Mental Insanity and Desperation – Step Study – a 12 Step Study – Part 5 of 6 – Local AA Speakers

Daytime watching the New York Yankees play in the World Series, which is for me at least a religious event. And I noticed that I could see right through Mickey Mantle's shirt. I could See through his shirt. I could also see through his shoulder and I could the bones in his arm when he was at bat. And I was looking right through his Shirt. And I thought, God, I've got X-ray eyes. I can see right through the man's shirt. And I told the guy next to me, I said, I can't see through his shirt. And the guy left. And you know, I have all these children, and I went home, and my oldest child was about eight, a boy. And I tell him, today I watched a game, and I can sit through Mickey Mantle's shirt, and he left. and a phone rang and she answered it and somebody I guess on the other end said what's new and she said he can see through people's shirts so I left but the whiskey did that to me it gave me a great sense of accomplishment things that you're not normally able to do and of course the sad part about it is I didn't know that there was anything wrong with that I really thought I could do it. But that talent went away. It just lasted to one day. It's not an ongoing thing. It's an illusory thing, just like everything else that ever happened to me when I was drinking. Of course, when you're that kind of a drunk the way I was and you engage in that kind OF conduct, which is really not harmful to anybody, people go away. They leave. And, of course, I preferred that they would go away. And at the end of my drinking, I was very isolated, very alone, and spent a lot of time by myself brooding, drinking. I preferred to drink alone. And I really didn't ever think I would stop. I really Didn't think so. I didn't think it was possible for somebody like me to stop drinking. And I had a great history of it in my family and where I grew up, in my neighborhood in the Bronx. I knew about the booze. I know what happened to people that drank the way I did. I've been to the funerals of members of my family. And I knew the Irish called it the curse. I knew what the curse would do to you. Or the creature. They also call it the creature, a drop of the creature they say. And they have long experience with drinking, the Irish. and I really didn't think I could stop and I tried AA that didn't work nothing else seemed to work everybody around me knew there was something the matter with me and then I got here I got hier because I had to come back here having been here once for ten months I knew that there was something here that attracted me in the sense that a life preserver attracts a drowning man. I knew that if I were to get help with this problem that I had, I would have to come here and I would have to be part of this thing. I didn't come here willingly. I was not a great volunteer. I didn' t come here singing a song or throwing my hat in the air. Maybe the way I would go to a baseball game. I didn''t have that feeling. I had the feeling that ifI don' t get there, something really terrible is going to happen. I'm going to die. I really had that thought, that I would die. And I guess I had somewhere along the line sort of accepted that fact. So I came here and I stayed not because I really wanted to stay. I came hier because I was afraid to leave. I stayed because the fear of alcohol was so great and the fear or the terror in which I lived was so grave that no matter what was here, it was more acceptable than what was there. I stayed here because I was afraid to leave. I had that feeling at least for an hour or so every day. I hadthat feeling when I came to these meetings that at leastfor that hour or hour and a half or whatever it was, that everything would be all right for at least that period of time. I knew, for instance, that when the phone rang, as it sometimes did in our group, it was not for me. I knew that they whoever they were couldn't get at me and I knew that these people had really had my best interest at heart so I I stayed and I didn't drink and that was the most amazing thing about it all I stayed here and I did not drink there was something going on here and I understood that what was just read that I was powerless over alcohol but I was an alcoholic and could not manage my own life. I understood that after I stopped drinking, not while I was drinking. When I was drinkin', I knew what to do with whiskey. I knew how to use it. I could drink any way you wanted to drink. You want to drink shots of beers? I'll drink shots or beers with you. You want me to drink a martini in a nice chilled glass? I'll think that way. Any way you want. It's perfectly all right with me. Just put it up and I'll take it. I'll just drink it. I was very eclectic about the way I drank. I wasn't selective. It didn't make any difference to me. And then, of course, I stayed. And I had this feeling that I belonged here. I was part of this thing. I was a part of the first word of the First Step. I was apart of the we. And it was very important for me to stay here because I didn't want to go back and die. And I didn' t want to get out of here. I didn''t want to come back to the terror that I had lived with for a period of years, maybe four or five years, with the terror. And I've told you over and over again that I could have lived with the physical alcoholism. I could have lived with that. I could live with the throwing up every morning and wetting the bed at night and being numb in the right leg. I could love with that, but I just couldn't live with terror. And I came here. And little by little, I became better in a mental way. I began to get some of my faculties back. I was no longer able to see through anybody's shirt. And I didn't know if that was a plus or a minus, but I wasn't telling people about it anyhow, even if I could. And I understood that there was something going on here. It's such a great understatement that we use in this program. We say he came here and something happened to him. I know what happened to me. Something, God, a miracle happened. Not only did I not drink, I didn't want to. Somewhere along the line in my first period of time, or whatever it was. It wasn't easy. It was maybe more than a year. I lost the desire to drink. I didn't want to drink, became, a drink to me became a nothing. It just wasn't a plus or a minus. I just wasn' t interested in it anymore. And of course I had lived for many years obsessed with it. My first though when I woke up and finished my morning routine throwing up and all the rest of it was now how do I get a drink? Where do I got to drink? How can I get the next drink? Do I have enough? Can I get some more? Who's going to give it to me? Where can I get the money? It's a full-time job, you know, drinking. The way I did it was full-term. You don't have time for anything else. I didn't have any time for everything else. Drinking consumed every part of the energy that I had. But that had gone away. I thought differently. I sure acted differently. I began to look differently. When I first came here, if you first met me, you'd think I had some Chinese blood. My eyes were closed. that looked Chinese and that went away it was all water in my body and that pointed out all those fluids so I understood that there was something here much greater than than I had ever run into it was the greatest power that I had never come across in my whole life because this whatever this was whatever was going on had done something for me that I have tried very hard to do for myself and not every other power that I dealt with had tried to do for me. People tried to help me in the beginning until I was so bad that their experience told them that nobody could help me. My friends tried. They told me, you know, there's something about the drinking. A man I went to college with came all the way up here from Florida to New York just to tell me that, to stop drinking. He had been to a college affair that I had been told. He talked to me for a while and he went back to Florida and three weeks later he came all the way back up just to tell me he knew something about this disease. He was not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but to tell him that I needed help. All my friends tried that, but I rejected them. My family tried, but they're the least effective. People I dealt with at work tried. My boss tried. No possible way. And a doctor had told me, he said, you know, you should know about this. You're going to die. And he had had, just like Bill Wilson, he had held a conference with my wife about where they were going to put me. And I was a party at that conference, although they weren't talking to me. That ever happen to you? They're talking about me, but not to me, and I'm sitting there bumming in a chair with a load on and this clean-sheven, very professional-looking physician who I knew socially and happened to be the family doctor was telling her he's got to go and he was rattling off a list of names of places it was all long term stuff but here I am I'm hanging out with a guy who drove a Schaefer beer truck and a mailman and a couple of other people just like that the book says we are folks who would normally not mix and I normally would not mix with a Schafer beer trunk driver I put that all behind me when I left the neighborhood. But I look forward to being with him. His name was Pat, he's dead. And Al, and of course I had this sponsor of mine who was forever on my case. He called me today. He said, it's your fault that the Mets had to go all those innings last night. He said the last time I was at a Mets game you took me, it was the 1969 World Series. You remember that? And I said, yeah, you yelled at me for the whole game. why he keeps in touch he's worried that I'm going to get drunk he said 20 years don't mean anything he's got so many it doesn't mean nothing to him it means a whole lot to me but I knew there was some great power here not because they explained it to me because I had experienced it who knew better than me I knew better than anybody else in the world what I was about and I was not a guy who could give up the obsession to drink. That had to be taken from me by a power greater than my own, and it didn't make any difference to me what that power was. I didn't have to put a name on it at that point. I was just so happy to get the feeling that I could live and not drink and enjoy life to the extent that I would if I could. But I was ready to go further, to do more, And I, under the instruction of my sponsor, made a decision. Whatever was going on here, I was going to get as much of this as I could. And I think I really thought to myself, I thought, well, listen, okay, if you have screwed up everything so badly up to this point, at least try to do this well. Try to do it. Try to go through this well, every opportunity that came across my life, I had wasted the opportunity. I really had. Because there was a time I was someone of great promise, and here I was, practically unemployable, in very serious trouble, financially, personally, and professionally. My reputation, whatever it had been as a lawyer, was certainly gone. Nobody would ever trust me to do anything of that nature. I had sort of a menial job in the legal profession. And I was very happy had it, because it was all I was capable of. And I thought, well, I better do this one well. Whatever they're doing here, I'd better really get in this thing and do the best I can, really apply myself to this. And then I made that decision. I'm going to stay here. I'm not going to leave. I've got to stay. I got to do what he tells me to do. And then I came to terms with the God of my understanding. I didn't become a theologian. I I didn't join a church. I'm still not a member of any church. I didn'T get any ritual tattoos. I didn' t wear any distinctive clothing. I didn''t have a religious habit. I didn ''t go to any institutional religion on Sunday and sit in the pew and listen. I didn�t sing in the choir. I didn΄t do any of those things. I came here. But I did come to terms in my own head, my own understanding of what I thought the word God meant to me. And I've told you and I tell you again And it means the first two words of the Lord's Prayer. Our Father. My Father. And that has served me very well. And it says in the ABCs that no human power can relieve our alcoholism, but God could and would if he was so. So I decided to seek him as best I could. And at this point, my alcoholism was very much under control because the first step took care of the physical problems The second step took care of the mental problems. And the third step was at least the beginning of the spiritual problems. And I now understand that the spiritual aspects of my disease were much more extreme than any other aspect of my diseases. I was much more devastated spiritually than I was physically or mentally. The feeling in my leg came back. I've been sleeping in a dry bed ever since I got sober. And whatever marbles I had, I suppose I have most of them back now. I'm able to function. But this spiritual illness was really devastating. That took a little longer. And I had to take my medicine. I just had to tak e my medicine and the medicine starts really in step four. That's where the medicine begins. And nobody enjoys taking medicine. I don't enjoy taking medicine, it's noxious stuff, you know. It's awful, but it gets the job done. when I moved to Miami two years ago I could not get a driver's license in the state of Florida because I couldn't pass the eye test the reason I couldnít pass the eyetest is I couldnít see and my first six months here I was driven around to the meetings because I really couldnít drive a car at night I could drive pretty well in the daytime but I had an eye operation it was the third one I had and the guy stuck a knife in my eye and when he was all finished I could say wearing these glasses it wasn't a very pleasant occasion having a guy stick a knife in your eye I could think of nicer things to do than lay on a table and have some guy stick a knife at my eye being able to walk on the beach is better having an ice cream soda is not a bad idea but this was the medicine this is what I had to do in order to be able to see it was more important for me to see than it was to not let him put a knife in my eye. So I went through that. It was not a big deal. Once it was over, I had a lot of trepidation before it was all right. I'd like to tell you I'm so spiritual I didn't really care one way or the other that this guy was going to do that. I'll tell you, boy, it wasn't true. I went in there very nervous and I came out just as nervous. But a little while later when all the bandages and stuff came off, I could see and it was worthwhile. Now I say there's nothing to that and I've talked to a couple of people who wanted to have that operation I tell them there's nothing to it I've been through that, that's easy doesn't sound too easy does it but the experience showed me that it was possible and not only that that was the medicine I needed to be able to save and the fourth step was the medication I needed in order to be about to know what I was about to know that I was not a nice guy who drank too much and I sometimes thought that of myself I'm a nice guy who happens to drink a great deal even I would even admit I drank too much I wish that was so my inventory didn't show that I was a nice man I was not a nice kind of drink too much my inventory showed I was very, very defective I was full of character defects I was so full of character defects that one day they didn't recall me I was sold defective and I never thought of myself as being a defective I thought of my self as sort of a rough, tough, bright hard working hard drinking rah-rah-rah. Guy who drank. The only part true about that is that I drank. The rest of it was not true. It might have been true when I was 20. It wasn't true when I was 37. No longer true. Hadn't been true for a long time, but I lived with that illusion the book tells us about, the illusion of the alcoholic that he can someday return to drinking safely. And they compare it to a guy who's lost his leg and thinks it'll grow back. I had become an alcoholic. I had became... They say in New York, once a cucumber becomes a pickle, you can't make it back into a cucumber. I'd gone over into alcoholism. My thinking was so clouded by my disease that just I wasn't seeing myself clearly. Well, the fourth step at least gave me a beginning at that. And the fifth step nailed the coffin. He was able to tell me the exact nature of my wrongs. he took away what I thought I was I thought I was so unique after a while sort of a better alcoholic than you were either I got in more trouble or less trouble or something like that and he said, you're just another alcoholic your fifth step is just like many other fifth steps that I saw and that straightened me out with me and steps six and seven gave me a relationship with God I think that's the point of steps six and seven four and five gave me an understanding of myself and I suppose you can use the term a relationship with myself six and seventh gave me a relationship with God not only an understanding of God but a relationship with God with our father your father my father I told him I was ready I'm ready some days I'm more entirely ready than other days. But just to develop that attitude was such a big step for an alcoholic. I wasn't entirely ready to do anything when I came to Alcoholics Unarmed. I wasn'T even entirely ready to stop drinking. But now I was entirely ready to have God remove my defects of character. So I asked Him, humbly, I asked him, please help me take away these things that don't do me any good and these were the things the defects of characters these were things that had separated me from God and had separated me from you. This is what has separated me from everyone around me. My defects had caused the alcoholism that had separated me and given me this terrible isolation. And in the book Bill Talks in History he says a loneliness that only an alcoholic will understand. And all of you know what I'm talking about. It's a lonesome disease. it's a disease of the night it comes in the night and it makes you all alone it made me so isolated I lived with a lot of people I didn't have anything to do with them I worked with a whole bunch of people I had nothing to do I was isolated 6 and 7 gave me the way out of that gave me a relationship with God which is permanent or has been at least in my case constant for all these years Everything else in my life has been in, since I was born, has been a state of flux. Everything moves through my life. I don't... I moved here, as you know, two years ago. I live in a totally different place now. I love it. I love this place. I work in a completely different place. And I work on a totally different kind of work. I teach and I'm a teacher. I don' t go to courtrooms anymore. I don''t go in and be a big tough guy in courtrooms and slam tables around and jump up and down and act. Like Perry Mason tries to act. My only similarity with him is that I'm fat. I don't do that anymore. Now I go and I lie to children. Tell young law students war stories. It's a whole different kind of work. It's much easier. And I like it. I like her very much. The work I originally started out to do with the alcoholism took that away from me. And they fired me in 1962, but I'm back now. Just took a little while. Took a little few meetings and came back. Came back without my asking for it. Then I came to this step that we're on tonight, the eighth step. Says we made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. I tell you, I thought I had joined the International Society of List Makers What a pain in my ass. I mean, God, you're writing another list now. So I went to him for instructions the way I always did. And I said, listen, I read this thing. Do I have to put down people who are dead? He said, all, dummy. All. I said how about people I'll never see again? He said all. I said How about people who moved away? All. He said, everybody. I said, how about her? He said all and right at the top of the list. I said why should I put my wife on this list? Shut up he explained. Says made a list of all persons we had harmed. Doesn't say all persons who are now alive or all persons that you're going to see this week or all people that you really don't despise. All. Everybody. I said everybody. He said, that's what all means. Not a big word. All. That means everyone. I said, everyone. He said you got it now? I said I'll try. He said bullshit, you'll try, you do it. Go do it, never mind trying. So I started to make a list. I had a very peculiar notion of what harm meant. Harm to me, number one, was if you caught me. I had harmed you if you found out. That was harm. Yeah, he knows about that. I'll put his name down. Harm to me was physical harm, but I don't mean physical in the sense of fights or anything. I didn't do anything like that. I couldn't possibly do that. I'd be dead now if I ever tried that. Most of my harm was my big mouth. I have a vicious mouth. Vicious. Physical harm. Money. Taking money from people. That was a favorite pastime of mine. I was like cornucopia in reverse. I'd take all the money in, and no work would come out on the other end. And I was very proud of that. Got one over on him. Then I explained to you, I'll give you some crap about your case, and I'll keep your money. It was a very interesting way to practice law. I considered that to be harm. That was harm. I took his money, and I put those guys down, especially the ones who caught me. I put them down. I put both of those ones down. I was not well motivated that was harm to me I thought I had this notion that harm meant that you had not harmed me as much as I had harmed you it was all relative I had this this job when I was drinking I was a tenured professor of law at the Fordham University School of Law and when you are tenured theoretically you're not supposed to be fired it's a lifetime job that's what tenure means and you have to be in the faculty for a certain number of years and you'll fill a certain number of requirements on scholarship and things like that and you've got to be able to teach your class as well and they come and they visit you I'm now on the tenure committee of my school I go around and I visit the classes of the new teachers and I make reports on them as to whether or not they should be tenured at some time you need years you have a period of years each school is different. But I had fulfilled all of that before I got too bad with the drinking, and I was tenured. And in order to fire a tenured professor, you have to have a hearing, and they have to cause, and you have all kinds of stuff. And you're a member of the American Association of University Professors, and everybody's very interested in this, and then come around. Well, that wasn't the way they fired me. They fired me in 15 minutes, get out. And I said, I got tenure. And that boss of mine, that dean of the law school said, you know what you have? He said, what do you think this is, a poetry school? We know what your got. This is a law school. We understand these things. You're out of here. He harmed me. He screwed me. I was entitled to a hearing. I was entitled all kinds of things because I was a dead duck. They had me nine different ways. And I knew it after a while, and I didn't put up any fuss. I just picked up and went away, and it really was devastating to me. And he wanted me to put this guy's name on the list. Fuck him, put him on the list, you know? He ain't going on my list. He fired me that passage. He said, you put him out of the list? I gave him the first list, he gave it back to me. This guy's name wasn't on it. My sponsor's a lawyer. He knew. He said, where's he? Where's his name? I said, ah! And I went in. I don't want to use that bad language again. He said, put him down here. I said this guy screwed me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, put them down. Put them down." Boy. So he's not putting me on his list. Oh, I said, he don't have a list, dummy. He's not an alcoholic who's going to die. You are. So what is this? Magic? If I don't put his name on the list, I'm going to Die? He said, that's right. That's right, exactly so. He said if you balk at this step, you will drink. Just like if you bark at the fourth step, you will think, put him down. Boy, so I sulked a little, I pouted, I went home and I wrote this guy's name down. And years later, I came down here to take the bar exam in Florida. By this time, this guy had gone out to the United States Court of Appeals, which is a very prestigious court, second highest court in our country, federal. And when I passed the bar examination down here, they asked me, because I was a practicing lawyer, to supply names of five judges before whom I had appeared for a recommendation. So I put his name down. And I was interviewed by the Bar Association down here. And I thought I'd be spending a few hours with them because in addition to the alcoholism which I had written down on the application, I had my youthful arrest record to re-explain. I was innocent. There was a great misunderstanding four separate occasions, including one in Key West, Florida when I was in the Navy. So I thought I'd spend a few hours with these people explaining to them that I was no longer that type of a citizen. I was eligible to be a member of the Florida Bar and I went in and this guy said, Mr. O'Keefe? Nice. He says, we have a letter here from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit She said, there'd be no need for any further interviews. The guy who fired me had written a letter. And it was quite long. This guy was going through the pages. That's because I wrote his name on the list. There's no other explanation for that. I went, I had gone to see him after I was sober a while and after I did the stuff we talk about next week. I had gotten to see them and I told them about the stuff I had done. And he said he understood. And so we had squared that away. So it means everybody. It means everybody we've ever harmed. And harm means more than simply taking their money or hitting them over the head or something like that. I harm people in a physical way, but more so I harm people in an emotional way. I have no regard for anybody else's feelings. If I insulted you, I'd expect you to sit there and take it. What are you getting excited about? Because I told you you're stupid? Idiot? What are YOU getting upset about? You don't like that tough shit? Everybody's on their own here, you know? Every man for himself. If you can't take it, well, it's all part of human behavior, thought I. That's not the way you do things. It's the way I did things. I went through people's lives like a big tornado You know, when they flatten them all out, I don't know what the hell are they laying on the floor for? What's he upset about? Just because I said he's an incompetent lawyer? Because I told his client, you're making a great mistake. You gave this guy money. Are you crazy? Give me some money. I'll explain to you what's going on. Why were they getting upset with me? I only told the truth. The dean of that law school would send an agenda around at a faculty meeting. This is going to be a faculty meet. this is the agenda this is what we're going to talk about I'd send him back my agenda number one on my agenda was removing him from office and he'd be furious by the time I got to the meeting that was he upset about everybody knew he was incompetent and why should he get upset about something like that just because I circulated a piece of paper to 30 professors of law saying when we get to the meet this is where I'm talking about he can talk about the building and the lights and the library and all that routine stuff I'm talking about big stuff removing the dean and I had a replacement for him in mind me and he knew it and for the first year or so I knew that's why he fired me he was jealous crazy just crazy in the head and I I became willing to make amends to them all It was an amazing thing in my case. I didn't want to make amends to anybody for anything. I was willing to let bygones be bygiones. You know, I was just willing to forget it if everybody else would. I saw no point in dwelling on this, these unfortunate incidents. You know? And I was really willing to just wipe the slate clean and go on from here. You know. Unfortunately, the people around me, their emotions required me to do something in order to make them stable, make them whole, make them well. So I became willing. And in my case, it was almost a physical thing. I still remember it. When I wrote the name on the list, it was as though somebody turned the switch in my head. When I got her name on that list, I said, all right, I'll make amends to her. I'll do something to restore this situation to the way it should be. when I got to his name the guy in front of me I said I'll do it I didn't know what I was going to do but I was willing I said alright I'll go I'll talk to my sponsor I'll ask him he's a lawyer he'll tell me but I will do something whatever it is I will make amends I wasn't quite sure what that meant if I was wanting to make aments I had a guy a lawyer in the last summer that I drank who did a very foolish thing. He hired me to write a book and I had been teaching this one subject which was very popular. It's called wrongful death. It's being killed in airplane crashes and stuff like that. And he wanted me to read it and I wanted him to write a book about it because theoretically I was supposed to know about it and he wanted his name to go on the book because it would give him a certain amount of prestige. So he gave me his file on this subject and I had a file that I'd stolen from other teachers and he gave me a tape recorder and a dictating machine and I was supposed to spend the summer writing this book. And he was very faithful. He sent me a check every week. I didn't have to go to the office or anything like that. He just mailed me the check every year every week, I was very faithfull too I cashed a check regularly every week and I don't think I even plugged that machine in and by the end of the summer I had written nothing or done nothing but I had collected a lot of money from this guy and he was on my list and I was going to make amends to him I was willing to make a man I said my sponsor what do you think you should do about him what are you going to do about that I said I'm going to go over and tell him I'm sorry my sponsor you're kidding me he said this is a Jewish New York lawyer and you owe him $15,000 and you're going to go tell him you're sorry? He said, you've got to be kidding me. I said, what am I supposed to do? He said you're supposed to put that situation back to where it was before you got your grubby hands on it. I said do you mean do that mean that I am supposed to come up with $15000? He said You've got that right. I said ah. He said but you're not there yet. You're not There yet. Are you willing to do it? I said, I wish you hadn't even asked me that. I mean, I thought I was going to go over and say, listen, pal, you know, I'm so sorry that I screwed you. It's been a pleasure, believe me. And I thought he was supposed to jump up behind the desk and say thank God for that, thank God for AA, and God bless you. He said, that's not making amends. Making amends is getting it back to where it was before you screwed it up. I said, you can't do that with a family. He said, yes, you kann. He said you're going to go to a lot of little league games. He said You're going be civilized around your home. You take an interest in what's going on. Get it back where it's supposed to be before you screw it up So it wasn't all my fault, he said. It certainly was. I went back to the job again how do you do this no, no,no he said I don't know how you're going to make a man I said don't worry about that don't worried about that he said just worry about making the list if you made the list and you became willing he said that's that's what you have to talk about I said maybe I should put myself on this list he said are you kidding me I said this is not for you stupid the whole program is for you all the twelve steps that's for you he said this step is for the first time you go outside of yourself you are not to put yourself on this list I hear people say they're putting themselves on a list I think it's ridiculous I know people that say they're putting God on a lift and that's sweet that's what God needs He's on your list that makes His day wonderful says other persons Persons that we have harmed. Others. And you notice how these steps are so symmetrical. The first three steps take care of the immediate acute problem of the alcoholism. Four and five get you even with yourself so you understand yourself and what you are about. Six and seven make you a relationship with God. And eight is the beginning of a relationship with other people, the outside. And after all, what the hell else is there? what else is there in your existence and my existence besides our relationships with ourselves with our father and the people around us these are the only relationships we have you don't have a relationship with a chair or a table it's yourself the God of your understanding and the God and the other people around you and we all have the same list everybody has the same lists we could just print a simple little form for that. Everybody's got the same list. You have your family, number one. You have your business and social acquaintances. And that's it. That's what you got. And your employer. You have the work situation. Everybody's got the same list. It's because we all have the same disease and we all do the same things. There's nobody different. We're all the same. Well, that's what the step involves. And it simply involves writing down, making a list. The reason they have us write it down is just like teaching school. When you were in school and I was in school, the teacher said something, you heard it, she wrote on the blackboard, you saw it, and you wrote it in your notes so you felt it. Use all your three senses and that's what this is about. So to do the eighth step, the book says we beg of you with all the earnestness we can command to be fearless and thorough from the very start. So make a list of all the persons that you have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all. And that's the eighth step. Thank you.