Mike S. at the Luck of the Irish Roundup – 2005

I might guess I'm an alcoholic, and after that applause, I'm done. I didn't want Bart to know how I really sounded, and so we purposely erased the tape before he got here. My sponsor is Cliff Roach, for any of you who know him, and he's talked a lot about the group back here and about Bart in particular and said some very nice things and just like Bart's judging me tonight I'll let him know if he lives up to those deals when I go home too you know it's been a long day I got up early this morning in Riverside, California and got ready to come up here drove to the airport, changed planes, got here was groggy, got in my room and just as I was starting to settle in the door opened at the hotel and And now I know it was a guy named John, one of your guys. But at the time, I thought it was a burglar coming in the room. And he brought me a little gift basket. And that was really nice. And then I fell into this sort of a sleep, almost a complete sleep, a nap before I came down tonight. And I had a dream. And in the dream, I had died and I went, I guess, to heaven. I'm not sure. It seemed like it would be heaven. And St. Peter came to greet me, and he was walking me around, and it was just all foggy and goofy for me. And we came upon who turned out to be John. I guess he'd been in my mind. And he's walking along, and He has a chain on His arm, and there's this little creature on the end of it, ugly, horrible little monster. And I said, What's that about? And St.-Peter said, Well, you see, John almost didn't make it here, and for the next 5,000 years he has to walk around with that attached to his arm. We went a little bit further, and I see out of the fog a bigger monster, just hideous kind of a creature on a chain. And at the end of it was Jeff. And I asked what was up with that. And St. Peter explained that Jeff almost hadn't made it up to heaven either, and for the next 10,000 years he was going to have to walk around with that thing attached to him. And sure enough, we go a little farther, and there's Bart. and Bart's got his chain on too and on the end of it is Selma Hayek looking like she did at the Academy Awards the other night and I go, now wait a minute I've heard about him, I know better and he said well you see, Selma hayek almost didn't make it here it's an old AA story but I like it you know I am glad to be here tonight and to do what I'm supposed to do I guess I'll tell you about what it was like what happened and what it's like today I you know you don't ask for hands at a convention normally of people on their first 30 days so I'm not going to do that but we in California we always ask for the hands of newcomers and I don't know if you do it here or not but I had a friend that used to speak and he would get up and he'd say can I see the hands of the people on their last 30 days and every time he would do that it would give me a start because it would be like I know that's me. I mean, I've always known that somewhere it's been like that all my life. If I start something and do well for a while, it's just not going to last. I mean I can clean up. I can look okay. I can follow the rules. I can get by. But eventually it's Just Not Going to Be That Way. And the truth of the matter is I'm the type of alcoholic that it may end up being that way. But tonight it's not that way。 I had a good day today. It was a nice day. I grew up in an alcoholic home. There's a real surprise, isn't it? I was born in upstate New York and I lived in a town where people truly lived by their nationality I'm of Italian descent the Italians lived together the Polish people lived together and then there was a little section that they called the Americans I was never sure who they were but they all lived together too and then of course there were the Irish who had no roots and they just wandered through town looking for handouts And, well, you know it's true. And they were just waiting for the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous or there'd be some organization that had low enough standards so where they could join. I figure if you ask an Italian to come to the Luck of the Irish in the next two speakers, if you notice Sean and Kenna, I mean, I had to get my shot in now. And they're on a plane. They're not here yet, so that's a good thing. But it really was like that, and my family was – the reason I tell you about this is it affected the way I was to think about manhood, drinking, and all the rest of it. My family was in the liquor business, and we were in the liquid business before it was a legal business, if you know what I mean. My grandfather died doing some of those kind of crimes. My uncle Nick bet some money in a bar that he could chug a bottle of whiskey, drop dead, and those were the kind of stories I heard about forever. My father owned a bar, one of those little corner bars like in New York, like in Boston too. And they were the kind of places where people hung out and it was a great deal. My father was an alcoholic, and I'll talk about him a little more later. But for me, the lessons were I had uncles, true uncles named Rocco and Dominic and those kind of things. And so just as you get the drift, there was a certain element in our family that, well, we had like a little unwritten rule. If you could get something illegal, it was always better, even if you had to pay more. It was still something good about our family dog was one in a poker game. We just had that kind of heritage we passed along to each other, and I wanted to be just like them. And my father would take us into the bars when I was real young, and the smell of the bars and the way they felt, I still like bars. I mean, I stopped in the hotel one tonight just to get a whiff on the way out. There's something peaceful about them. And we would go in there and sit up on the barstool in the mornings, and they'd give us little shot glasses full of Coca-Cola, and we'd play and they'd give us money to play the pinball machines. And the women, I mean, I'm four or five years old, maybe six. The women would come by and give us little kisses on the cheek and stuff and they always smelled good and they touched me deeply. I was to find out many years later that if it had been for alcohol and women, I'd have had a good life, but I never did real well in either. I just enjoyed both things a little too much, I think. But it was a lifestyle that taught me a lot of stuff. My father was recalled into the military when I was young, and he ran the clubs, the NCO clubs, the officer's clubs, those kind of things. And it was great life for him and for us in a lot ways. But I want to tell you about my mother real quickly too. My mother turned 84 last month. I called her when I got here today. And she's never had a drink of alcohol in her life, not even a sip, because she grew up in an alcoholic home. And she knows what that terror was like as a little girl. And she ended up marrying an alcoholic man, and both of her sons are alcoholic. She has had the full effects of every way you can get hit by alcoholism. And there have been times we've been real critical of her and say things like, What's the matter with her? When a better question ought to be, How did she survive all those years with the stuff that was going to happen? And she survived pretty well. And I'll tell you about how she survived too in just a little bit. But I know what it was like to be terrified at night, to be laying awake at night and hear my father come home and hear those kind of fights go on or the police come or have the women call the house and tell my mother what things she didn't want to hear and hear that kind of crying. And I would lay there awake at nighttime and pray that they wouldn't break up. I mean, I would just, I hope that they would just hang on. You know, it always passed. They stayed together until my father died a few years ago. But the terror was tremendous. And the one thing my parents gave us that you know, I'm not one of those kind of kids who came from a family that says that I didn't feel loved. I was perhaps perhaps overloved, if that's possible. Although for me it's not. You can't overlove me. But I knew how much they cared about me. They made me feel special and at the same time gave us a lot of feelings that we were just different than the rest of the world for a lot of reasons. And my father and mother gave us good educations. They sent us to Catholic schools whenever they could, which was most of the time. In fact, by high school I was starting to get into trouble and they sent me to an all-boys Catholic high school, which I think really truly did save my life because I was going away. I shouldn't have gone. In all those years, I didn't drink at all. The other thing, the other factor that I want to bring into this is we were all gamblers. Everybody in my family was a gambler. Everybody had a bookie, for instance. Even when it was legal, when you didn't have to have a booky anymore, my grandmother still had a boogie. When she was 93, she had a booksie who would come to the house and she'd make a dollar bet every afternoon. But, you know, it's just we spent more time at racetracks growing up than anywhere else, I think, on a steady basis, horse races. And I wanted to grow up and be a gambler and own bars and be in that business. I mean, I just knew that's what I always wanted to do. But the education part kind of sidetracked me because it pushed me to the side. But I want to get to the drinking now. You know, I'm one of those kind of people who was never seldom mildly intoxicated. I was always more or less insanely drunk. I'm like the book talks about. I got no question about how bad bad I drank. I drank terribly. The very first time I drank, I drank in a blackout. I didn't know until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that most people who drink, even when they say they're drunk, don't drink in blackouts. And my kind of drinking took on the progression that I used to get so excited about parties or anything going on that I would get into a frenzy beforehand and then drink myself into some silly mess before the evening was over. I mean, the very first drunk, a young lady called me and told me that her parents were going to be gone and I could come over. She told me that on a Monday, and I could come over on Friday. By Friday, I was in a frenzy. I couldn't sit still anymore. And I headed over to her house, and i bought a case of beer, and a friend and his girlfriend were coming over too, and we started to drink. And in the middle of the afternoon, after maybe four beers or five, I don't even know, I went into that blackout. When I came to, I had slipped my wrist at what I had done. Now, that's what I did when I was in a good mood when I drank. It was going to get – and I slid them not enough to have to go to the hospital or anything, but enough to get that kind of question asked to me that was going to be asked over and over again. What's the matter with you? And later on there were going to be the recommendations, why don't you just slow down? Why don't You just not drink so much? Why don' t you – whatever the thing was. But my point is this. I drank badly. I have grown daughters, and they're having their own little problems here and there with drinking. and I've been sober a long time so they don't talk to me much about that but one day my middle daughter Deanna I was driving her somewhere and I guess she forgot and she said boy I got a bad hangover and then it dawned on her who she was talking to and and she goes but don't get me wrong I'm not like you and I said really how's that and she says I choose to get drunk now I don't know what she thought I was doing those nights I mean, it wasn't like I went out to not have a buzz and somebody made me drink more. But that's her little rule now. She's not quite ready for AA, so she's not like us. I'm going to talk something about drugs too, and I apologize to any pure alcoholics that I might offend, but it made a difference for me when I came into AA, and so that's where I added my pitch at this point, and we'll be done with it for the evening. At the same summer that I started to drink, everything happened in my life that should have foreshadowed that I'm not a good drinker. I rolled my car. I got in trouble with the police. I mean, all the things start happening almost instantly. And I'm old, as you can tell. And in California back in those days, any kind of drugs you happened to have on you were felonies. I mean it was a bad deal for you to have anything. And I'd heard about something that I assume came out here to Omaha too or those of you who were transplanted that were called bennies, benzadrine, big, fat, white, double-scored tablets. their speed, and they really worked. I mean, I pass it along for historical purposes so you can know this. They were the best value in narcotics sale. You paid a dollar and you got ten of them. And I want to tell you about that first day too because all of it started to come together. I'll try to talk in cool California terms that don't apply to me, but I'll use them anyway. I called my connection that day. Who was this guy, Bill, that went to school with me. But by now he's become my connection. And I ordered a dollar's worth of bennies. Yeah. And when I went over to get them, it was at night and I was in my 56 Volkswagen. And I had decided the police had somehow found out. Paranoia had already struck me. So it took me like half an hour to go two miles. And I was hiding down side streets, turning off my lights, trying to lose the tail. Honestly. And I got over to his gas station and he was like 6'6". And he was trying to hide too, which was difficult for him. And he came running out of the dark and he looked around and he said, I couldn't get them for you, but do you have $5? So I said, yeah. And he gave me this little aluminum foil packet and he says, This is called methadrine. It's just grandfathered methamphetamine, I know now. But then I didn't know. So I sped away in my Volkswagen. Now, you know that's not true, right? You can't speak. That is impossible. They're like those little cars at Disneyland where you put your foot on them and you just run away. And then I tried to lose the police again for a while and finally I found a spot in the dark and I opened it up and it was powder. It wasn't pills and I hadn't gotten any directions, any instructions on what to do. so I put a little bit in my mouth and waited up to a minute nothing, nothing at all so I'd put it all in my month and we had a rule in my home because my mother worried so much about all of us being out there doing the things we were doing at night I would get home at curfew time no matter what I mean I could be beaten to a pulp I could have rolled my car I would drag my body in there and this particular night I got home early about an hour early even and my father was there too and I'd been one of those kind of sullen teenagers and they'd wanted to talk to me for quite a while and that night I wanted to talk to them too I talked till they went to bed and I experienced that night what I was going to experience thousands of times after that it was the oddest sensation in the world I was up at night in my own room now keep in mind but I felt like I'd done something really evil like I was a real criminal sneaking around my own home in my room I neatened my room then the house and then the other thing that hit me was I couldn't read much I didn't have the attention span but it was like Ritalin for me all of a sudden I was focused I read a newspaper that night It was tremendous. I even read the legal notices in the newspaper. But it was still dark when I was done with all that. I had plenty of time. I was peeking out windows. I chewed the inside of my mouth raw. I just had a wonderful time alone that night. And the morning came, I started the conversation back up again. And after that, they never wanted to hear from me again. I was like, that's it. We don't care what you think. Nobody paid attention to me for the next two years, I don't think. The reason that I mention it is because I knew I was an alcoholic. I mean, I'd become the kind of person by the end of my drinking who just drank badly. I'd gotten to have all the things I wanted to have in life. One of the things that I've learned since I've come to AA is it's never the things what I want that are going to make me okay. Never is. Not prior to getting sober and not in sobriety. It never ever has fixed me. But up to the time right before I got sober, I had gotten those things. I'd gotten married early, had two little girls, left that family because I had to go out and do the kind of things bar drinkers like I am like to do. And I was on my second marriage. It was late 1979, and I was as miserable as you can be. I mean, I know what pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization are. Nobody ever had to explain to me what that term was. It was the way I lived. It was what I felt all the time. Nothing made me happy, and the thoughts of suicide were constant. I couldn't shake them. The only times that they would finally be gone is if I was drank enough and I was out at the bars with the guys, and for a little while the fun was there. I was chasing some woman. Something would divert my attention for a while, but I couldn't keep that horror off for very long. And something changed in our family. That spring, in fact it was probably March of 80 by now, I had gone up to Las Vegas because I'd always fashioned myself as something. And it was like one of those perfect trips for me. I got up there, and I met a girl that I hadn't known before. She was very attractive. And I'm only telling you this because I want to, I guess. Because it was what I'd always hoped would happen. And I was playing poker at this one casino, and I remember she came in, andI saw everybody turn. I was just thinking, This is it. This is just, like, perfect. I mean, I've made it in the world. I'm playing cards. I've met this young lady. and she sat at the bar for a little while and I went over there and they were drinking kamikazes and I started to drink with them and somebody gave me a Quaalude and the next thing I know I came out of a blackout and I was standing in the public restroom at the urinal and some guy was shaking me saying are you okay now he was shaking my shoulder I want you to know I'm thankful for that. And the next thing I remember, I was in my room. I was still dressed the way I'd been the night before, lying on my bed on my back. She was sitting in the chair. God only knows why. It was morning, and I had vomited straight up. Now, I hadn't vomited in years. I didn't throw up when I got drunk after the first summer. But that night, I had poisoned myself so much with alcohol. You know, we die like that. A lot of people choke to death doing that. I didn'T know that until I came here either. But that morning, I was laying there. I finally made it, the coolest stud I always wanted to be, huh? Big-time gambler, laying on my bed in vomit and sick because I always had bad hangovers, terrible, terrible hangovers. And she left, and I don't know her name to this day and like to tease about it sometimes, like if I'm speaking in Las Vegas. But the reality is it was a pathetic, sad night. I mean, I thought it was... And I got up, and I got sick again. And I remember I had to wash my clothes out in the shower of that hotel. I mean... I drove my Mercedes home from Las Vegas with my clothes and a plastic bag in the back, stinking to high heaven. And I was sick for days. I mean horribly, violently sick. I was remarried by then, and we just had a baby who was about 10 months old. And I was getting ready to leave them because it would have been the decent thing to do, I think, but that wasn't my motive. I was leaving because they got in my way again. And everything in my world changed. All of a sudden, my then wife no longer fought with me about anything. I could be gone all night or the weekend or whatever, and she wouldn't say a word to me. I'd come home. There's one thing I know how to fight and to lie and to defend myself. The one thingI can't stand is to be ignored. And I would come back in the morning, and she'd just walk by me, and it would just drive me crazy. And finally one day she said to me, she said, you know, I really love you, but I can't stand to live like this anymore and watch you do what you're doing. What I didn't know is she'd gone to Al-Anon. She'd been going to Al Anon. She and my mom both had been going down on for a couple of months, and everything was different in our home. They were actually working the steps. And I got in some trouble that week drinking again, and I'd made her this stupid promise that I wouldn't drink and all kinds of things. And I ended up having to go to my first AA meeting as a result, and I'll just describe it real quickly. I walked in, and it was a participation meeting, and there was a guy up at a little table, and he would rap on the table, and then he would call on people to speak. And I often have simultaneous conflicting kinds of emotions, and I had him that night because when it dawned on me that he was going to call on people to say something in public, and I hate to speak in public. And so I would close my eyes, and I would look at my coffee or I'd pretend to be asleep, whatever I could do so I wouldn't get his attention. And then as soon as he didn't call on me, my feelings were hurt. And by the end of the meeting, I hated the guy, you know. And then they got up and they held hands and I was so embarrassed. I get embarrassed easily. And I thought, I can't believe this. Men are holding hands and they pray. And I was just like humiliated. I felt dirty, you Know what I mean? It was an ugly feeling. And I went home, and she asked me. She was hopeful. She said, what do you think? And I told her my version of the truth that night. And I said, you know, it's terrible. A is a terrible thing. You should see the people. I made up some of the stories. Well, I exaggerated on some ofthe stories, and I explained to her why it was a jerky place, a terrible place to be, and all that. Now, I'm going to skip ahead three years. I was at a meeting one night, and a man who since passed away got up to take a birthday cake. He was newer than me. but he talked about going to his first meeting and having those feelings too and i remember how we used to all newcomers together we'd always think we were the only one who didn't want to be here because it looked to me like everybody else enjoyed it you know and i was i thought am i the only one that hates this meeting and um and but he got up and he said he went to his First Meeting and had the same kind of feelings that he didn't Want to be a part of it didn't like it same kind Of cruddy feelings i had had and he went home to his wife, who asked him the same kind of questions. But he was smarter than I am. He told her, he said, you know what? AA is a good thing. I think it's going to not only help me, but it'll help you and the family and the kids. Everything's going be just wonderful because of it. And he explained to her there was only one problem with Alcoholics Anonymous. And he told her that AlcoholicsAnonymous in Riverside, where I live, was full. There was no room. And he didn't stop with that story. he said there was a waiting list that he was on the waiting list and they had told him to tell her that if he drank while he was on the wait list not to get mad that they were going to call as soon as there was an opening and I remember looking at him thinking like a genius I try to pass that story along when I'm speaking to people who need to go home and tell a story because I'll tell you what my belief is when it was my time to get sober it was also my time to get over whether I knew it or not whether I liked it or not, whether I was comfortable in Alcoholics Anonymous or not whether I understood alcoholism or not didn't make any difference in my case and I know that as a fact and I'll tell you why. On May the 30th, 1980 I woke up at a guy's house, a friend of mine, where I'd been out again one more night and I remember portions of that night coming out of a blackout at a bar sitting on a curb, the bar I usually drank at and some girl, another girl saying to me you know you need help and I member going back into the blackout and I wokeup that morning still dressed in my clothes from the night before there was animal hair on me, white animal hair and I thought I know I've been lonely but my god please and as it turned out a cat had slept on my chest and I got up and I went to the store and I bought two tall cans of Coors and I started to nurse one because I was so sick again I always had bad hangovers have you seen that new stuff in the stores that's supposed to cure hangovers I saw it the other day, it was on sale I just wanted to buy some and take it to see if... And I drank the one beer, and I got buzzed just enough again. It was about 7.30 in the morning, and I had that lonesomeness that I've had off and on my whole life. You know, I don't know about you, but that kind of feeling, I used to get a lot at Christmas. I'd be driving around town, and I'd see people's homes, and they would look so peaceful. There'd be a light on inside. It'd be winter, and I would think, how come I'm not home? I mean, I want to go home, but I guess I really didn't. and I would agonize and I would see all those kind of things and that morning I felt that even deeper. I just didn't know where to go. And that place where I went to my first meeting had a treatment center, a drying out place and I got drunk just enough to walk in there and sign myself in. I hid the other can of beer out in the bushes for a snack for that afternoon and went in and I've never had to drink or use since that morning ever. And I didn't want sobriety, I thought but let me tell you some of the things that have happened that made all the difference to me in the world. I'd been there about an hour or half an hour, and I decided to leave. I started to sober up, and I thought, this is nutty. This is a terrible reaction. You overreacted again to a small problem. You've always got to be dramatic. And so I was sneaking out the back doors, and they had these two big glass doors that opened up. And as I was going out, this shadow came around the corner, and it was a man named Jim. Now, I'd worked with Jim years before. At one time in my early life, before I got really bad. I'd been a probation officer. That was a mistake, but I'd been a probation officer. It was a big mistake on their part and Jim worked with me there and he was the only person, well we met at a party because I'd gotten in a fight. A probation party, that's the kind of nice way I lived and I was in a flight with the manager of these apartments and the police were coming and I didn't know Jim and he was a huge guy and he walked over and he grabbed me and put me over his shoulder and said I need to get you out of here before you get arrested. And he took me to my apartment, and I proceeded to fight him for several hours. And he was very patient most of the night until I bit him really hard, and I'm in bad. And then eventually he gave me one punch and it was over, and we became the best of friends. For the next, I don't know, eight or ten years, we gambled every week together. We played cards together. We drank together. We did a lot of things that I won't mention up here running around town together. We were just as close as thieves until one night on the way to Las Vegas, I got arrested for driving under the influence. And I blamed him because he was drunk and I stopped to sober him up and then police saw me. So in my convoluted thinking, it was his fault somehow. And I told him that night, don't tell the boss and don't telling my wife. I'm going to get bailed out tomorrow. Don't tell them. And I got arrest like 90 miles from this jail. It was one of those hideous kind of evenings. And he told. He was drunk, and he called my wife, and then work found out. I was so mad at him, I never spoke to him again after that night of the arrest. Now here it is. It had been a year or more since we'd spoken, and I'm sneaking out of the hospital. And he comes around the corner, and He puts his arm around me, and he turned me back in, and said, It's going to be okay. He said, I've been sober almost a year. You'll be all right. And he took me right back to my bed and I stayed. Now, I'll tell you what impresses me about that were the facts behind with that act. We hear about Eskimos in here. Jimbo was my first Eskimo because that morning he didn't live in the town I lived in. He lived 25 miles away. And he said he was riding on the freeway on his motorcycle when he just had this compulsion and urge in him to call my house to see if I was okay. And he called right after the hospital had called to tell my wife I'd checked in. But he said that still wasn't enough for him, and he had to call from a pay phone. They didn't have cell phones then. He said he rode his motorcycle over to the hospital just to make sure I was all right because it just didn't sit well with him. If he'd have been a minute, 30 seconds, 10 seconds later, I'd have made my escape, and I don't know if I'd of stayed sober or not. But a series of events has happened like that for me for almost 25 years now. Here's the deal. I was in that hospital for a while, and I was a terrible patient. I didn't like it. I hated my family. I hated the world. I hated everything. Every week they would have these votes on who was the most angry and who the least likely to succeed would be. And before I would go in, I'd say, don't let them see you're angry. And then as soon as somebody voted on me for being the least likely, I'd be angry again, andI'd get more votes that way. I couldn't control myself. And on Sunday nights, they had the hospital institutions panel come in. and that irked me for two reasons one we had to quit watching TV and the other one was they called it a panel and it was always one guy so I would point out to everybody that's not a panel I mean come on panel means at least two or three and everybody else be going into the meeting I'd be out in the hall trying to have somebody listen to my definition of a panel and I was in there that last night with the panel and there he was up there babbling blah blah like I'm doing now and I'm dealing with some of you were doing I was daydreaming about my own life and the panel says do you want to know what I found in Alcoholics Anonymous I thought no it irritated me enough that I paid attention to him for a minute sorry Bart some Irish are okay and he repeated it Do you want to know what I found here on Alcoholics Anonymous? And by then, I was truly annoyed. So I was really paying attention. Because I knew what he would say. He'd say he found God, right? Found friends. Stuff I already had friends. A lot of good friends were waiting for me. I'd just call them at the bar every afternoon and see what they were doing. And he didn't say that at all. He said, I'm going to tell you what I felt. He was going to tells us anyway, so I never was sure why he asked the question. Do you know what it is? Do you not want to ask the question? He said I found a higher degree of mental comfortableness. He said, I have peace of mind. And he stunned me because I'd never had peace of mind, never that I could remember. And he started to talk about his life and it was a much simpler life than I was used to. He said that he was a butcher and that he was going to leave there from us and go home to a wife he wanted to be with. And he said he was gonna go to bed and sleep on clean sheets with her, get up in the morning, fix his lunch in his lunchbox, have breakfast with his children, Go to work, give him eight hours of work for eight hours of pay. Come home and have dinner with his family because he wanted to. And then clean up and go to a meeting and drink coffee and be with his AA friends. And he just stunned me. He talked about the ingredient that you all have worked the steps and take the actions of sobriety always have. It's serenity. He just didn't call it that that night. My friends and I were all cooler than him by a long shot. But none of us had what he had. None of us hade that kind of peace. And it shocked me so much to see it in some person that I went to my room and I started to read the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, for the first time ever by myself. And that book to this day talks about peace of mind and quietness and a way to live that's cleaner and better than I've ever lived. Now, I knew right from wrong. Don't get me wrong. I was raised with a lot of rules. But for some reason, him just talking about that simple life stunned me. and the other is that you the other thing that happened right away I got a sponsor my first sponsor's name was Don Hopes and Don had just moved out to my town from Los Angeles from the Pacific group out of West LA and Clancy was his sponsor now I didn't know any of that had I known any of it or anything that they did I would have never asked Don to be my sponsor I ask him because at the time I was selling real estate and not doing real well and he looked rich and I didn't realize that year he was going to lose his home and his car but I make bad choices sometimes and Don gave me some direction that has served me well to this day, he told me things like you're not going to make any major changes your first year of sobriety, that was my whole life's plan, he said you're no going to get a divorce you're non going to change jobs and you're none going to move I'd been planning that for the last three weeks all of those things you know when you're new and at meetings you hear people say if you drink again you're going to lose your family you're gonna lose your job you're all those kind of threats those veiled threats sometimes those sounded like the promises to me I was like I thought I would think to myself if you're sure that'll happen I might drink this afternoon if there was no other is that all? but Don gave me that direction and for some reason I followed it And he gave me more direction than that. He made me take actions better than the way I think and feel. He made my go to the same meetings he went to, and I had to have a job at every single meeting. Had to. I was the mop boy for like eight years at one of our meetings. I loved that job. I mean, I hated it when other people... There's a lot of advantages to being the mop person. One of them is if you see people who aren't working programs as well as you think they should, you can mop their shoes when you go by them. I tried to find something good in everything you know what I mean? I see the glass half full and he made me do I'll give you another example he told me I used to feel so out of place Dr. Paul used to talk a lot out at our hometown and I was privileged enough to spend evenings with him and listen to him talk he would expand on that theory about how awkward he used to feels making small talk at social gatherings and I mean I really understood that still do to this day often. And I was feeling the same way in AA. I mean, they can say all they want to us that, hey, newcomers are the lifeblood of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I would point out to my other newcomer friends, you know, they don't talk to us at the break. They're hypocrites, and I'd like to find fault, unless we were a pretty girl, and then they always seem to have a seat saved for them. The rest of us all stood in the back. So I was doing that kind of judging and stuff, and I told Don one day about it, and he said, I want you to go around today and meet five people you don't know. And it terrified me. And I went around and I met, I tried to find like five of you together and get it done. And then I would go back and sit in my chair and wonder how I looked or how I sounded and obsess on that for a while. Short time later, I complained about somebody else, tattled on somebody for something. And he said, I want you to go meet 10 people you don'T know. I was like, oh my God. And that wasn't catching on. So I went around and did that for awhile. And one night, he and his friends were up at the podium. I still remember the night and he's a big loud guy and they were up there and I assumed probably planning some kind of a social event without me and um I went up to um to whine about something and he screamed much to my mortification in front of everyone he said god damn it he said you're so sick come here and he took me to the front door and he said I want you to meet everybody who comes in here at the time we had about 150 people coming to that meeting I was terrified now most people were kind about it. I'd say, I'm Mike, and they'd go, hi, I am so-and-so. But some people would go, I'd said I'm Michael, and he goes, so what? I think I'm going to get you. Some people wouldn't shake my hand. I mean, it was just horrible. But he made me do that every single night. And then one day, brought another guy over, young guy, put him next to me, and I heard him saying, you're so sick, stand here with him and meet everybody. And I looked at the guy, and I thought, you are sick, pal. And I explained to him the virtue of shaking hands, like it had been my idea somehow. And that's been my experience with the direction I've been told in Alcoholics Anonymous. It has always been good direction. You may not take it, but it's always worked well. A couple other areas that were like that. He told me that I had to act like a married man. And I'd already met some, or not met, I'd actually just seen some ladies in AA that I thought I might marry someday. I wasn't sure. And one night, I was only a couple months around here and one of them came up to me after the meeting and said, where are you going? Not a tough question. And I was brilliant and said I don't know. And she said look I know you're married. She said but I'm lonesome. And she said why don't you just come over tonight to my place no strings attached. I've been going to bars all my life waiting to hear that. I didn't know it was an Alcoholics Anonymous if I'd have known I'd had joined when I was like 14. But I did what he told me. You know, I've been told, like most people I assume, do this, don't do that, it's bad, it' s morally bad, it's a sin, whatever the thing is. But they were starting to tell me I shouldn't take actions because I might drink again. Now, I wasn't sure that I did or didn't want to. I was still debating now whether I was really that alcoholic Because if I hadn't been wired so much, maybe I wouldn't have drank so much. That kind of game, back and forth, back and forth. And one night, Clint Hodges was speaking at our meeting out in Riverside, and he got up and he said, Our first step doesn't say we're alcoholic. It says we're powerless over alcohol. Ask yourself how well you drank when you drank. I already told you how I drank. That seemed like almost an unfair question to me. Obviously, I was going to fail that test. We had a girl talking at our home group last night, and I liked what she said. She said she was reading the 20 questions or similar versions of the 20 questions when she was new, and on there where they ask about blackouts or something, the ones she was read. She said that she answered no even though she had them because she felt that since she chose to have blackouts, it didn't count. So that girl had asked me that, and I called Don, and I told him I wanted him to know how cool I was. So I tell him about the incident, and he says, you know, pal, it's not you. she's sick it's got nothing to do with you which truly hurt my feelings and uh and i knew he was wrong but but within a week or so i was at the meeting and she was sitting with another newcomer holding his hands and i was like heartbroken right i didn't even know her and uh in a little while later they both drank and all of a sudden the message came home in the form of people i actually saw and they both are sober today not together but sober and they told all of us for quite a while, how they'd gotten together against their sponsor's advice. They went out and they got drunk. And those little lessons were real important for me. You know, I was asked to try to learn how to trust a higher power to run my life when I got here. Don used to take me around when I was new to listen to Chuck C speak everywhere we could go hear him speak. And he would get up at the podium and he would say things like, I know who you are even if you don't. And I would say, Don, who are and Don would say shut up and then it dawned on me one day years later Don didn't know the answer either that's why he'd say shutup and Chuck used to say if I ask you in the room how many of you believe in God probably get 90% 95% but if I asked you how many trust God I'd get an entirely different answer and that's been the truth for me I can come in here what I wanted to believe was the message of Alcoholics Anonymous that there's actually a higher power that takes care of the details of my life. I wasn't so interested at that point whether he took away the obsession to drink or use. I wanted my life fixed. I mean, you know what I mean? Great, I'm glad I'm not drinking, but look, I're miserable here. I'm dying. I was about 100 days sober and I was at the beach where Cliff lives and I Was staying at a house. My family knew nothing much about AA. I could have told them we drank every 90 days and they'd have been happy, right? It would have been a relief. And I was out on the beach and I'd seen somebody drinking a beer that day in one of those frosty mugs, and I wanted one badly. And so it ate at me for hours. I couldn't get the thought out of my mind. I didn't try to get it out of mind either, to make a point, but it stayed in there all day. And I finally went in and got dressed, got my money, and was going to go get a six-pack. Not to get even with anybody, I just wanted a drink. The craving was back. And instead I got on my knees, because I must have heard somebody in a meeting say it, because I would never have had the thought. And not in like a mean, challenging way to God. I just said look I'm going to go drink if you want me not to I don't know what else to do I'm just miserable and you know I've never had an urge to drink since then I got up that day and I never have had an urge again within a month I'd finished my fourth and fifth steps and we'd moved through a lot of things Don taught me that I had to act better than the way I was feeling because my emotions have always been out of control sobriety or no sobriery my emotions are fairly nutty a lot of the time. Things at home were not good because of my behavior, of course, and my selfishness. And I'll give you just a quick story about what happened there. He told me one time, he said, I was complaining about her again. He said, I want you to go get a little card that says I love you and put it on her pillow. Now, I get morals whenever it's convenient for me. So that day I had them. And I said, you want me to lie, Don? You want me to lie? He goes, it's not a lie for you. He said, You don't know how you think. Go get her the card and whatever she says back to you is none of your business. If she tells you she loves you too, great. If she tells you to go to hell, you're not to respond. So I did it. Then I tattled on her again shortly thereafter and he told me to go get some flowers and he said, Don't spend a lot. Go gets just some nice flowers and put it by her makeup mirror. Same little card. Same instructions. If She tells you go to Hell, man, I was like, geez. So I did that. Then one night, he and I are going to Los Angeles to a meeting, and by now she's getting tired of me going to meetings as much. And she said, where are you going? I said, we're going into L.A., and she goes, you know, I don't think I like Don. So I got in the car, and I said... You know, she doesn't like you either, Don. And I figured he was going to say, you better get out of there because you'll drink. But he didn't. That night he gave me some direction. He said, I want you to get up in the morning and fix her some coffee. And I said, you know, she's not up when I get up. And he said, then you fix it and you put some aluminum foil over it and you putting it on the side of the bed. And I remember doing that in the feelings. It was like my manhood was gone. You know what I mean? It was, like, what am I doing? And I would, and I did it. He made me do it every single morning. And then one day I got up and there was coffee on my side of the bed, she had done it. And I found out a good lesson. If you want somebody to bring you coffee in the mornings, All you have to do is get up every day for two years and do it first. Of course, the real lasting lesson in that isn't that at all. It's when I'm doing something for other people, whether it's at home, at work, or somewhere else, things go better in my life for them and for me. But as Chuck used to say all the time, if you become somebody, you've got rights. And if you've got rights, you've got to defend them. And so those kind of actions, whether they were here in AA or outside, were always meant to make me forget about me, the selfishness, the selfish part of me. You know, Don used to tell me all the time, I wish you a lot of pain because the 10th step talks about pain as the touchstone of spiritual growth. And it has been for me. But it doesn't have to just be pain. I've had unbelievably good things happen in my life. We ended up getting divorced, by the way. When I was 12 years sober, and it was maybe the hardest thing I've been through sober. But I learned a real valuable lesson. So if any of you are out there sad tonight or miserable or wondering whatever problem you've got going on, even if it's your own fault, and I'm beginning to wonder about the holy concept of fault, I'm having a real change of mind about fault. When we come in here, when I came in here at least, they told us, there's a higher power who will take care of those things for you. I'd say things like, but you don't understand what I did. And they'd say, it doesn't matter. We've got a step to work on for that. I don't have any money. I'm losing my money. And I was. That first year was a bad, bad financial year. We lost almost everything. And people would say, you know, if you just stay sober and go to meetings, work the steps, put one foot in front of the other, it's all going to be all right. That same higher power that was there when I was new is still here. Somewhere along the way, after a few years, I began to believe that maybe that wasn't true anymore, that it had my one shot, that I'd been given so much that if I screwed up, God couldn't be that loving and forgiving a second time, could he? But I'm here as living proof that yes, my higher power can. I don't think there's a punishing God. And I just don't take that in a matter of like sin. I mean, I don'T think there'S a punishing god. A guy I sponsored the other night got an eviction notice. We were riding to a meeting in Escondido and he said, well, I guess God wants me to learn a lesson. I'm thinking, I DON'T think so. I mean maybe God went to the realtor and said get him out of there. I'M not sure. and I'm not trying to change anybody's belief. I'm just telling you how I've had to interpret, how I have had to develop a concept of a higher power enough that I'm willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I think problems happen to me in the world, often of my own making, sometimes of other people's doing, because my defects of character, my instincts gone astray get out of hand. That's what Bill Wilson wrote so much about. I believe that's true for me. I don't think God does that. But I also think that then whatever opportunity there is when I'm willing, God will take care of it. See, God's role in my life has always been he's just real clever. He comes up with things. I never know when God's working in my Life. I seem to miss the point. It always seems like the worst thing just happened, and it can be the best. When I was a year sober, I got to change jobs, and I started looking for positions, and I couldn't find any. And the only job I could get again was working as a probation officer. And it was in Orange County this time, which is just another county over from where I live. And there were two territories to work. One was at the beach where I thought cool people like me should be, and one was in this inland town called Fullerton where all the gang people lived. And that very first morning, the boss said to me, you're going to work in Fullerton. I thought, no, I'm not, but I didn't tell him. And I called Don and I said, I'M QUITTING. And he said, no you're not. He said, people like you are quitters. He said you're gonna stay there one year and we'll talk about it at the end of the year. He couldn't think of any... his time concept was odd. It was always a year. and I remember I got off the phone and I thought, I'm not. And I was looking at the classified ads and scared to death and I hated the people there and I hate the drive and it was wrong and it's the worst thing in the world and I was making less money than I'd made in years and I knew it was all wrong. I was convinced. Two things happened. One, after I'd been there two years because when the year came and went I didn't want to leave. I liked my job. I was sober and active in AA and life was going well and I just didn't want to live anymore. I got a call one day from the Santa Fe Railroad I guess you're a UP up here but Santa Fe called and asked me if I would apply for a job as their employee assistance counselor, the person who works with people with drug and alcohol problems for several states, California and Arizona and New Mexico and I did, but the competition was national. I don't have any background in alcoholism counseling or working in treatment places or anything but I got the job and when I got it, my boss, I asked him how come? And he said because I saw in there he had recent probation experience and that stood out to me and I wanted to give it a chance. Now, it hit me that afternoon if my first day at work in Orange County God had just stopped into my office and said, look, I got a plan, relax. I'd have been the most gracious A.A. member in the world. I'd of been easy does it not just on my bumper sticker I'd really believed it. The thing is we say it to each other all the time in meetings it's all going to work out it's always going to work out. I look back over the 24 years I've been sober, and every problem that I thought I had or actually ended up having has been solved. I don't stand here tonight with one of those. And yet, when my instincts and my moods are so full of fear, when I haven't got the connection to the higher power that I should have, I forget all the stuff we tell each other at meetings. And so that's why it's so important for me to still go to the meetings i go to every week to suit up and show up to have a job you know i borrowed a lot from chucks i spent one afternoon with him one time talking about some things and um i just think he was probably the most for me he talked about a god that um that i wanted to know more about i wanted to be like him he used to say things like you know what it's like to never want anything for yourself i thought no i want something right now i i have no i have no clue and um but he would talk about that if you trust god he used to say it like this it's our business to do our father's business that's being of love and service to other people and it's his business to take care of us and i would and i'd be asking him something specific like should i take this job or not he would never answer that he would say stuff like that i go yeah but what does that mean i I mean, I even called him back one time. And I called him one time and he said, well, what's your motive? It was about this particular change. And I said, self-improvement. I wanted to take that answer back right away because he said that's the worst answer on earth. He said that'S the worst motive for doing anything. Now, I know what he means, but I still sometimes do it for self- Improvement, okay? I'm not pretending I've bypassed any of that. My point is he used to talk, and I've adopted it to this. The book talks tells us either God is or he isn't, right? Now somewhere along the way if I'm going to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous, if I really want to work the steps, I guess I can stay without doing it. But I have to find out whether God really takes care of the details of my life. I mean I was forced to sometimes because I just couldn't control the things I was trying so hard to control, whatever they happened to be at the time. So little by little trust would come. And so the question I ask myself every morning when I'm still in bed is do I want to run my own life and take the consequences thereof or do I not want to run it and take the consequences thereof and I actually asked myself the question I put it in the form of a question do you want to or not now some days I say no I don't want to but I really do but I you know I really don't want to if I really believed I mean I think about it sometimes if I really believed that there was a God that took care of my life my job my everything I wouldn't worry there was another saying that supposedly comes from Australia, that the measure of my anxiety is the measure of my distance from God. I believe that's true for somebody like me. And so I go through that little ritual in the mornings and I get up and I talk to the guys that I sponsor before I go to work to a lot of them. I've been on the phone quite a while and then I go back and I try to be like that butcher. I try remember to go there and be useful to other people. And I'm going to tell you about my work. The other thing that I didn't tell you about when I was working down in Fullerton that was also there, the other thing, was a law school. And I signed up one time when I found out they had an evening program. I took one class, and I'd gone to one class one night, and I called Don, and said, I hate it. And he goes, you know what? People like you are quitters. He goes, just finish the class. Nobody cares if you ever become a lawyer, but can you just finish this class? Everybody always asks me questions, and the answer is always no, I can't. But I always go, yeah, I guess I can. So I finished that class, and to cut this down for your sakes, I finished law school. I took the bar in February of the year that I finished, and in California you have to wait several months to get the results. On May the 30th, on my AA birthday, in the mail came the results, and I passed and I became a lawyer. Now, I told them the truth just like I told the probation department the truth about who I am. There were no secrets about my arrests, about the hospitalization, about what I've used or not, so nobody could ever blackmail me. It wasn't done. And then I left the railroad and went into some great pain making a job change. And I'll tell you what I do today for a living, because it is as far from where I started in my life as could be. I'm a district attorney. I'm an attorney. I'm not a prosecutor. I have been for a long, long time. And, you know, let me tell you something funny. Oftentimes in meetings, I laugh to myself or I'll telling them at groups different times, AA's the only place where I'm almost ashamed sometimes to say I'm in law enforcement. You know what I mean? It's like, ah. People go, get out of here. I spoke at a group home the other night, Monday night. I had just a little one there in town. There were like 20 guys, and a lot of them are from prison sitting in there. One of them says to me, how can you do that? I don't know. I'd rather rob and kill people, I guess. I don'T know. I mean, we had a nice talk. You know, they'd never gotten to talk to a DA. I mean they don't Know that when I first talked to them that I'm even a district attorney. I don' t tell them. They just think I'm a drunk that's come in to do a panel. And I didn't want to be a DA. I was going to be a real estate lawyer and make a ton of money and I started a firm and I hated it. I got the job. You see, that's the other thing. The things I always think I want seldom pay off the way I thought they would pay off. Whether it's a her or a job or money or anything. I got that good real estate job and I was bored to tears. And through a series of other coincidences honest to God But an opportunity came to go to the DA's office, and I didn't want to. I didn' t want to go back into the criminal field. I don' t like to speak in public. And I became a trial lawyer, and I've been doing that now for 16 years. No longer. And I've been doing homicide, murder trials for the last 11. And let me tell you, where I live, when somebody's killed, we go out to the scene. So we see the dead person and all the scene when it happens. And I' ve been out I can't even tell you how many. And it always impresses me, this. I understand that kind of anger because I've had it. I understand the kind of emotion that somebody can kill because I would have done it on several occasions I tried if I could have done it. I understand people only do what they do because they have to and not because they want to. Now that doesn't mean there's not accountability. Obviously I wouldn't be in my job. But I'll tell you what it does do for somebody like me is it takes some of the sting out of what people do. Now, there are some crimes I can't fathom why they're done. But others are more understandable. And, you know, I sit there in court starting another trial in two weeks on a lady who killed her husband. And I was looking at her yesterday and I was thinking, she's hoping that maybe she'll beat this deal, right? So she doesn't spend the rest of her life in prison. And I'm sitting there with the same kind of emotions and feelings. And the difference for me is I had a disease called alcoholism that got me somewhere where people started making me behave. Not making me, suggesting I behave if I wanted to be happy, joyous, and free. That was what was promised to me by Don and them. And then Cliff. I can't leave Cliff out of this because he's a very sensitive baby. And Don moved away about eight years ago. And I'd known Cliff because every time I'd go for the summer down to the beach house, I'd see him at meetings. and he'd speak at our meetings. We'd go to dinner and stuff, but he was just nice to me. And one day when I was going through the divorce, we hadn't separated yet, but we were getting ready and I was in the backyard and I Was just as sad and heartbroken and angry and scared as I couldn't get. And the phone rang and my wife said, uh, somebody on the phone for you. And it was Cliff. And he said, you okay? And we didn't have calls back and forth, honest to God. And I go, no I'm not and I said what are you calling about and he said I don't know I just wanted to know how you were and he says I just wanted to find out and I say Cliff I'm miserable and he goes why don't you come down and see me so I drove he's about 75 miles from my house I went down there and we went back through and did another fourth and fifth step and those kind of things and he's been sponsoring me ever since because the message he has is the same one that the people that I run around with in AA have we're supposed to be happy joyous and free life's supposed to be better than it was or there's no point being here they always tell me if you're not, you're not doing it right. Now I don't know if that's always true but I know it's been true enough for me. I've never had it so good. You know I'm single today and that's okay. That's the way I've wanted it for quite a while. I enjoy my life. I talk to my daughters. My daughters and I when I got sober I can't tell you what it was like to be a sober father. How nice it felt for me from instead of running around in the bars and doing that stuff to being there coaching soccer and being with them and and being a dad being a dad that they call to this day when they're in trouble when they even they're adults they still call me just to talk I like that feeling I mean it's a nice deal um I uh I lost my train of thought um the when You were being a dad. I know. Oh, I wanted to talk about my dad. Thank you, Bart. When I was still in treatment, I wasn't sober. Well, it was like my second week. My mother was going to Al-Anon, like I told you, and she wanted my dad to go to the Al-ANon meeting, but she wouldn't let him ride with her because he was drinking. So he drove himself. And he was this really handsome little Italian man. and he got over to the hospital and he went over to the Al-Anon meeting and he shook the lady's hand and she smelled booze on his breath and he didn't know anything about he didn' t know the names of Al-Ana or anything and she said to him you want the meeting down in the hall and she pushed him down to the AA meeting and he was like and he never drank again ever, ever again he stayed sober for 16 years as active in AA but he loved AA He died when he was 77 years old from cancer, but he loved Alcoholics Anonymous. And he and I went to meetings together three nights a week, and my whole family life has changed. I mean, when I say I've never had it so good, I believe that God actually works in my life. I'll finish with this. Chuck's used to, and he talks about it in a new pair of glasses and on the tapes. He had a picture on his desk of a man with a long beard and a caption under it that I think comes from Mark Twain. and the caption said something to the effect of I'm an old man who's had many problems most of which have never happened that's been my situation here if I sit still and listen to what you tell me if I work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous I can have peace of mind and I've had it for a long time only because God's so kind thanks for letting me share