Second Surrender and the Obsession That Was Finally Lifted – Glenn J.

I would now like to introduce our speaker for tonight, Glenn Jay from San Leandro, California. Welcome, Glenn. Hi, everybody. My name is Glenn and I'm an alcoholic. First, I'd like to welcome Jason and Ron. Believe it or not, most of the people that are attending tonight know how you're feeling right now. And they also know that you haven't been having a real good year so far because that's the way it was for us. I'd also like to thank Thaddeus for asking me to do this. I consider it a real privilege. And since we're going to be talking about a deadly illness, a killer malady, for the next several minutes, I thought that we'd start off kind of on a lighter note. I've got a couple of questions that I'd like to ask the people in the audience tonight. First, how many people here have driven drunk more than 100 times? Next, how may people, because of their drinking, have had to spend some time in the back of a police car? And then finally, my last question is, how many people, because of their drinking, have ended up peeing in a closet? Well, I can't admit to that. And if you did, I'm a little embarrassed for you. I will tell you, though, not to feel bad, because when I was in rehab, I had some trouble getting to the bathroom, and I'm here to tell you it didn't involve urine. uh and and but that's exactly what i needed um it wasn't so much that i needed to stop drinking although that was an important goal of mine at that time what i really needed was ego deflation ego defamation at death was absolutely critical to my early recovery and and right now okay if i get to the point where I think I've got this, or I know what I'm doing, or I'm an expert, or an authority, I'm back to being doomed. And I don't want to be doomed. Before it slips my mind, I want to let you know that I have a sobriety date. It's July 24th, 2008. I have sponsor, and I have home group. Now, with that sobriety date, I've got 11 years of sobriete and I still consider myself a newcomer. And I'll tell you why. I've learned a lot. In fact, a big part of the reason that I'm sober today is because old timers took an interest in me. And at about the two-year point, I was talking to an old timer And he told me, Glenn, you need to consider yourself a newcomer until you've got 10 years. And that served me well for a long, long time. But in about eight years, I walked up to him and I said, okay, I'm closing in on 10 years, am I still a newcommer? And he says, consider yourself an newcomer till you've gotten 15 years. And then I started to see the pattern. If I consider myself new, if I approach my recovery in a childlike manner for as long as I can, I'm going to be much better off than if I decide that I've got this. I need to tell you that I am a real alcoholic. And also, even maybe more important, I'm a recovered alcoholic. And those things are significantly different. First, I'm going to talk a little bit about what it means to me to be a real alcoholic. It means that I've got three particular qualities that aren't working to my advantage. First, there's something wrong with my body, okay? The literature calls it an allergy, an allergy of the body. And when I was new, that made absolutely no sense to me because I need to tell you, I was drinking over a quart of hard liquor a day, and when somebody says allergy, I think to myself, hold it. I'm not sneezing. I'm nicht itching. I don't have any hives. What is this allergy thing? And then the old-timers explained to me, actually, I believe it was my sponsor who explained this one. He said an allergy is an abnormal reaction. I have an abnormal reactio n to alcohol that 90% of the population doesn't have. I'll give you an example. My ex-wife, when she would take a couple of drinks, she would say things like, ooh, I'm starting to feel it. I think I'm going to stop. Well, when I take a couple of drinks, I say, ooh, I'm starting to feel it and I'm just getting going. It's time to go downtown. As a matter of fact, let's go over to the city. Better yet, maybe we ought to go to Lake Tahoe and if I've had a chance to think about it, I want to suggest we go to Mexico and it doesn't work to my advantage. I've got an abnormal reaction which means once I start, I can't guarantee my behavior. I used to think that my abnormal reaction was once I started, I couldn't stop. But that isn't true. Upon further examination, sometimes I'd have two, three, four, five, six drinks and I'd stop. It was always a wild card. You never knew if I was going to be cool or if I was going to be not cool, and so since I can't guarantee my behavior, that makes one part of me a real alcoholic. Second, I have what's called an obsession of the mind, and an obsession, again, had to be explained to me, but obsession is an idea that overpowers all other ideas, and my obsession is I want to drink. Believe it or not, even when I don't want to drink, I end up drinking. And I can't control that. Third, the last and most difficult part of being a real alcoholic, at least for me to understand, is I have a spiritual malady. I've got a spiritual problem. And again, I had to look it up in a dictionary. What's spiritual mean? It means I didn't have a relationship with a higher power. And I could not see the relationship between drinking and a higher power, but it was Chuck Chamberlain who explained it best. He had a little diagram that he would show at his retreats, and the little diagram had a stick man, which represented me, a big wall near the stick man. And on the other side of the wall was the world, all the people in the world and a higher power, basically God. And it turned out that my enormous ego was so big that it erected that wall between the world its people and God and I was completely isolated and that had to get fixed. And as a recovered alcoholic, two of those three things have been eliminated. And I consider that a miracle because establishing a relationship with a higher power that resulted in a spiritual awakening, I could not possibly see how that had anything to do with drinking at all. But I'm here to tell you that obsession of the mind, the one that told me I want to drink, that I did that day after day after week after year after year after year. I was drinking, I would say, roughly 363 days a year for several years, and that's not easy to do because at the end of my drinking, I was putting away over a quart of hard liquor every day, and that is not easy to do. Some of us might have been able to do it once or twice, but to do it and then the next morning wake up with that pounding headache, with that mouth that felt like it was full of mud and it was being stomped on back in World War II by the entire German army. My stomach would hurt, but I had a plan. When I woke up with a hangover like that, I I would immediately pound four ibuprofen and drink as much, at least two of these. And I knew that relief was coming. But because of that obsession with the mind, which I no longer have, I would do it again and again and it was, you know, I think about it today And it appears what I was doing was committing a slow suicide, because I was good with being an alcoholic. I was just going to drink myself until the end, keep drinking, but you and I have both seen people where that's happened. And it's a long, slow, lonely process. It is painful. And by the time the death comes, the alcoholic wished he was gone a long time before that. And bonus fact, anybody that I ever cared about, anybody than I ever thought the approval of, anybody that ever loved, by the times that death would have come, they would have hated me and they would've been glad I was gone. Anyway, I'm not here to tell you that I'm sober as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA had a big part in it, but what really happened was that I established a relationship with God. I had a spiritual awakening. You could call that a psychic change or the old timers used to say, Glenn, you need to change your thinking. And that is the result of me doing the steps, and I don't want to drink anymore. That obsession was lifted for me years ago, and it's been gone for a long time. And that's why I keep doing the things that I do, so it doesn't come back. I need to rely on other people. I believe God works through other people, and so I can't isolate like I used to. I have to, and I was particularly pleased to see a couple of members from my group here tonight because if I try and do this alone, I'm doomed. Anyway, I need to get around to telling you what I was like, what happened and what I'm like today. Now, I grew up in San Leandro. I've spent most of my life here. My parents were great. I cannot blame any of my drinking at all on them. They were hardworking. They were moral. They tried to show me the right way to live. I'll tell you the truth. I wanted to be a good little boy. I wanted to I tried real hard but sometimes I felt like I just didn't fit in I can't explain why if I had the vocabulary that I have now I would have explained it like this I was restless I was irritable and I was discontented and I waited absolutely as long as I could before I took that first drink, and so at nine years old, that's exactly what I did. And I can explain to you with two reasons why I did that. My parents, who didn't drink very much, they would have Christmas parties, and I remember three of my four uncles, who were alcoholics, they would be lined up along the kitchen wall, sitting on the floor, singing, laughing, carrying on, and they were drinking. And I thought, hey, those guys are having fun. I need to look into this. And, I'll tell you one other aspect, too. It kind of points to one of my character defects. I knew that taking that first drink was wrong, but I did it anyway. I was curious, and I was defiant. So, I picked a Saturday morning. I knew I couldn't go to school under the influence, And I went out to the kitchen where my dad kept the liquor in the cabinet above the stove, and I got a tall water glass. It was this big. And I filled it with a little bit from each bottle, brandy, gin, vodka, whiskey, scotch, and there were probably a couple other ones. And I took that back to my bedroom. I got in the closet because I didn't want my dad – my dad would catch me at everything that I did wrong. So I got into the closet, andI drank as much as I could. And I'm here to tell you, I don't drink for the taste, all right? From the get, I was drinking for the effect. And I drank as much as I could slowly because I felt like throwing up. And I can remember this. This is 50 years ago. I remember this going more than 50 years, actually, going to the bathroom, which is in the next room, rinsing out the glass, going into the kitchen, putting the glass back so I wouldn't get caught, and I blacked out. And that's not a good sign for an alcoholic. All right, so I didn't drink again for a long time. But I'll tell you, I have a lot of stuff now. And I give away a whole bunch of stuff to find out what happened when I blacked out when I took that first drink. So I didn'T drink for a Long Time after that it was several years. But I do want to tell you one other story. So you get to know how I operate. Okay, my elementary school was about two blocks away from the house and I was 10 or 11 years old and I was coming home and I looked over on one of my neighbor's lawn and I saw a brown paper bag and I could tell there was something in that bag. Okay, and I walked over, I picked it up, I looked inside and I started running. I started runnin' towards my house because I knew if I could get that bag full of money under my bed there might be some kind of hope that I would keep it but remember I told you I tried to grow up trying to be a good little boy okay so soon I told my parents about this bag it it had about a hundred dollars in it and when you go back into the 1960s that's a lot of dough okay and my parents did the right thing somehow they found the kid who was selling statues door-to-door who lost the bag of money, and the right thing to do is give it back to them. Right? And I ended up getting a $5 reward. And that's when my character defects started to grow. Because I thought, wait a minute. I found it. It's under my bed. It'S a hundred bucks. I deserve at least half of it. And I didn't get half. And I was pissed. And, I vowed Right then, that if I could find something that nobody was looking at, I was going to take it. So my dishonesty grew from there. And I also started to develop selfishness and self-centeredness. And if you've read the literature, you know that that's the root of my trouble. Okay? It's not drinking. It's selfishness. Self-centered. But I didn't know that. And so I also found out that resentment and fear and pride and lust and envy and jealousy and a whole bunch of other things drove me, but I couldn't see it. For example, most of the things I've done throughout my life were done for fear, okay? I've been reading the big book for the past 10 years, so when I do this kind of stuff, When I stand up in front of other people, I don't look like a complete idiot and have people laugh at me. That's part of the reason that drives me, fear. And these character defects, they kind of grew and grew and drew over the years. Anyway, I got into high school, and I think I was about a sophomore. And one of my friends said, hey, let's go to the drive-in movies. They're right down here in Union City, and the way they rolled is they would charge by the car loan. So occasionally, maybe once a month, maybe not even that often, we'd get a whole bunch of teenagers together in one car. Some of them would go in the trunk, but since my ego was growing, I never ended up at the trunk, okay? So we did it into the drive-in movies, and I can't even explain how, but everybody would have a bottle of Boone's Farm strawberry wine. And I'm here to tell you, once again, I was not drinking for taste. I was drinking for the effect. I know there's one member here who happened to like Boone's Farm strawberry wine. But if you ask me, it tastes like gasoline. Okay? I haven't had it in over 50 years, and I still remember that taste. I'm absolutely convinced it's not made with grapes. But it didn't make any difference because I was drinkin' for the effects, right? And it's a drive-in movie. Think about it. A bunch of teenagers. Nobody's watching the movie. Everybody's got their radio tuned to the same FM station. We were all laughing. There was high school girls. It was a good time. And the worst thing that ever happened, there was two worst things that ever happen to me. When I would come home, sometimes I would get in bed and the ceiling would be spinning around, okay? Small price to pay. And I can remember one time having the dry heat, okay, but that stuck in my mind too and did not work to my advantage, and I decided at that point, I'm never going through that again. And so that would kind of throttle my drinking. I knew that I had to have some kind of foundation in my stomach, And then if I hammered down that bottle of Boone's Farm, then I was going to end up throwing up again. And it was no fun. And so I did not do that. At the drive-in movies, we had a great time, okay? There were no DUIs back then. There were not even any fistfights. And certainly nobody got killed. All those things were going to happen later in my training career. But at the drive‑in movies it was all good. And I learned a formula. It was a recipe that did not work to my advantage. It was drinking equals fun plus no consequences. And I can't tell you if it was the liquor, but throughout the rest of my life, I would come upon statements like that, and they're lies, straight-up lies. Drinking does not equal fun plus low consequences, but somehow, I don't know, maybe I'm delusional. Maybe that's another one of my character defects. But that's the recipe that got stuck up in here, okay? And I'll tell you, I was an average student until then, but I went to college. I started at Cal State Hayward. It's now Cal State East Bay. And I got involved in smoking marijuana. And then I transferred to the University of California in Berkeley, okay, and I had a routine, all right? I would drive to school in the morning. I could park my car right next to where my classes were for a quarter. I'm going to say that again, park all day in Berkeley for a quarter and I would go to class in the morning, in the early afternoon, come home and do my homework, have dinner with my mom, my dad, and my brother and by the way, I need to point out, my brother's the reason that I got into recovery, I wouldn't have done it without him. And so in that sense, I owe my life to him. But anyway, continuing, we'd have dinner and then I go over my friend's house from high school and we play cards. We play poker for money and we'd be drinking and smoking and having a good time. And I liked it, okay? You need to know something else about me. Without divine intervention, How I feel becomes the most important thing in the world, and I will do anything to further that goal, anything. And that's why I like to get drunk all the time. I couldn't deal with any disappointment or any depression or even resentment. Didn't want to deal with it. I just went to the bottle, and for a long, long, one long time, it fixed it. Anyway, I persevered at Cal and I got an engineering degree and a degree in math. And I was recruited by Bechtel in San Francisco, at that time, largest construction company in the world. And yeah, I was working in San Franciso. Sometimes I'd go to job sites. Within five years, I had a corner office and I had it done. A dozen engineers working for me. But even that, yeah, I had arrived. Every month or so, we would go down to the bar in the bottom of the high-rise building, and we would just get wasted. I mean, that was not normal drinking. I mean I could remember driving across the Bay Bridge with one eye open on – I'm going to go with dozens of occasions. It was a regular thing. And through the years, my drinking just got worse and worse and worst until at the end, I got to tell you, I retired early. I retired when I was 49 years old because I took advantage of 401K plans and I was careful with the money and we had a budget and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that didn't work to my advantage either because now I had more time to drink. And where I was still working, I'd be drinking about a half a quart every day. But after I retired, it grew to a quarter day. And I had liquor stashed all throughout the house. I had absolutely no friends, but no girlfriend. I was living here at home with my mother and the rest of my family was afraid of me. And I was completely okay with that because of the extreme amount of self-centeredness that I had. My self-involvement, my self-absorption, myself, even self-pity. I would take advantage of self- pity to drink more and just keep doing it and doing it and doing It. Anyway, now I need to tell you what happened. Okay, so I was, I'm a certified barbecue judge, okay? I know I'm changing subjects quick, but I was at a barbecue contest and I got an email from a lawyer who said my mom wanted to meet with me to discuss my situation. And I thought, hey, wait a minute, I might be a drunk, but this don't look too good. So I decided my plan was I'll go to my personal physician and I'll talk this over with him and see what he has to say. And he said, yeah, Glenn, I think you ought to go to this meeting with the lawyer and your mother. And it turns out my brother went too. But my next idea was, well, I'll go to my personal attorney. I go to him. I pay him money to look out for my own best interest, right? He's going to say, run. No. He said the same thing the doctor said. Maybe you ought to go. And so reluctantly, I got wasted one more time and I went. And of course they wanted me to go into rehab. They have restraining orders. My mom and my brother, my close, that's the only close family I have. Oh, I need to explain. I got a lot of cousins, okay? At least 30 cousins, and a whole bunch of them are in the program, but I wasn't that close to them. The only people I really even cared about at all was my mother and my brother. And I've got to tell you, I was this close to walking away from them, you know, because I didn't want to go to rehab. I had a rough idea that that big book was not going to be good news. And when my brother drove me to rehab, I remember they asked me a few questions. It's kind of like an intake interview, and I can remember walking away from that intake interview guy, and even though I was walking, I can't show you, my hand was up against the wall. I was using the wall for support, and at the same time, I'm asking him, hey, do you think I could stay the weekend and maybe just detox and then bail? And he said no. And it's a good thing because most detoxes, I don't know if you're aware, but a typical detox takes between three days and seven days. All right? And when I got to the two-week point and I was not detoxed, I found out years later, the medical staff was having a meeting every day saying, did Glenn clear, did Glen clear, did Glen Clear? And Glen didn't clear until week three. Okay? And that's extreme. And what they were thinking is, Glenn's got a wet brain. Okay? But some people don't detox. Some people drink themselves into the point of permanent mental deficiency. Brain damage. I was that close. They didn't think I was going to detox. But I did. And during that time, I was no picnic to be around. I had to make amends to counselors and to other people. i have to explain the the new people they weren't like us they weren'T real nice to other people they gave me a hard time and i'll admit i was not exactly in a people person mood and there was people i wanted to hurt in in i went to mpi which is a hospital in oakland it's a 30-day rehab place and one of the people one ofthe new folks he had uh i think a couple days less than me um we were close to duking it out and he started calling me game over okay and i was already pissed i was harboring resentment and i got people with less than 30 days calling me game oh and i almost lost it i mean they couldn't have 51 50 me so quick that well anyway that nickname has stuck with me because i gotta tell you there's people in my home group there was a guy, I went to a sober house. Okay. And the guy who managed the sober house, he walked up to me last year, 10 years of sobriety. And he goes, Glenn, I really didn't think you were going to make it. And it wasn't like I was doing anything odd. Okay, I wasn't doing a sideshow in my sports car in the parking lot. I was just walking into our home group. Dude walks up to me and said, Glenn, we didn't think you were going to make it. And that was 10 years ago. Anyway, my great idea in rehab was I'm going to get all the literature, Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, As Bill Sees It, A Comes of Age, Big Book, 12 and 12, a pamphlet. Yeah, bring them. I'm gonna get as much self-knowledge as possible. Unfortunately, I hadn't read up to the point in the big book where it says self-knownledge doesn't help. And the people, the professionals at the rehab, MPI, told me, Glenn, put down that literature, including the big book. And they said, what you need to do is go to a sober house and get a sponsor. Go to a sobre house and getting a sponsor I must have heard that 100 times. Go to it sober house, and get us a sponsor and by that time I realized things are either going to get better or they're gonna get worse. And so I went to a sober house. And the sober house was no picnic, all right? But during the first week I was out, I got a home group and I got a sponsor, okay? And I'm here to tell you, I had a lot of comments, questions, and suggestions while I was going through the 12 steps. It's amazing that my first sponsor didn't fire me because I would have told myself to shut up. And I am talking on the first step. And me and him lasted all the way, well, shoot, We've worked through the traditions, too. Well, almost all of them. And anyway, that's when I found my home group. And that's been absolutely vital, particularly during these pandemic times. Because those 100 guys, it's a men's group, men's answer group, Tuesday, 7 p.m., those guys know me, all right? And so if I start acting in an off manner, and believe me, that's more common than you'd come to believe based on what I'm wearing. They're going to call me out, okay? And because we haven't had these meetings and because there hasn't been hospital institution stuff, which I rely on heavily, heavily, I've had to call other alcoholics and other alcoholists have called me. And remember, I told you, I believe that God works through other people. And that's how I've maintained my spiritual awakening, the whole reason that I'm sober. It's because I know and I talk to other alcoholics on a regular basis. And I've got to tell you something. Okay, I'm not an authority. And if I say anything that your sponsor disagrees with, your sponsor is right. But I hear things in meetings like, just don't drink and go to meetings. Well, I'm here to tell you, if I knew how to not drink, not only would I not need to go to meetings, I wouldn't need a sponsor. I wouldn'T need a home group. I wouldn'T need to be doing this. I wouldn''t be needing to do hospitals and institutions work because I just not drink. But that's not within my capability. I got to tell You one other thing too. I moved in at around two years of sobriety to a house. I rented a room from a couple who had been married for, jeez, 30 years. And both of them had 30 years of sobriety, okay? And even with my UC Berkeley double major working for Bechtel, and by the way, I didn't tell you, but I worked several years on the space shuttle too. These guys had to give me remedial AA. It was, Glenn, just follow us around, okay. And so they took me to meetings, and I saw them working with other people, and I see them being of other service, and that is what got through to me, okay? I owe my life to those people too. They've moved away since then, but I talk to them on the phone every other week at a minimum. And if I got a big problem, I call folks like that up because if I roll with my ideas, I'm doomed. Yeah, yeah, I can't manage my own life. I like the way in the back of how it works when it says we're alcoholic and cannot manage my own life. I can't manage my old life sober. I need help, not only from God, but from people like you and from the new people I work with. I need health from them too. And I'm completely okay with that because I've got a good life now. I've Got a Life That I'm Happy With. And that's the whole reason I came to speak tonight, is if you're fairly new, okay, there's hope. There's help in Alcoholics Anonymous. It works. I personally know thousands of people that this has worked for. I know them. I see them on a regular basis. And in AA, if you look at the statistics, there are 2 million people in AA. Okay, and if this thing didn't work, there wouldn't be 2 million people in AA. Sure, it would be better if there was 10 million because we're only scratching the surface. But anyway, I followed these old-timers around, and I got comfortable with the AA design for living because I thought do the steps one time and you're done. And, you know, I got through step 12. I'm good to go, right? Exactly wrong. Once again, my ideas don't work. I have to adopt the design for living that works not only for me, but for you guys too. Okay? And through that home group, that's how I got to go to my first international convention in San Antonio. Two old-timers said, hey, we're going to the international convention. We're going in a pickup truck. You want to go? And I said, yeah. And we had a great time. I mean, we drove from – after my home group was over on a Tuesday night, we drove straight through all night and most of the next day to get to San Antonio. And we had just a great time. And you know what stands out there? What stands out here is I was able to help a couple of old-timers at that convention because I know San Antonio, I used to live there, I would go there often, and I told them, here's what I'd do if I were you. And they listened to the newcomer. They didn't go to the Alamo, because everybody that comes to Texas wants to go to the Alavo, and we got wiped out of the Alago. There's no good news at the Alabo. The Alamo sucks. It's just terrible. Go spend some time on the Riverwalk. Go to this barbecue place that's three blocks away. It's the best in the state. And they did that, and I was able to help them. And little by little by little, you know, I started working with new people. I started trying to help other people. I got used to it because I didn't get sober until I was 54 years old. OK, and this self-centeredness, these defects, selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear, they were deep. They were deep and I'm not here to tell you they're gone, but I'm doing a lot better. and it's damn near a miracle. Because remember, I was good with drinking myself to death. Okay, so I decide, hey, that first international convention was pretty good. Let's go to Atlanta. We spent two weeks in Atlanta, and one thing that I did there, I found out, I looked on Groupon because I'm kind of economical. Some of my friends call me cheap. But there was this zipline complex that I decided, okay, I'll take a day off. I'll go to this zipline thing, $250 at a ziplline. If you don't know, it's a wire rope that's often stretched across bodies of water or groups of trees. And I had just a great time. I really enjoyed that. And I took it to the next level because I've been to zip lines in several other states since then. There's a real good one at Lake Tahoe. When they opened up Lake Tahole, that one at the top of the gondola at Heavenly, that was close and it kicks ass. And I'll tell you something else too, okay? We go to a spiritual retreat every year, and I've be doing that for close to 10 years. It's in San Juan Bautista. And since I like doing these zip lines, there's no better place to skydive than in Monterey. Now, I know that's not for everybody. But for me, think about it. You're jumping out of an airplane at an altitude that no other parachute company does, 18,000 feet. That's up high. And you're looking at Big Sur, Monterey, Pismo Beach, and bonus, what they do in this real nice airplane. And I jumped in. They take you out over the ocean. So when you're Looking Out, and you're going to be scared if you ever do it. When you're Lookin' Out,and you're getting ready to jump, you're lookin' at water. You're not lookin't at land. And the wind takes you back in. And I've done that four different times. And I brought other people with me. And I been with them for their first time. And that's a riot. and I've got friends now, I've got hundreds of friends that I rely on. I've done a girlfriend we met about a year ago and she's an Al-Anon and I don't like admitting this but I used to make fun of Al-Anon okay? I used to make fun when I was a little kid and I didn't realize why we always made fun of everybody else. You want to know why? It's so I'll feel superior, so I feel better about myself, so my ego will be increased. And it's like, I don't know, there's a big relationship anyway. We get them on good. I'm learning that her program's a little bit different than mine, but we both rely on a higher power and we try and help other people. We use other principles of the program. Honesty, faith, hope. There's a bunch of them. And I don' t do it perfect, okay? But I'm here to tell you, I'm real fortunate that I'm able to do some of the things that I get to do. For example, Three years ago, I bought a sports car. It's a convertible. The reason I did that is that's the kind of car I learned to drive on. I learned in the 60s how to drive in an Austin Haley. But this car, I've decided to modify, and so it's got increased horsepower rates. I've got more horsepower than any Miata that's ever been sold production, okay? Okay, I've increased the exhaust so it goes faster. It's got racing suspension and no less than 50 other major modifications. I'm not talking about little tiny things. And I go to racetracks. Okay,I get to go to race tracks. And do you think I'd be at Laguna Seca if I was still drinking? I've been there three times. I've done Thunder Hill four times. I've been to AAA Auto Club going 135 miles an hour, and I've raced cars on Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And the way I roll, it's not NASCAR, okay? I pick tracks that have a lot of turns in them because that's what my car is good at, okay, on the straightaway. I can't keep up with BMWs and Corvettes, but in the corners, that's when I can pass them. And racing, if you're interested, it'S real simple. When you're on the street, itS put to the floor. okay and it's like made for alcoholics because there's no speed limit okay you're going flat out the last possible moment when you start to break and i mean break hard and then down ship and then turn don't do those at the same time if you try and break and turn at the sametime you're gonna spin and i've only done it once but that could be kind of dangerous so i i tend to avoid that And I love doing these things. I like working with newcomers, okay? I've worked with probably 30 different new people. I've taken some all the way through the steps. And believe it or not, some have even stayed sober. But you want to know why they don't? It's in the most ignored part of AA. It's In The Second Sentence Of How It Works. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. When I was in MPI and I saw that, you know what I thought? Okay, time to stop lying, time To stop stealing. And once again, I was exactly wrong. I had to be honest with myself about whether or not I crossed that invisible line into alcoholism. Because once I had, there's no more controlled drinking. And there's only two alternatives, total permanent abstinence or chronic alcoholism and all the penalties associated with it, namely jails, institutions, and death. And I had to be honest when it came to believing in a higher power. And when it became to an inventory, was I fearless and thorough? And was I honest with my sponsor when I did that fifth step, and who would I have harmed? Was that list complete, and did I do all the amends? Because I've got to tell you, I've seen people do all their amends but two, and there's a big difference, a huge difference, a life-threatening difference between the people who do it and those who leave somehow. And second, completely giving myself to this simple program. There's lots of people that believe that just going to meetings is going to do it. Well, that don't work for me, okay? It might work for some, and it's a good idea. I'm not saying eliminate meeting. I get to meet newcomers. I getto carry the message, and new people have a place to come. But if I didn't do these steps, if I didn't DO these steps—it's not thinking about the steps, it's not talking about the step, it's taking action. Only through action could I have that spiritual experience that resulted in the obsession to drink being lifted and that spiritual malady going away. I'm almost out of time. I'm kind of an old guy, okay? And I've been sober a long time. So if you're new, it might have been a little bit difficult to relate to some of the stuff I've said. But I've got a short summary. And if you don't mind, I'm going to give it to you. Welcome to an illness that will bring you to your knees. It will make you drink some more until you can't even breathe. There's an answer if you want it, but we're not going to plead. Just follow us to the solution. We got just what you need. Thank you and good night. Thank you, Glenn. Very good. I would like to thank our readers