And again and again and again, I find myself and other people coming up with excuses for staying sick. When the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the program of Al-Anon walk into our lives and offer us a wholeness, because that's really what's being offered. Would you like to be whole as a person? To embrace everything that you are. But you don't understand, I can't do this because my bishop doesn't appreciate me. My pastor gets on my back. My parishes are too small. And I come up with the excuses for staying sick. And then, for all of us also, comes the great challenge. Despite our excuses and despite the part of us that wants to stay sick, we're given instructions to help. Pick up your mat and walk. What a challenge it must have been. What a challenge it must have been. What a challenge it must have been at that moment. What if the man just didn't believe and stayed on his mat? What if he had not picked up the mat and taken the steps to walk to hell? There would have been someone with the total potential for living whole and healthy laying on a mat, cursing the world for his paralysis, because nobody would pick him up and put him in the water. And that's exactly how I live again and again and again. What I'm going to do is, what I'm going to share with you is the type of talk I most appreciate hearing in AA. And it's a talk that is based on the thesis that my disease, and I think alcoholism is a disease, is not a disease that is treatable with a vaccination, but a disease that is treatable by constant recurring treatments. And sometimes what we hear is just the very first time a step was ever worked in a person's life. Again and again we'll share, when did I work? When did I work? When did I work? When did I work? When did I work? When did I work? When did I work? How did I take the first step the first time? And how did I get there? How did I take the second step the first time? But for most of you in this room, that type of a talk won't have a real importance. And it's actually going to make you feel you only need that vaccination once and you're done. My disease is a disease that threatens me today. And it's a disease that has really caused me to note some things. How very few birthdays we have in AA, over five years. We have so very few between about five and 20 years. And what's happening? One of the things I think that's happening is there are people in our program who out of a lot of great love are saying things to kill us. And I opened up a talk once. Why do you want to kill me? Why are you sitting out there and then coming up to the microphone and telling me, take what you want and leave the rest? This is a cafeteria style at the same time. A lot of meetings open with the phrase we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Take what you want and leave the rest. If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, take what you want and leave the rest. And I'd like to point out to you something probably you've never heard in the big book. Unlike the 12 and 12 in the big. Book, there are not suggested steps. There's a suggested program of 12 steps that fit together in a coherent pattern. These are the steps that we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. And there is a radical difference between a program I suggest to you to accept or reject and suggested steps. And we have taken a suggested program that has. Worked, and I've rarely ever been any place that has such living proof as here in the White House with sobriety of 39, 37, 36, 35, et cetera. It's horrible when you have 30 years of sobriety and you're referred to as an et cetera. Most of the places I go to, they are very, very rare creatures. But here's a program that has worked for these people, and we take this program that has worked and we suggest. It to you, and we transform that in a suggested steps. You don't have a recipe of suggested ingredients. You have a suggested recipe. And if you're using the recipe, you use all the ingredients and you leave one out and the cake doesn't rise or the bread doesn't do anything. You're not supposed to be shocked when we tell people they can take and leave. We're gambling with their life and we are killing them because many of them don't make it back. The most. Important AA talks or the ones that are never given. We hear the people who go out and slip and slip and slip and come back, but that doesn't work for a great majority, I feel, of the people who go out, they go out and they can't make it back. And that hell of drinking is out there waiting for him. So what I want to share with you is how I have to relive my steps. I particularly want to focus on the principles that the steps have for me, because I think there's a difference. between the principles and the steps. If I'm riding down the street and I'm furious with anger, I can't stop and do a fourth step and call somebody to come meet me in the middle of my car in an interstate and do a fifth step with them and then work eight and nine. But there are principles involved in the fourth and fifth and eighth and ninth steps that I can bring into my life in an active way in that car at that time. About three years ago, I was teaching at a Catholic high school. I got fired from there. I'll just tell you that. Nine years sober. Not many priests get fired. Those damn nuns fired me. Once, but I'm going to have the satisfaction of getting back at them at every AA talk I ever give. Only later did it occur to me what a golden opportunity I missed. Could you just see if I'd gone down to unemployment? What do you do? I priest. Oh, you priest, huh? Well, we don't get much call for them. That's okay. I'll just collect. I'll just wait for a while. Anyhow, before I got fired, and I was a good teacher. Now, I don't know how you're going to put those two together, but that's their problem, not mine. Before I got fired, there was a shift that occurred in my AA living over a two- to three-month period. I was going to meetings. I was eight or nine years sober, going to meetings at eight o'clock, exactly leaving at nine. I didn't want to talk to anybody, anybody that I sponsor who called, irked me, and irritated me. People, because I'm a clergyman in the program, have a way to ask me if I will listen to their fifth step. I had no sympathy. I wasn't listening with any heart. And I believe in a written tenth step daily. I was doing one, and I absolutely missed this whole pattern. And maybe two to three months into it, it finally occurred to me what was going on. I was going to bed saying, of course I'm sober, rather than, my God, I'm sober. I was taking my sobriety for granted. In other words, I was taking my sobriety for granted. In other words, I was taking my sobriety for granted. In other words, I was taking my sobriety for granted. I wasn't doing the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I'm not doing the first step of this program, then every single thing that deals with AA is going to infringe upon me. If I'm actually working this step, and if right now when I stop standing in front of you, I'm shocked at being sober, I'm surprised that I'm sober, then everything connected with this program is a treat. Your being here is a blessing. I have no right to expect that you'll receive me. I should be grateful. I should be grateful. Any AA group will accept me anywhere. And my whole attitude toward AA changes. I've got to remember that. I've recently started law school. I'm in my first semester at the University of Oklahoma's law school. I can do that with the parishes that I have. And I'm under just tremendous pressure how to drop a course. And I noticed these same things creeping back into my AA. I brought books up and studied all the way in the plane and felt a little bit of guilt because I haven't had time to look at the books more while I've been here. And I'm going to study all the way back. And I realized yesterday afternoon that this conference has been so excellent for me because the pressure of law school was taking things out of perspective. Now, I sponsor an eminently successful lawyer who was eminently successful in his drinking. And that should remind me that the profession of law will not in any way affect my alcoholism. And I've got to keep the solution to my disease. And I've got to keep the solution to my disease first. And that's a very important technique I use. I think of all the things I want to be. I'm a compulsive overeater. I have most of the compulsions. I've just been eating very healthily. I haven't had a snack for seven years now. And I'm down to the weight I want to be. But I look at thin people and I can still very much envy them. Except I came into AA with someone who has nearly a one-inch waist. And he does, right today as far as I know, does not have one day of weight. He does not have one day of sobriety. And he has been thinner even than I would dream of being through this period. So being thin is not an answer for my disease. Being rich is not an answer for my disease. Because I knew a banker who was blasted away by the police with a shotgun when they came to his door. And he pulled a shotgun on them. Being rich is not an answer to my disease. Being prominent is not an answer to my disease. People, by my experience, who experience the reality of love, and have the ability to share that reality, have what they need to stay sober and to live contented. And that, as far as I understand, is a gift they receive from this program. I've got to remind myself that I do have a disease and it's not a weakness. And to place all the traits of a disease on it. Fear and knowledge don't affect it at all. If I know that I have cancer, that doesn't stop cancer. And if I'm afraid of dying of cancer, that doesn't stop cancer. And if I'm afraid of dying of cancer, that doesn't stop cancer. And if I'm afraid of dying of cancer, that doesn't stop cancer. And if I'm afraid of dying of cancer, that doesn't stop cancer. And all the knowledge I've picked up in AA doesn't in any way give me one bit of power against my disease. In this one sense, AA is dangerous to sobriety, and I mean that. The longer you're here, the more you're going to hear, and the more in the back of your mind, if it's like me, you're going to start thinking, well, I know how bad it is, so I'm not going to drink. There is no more power in me today than there was when I was drinking. Not in me, as far as alcohol goes. Not in me, as far as alcohol goes. Knowledge is not a defense, and my dad didn't have it, but had I watched my dad die of cancer, it wouldn't keep me from getting cancer and dying of it. If I watch somebody else having the disease, that will not stop it in my life, and I've got to remember that. Today is the day I've got to put first what I am, that I'm an alcoholic. If I lose that, I'm going to lose everything else. It's just as simple as that. And it doesn't happen automatically. It's simple for me, a fear. A healthy, very real fear of what the disease that I have will do for me is one thing that I absolutely must keep in my life. Day by day by day. The second step says, We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Someone said it, I think it was this morning, and I really shouted hooray in my own heart. I believe the second step is one of the most overlooked and crucial steps of this program, overlooked by sponsors. You go to your sponsor with a problem and they'll tell you to do the third step. And I did that for quite a while until it dawned on me that anybody who's coming to me with a problem can't surrender it to God. And the problem isn't the third step, the problem is the second step. Believing somehow that God is going to be able to touch this problem and handle it. You know, I am not Saint Joseph with a drinking problem. Every so often I've heard some priests in the program who are, without knocking them, that's where they're at. All the things you think priests don't do, I did. Now you're going to hear my GP rated talk. There's an R version and there's an X version. You're not going to hear those because you don't have permission slips from your moms, okay? But I've done those things and if I didn't do them, I wanted to do them and I just wasn't able to do them because of circumstances or fear. I can have deep problems still facing me in my life. I've just walked through, I've had sexual difficulties all of my sobriety, most of my life. And I just was ready to absolutely give up on some of them. And I went to see my sponsor. And when I'm ready to give up and lower my sights, that's when I need the second step. That's when I really become, I'm challenged to believe that there is a power greater than me that will bring hope, hope as absolute certain trust. That's what the religious meaning of the word hope is, not I wish that, but I have total confidence that. This is going to go in my life. Now my interpretation of the second step is very different from what most people in the program have. And it's very important for me and maybe it will help one of you. I believe the second step challenges me to believe that I will be perfect. Sanity to me is off the Latin root word, sanus, whole, entire. That I am someday going to be whole. And you know I absolutely need that because if I'm going to believe through life and if after, through eternity I'm going to have to carry sexual problems, then I am going to really know a degree of depression right now. I'm going to lower my sights and live with just giving up in a way that I don't ever want to. I don't know when I'm going to be perfect. I fortunately am in a religion where we do think that God's power blesses some people with the total ability to be loved. And that to me is the definition of sanctity. Loving, allowing everything I am to be perfectly loved. To stand as a whole person and accept it all. And then to share that love with others. Now we believe that a few people reach that point and are able to continue living in that point. That isn't that crucial for me. I don't care if it's going to happen before the grave or after the grave. It is crucial for me to know it is going to happen. I'm going to be able to live with myself, accepting myself completely. When I do that then I can strengthen wherever I'm at. Now the way I build the second step is I count. Every single day of sobriety and every great thing that has happened in my life. I go back and I look. I have eleven years and four months. God has actually broken into my life for eleven years and four months every single day to keep me sober. And when I can't feel it and don't want to think it, I've got to somehow come to believe that a God who has taken that mountain out of my life is not going to let me fall flat on my ass over whatever this mohill is that's facing me right now. I had to do that very much when I was reassigned to the place where I just am signed right now. Because I am from the east and I'm an eastern city snob. And I am in as rural Oklahoma as you can find. And it just isn't for me. And I couldn't even believe anymore in God. So I had to come back to God as I found Him. And incidentally, I found God through the program. I was an ordained priest and with ordination that was my goal. That when I became a priest, all this emptiness would go. And I had to be ordained to discover if you're frustrated and you become a priest, you become a frustrated priest. And I lived for so long on that dream that it was only when that dream turned into nothingness that the alcoholism exploded. I didn't want there to be a God when you steal every cent in the poor fund for three years running and not for alcohol because I had the church wine closet for that including a lot dealing with sex. They're not going to make you saint of the year for doing stuff like that. If there was a God, I was going to go to hell. So when I came into this program, the church was way out there. It was just a profession. I surrendered to this program. And I experienced something. And what I experienced, I did not quickly say, this is Christianity. Today, I prefer to sponsor atheists and agnostics over Christians. It is far easier for them to find God because Christians bring all of the excess baggage in and they try to force God into the molds that their minister, their priest, or some Sunday school teacher taught them this is God. And He doesn't fit well into our boxes. And I didn't do that. I didn't have to, fortunately. And religion was here and this experience was here. And it took me two and a half years to bring the circles together. But when they did and I went to the Bible, I began to find that God that I hear talked about here who is all loving and all forgiveness on every page of the Bible. And I began to see how it was only our remaking God in our image caused people to read that book to redefine God the way He so badly has been. Anyway, I've got to come to believe today. If there isn't hope of some kind, then this is a day of depression. The third step said we made a decision to turn our life and our will over the care of God as we understood Him. Now let me tell you first what this step does not deal with. Because for many of us it does. It does not deal with feelings. It has nothing to do with stopping anger or fear. It does not deal with thoughts. I can stand up here and think I'm better than most of you and half the time I talk I have that. That's a big problem with me. I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I've heard that description and it applies to me 100%. And my insecurities force me to project a superiority. That doesn't make any difference what I think. I can't control those thoughts. And when I meet people I often don't like them because of my fears. All I can control are my actions. It does not say we surrendered our feelings. It doesn't say we surrendered our thoughts. It says we surrendered our life and our will. The area of my life where I act. Secondly, in a very major way, this step has nothing to do with cleaning up my act. I do not become a saint in the third step. If I did, I don't need 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. So many people don't go on to later parts of the program because they're still not working the third step correctly. I lied before and after my third step. I stole before and after my third step. And believe you me, I hanky-panky before and after my third step. And that didn't affect my third step. I surrendered my life over to the care of my sponsor who told me what to do. And for 11 years I have done every single thing I have been told to do by my sponsor. Therefore, I am one of these blessed individuals who from the moment I've walked into the doors have not found it necessary to take a drink or a mood-changing chemical. Nothing dealing with me but the simple reality of surrendering my actions to the care of my sponsor. The care of a program that represented God's power. I picked good sponsorship and I have done what I've been told to do. I make 4 meetings a week. Not because I want to, not because I don't want to. Not because I need them and not because I don't need them. But because I've surrendered my life to a sponsor who's told me to make 4 meetings a week. If I decide I don't need 4 meetings, now I'm taking my life back in my own hands. I believe as long as I am surrendering what I am doing to what I've been told. Now hear this. If I have good sponsorship who's telling me to do the program, I believe that if I surrender and do every single thing I've told, I cannot get drunk. I believe God's power will intervene between me and a drink so that he will not allow me to get drunk. I don't think I have the freedom to drink when I'm working my program. I've witnessed twice in my life where I just decided to get drunk. Some crazy thought hit me. I got insane. And if you had told me everything AA has ever taught me, it wouldn't have worked. One was I got mad at my bishop. I was going to get drunk at him. Nothing you said would have worked. Immediately in my mind came the only thought that would keep me sober. If I got drunk, my bishop would be convinced I was exactly as sick as he thought I was. And I decided to stay sober in anger at that time. Now that's the only way I could have stayed sober. And I believe God kept me sober this way. So for me, the third step deals with surrendering to my sponsor. And incidentally, we've heard some good things on sponsorship. Let me just tell you what my guidelines are for a sponsor. In picking a sponsor, I want to know, first question, who's your sponsor? I don't want someone who doesn't have a sponsor sponsoring me. Secondly, I want to ask, have you done your fourth and fifth? That's an absolute minimum for me. All 12 preferably, but an absolute minimum. Who'd you do your fourth and fifth with and where? If you did them in treatment, and I go to treatment, I want you as a sponsor. But I'm not in treatment right now. I'm in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I believe that the steps that began in treatment need a further redefinition. I'm not knocking treatment. But from my own experience, all of my friends who sat on a fourth step done in treatment have gotten drunk. I consider the fourth step in treatment emergency surgery that needs more careful correction later on for a person to know the full piece of the program. That's just my own opinion, but that's where I'm at. So I want to know, have you done your fourth and fifth? And I want to know then, what's your meeting patterns? I want to know that my sponsor is as active in this program as need be, because I'm putting my life in his hands. And if I've got good sponsorship, and he tells me what to do, tells me to do the things he's doing, I think I will stay sober, that God's providence will be with me. Now, when I say I do the things he tells me, I haven't done them fast, and I haven't done them eagerly. I've done things to prove my sponsor wrong. And I've been angry when it's turned out the way that he said. Told me to go inventory my relationship with the club, I'd see things. I wrote it out, and was sure I'd learn nothing new. Saw some new insights on the last paragraph, and it made me mad. Went to share it with him, and found out that I couldn't even see what I was really writing. Every paragraph I wrote had hatred at a woman who sort of ran the club. And he says, you don't have problems with the club. You've got to hang up with this woman. You've got to go make amends to her. And I'll share this in advance. That was horrible. I had to go make amends to her. Two months later, I had this big fight with a nun. I got all ready to see my sponsor, and I figured, hell no. If I go see him, I'm going to have to make amends to this nun, and there's no way I'm going to do that. So I went to this priest friend of mine, and I went to confession instead. And he gave me as a penance going to that nun and making amends. I had gone to confession to him for five years, and he'd never come up with anything that sick. I hope you can hear how mad I was at God for that. I thought you'd put a little in run, you little polaca. I've done what I've been told. Fourth step. So to me, basically, the third step is, on the basis of that hope, accepting the care. That's the big word of the third step. The care of God. I don't have to worry about getting drunk. That's not my problem. I surrender my actions to my sponsors, and my sobriety is his responsibility. And behind him stands the power of God. So it's getting rid of the problem and turning them over. The fourth step, made a written, a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves, to me, is self-awareness. Steps one, two, and three do not deal with alcoholism. They deal with alcohol. I've heard people in good faith share this weekend that the name of the game is stopping drinking. And it hurts me to have to disagree with what someone said. But every ounce of my alcoholism forces me to say that's totally wrong. The very worst thing you can do to an alcoholic is take the alcohol out of his life. A black gal speaking at our state conference in Tulsa was the one who told me that. She said, alcoholism was my problem, alcohol was my answer. Inside me are a set of feelings. I'm a loser and I'm a loner. I went to school at the age of five, so I was the youngest kid in class. Graduated from high school like Peggy at the age of 16. Incidentally, Tom, if you ever raffle off one of Peggy's purses, you're not going to get any takers. Now, if you weren't there, you won't understand that. I really identified with Peggy as I shared with her. That part of her life was part of my life. We're the people who invented the waterbed long before anybody else thought all about it. Uh, I forgot my point. I'll come back on to the need for self-awareness. Okay, alcoholism to me is I'm a loser. I'm one of the people who feel depression for being, not just for what I've done. I don't feel I have a right to take up whatever space I'm occupying. I don't feel the world wants me. I'm a loner. Trying my best, living with what I am, I still found it necessary to drink. That's what having an unmanageable life means. When I tried my best, I still had a drink. Alcohol handled that pain. Fortunately, I did not grow the way Peggy did, but I grew all the ways I needed to. I feel physically ugly because I had a sadistic older brother who just taught me that I'm ugly. And I feel my ears go from wall to wall. At 28 years old, I couldn't even mention them publicly because he called me Big Ear and Dumbledore and the Elephant and a lot of other things. I felt different from people in every possible way. Alcohol made me feel a part. And I thought it handled my problems. I know today it just drugged me to my problems. Now, I'm only going to use the word alcohol because I'm talking in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I want you to know, for me, alcohol means pot because I smoke the houseplants. It means pills. I've done them. Tranquilizers. And I've done some of the street drugs. I didn't do a lot because I already knew that I was totally alcoholic. I had friends who tried to get me to drop acid. I ran with a drug crowd for several years in Lawton. They'd always try to get me to drop acid. But I hated myself mentally so much. I knew I'd flip out completely. And they always would agree with me and then still try to get me to do it. But it was the one element of kind of sanity that I had that I'd never drop it because of this absolute rejection of everything that I was. I'm here only because I couldn't commit suicide. And I'd lay that on you. That's true for most of us. If we had the option of suicide, I think very few of us would be here today. We'd have killed ourselves before AA, which says something about how we view AA. Now, if you simply take the alcohol out of my life, you're leaving that pain. I've heard people say their worst day sober was better than their best day drunk. That's not true for me at all. The worst time in my life is the beginning of my sobriety because I had nothing but the naked disease. My body screamed for pills and drugs and booze. And it didn't get anything. And I lump them all under alcohol because they're all chemical escapes from living. They're all chemical solutions to those feelings I call alcoholism within me. With these inside me, without the alcohol, I can't face it. And so I need a solution to the alcoholism. I know a guy six years sober who didn't go back to drinking and blew his head off. Stopping drinking was not the name of the game for him nor for anybody else that I really know in this program. Stopping drinking is taking the pain of the alcohol which has become an additional problem out of our lives. But once that euphoria is gone, the alcoholism stays naked. And that's my problem. So one, two, and three don't touch my alcoholism at all. What is my alcoholism? In one sense, my disease has as its symptom the need to escape. I escaped with fantasy. I escaped with sex. I escaped with money. I escaped with material goods. I escaped with activity. I escaped with isolation. I escaped with psychiatry. I escaped with a fantasy life. All of those things I'd escaped myself. And I still have that tendency to want to do it today. What's the opposite of that disease? To confront what I am on paper. The fourth step starts attacking the disease of alcoholism. It goes right to the heart of the disease itself. And that's why the big book says if we don't go on, we are almost certain to drink again because we're not touching the disease and it's just a matter of time before it explodes. The opposite of needing to escape these feelings I can't live with is to confront them on paper. And if you really do a good fourth step, you almost cannot like it. Because what I'm putting on that paper was everything I didn't want to see about myself. All of those cheap little traits that added up to a Larry that I hated. That garbage in here that it was so necessary for me to hide from you. I had to put all that on paper and say, okay, this is what I am. I wish I were more, but I'm not. This is what I am. But as soon as I did that, I started hiding new traits again. There were things about me that I started wanting to deny to myself. And so it's necessary for me constantly to become self-aware of what I am. To know where I'm at today. To know that my dedication to law was making me insensitive to people again. And that I was turning my back on people and really objecting to people rather than wanting to help people. I don't like that. I don't want to stand in front of a group of 11 years sober who have called you to talk about how your program is going and tell them how selfish you're becoming. But I've got to see that within myself. Because if I don't see it, I can't do anything at all about it. And seeing it is the beginning of at least accepting it. So I've got to be self-aware today. The fifth step says we admit to God, to self, and to another the exact nature of our wrongs. Not only did I deny what I was, but I hid what I was. The less I wanted you or anyone else to see. If I could not like being me, there was no way I could possibly think you could like it. And so I had this big camouflage. An excellent example of this was when I was three years sober, four years sober, I went to a group where we had a woman six years sober who got drunk. And she called me the day she got drunk. And I listened to her while she was kind of coming down off the drunk. And she said the reason she got drunk was because in this seventh year of her sobriety she was hurting inside. But she felt that if she with seven years came in and told newcomers how bad she was, it would upset them. So she put a smile on. And she had this plastic outside and this hurting inside. And the less she showed her inside, the more it hurt. And that distance became so great that it took a drink to span it. Six years sober, in the same club, dying inside. Thanksgiving week, Monday night. And I thought of her. And it came my time to share. And I don't remember, I either passed or gave a nice plastic answer with a plastic smile. And I came back Thanksgiving and I told them I didn't want to be at their Dan meeting because I knew they were going to talk about gratitude. And the only thing in my life at that moment that could be worse was I could be drunk on top because I stopped hiding what I was and I was willing to share it. And that's what the fifth step is. I took everything that I hid from the world and I offered it to another person. And I was open. That's my principle for the fifth step. The ability to be open about myself. Incidentally, in a symbolic way, the Bible shows this. Adam and Eve were naked and they were at peace in their nakedness until sin came in, which is simply the lack of feeling love. And when they couldn't love themselves, they were ashamed of their nakedness and they started hiding what they were from each other. With the fifth step, we have the ability to stand naked in the presence of the world again. To be all that I am, whether you like it or not. And if there's any part of this talk that I'm sharing myself that you don't care for, blame God, not me. Because to the degree that I am sharing myself, you're seeing the person that God wants to stand up here. When I put the plastic smile on and tell you how great it is, you're seeing the person I think God wants you to see. And I ought to have enough common sense to know that if that's the person God wanted you to see, that's the person I'd be right now. What I am is what God knows you need to see and to hear. And that's what I've got to be open with. That doesn't come easy. But in my life, in the last 10 years, I had to go to my sponsor 11 Years Sober and admit two months ago a major sexual problem. Nothing new to him. He's been hearing it for 7 years, but he thought it was kinda being resolved. And it was so difficult, sharing this with him, and I shared it with him, and he didn't throw me out. He told me exactly what I needed to do. And for once, I've listened to him. And I have had absolute total peace from that day to this day. know how long it's going to last, but he told me, up until now, you always do crisis therapy. I'm about to tell you the one thing you're likely most to remember from my talk. I'm throwing it in as an aside. In my view, waiting till you're in trouble to see your sponsor might be as silly as waiting till you're pregnant to use a prophylactic. It might be too late. He told me that it would be good to start protective therapy, in a sense, if you'll pardon the phrase, to get on the pill, so there won't be a problem, and to come and see him and constantly just check in and work it through, and that's been happening, and things are going as he shared. The sixth step, entirely ready. Ready. Larry isn't eager, and people confuse that. If I've got a defect, I need it. I can't be eager to have it removed. Entirely ready to have God remove. Now, God isn't going to remove the coat. I am. I'm warm. Entirely ready to have God remove. That's very, very different from having Larry remove. I didn't see that for five or six years. I know what I worked on. I really don't know what God worked on. I can trust God. Trust me. I don't know if I can trust him. Remove is different from suspend. Ask me, the old guy who hit the poor fun, to remove your wallet. Okay? And it's going to happen real, real fast. And you'll find the difference between removing the defect and putting the defect on ice so it doesn't disturb me now, but it's there if I want it. Supposing God removes your resentment. And somebody's in a hurry to get out of here and smashes into the side of your car and you go in to resent. And there's nothing there. It's removed. Supposing God removes your lust. And that perfect person walks by and you go inside to get a good old lust. Remove is a very, very heavy term. Entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Now, the biggest words are defects of character. What's a defect? First three years, I thought the defects were the things that made me a son of a bitch. Years four through nine, I thought defects were the things that made me a nice guy. And here I hope the Al-Anons can hear. The things that made me play like a doormat to the world and let people walk on me. And I started standing up and saying, you can't do that to me. I started putting people in the corner when I had to. I have the ability to really nail somebody's butt to the wall when I'm sponsoring or they're doing a fifth step and they're saying something they don't want to hear. And I could show true tolerance and tough love. Now, that doesn't make me popular always. But that's getting rid of the defect of spineless jellyfish telling people what they want to hear even when it's going to kill them. The last two years, I've gone a lot deeper. I don't know what a defect is. There's a seventh step prayer that says, my creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me. I pray that you now remove every defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and others. Most people, in wanting a defect removed, want something removed that upsets them. I believe your defects are very likely your assets in God's eyes. Your defects to you are your assets to God and your assets to you are your defects to God. All the things I like about me, my academic ability, the years I've got sober, my profession, all of these give me a big head. And you know, you don't sponsor well and you don't share well with a big head. My sexual, my sexual problems, my greed, my materialism, my laziness, my bad temper. These keep me humble. And because they keep me humble, I can be human in sponsoring. And when someone comes to me locked in an affair, I can't look at them the way people who have never had any problems in their life can. I say, well, get out of it. They enable me to listen to people and to share and to really hear with love and say, I understand. Now, the only thing you've got to do is at least take whatever actions you can not to keep in it. And then the rest, it's just going to have to happen. Is, therefore, are, therefore, my defects, defects to God? No, they make me human. And they're making me share better in the meeting. I believe if I grow enough in love, I will need these things. And at that point, God will take them out. But right now, they're tools that help me love and be more human. So I honestly cannot tell you what a defect is. And that's why I've just got to let God work on me rather than make the decisions myself. Seven Step has humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Humbly ask is not proudly demanding. If you ask God to remove your smoking today and you're mad because you're still smoking tonight, and you've been no humble asking at all. That's took me a long time to see that. A very, very long time. But the biggest thing was I didn't meet God. And we've never shaken hands yet. I experienced God through my sponsor, through the group. And nine years sober or 10 years, I finally had, the simplicity to see that I was short-cutting the way God came into my life. And on the seventh step, I was going right to him and missing my sponsor because I didn't want to talk about these embarrassing things. And when I do that, nothing goes. Now, if I go back to the way that God came into my life and I go to my sponsor and I humbly ask, my sponsor is going to tell me what to do. And that which must be removed is going to be removed. Just like with this sexual difficulty that I shared with recently. And so many other things. The eighth step made a list of all persons we had harmed. So let me just throw some words on there yet. Fifth step is openness. Sixth step to me is wholeness. This is the step that I get spiritual experiences from right now. Wholeness means I'm not going to be a schizo anymore and say, God, you can love all of this, but you can't love the lust. I was at a meeting up at Crested Butte, Colorado, and we had this elderly woman, this woman who had experienced more of life than many of us. And she said that she was having troubles with lust. She had problems with lust. And I looked at her and I said, I've never had any problems with lust. I've enjoyed it. But in its own way, somewhere I was on seven, we're on eight. Oh, it's wholeness. I'm not going to let the lust out here and say, God can't love that, AA can't love that, and Larry can't love that. I try to stand as an entire person. My God doesn't love labels. He loves people. I know, I know people in the program who do all the things I don't like in myself, and I accept them, and I love them. So I know AA accepts me as I am. And I've got a struggle to be whole in my own self-acceptance. And that, for me, is the principle of the sixth step. The seventh step is, I'm going to be active about this. It's a word that is badly, I misuse this according to some Al-Anon books, but I use the word submission, where I am going to be actively humble in asking God to love me. Bringing that love into my life. The eighth step is one of the most productive steps I've ever had in this program. Because somebody showed me there are two parts, and if you want to do it well, separate them. You make a list, and then become ready. If you're going to try to be ready, it's going to be very difficult, much more difficult to make your list. It could have said, we became willing to make amends to all people we had harmed, and so we made a list, in which case that's how it'd have to be. But it doesn't say it that way. Seeing that, I made my list, and it was long, and I hated a lot of those people, and I wished they were there when I wrote what I did, so I could do it again. I hated them that much. And I didn't intend at all to make amends to at least nine out of every ten names on my list. No dreams at all of making amends. That wasn't in my mind. With that, what I discovered is, you have feelings. I wrote your name and what I did. And you know, I have nearly ruined people trying to do good because I wasn't aware of where they were at. I laid a deep spiritual experience on a drug addict early in the program, and she fell absolutely apart, and it took me three hours to put her back together. She wasn't able to do this right then. Felt she was a failure and going to twist off. And I wish I could say I forgot this, but two weeks ago, I was sitting Sunday night at a meeting with a local product, a guy from this area, from Marion Lawn, and a gal who was having a lot of real problems, very new, sat next to me, and I was really intolerant to what she was saying and just told her how she was going to twist off. And all she heard in what I said was, well, if she was going to twist off, well, why the hell didn't she go out and twist off? And she left the meeting. And before she left, I felt that I should lean over and make amends, but I didn't want to interrupt people. And I'm not sharing a happy ending story. I feel bad on this one. I did not take the right action. When she left, I should have got up and chased her, and I didn't do it. But I really again saw how I need the eighth step all the time. It does not come natural for me in sponsoring and talking in AA and talking socially with anybody to be aware of where they're at. Because, see, I hurt that badly. I'm just in myself. And I've got to get outside myself to touch you. So the eighth step principle for me is other awareness. The ninth step I have not completed. It's a healing step for me. It is healing the relationships. And what I do is I think of the broken relationship, and I start, I'm praying for the other person. And I've got some little prayers at work for me, and I just keep saying them. When I first start doing this, I hate them more. And that's a healthy thing. I can't control feelings. My program doesn't deal with feelings. That's the anger coming out. And until that anger comes out, there can't be peace within. And then after that anger is out, if I persist at the prayer, a quiet comes in. And then after the quiet, there's a positive feeling. I've got to tell you that I finally have some positive feelings for those damn nuns who fired me. And I really wish I didn't, you know, pardon me, but it's happened. I've prayed for them long enough that I really want a healthy, healed relationship within me. And if my relationship is healed and I owe you amends, talking to you is just the last part of this. And there's no need for me to plan in advance what I'm going to say. That's dangerous because you're never going to follow my script. I ring the doorbell. I say, hey, I'm here to make amends. You say the wrong thing, and I've got to force you back into what I've plotted out. And it becomes pressure. So all I do when I go to make amends is I just stay in God's love. Figuring if I'm filled with love, whatever is said is what's going to have to be said. The tenth step, continue to take inventory. That's staying responsible. When we were wrong, promptly admit it. Incidentally, my sponsor pointed this out. This may help a lot of you because it sure helped me. When we're wrong, we admit it. That's a good word for the ninth step too. Going to people, I used to go back and try to tell them I was sorry. And there was something wrong with that because I wasn't sorry. But I was wrong. And then tenth step says I just have to tell them I'm wrong. And that's honest. When I had to go to the gal in that AA club and make amends to her, I could not say I was sorry for what I said because I enjoyed saying it. I was happy I said it. But it was wrong. It hurt her and it hurt AA. I could go to her and say I was wrong in what I said about you. And that took most of the strain on honesty right out of me. The eleventh step, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him. I'm not going to say the last half because I still find it very difficult to pray only for the knowledge of His will for us. Praying is talking. Meditating is listening. I've discovered God really doesn't need to hear much of me. I need to hear of Him. My God is not a truth. He's a love. Love isn't basically heard in the mind. It's heard in the heart. And so what I want to experience in meditation is listening to being loved inside me. I'll tell you my best meditation. It would be taking my closest friends in AA, putting them in a room, standing in front of them, and in my imagination I do this, and I feel what's in their heart for me. And I know every one of them want me to be sober and to feel peace. I also know that like me they've hurt that badly that at the end of their drinking they were so self-centered and selfish they could not really care anything about another person that they weren't using in some way. So if these people can feel this for me, want this for me, that isn't them. That's some new power present in them. And when I feel this I'm really feeling God. And I will tell you when you experience love, you're at a place where you do not need or want alcohol, pot, pills at all. Because you don't want to be drugged to that experience, at least if you're like me, because I don't want it either. I think therefore it is very, very important that we allow others to feel who we are. AA for me, if I summed it up, when I walked into the program, was we understand. I don't know that anybody ever told me that. Larry, we understand. And I came in as an absolute failure, and they just looked me in the eye, and they said we understand and we care. That's God for me. I have found that incidentally in the Bible. Nowhere in the Gospels am I aware of Jesus ever telling a sinner off. He's criticized for eating with crooks and prostitutes. Now if he were telling them off, he wouldn't be criticized. And if they were exes, he wouldn't be criticized. So he's sitting down with a prostitute, having a hamburger, and saying thank you for your fellowship, and walking away. And I do understand what that means. And I understand why the religious leaders of that time and the religious leaders of today don't want that kind of a God, because it rejects so many of their concepts. But you see, when I hate myself, the answer to that is not you're loading me with guilt, it's giving me acceptance. And when you give me acceptance, I want to be better. One of the neatest moments that I've had in my whole AA life was at the end of a conference, I had met this friend, a black lesbian prostitute, active in our program, and she and I just really gave a true kiss of friendship. That's all of AA. There's no rejection. She accepted me where I was, and I try to accept her exactly where she is, and we show this. And by doing that, we each want to be better. Therefore, please, be careful how you phrase what you haven't done. I have never been arrested. I have never been institutionalized. The cops were out looking after me because I was in a military town leading an anti-war movement. And I was told if I ever took a drop not to drink, and I was driving blacked out all the time and had the only car of its kind in town, I have nothing to say about not being arrested. It has nothing to do with me. Now, if I stood here and said, at least I have never been arrested, I've just rejected every one of you who have. If I say, at least I've never sold myself for money, and I damn well have in lots of ways, maybe not sexual, I've hurt every person here who's trying to walk the way of sobriety who has done this. Be careful when we say what we haven't done. If I haven't found it necessary to do certain things, sometimes I'll tell you. Other times I won't. Because I don't want you, if you found it necessary to do those things, to feel apart from me. Because I broke every rule I had. A gal named Alabama is the one who opened my eyes to this. She's in our program. She said that she had never functioned as a prostitute and put them all down, having all these affairs in her drink, and until it dawned on her one day, she was real rich. The only difference between her and a prostitute was she didn't need the money. And that hit me so damn hard, because you can't believe how smug and proud I was and basically still tend to be. And I realized, you know, the only difference between me and you are circumstances. I have done everything I never wanted to do. And so there is a sameness. And if anything I have said makes you feel an at least, I'm sorry. I don't want that. Because I'm here to give you the message of Alcoholics Anonymous as I received it. And it's, we understand. I understand where you're at. I hope. And I care. The twelfth step, I want to, I know I've talked a while, I want to share on the twelfth and then end with the story. So maybe, you know, your butts can take a little bit before I go. Wind up. I want to tell you something that I've just realized in the last four or five months. And it's crucial. Why are alcoholics getting drunk in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? It's because you're not hearing from the podium if you're hearing the kind of talks that I hear that are telling you what you need to do to stay sober. What is the answer that Alcoholics Anonymous gave the world 48 years ago? It's not God. And it is not not drinking. How does an alcoholic stay sober? It is not fellowship. And I will surprise you, it's not the steps. If it were the fellowship, our bar fellowship would have kept us sober. If it were God, we should be going to churches because they're the experts, take it from my other hat, on God rather than we. But they can't keep us sober. What is our answer? What did the world not have until 48 years ago? It's that an alcoholic stays sober by working with another alcoholic. Not by letting treatment centers work for him with other alcoholics. Not by letting a certain select few make the 12th step calls on behalf of all of the alcoholics. Not by letting the professionals with the callers do all the fourth and fifth steps and work with other alcoholics. I'll do that because it keeps me sober, but you're likely to get drunk if you're not doing anything. This explains certain riddles for me when I started seeing this. And I, incidentally, what I'm saying is solid in the big book. Look at the start of chapter 7. The first sentence just shouts this out. I'm going through the big book now. I've gone through it three times in a special way. I read first and underlined in yellow everything that was important. Then I went through and I underlined all the promises. And there's promises with the third step, the fifth step, the ninth step, the tenth step, the eleventh step, and in the later chapters. And if you're not aware of those, go through and find out where is a promise guaranteed? Where are you supposed to stop fighting alcohol when you hit the tenth step? So if you're working the fourth and you're still fighting alcohol, well, you're not supposed to see the mountains from the fourth step of a building. Build higher if you want to see the mountains. When you hit the tenth step, you'll reach a point where you're being given the power to stop fighting if you call on that power. Then I started going through this last round through underlying all of the references to how we have got to work with other people to stay sober and it astounds me. Bill says, never pray for anything for yourself. Just pray only for what will be of use to other people. I gave you the seventh step prayer that says, a defect is only what keeps me from doing God's will, sharing with you. We're told, how did Bill stay sober? The compulsion to hit him, did the compulsion to drink hit him one day, Mother's Day, 1935, and he started making calls and didn't drink. And the next day he saw Bob, and we began. Immediately Bob knew they had a call on another drunk and so they called on the first person they called who became AA number three. I forgot his first name. It was either Bill or Bob. They continue to have to share with each other. Look at your clubs. You're going to see people with long-term sobriety who are really sons of bitches. That's the only good word for it. How are they staying sober? Because those people, twelfth step, the ones I know of that I'm meeting who have nothing that I want, they will stay and they will work with newcomers. They'll go out and they'll call on newcomers and they carry that message and carrying the message will keep them sober. Unfortunately, they're not working the steps so they're missing the benefits of sobriety but they're staying sober. People with neat sobriety go out and drink. Why? Because they stop working with other alcoholics. They don't sponsor. They don't twelfth step. They don't set up chairs. They don't take down ashtrays. They don't chair meetings. Now no one person has to do all of these. But if you want to hear what we're telling you, if you want to hear what our answer is, is the secret to sobriety that Alcoholics Anonymous offers the world is working with another alcoholic. What do I owe you? I owe you what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. Incidentally, I didn't qualify myself as an alcoholic. I'm the kind who liked the effect from the first drink. I'm alcoholic from the first drink. Don't ever remember quitting because I was where I wanted to be. I did not like the taste until the first drink at the very end. I blacked out all the time. I was not a daily drinker because a friend of mine whose father was a doctor taught me the pills to take at the night after the drinking and in the morning. And so if I was too drunk on Monday, I was strung out on Tuesday. And by being strung out on Tuesday, first I didn't have to take a morning drink but I got in the pill what everybody else got in the drink. And secondly, I could convince myself I didn't have a lot of troubles. That's basically my pattern of alcohol. I can't tell you if in the last three years of my drinking I had a single day straight. I doubt it very much because I could not have experienced it. I couldn't live with this pain in here. Okay. I've basically told you what it's like and what's happened. Sober. Found a God experience. Needed it because I'd have gone crazy. Needed it very quickly for me. I have stayed active in this program. I have had moments of great pain and moments of great peace. I have had a lot of failure and I've tried to share those with you and I hope that this program with its principles continues to give me the opportunity to go out and help others. Incidentally, the principle of the 12th step is loving. 11 is being loved, letting AA, my sponsor and God, accept me. That's my meditating. The 12th step is my giving that love to another. What am I like today? Well, I felt very flat when I got here from the law school and everything else. I'm as active as I've ever been. The thing I'm most happy about is I live in one town. The law school is 80 miles away. My sponsor lives in Norman where the law school is. So I spend Monday and Wednesday night in the homes of my sponsor. I'm there all the time and I feel very good about it. It's the healthiest thing in the world. I hope I can get through this semester. I hope I can get through law school. That's an added benefit. It isn't going to be my life. In the Gospel of John, the story I most like to tell in AA, deals with a friend of Jesus who dies. A man named Lazarus. Jesus comes to the tomb with his two sisters, Martha and Mary, and calls Lazarus out of the tomb. Lazarus comes out and he was bound in thin strips. His hands and his feet and everything in his head. And he comes out and then is the line that is so important. Jesus, now here's the crowd and here's Lazarus. Jesus told them that Jesus was going to die and that Jesus was going to come. Untie him and let him go free. That story contains so much true genius about my living, my program. You have not called me out of the cave where I was dead inside. You haven't called me from darkness to light. Only my God has the power to do that. But my God is very strange. When he brought me out of that light, I had had nine months of being unable by fear, anxiety, depression. He brought me to you and he said, untie him and let him walk free. I've discovered that it's not a single moment unbinding. With your love you continue to remove those bindings and give me an increased ability to walk freely. At first I barely could crawl and then I learned to stand and I can take some stumbling halting steps. I guarantee you the process is long from finished but it will continue and I hope that what you have done for me that I together with you will do for you and for everybody else who comes through this door. Listening to our God who offers life, show us how important we are for offering freedom. Untie her in NAA, untie him in Al-Anon in NAA and let them walk free. Thank you very much.