My Sponsor Had His Foot on My Chest and Said That’s Step 1 😂 – David B.

Hi everybody, my name is David Bray. I'm an alcoholic. And my sobriety date is January 2nd of 1981. And for that period of time, I'm extremely grateful. I want to thank the committee for inviting Susan and I here. It's, you know, I'm standing here a product of strong sponsorship. And I believe wholeheartedly in strong sponsorship. And, you know, I know the difficulty that putting on a convention like this takes. And so I appreciate all the work that all the committee members have done. And I certainly appreciate how well everybody's treated us. And so I, you know, just want to thank you for doing that. I would have appreciated a little cool air in the room. Last night. But, you know, it's we've just had a ball. We came down about a week ago last Friday and spent some time with Susan's son down in Tucson. And then we went and played in the mountains in Sedona and then came back here in the oven. I mean, the valley. And just enjoyed our friends. And so we've just we've just had a ball. And so I certainly I appreciate being here for me to be able to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous at any. Time doing anything is truly a gift. You know, the one thing that I recognize and realize because of my my sponsorship is, is that, you know, the gift is, is that I'm standing here sober. You know, all I wanted, all I want is just let me stay. You know, just please let me stay among you. I'll do anything you ask. Just let me stay. You know, from once I came and I'll get into that. You know, I'll do anything to stay. I would do anything so I don't have to live the way that I lived before. You know, I really believe for me today. I have I've come to believe that, you know, for me, the people that are those those individuals that sit ready and will do whatever Alcoholics Anonymous asks them to do have been blessed by fitting into what I believe is a very thin corridor. And that corridor is full of hopelessness. I today, you know, Sheila talked about it. Susan talked about the moment of clarity. You know, today I recognize the fact that I've had one, but it wasn't that I'm powerless over alcohol. I mean, I knew I was powerless over alcohol long before I got here. I knew I had a drinking problem long before I got here. For me, that moment of clarity is simply that. My life is my fault. It isn't anybody else's fault. I would have liked to blame it on somebody. In fact, for a long time before I got into that corridor of hopelessness. And helplessness. I was blaming you. It was all your fault. Just leave me the hell alone. I'll be fine. You got a drinking problem. No, I drink great. Sober is what I don't do. Well. But this idea that. The clarity was is that my life is my fault. And if my life is going to change, I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. I finally got to the point where I can't do it anymore by myself. Today I know because I am active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a member of the Going to Any Lengths group in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is by far the greatest AA group anywhere. The idea that, you know, of being ready to just help that other alcoholic. You know, that's what I'm so grateful for is I had sponsorship that just said, this is what we do. We help each other. You know, there's a lot of bad information in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sorry to say that. You know, there's a lot of bad information going around in AA. One of those things that I hear quite a bit that just drives me insane is that this is a self-help program. I dare anybody to bring the big book up to me and say, show me any place in the book where it says help yourself. Be good to yourself. If you can show me any place in that book where it says be good to yourself, I'll eat it. There is no place that it says be good to yourself. So if you're sitting out there trying to be good to yourself, cut it out. You know, when I first got to Alcoholics Anonymous and I saw the people that would get behind, put me on the bus, I said, I'm going to be good to yourself. I'm going to be good to yourself. I'm going to be good to yourself. I'm going to be good to myself. And tell their story and tell some of the most unbelievable things. You know, I got sober when I was 20 years old. And at the very first part of my sobriety, there was a period of time where I didn't know if I belonged here because there wasn't a lot of people back in 1981 that were 20 years old getting sober. And it seemed to me, my perception, it seemed to me like I'd go to meetings and everybody was old. I mean, like old. And they'd sit there with pursed lips. and talk about, geez, it's great not to have to drink today. But I would hear people from Alcoholics Anonymous get behind these podiums and tell unbelievable stories. The story that I remembered, and it's seemingly at the front of my mind, is a guy got up here and told his World War II story, a guy by the name of Cleve L. out of Warika, Oklahoma. And Cleve was a World War II pilot. And he didn't say this. This is what I heard. He was flying these bombing missions over Europe. And he was a pilot, and all of a sudden he was being attacked, and he was behind enemy lines in Russia. And his plane got hit, and the fuselage was on fire, and the co-pilot was dead. And inside the fuselage was live ammunition, hand grenades and bombs. And he knew he was going to die. And he got back into the back of the fuselage, and one of the things exploded, and it didn't explode in, it exploded out, and there was a hole, and he jumped through the hole. Now that part of the story is true. What I heard was he jumped through the hole, crawled to sobriety, and became Mr. AA. And I knew, boy, I better go get some more information. I better go get a different story. Because all I did was, drink. All I did was drink a lot. All I did was drink and get in trouble. All I did was drink and hurt those people that I loved. All I did was drink, and I couldn't stop drinking. I love what the doctor's opinion says, because when I got here, I thought I was weak. Doctor's opinion tells me that these men are not drinking to escape. They are drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. And that phrase in the doctor's opinion, kept me here. Because I thought I was weak. I grew up in a family of, I've got two older brothers. My father was a professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs minor league baseball system. Very sports-minded family. We were a very competitive group. You know, I'd like to blame my alcoholism because, you know, I hear a lot of, came up in a dysfunctional family. I don't know what that is. I know for a fact that, my parents at least functioned three times. I don't know. All I know is that, you know, all of a sudden I was there, my two brothers were there, and all we did was sports. And my father was a fundamentalist. He taught us the fundamentals. And he also instilled in us an incredible amount of competitiveness. I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, ungodly competitive. I can't, I can't stand to lose. I do it all the time. I just don't like it. I don't do it well. I say things in the spirit of competition I wish I could not say. I act like a jackass. A lot of times in the spirit of competition, I just don't, I can't stop it. I'm powerless over the mental control of competitiveness. I can't stop it. I can't stop it. I can't stop it. You know, and when you're, when you're little and all these people are, are not bad athletes, I was always kind of fat and chubby. But I was, my father taught me all these fundamentals. I can shoot a basketball, I can throw a football, I can throw a baseball, and I can hit a golf ball. But I've got a body that, you know, I'm a great athlete in a body that doesn't want to cooperate. I know I should be able to defy gravity. Nope, doesn't work. I get off about three inches. That's my top, top leaping ability. So I cheat. I have a great advantage. I'm willing to cheat. You know, I went out for, I remember growing up, again, we're all in the sports thing. My brother, my, the middle brother was the best athlete of all three of us. My middle brother was the best athlete of all three of us. And he was a three-letterman athlete in high school. He lettered in baseball, football, and basketball. And so I was a freshman in high school and went out for the football team. And I'm fat and slow and don't run real quick and kind of uncoordinated. And go out for the football team. And it was like the last week of football. And the high school that I went to in Chicago, there's like four squads. There's the A squad of your freshman year. There's the A squad, C, B squad, C squad, D squad. I remember, I rode the bench on the C squad. They didn't have a D squad. There weren't enough bad people to get that far. So I rode the bench on the C squad. I remember one day in this last week of football practice, we're out there, we're doing all those stupid drills. And the football coach looks at me and he goes, you know, Bray, for a guy like you that shows up to football practice every day, you are the worst football player I have ever seen. And I took up golf. Golf is a great sport for people like me. You hit the ball and you can walk. You can take your time walking if you choose. The amazing thing was, is I became very good at the game of golf fairly quickly. Started participating in golf. And it's one of the things that my alcoholism cost me. By the time I was 17, 18 years old, I was playing to a one handicap and eventually got down to being a scratch golfer and, and played a lot of tournaments and, and, but my drinking started and you have to either practice or drink. And at times there was times where I could do both. And then there was times where I couldn't do both. And there's only, I had to practice or drink and I started drinking and these guys kept practicing. There's about four or five guys that I used to play golf against in college that are now out on the tour. And they're making a lot of money. And I'm in the, I'm in the desert. . . . . . . . . In August. You know, um, you know, I took my first drink when I was about 13 or 14 years old. And one of the most amazing things occurred. You know, I, I felt like, and again, this perception thing, I felt like I couldn't live up to what my brothers were doing. I certainly couldn't live up with what I believed to be the expectations my father had of me. And I felt like I just didn't fit. and I took that drink of alcohol. I remember my very first drunk. Slow gin. Goes down red. Comes up red. I won't go any further. But I was a puker. I thought everybody did it. You just enjoy it better, that's all. But I remember that first half hour of inebriation before I blacked out. It was like every poor feeling I had about myself, everything that I felt, the low self-esteem, the worthlessness, I couldn't meet your expectations, it all went away. It's like I dropped 40 pounds and grew 4 inches. My tongue became unraveled and I could speak volumes of philosophic thought. And it made sense. At least in my mind. And then it went away and into oblivion. And I remember waking, coming to that following morning and I was laying on my hands, I was sleeping like a dog with my hands on my knees with my head in a bucket. And that was my first experience with alcohol. And if a normal person would have had that experience, they would have said, boy, I don't do that. Well, I probably won't do that again. For me, the only thing that I could focus on was that half hour where all the pain went away. That's what alcohol did for me. When I drink alcohol, the pain goes away. I don't know why, it just goes away. And I want that feeling as often as I can get it. You know, my drinking career didn't last very long and it confused me when I first got here because maybe I wasn't alcoholic. Because I saw all these old people, what I will term the old mossbacks. They just sit around, and be sober. You know? And I'm still wondering, you know, I got sober in Illinois, in Chicago, before I could legally drink. And I'm not sure, but I keep sitting and I listen to you. I heard a couple years ago, Tom I out of North Carolina talk about the one qualifier of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, and this is Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're, going to be listening for other things other than Alcoholics Anonymous, you're in the wrong spot. At least why I'm up here. Because I'm not going to talk about anything other than what comes out of the big book. I'm not going to talk about what other than comes out of the 12 and 12 because that's where our program is. That's where the instructions on getting well are. But Tom I talked about this. You know, it says in the first or second paragraph of More About Alcoholism, we alcoholics, that's you and I, we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. Period. Not young, not old, not black, not green, not white, not HIV, not yada da da da da da da da da. We are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. That's it. I had lost the ability to control my drinking two years before I got here. But then it goes on to say this. That the obsession of the abnormal drinker is that they will someday control and enjoy their drinking. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity and death. And I believe those are the people that overshoot the corridor. They go right through the corridor of hopelessness into insanity and death. We don't see those people. Maybe we see them for a week or two in Alcoholics Anonymous and they go back out and they drink themselves into insanity or death. Or they blow up. Or they blow their heads off. Or they take a bunch of pills because they can't stand drinking or not drinking. Then you got those people that sit in meetings with alcoholics and honestly haven't got to the corridor yet. They're just bugging us. Those are the people that you ask, hey, why don't you get here about a half an hour early? Why? Well, we find that if you get here early and talk to us, you might help get sober a little bit quicker. Well, I don't have to do that. Where's this AT&T? I don't have to do that in a book. Well, one of the things that our book talks about, the leveling of our pride. I have to be willing to participate in my own recovery. I have to be willing to take part in me getting better. So anyway, went off a little bit. You know, this idea of alcoholism, I'm going to tell you a couple quick stories about me drinking and then I'll tell you about sobriety. One. I graduated a junior college and applied for a college up in DeKalb, Illinois. It's about 40 miles north of Chicago. And it was my junior year in school. And it was the very first time that I was on my own. I'm 18, 19 years old. It's the very first time I'm on my own. And my alcoholism just accelerates. And it's the college campus scene where there's drinks at Bound. And I go up there. And I get enrolled in class. I went up there with the idea that... I love Bill's story. Bill talks about, you know, he had arrived. He imagined myself at Vast Empires. I had imagined myself leading Vast Empires. And so I applied with the business school thinking that I would lead Vast Empires. But one of the things about Northern Illinois, they expected you to, like, have good grades. And so they expected me to have a B average or better. And I just cracked the C- area. So they said, no, you can't come into our business school. But here's what you're allowed to take. And it wasn't much. Until my grades got better, what I qualified for was, like, being a plumber. Or an electrician or a TV VCR repairman. And if you do those things, great. I just, you know, that wasn't where I was wanting to go. But that's where I was. So I signed up for these things. But I wanted to kind of... I wanted to do it. I wanted to build into it slowly. So I took a couple art classes. Now I'm a junior in college. I took a freshman English class. And wanted to, you know, slow down this thing a little bit. But all of a sudden you have to go to class. So you want to, you know, get grades, you got to go to class. And I'd rather drink. One of the things that goes on on a college campus, especially around Halloween, is a lot of parties. And Halloween is, like, the greatest party of a college campus. At least in Northern Illinois. I don't know what it was. Everybody parties. And you can dress weird, kind of like you see at a normal AA meeting. And... And do whatever the heck you want. And I go to drink. And by this time, every time I drink out, I black out. By the end of that drinking, by the end of my drinking, when I started to drink, one of three things would occur. I would black out, I would pass out, or I would run out. And that's it. Those were the three options once I started. I could not guarantee you what would happen when I started drinking. I couldn't tell you where I'd end up. Couldn't tell you what I would do or not do. Who I would end up with. Where I would end up with. Doing what. And if that's not the definition of unmanageability, I don't know what it is. When I drink, I can't do the things I want to do. And when I drink, I can't stop from doing the things I know I shouldn't do. I have lost control. And so this night of this Halloween party, I'm out there, and I was living with a bunch of guys, and we decided, back in 1980, there was a movie that came out, it was called The Warriors. And it was about gangs, and one of the gangs in this movie was the Baseball Furies. And we dressed up like the Baseball Furies, and you needed to carry a baseball bat, but I didn't have a baseball bat. So I went into my closet, which was one of those real narrow ones, had about a three or four foot closet pole, so I got the closet pole, and that was my bat. Off to the party we go. The story that was told to me the following morning was this, because I don't recall. About four in the morning, some of the people that I lived in the same apartment complex saw me walking across town in the opposite direction of which way I should have been going, and so they drug me home. And the story that they told me was, I came into their apartment about four in the morning, and I had about this much left in my closet pole. And I said, oh, I was hurting people. I was hurting people. And I don't remember. I don't remember what I did that night. I don't recall what occurred during that evening. The following morning when that story was told to me, it frightened me for a little while. I got the campus newspaper, and they always have in campus newspapers, they got this little section that's like the police blotter. And they tell of all the silly crimes that go on. And so I started looking in the police blotter to see if there was some idiot dressed up in a baseball uniform carrying a closet pole, beating on people. Because I didn't know. And I couldn't find anything, so I figured, eh, don't worry about it. But I can't stop from doing the things that I know aren't right. One, about mid-November, I come to. Now, we're living, and these guys that I'm living with, you don't declare anybody else alcoholic, but these guys probably, we're pretty close. We lived alcoholically for certain. I came to one morning in the middle of November, and I was sleeping on our living room carpet kind of face down. And our apartment had come to that point, we had a lot of parties, and so the carpet was kind of, that had that glistening crunch of dried beer. And whatever else might have been on the carpet. And so I kind of peel my face off the carpet, and I look, and I take my eyes out, and for whatever reason, I had an intuitive thought that I had an art test that day. I hadn't been to this class in quite a while, but I knew I had to go. So I put on my uniform of the day, which was my T-shirt with the sleeves cut out that defiantly declared, free me. and I put my shorts on and my thongs and I grabbed my number two pencil because I had a test and I walked to class. And I get to class and it's in one of these auditoriums because there's a bunch of boobs like me that are taking this class and I have to find a place to find a seat and so I look up to find a seat because there's quite a bit of people in it and when I look up, I see immediately there's a distinct difference between you and I. You're in winter clothing. Because it's late November in northern Illinois and it's cold. But when I came to and peeled my face off the carpet, I looked out the window and the sun was shining. And the ability of my brain at that time was about this. I look out the window and see that the sun is shining and my calculating alcoholic mind, sun, warm. Free me. Number two pencil, go to class. That's the type of brain power I came to you with. At Alcoholics Anonymous. The last straw was this. The semester ends and I go home. All during this time I never got a job because my parents kept sending me money. I've been looking for a deal from that time to this time. My sponsor won't let me do it. So I never got a job. I just kept calling them for money and they had reached their end with me. Well, it's about right after Christmas and they're going to one of those final Christmas parties. And I invite four or five people over so we could have just a little bit of a small get together. So we had one of those parties where you invite four or five and about 87 show up. And one more time, this wasn't the first time, but one more time, my folks' house is destroyed. Because see, when I drink, I black out. And when I black out, they have the run of their home. It isn't even my home, it's my parents' home. I'm not even there to stand guard. So I come to, and I'm trying to put the house back together. And I'm drunk. And you've got to understand something about my mother. If the bedspread has a wrinkle where it shouldn't be, she knows somebody was in the house. One of the things that occurred while I was in the blackout is a bunch of these friends went up into my parents' bedroom and they had in their closet a lockbox with all the family important papers. So they, grabbed the lockbox, which wasn't locked, and beat it to within an inch of its life to try to get into the lockbox. And it was one of those things that's like a lunchbox. It had the little latch. But they couldn't quite get it. I love the line in The Vision for You, we sought out lower companionship. My sponsor pointed out, Dave, they were seeking you out. My mom finds this lockbox behind the furnace in the basement. See, I had lost their trust long ago. They looked upon me with just... You know, the doctor's opinion talks about frothy, emotional, emotional appeal. I know froth. I have a clear vision of froth. You know, the white stuff that builds up on your lips when you just can't stand it anymore? My mom would talk to me in frothy, emotional appeal. Just stop drinking. If you just stop drinking, we'd be all right. And how little they understand. What do you mean, stop drinking? Drinking's the only thing that keeps me together. It's the only answer I got. But they don't understand that. So my father has a little visit with me. And the last thing that my father said to me before I came to you was this. Because I had taken from him everything that I could take. I had stolen from him everything that I could steal. I pawned everything from him I could get out of the house. And he was done. He looked me in the eyes and he said, you know, Dave, with a son like you, I don't need anything. I don't need anything from the enemies. And we're tired of watching you. And we're just done. And he said, what are you going to do? And this is when that moment of clarity came because the words that came out of my mouth were these. If I'm going to stop drinking, I need help. Now see, that's totally foreign to the way that I was raised. You don't ask for help. You don't ask for help from anybody. God, act like a man. Just be a man about this thing. Just stop. And I tried with all my might just to stop. And I can't because I'm fighting a craving beyond my mental control. I think I'm weak. And they're saying stop drinking and I can't. And all of a sudden this, I need help, comes out of my mouth and I haven't had a drink since. Now there's a lot of work between I need help and working the program of, Alcoholics Anonymous. But they whisked me off to a treatment center. I turned around, I was in a treatment center. Treatment centers have absolutely zero to do with Alcoholics Anonymous. They have nothing to do with my recovery. The only thing they did was keep me not drinking for 28 days and make me swim in a pool a bunch of people urinate in. . . . . . . . . . . . Has zero to do with my recovery. My recovery didn't start until I started working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I go from this treatment center into a halfway house. My sponsor tells me, halfway to what? . . . This halfway house had zero to do with my recovery. All they did was put me in with 14 other brands, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You got to go to meetings and get a job and pay us. Kind of concept. I haven't done that in a while. A couple things started happening while I was in this halfway house, so. One of the things that had a lasting impression on my sobriety from the time that it happened to this day was I met a guy that we got friendly. I met a new guy. We're getting sober together. He's one of those guys you get sober with that you kind of have that immediate rotte. bond with and you know you sit up late at night and take everybody's inventory and we're going to meetings together and we're about three months sober and he gets drunk and it devastated me i don't know why it just devastated me i thought when you got here all was well and we just tiptoe off into la la land and just help other alcoholics be wonderful and he got drunk so i went over to try to save him bad mistake walk into his apartment and he's sitting in a recliner he's got that alcoholic glaze on his eyes already a couple about 12 crushed beer cans at the bottom of the recliner and he asked me if i wanted a beer and this is one of those points in my sobriety where it could have gone either way and god said and i just said no do you want to go to a meeting he said not not right now so i walk out of that guy's apartment i don't know if he ever got sober but i walk out of that apartment and i go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting and i'm mad i don't know what i'm mad at but i'm mad and i go to your meeting and i am waiting it's a discussion meeting i don't know what they were discussing because i was all during a meeting i was formulating my rebuttal i don't know if you've ever sat in a meeting where somebody formulated their rebuttal to you it isn't pleasant they're talking about whatever they're talking about and i'm thinking that the guy that's leading the meeting probably sees that i'm not the guy that he should call on but he ran out of people to call on and he had to call on me and for about eight or nine minutes i interrupted your a because i told these people what i thought of you i told you what i thought alcoholics anonymous i told you a bunch of liars my my my language was laced with profanity i told you i wanted my money back your program doesn't work my buddy's drunk and basically and finally the guy that was leading the meeting had enough courage and i'm so grateful that he did it he just said dave shut up we're tired of listening to your crap and he said something very important to me that night he said dave i want you to understand something and i hope you listen to what i'm saying he said dave the reason that your buddy's drunk tonight isn't because a doesn't work he said dave the reason that your buddy's drunk tonight is because he chose not to work a but he said there's something other than that that you need to understand dave he said i want you to look around at all the people in this meeting tonight because all of fit into two categories. They all fit into a category of good examples and there's a group that fit into bad examples. There's a bunch in every meeting that are good examples of Alcoholics Anonymous and there's a bunch of people that are bad examples of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now Dave, pick the one you want to be and shut up. I had my first resentment in Alcoholics Anonymous. And for a period of time I was a bad example. But you know what? I thank God that that guy had enough courage to tell me like it was. See I think I got a right to sit in your meeting. I think I have rights to interrupt meetings by getting up and disturbing the meeting while it's going on. I think I have a right to get up and get coffee during when somebody's sharing. I think I have a right to come in late and to leave early. I think I have a right to come in late and to leave early. To get up and go to the bathroom. To do all those things that disturb the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and the people that are sitting next to you when you get up and disturb them. I think I had a right to do all that stuff. My sponsor said, no Dave, sit down, get one cup of coffee and wait till the meeting's end. And when it's your turn to share, say, my name's Dave and I'm an alcoholic and pass. Because that's all you know. Oh, by God. I got another buddy so we could take his inventory. But thank God for people that care enough. They care enough more about the integrity of Alcoholics Anonymous than how I feel. They care more enough about how AA should be and are willing to stand up and defend it. And to stand up and protect Alcoholics Anonymous so that our meetings don't get destroyed by the idiots that don't. If people don't stand up and say, we don't do that here, show a little respect for Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what? It's the program that's going to try to save your life one day. It's about time you show some respect toward it. These are all brand new things to me. I don't respect anything. I don't respect you. I don't respect me. I don't respect nothing. And all of a sudden, here's somebody trying to teach me some principles. From that day to this day, little by little, I've tried to act like a good example. And there's a thousand days that I have fallen short. But all I can do is try a little bit stronger to act like a good example of Alcoholics Anonymous. Act like it's saving my life. Act like it's working. My sponsor said, you know what? It'd be nice if you started talking a little bit better than the newcomer. You know, if my speech is laced with profanity, what does that do? My sponsor today says, profanity is nothing more than a crutch for conversational cripples. It does nothing to enhance Alcoholics Anonymous. He also said, why don't you start dressing a little bit better? You know what? At least look sober. My sponsor was mean. About a year goes by, and I'm still in Chicago, and got a job, and started making a little bit of money, and decide I need to, there's an opportunity for me to go back to school. My oldest brother had finished school at the University of Oklahoma. He called me up. He said, Dave, why don't you come down here? So I go down to Oklahoma, and I fall into a group called the Big Book Group in Norman, Oklahoma, and I was introduced, again, to a lot of people what I'll term activists in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were heavy into sponsorship. They were heavy into... Service work. We carried meetings into prisons. We did things as a group. We were together. There was meetings every night. My sponsor started talking to me about Alcoholics Anonymous and started working me through the steps. The guy that I asked to be my sponsor was a big guy. It was a guy that talked to Sheila. He was a big guy, about six foot four. I had picked a guy that I knew that I could not manipulate, because there was something about the fact that if I could use you, I would. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, my assets... I could lie, I could steal, I could cheat, and I could manipulate. And I thought those were my good points. I used those to survive. Those were my survival techniques. And Alcoholics Anonymous starts stripping all that stuff away from me so that I can start building upon a foundation which I might be able to live happy and a useful life. So he starts working me through the program. One day he asked me to do something stupid. I don't even know what it was. It was just stupid. I don't know where they get this stuff. Do they go to sponsorship school? Do stupid things? We're going to have a course on stupid things to tell your sponsorees. Well, he told me one of these things, and I said, I ain't doing it. That was the wrong answer. He said, you want to go step outside? Now pride steps in. And I go, alright. So we step outside, and he proceeds over the next 15 miles, pretty much to beat the crap out of me. And he's standing on the front yard with his foot on my chest. And I say, I give up. He said, that's step one. 26 charging up head of brands You know what? I understood that. I understood hopelessness and surrender. It was the very first time that I think from that day that I had that I knew I needed your help, that was the next day that I knew I needed your help. And I hope I never lose sense of I need your help. We started working through the steps and I did that inventory. And I started making my amends. I started becoming an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Got involved in a group, like I said, and we were just active. Like Susan was talking about, we were on AA row. And we lived amongst a bunch of alcoholics and like she said, there was that one person we couldn't get out, Normie, that was in between the clubhouse and all these other houses. And we were just interacting all the time in Alcoholics Anonymous. Susan came back from a women's conference and we had been friends for quite some time and she said, she invited me over dinner and I came over and she was cooking something in the kitchen. I walked into the kitchen and she turned around and I kissed her. The most amazing thing happened. She kissed me back. Now, I still have that alcoholic mind, you know, sun warm thing. So I did the very next thing that seemed logical to me. I moved in. She let me. And we started doing Alcoholics Anonymous Al-Anon. And then another thing happened. One night we're laying in bed and she asked a very stupid question. She asked me, Dave, what are you thinking? We laugh about now when we like start, you know, baby, I've been thinking. And before I could get it back into my mouth, the words that came out of my mouth were, you know, I don't think I can marry you. Bad. Don't say that. Out I go. And at this time, we're active members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Susan told you about Vinoy was her sponsor. She'd moved to Norman. And Jim Shaw was Vinoy's husband. And Jim and Vinoy's house was AA Haven. And every Saturday night after the meeting, everybody that could fit in their house was in their house. And it was just, it was where the meeting after the meeting would take place. And we were big into trivial pursuit. And it was just, I had some of the most incredible belly laughs. And I don't know when you ever had your first belly laugh in Alcoholics Anonymous, but when you have that first belly laugh, boy, does it feel good. And there was a hundred belly laughs in the Shaw's living room. And we're, but see, now we broke up and see, Jim has not been my sponsor yet, but Vinoy forever has been Susan's sponsor. So when this thing happened, Susan moved in. And here's where my perception takes over. Now I'm not welcome. And that's about all an alcoholic needs to start getting that self-pity and that self-delusion and that self-seeking thing going. And I had it going. And this Saturday night, everybody's being invited over to the Shaw's because that's what we do every Saturday night. And they go. And nobody came and asked me. Oh. And I'm mad. But I wanted to make sure, so I drove by. And I rolled the window down. And I was listening to the laughter. I did a drive-by listen. And one of the scariest moments of my sobriety happened. Alcoholics Anonymous went away. It was gone. I don't know how it goes so fast, but it was gone. Everything was gone. Two minutes before, I'm an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I sponsor people. I'm taking meetings into prisons. I'm an active member of my group. I go to four or five meetings every single week. I'm four years sober. I'm doing all this stuff. And none of it's there. It's gone. The book talks about the strange mental blank spots, and I am in one. Now, when I'm in one of those things with no defense against the first drink, what happens? My mind says, Screw you guys. I don't need you. And the very next thought was, Let's go get a drink. And I want it. I want that drink. And I'm about to go get that drink. And God got in the car because I had never had a drink in Norman. I don't know where to go. So I put the car in park to think. I got to think about now, where do I go get my drink? And at that moment, God put this thought in my mind. Why don't you go see if Chip's home? Chip was a very good friend of mine in Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I put the car in drive. And I know for a fact that if Chip wasn't home, you'd have a different speaker tonight. But Chip was home. And I go into Chip's apartment, and I'm bawling like a baby. Because I'm so mad I can't see straight. I'm devastated. And we sat up and we took every one of your inventories. Especially hers. And theirs. And hers. But I didn't drink that night. It was one alcoholic working with another alcoholic. The sanity returned. And I could make it one more day. The following Saturday night, we go back to our Saturday night meeting. Susan's there, I'm there. The electricity is like, great. She comes up to me and she had a joke she learned. Like the minute before. Excuse my language. She said, what's the difference between a Yankee and a bucket of shit? The bucket. He he he he he he he. . I stared at her the whole meeting. . And then, here comes my alcoholic mind. I did the only thing that I knew what to do. I married her. We got married on August 3rd of 1985, and last week we celebrated 12 years of marriage. The most amazing thing about our relationship is that she works a solid Al-Anon program, and she sponsors a bunch of gals, and Al-Anon is active, and she's active. And I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous, and I sponsor a bunch of guys, and our phone is always ringing. We had to get two phones because she sponsors so many gals, and I sponsor so many guys, and we rarely see each other, but we always try to save time so that we spend time together. Every year we go to a place in Oklahoma that's one of our favorite places. It's the Canyon Conference, and on the grounds of the Canyon Conference, there's a little chapel. And every year at the Canyon Conference, Susan and I, at the end of the conference, go into that chapel. And we get down on our knees, and we do a third-step prayer on our marriage. And we invite God every single year at that conference because it's our favorite place for God to take care of our marriage. We offer our marriage to God to do with our marriage as He will. Relieve us the bondage of self, which is, that's a full-time job. I wouldn't want it, God. Take away our difficulties so we can be of service. Remove from us all the defects, which stand in the way of us being useful to you and the people about us. And then we get up, and we stand in the middle of the aisle of this little chapel, and we take off our rings, and we renew our vows every year. And it's just the way that we keep God in the middle of our relationship. It's the only way we have found that it works. And we know that God is the reason that our relationship is. We know that these programs are the reason that our relationships are. But we also know what our primary purpose is. And if a member of Alcoholics Anonymous calls, and we're doing something, I've got to go. Because we wouldn't have our relationship if it wasn't for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if the phone rings, and Al-Anon is in need, she's got to go. And we keep our primary purpose first. We don't make excuses why we can't come to meetings. We don't make excuses, oh, that's too much. We would have nothing if it wasn't for you. Everything we have is yours. The only reason we have it is because of you. When I got to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I had nothing. I had no clothes. I had my Free Me t-shirt. Didn't have a job. Didn't have a car. Parents were sick of me. I had no money. And now I have all these things. And I would have the audacity to say, sorry, I don't have time to help Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is the reason that I have all these things. You have given us everything that we have. Now, that does not give you permission to come over and take it. But it's all yours. Amazing thing happened during this time. I'll tell you a couple of quick stories and sit down. One of the things that was, one of the worst things that I had to watch was watching my mom die of this disease. She became, you know, she started exhibiting alcoholism. And God, it was ugly to watch. I hate alcoholism. I absolutely adore what alcoholism does to people, especially those ones that you love so much. And we'd go to my folks, and it was the only time that she and I would fight. Except when we'd go to her folks. But watching my mom die of this disease was just a nightmare. Every time we'd go, we'd go, six months here, and the next six months, and she'd get a little bit more. She had started cirrhosis of the liver, and she was at least 30 or 40 pounds underweight. She had little bird legs, and she couldn't remember blackouts, and it was just, oh, God, it was killing me. I'd call Jim and say, Jim, I don't understand. I just can't watch it anymore. What do I do? And he gave me some suggestions, and those weren't working. I was like, God, Jim, I just can't stand it. And he kept telling me the story of his father. And his father got sober when he was 78 years old, and he said, Dave, all we can do is pray for your mom and just keep going. Keep going. And then one day, I get a call, and it's from my dad. And through a series of circumstances, my dad had lost his job. And so now he's home. And see, he was in denial of the alcoholism going on because he didn't want to look at it. He'd rather not look at it than do anything about it because they had this big house around him. They had all this stuff around him, so there are no problems. If we don't talk about it, there's no problems. And all of a sudden, he calls me, and he said, Dave, we just stuck. Your mom had a treatment center. And that was on January 8th of 1993. And a year later, they had retired to Sarasota, Florida. And a year later, I got to go down there, and I got to hand my mom her one-year chip. I got to put a one-year chip in my mom's hands and say, happy birthday, Mom. And to watch in one year what Alcoholics Anonymous has done for her. And now she's coming up on five years. And people ask me, why do I care so much about Alcoholics Anonymous? Why am I so adamant about keeping Alcoholics Anonymous pure? Why am I so adamant about keeping all that crap that doesn't belong here out of here? I don't want to hear about your inner child. I want to hear about your therapist. I want to hear about the psychiatrist. I don't give a crap. Keep it out of here. You want to talk about it? Go to the place where you talk about that stuff. Come to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. We talk about, what's going on with Alcoholics Anonymous? You know what? The door says Alcoholics Anonymous. We got a book. The book says Alcoholics Anonymous. It doesn't say Alcoholics Anonymous and a... I watched my mom regain her life because of Alcoholics Anonymous. That man that said, Dave, with a son like you, I don't need any enemies. And he meant it. He meant it with every fiber of his being because I had taken from him everything that I could take. I heard a guy say one time, the worst thief, the worst type of thief is that that steals the right of another person's happiness. And I had ripped the happiness out of his life by my actions. I had totally ripped his happiness because of my actions. And he got to watch what happened to my mom and it started softening him a little bit. And then my wife got sneaky and on my 15-year birthday, she flew my parents in to my 15-year birthday party. And he got to watch Alcoholics Anonymous at its finest. He got to watch you love me and my family. He watched you love my mom. And at the end of the party, we took him back to the airport. And he pulled me aside. And he said, you know, Dave, because of this golf thing, he said, you know, Dave, I thought at one point, you had a promising golf career. But after this weekend, it's very clear to me that you've been called to a higher order. This man is a devout atheist. He claims it. Whether he actually pursues it or not, I don't know. But something happened during that weekend and it softened him. Over a 15-year period of time of my sponsor and telling me how to act right and do the right things, our relationship has improved. Now he calls me and says, would you call your mother? She needs to talk to you. I've got an older brother that's off in the wild blue yonder and it's driving my mom crazy. And so my dad calls me and says, hey, you know, talk to your mom. I don't get to see him as often as I like, but I'll tell you something. Our relationship is a thousand times better. He no longer has to worry about if I come to his house, what am I going to steal? I don't know. Because now what I try to do is when I go there, it's what can I give? The one thing that this program has turned me, we talk about the entire psychic change. If I'm going to change, I have to change from what I was when I got here, which was a taker and a user. And I have to become the thing that this program allows me to become and that's a giver. And if I can go from a taker to a giver, I've got a chance. If I think about what I should be getting and what's mine and what I deserve, I'm not getting this program. I thank God for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's because of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that today I have a relationship with God. And for that, I'll always be grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.