Powerless Over Alcohol, Unmanageable Over Me — Step 1 Is Two Separate Wounds – Marty J.

and I'm supposed to return order to this pandemonium 9500 unsatisfied people who
didn't wear it win the horse like talk about an uphill climb I just before I
start I'd like to say something and that's that despite how Lenny acts and
treats people at the public level when you come here and you're invited here by
Lenny he takes you out and shows you the retreat and he takes you out and
shows you the Falls and the gorge and I've been in Portland I don't know how
many times nobody's ever taken me anywhere the only thing that he didn't
do was pick me up at the airport because he sent Lenny II to pick me up in the
airport which was probably good because I got to my room in a minimal amount of
time to near crashes but nothing too serious a little swearing but
it's a typical alcoholic ride and I want to say congratulations to the man with
48 years of sobriety
I wanted the newcomers to see what they're gonna look like if they keep
hanging around
hey listen for a hundred and six he looks great I mean I'm I am just about
the same age as you are not sobriety wise but physically I've been I'm 47 so
you sobered up the year before I was born which left some room for a new pig
at the trough and it's a good thing
well so that's one person I want to thank you so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
take any time to offend have already done it you know you do people
in the room how to tell which of the people is going to be talking at the
conference for this meeting it's always the ass with a suit and the tie right
everybody else is comfortable you got one fool in from out of town with a suit
and tie and that's how you know and the one that's in introducing him is local
so they're cool they've got a suit with no time that's how you can tell that's
the deal it's great
anyway my name is Marty Jeffrey and I'm an alcoholic and I don't know if you do
this here but you'll see what we have going on, so if you want to look for us here next time.
but many places that I talk, they ask that if you give your sobriety date
as they have a train drive by.
And I had my last drink of alcohol or smoke of Mary Wonderful or anything like that.
It was February the 8th of 1976.
And what I wrote in that book for that fellow who was four days sober was
that every day you get an Alcoholics Anonymous they can't take back.
And I don't know anything else that kept me sober in the beginning but that.
I thought, man, I'm the kind of a guy that if I ever got sober and ever got happy,
I'd be walking across the street and I'd be run down by a beer truck.
I mean, that's just the kind of crap luck that I have.
And then one day it dawned on me, my God, you know, they can't take it back.
If I just stayed sober all day today and nothing bad happened to me,
they can't get that back from me.
It's mine for once and forever.
And I have stayed sober.
I've stayed sober on that premise these 23 years.
And I'm, you know, I'm one of those people that believes that I live with a daily reprieve.
And it's contingent.
It's a contingent reprieve on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.
So I'm going to do some stuff tonight that you may or may not like.
I'm going to tell it the way that I see it.
I'm going to share my experience.
I really believe we make a mistake in a lot of meetings.
I hear people say that the book tells us to talk about what it was like,
what happened and what it's like now.
And that's not what the book says.
It's not what the book says.
It says clearly what we were like, what happened and what we are like now.
So I can't, what's the point of telling you what it was like?
It sucked.
It sucked then.
It can suck now.
It continues to suck.
It just.
When you come in and you're new, they say it gets better.
No, it sucks.
It sucks.
You get better.
But it continues to suck.
And any old tyrant in this room that's not lying to you, it's just the truth.
I mean, the world is not going to get down on its hands and knees and start to celebrate your sobriety.
I guarantee it.
There is some wiener released every morning to get in front of you with his car
and just cut you off and infuriate you.
There's people sent to aggravate you.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, we call them family.
Family.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
These are the ones.
They know all the buttons in the code.
And they share with you the level of your understanding, you know.
And so I just want to talk a little bit about what we were like.
And I can say we clearly, I had a committee in my head.
I think most alcoholics can identify with that.
I had this one set of voices that cried for more and another set of voices that said stop.
And I had my father and my, I had some people that I admired, school teachers.
I started drinking at the age.
I have 11.
That's no big record.
Our 48-year-old member told me he started drinking at 8.
I'm sure there's somebody in here prenatal.
You know.
It doesn't matter what you say at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Somebody's done worse.
You know, you could get up here and say I made love to a zebra.
Somebody says, well, at least the one you had was female.
It doesn't matter what you say at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's the only group in the world.
I mean, we come here saying I'm not like that.
And within three or four months, we're the worst one and the worst alcoholic that ever lived.
You know, you people don't understand how I feel, you know.
But I want to talk to you a little bit about what precipitated my drinking
because I really believe that there is a statement in the big book
that describes me so perfectly and completely in one sentence
that it's amazing that Bill had never met me before he decided to pen that book.
I'm serious.
And the statement is that we were powerless over alcohol.
We had to admit we were powerless over alcohol.
And then there's this sort of a dash.
An M space, they call it in printing.
And it says we had to admit that our lives had become unmanageable.
You see, it doesn't say that we admit that we were powerless over alcohol and powerless over our lives.
It says that we're powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable.
And if you want to describe everything that's wrong with me in the whole world, that's it.
That's the entire thing.
That is the problem.
And you see, I didn't get that.
This powerless over alcohol thing.
I mean, I was 90 days sober driving down a freeway in a place called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
When I realized, my God, I'm alcoholic.
I'm serious.
I'd been to like hundreds of meetings.
I had a sponsor.
I was not sponsored.
I was kidnapped.
And I was held hostage by a man that told me we're anonymous because we have hundreds of people watching you.
That's true.
I love him with all my heart and soul.
And to hear me talk, sometimes you'd think I didn't.
So I want to make that very clear.
I had the opportunity.
I had the opportunity about a month and a half ago to share this story that I now have in front of that man.
And I haven't seen him for a number of years.
He said, you know, the only reason I kidnapped you is because I was so desperate myself I needed a newcomer.
You were nothing special.
See, I didn't get the alcoholic part.
I'm an alcoholic.
My God, you know, alcohol.
Alcohol.
Call me anything, but don't call me.
Alcoholic, you know what I'd say that that it's such a skungy, dirty, filthy, you know, child molester.
Yes, but not alcohol.
Geez, not alcohol, because that was associated to something I love to do, which was drink alcohol.
I laugh at us at meetings.
We get up.
So we say, my name is Marty and I'm an alcoholic addict.
That's from the Department of Redundancy Department.
Believe me, it's it's because Dr.
Silkworth said we are addicted to alcohol.
That's where the word alcoholic comes from.
Alcohol addict.
Push it together.
Alcoholic.
It's true, but we seem to like to tell everybody everything we are when we start off, you know, but anyway, I'm an alcoholic.
So this this powerlessness would mean that and sometimes in understanding things, the best way I can do is turn around backwards.
I must.
Have come in here believing that I was powerful over alcohol and that my life had become manageable.
Because they were trying to get me to admit, which is difficult with an alcoholic.
Only people in the world that only had two drinks.
I swear to God, you know, we're puking blood.
And how many did you have to chew?
You know.
You.
And somebody pissed my pants, too.
It's the but so powerless that the concept of powerlessness eluded me for a period of time.
And I'm driving down this freeway after about 90 meetings and all of a sudden it dawns on me, oh, my God, this is a progressive fatal disorder.
I could die if I drink and I go into a panic.
And so I phone this guy and I say, oh, my God.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
He says, shut up.
What do you want?
I said, Dwayne, I'm an alcoholic.
And there was just dead silence on the other end of the phone.
He said, oh, God, it's unanimous now.
Everybody bloody understands that you're an alcoholic.
I said, you don't understand what I'm saying.
I will die from this disease.
He said, let me understand what you're saying.
He said, what I'm hearing you say is if you don't put it in your mouth, you could bath in it and you would not die.
Just don't drink it.
I thought, well, that's not good enough.
I want.
I want to understand what's wrong with me.
And I need to understand what's wrong with me.
So I went to this guy's.
He was in the alcoholism business, which was crazy.
But I went to his associate, who was an educated man, very educated.
And I said, Bob, I believe that I might have this alcoholism.
And he said, oh, I believe you do, too.
And I said, well, what is the medical description of alcoholism?
And he said, you have a biochemical disorder.
Centering the hypothalamic information control center of your brain.
And that's made worse by your liver's inability to metabolize alcohol without producing acid aldehyde,
which mixed with dopamine produces tetrahydroxyquinone.
And that's a nasty combination given your narcissistic, egocentric core.
Nasty combination given your narcissistic, egocentric core,
which is driven at times by feelings of omnipotence,
which tend toward their own integrity in spite of the cognitive dissonance.
And stimulus augmentation.
So what does that mean?
He said, your drinker is broke.
Powerless over alcohol.
Now it's starting to come clear.
You see, understanding it doesn't make any difference.
The fact that I have a hypothalamic information control center in my brain,
which craves the next hit, makes absolutely no sense.
It's not a good thing.
It's not a good thing.
It's not a good thing.
It makes no difference when I'm craving the next hit.
You see, the thing about alcoholism is I didn't understand it
until I read a book called Alcoholics Anonymous.
I heard countless people try to describe it.
Countless stories.
I heard people at these podiums, 47 minutes of their talk was about getting juiced.
What they did, where they've been, who they beat up.
Didn't help me.
Didn't help me.
The fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the single most important factors of my life.
However, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the thing
which divided the line between dying and staying here.
And what happened to me was an old boy named Franklin Williams.
Do any of you remember Franklin?
He was like 110 years old.
And he always used to say,
I was trying to decide whether I should listen to that L-teen speaker or go pee.
And I know right now I've made the wrong choice.
He used to say that every time he talked.
Old Franklin described himself as a real alcoholic.
A real alcoholic.
And I thought, what the hell's the difference between a real...
Like, who'd want to be a pretend?
And one.
See what I'm saying?
And I said, what is a real alcoholic?
And he said, go to your big book and find it.
He said, it only appears in the book once.
And so I started to dig.
I was one of those alcoholics that had to know.
And so I found this thing in the book.
And if you are new in the room today and you've been trying to decide whether you've had enough
or whether you've been bad enough or you've been beaten up enough or you've lost enough
or haven't lost enough, it doesn't matter.
Here's what matters.
It says it a couple of times in the chapter to the...
I'll get that.
Hello.
This never used to happen when I first came here.
There were no cell phones.
It's a union beef.
But anyway...
See, in the chapter to the agnostics, the chapter four, it starts off and it says,
you know, if you find that you can't control the amount you drink once you start to drink,
you may be alcoholic.
That's sort of like saying, if you're female and your belly protrudes after several months
of not having periods, you may be pregnant.
Trust me when I tell you this.
Earth people...
Don't get that drinking themselves thirsty thing that happens to us.
They have a few drinks.
They burp.
They puke.
Sometimes they get drunk.
They never get thirstier and thirstier and thirstier the more they drink.
It does not happen to them.
This is what is sometimes described in very confused terms in the big book as a heavy drinker.
They are drinking for the companionship, the acceleration, the fun, to be with the lunatics like us.
And then for some reason, hell, marriage breaks down, whatever.
They stop drinking.
They never think about it again.
That's not us.
We're people that...
Once we start to drink, we cannot control the amount we drink.
And then on top of that, and this powerless thing that I have is so goofy.
Because just before I take the drink, I cannot remember why I shouldn't be drinking.
I honestly cannot bring into my mind, the book says, with sufficient force...
Kind of like a little...
Way out there, you know, oh, jeez, you know, fishbowl, peed in it.
Police, car, it doesn't matter now.
I'll have this beer and...
I'll be better, you know.
So...
So that I can't bring into my mind sufficient force, the suffering and the humiliation
of even a week or a month before that I am without defense against the first drink.
That is powerlessness.
You see, and people like us wouldn't drink if we weren't powerless.
If it couldn't take you to a different place or position, what the hell would be the use of drinking?
These idiots that are trying to figure out how to get us to drink normally, what the hell for?
What are we going to do?
Have two drinks?
Yes.
If it doesn't go ba-joing, boing, boom, bam, zing, hee, hee, hee, I don't want any.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I need...
I don't drink for that.
I drink to get different.
See, when I drink, I go outside, in.
I'm all of a sudden, what I had inside comes outside, and I share it with you.
Oh, yeah.
Like it or not.
And usually you didn't.
See, I was one of these alcoholics who was very, very...
Sort of the affable, fun guy, sober, but when I drank, I didn't speak.
Very rarely talked.
And what I would just do is I would find one of you that was particularly annoying me,
and I would go over and I would slap you up alongside of the head, and then you'd beat me up.
I did it all the time.
And I don't know why.
I don't know why I got angry like that.
I don't know why my father threw me down two flights of stairs on Christmas night.
Beat me up so bad, I ended up the rest of the night licking my wounds under a table in some strange house.
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
You know, the book talks about incomprehensible demoralization.
Pitiful.
Pitiful.
God, did anybody in here start out to be pitiful?
Like, shoot me, but don't let me be pitiful, for God's sake.
Not pitiful.
And if I am pitiful, I'm more pitiful than you are anyway.
I'll show you pitiful, you know.
It's incomprehensible demoralization.
It's incomprehensible demoralization.
A moral is a truth that you hold within.
And it's a guiding inner truth that you know.
Nobody ever teaches you a moral.
You know.
And what demoralized means that these inner truths of yours have been plucked away from you.
That you no longer possess the things in which you believe.
Why would anybody want to do that?
And the answer is because they are powerless to stop it.
That's why it says that we also have to admit that our lives have become unmanageable.
See, I think I have a part.
A part of my mind that was installed by an aviation corporation.
It's an autopilot.
Because I go to land in Los Angeles and I see the plane clearly going down in Las Vegas and I'm fighting it.
You know, I want to go over here and I say to my wife, I'll be home.
Calgonit.
And then I start going this way, against my own will.
I'm with people I don't like.
Drinking stuff I don't like, against my own will.
Because I'm not like that up here.
Everything that I was, I used to say to people when I was 18 years old, let's have a drink.
You'll see everything that I am in the bottom of that bottle of scotch by the end of the night.
How would you know that?
I intuitively knew these things.
The unpredictability and the unmanageability is in truth what got me to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because, I mean, one more time, I went out not to drink.
Anybody do that?
You know, I keep hearing these people talk about, every time I drank, I went out to get drunk.
Well, that might have been true in my early drinking.
But at the end, every time I went out, I went out to not get drunk.
Just to get a little, you know, just a buzz.
Just enough until my hair came back.
Yeah, that was bad.
So, all I wanted to do every time I drank, at the end of the time I drank, was just get different.
I just, I wanted to be anything except what I knew I was.
And I just, I would get into that place, you know.
Unfortunately, it's very short at the end of your drinking.
If you're like me, that...
That condition of being in a euphoric state became very abbreviated.
I later came to understand that alcoholics, unlike normal people, and this is tricky.
You see, because if you're drinking and you're alcoholic,
you don't know that when they're sitting beside you as non-alcoholics drinking,
what they're experiencing is different than what you're experiencing.
You don't understand that your body thinks that you're drinking water.
And so it fills your cells up with water.
And alcohol is not as turgid as cells.
And so the cells collapse.
And what you're actually experiencing in your mind is a death syndrome.
It's the dying of the human brain.
It's a very euphoric state.
I love that, you know.
Go out, tell a few brain cells, you know.
And my thing was always, hell, I've got millions of them I'm not using.
I did not know until years sober that it's an indiscriminate process.
You can hurt the ones in the front or ones at the back.
Completely indiscriminate.
Indiscriminate.
And so everybody that...
Everybody that drinks should look out.
It's a serious thing when you're killing those brain cells.
But that sensation, that wonderful sense of...
And I looked for words for this for years and years.
And the best I could describe it to you is like this.
That when I drank for a short period of time,
I felt all in one place all at the same time.
I never had that at any other time.
The unpredictable, unmanageable sense of me sober
was simply that when I was in position A, I thought I should be at B.
If I was drinking in the King George, I thought I should have been in the Princess.
If I was with Shirley, I thought I should have been with Mary.
No matter what I was doing, I was always in the wrong place with the wrong people.
There was this restless, irritable, discontent thing that Dr. Silkworth talked about
that plagued me not only drinking.
You see, here's another big tip if you're new.
You're nuts.
Yeah.
I didn't know how to slide that to you, so I thought I'd just pop it out.
You see, we're all here because we're not all there.
We are people who have lost the ability to judge
between what's true and what's untrue.
We've become to believe that things that are not good for us are what we want.
The isolation and the loneliness, the unmanageable, unpredictable madness
of having nothing going on in your life that you want
and continuing to do the same things to try and create it
is what we talk about when we talk about insanity and alcoholism.
The most insane thing any person in this room who is suffering from alcoholism could do
is to take a drink.
People say to me,
How do you know if you're restored to sanity?
I tell them,
You know that as soon as you don't want to drink anymore.
Because I don't remember from age 11 on ever not wanting to drink.
People say,
Don't you wish you could drink?
I say,
This is the first time I ever had a choice.
What in the hell are you talking about?
When I took that first drink, it was never a choice after that.
I always had to drink.
You had liquor, I had to drink.
And today, I don't have to drink.
I can always drink.
I have a choice.
Today, I choose not to drink.
And every day, I don't drink.
They can't take back.
So, if my problem is unmanageability and powerlessness,
obviously, the answer does not lie within or out of solve that a long time ago.
I mean, I tried to gain control.
The illusion of the alcoholic is that somehow we will wrest satisfaction out of life if we only manage well.
Let me put that another way.
We are so egocentric, so selfish and self-centered,
we honestly believe that we can bring order to chaos.
We believe we're the only human beings on earth
that can feel the power of God.
We believe we can fix it.
You know what I'm saying?
And then we've got these crazy people that hang around us called Al-Anon.
They're dumber than we are.
They think they can fix us.
My God.
We're trying to control the liquor.
They're trying to control us.
It's like a sick contest.
Who's nuttier on any given day?
Those lines in the Al-Anon's heads, that's not age.
Those are from Venetian blinds as they're standing.
You know.
It's insane.
They wait every day.
They're waiting every day for your sanity return.
Hello.
Hot tip for you.
You know what?
If most of us just don't drink extended periods of time, it gets better.
Never mind sanity return.
Some of that's a very slow process.
Now I had, as I told you, this big, almost cathartic type revelation.
My God, I'm an alcoholic.
And from that moment,
I swear to God, I knew that if I saw a bottle of whiskey,
I might as well look at it with a skull and crossbones on that bottle
because for me to drink is for me to die.
I never had any doubt.
Whether or not I would survive was a big question mark in my mind.
I came here looking for a bridge to run my car into.
I was not sure in sobriety that I could stand the pressure of each and every day.
I couldn't believe that anything, your stupid little 12 steps,
when I saw those babies, I thought, what am I going to do this afternoon?
I'll do those this morning.
You know, any of the rest of you think you're a little brighter than the rest when you got here.
I mean, I'm 23 years old.
I get picked up by this guy named Dwayne, who's probably 50.
He's a liar, says he hasn't had a drink of alcohol for 13 years.
Get the hell out of here, Dwayne.
That's what I think.
Like, come on, go pull the other one.
Right.
He says a number of incidents.
And stories.
This is a classic 12-step call out of his experience.
I think, God, you know, he's a bigger jerk than I am.
So I start telling him some of my stuff.
And pretty soon he says to me, again, again, this is the key.
He says, even if you're not alcoholic,
don't you agree that if you didn't drink, you'd get in less trouble?
I had never consciously thought that before.
This is the disease that denies you have it.
And so when he said, don't you think you'd get in less trouble?
I started to kind of go on a mental journey.
And I recognized, my God, almost every time I'm in trouble, I'm drunk.
It was like, wow, a revelation.
I used to say, man, if I wouldn't have been drunk and fell down those stairs,
I'd have hurt myself.
Never occurred to me if I hadn't have been drunk,
I wouldn't have fallen down the bloody stairs.
You know, you hear about alcoholic genius at a lot of these meetings.
But it's the only place you ever hear about it is at these meetings.
What?
You know, most of us are not that bright.
You know, when you can't figure that the thing that's killing you is killing you
and you're taking it to cure you, hello.
And so he says to me, I'm going to go to a meeting in the morning.
Maybe you should come.
And I said, what time is the meeting?
And he said, nine o'clock.
I said, I'd love to go because I'm an alcoholic.
Alcoholics will lie to you when the truth is good enough.
I had no intention of going to that meeting, but I knew if I said I'd love to go,
he'd shut up.
And that's all I really wanted.
He was too close.
He'd gone too far in.
He knew too much already.
And he dropped me off at my house and I had a restless night.
And at eight o'clock in the morning, I left.
And he was in the car waiting for me.
If you get a sponsor like the sponsor I had,
you come to understand that they live.
In your head, they have intuition.
They were liars themselves.
They know whatever you're going to do.
Do not try to run.
Do not try to hide.
It makes no difference.
They know everything.
He took me to that meeting and this meeting was just incredible.
I'm twenty three.
Everybody there is like one hundred and seven, maybe older.
One guy, oh, I don't know what was going like.
We're going up some damn stairs or steps or stairs or something.
I couldn't figure it out.
Apparently there was twelve of these things.
And.
They're all talking at the same time about different things.
All of a sudden it stopped and then somebody was asked to share and they'd talk.
And then somebody talking a completely unrelated thing and they would laugh at stuff that wasn't funny.
You know, one guy got going about peeing his pants.
I thought they were going to die laughing.
The Thursday before I had peed my pants, I didn't think there was anything funny,
nothing funny about peeing, especially when it just happened to you.
But you see, they've stopped peeing their pants.
So now it's funny.
Well, good for you.
I'm so glad.
Don't piss yourself, but don't call me anymore about it.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't need to share in your revelry over.
You're not pissing yourself when I'm still doing it.
Let's go to the cancer ward and make some some fun around people having cancer.
I have problems.
I wanted them all to understand.
And I'm just sitting here.
This is all going in my head.
This raging, yelling, screaming.
Shut up, all of you.
So and they're drinking coffee.
Now, I don't know if you drank coffee when you drank, but I never drank coffee.
My dad used to say it's 50 cents.
It's a hell of a way to screw up a $40 drunk.
So I never drank coffee.
But they're not.
They're inhaling coffee.
I'm expecting anyone want their colostomy bag is going to break and it's going to just shoot coffee all over.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
It's like I figure, God, they're in the right place.
There's no question about it.
These people are nuts.
And at the end of it, the part that was just mind boggling was the guy says, if you want what we have.
And you're willing to go to any lengths to get it.
I look around.
Holy God, what do they got?
You know, there's a bunch of old bastards.
Most of them have no hair.
They're like they how people leave the world.
No hair, no teeth, no money everywhere all around me.
Do I want what they have?
Let me think now.
Oh, shit.
They can't drink for the rest of their lives.
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Come here and drink.
Drink coffee and urinate down your own.
No, I don't want what they have.
I didn't even know what they had, but I knew I did not want what they had.
I was clear on that.
Alcoholics are like that.
You get them in a corner and you say to them, what do you want?
They don't know, but they know what they don't want.
They're very clear on what they because they focus on everything that's negative.
That's all they think about is what's wrong.
Alcoholics could fall into a, well, the best I ever heard it described was a barrel full of boobs
and come up sucking their own.
Come on, I'm serious.
We just, we, I apologize for that.
Somebody in here made me say that, so, yeah.
We are people who are focused on our own destruction.
Some of you can't even laugh you're so tied up in your own, you know.
I'm serious.
What the hell is he joking about, you know?
Easy for him.
I'm the rich dork, you know.
It's just, you know.
Well, I'll tell you what.
At this stage, when I discovered my own alcoholism, I had nothing.
I was hopeless and I was helpless.
And, you know, the book says that we have recovered from a seemingly, seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
It was at a place in my life where I just could not see my way around it.
And I came out of that meeting and I didn't get any hope at my first meeting.
I didn't get anything at my first meeting except aggravated.
And so when we went outside, I didn't get any hope.
I went outside and this guy says to me, how did you like the meeting?
I said, I loved it.
I sure can see what you guys got going.
That's great.
I said, Dwayne, I'm going to tell you something.
I almost wish I was alcoholic.
Because you guys have got a thing going there, you know.
In fact, if you need any money or anything I can do to help you, you call me.
I didn't have a nickel, but I was going to give them the money or the radio, whatever, however I can, a big shot.
And he said, no, that'll be fine.
And we got in the car.
And he drove me home and I figured, well, that's the end of that.
And I went in the house and I said to my wife, you'll never guess where I've been.
I said, I've been at a zoo.
Looking at animals I do not want to identify with.
And I told her some of the stories.
She said, oh my God, Marty, that's terrible.
Why don't you just slow your drinking down a little bit?
See, she didn't understand the nature.
She doesn't understand like you understand if you're alcoholic.
I can't slow it down because I can't take a drink without the phenomenon beginning of me wanting another drink.
You see, non-alcoholics...
Non-alcoholics will be forever trying to understand why we're laying on the floor with our false teeth puked into the toilet
and somebody will say, can I help you?
And you say, yes, just get me another beer.
Why would you want...
Because I'm thirsty, that's why.
They would think apparently you've had enough, but you haven't had enough
because if you'd had enough, you wouldn't be thirsty anymore.
Make sense?
And so this powerlessness of mine was completely over the head of my poor wife.
And she just thought I had a lack of control or maybe not enough spine.
Or something like that.
And there's nothing at all to do with that.
In fact, I don't know about you, but I never ever craved a drink in my life when I wasn't drinking.
I only crave it once I start to drink.
Now, I was obsessed to the idea of getting drunk, I suppose.
Or not getting drunk, however you want to describe it.
I was obsessed with the concept, I can't have fun unless I'm drinking.
You know, I can't be intimate.
Which every woman in here will testify how intimate us guys are when we're drunk, you know.
It's like being at a smorgasbord, you know what I'm saying?
Help yourself and clean up when you're finished.
It's, uh...
Yeah, and Johnny A., I think you said, is coming.
Johnny gives the best description of the whole world of making love
and then realizing his wife was watching him.
He was by himself in the bed and...
Yeah.
My wife's world of understanding was everything that kept me drinking for a long, long time.
And here's the other interesting thing about it was that that night,
even though I told him I didn't want to go,
he came and picked me up for another meeting.
And I thought I'd kind of explained myself,
but I thought, oh, well, I'll go with the big dummy.
They're so stupid, you know.
They've had so much of their brain eaten up, he probably didn't understand.
So I went to another meeting.
Now, this meeting was...
The group was called Mustard Seed.
And at this meeting, there was a bunch of the ones from the first meeting
and a couple of other ones and two women.
So, hookers, I figure.
Because...
No, I didn't know anything about alcoholics, to be honest.
I figured all the...
Absolutely everybody who's ever been...
In real trouble is in alcoholics now, so it's probably hookers.
So when the time came, you know, at the end of the meeting,
they said, does the young guy have anything he'd like to say?
And I said, yeah, I got a question.
And they said, what is it?
And I said to these women, are you guys hookers?
And...
Yeah, Ruth said, no, I was never a hooker.
But she said, what I would do is every once in a while,
I'd get really drunk and then I'd pick up an anemic little turd like you
and I'd...
I'd take you home.
I'd take you home.
Yeah.
Don't mess with the alcoholic women in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Tell you what, they've been there, done that.
She humiliated me like I tried to humiliate her.
And I went in that car and now I was not mincing words with Duane anymore.
I said, I'm not going to any more meetings, so don't bother picking me up.
He said, oh, yeah, you'll be at more meetings.
I said, I won't.
I have rights.
He said, you have no rights.
Where the hell did you ever get that idea?
You don't have any rights.
You're an alcoholic.
I said, I'm not an...
Yes, you are.
He said, you've been to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The only people that ever go to Alcoholics Anonymous are alcoholics.
I said, Duane, I don't have to go to these meetings.
He said, oh, yeah, you do.
He said, that's why we're anonymous.
We're everywhere and we're watching you.
And let me tell you something else.
If you decide to drink, Marty,
he said, let me tell you that...
All you have to do when you want to drink is you phone me
and I will bring you your first drink.
And then I'm going to bust every bone in your body.
And I said, Duane, why do you say these things to me like that?
Thank you.
He said, it's really simple.
If you drink, you're going to get hurt.
And I really like you.
And I don't want you getting hurt by strangers.
Now, I don't know if you're lucky enough to have somebody that loves you like that.
I don't know whether you understand
that the way that they talk to you
and seem to verbally abuse you
are actually terms of endearment.
I don't know if you understand that.
I don't know if you understand how hard it is sometimes
and how aggravating
and what a pain in the rear end it is
to tell somebody the truth
because you've got to go through a whole bunch of abuse after you do it.
But I want you to know
if you've got somebody like that in your life,
thank God every single night
because that is actually what got me through to the place
where I had enough of my mind come alert to say,
maybe they've got something here.
Maybe this is something that I want.
Maybe I am ready to go to any length to get it.
And so, it took me that time to do the answer,
which is step two.
The question undoubtedly is step one
and the answer undoubtedly is step two
that I came to believe
that a power greater than myself,
brackets, Dwayne, bracket,
was going to restore me to sanity.
That's all I could see.
See, I didn't come here with two,
cases full of faith.
I had been in and out of the churches.
I had been in and out of the hospitals.
I had come to understand with clarity
that there's nothing there for me.
Some other people seemed to get help,
but there was never anything there for me
because eventually I would break out drunk
and sometimes against my own will
and I thought there was just no hope.
But inside this gorilla that God sent me named Dwayne,
I saw a power greater than myself
and I turned my life and my will
over to the power of that gorilla.
You know, it's an interesting thing.
About 120 days sober, I phoned Dwayne.
I said, you know, I'm really having some trouble, Dwayne.
He said, what is it?
I said, I can't turn my life over to God.
And he said, why not?
And I said, because if I turn my life over to God,
he's going to send me to Africa as a missionary or something
and I've got this brand new baby and I can't go.
He said, what would God do with an ass like you in Africa?
He said, what would God do with an ass like you in Africa?
You know, and as dumb as I was,
I kept thinking, good point.
That's a good point.
That's an excellent point.
You don't have to worry about anything grandiose.
The problem with step two is
it's something that you come to believe.
You can't come to believe something
and then believe it at the same time.
You kind of come to that conclusion.
So there's a place where it says
if you agree that the problem is this
and you agree that the answer is this,
you've got to make a decision.
And that's step three, you see.
For me,
the most important thing about a decision
is that once you make it, it's irrevocable.
You can't take it back.
It's a decision.
If you're sober on Wednesday
and think you should get drunk on Monday
and you're not solid on anything,
then what happens is
is that every single day of your life you get up,
you've got to make that decision again.
Which means you didn't make it last time.
I'm going to tell you the choices
you'll have after you come here
are legion.
You'll have lots of choices.
Which group to go to,
how many meetings you want to do a week,
blah, blah, blah.
But if,
if you make a decision
to turn your life and your will
over to the care of a gorilla
or a god of your own understanding,
that is something that you do
and you can't take back.
Once you do that, you're here.
And the days will turn into years
and the years into decades
and someday we'll be sitting there
with 48 years of sobriety
loved by a bunch of people in a room
just because we came to understand
that we just don't have that decision to take back.
And I did that.
I turned it over as best as I knew how.
Now,
anybody in here
realize that
the people in Alcoholics Anonymous,
in those days,
they used to swear and smoke.
And I mean,
I came in here
a complete pig,
but I got so spiritual so fast
I was of no earthly good.
I mean,
I really got spiritual.
I went to the church.
I figured I might as well be leading the church
by the time I was there two or three weeks.
I knew exactly what they should be doing.
And in fact,
Dwayne used to phone me up
and tell me dirty jokes on the phone all the time.
And I used to have to forgive him.
He used to just tire me out.
Forgive Dwayne 20, 30 times a day.
Sunday morning,
I'd get up,
neighbors mowing the lawn.
I had to forgive him.
Oh God,
I was busy.
Just self-righteous,
you know.
And it was interesting.
One night,
he took me out in the car
and he played me this tape
and it was a guy named Nestor Pister.
It was a filthy comedy routine.
And I said to Dwayne,
you know,
I don't have to listen to that crap.
And I guess old Dwayne had had enough.
He flipped.
And he turned the car into the curb
and he just about smashed the tires
off the front of the thing.
He said,
you know,
let me tell you something,
Marty,
and you just never forget this
as long as you live.
He said,
I have more spiritual,
spirituality in my ass
than you have
in your entire body.
So being the spiritual giant I was,
I said to him,
how do you know that?
And he said,
it's easy,
Marty,
because the God I understand
is a God of peace
and a God of serenity
and your God is madness
and having to convince everybody
that your way is the only way.
And you know what,
Marty,
you're out.
Tonight's your night.
You're off the hook.
And he kicked me out of alcoholics.
Anonymous.
I hadn't been around long enough
to know he couldn't kick me out of alcoholics.
I didn't know the only requirement
for membership
was a desire to stop drinking.
I thought it was a desire
to please Dwayne.
I had no earthly idea.
I think that was the longest walk
I ever took in my life.
Kicked out of alcoholics.
Anonymous.
You know,
I was expecting something bigger
for myself
than getting kicked out
of alcoholics.
Anonymous.
I didn't think it was
that good a place anyway.
You know,
I phoned my mother
and I said I joined
alcoholics.
Anonymous.
And she said,
oh really,
what will you do next
to humiliate this family?
Now I've got to phone her
and tell her I've been kicked out.
Hello?
Oh, God.
So I decided that I
got to go back to the church
and it was,
you know,
see,
God's in church.
God's in AA.
God's in you.
That's the interesting thing.
It says in the book
that the basic idea of God
is deep within every
man, woman, and child
that it's an inside job.
God's been with us
all along.
You can't escape from
or it's the living,
the essence of who you are.
And so I'm out here
trying to find this
God thing
and all along
it's inside of me.
And all along
it's guiding me
if I could only listen.
But I had so many voices
and so many different things
in my head
I couldn't hear
because of the fear.
I couldn't see
and I couldn't hear.
And I was driven
to try and do the next thing
to solve the problem.
See?
That's the madness
that's sobriety.
That's where the pressure
builds to the place
where someone like me
has to take another drink.
And on that walk home
I, you know,
I made some decisions.
And I decided
I was going to become
a saint, you know.
I'd go to Africa
if they really needed me.
Next day at the church
the pastor called me
out in the hall.
I don't know
whether they planned this
reflecting on it right now
but the pastor said,
to me,
when you're in church,
he said,
and I'm at the pulpit
preaching,
who's the audience?
And I said,
well, we are.
The people.
And he said,
no.
The audience is God.
See, God is watching
as we're preaching
and like we're worshipping God.
You see,
I think you've got
a lot of this stuff
upside down and backwards.
And he said,
I'd like to really make
a suggestion to you.
He said,
I think you should return
to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I said,
I don't know.
I mean,
this sucks.
Even drinking,
I never got kicked out
of the church.
Well,
there was the time
when I was in grade six
we got booted out
for selling condoms.
But,
the reason we did was because we were filling them with water
and throwing them at cars
we were little kids
I didn't even know what they were
I just knew they really could whack a car
so I decided to go back to AA
now I don't know if any of you spiritual giants
have ever been kicked out of AA
and kicked out of a church
but when I went back to AA
there was an old boy
and oh god these old turtles are great
and I walked by him
his name was Jeff Charlebois
and I walked by Jeff and he said
there but for the grace of God goes God
holy smoke
I had another spiritual awakening
it was huge
and I remember going with my sponsor
and sitting in the car
and saying I've made such a fool of myself
and he was saying
Marty you acted like a bloody alcoholic
you were trying to get too much of something right away
that's how alcoholics are
we can use up a month's supply of anything in one hour
all you were trying to do
was just get more God than anybody else had
and he said
you know what
for that I can't even be mad at you
but let's start and do this thing
and let's recognize
that you're going to turn your life
and your will
the things that you think
the things that you want
over to a power greater than yourself
called Alcoholics Anonymous
let's start
and just for a refreshing difference
let's do the steps
well there was a novel concept
I had never ever thought
that I would ever do the steps
but I did a step
searching fearless moral inventory of myself
you know I didn't even know what a moral was
I didn't know what I was looking for
he said let me make a suggestion
write down everybody you're mad at
right now
I said let me make a suggestion
I'll write down the one person
I'm not mad at
it would be quicker
you know I was
to learn later that resentments
cut you off from the sunlight of the spirit
and when you're cut off from the sunlight of the spirit
insanity returns
and when insanity returns
people like me drink
and when people like me drink
we die
and therefore these
madness
these resentments
these reoccurring bad feelings of mine
actually did have the power
to kill me
and I had to say to myself
for once and forever
you know what this isn't working
why am I hanging on to this
and it came clear to me
over a period of a couple of years
what they meant when they said
some of us try to hold on to our old ideas
so many of my old ideas
are about who I'm blaming for whatever
so many of my old ideas
are related to the fact
that powerless people
blame other people
and when you're powerless over alcohol
I spent more of my time
trying to figure out
who it was that was doing it to me
instead of looking in the mirror
and seeing the enemy
and so when they stand squarely
in front of that searchlight
and I start to sweep that across my life
I say oh my god
in almost every instance
I either placed myself in the position
to hurt somebody
or I actually went out to hurt somebody
every single time
all of these people are as much
involved as victims
in this damn thing as I am
I am not a victim
I'm an assassin
I'm a hitman
I'm an undercover agent
I'm a liar
I'm a cheat
I'm selfish and self-centered
Bob C. used to tell me
Marty it's 7 o'clock
go home and get in the chair
and read page 62
and I'd go home and I'd open the book
and I'd say why do they make me read this
driven by a hundred forms of fear
selfishness, self-centeredness
and self-delusion
we step on the toes of our fellows
and they retaliate
seemingly without provocation
but we invariably find
it was us
oh man
and so I started to look at my life
with a new pair of glasses
as our friend says in his book
a new pair of glasses
that said that
geez you know
I am not going to be
powerless over my life
forever
that I can bring some management
into my life
that's going to allow me to live
as sanely as I choose to live
I can have the things in my life I choose
and what happened to me
was that I was not
was that I replaced a bunch of old ideas
in the autopilot section of my head
with some new ideas that you guys had
and were clearly working
and after a period of time
without even thinking
I started to say do and be the things
that I wanted to say do and be
it was amazing
I went through a complete transformation
I sat with a man and I admitted to him openly
the nature of my wrongs
I said to him I've done these things
and you know it's an amazing thing
it says in the book
we can do this fifth step with our sponsors
we can do it with people we love
we can do it with people we love
we can do it with people we love
we can do it with people we love
we can do it with people we love
I've done a number of them as a sponsor
and here's what I've learned
every single person in this room's
fifth step will sound astoundingly similar
you would be amazed at how unoriginal you are
in your own filth
you would be absolutely amazed
to learn how easy it is
to fall asleep when somebody's laying
their whole damn life out at your feet
because it is
same thing over and over
drunks are the ones
who are the ones who are the ones
who are the ones who are the ones
who are the ones who are the ones
drunks are deeply attached people
highly sensitive spiritual people
every single thing that you've done
is directed at destroying that spirit center
all you've ever done in terms of demoralizing yourself
is try to humiliate yourself at a level
where you can no longer stand it
and you can scream for help
that's all you've been busy doing
so when you dump that trash in the fifth step
one of the most miraculous things that happens
to a person like me
is that I do become
for a period of time
entirely ready
to have God remove these defects
and to have God remove these defects
and I've been in countless meetings
all over the world
and I hear people talk about the fact
that you know God will not remove your defects
I want to tell you
stand here as a witness
that a number of defects I had when I got here
I can't even remember
and that just recently
February the 6th of 1999
I had a defect of character removed
that I have had for 35 years
25 years
almost 23 years
sober
praying constantly
that God would remove this thing from me
and it just wouldn't go
and it wouldn't go
and on February the 6th
I woke up
and I knew it was gone
I can't explain to you how that works
all I know is
is that if we keep coming
if we keep doing the work
if we keep staying willing
entirely ready
and humbly
which just simply means
that I understand
I cannot fix it
I cannot understand it
and correct it
I am not going to have
some human power
reach down and go
oh there
you don't have that anymore
it doesn't work like that
for people like me
I need to have this power within myself
get to a place
where I have either had enough humiliation
as Father Eddie said
alcoholics may never get into heaven
forwards
they may come marching in on their knees
but realize that when you are there long enough
and you are sincere enough
at some point
the power will remove that thing
when it stands in the way
of your being of maximum use
to yourself
to your fellows
and so I don't even know
how to begin to thank God
that that stupid nonsense
has gone out of my life
it's gone
so I believe that you can have things removed
I believe that some people gain humility
through a series of humiliations
you know I was one of those people
in Alcoholics Anonymous
that had such an ego
that they had to deflate me
at really great depth
I know some of you are thinking
it's not gone yet
it's not
and shame on you for judging me
I remember
telephone rang one night
and it was my sponsor
and he said
oh you got to come to Swift Current
and hear this speaker
man this guy is an authority on humility
and I said
well I don't think I can go
I'm busy
and he said
no no no
you got to go
Marty he said
one day you're going to be
a world caliber speaker
you know that don't you
and I said oh yeah
and he said
well you know
you got to get this
humility thing nailed
and I said
so this guy can
he said
you can't miss this guy
so I cancelled
whatever it was I had
we went down to this place
500 people
500 people
500 people in the room
man
it was incredible
electricity in the room
they introduced the speaker
it was me
I mean the blood
just came out of my face
I couldn't
like
what are you talking
so anyway
I went to the front of the room
and I said
I would just like to listen tonight
thank you very much
you know
it was like
it was
oh it was humiliating
but you see
he was trying to deflate me
and when we got in the car
I said I get it
okay
I get it
I'm not going to be a speaker
okay
he said
where the hell
did you ever get that idea
you're going to speak
he said
you're speaking next weekend
I said no I'm not
she said
yeah you are
I said Dwayne
I got up there
I didn't have a thing to say
he said
I will give you something
to say
we'll practice your talk
seven hours in the car
we rehearsed my talk
Sunday morning
comes to introduce the speaker
it was him
that's it
that's deflation
that's deflation
at great depth
humiliation is what you get
when you don't have humility
I've had more humiliation
sober than I ever had drunk
I can't remember
a lot of the stuff
I don't know about your God
but my God used to just
wake me up for the bad parts
you know
I mean if I fluked up
and landed sleeping
with Marilyn Monroe
I wouldn't remember it
but I'll tell you what
pee in a fishbowl
I'm awake for the whole trip
you know what I'm saying
in the morning
oh man did I do that
so
humiliation
is more to do
I used to say
in my home group
you know
I've got a God shaped hole
inside of me
there's nothing
will fill the hole
except God
you can put liquor in it
cocaine
wacky
it doesn't matter
what you put in the hole
money
prestige
position
it will not fill
this God shaped hole
and humiliation
always comes for me
when I'm stuffing
something in there
that won't work
and it's like
getting caught
in front of your parents
stealing
it's like
it's in front of this
this deep sense
of who and what you really are
this horrible
realization
sneaks up to you
oh my God
I'm doing that
in front of
him
and
that kind of humiliation
for me is usually inside
I don't get
I'm not a person
that gets red in the face
but I've gone out of these rooms
a hundred times
got in the car and said
oh
why do you do that?
that stuff
I don't want to be like that anymore
and I'd say to God
as I understand it
humbly
remove these defects of character
that drive me to be like that
and what I found out
in that searching moral inventory
was there was not a great number
of defects of character
that I'm selfish
I'm self-centered
I'm dishonest
and I'm fearful
that's just about all
that's wrong with me
and when I get really fearful
I do things
to try and not be fearful
sometimes I get aggressive
with other people
and I hurt them
when I'm being selfish
I don't notice
what other people
needs are
about two years ago
I was driving down the road
and I thought
oh my God
if I'd only known this
when I was 18
and had hair
I'd have been a stud
well okay
imagine it
alright
can you imagine
gentlemen
if you had actually
thought about
what the woman
would have liked
at 18
they'd have thought
you were Romeo
or something
men are pigs
you know
we just did
what we wanted to do
where we wanted to go
blah blah blah
alcoholics
are just like that
when I start to wonder
what it is you need
and I start to try
to provide that thing
for you
the one thing I want
more than anything else
in the world
that selfishness
and self-centeredness
can't bring me
comes to me
love
see that's the part
that fills the God-shaped hole
when that stuff
starts to come back to you
and seemingly
unrelated to the actions
you're taking
you're on the beam
that's when they say
you're doing the program
when you humbly ask God
to remove these
defects of character
and for just a period
of time in your head
you're clear
on what somebody else
might want
you're clear
on how to help
somebody else
and then you know
my experience is this
what we are like now
is that a bunch of things
have come to me
as the result
of reprogramming
these old patterns
you know
I stopped
I have no fear
of financial insecurity
by the way
that doesn't mean
you're going to get rich
or even have money
it just means
you won't be afraid
to be broke anymore
see from step 8 on
I go outside of my body
for the first time
up until now
all I've been doing
is working on me
and now I start to go
outside of that wreckage
and say
what could I
for the first time
in my life
start to put back
and this is where
the joy of the program
starts to come
this is the stuff
you hear the old timers
at the meeting
talk about
and you think
yeah yeah yeah
I don't think
I'll ever have that
you'll have that
the minute that you say
you want that
the minute that you say
I'm ready now
to make a list
of everyone I've harmed
I'm now ready
to make amends
wherever I possibly can
although I will never do that
if it's going to hurt them more
or hurt somebody else
I'm ready to go
and start to put back
into the world
the things that I started
to steal out of the world
I want to start to live
my own life
tall in my own eyes
I don't know if you know
what I'm talking about
when I say this
but I spent
the first half of my life
trying to impress
everybody else
that I was okay
I'm spending the last half
of my life
trying to impress
me
that I'm okay
doing the stuff
that does not come easily
for me like this talk
some of you look hot
and tired
and sick of listening to me
and I'd just as soon
sit down and shut up
so you could go home
but I know I've got
some other things
that I just want to say to you
and then I will stop
Alcoholics Anonymous
is about this concept
of seeking through prayer
which is just basically
talking even within yourself
prayer and meditation
which is more to do
with this concept
of getting quiet
prayer
people say that
it's talking
and listening to God
that's okay
but I don't know
sometimes I have to
really work
to get the noise
in my head
down to a level
where if God said anything
I'd hear him
I was in Hawaii
one time
to give an AA talk
I was telling Lenny
this earlier in the day
and I was standing
and the sun
was going down
and all of a sudden
I felt so small
and so inadequate
and so insufficient
to go and give that talk
you know
I started thinking
why would they invite me
I don't know
I'm an idiot
I don't know anything
what the hell
am I going to say
to these people
because you know
the alcoholic
wants to have a reputation
but deep down inside
basically understands
he doesn't deserve it
that's what I had done
as I developed
this outside character
but inside
I had not won
my own approval
and I heard a voice
in my head
as clear as
you can hear me right now
it was my own voice
and the voice said
just tell them
to believe
their own miracles
and I thought
good talk
thanks for sharing
like
the hell
do I talk
for the rest of the talk
so
I go to this meeting
and I deliver
a very mediocre
talk
just a talk
and I say
oh by the way
God told me something
to tell you
a couple of the guys
in the front
yeah
very interesting
I said
God told me
to tell you guys
you got to learn
to believe
your own miracles
thank you
and I sat down
and the people
came up
as they do
at Alcoholics Anonymous
and some of them
listened to you
to learn
others listened to you
to love you
back to health
and they were
hugging me
and telling me
to keep coming back
and this guy
came up
and he said
you know
I've been drunk
off and on
for 11 years
11 years
I haven't been able
to get this thing
and he said
I will never drink again
and I said
because of my talking
he said no
because
when you said
that thing
about the miracles
he said
I had almost
like a screen
go across my eyes
of all of the miracles
that have happened
in my life
I've never seen
them before
I've never
believed them before
and I just
intuitively know
I'm going to be okay
and I'm going to be okay
and he left
and I thought
man oh man
they probably spent
three or four thousand dollars
getting me here
to talk to one guy
if there's only one person
in this room tonight
that heard what I'm trying
to say here tonight
I had a good night
because
it works like that
if you don't like me
that's no big deal
there is some speaker
somewhere you are
going to like
because
that will always happen
sometimes you have to
go through a whole pile
of just listening
until it's your turn
and then one night
somebody will sing
that music
that you can hear
right to your
interior soul
you will have had
a spiritual awakening
and as the result
of that
you will take
this new attitude
in life
where you start
to understand
that it's more important
to give than it is
to get
to understand
than to be understood
to love
rather than
to get love
you come to understand
that we are actually
catapulted
as Bill says
into a fourth
dimension of living
and this only comes
one way of which I know
and that's to do
the steps
the steps are the only
thing that will take
this noisy receiver
I call a mind
this hormone
pump called a brain
and get it onto
one frequency
so that just
for a short
period of time
I can hear
something with clarity
that I can actually
understand
at a level
that's so deep
I start to get results
seeing results
are what it's all about
did you guys ever hear
the story about
the Portland
alcoholic cab driver
that had the preacher
in the back
and had the accident
they were both
went to heaven
and of course
they take the
preacher
off first
and they put him
in this little place
it's just a little place
little white fence around
this cab driver
the cab driver
goes away
and the man
and on
and the
and the
gets
gets
gets
gets
the crowd
out of the front of the
crowd
out of the crowd
crowd
this is
this is
the mistake
I'm the
preacher
in the church
he said
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
he's all
drunk
drunk
drunk
drunk
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
and everybody
was praying
laughing
so
20 years ago
3 years ago
3 years ago
I went to a place
I went to a place
I didn't want to go
the person
didn't like to live
to live
like
there's
there's
there's
I couldn't
I couldn't
I couldn't
I couldn't
I couldn't
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching.