Not One Drink Away from a Drunk but Twelve Steps Away from a Drink — Work Them Forward or Work Them Back – Joe K.

Make that 32. I'm Joe Klass. Thank God I'm an alcoholic. Well, let me think here. I'm in my 23rd year of OA, my 33rd year of sobriety, my 27th year of Al-Anon, and my 27th year of Narcotics Anonymous. My 39th year of Alcoholics Anonymous, my 48th year of marriage, and my 75th year of financial insecurity. I come from Carmel, the land of the newlyweds and the nearly-deads, where people with power steering have trouble getting around corners. We have a lot of meetings. Somebody asked me. We have a lot of meetings down there. In the area, we have 120 meetings a week. In Carmel, we have about 13 or 14, but we're only a town of 4,300 people. We do all right. Every place I've ever lived, I used to go to meetings here. I've gone to meetings all over around here. I got into AA the second time around. I've had two firsts, second, third, fourths. I've had fourth and fifth birthdays. I've had two of each of those. I'm not going to have two 32nd birthdays. But I got into the program through the Five Cities Fellowship when I was living in Hayward. So obviously, I'm an old-timer, and people want to know what it's like to be an old-timer. It's a near-death experience. There are people in this program with more years of sobriety. I just can't believe people with 50, 55 years of sobriety, but we've got them now. There are people in this room who are going to end up with 60, 70 years of sobriety. That's out of the question for me. I can't ever achieve that. But I'm going to beat you to whatever I get to. I got into this fellowship. The way we all do. I drank too much. Now I've got 32 years of sobriety, and I owe it mostly to not drinking. The truth of the matter is, I can't drink. The reason I can't drink is that I decided to do the steps forward, and I do them forward. There's two ways to do the steps, backward and forward. Some people will say he's got 32 years of sobriety, but we're all only one drink away from a drunk. The truth of the matter is I am a long the way from a drink. That's what is important. Not how many drinks it takes... but how far away from a drink am I. I'm 12 steps away from a drink. Now I've practiced the Step so much, people used to call me a Step Nazi. I didn't like that. because I was a prisoner of war of the Germans for 25 months, and none of us liked to be called any kind of Nazis, you know. But what I admit to being is a stepaholic. What it would take for me to stop practicing the 12 steps is a program called Stepaholics Anonymous. I could give up AA only if there were a program called Alcoholics Anonymous Anonymous. Now, I go to a lot of other fellowships, as you can tell, and I'm eligible for just about everything except Allotine. I have gone to fellowships that I don't go to anymore. I used to go to adult children of alcoholics, except it got to be kind of unbearable because I had six alcoholic children, you see. And I'm an adult children of alcoholics. Both of my parents were. We're alcoholics. We had a speaker the other night from Milwaukee, and it suddenly hit me. I got drunk in Milwaukee when I was 13 years old. That was the year prohibition was repealed in this country. And I thought, no, that wasn't Milwaukee. That was Waukesha. And then I got to thinking, but I went through the brewery in Milwaukee because my parents traveled a lot. We traveled an awful lot. And wherever I traveled with my parents, we went to the... Art museums, the zoo, and a tour of the brewery. And I look back, I never thought of it before. I've been through the Budweiser Brewery, the Pabst Brewery, the Rainier Brewery, the Olympia Brewery, the Horlicks Brewery. I've been through the Pilsner Brewery in Czechoslovakia, the Hofbrue Brewery. Well, I told me I'd bring down the house tonight. I said, you can burp up here and get a standing ovation. People say, are you nervous? Well, what for? Well, obviously my parents were both alcoholics and my grandfathers were both alcoholics. I'm an alcoholic. My kids are alcoholics. My wife is not an alcoholic. She's an Indian. I'm an Indian. And black feet. There's not an alcoholic member that we can trace on any... on her side of the family in any generation. There's a myth about alcoholism, you know? A year and a half ago, a year ago last August, I was in Russia. I was in Siberia with six other people from the fellowships of AA and Al-Anon. And we helped organize, or let's put it this way, we helped found five different... five different AA groups and Al-Anon groups in four cities in Siberia. And then we went back to Moscow and we met the guy who was responsible for getting Alcoholics Anonymous into Russia. He's not an alcoholic. His name is Dr. Peter Shikhov. And what happened was Gorbachev was having a difficult time. One of his daughters had a drinking problem. And that's not unusual in Russia or anywhere else. And so he sent her to the program that had been going for about 12 or 13 years called SS, Society for Sobriety. And for that long, instead of sending people to prison, they were sending them to detox, then to what they called... I forgot what they called it, but a house where they could live for a while or to sort of a boot camp arrangement. And they try and teach them what they know about alcoholism, Alcoholics Anonymous, only they changed the name to SS. And it wasn't working. Now, they tried every way they could think of to get people to stop drinking. They invented a specialty of medicine called narcology. And so the doctors we were dealing with over there are called narcologists. And, you know, it's kind of a funny program because they tried hypnosis and they found that they could program people not to drink for as much as up to two years. With the best hypnotists in Russia. It didn't usually last that long, but that was the record, two years. But then they drank again. They lined hospital rooms with slabs of salt because they did a scientific study that showed that the salt mine workers drank less than other people. They tried putting amethyst under people's tongues because there was an old wives' tale passed down generation after generation. And if you have an amethyst under your tongue, you can't drink alcohol. They tried all kinds of things, and it didn't work. They tried sponsorship. They tried meetings. They tried birthdays. They tried family groups. They tried going out to help other alcoholics. They tried clubhouses for alcoholics and for families of alcoholics. They tried everything that we've tried. And so Gorbachev called Dr. Shakirov, who is the director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Now it's the Russian Academy of Sciences. He's sort of a brain trust of all Russia. He's a real brain. He's like we treated Einstein. That's the way they treat Shakirov. Not an alcoholic, but a great psychologist and scientist. A genius. And really is one. And a hell of a scholar. And a scientist. And so Gorbachev says, why isn't SS working when it's exactly like AA, which is working in more than 120 other countries? And Shakirov says, I don't know, Mr. Secretary. I'll make a study and see if I can find out what's wrong in Russia. And so he made a study for three months. And he came back and he studied all the countries of the world and every study ever made in every country about alcoholism. He says, Mr. Secretary, we do everything they do in AA except one thing. They have God. And they do 12 steps that put their will and their lives into the care of God. He says, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God. But that's the only difference. Therefore, the one thing, that must make it work in AA and make it not work in SS is that they have God and we don't. Gorbachev says, God? That's the only difference? And Shakirov says, yes, that's the only difference, Mr. Secretary. Gorbachev thinks for a minute and says, all right, from now on, alcoholics and drug addicts can have God, but no one else. And for the first time, in the history of the Soviet Union, God became an approved part of a communist government program. So it wasn't the evangelists that got God into Russia. It was a bunch of drunks. So they contacted our general service officers, said, can you come over here and organize our program? They wrote back and said, we can't do that. There's too many traditions would be broken. We don't have professionals to do that. And we're all entirely self-supporting. So we will pass the word around. And if anybody wants to support themselves, to go over. And since then, there have been, by now, I think I was on the 29th trip. And there must be 35 by now. Well, another curious thing happened. We met this man, who is one of the two people that actually, translated, Shakurov translated, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, into Russian. And when we were there, he was translating the book, Living Sober, into Russian. The 12 by 12 was already translated into Russian by somebody. And I went to a group in Moscow that started seven years before, the very first group. And there were people in that group. And it was a step study meeting. And there were people in that group that had seven years of sobriety. So we're back and we're talking to this great man, Peter Shakurov. And one of our members, we're in a little teeny hotel room in the Intourist Hotel. Little teeny room. There's two bunks in it. It's the best hotel, one of the best hotels in town, right off Red Square. And we're sitting on these bunks in a couple of chairs and somebody's sitting on a windowsill. And we're talking with, Dr. Shakurov, about these things. And one of the members says, is it true that you have a higher percentage of alcoholism per capita in Russia than we have in the United States? And Dr. Shakurov says, well, yes. He said, our statistics show that we have 13%. 13 out of every 100 people is an alcoholic. And in your country, only 3%. But he said, in Russia, in your country, you wait until they admit it. And in Russia, we diagnose them. But he says, we're both wrong. Because I've read every study ever made about this problem all over the world. And there's one statistic that is exactly the same in every culture, advanced or third world, every race, every religion, every geographic location. It makes no difference. Every degree of civilization, every economic level, 20% of every society consumes 80% of its alcohol. Therefore, it's obvious that one out of every five people is an alcoholic. Well, I thought that was damned interesting. And I also believe it. Because he's the greatest scientist I've ever met that studied this subject. And I don't think we've got anybody that ever studied it that much. And he's not an alcoholic. He's got no access to grind. And so when I, then I began to understand why my wife's family of blackfeet Indians had no alcoholics in it. Only 20% of them are alcoholic. And only 20% of the black people are alcoholics. When I was in Hong Kong, I went to some AA meetings. I got the wrong number the first time. I looked it up in the book and I called and the recorded message was in Chinese. I'm trying to find out where the meeting is. So I dial the next number and I get English and I'm living a block away from what is it called? The Merchant Marines Club or something like that. Where the meeting is. And I go over there and everybody in the room is Caucasian. And I said, where are all the Chinese people? He said, well, we've been running that for several years and we've never had a Chinese person call in for a meeting. Well, I was traveling with a Chinese guy and he was introducing me to all his friends and relatives in Hong Kong and I wasn't socializing with anybody but Chinese except at the AA meeting where there were no Chinese. And so in a conversation with the Chinese in Hong Kong in a very beautiful, beautiful flat that cost several thousand dollars a month to rent, I asked them, I said, you must not have any alcoholics. And they said, what do you mean? Of course we have alcoholics. This is confidential, a little family gathering, you know. I said, well, we've been running a message in Chinese here for years and nobody's ever called. He said, well, Chinese can't do that. I said, why not? He says, we are not permitted. It's a matter of honor. We cannot wash our linen in public. I said, well, what do you do with your alcoholics then? He says, we take care of them. We keep them in the back room somewhere. And I said, you mean that there is no AA? He says, I'm not saying that. But if there were such a thing as AA, it would be the Wong family group of AA. Or the Fong or the Chin family group of AA. There would only be members of the family in it. I said, is there such a group? He says, I can't tell you that. So I don't know. I have no idea. But now I know that one out of every five Chinese is an alcoholic. I believe that. So we don't know. I can remember when we didn't have any in this fellow. I can remember when we didn't have any in this fellow. I can remember when we didn't have any in this fellow. I can remember when we didn't have any in this fellow. I can remember when we didn't have any in this fellow. Lots of years. So if you are feeling sorry for yourself, some of you new people, wondering, why me? Why am I an alcoholic? What's the matter? Why am I an alcoholic? Oh, God, if only I weren't an alcoholic. Well, only an alcoholic would worry about that. Why? Because it prevents us from drinking, maybe. Huh? But the fact of the matter is, there's nothing special about being an alcoholic. One out of every five people on the planet is an alcoholic. What's special, what's really special, is the 3% who admit it, and the 50% of those who don't drink. One and a half percent. One and a half percent. Of the alcoholics. Probably no longer drink. And that is really special. So don't feel sorry for yourself. Besides, I got a little verse. I've written a lot of verses. I hope I don't quote too many of them. I probably don't look so hot while squatting on my pity pot. Am I an alcoholic? Well, of course I am. I belong in adult children of alcoholic. Oh, of course I am, if it's a 12-step program. I'm an adult child of alcoholics. But I kept hearing my generation being blamed for the problems of the younger generation. And frankly, I was beginning to get pretty goddamn self-conscious about it. And finally, I stood up one night, and I said, I'm sorry, I just can't come here any longer. What I need is a little bit of alcohol. What I need is a little bit of alcohol. There's a special program for people like me, which would be called Adult Children of Alcoholics, who are also parents of adult alcoholic children, anonymous. And every one of you people is going to be eligible. Because your kids are going to be eligible for Adult Children of Alcoholics. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. him for, you know, so we can sign him. Nobody makes a living. And so I took my family and we went down to Mexico and I was released from a hospital. Some doctors say I couldn't have had cirrhosis because nobody used to have cirrhosis. I've met a lot of people in AA who used to have cirrhosis, hundreds of people. I've never met anybody outside of AA that used to have cirrhosis. So people that aren't alcoholics that used to have cirrhosis have had it, I guess. But here, there are people who are miraculously cured from that terminal illness and from many others, from many others. So I called Alcoholics Anonymous. Why did I call? I had a new job running a radio station. I'd been living in Mexico for six months and I ran out of money. So I came back to California and I got a job doing something I knew how to do, which was run a radio station. And I wanted to introduce rock radio to California. There wasn't any. I wanted, I thought it might work. I thought it might work because I worked for one up in Seattle when I was diagnosed at Virginia Mason Hospital. And when I was in the hospital in Mexico, I heard it on a Mexican station with English lyrics. And I met the guy that owned the station and three others in the same town, which was legal then and it's legal here now. And I asked him which one of his stations, he had one station that had nothing but time signals and commercials for people that couldn't afford a watch. But the station that had the biggest audience was the one that was playing the top 40 American hit records in English. And so I figured if it would work in Mexico where they didn't even understand the language, I'd be able to get a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. And I got a job there. But the station that had the biggest audience was the one that had nothing but time signals for people that couldn't afford a watch. And I went all over Los Angeles and I was drinking. I was sick. And I went to every radio station that I could find in Los Angeles and none of them would let me put top 40 radio on the air in Los Angeles. They said Los Angeles citizens are much too sophisticated for that kind of music. So I got a guy out in San Bernardino Dino to let me do it on a station called KC, and I'd have to look at my card, SB, KCSB. I changed the name to KCKC so I could remember it when I'm called on somebody. I also got the top 40 on, but I reported for duty, and then I went out to survey the market, which meant to find out in all the bars how we were doing, you know. I got 17 tickets while I was sleeping in my own car. I was throwing up 18, 20 times a day, and I'd been doing that ever since World War II. The Veterans Administration was giving me 40% disability compensation. They said that this problem was caused by my horrible war experiences. I had esophagitis. I was throwing up blood from a ruptured esophagus. I had palergma, which is permanent nerve damage caused by malnutrition. They said this was all due to the war, you know. And even then, I suspected it might have been because I celebrated the end of the war for 11 years. Yes. I said to a doctor who was trying to weigh me, he says, My God, you're shaking a lot. I can't weigh you. The bar won't stand still. I said, Maybe it's because I stayed up all night with a bank president, and we drank a couple of bottles of booze. And he says, Oh, hell no. Anybody that's been through what you've been through needs to have some alcohol or pills. He says, Go out and get a couple of snorts and come back steady so I can weigh you. So I thought, I'll find out about the B.A. doctors. So I did. And the truth of the matter is, I hid out from the radio station for four days. I never even went to this new job I had because I shared an office with the owner, and I didn't want him to know how much I was drinking. And I got away with it because he didn't want me to know how much he was drinking, and he wasn't going there either. And I finally spun out in my car a couple of times, driving around the city, and I said, I'm driving back to my temporary house in Burbank, California. And I went to bed with the dry heaves and the coughing of blood and the whim-whams and the shakes and the god-awful, terrible situation, the seizures, the whole works. And I stayed in a separate room because I knew it would be at least five days before I could get well enough to drink again. And in the morning, my wife came in and said, You know, you're rather successful. And she said, You're going to die. The doctors have told you that. And it's too bad because we've had a lot of fun. Have you ever thought of calling Alcoholics Anonymous? I said, No. She says, You know anything about it? I says, No, I've heard of it, but I don't know anything about it. She says, Why don't you call them? Maybe they might know of some way for you to live a little longer so we can have some more fun together. I said, Okay, call me. Call them for me. And that's how my wife nagged me into Alcoholics Anonymous. One suggestion. Any Al-Anon's present? Eat your heart socks. Just a suggestion, and I took it. It was such a passing thing that she doesn't remember that conversation. But I remember it because she suggested what I should do. And I went back. And I was feeling terrible in a front bedroom, looking out through the window, waiting for somebody to come. And who comes walking up? Now, here I am, a fighter pilot. That's what I was. I had been in the war. That's why I was a prisoner of war. I was a fighter pilot in the American Eagle Squadron of the Royal Air Force. And then I transferred into the American Air Force when they needed pilots to fight a war over there. And when we needed, I should have said, I still think of them as they, and I was in the American. I was in the American Air Force for 28 years. And so what happens is they send somebody out they know is going to nail me. I recognized him coming up the walk. One of the greatest American fighter pilots that ever lived. A man that was every fighter pilot's idol. And a famous alcoholic. He made Time Magazine with his drinking. It was Pappy Boynton, for God's sake. And he came up, and he had a big, big book under his arm. And I went to the door, because I couldn't wait to meet him, you know. And he says, Hi, I'm Greg, and I'm an alcoholic. He says, if you want what I have, and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, maybe I can help you. And when he told me he was an alcoholic, I wanted to be one. He didn't take me to a meeting that day, because he didn't have stretcher bearers with him. I was in no shape. The word detoxification had not yet been invented in any language. It didn't exist. There were no detoxification centers. There were no treatment centers. There were a couple of places that took in residences around the country. But not many. And so, alcoholics used to drink. Alcoholics. to ride and take care of one another. He didn't stay and take care of me. He just left me there. He said, if you manage not to drink till tomorrow, I'll come back and I'll take you to a meeting. So the next day, I couldn't drink. I threw up a lot more bile and red blood. And then the next day he came and he led me out to his car. I think my wife helped him. They helped me into the car, drove me to a meeting a few blocks away in Burbank. And this meeting was a room about half the size of this, just filled with a Sunday morning, everybody in beautiful suits, not very many women. There were a few that looked like maybe they forgot to bring their parrots along, you know. In that time, it was a disgrace to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. We really thought it was. And that's why we were so goddamned anonymous then. We didn't want our relatives, anybody to know. And no women who had any reputation left at all would even come close. We're, we're not going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that. And so I went to my first meeting. So there were very few, there was, there was none of this temptation beaming up at me when I went to my first meeting. And they led me in, three guys, quaking and shaking. And a guy looked at me and said, you have a job? I said, I think so. He says, you got a wife and kids? You living with them? I said, yeah, in the house? He said, yeah. And he shook his head. He says, you got a car? He said, yeah. He says, how old are you? I said, I'm 36. He says, well, for God's sake, you haven't lost enough and you're not old enough to be a real alcoholic. But fortunately, we have a new rule. The rule is that the only requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous is a desire, an honest desire to stop drinking. The word honest was in there then. We had to drop it later because that, we use that word to kick people out. You know, he said, he's not honest. Get him out of here. Doesn't have an honest desire. So General Service Conference one year decided to take the word honest out so we couldn't pass judgment and screw up our wonderful program, which we'll do at every chance, you know. That's how I got to my first meeting. And the guy up in front of the room, he says, well, it was a movie tycoon who had drunk his way down to the Skid Row on Main Street in Los Angeles, got into AA, got sober, got back in the movie business and was once again a giant in the industry. Now, God knew how to handle a guy with an ego like mine, you know. He sends me a guy with a Congressional Medal of Honor. I said, well, I'm not an Englishman. I'm not an Englishman. I'm not a movie tycoon. I'm not an Englishman. I'm not an Englishman. I'm not an Englishman. I'm not a to take me to my first meeting and a movie studio tycoon to deliver the first message from the podium. How could I resist this program? I even thought they were better than I was for a little while. The guy says, I have a disease. It's just like any other disease. It's like leptin. Or diabetes or heart disease or measles. He said, this is an incurable disease. He says, it's not my fault if I have heart disease or leprosy. He says, it's not my fault. Nobody deliberately gets a disease. There's nobody here who deliberately got the disease of alcoholism. We have a disease. The symptom of the disease is that we take one drink and it goes down. Thank you. The one drink goes down to the stomach, sends a message through the nervous system to the brain, and the message is a command, a mandatory command that cannot be disobeyed. One I cannot disobey. I'm incapable of disobeying the message of the first. The order it gives to the brain and that irrevocable command is get more. So he says, obviously, the way to stay sober is don't take the first drink. If we don't take the first drink, we can't get drunk. So the way to keep from getting drunk is turned up. We only have to turn down the first drink. We only have to turn down one drink. One day at a time. I thought, boy, that makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Now, my sponsor happened to be an atheist. He shot a Japanese plane down on Christmas Day in the Pacific when he was in the Flying Tigers, way back then. He shot six down in the Flying Tigers and 20, maybe two more after he got back to the Marine Corps. So he shot this one guy down on Christmas Day, and he flew down and he looked down into the cockpit of the falling Japanese plane. The guy was still trying to fly it and screaming his head off because he was on fire and burning alive. And Greg said, if there is such a thing as God, God wouldn't allow one man to do this to another on Christmas. And that convinced him there was no God. So we didn't have the 12 steps. Matter of fact, I don't think anybody was working the 12 steps. I never heard much about this. They weren't even being read. How it works wasn't being read yet. A little later, somebody started reading that accidentally in Long Beach. They lost the format. Somebody says, how will I open the meeting? You know, some of the best things happen when we lose formats. This is how open the meeting. Somebody says, well, open up the format. Somebody says, well, open up the format. Somebody says, well, open up the format. The big book and read whatever you hit. And they open it up and it was chapter five. Bill came by a couple of days later. They decided to keep doing that and Bill heard it. He wrote the book, so he spread the word. And today it's read almost every place at the beginning of every meeting. But then you never heard it. I looked at the steps and thought, I agree with those. And I just kept right on reading, you know. Boy, the promises. Where the hell were the promises? They didn't even have numbers. They didn't have numbers in front of them yet. There's just a paragraph in there. I read the book, but I got four years of graduate school in English literature and creative writing. Man, I don't have to read things more than once. And if I read the textbook, I don't have to attend the lectures. Or if I go to the lecture, I don't have to read the book. I like the lectures better. They were funnier, so I read the book once. And I turned down the first drink. And three years later, we had about 25 different reasons not to drink or we might get drunk. All we had to do is turn down this, that, and the other thing. Nobody had figured out yet that you could spell halt with hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. So we probably did those in a different order. You know, the big book doesn't say, not to get hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. It says we're vulnerable then. That's when we need to practice our program. It doesn't say we can avoid having to practice our program by just not getting hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. Who the hell never got hungry? Who never got angry? What about not going out with the opposite sex for at least a year? You tell a guy not to get lonely and then tell him that? He says if you do, you're going to get drunk. you planted a seed for drunkenness or not? Who the hell's going to wait a year for both of those things? So we had all these things. And I used to drive back from Hollywood, where I spent two or three days every week, and I would drive back toward San Bernardino, where I was managing this roaringly successful top 40 radio station. The only one in California, can you imagine? And it went from last place to first place in one survey. And I'm heading back, and I'm thinking, what if we have another nuclear war? And up ahead, there's Marchfield and Norton Air Force Base and Air Force Systems Command, Missile Command, all of these places in one place. And that's a perfect target for the Russians. And what if I see the mushroom cloud go up, up, down? And I'm driving down the San Bernardino freeway, and I realize that everyone I know, everyone that I know in the program, everyone I love in my family, all are gone. Would I drink again? Or I'd be racing along that freeway in the rain. When it rains there, it really rains. Not often, but it really rains. And I think, what if I got into an automobile accident and I was pinned under a burning car? And I'd be driving down the freeway, and I'd be driving down the green car. My left leg is pinned under the car. And a doctor comes along, and he's got to cut my leg off to get me away from this car. And the only anesthetic he's got is a quart of booze. Would I drink again? While he takes out his pocket knife? Well, what if I'm sitting in front of an apartment house? I've got time to kill, and I'm just sitting in front of the apartment house listening to a radio. And a redhead comes out and comes down and says, you look lonely. Would you like to come in for a drink? Would I drink? I had thousands of things like that dreamed up. You know? One of them happened to me, and I drank. I was a little bit of a kid. Still got a wife. All those kids. So I gave myself all kinds of reasons. When I came back into this program the second time around, it was up in this area, when I hit my fifth birthday, I thought I ought to really find an AA meeting so some intellectuals like me, some real scholars, could be told and proven. There was somebody in the fourth class that was people who had read abstracts stellars andradox but failed atiera plano so people that were fully informed had no benefit the number of lectures they covered was nearly a quarter around. That's simply one-quarters of what I had to able to do. Let me tell you that part. Back in 2009, I got therail. I think it was called the R genom. So, when in Kimberley, Massachusetts inievers said it's about the time to exit a campus. No, no. The Berkeley Law Student Unionั Å we did a morning lesson together at mike Keynes. For that couple of years he met a lot of people there. He wanted to cut the budget that much, and he says, the best and most effective program against drugs and alcohol ever invented doesn't cost anything. It's Nancy Reagan's Just Say No. Hell, she didn't invent that. That guy I heard at my first meeting might have invented it, and I don't think he invented it. But we were trying to work that program instead of the 12 steps for years in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's amazing how long many of us stayed sober by just saying no. It's better the other way, work the steps. When I came back into this program, I only got drunk once after five years and eight months. Otherwise, I would have 39 years of sobriety in about a week. So I only got drunk once for three months. And I came back realizing I was powerless over alcohol, which got me through the first half of step one. And three years later, I finally became convinced I couldn't manage my own life. I found that out by watching all the best magazines. I found out that I was the best manager I knew in business, in politics, all over the world. The greatest managers we can select. And watching how they fuck up all the time. And if they're going to do that, I can't do it either. So my ego let me admit, I can't manage any better than the president or the head of Sears Roebuck or General Motors. So I got through step one. It took nine years. And one drunk for three months. Two years later, I thought, isn't it great we have step two for the nuts in this program? You know, people that have been in mental homes, they can get it too. This program has a step for everyone. Even the certifiable. And then two years after I admitted and was absolutely convinced. I don't recommend admitting. I can't. I can't manage my own life if I think I can. That's dishonest. I got to be convinced. And I was. And two years later, I suddenly realized that even though I know it can't not be done, that it's impossible, there's no use trying, I'm still trying to manage it. And anybody that keeps on trying to do something they know can't be done is certifiable. So I was eligible. I was eligible for step two. Now, I read very carefully. It didn't say God would restore me to sanity. It said, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That it might work. Well, it might. If I can't do it, what have I got to lose? It might. Another year later, 12 years after I first came to this program, I was driving down the freeway, down the street. This is Nimitz Freeway toward Hayward. And I thought, what a hypocrite you are. You go to meetings and you say things like, I turn my problems over to God, all right, but only after I do what God gave me the talent and education and strength of character to do, after I have exhausted every possibility I can think of to solve the problem, then and only then can I turn it over to God. I used to get a standing ovation. I must have said it differently. I must have said it then like I meant it, because I did. And so finally I figure, going down the Nimitz, boy, what a hypocrite you are. You're going around speaking all the time, and you haven't even taken step three. And you're six years sober the second time around. And so I decided to do it while I was driving down the freeway. Actually, I was afraid if I did step three, he would make me do the rest of the steps. And I would get up to that one where I humbly asked God to remove my shortcomings. Now I'm in the 60s, for God's sake, and I wasn't sure about what was a shortcoming and what wasn't, but there were some things that I had newly discovered I didn't want removed. And then I thought about my St. Bernard. I was telling somebody at dinner tonight about my St. Bernard. Now my St. Bernard, which I rescued from a couple of people in the program that had a real small little yard, my St. Bernard weighed 185 pounds, and he bit people. And I had to get him fixed. And when I got him fixed, he became the sweetest. He was the most lovable St. Bernard you ever saw. And everybody loved that dog, and he was so gentle, especially with kids. And I thought, God, he doesn't seem to mind. Maybe if I do step three, God will get me up to step seven. Whatever God does to me, I won't care anymore. And that would be a big problem solver, too. And so I did. And so driving down the Nimitz at a good rate of speed, I look up as I'm driving, and I say, Okay, God. No, I said, Okay, Buster. That's right. I had to be flipped. You know, I've got to be hip, slick, and cool, as we used to say in H&I. Okay, Buster, from now on, anything you say goes. I will accept whatever you do with me. Take me away. I'm all yours. I will settle for whatever follows, whatever happens. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay with me. Except that happened. And so I did it. Oh, and I added, even if you castrate me. So I did it. And he didn't. And I learned to trust God. I can do those steps in a real hurry now. I think I can do them in somewhere between 45 seconds and a minute. Let me try it. I'm powerless over everything, and I can't manage anything. Step one. Step two. Maybe God can run things better than I can. Step three. God, take charge. Step four. I'm all fucked up. Step five. I admit I'm all fucked up. Step six. Maybe God can straighten me out. Step seven. Okay, God, straighten me out. Step eight. Make amends. A list and make amends. Step nine. Step ten. I'm all fucked up again, and I admit it. Step eleven. Okay, God, make me feel like doing what you want me to do. Step twelve. I just did it. Now, if I do that, I don't have to resist alcohol. There are roads we haven't even sworn off. The compulsion is lifted. It's yanked right out of us. We no longer want it. We will recoil from it as from a flame. You don't have to resist pulling your hand out of a flame. You don't have to resist alcohol when it becomes repulsive to you. And only God can make it repulsive to me. So if I'm working the twelve steps, it's impossible to get drunk. All I get from the twelve steps is serenity. Does that mean sweetness and light? Happy, joyous, and free? Nothing nasty ever happens? Most of you know who I am. Terrible things can happen. Terrible things can happen. In one year, Polly was kidnapped. She was murdered. She was raped. The following August, my youngest son just turned 35, and he died from alcoholism. Last month, my mother-in-law, a woman I've known for 50 years and loved, died, and I buried her. Would I go around being happy, joyous, and free all the time? Of course not. But serenity is what I get, not happy, joyous, and free. Serenity is what I get from the steps. Would I drink over these things without the steps? You're goddamn right I would. I wouldn't have stayed sober long enough to follow their last wishes. But I didn't drink. Why? Because I didn't want it. I'd rather eat shit. Serenity isn't worth a damn. Unless you've got a disaster to use it on. You don't even know you've got serenity until things are really bad. How the hell would you know if you've got serenity if everything's going the way you want it all the time? I don't know. I think if everything went the way I want it all the time, I'd figure I was dead. Because heaven's supposed to be like that, maybe. But certainly not this life. And so, I'm twelve steps away from wanting that drink. That's the secret. I'm twelve steps away that make me recoil from that drink. Now here's what I have to do to drink. I've got to do all twelve steps backwards. Step twelve. I've got to stop practicing the twelve steps. I've got to stop being spiritual. Being spiritually awake. I've got to stop delivering the message of the twelve steps. Step eleven. I've got to start praying for specific things again. And make a servant out of God and tell him all the different things I want him to do for me or help me to do for myself. Step ten. I've got to never admit when I'm wrong. And I've got to take full responsibility for all the things that happen to me. And take courses in how to do that. Like Esther or something. You know. Step nine. I've got to wait for you to make amends to me for all the shitty things you've done to me. Step eight. I've got to make my shit list of the people who have been dumping on me so I can get even someday. Step seven. I'm not going to ask God to remove my shortcomings. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to buy every self-help book and go to every self-improvement and consciousness-raising program at every hotel in the Bay Area. And I'm going to learn how to manage my life. Step six. I'm not going to be ready to have God do it. I'm going to be ready to take the responsibility myself. Step five. I'm not going to admit anything to any other human being. But I'm sure as hell going to point out what's wrong with you. And on step four. I'm going to make a list of it to see if you straighten your goddamn act up. And step three. I'm going to take charge by God. And step two. I am not going to wait for God to do anything. I'm going to do it for myself. God will... Step one. Now that I can manage everything, I'm going to be able to manage alcohol. Well, I can say it in 45 seconds, but I can't do it. I can't do the steps in 45 seconds. I really can because I got a lot of practice to do. I'm not doing the steps now. I got very little practice going backwards. So, which way do I go with the steps? It's up to me. That's where I got to make my choice. Am I going to work them up one through 12? Or am I going to work them backwards 12 through one? One leads to the drink and the other leads to recoiling from it as from a flame. That's the only choice I have to make. Which way do I go? Up or down on the 12 steps? You know, I came out of a step study meeting years ago, about, oh God, a really long time ago, ten years ago. There was an actor at the meeting in Carmel. He was bragging at the meeting about how he learned a thousand lines, letter perfect, in a play by Moliere called Tartuffe. Letter perfect. He could recite them all without a cue. And he came up to me after the meeting. And he said, you're always talking about doing step three, but you never say how to do it. And I say, just turn your will and your life over to the care of God. And he says, that's easy for you to say, but you don't say exactly how to do that. I say, well, it's easy. And I'm thinking, I'm going to trick this guy. I'm going to write a script for him so he can memorize it and get it right. And I didn't have the script. And I'm thinking, what am I going to say? I say, you're going to work the Stanislavski method. You're an actor. You're going to use the method. You're going to believe what you say. And you're going to do it. And you're going to have two characters on the stage, one that is visible, that's you, and one that is invisible, like Harvey the rabbit. And you're going to talk to this, only it's God. And you're going to say, what's the line? What's the line? God, take charge. And I said, wow. That's not bad, you know. That's so easy. God, take charge. Of what? Of everything. God, take charge. Take charge. He says, what do you mean, God, take charge? For Christ's sake, Joe, tell me how to do step three. I said, just say, God, take charge. Learn your lines. Rehearse. The following week, I was speaking at the Big Sky Roundup of Alcoholics Anonymous in Billings, Montana. And I told them about Bill the actor and how I learned this new way to do step three. And all of a sudden, I realized I had 700 people at a banquet from all over Montana and the surrounding states. And I thought, my God, let's do it. I said, I can see there are people in this room who don't know how to do step three yet. So let's do it together. When I raise my hand and lower it, let's all say it and mean it. God, take charge. And when I lowered my arm, my God, they just took the roof off of the Sheraton Hotel. Now, isn't that fantastic? And then I started doing that all over. And a couple of times, I got to do it with 5,000 people. Civic Auditorium San Jose, conference center in this place and that. You know, God, take charge. And I went back east and I saw bumper stickers, God, take charge. And I went to a drugstore looking for a birthday card one day and I saw a card that said, God, take charge. I said, wow, this sure got around, didn't it? And I was telling this story. I was telling this story at Wendy's over a bowl of chili to a woman I sponsored. And I said, I was telling her about Bill the actor and how this came about, this God, take charge. And all of a sudden, who walks in but Bill the actor. I said, Bill, for God's sake, I was just talking about you. Come on over here. He says, how could you be talking about me? I haven't seen you for five years. I said, Bill, do you know how to do step three? He says, no. Well, I can see there are people here who don't know how to do step three. So we're going to say it together and we're going to really mean it. We're going to really mean it. We're talking to God. He, she, it, or they. I'm not disqualifying God if it turns out to be a woman or a man or twins or a lizard. It makes no difference to me. I can call God by any name and God will answer just the same. I call God he, she, it, or they and God will answer anyway. That makes no difference. So when I lower my hand, let's all do it the first time. It's not a sing-along. Remember the line, God, take charge. God, take charge. Well, that's a first mass taking of the third step in the history of San Leandro. Thank you very much.