Paul M. at the Derelict’s Retreat – 2017

Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul. I'm an alcoholic and it's good to be here and it's going to be sober. And I want to thank everyone, everybody who was involved in this weekend for inviting me out here. It's been really wonderful. I've had a wonderful time so far and seeing old faces and some new faces. And, uh, I love Alcoholics Anonymous because the old joke. It's one of the few places in the world that you can walk in a room full of strangers and start reminiscing, you know, that we'll all understand. We've all been there together, you Know? And I had quite an eventful morning. I was in my room getting ready earlier on, and I heard the door jiggling. And I was right by the door. I thought it was the housemaid. And they opened the door, and there's a guy standing there completely drunk out of his mind. I mean, he had no shoes on. I I mean, this guy was like completely whacked and he pushed me. So now I'm like, and he comes right into the room and he's like stumbling around the room. True story. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm just like, whoa. I says, hey, my friend, I think you got the wrong room. And he's Like what? Wrong room, wrong room? And he is walking around and a big guy who is like turning around Shrek, you know, and I am thinking maybe did Bob send him here to see how willing... Am I really willing to work with wet drunks, you know, is this, I've got to remember this is all on a nanny cam somewhere, you know. And I turned him around, you know and pointed him to the door and popped Bob's phone number in his back pocket and pushed him on his way, you now. So you might hear from him later on this afternoon, you kno, but and it's really good to have the ladies here, you kow, and Just, it was all guys by Sunday morning who were like monosyllabic cavemen, you know, just grunting at one another, you now. You know, drink bad, steps good, you kno? Somebody holds up a bottle of whiskey or like Frankenstein in the fire. Oh, oh, oh! So it's really nice to have a little panache and decorum here this weekend, you know. I mean, I just want to keep talking about the typical alcoholic. I'm like, I want that topic, you Know what I mean? And it's funny how sometimes conventions have that. They just take on this theme. And I see the theme already this weekend here of transparency and letting the sunlight of the spirit in and the freedom that Alcoholics Anonymous gives us. I'm standing here this morning, I'm as free as any time I've been in my life. You know, before I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous, alcohol was a common denominator in my life. Every decision I made was divided through the first drink at least once. I don't care if it's from going here to the pool, there's enough booze to get me there, enough when I get there, enough to get me back and when you live your life under those parameters as we do your life gets very very small with very few people in it and this freedom that just to get on a plane in New York and fly all the way out here and see people and strike up conversations and uh it's just incredible I grew up in Northern Ireland outside of Belfast during the troubles when they're at their height and we sang about freedom we marched in the streets for freedom we talked in pubs about freedom, I wouldn't have known freedom if it jumped up beside me. But I know about freedom today, the freedom that Alcoholics Anonymous has given me. Not handcuffed to a bottle of whiskey anymore. And the freedom from the bondage of self to go to places and I just you know, I mean, I'm just I just love AlcoholicsAnonymous. I mean I'm not a perfect AA member but the minute I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I come off a bad, bad drunk and someone brought me to a meeting and someone had asked me after the meeting, because I'd heard it all before like the oaths and the proclamations and swearing offs and all that stuff it talks about in chapter 3. But they asked me and I said I found something. I intuitively knew at my very first meeting. I couldn't have verbalized it or articulated it or described it but I knew I was home. I ran around the word looking for what I find in Alcoholics Anonymous. People get people sober. You people have helped me get sober and it's been said here this weekend too, I think Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the few places in the world where you see hope in human form you know and as God at this meeting I've never seen God at a meeting yet but I know he's here and the conduit that he uses to spread his love and grace is the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and like was said so well at the previous meeting, the only one that can block myself from this wonderful way of life is myself you know and so I'm really I'll be honest with you, I never took sobriety for granted. I was always a very grateful member of Alcoholic Anonymous but I've taken AA for granted yeah we're so fortunate to live in a time and a place i live in new york city where a is almost ubiquitous you could trip on the sidewalk and fall into a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and i just thought yeah there's a meeting down the corner three nights a week what's the big deal and then you hang around alcoholics synonymous and you learn a little bit about our history and you realize that we are very very blessed people to be able to find this wonderful way of life. You know that because at the end of my drinking, and the sad thing about this disease, before you're actually graveyard dead, you're dead emotionally, mentally spiritually, and anyone who mattered in your life is long, long gone. It's a terrible disease of isolation. And to be brought into this place and to have gotten sober. I bartended the last five years drinking and I bartending the first 12 years in AA. I worked in a crazy bar in New York. This is not false humility. I've seen better men than me drink themselves to death right in front of me who never darkened the door of an AA meeting. Good family man with better morals and probably better principles than me and I sometimes ask myself why did I get sober? I used to think oh we are the chosen ones and a guy from Brooklyn who's passed away Jimmy Laffey says to me one night does that mean the guy on the barry right now is unchosen? God doesn't pick winners and losers God's grace is like the rain it falls on everybody I just don't know when that drop of rain fell on my face in August of 1992 that I just wanted to live a little bit more than I wanted to die and came to this wonderful thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm the first person in my family ever to come into AA, and there's been alcoholics in my family, you know. It almost sounds like something from a Catherine Cookson novel. I was at a family wake one time in Ireland, and they mentioned this uncle that I had never heard of, and I said whose name was Bernard? I said who's Uncle Bernard? oh we don't talk about him now to cut a long story short this guy was an alcoholic now i'm talking about in 1930 and 1931 what could happen back in ireland you could be signed in to the county mental asylum for life by a family member it was called being signed in in red ink this guy spent 40 years of his life died became institutionalized he was an alcoholic so i'm the first person in my family to come into alcoholic slum my brother's sober in ireland now he's got about 20 years so the chain has been broken here my daughter who's 12 years of age has never seen me take a drink she's seen me acting crazy a few times but just never seen me taking a drink you You know, there's some times in the home that she's the only adult there, you know. And I thank her for that. But just really, just really the blessing. And I was talking to Bob and it's been sort of a theme here this weekend. And I Was talking to a friend of mine before I left. If something in my life is so good, if something in our life is providing such joy, that's it's like you know it's everywhere in my life why would i why would I let the things that AA gives me stop me from going to Alcoholics Anonymous I mean it sounds like now you see this bit on paper it sounds Like a no-brainer but boy the longer I'm around Alcoholics Anonymous and it was said here this morning that disease you know people say oh my disease is in the parking lot doing push-ups my disease is right here it's been at every meeting I've been at it's heard everything I heard and it never goes away cunning baffling powerful insidious someone said relentless always looking like that door-to-door salesman always trying to get his foot in the door to get me to buy one more vacuum cleaner you know and if I'm not like we said here and I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here because there's people here. The coffee makers are here. The chore people are here, the guys that are running and gals that are runnin' step study meetings in their house, they're all here. But the sad thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsor, the first guy that sponsored me came into AA in 1960 and he lived in a little, he went to his home group in Rockaway Beach which was a small little, right on the edge of Queens on the Atlantic Ocean there near JFK Airport. So it's a little town where, you know, it's part of New York City, but it's not really part of new York city. And everybody knows everybody, our big Irish American neighborhood. And I'd be walking around with him in early sobriety and he'd be saying hello to this guy who had never seen before and hello to this guy. And I figured out later on, he wouldn't break their anonymity. These were guys that were members with him years before that just stopped going to Alcoholics Anonymous and I wonder why that you know and the thing about AlcoholicsAnonymous it's not like backing up a truck where you hear like beep beep beep and you realize you're leaving AlcoholicsAnalymous it's so cunning but I mean it's almost like the metaphor I like it's Almost Like A Plane Getting Lost it doesn't have to make a 90 degree turn it's just one degree but long enough and far enough, it's completely and they used to use that term, you don't hear it so much in alcoholic synonymous now it's a navigational term, staying on the beam and I ask myself, that's one of my things when I'm taking, am I staying on the seam in alcoholic synonymous, and I like to keep things real simple in alcoholicynonymous, I always go to the triangle, any time, I'm not sitting up here some sort of spiritual hilltop but anytime a guy comes to me an alcoholic synonymous who's got like and i've been in this position myself at times that's in the ringer for a variety of reasons that were mentioned here this morning i keep it real simple because it was asked of me the three parts of the triangle are you doing unity service and recovery unity many meetings make it easy few make it hard none make it impossible i need you you need me there's one lifeboat it's called alcoholic tsunamis my disease will tell me to get my own personal lifeboat and put my name on the side of it and sail off to the sunset it will not work my disease will tell me you can swim to shore. You don't need these people. I do. I've got to stay in the lifeboat of alcoholic tsunamis. It's none of my business who's sitting next to me. That's God's business. It is my business if I'm willing to put my hand out and help that person or be helped by that person and not have contemporary investigation about them. Service. One of our speakers that passed away used to say a phrase, the highest pay grade in alcoholic synonymous is servant why because i'm shackled to self by the very disease of alcoholism my holy trinity is me me me i can't i i know you're out there i can hear you but i can see you because there's so much of me in the way and that can happen in my life like that like that service and recovery the 12 steps, the 12 traditions even the slogans like the banisters to the steps and it's been my experience not that I'm any guru or spiritual hilltop, every time I have met someone, every time in my own life that I've got that stone in the shoe that knot in the stomach, not feeling comfortable in alcoholic tsunamis I've tried, you can stay dry on two parts of the triangle I've done it you can even stay dry in one part of the triangle I've done that too but if I want to be free as they talk about if I wanna have the freedom that's on offer here in Alcoholics Anonymous I gotta put all three parts into my life and I gotta do it every day in Alcoholic Anonymous I often say this story and I seen it again yesterday and a few hours before we got started and I took a walk off through the casino stopped by You know, an old joke. I don't gamble, but I like to watch, you know. And I'm watching one of the guys. I'm all in. What a metaphor for alcoholic synonymous. That's the way I've got to be. It's just because this disease. I've seen people drink again in alcoholic synonyms I thought would never drink again. And that tells me the ego of the alcoholic. Bob sometimes uses this line, the line of Harry Thiebaud, the psychiatrist that was a great friend of A.A., The recuperative power of the alcoholic ego. It just never goes away, and it's always looking. I like to use that. Remember the movie, I think it was the second one, Terminator 2? And the guy shot the Terminator, and he sent like a thousand pieces. And you're saying to yourself, well, this movie's over pretty quick, you know? And then the thing just starts to come back together again, and it stands like this here, like nothing ever happened. That's my ego as an alcoholic. I've seen me bottoming out in bouts of self-will talking to my sponsor one of my opening lines to my sponsor is, you'll never guess what I did again and he usually would say I could ballpark it that's one of a couple of areas you know, I could throw a dart and probably hit one of the areas because we think we're unique but we're not we're alcoholics, we all have the same fears, phobias, hangups, neuroses what keeps you awake at night most times keeps me awake at nighttime but thank God, the good news for me in alcoholic synonymous I have made a lot of mistakes do-overs in alcoholic syndromes but one thing and I thank God for sponsorship and it's been said this podium time and time again I've stayed accountable to somebody I'm a great believer that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Somebody has to know what time of day it is in my spiritual world because a lot of times I don't know what time it is and I need somebody in my life that's not as emotionally attached to my life as I am who can stand back and say Paul it may appear that way but that's not the way it is. I'm too subjective. What's the old saying? When you're inside the jar, you can't read the label. I need somebody standing outside the jar who can see exactly what's going on and this idea that I can do this myself and once you're sober a while, Lionel will get a guy like me in trouble. I got this. Thomas Merton says I said it was a lucky wind, but he didn't say lucky he says it was the divine wind that blew away your halo this idea that somehow with enough information that I can engineer my own personal recovery project, bunch of nonsense it doesn't matter if you're not reading or walking down that happy road of destiny and it's been my experience in alcoholic synonymous, it doesn'T matter how far down the road you are it's the same distance to the ditch 12 steps and all the guys that have shared with me given those steps back one step at a time so thank god i've that one thing i've done right in alcoholic tsunamis i've had somebody that i'm accountable to somebody that I'm talking to because I can fall into that trap my some of one of our guys gives a talk my case is different nobody understands me or the one that really gets a guy like me in trouble when you've got a few years under your belt three o'clock in the morning can't go to sleep this one keeps me awake where i should be an alcoholic synonymous at 24 years sober that's a that's align that'll get a guy like me in trouble i'm a great believer that sobriety and alcoholic synonymous is reality check on how my life is going today not how i think it should be or i wanted to be how is the rubber meeting the road in my life today that's alcoholic synonym for me that's life on life's terms and sometimes i think the solution is too simple it can't be that simple I'm only saying this because Bob here was a great help to me he probably doesn't even realise how much he was at 20 years sober I think it was the last time I was here I was going through a terrible well it seemed at the time terrible divorce got a little 9 year old girl talking to me in the first person daddy I don't want to get divorced. Another guy involved resentment to here, how about up to here? Trying to stay sober day at a time. Now one thing I realized at this labyrinth that if I try to navigate my way out alone, I'm a beaten docket. Actually Bob called me about something completely different once again god working through people he says how's it going i said do you really want to know how it's going he says yeah and i told him i says bob i'm in the ringer big time big time and i just give him a quick synopsis of what was going on and he says paul i'll never forget this and i use i was talking to hero there a couple weeks about it how much it saved me he says Paul one of two things can happen here this can kick you into AA or this can kick you out of AA something that simple just turned me at that moment I realized that's the answer and I got a double down and he can get more involved in alcoholics now and then he went on to say and usually which way you're facing if you're chasing in you'll get kicked further in and if you are facing out and boy is That's so true. As Bob was able to cut right to the chase, I hung up the phone. That one sentence, I've been talking to my sponsor, and it was great help, but that one sentence was invaluable for me going forward in that difficult period. And that's another thing, another misbelief of mine, that you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and we'll just walk between the raindrops and one day I'll be, and don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of good days in AlcoholicsAnonymous, a lot more than I probably deserve. Thank God Alcoholics is not, anonymous it's not a meritocracy by where good deeds out there ensure where you get to in here because i got a lot more than i deserve but life on life's terms the roller coaster goes up for the new people and the rollercoaster goes down just don't get off stay on the roller coaster that's been my experience in alcoholics anonymous and sometimes the solution looks too simple only because this was told to me i got a phone call from a guy one time and he was in the ringer too for different reasons 20 years sober not going to alcoholics anonymous big trouble all work troubles family troubles you know you can fill in the blanks yourself and only because this was asked of me I asked him a question I haven't an original thought since I got the alcoholic synonymous thank God I don't have to make this stuff up it's all been done already as Norm Albee says don't try to impress anybody in AA we've been impressed by the best you know I mean everybody's heard it before I said to the guy when were you happiest in alcoholic synonymous which is a no-brainer first year i see if any idea why i'm going to meetings pretty much every night a bunch of guys in the car old junker of a car going here going there going to detoxes going here doing commitments going all over the place all right i wasn't trying to be a smart aleck wasn't talking the spiritual hilltop just sharing my experience strength and hope i says well in my experience when i was in a situation something similar why did you go back for 90 days doing what you did in the first year of sobriety silence on the phone and i know why there was silence onthe phone because that guy's thinking where i thought i got a 20-year problem And this guy is giving me a 90-day solution. And I found out in Alcoholics Anonymous, it doesn't matter how complex the situation may be, thank God the solution's always simple. It's unity, it's service, and it's recovery. My disease will tell me that I've got multiple problems that need multiple solutions and all these... No, I got one problem. I got alcoholism I treat that problem with unity, service and recovery, staying connected to alcoholic synonymous staying tethered to alcoholic synonymous, those things won't go away, I'm not saying they're just going to magic one but I'll be able to make sober with a sponsor rational decisions one day at a time and even if things don't work out the way that I want them to do because I'm connected it to AA I'll be able to live with the consequences and I never heard from that guy again I hope he's doing well but that just tells me it doesn't matter how long you're on this program my disease will want to tell me I got this in my back pocket and that's why it's such a great thing to come here I mean just to be I mean to be asked to speak here is an even greater privilege but to be here this weekend because I'm a great believer that the whole is greater than some of the parts and seeing people who are trying to walk this journey. And I love that they have that word trudge because I would like to jog down the happy road of destiny or can we at least walk briskly? You know, why do we have to trudge? And as it says in the 1930s dictionary, walk with purpose. And that's what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me. It's given me a purpose. everything I need to know I found out in Alcoholics Anonymous my name is Paul, I'm an alcoholic that tells me who I am what I am, where I am that's all I need today if I build my life around those facts everything else will take care of itself and I can live a life that I don't deserve and sometimes have to pinch myself that I'm actually living it I'm not here to sell AA this weekend but I'm here to tell you from personal experience. You cannot get where I am today from where I came from without AA. It's an impossible journey. And why do I continue to go? I know how the movie goes, but I wouldn't miss it to see somebody walking in on the worst night of their life and then watching them put their lives back together again. I think the most selfish, narcissistic thing that I could do would be to get this life put it in my back pocket and say thank you very much, I'll see you on the sunny side of the street and I ask myself each day what am I doing to stay connected in the alcoholic synonymous and I like to keep things real simple and it was pointed out to me there's two dogs there's the sober dog and then there's the alcoholic dog whatever dog you feed is the one that's going to live which one are you feeding today this one the sober one meetings service recovery you give him that food he's going to live a happy life on the opposite on the other side so that's what i ask myself in my daily my daily inventory which dog am i feeding today and coming here this weekend spending time with you i'm looking forward to the rest of the weekend and uh so i just hope that we all stay here in alcoholics anomalous because I know intellectually do I know it cognitively and internally there's nothing out there for me this is where I belong this is my home if you're feeling homeless no more your home this is home you found a home and don't leave your home stay here home with us thank you so much for my sobriety Thank you, Paul. I'd like to invite up Steve L. Good morning, everyone. I'm Steve Lee. I am an alcoholic. I've had a great time so far. Wonderful panel this morning. Thank you guys so much, really. And I think you, this is obviously something you guys do yearly, but you certainly set the tone for me for the weekend in terms of the honesty and the transparency with which you shared. So I've got to start first by apologizing to Paul for barging uninvited into his room this morning. You know, I love sharing the podium with Paul. It's the only time that I'm not the guy with the accent You know, as I listened to you guys in the panel this morning A thought would come to mind based on something you said So I jotted a couple of things down That I wanted to try to talk about What I want to avoid doing if I can And it's hard Is giving a talk one of the things that happens to me and I think others that I've talked with, you know, and it doesn't have to be speaking from the podium but you know you guys that are active in Alcoholics Anonymous and you go to a lot of meetings and you're sharing a lot of meetings. And pretty soon you know what you're going to say. Pretty soon the topic's the third step and they go man I know what I say about the third steps. I got some good stuff on that third step. I dial it up. You know what I mean? I got a file on this And it's not always conscious, but I know what I say. I mean, look, in Vegas last week, I told them this. They loved it. It'll kill in my home group. And you ever caught yourself? I do. You ever catch yourself? You know the difference between having something to say or having something you want to be heard? Yeah. I usually know that about the time I'm in my car driving home from the meeting. No, I do, and I go, man. You are so full of bull. Now, I'll be honest with you. That doesn't mean that the information wasn't accurate. It doesn't even mean it wasn't helpful and useful. But it begins to be about the experience that I'm having. Am I having a current experience? Or am I regurgitating past experience? Am I sharing from today's perspective? or am I a collection of anecdotes that I begin to share back? And I could be sharing the same thing and me have a different experience. I was telling Paul last night, last October we were at a conference in Aspen, Colorado and I was speaking on Saturday night and I popped up to give my talk And about 10 minutes into this talk, I realized that I was totally disconnected from the story I was telling. And I was completely disconnected from people I was talking to. It's as if it were a song that I knew the lyrics to. But I wasn't connected. I want to talk a little bit about this morning, I think, is connection and authenticity and relationship. See what happened, and I don't know if my friend Carl, Carl who was over here last night or at the meeting last night, Carl was there, and he spoke too, and Carl said, dear friend of mine, we talked about it later, and I'm telling Carl this experience, and he was trying to be a good friend, you know, and And he said, Steve, man, it was okay. He said, that wasn't your best talk, but that was a good talk. And I said, Carl, you're misunderstanding me, man. I said I'm not concerned about the talk. I'm concerned about The Guy Giving the Talk. I'm wondering what happened to me where I got lost in that process. I get back home on Sunday, and Monday morning I went to a 9 a.m. meeting that I don't typically go to. It's my wife's home group, but she couldn't go that morning. And I went in there, and the meeting was on the 11th step. And what became clear to me, and I hadn't pieced it together at the time, was on The Seven or Eight or Nine Months prior to that night, as Paul said, maybe I had been facing away from the God of my understanding rather than facing in, so I was getting kicked out. So subtly, so my prayer and meditation had gone from being pretty disciplined. I mean, I won't match it up against everybody else's, but it was disciplined and it had a good solid relationship plugged into that power to being kind of casual, to being sporadic, to being resistant. Now I'm getting up in the mornings at that time And what I typically would do is fix a cup of coffee and sit down and spend that quiet time, a couple of things I read, maybe some prayer. And now while the coffee's being made, I'm thinking about that, but I'm also named, you know, Sports Center's on. Morning Joe. I don't want to leave without understanding the state of the nation this morning. And I would turn the TV on first. And then I would just, you know, and it just kind of just, you know it happens and our book suggests that a thing like that might. It says that rebellion will dog my every step. It says I'm not apt to be inspired at all times. It tells me that I'm going to bump into these periods. But it happened. So I was the reason that I felt unconnected to the story and unconnecting to the people I was telling it to was because I was disconnected. I wasn't connected to God and I wasn'T connected to you. And by the way, I've got to be connected to both or I'm not connected to either because there's not a separation in my point of view. That if that fundamental idea of God is deep within every man, woman, and child, then that's the point of vue I've adopted. Then we're a collective. Everything I am is of God, but I'm nicht everything Gott ist. collectively we've got that consciousness so when i'm disconnected from god i am naturally disconnected from his kids i was um i was three and a half years sober active in aa loving being an aa and i want to i want To say this that uh some of this is going to sound like things aren't going well I have never never in in my 27 years sober and in my 68 63 years on the planet been more open more connected more authentic and more transparent than my life is today and I have ever been more aware of the lack of openness transparency and authenticity in my life today. That's a paradox that sounds like they couldn't match, but they are both true. I hear people say sometimes, and I know what they mean when they've been around AA for a while, they said, you know, the longer I'm here, the less I know. I will tell you that the longer I'm Here, the more I know, and the more i know is that i don't know what i don' t know. I know a lot. I know the road I've traveled, but I see the horizon continues to move. That's good. You know, back in the story Keys to the Kingdom, it says this isn't a program that can be mastered. I'm never going to reach the end of this journey. That's not the bad news. That's the good news. What's required is enough humility to be where I am when I'm there and not be caught up in what happens as this comparative with the rest of the world where I will never match up because number one, what I see is not accurate and what you see is not me right I was at a meeting a number of years ago I was a couple years sober and I spoke about the talk was about as long as the one I gave last night but it wasn't a speaker meeting and I called my sponsor when I got home and he had been there but you know we didn't have cell phones in and i said joe uh did i sound self-righteous in that meeting and he went oh steve he said you're still asking the wrong questions man so it's because the question isn't did you sound self-Righteous the question is were you self-Righteous he said but the truth is you don't care whether you were self- Righteous or not you're afraid they caught you. You're not worried about being self-righteous, you're worried about them thinking you're self-Righteous. And he was correct. I mean, I don't know these things, I don' t recognize these things. He said, here's the news, he says, you're not who you think you are. And you're especially not who they think you think they think you are and man what struck me and continues to strike me is how often I am giving consideration to what I think you think how will this play? How will this look? So how do I find an authenticity in me when I am trying to be that actor that we talked about in the last, that's one of the paragraphs that I saw that let me know I was in the right place that actor that more than most wears two faces that's a stage character that wants to be a man of certain reputation boy but in his heart he knows he doesn't deserve it I'll do back flips to win your attention and upon getting that positive affirmation feel like you but if you really knew if you really knew so even that falls empty when the book talks about the alcoholic will know loneliness as few do that's drunk or sober at three and a half years sober my wife and I were you know we were my wife's sobriety date is ten days after mine, we were married seven years drinking and drugging together we met over a pile of her cocaine i said she was freshly divorced out of tahoe with a pickup truck a pocket full of divorce money and an eight ball of cocaine what's not to love and uh and that's the basis upon which we met and that'S THE BASIS UPON WHICH AN INITIAL RELATIONSHIP IT DIDN'T MEAN WE DIDN't CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER AND DIDNT LOVE EACHOTHER WE DID TO THE EXTENT THAT WE WERE CAPABLE OF THAT BUT UPON GETTING SOBER NOW WE GOT NEW PEOPLE IN THE HOME WE GOT to figure out who are these new folks in the house. What's going to be the basis of this relationship today? What's it going to be based on? Are we compatible? Not do we care about each other, do we love each other but do we fit together? It was beginning to look like we didn't. We were getting some marriage counseling and I actually picked out the marriage counselor and Connie was sober for three and a half years but not going to aa so certainly she's the problem and and so i got a therapist that was in aa and as i say while we were going to to therapy and in effect i sort of thought i was giving her a ride and uh because it would become clear that they would tweak her up a little bit she would see how well i was doing because here's the thing i'm going to a and y'all are telling me I'm doing good. Hey, I wasn't drinking. I'm showing up regularly. I'm sponsoring some guys. Hey, Steve, you're doing good, and that was true. But was I being a good husband? Was I being a good father? Did I have the capacity to demonstrate and share my life with another person? Or was I incapable of having a true partnership? I want a partnership. I love partnerships. I just want to be the senior partner. And I don't even know it. Because what I really think, let me explain it one more time and you will see. And I thought that this therapist would clarify this for her. And she saw us, you're ahead of me. She saw us together, but she saw separately too, and a couple of things happened. But one of the things that happened on about my third individual conversation with her, I was talking, I was prattling on about something, and she stopped me. And she said, Steve, you must really be lonely. And it was a gut punch. The moment before she said that, that's not the word I would have used. But the moment she said it, I knew that was true. Lonely. She says, you know what? she said, that old southern boy bullshit isn't going to work in here. She says, you know, I bet you're a pretty popular guy. I bet people enjoy your company. I bet, I'll bet you are hit at parties. She said, I'd bet you go get five minutes here and five minutes there and five moments over there and then you get in your car to leave at night and you're empty. Boy, was she right. Because I didn't have a real connection. It wasn't a lack of people in my life. It wasn'Ta lack of good friends, but an inability to feel a genuine connection with people was missing. Now, I told her that can't be true. I didn't admit to being lonely with her. And I went and I talked to my sponsor because I said, if that's true, I'm three-and-a-half years in the AA, man, and I'm, you know, and that means this whole thing is a fraud. This means I'm just kind of faking my way through everything, and this is all crap. and my sponsor said no steve not at all he said this is proof that aa is working he says now you're ready to put this on the table now this stuff is showing up but how do i get that real connection that loneliness i know what it's like to stand in front of a door and and and have to steal myself up to then go in and whether that's a family situation or a work situation or an AA situation and then burst through and be the dancing bear and then later come out and again have that feeling of emptiness. Now I will tell you, I'm not plagued by that today. What used to be my constant companion is now an occasional visitor. But it shows up. It happens. But the thing is I think that happens to a lot of people in one way or another. I was at a conference a couple weeks ago, a men's retreat, Texas Man to Man, and we were talking with some guys and I saw a guy. They had cafeteria dining, so you go through with your tray and then everybody's at tables. And man, I saw this guy and he was me. He was me, he came out with his tray, with his food and there are all these tables around and I see him not knowing where to sit. Do I go over there? I'm not sure if they want me over there. I don't want to have this awkward moment. When I was six months sober, it's probably the first time that I was going to meetings and digging this, you know, but I'm going to meeting so I'm gong home and I'm goign to meetings and I am going home. And I finally heard somebody say at one of the, it was a Saturday meeting, 1130 to 1230 meeting and somebody said, hey, we're all going to lunch after the meeting. Who wants to go? I desperately wanted to go, desperately. So I get in my car and I start over at Shoney's. And I get about halfway there and I turn off and I go home. The next week, I get About Halfway There and I Turn Off and I Go Home, three, four weeks in a row because I wanted to go but my fear was is I'll show up at Shony's and I'll walk in and there will be six people already sitting at a table for six and I don't know whether I'm supposed to pull up a seventh chair, whether I're supposed to crowd them and make it uncomfortable. I'm unwilling to, I'm too self-conscious to risk it, to have this embarrassing moment. You know, our friend Lyle says that we'd rather be dead than embarrassed. I'll risk my life not to be embarrassed. and that was what I needed was just if a couple of guys had come over after the meeting and said you know Steve we've been talking man we really want you to go to lunch with us and we're just arguing over who gets to sit with you I would have gone and by the way I would've been the head of the table because you will have removed that risk that self-consciousness that awkward the potential for that awkward moment when I was a freshman in college it's before I ever took a drink I didn't take a drink until later my freshman year in college the first day of school I go to school and I can't find my way around campus very well I get to my first class about 15 minutes late the door's closed it's got one of the little square windows I they're in there and I look in there and class has started. I couldn't go in. I just walked away. I just never went back to class. It's not like I came back the next time. Early. I just never went to class or went back to that class. That's the kind of stuff I would pour a drink on. This lack of connection. I know I'm not alone in this. Have any of you guys mastered the fake phone call? Yeah, you know, when you're someplace you don't quite know where you fit or where to go so you act like you're talking on your phone while you try to figure it out. I know, I know you've done it. You try to look because you feel like you don' t know what the hell to do next so I got to look like I'm doing something while I try to figure out or hope the person I know shows up, you know, that somebody, you Know, but let me, don't let me get caught feeling this insecure and this uncomfortable. Yeah, the fake phone call, by the way, has gotten easier since their cell phone. It was tougher looking for that booth, you I think what's happened, and again, I share these stories, and they're all true, and they'RE not all ancient history. But don't think for a minute that I'm suggesting that, again, that this is... What's happened is I've become more comfortable with the discomfort in my life. I've become more comfortable with the awkward moment. I've becomes more comfortable as you people share your lives with me like the four guys did up here this morning. They didn't say a thing that I don't believe didn't resonate with most everybody in here, that these circumstances might be a little different, but those internal feelings are the same. There's nobody in this room that hadn't kept a secret. There's somebody in this group that hasn't done something that they said, I can't share that. And it's usually not, as you said, it's not the bank robberies. It's not having four wives in three states, you know. It's this dirty little thought I had or this tacky thing. And when we share ourselves with each other, which is the linchpin of Alcoholics Anonymous, sharing honestly about ourselves with Each Other, is when we begin to see the God in each other because we see that we are not different. That's what I thought. I didn't think my drinking is what differentiated me from other people. I had alcohol-related problems. I drank and got in trouble. And when I got to AA, I was pretty sure that you drank and Got In Trouble, and your story seemed to verify that. I didn'T know I had alcoholicism when I wasn't drinking. I didn't know on a Tuesday afternoon sitting in my office with a wife that loved me and a kid that loved мне and a good job, why do I feel the way I feel? And I could not have articulated to you what that feeling was. I began to find it in the unmanageability of my life. I can't manage just to decide to do better. I can' t decide not to feel this way. but what happens is through the process of these steps as I remove those things you know our book says that being convinced that self is what had defeated us we looked for its common manifestations then it says resentment's the number one offender talks about fear, talks about sex conduct most everything can fall under those umbrellas but it's self that has defeated me The bondage of self. Paul talked about it, the guys talked about it this morning. I'm pretty sure it'll be talked about the rest of the weekend in one form or another because that's the nature of the problem I'm trying to get from this bondage of self I was in a meeting seven or eight years ago now there was a young girl in there about 16, it was a beginner's meeting and I knew her, I know her mom my wife sponsors her mom and she's in there and she had been a mess and she started trying to share in that meeting and she got tongue-tied and embarrassed and finally after stammering for a while she said, I've just got to get over myself. And I thought, me too baby, me two. That's what I'm trying to get over self. I'm try to be free of the bondage of self and that third step prayer when it says relieve me of the bondage of self. I think I misinterpreted that for a long time. I thought that self was being held hostage, but self is the hostage taker. Pride and ego, self as we talk about it in AA is the pride and the ego. And they come dressed as our friends and like the government say we're here to help. But they're not very effective. They look like they're here to protect me. Pride and ego wouldn't let me go to Shoney's. Pride and Ego wouldn't let that guy with that tray sit down. It looks like it's protecting him. It is the very thing that keeps me from you. It is the very things that keep me from God. It is everything that blocks me from God. Can I start to risk these things? Can I begin to trust God? And to trust god means I've got to trust you. And sometimes it's going to get messy. What I've tried to do, and I think this is where I'll head toward the closing here, but what I, you know, I think Zach or one of the guys brought this story up yesterday, but today what I try to do is if I am current, as current as a guy like me can be, And over around the 11th step, it will say that I'll begin to hear this intuitive voice. And it says when my thinking is divorced of selfishness, self-pity, dishonesty, of self, when self is out of the way and my life is no longer being run through the prism of self that I can begin to trust. It says we come to rely upon it. and when and what happens for a guy like me when I first get to AA you guys tell me do not trust your thinking don't rely on that but over time my first thought is is more and more often my best thought these days and pride and ego will shout it down so I was on an airplane I think a number of years ago I was invited to a big conference this has been 12 13 years ago now a conference It's in Toronto, and I was excited to go, and there were a bunch of people there. I thought that made me important, and I Was excited for probably all the wrong reasons. And I go to get on the airplane flying from Nashville to Detroit and connecting to Toronto. It was a little regional plane that was flying out of Nashville, about a 50-passenger, whatever that is. As I was walking through the gate area, there was a woman holding a child, an infant, and the woman was just weeping inconsolably. And anyway, we boarded the plane and finally a flight attendant comes on and she said this woman's brother has been critically injured in a car accident in Detroit. She's trying to get to Detroit. Would anyone be willing to give up their seat? Intuitively I knew that that was the thing to do. Immediately I thought sure. but then I started thinking about it and I said well wait a minute these people bought my plane ticket my God what might happen to that conference if I don't show and while I'm thinking nobody gave me up their seat and they closed the door and we took off and I'm standing up in front of a microphone like this on that Friday night in front OF 2500 people and weighing heavy on me was the absolute knowledge that the guy they thought they invited would have given up his seat on that airplane. So I will fly internationally to talk to you about principles that in the moment I will step around. we have a conversation this weekend the challenge is to put the information into application to bring about the transformation when Bill Wilson wrote Carl Young in 1961 I think it was that's how long after Roland Hazard's visit and he wrote Young to kind of tell him what had happened and to thank him for the role that he played in Alcoholics Anonymous and Young wrote back almost immediately and thanked him for writing. He said it was great to hear what had happened with Mr. Hazard and he said you know I couldn't even be as forthright with Mr.-Hazard as I would have liked to have been given the times because Young had some, in Bill's story, when Ebby tells Bill to pick a god of his understanding, he says this was a revolutionary idea. And Young had somerevolutionary ideas. But he said that what he thought with Mr. Hazard and others like me was what he really had was at a low-level yearning for a union with God. When I feel that sense of loneliness, when I feel that sense of disconnection, I show up here with a yearning for union with God which is a union with you. So I'll repeat today the same poem that you heard last night if you were there but it's because that describes what has happened for me in Alcoholics Anonymous is how that union happens. As I sought my God, my God I couldn't see. I was lost here. I sought my soul, my soul eluded me. I'm in search, I'm trying to find where I fit, who am I? How do I match up with you? This is, I sought my fellow man and found all three. It's simplest form if I will do as Paul said I show up in AA with a lot of complicated problems. The more complicated the problem that I take to my sponsor, it seems the shorter and simpler his suggestion. In this case, if I will unreservedly quit trying to solve my problem, see if I can be of some worldly use to you, this God shows up and I feel connected to this world in a way that I didn't before if you see me wandering around with a lunch tray today invite me to your table and if you see me sitting at a table please know I want you to come sit with me thank you applause applause applause all right so we end with the Lord's Prayer All right.