Selfishness and Self-Centeredness as the Dead-End Meditation Requiring Constant Interruption – Terry R.
About This Speaker Tape
Father Terry R. shares his story at what appears to be a sober vacation event in Ixtapa, Mexico in 1993. A priest from Los Angeles, Terry grew up in Hawthorne, California surrounded by alcoholism — his father died in withdrawal in 1945, and his mother had three alcoholic brothers. He studied the disease obsessively as a child, read the Big Book two years before his first drink, and made a pledge not to drink until 21. When he finally drank, the obsession was instant and total. He describes wanting not just a drink but transcendence — to break through the clouds and see the face of the living Higher Power — and the depressing knowledge that every drunk had to end.
Ordained as a priest, Terry was assigned to South Central Los Angeles during the Watts Riots and was drinking a fifth of scotch a day by early 1967. He was fired and sent to aversion treatment, where warm salt water and nausea drugs were supposed to cure him. He went through that hospital five times before they asked him never to call back, then a sixth detox at Queen of Angels Hospital. During that sixth stay, something broke open — he realized he was the type who gets drunk no matter what, and no book, prayer, or resolution would change that. It was the First Step, though it did not feel like anything nice at the time.
Sent to a recovery house for priest alcoholics in Sterling, New Jersey, Terry began attending AA meetings daily with no expectation they would work. His first sponsor was Father Ralph Monk, a bald man with a red toupee from North Carolina who had gotten sober meeting Bill Wilson in New York in the late 1940s. The program surprised Terry — instead of pep talks about trying harder, people told him to relax into being exactly the far-gone, immature, self-obsessed alcoholic he was, and just show up. He describes his ongoing interior life as a profoundly self-centered meditation on how Terry is doing and how Terry rates, constantly requiring interruption by Higher Power, the program, and other alcoholics to pull him out of that dead-end street. With 20-plus years of sobriety, he remains deeply grateful for those interruptions.
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Full Transcript
My name is Mary Lee, and I'm an alcoholic, and I love to read how it works, from Chapter 5.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give...
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give...
My name is Mary Lee, and I'm an alcoholic, and I love to read how it works, from Chapter 5.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
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.
There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way.
They are naturally incapable of drafting and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
Their chances are less than average.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders,
but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like,
what happened, and what we are like now.
If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it,
then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these, we balk.
We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not.
With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.
Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas,
and the result is that we are not.
Our result was nil until we let go absolutely.
Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful.
Without health, it is too much for us, but there is one who has all power.
That one is God. May you find him now.
Half measures availed us nothing.
We stood at the turning point.
We asked his protection and care with complete abandon.
Here are the steps we took,
which are suggested as a program of recovery.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol,
that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to some of our shortcomings.
9. Made direct amends to some of our shortcomings.
such people wherever possible
10. Continued to pay personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Fought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God.
We understood him.
Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the fireworks that carry them out.
12. Having had a spiritual service with many people.
a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us explained, what an order, I can't go through with it.
Do not be discouraged.
No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.
We are not saints.
The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress.
We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after
make clear three pertinent ideas.
A, that we were alcoholics and could not manage our own lives.
B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
And C, that God could and would if he were sought.
The format of today's meeting.
Is that the leader qualifies for five minutes, followed by the main speaker.
As I said, my name is Doc, and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict.
By following this program, I've refrained from drinking for 20 years.
I've refrained from doing any other drugs for 15 years.
I am grateful for that.
It would be...
Very difficult to try to qualify in five minutes.
And actually, I've got a tattoo on my arm that can do it a whole lot faster
and a whole lot better than I can.
Because when I had that tattoo put on there in 1976, it read,
Born to Lose.
And that's what it was like for the first 49 years of my life.
And then the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous happened.
I finally surrendered.
And after one year of sobriety, I went down and I had that tattoo changed to one letter.
I had the S changed to a V.
And today, the tattoo reads, Born to Love.
And that's what it's like today.
Thank you.
That really doesn't mean a whole lot unless you know what it means to be born to lose.
Being born to lose, in case you don't know,
that means being eighth in line in a gangbang and falling in love.
Don't laugh.
It happened to me.
It happened to me.
No.
I attended my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1960.
I had this little drinking problem.
I'd had a little bit of a drug problem prior to that.
And when I was interning in 1953 in Massachusetts,
I got on Demerol and wound up in an insane asylum for trying to commit suicide
and got a six-month sentence to the federal narcotics prison in Lexington,
Kentucky.
Which I ran away from.
But when I came to AA in 1960, I didn't think I was an alcoholic
and I didn't think I was a drug addict and I didn't think I was anything else.
The only reason I went is because my wife told me I was either going to call AA
or a divorce lawyer.
And she didn't care which.
I wasn't quite ready to get divorced yet, so I went to AA.
And I liked what I saw there.
I didn't want to be a drug addict, and I didn't want to be a drug addict for you folks because you needed it.
I didn't.
I was a very successful doctor at that time, a veterinarian.
I owned my own animal hospital.
I was president of Men of the Church, my Sunday school class.
I taught Sunday school.
I was president of the Veterinary Association, Civitan, Neighborhood Civic League, and a
Boy Scout Master.
And I had it all together.
I just couldn't quit drinking.
So I hung around a while and I quit drinking.
But being a doctor, it was very easy and cheap and legal for me to get drugs.
And so I began to get off into that scene.
I remember at that first meeting in 1960 they told me that if I didn't quit, I was going to wind up going to jail.
I'd wind up on Skid Row.
And all that.
And all these things.
And I said, Oh, no, not me.
I'll quit before I get that bad.
Well, in 1971, I found myself on Skid Row.
I found myself sleeping in doorways and under bridges and in weed patches, eating out of
garbage cans, panhandling for my next drink, and robbing and stealing for my next fix.
In 1971, I got popped out of here in 1970.
I was a young man.
I was a young man.
I was starting out here in Graham, Texas.
My picture was on the front page of the Graham Daily News.
And the headlines on the front page said they had arrested the biggest drug dealer in the south.
I finally made it to the big time.
I heard a judge sentence me to 40 years in PDC as a result of that.
Later on, I was given a sentence.
Then I finished with legal 노래.
I was released.
was to hear another judge sentence me to TDC as a habitual criminal
because of my drug addiction.
But in 1979,
I can't even get my numbers straight here,
I finally made that surrender,
and I came crawling back.
I'd been bouncing in and out of AA for 17 years
and had never been able to get a handle on it.
But on November the 9th, 1977,
I got out of jail and I went back to AA one more time
and I crawled under the door
and I gave up and I quit fighting.
And as a result, everything's great.
Bullshit.
Things did get a lot better, you know.
Today I'm employed as an alcohol and drug counselor
at the Texas Department of Corrections Cofield Unit
and I get to give back what I got.
And I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.
I love the work.
And things have gotten a whole lot better for me.
You know, I went through five marriages
and lost them all because of the result of my addiction.
And right after I...
I got clean and sober.
I got into a relationship which was perfect.
She thought so.
I thought so.
Until last summer on a sober vacation cruise.
This last year has been the worst year in my life.
Just shortly before we went on that sober vacation cruise
with Guy and Mary Ann,
I'd been diagnosed as having leukemia.
They found out that I wasn't right
and they told me I had colon cancer
and that I wasn't right.
And then they found out that arthritis medicine
was just causing me to bleed inside.
And I got over that.
I went on that cruise
and as soon as I got back,
this perfect relationship ended.
And I thought the world had come to an end
and went on back home,
went back to work
on November the 2nd.
I had a hernia surgery.
Got out of the hospital the next day.
That night,
developed complications,
was right back in.
Three weeks later,
I was spread in the comfort on my bed
and the tendon to my biceps muscle tore loose.
So on December the 9th,
I'm back in the hospital for the third time,
major surgery to have that tendon repaired.
And it was fixed and everything was great.
And three weeks ago,
I fell and tore.
And I tore it all loose again.
So this has not really been a good year.
And I didn't really think I was going to get to come to this SVI.
And I came down here with a lot of self-pity
and a lot of resentment and anger and grief
and the whole ball of wax.
But it's amazing how this program works.
Because Dr. Paul taught me that it,
you know,
everything happens for a reason,
nothing by mistake.
And then tonight,
a guy came up and asked me to lead this meeting.
And it's okay,
you know.
They didn't promise me a bed of roses when I got sober.
But they did promise me I don't have to drink and drug anymore.
So today,
regardless of what happens,
it's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay not to be okay.
So,
you know,
all I can say is keep coming back.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
But you don't have to drink or drug.
Uh…
I've never met our speaker,
but I'm certainly looking forward to hearing him,
Father Terri R.
And,
uh…
Hello, my name is Terry, and I'm an alcoholic.
I thought that bright light was the sun.
Someone has just a light up there.
I'm grateful to be sober, and I'm grateful to be here at an AA meeting.
I'm grateful to be here because I'm here kind of free.
One of those guys called down.
I had an automatic reaction the other day that I thought was instructive to me.
I'll share it with you.
We were here a day.
I went in my room, and there was a basket of fruit.
There was two apples and two oranges and something else,
and a whole leaf.
It was a liter and a half of water, mineral water.
And I thought, that's nice.
Next time I saw Steve, I said,
yeah, those have got a basket of fruit in the water.
He said, yeah.
We give him the list of the distinguished visitors.
I said, do I get it every day or just once?
I didn't say thank you, but it's only once, you guys.
That gave me some food for thought later.
Gratitude doesn't come naturally to me.
A sense of entitlement grows very quickly.
I'm somebody who has been dealing with alcoholism
as a principal theme of reflection in life and everything
since as long as I can remember.
The very first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
that I can remember,
was the first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
that I can remember was the first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
was on the disease concept of alcoholism.
We talked about the first drink, get some drunk.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
They got a disease.
My mother told me, don't think badly of your father
and your Uncle Bill and your Uncle Matt
and your Uncle Ed and your Uncle Jack.
They have a disease.
Pray for them.
That's the way it started.
And I was fascinated by it.
This was a lot of reflection right off the bat.
I was going to school.
My father had a slip.
My father was in the program in 1943 and 1944.
And he was in and out a bit.
And he died in withdrawal in 1945.
So that was early.
And my mother had three brothers, alcoholic.
And one of them came around a lot.
So I was very much accustomed to reacting to alcoholism.
And I thought about it.
Since I had all this high-proud discussion,
I know one of my first theological reflections on the disease,
I was about eight.
And I learned about the doctrine of grace and redemption
and heaven and hell.
And I thought, hmm.
I think at the last judgment,
there would be some advantage in being an alcoholic.
Because just before the gavel comes down
for the final judgment,
you could say, just a minute.
I had a disease.
Couldn't help it.
This is my fantasy life when I was eight.
You can imagine the way I think now.
I went ahead.
And made a pledge not to drink until I was 21
that Catholic kids did in the 50s.
And went to the seminary to be a priest.
I wrote a paper in college called Alcoholism,
the longest paper I ever wrote.
I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous
and about six other books on this disease
two years before I had a drink.
And as I was as prepared as anyone has ever been
to have a drink,
there was,
I could have got a license.
I could have gone to the National Council
and laid out my credentials
and they would have stamped the papers.
He's ready.
Give him a drink.
And I waited until I was 21.
I did sneak some beers as a little kid before.
In fact, I never mentioned that.
I hate it when people go on and on about their childhood,
but this is an old thing that happened.
I was around, I think around 10 or 11,
and Tommy Bernard and me,
one of my old friends I had,
his dad opened up a new business
and they had beer there.
And we got back there and drank a few cans of beer.
And for a kid, alcohol is supposed to put you down, you know.
And I went home after a few cans of beer
and for the first time in my life at the age of 11,
I was...
Wired.
I was stark awake and could not go to sleep
and I wanted to go out on the town.
But when you're 11 and Hawthorne in the garage,
in the bunk bed in the boys' room,
it's hard to get a start on where to go.
And I...
So when I turned 21,
I knew it was the day I could drink.
And I...
That didn't escape my attention.
And I went...
It happened to be in the summertime
and I was grateful for that.
Because they allowed no drinking in the seminary.
And I went straight to the store
and bought a bottle of bourbon,
sweet vermouth, bitters, maraschino cherries.
Got a recipe book for Manhattan's
out of U.S. News and World Report.
The Southern Comfort ad
with the 16 most beloved cocktails in America.
And I followed the directions scrupulously.
And even the dash of bitters,
I went and bought this specifically.
Somebody mentioned at the time
that I probably would not have any trouble with my drinking
because nobody in my family's history
had taken that much trouble to make a drink up until that point.
But I...
It's the last time I took that much trouble.
Anyway, it was...
I crossed the invisible line sometime in the early afternoon.
There was no warm-up time for me.
It was instant...
Deep, pervasive, imaginative, strong, focused obsession.
And when's the next time I could drink?
I had the next few times I could drink laid out in my imagination.
I was looking around for more right then.
There was no more.
Other people drank it.
I couldn't get over it.
I just thought, this is...
This is terrific.
Whatever you do, don't become an alcoholic.
That means you can't drink at all.
You know, be careful.
So I was...
I had alcoholism in my mind the first day I drank.
And it wasn't so much that this was a...
I was...
Figured I wasn't an alcoholic right away.
I didn't act like my Uncle Bill.
In fact, my Uncle Bill gave me great comfort for a number of years.
Because I figured that he was...
My father died when I was too young.
But my Uncle Bill kept going.
He was...
He got in the program and didn't stick to it for...
I think he was three years sober.
But he lived in the Shoreham Hotel in Grandoulette.
And I met Holly Hall when I was in the seventh grade.
Went down to a meeting in the basement.
Some people remember the Shoreham.
And...
But he was my alcoholic.
He was my model.
And I thought, well, as long as I'm not like Bill,
I'll be in the clear.
And if I ever do get the disease,
I know that I will quit.
Because I'm hip to this thing.
I did all this reading and this writing.
And one thing I knew for sure,
if you're an alcoholic,
you cannot beat it.
You have to quit.
You cannot learn to drink right.
You know, you can't...
That was settled.
And the reason I thought I was...
I was so confident that I would quit is that I...
I just didn't think I'd do...
I knew I would never, ever do what my Uncle Bill did.
You might think, well, what are you, some crime?
Well, there's a lot of talk about child abuse now.
Feeding kids up, sexual abuse.
He didn't do either one of those things to me.
And he did...
He was in jail a lot,
but he did community crimes that bothered me.
What he did do that I couldn't imagine ever doing,
that I know I would immediately quit,
is that he would...
When he drank,
he would occasionally come to our house
and he would trap me
and bore me to death.
And I thought,
I would never do that to a kid, you know.
I would never trap a kid,
breathe on him,
quote poetry and tell stories of the old days
and give definitions of words
until you just...
murder.
It was all I could think of.
It was a net dragging him away,
the cops coming, anything.
Get him out of here.
And I thought, I would...
I'd never do that.
And I was sober in the program for some time
before it dawned on me
that the minute I began to drink,
I set out in search of people
that I could bore to death.
It wasn't apparent to me.
It doesn't seem like you're...
The bore-er
sees things very differently than the bore-ee.
But I knew how to forgotten these.
Goodnight Prince.
Bye, darling.
Whatever, it's good.
Welcome to our home.
Let's borrow,
I think it's referred to as
the home for all of us in the audience.
I've done my best to getome a boner normally
than this last heading,
or at least something like that.
It's true.
So let's look back.
It is true because
what the bott knitting just meant
is not a bad thing
is not that bad a thing.
Not that bad a thing.
He contributed to that.
You run around the house,
to drinking. We just, oh, neat, this is wonderful. But in my earliest drinking, there was always
a cloud. The minute I would begin to get high, there was kind of a cloud hanging back here
someplace. It was kind of a depressive feeling. And I think, I'm not too sure about it, but
I think it was a feeling that once I began to drink, I wanted to get high, but I wanted
to stay high. I'm not in this for a little drink. I'm in this for ecstasy, liberation,
transcendence. I'd like to get a little higher and a little higher and a little higher, break
through the clouds and see the face of the living God. That's all. And the minute I begin
to drink, something in me knew that I'm going to have to stop. I'm going to have
to come down, and I'm going to have to come down ridiculously soon, you know. The bar
is going to close. We're going to run out. You don't get to drink. You're going to have
to stop after a few, or after this night, and it's going to be over. And that's very
depressing to me. I don't want to have a lousy two or three or four or five-hour drunk. I
want, and if you were to stop me and say, you know, what's wrong, I wouldn't know what
to say to you. I think if I were wired in, I'd say, well, I'm just a little depressed
that I can't stay loaded forever. That's what I'd like. And that's so shameful. It's such
a no-class feeling that I, you've got to be sober for years before you can, we've got
to deny that stuff. That's too embarrassing to ourselves. And I went along as a student
drinking when I could.
I always drank alcoholically because I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholics always drink alcoholically.
But boy, I was an alcoholic who didn't get much for a long time. Didn't have much money,
didn't have much freedom, social freedom. But in a way, I could see my alcoholism even
more clearly in those early days than later, because it was like a hothouse thing, you
know, a hothouse flower under laboratory conditions, this alcoholism in order of a pure thing.
You get this little polite little thing.
And I was there with a riveting concentration of, I would get more than anyone else there
easily, unless one of you were there. And then I'd, and then I'd like to think
I'd beat you. You know, I'd, I'd think I'd beat Mofi. It's a big deal. Drinking is a
big deal to me. It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal.
The first day I drank, it's a big deal today. The big deal, the biggest deal of my life
is that I get to be sober. But the sense of some security that God gives it to me a day
at a time. I don't have any worry about God. I have a little worry, the concern is about
my willingness to receive the gifts. Seems that different things get in the way of being
interested in the gifts.
arrogance and fear
and pride
and lying a lot
making you feel bad
being
living a life
where there's no real
connection and then you get feeling
if you get miserable enough
so that the misery you're in
is not hardly distinguishable
from the misery of the isolation of drinking
the motivation goes down
and I think we're open up to that
and that's my understanding of the program
is being drawn into
a way of life with the 12 steps
that
as a person is drawn in
you just can't
say miserable enough
to have to drink
you just have regular pains
and tragedies
and all that, sure
but not the oceanic ache
not the empty
hollow
dreadful
I don't care whether I live or die
regular feeling
that's the feeling
I don't care whether I live or die
I've never met
a dope cleaner, an alcoholic
who was unable to identify
with that sentence
and that's the enemy to me
anyway
I have a very unspectacular
story
I try to make it as interesting as I can
just by making wisecracks and everything
but I'm afraid I'm not going to do that
I'm a very
run-of-the-mill
quick-developing alky
raised in a social situation
that discouraged drinking
so I kind of was held back a little bit
I got an education because I was in a school
that allowed no drinking
and
as soon as I was ordained a priest
I went down the tubes
very quickly
and I'm deeply grateful for that
for the quickness of it
I have a special
I have a special
place in my heart
for all my brothers and sisters
who were able to
you know get some kind of equilibrium
and drink a fifth a day
for 20 years
before they noticed something was wrong
and I just
there's a lot of wear and tear
on everything
and I became a social menace early
to recognize one
and it just went down the tubes
I just had
whenever there was drinking
I was ahead
I was
going with it
and I just had to
these very polite occasions
and they'd be over
and say goodbye
and I didn't mind leaving
but once I was drinking
I wasn't done yet
I was never quite done yet
I had to get done
before I went to bed
how am I going to get done
I know a few more to get done
and you stop at a bar
buy your own bottle
or steal something
and
it's funny that there are certain things that
represent alcoholism to people
some people that say
drinking in the morning
says oh
then you do anything
not to drink in the morning
to prove you're non-alcoholic
I never had that problem
I drank in the morning
don't bother me
other people is missing work
they'll go to work dead
to prove they're all right
didn't have that trouble
somehow it got in my head
if you buy a big bottle
after midnight
If you buy a big, tall bottle of booze after midnight, you're an alcoholic.
So I tried not to do that.
I would go to bars instead.
And I was quickly going down.
I started to quit.
I'd given some thought about being an alcoholic before I ever drank.
And as I told you, because of my Uncle Bill, I just knew I'd quit.
And so I was noticing symptoms.
I was noticing I had blackouts.
And I was noticing that I was preoccupied.
I would admit it.
I didn't seem to be as bad as the alcoholics I knew.
But something was wrong, and I had that sense of impending doom that's...
You know why we have a sense of impending doom?
It's because doom is impending.
Because if you drink it away...
I would drink in two different ways.
In one...
Two different...
Two different alcoholic ways.
The one way I would have this kind of upbeat thing where I'd try to keep track of things.
I'd be drinking, and I'd say, well, be careful.
Remember when you're supposed to get up the next...
Tomorrow morning, you had it up at six.
Get up, and remember where you are.
Remember...
And remember how many you're drinking.
Now, count the drinks.
Be careful.
I'd have that kind of attitude.
It's a booze fighter attitude.
And then I would all of a sudden switch.
And I never knew when the switch would happen.
It was...
It was on some panel control that I wasn't around.
It just would happen.
And I would switch into...
I don't have to keep track of things.
I don't care.
Usually I care when I'm supposed to get up tomorrow.
I wonder why I don't care tonight.
Usually I care who I'm talking to.
Usually I care who's in my car.
I wonder why I don't care.
Usually I care what freeway I'm on.
But I don't care what freeway...
This...
I don't know if...
I loved it when I found out I didn't care.
It was...
It was...
I was after that, in a way.
I'm after being unburdened with all of this stuff
of taking care of every little thing and being good and being...
You know...
Let me out of here.
And when that would happen,
I would have a sense of exuberance and freedom.
And a sense of impending doom.
Because if you don't care, you're going to die, you know.
If you don't care what side of the road you're on,
you're going to go on the other side, you know.
You don't care when you get up.
You won't get up one day, or you won't go home here.
Something will happen.
And somehow that's in my bones, you know, I knew that.
Now I think I knew that.
I think that was the big, you know, feeling.
Anyway.
Um...
I...
I quit.
I thought I'd quit, and by golly, I quit.
And I lasted...
I thought I was pretty good.
I got a few months of sobriety, and I thought,
uh, not bad.
This is not just good intentions.
You're...
This is performance.
This is pretty good.
And, um...
I began to feel very spiritual.
And then a few more months went by, and into the fifth month,
I had a big shift of attitude, and I began to get worried
that I just might stick to this.
I thought, um...
If you don't drink for the whole rest of your life,
it might not be good for you.
This might be a little premature.
You're kind of young.
And, uh...
If you don't drink at all, maybe you might just flip out.
And they'll find you babbling in a corner someplace.
And no one will know what happened.
He waited too long to have a drink.
Uh...
And I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
And I...
who identified with that at all?
And you're a little new, and you're thinking,
elective thinking,
huh, he has a point!
Um...
I want to assure you that you will not go crazy
or have a breakdown from being sober
clean and sober.
You can have one why you're clean and sober,
but not because you're clean and sober.
The way to have a breakdown of why you're clean and sober, if you have any choice about it, is very simple.
Just never tell the truth to anybody, and never sit still long enough for anyone else to tell the truth to you.
And you'll get nervous and feel bad.
But if we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's funny that someone's always trying to tell the truth,
and most of us can't stand to let anyone else hog the show for long.
And they don't want to have them be the only people to say something interesting and true.
Let me get my turn.
And so I began drinking after that period of time.
And, well, it's just down the tubes.
I was still in my working as a young priest in Los Angeles.
I was in South Central Los Angeles.
It was in New York.
I was in the curfew zone during the Watts Riots in 1965.
By early 1967, I was drinking a fifth of scotch a day and just being totally desperate.
I thought about me not showing up for things, and we decided I shouldn't drink anymore.
And then I drank more.
And we did that again, and I drank more.
We did that again, and I got...
Cardinal Archbishop, you know, when we finally get...
That happened all one way.
I got fired, and I was put in a hospital for alcoholics.
And up until that week, I was all right.
I was an upstanding, regular person with a good record.
And then after that week, I was someone fired for alcoholism and treated in an aversion treatment center.
And so that...
I came out, you know.
It's great to come out.
Before that, it's so much energy to...
Keep giving me...
Keep giving me the impression you're all right.
When you finally break your mother's heart and disgrace your family and your neighborhood,
you're in constant danger of getting help after that.
And it's actually...
The odds increase in your favor.
Anyway, I went to the hospital and went through aversion treatments, nausea, drug, warm salt water,
throw up, get a connection between the taste and smell of booze and nausea.
And that's supposed to discourage you.
If you have a sense of good sportsmanship and take these treatments, you're supposed to stay sober for the rest of your life.
And I was a good sport.
I thought, well, they got me, fair and square.
I agree I'm an alcoholic.
I guess this is it.
And I lasted about four months.
And I was just sure I'd never drink again.
It wasn't even on my mind.
I wasn't saying, gee, will I drink again?
No, no, it's settled.
It's settled.
It's over.
It's over.
And I was going along one day, and I just got a message.
In 20 minutes, you're going to have a drink.
So I'll be damned.
Had a drink in 20 minutes.
And I was off on a round-the-clock drunk instantly.
And was back in the hospital in four days.
Took all the treatments over again.
And I lasted almost a year.
Never thought to go to AA.
I thought if I went to AA, all they'll do is tell me what I already know.
Now, I've been there.
I read the book.
They'll try to tell me it's a disease.
I know that.
They'll try to tell me the first drink gets you drunk.
Let me tell you.
No, I'll tell you a story.
And then some disaffected Methodist is going to try to tell me I have to pray.
And I didn't relish the instruction.
I'll pray on my own.
Thank you.
And I lasted with my self-pity almost a year.
And I was drinking again.
And I got to go back to that hospital three more times.
And the fifth time, they asked me never, ever to call them back.
And I got to go to a psychiatric hospital and detox for my sixth time in downtown Los Angeles.
Queen of Angels Hospital.
They had the locked part of the hospital.
It was called St.
Francis Hall.
I thought that was kind of cute.
The birds, tweet, tweet, tweet.
You know, the St.
Francis and the little animals.
I thought this was...
You see them planting.
Let's call it St.
Francis Hall.
Anyway, I was there.
And after I...
And it was a while there that a new thing happened.
In my sixth detox, it came to me.
It was the beginning of the...
It was the first step.
But it did not seem like a step or anything nice.
I was in there and it just came to me that you're going to be drunk pretty soon.
You're the type that gets drunk no matter what.
No matter what book you read, what prayer you pray, what resolution you make, what insight you have doesn't matter.
You're a loser.
You're an asshole.
You are a person.
Who there's no use talking to.
It's over.
You just get drunk after everything's set.
And it's true.
And with this, I didn't feel good finding that out.
I felt a little relieved, though.
I didn't have to get my hopes up again.
And I went from there and I got to go winter in Jersey at that point.
Thanksgiving Eve, we got to...
By the way, there's a certain point in the career of an alcoholic if you're in California.
You can raise money for a one-way ticket to Jersey.
They'll do that for you.
Almost anybody you know will do it for you.
Anyway.
And I got back there and I was in a recovery house for priest alcoholics in Sterling at the southern edge of the Great Swamp Bird Sanctuary near Summit.
And we went to meetings every day.
And we...
I had no idea.
I was so sure that Alcoholics Anonymous would not work for me that I was relaxed at meetings.
I would go in on no suspense for me.
I just came in with the boys.
We all had a...
We had a dress code that would make the Pacific group look very lax.
We wore our black suits and Roman collars, everyone, to every meeting we went to.
And we would be, five or six of us, troop in.
And we would stand there, shaking snow off our shoes, and when they saw this phalanx of black come in the room they were not waiting for spiritual inspiration, I'll tell you that, because they knew we were coming from that place up on the hill where they sent them, you know, there was no one there in their first place, you know, this is where you went after they gave up on you.
And...
And...
And...
And...
And I went to be...
I had no idea that...
I connected with the program immediately.
I'd like to say where my first sponsor was a guy named Ralph Monk.
His name was Monk, Father Monk.
And...
And he was a bald-headed guy with a red toupee from North Carolina, who got sober, and the meeting was Bill Wilson in New York.
In the late...
In the late 40s.
And he was kicked out of North Carolina, he grew up there, and he was a chain gang, and we let him out on a condition he'd never return to the state, and he went up to New York and got sober there in A.A. and then went to the seminary and started to be a priest, and I didn't even think of people going to A.A. meetings when you're in the seminary in those days.
And he was ordained and returned in triumph to North Carolina and got drunk again, and was in his sixth or seventh detox and treatment when I met him, and he never had a drink after that.
And he showed me the ropes, and this was wonderful.
I was under Ralph's wing as we went to give me all this stuff.
And the hope just started coming...
I fought off hope in this program.
I couldn't stand to get my hopes up again.
No, not...
I just couldn't stand that maybe it'll be all right, and then this dreadful, empty, self-hating, run-away-from-everything insanity.
I just couldn't...
Damn that.
So I wanted to be stoic until the next drunk happened and try to be cool and get through it.
And I was there five months.
They recommended a three-month stay, and so they kept me five.
I liked the meetings.
I looked forward to going to the meetings a lot.
Remember, we had negotiated which meeting we were going to go to this night, and I'd think, you know...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then I'd get there, and I'd get in the meeting, and the meeting would start, and I'd immediately look at my watch
and wait for the meeting to get over.
I was very anxious for meetings to get over.
Always have been.
And if the speaker went over time, I would just go berserk.
I would start to twist my chair apart.
The deal is until nine o'clock.
I've got to get back to my 12-step house and sit there.
And...
No, I have a thing about waiting in line the same way.
Waiting in line or having a meeting go over time is something that I'm way short of being emotionally mature enough to handle.
I can wait in line too deep if they're moving.
But checking baggage in for one of these trips is almost...
You almost want to go home, you know.
If you're sufficiently immature.
And as I went to meetings, this hope creeped in.
And I...
The big surprise to me was instead of telling me, giving me pep talks and saying,
Come on, do better, try a little harder, make sure you build up a good attitude,
I was always so self-conscious and so kind of keeping track of my emotional maturity and my insights.
And I thought I had to build this stuff up to a critical mass.
And then I would kind of come together.
The insights and the therapy and the prayer.
And then I'd be able to do whatever I had to do.
And...
That's not the approach.
That's not the approach I saw, you know.
The approach said, no, no, no, no.
You are deeply ashamed of being alcoholic.
You hate it, being alcoholic.
And you'd like to be as little alcoholic as you can be.
We'd like you to turn that around now and kind of relax.
And you're a lot more alcoholic than you think.
And your situation's a lot worse than you think.
And it's all right.
God has a lot of experience working with your type.
And you'll be fine as long as you don't mind being, you know, a far-gone, dingbat alcoholic
who is pathetically immature,
sort of an egomaniac looking for a lot of applause and praise,
full of fear about most everything, especially any disapproval at all,
and have a dirty mind.
And we'd like you to get used to that condition.
And thank God for giving us a variety today.
Now, I thought that condition was so awful, was so disgraceful,
that it wasn't worth being sober.
I mean, you have to get your act together and achieve a certain level of maturity
and aplomb and that kind of stuff,
or...
life's not worth living.
And they said, no, no, no, no.
It's the other way around, you see.
You've got to be willing to be what you're discovering
and then show up.
Don't have a drink till the next meeting.
And you play ball.
Just play ball.
Do the next step.
Talk to the person.
When they say hi, say hi back.
Go to the meeting.
Hang out.
Do your little thing.
Do your little chores.
Read the book.
Tell your secrets.
And everything that has been suggested to me in Alcoholics Anonymous
seems wholesome and irrelevant.
It seemed wholesome and with no promise.
I could not...
I didn't see there's anything wrong with going to a meeting
or writing an inventory
or saying,
perish for heaven's sakes
or telling the truth.
I thought all of this was wholesome stuff.
Most of...
I was trying to do something like that most of my life.
But I didn't have one drunk talking to another thing.
I didn't have the spirit...
the spirit of...
You know, it's not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I think it's...
any time people get on the track,
the spiritual track,
and really have a life,
they kind of get this thing
of...
The point is
we are very fortunate
to be children of God
who get to be led by the spirit
and have a life
while we're as goofy as we are.
And I...
I am, you know, profoundly self-centered.
And I think...
God is kind of on the periphery.
God is sort of a bit player.
An important one, but, you know,
out there on the edge.
And the great drama
is Terry.
How is Terry doing?
And how does Terry rate?
In every single imaginable way to compare.
You know,
IQ,
how fast I run,
how much I weigh,
how my hair's doing.
This is the drama of life.
How is Terry doing?
And when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous,
everyone was profoundly uninterested
in how Terry was doing.
This was a very boring topic to everyone.
No one ever brought it up.
No one ever gave any indication of caring about that.
And as I allowed myself
to be drawn into this fellowship
and find sobriety
a day at a time,
I've been under the illusion
a number of times.
Especially in that rush
of new life.
You know, when you finally just...
The first thing you think,
by golly,
maybe it won't be necessary
for me just to be...
to die drunk
and be a heartbreaker,
be the neighborhood asshole.
Maybe it won't be necessary.
And I just get so excited
and I started regaining
some normal interest in people.
And things...
Oh, I'm getting better!
I'm getting better!
The inside of me
is very interested in how Terry rates.
But, hey, your rating is going up!
That's not what was happening.
What was happening is
my rating's the same.
I'm kind of an introspective,
goofy,
alcoholic
who's
the introverted type
who gets philosophical
at the drop of a hat,
who never got any muscles,
who's pretty
right-brain instead of left-brain,
and is self-indulgent
and self-obsessed,
and on a good day
can do what he has to do.
And this is...
It's the big news, you know?
It's the regular stuff.
The big deal was
my higher power
batted down
my defenses
and I became willing
to play ball.
I became willing
to agree
that I am what I am
and do the next thing.
That's the big deal.
The change is
just
stopping resistance
and playing ball.
And my...
I get so excited
if I show any improvement at all,
I go bananas
in this excitement
that I think I might be getting.
And it's...
That's not what's happening.
I've...
These last few years,
I've been more aware...
It kind of discourages...
I'm not claiming...
I'm not telling you,
oh, my friends,
this is the secret
of the spiritual life.
I'm not saying this.
I'm giving you a report
that what I discover
is that at rest,
me,
by myself,
having my usual
reflection,
walking down,
walking to a meal,
being in my room,
brushing my teeth,
driving a car,
my automatic
reflection,
the train of thought
that I get into
is profoundly sick.
It's old ideas,
egomaniacal introspection
as a rule.
It isn't too hyper.
It isn't too serious.
It isn't too intense.
It's just the old thing.
And I have to be interrupted.
My God and my program,
my faith,
have to shake me and say,
Terry! Terry!
Look over here!
I'd much rather...
No, I wouldn't rather,
because I'm always grateful
for the interruption.
I'm grateful for the phone calls
that people call about.
People who are more desperately,
at least they're more in touch
with their illness
than I am at the time.
And they call me
for some advice
and I give them wonderful advice.
And I get right out
and I'm talking to somebody else.
It's terrific.
And then I feel more like
a human being
and I hang up
and I get back to worrying
about how I rate in the universe
and if I'm ever going to be significant
or happy
or ever really disciplined
or moral.
And then I need another
interruption.
Thank God for meetings.
But I've decided that the
that life,
that the program for me
is more and more
a matter of
constant interruptions
on the
meta-meditation
I have
of me.
And as long as I can be
drawn out,
shaken out of this little meditation
of how I'm doing
and how I'm rating in the universe,
I'm saved.
I'm saved again from this
dreadful, boring,
who cares?
No way to, you know,
this is a dead-end street.
Nothing happens with that meditation.
All it is is just kind of a funk
of despot.
And so I want to report in
that I'm deeply grateful
to my higher power
for interrupting me
in my path
walk towards death
and the disease of alcoholism.
And in a day at a time,
I'm grateful for the interruptions
my higher power gives me
with every aspect of the program
and meeting all of you.
Because if there's just one thing
that perks me up,
it's to meet another damaged,
terrible alcoholic
who,
especially when you don't mind
to be sober,
when you actually don't mind
being sober,
the wonder is there again
and it's the most exciting thing
in the world.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Father Terry.
Tonight, Kim has been asked
to read a vision for you.
Kim?
Kim?
Kim?
Hi, I'm a grateful member
of Al-Anon.
My name is Kim.
A vision for you.
Our book is meant
to be suggestive only.
We realize we know only a little.
God will constantly disclose
more to you and to us.
Ask him in your morning meditation
what you can do each day
for the man who is still sick.
The answers will come
if your own house is in order.
But obviously,
you cannot transmit something
you haven't got.
See to it that your relationship
with him is right
and great events will come to pass
for you in countless ways.
This is the great fact for us.
Abandon yourself to God
as you understand him.
Admit your faults to him
and your fellows.
Clear away the wreckage
of your past.
Give freely of what you find
and join us.
We shall be with you
in the fellowship of the Spirit
and you will surely meet
some of us
as you trudge the road
of happy destiny.
May God bless you
and keep you until then.
Amen.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
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.
There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way.
They are naturally incapable of drafting and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
Their chances are less than average.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders,
but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like,
what happened, and what we are like now.
If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it,
then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these, we balk.
We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not.
With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.
Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas,
and the result is that we are not.
Our result was nil until we let go absolutely.
Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful.
Without health, it is too much for us, but there is one who has all power.
That one is God. May you find him now.
Half measures availed us nothing.
We stood at the turning point.
We asked his protection and care with complete abandon.
Here are the steps we took,
which are suggested as a program of recovery.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol,
that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to some of our shortcomings.
9. Made direct amends to some of our shortcomings.
such people wherever possible
10. Continued to pay personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Fought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God.
We understood him.
Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the fireworks that carry them out.
12. Having had a spiritual service with many people.
a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us explained, what an order, I can't go through with it.
Do not be discouraged.
No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.
We are not saints.
The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress.
We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after
make clear three pertinent ideas.
A, that we were alcoholics and could not manage our own lives.
B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
And C, that God could and would if he were sought.
The format of today's meeting.
Is that the leader qualifies for five minutes, followed by the main speaker.
As I said, my name is Doc, and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict.
By following this program, I've refrained from drinking for 20 years.
I've refrained from doing any other drugs for 15 years.
I am grateful for that.
It would be...
Very difficult to try to qualify in five minutes.
And actually, I've got a tattoo on my arm that can do it a whole lot faster
and a whole lot better than I can.
Because when I had that tattoo put on there in 1976, it read,
Born to Lose.
And that's what it was like for the first 49 years of my life.
And then the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous happened.
I finally surrendered.
And after one year of sobriety, I went down and I had that tattoo changed to one letter.
I had the S changed to a V.
And today, the tattoo reads, Born to Love.
And that's what it's like today.
Thank you.
That really doesn't mean a whole lot unless you know what it means to be born to lose.
Being born to lose, in case you don't know,
that means being eighth in line in a gangbang and falling in love.
Don't laugh.
It happened to me.
It happened to me.
No.
I attended my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1960.
I had this little drinking problem.
I'd had a little bit of a drug problem prior to that.
And when I was interning in 1953 in Massachusetts,
I got on Demerol and wound up in an insane asylum for trying to commit suicide
and got a six-month sentence to the federal narcotics prison in Lexington,
Kentucky.
Which I ran away from.
But when I came to AA in 1960, I didn't think I was an alcoholic
and I didn't think I was a drug addict and I didn't think I was anything else.
The only reason I went is because my wife told me I was either going to call AA
or a divorce lawyer.
And she didn't care which.
I wasn't quite ready to get divorced yet, so I went to AA.
And I liked what I saw there.
I didn't want to be a drug addict, and I didn't want to be a drug addict for you folks because you needed it.
I didn't.
I was a very successful doctor at that time, a veterinarian.
I owned my own animal hospital.
I was president of Men of the Church, my Sunday school class.
I taught Sunday school.
I was president of the Veterinary Association, Civitan, Neighborhood Civic League, and a
Boy Scout Master.
And I had it all together.
I just couldn't quit drinking.
So I hung around a while and I quit drinking.
But being a doctor, it was very easy and cheap and legal for me to get drugs.
And so I began to get off into that scene.
I remember at that first meeting in 1960 they told me that if I didn't quit, I was going to wind up going to jail.
I'd wind up on Skid Row.
And all that.
And all these things.
And I said, Oh, no, not me.
I'll quit before I get that bad.
Well, in 1971, I found myself on Skid Row.
I found myself sleeping in doorways and under bridges and in weed patches, eating out of
garbage cans, panhandling for my next drink, and robbing and stealing for my next fix.
In 1971, I got popped out of here in 1970.
I was a young man.
I was a young man.
I was starting out here in Graham, Texas.
My picture was on the front page of the Graham Daily News.
And the headlines on the front page said they had arrested the biggest drug dealer in the south.
I finally made it to the big time.
I heard a judge sentence me to 40 years in PDC as a result of that.
Later on, I was given a sentence.
Then I finished with legal 노래.
I was released.
was to hear another judge sentence me to TDC as a habitual criminal
because of my drug addiction.
But in 1979,
I can't even get my numbers straight here,
I finally made that surrender,
and I came crawling back.
I'd been bouncing in and out of AA for 17 years
and had never been able to get a handle on it.
But on November the 9th, 1977,
I got out of jail and I went back to AA one more time
and I crawled under the door
and I gave up and I quit fighting.
And as a result, everything's great.
Bullshit.
Things did get a lot better, you know.
Today I'm employed as an alcohol and drug counselor
at the Texas Department of Corrections Cofield Unit
and I get to give back what I got.
And I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.
I love the work.
And things have gotten a whole lot better for me.
You know, I went through five marriages
and lost them all because of the result of my addiction.
And right after I...
I got clean and sober.
I got into a relationship which was perfect.
She thought so.
I thought so.
Until last summer on a sober vacation cruise.
This last year has been the worst year in my life.
Just shortly before we went on that sober vacation cruise
with Guy and Mary Ann,
I'd been diagnosed as having leukemia.
They found out that I wasn't right
and they told me I had colon cancer
and that I wasn't right.
And then they found out that arthritis medicine
was just causing me to bleed inside.
And I got over that.
I went on that cruise
and as soon as I got back,
this perfect relationship ended.
And I thought the world had come to an end
and went on back home,
went back to work
on November the 2nd.
I had a hernia surgery.
Got out of the hospital the next day.
That night,
developed complications,
was right back in.
Three weeks later,
I was spread in the comfort on my bed
and the tendon to my biceps muscle tore loose.
So on December the 9th,
I'm back in the hospital for the third time,
major surgery to have that tendon repaired.
And it was fixed and everything was great.
And three weeks ago,
I fell and tore.
And I tore it all loose again.
So this has not really been a good year.
And I didn't really think I was going to get to come to this SVI.
And I came down here with a lot of self-pity
and a lot of resentment and anger and grief
and the whole ball of wax.
But it's amazing how this program works.
Because Dr. Paul taught me that it,
you know,
everything happens for a reason,
nothing by mistake.
And then tonight,
a guy came up and asked me to lead this meeting.
And it's okay,
you know.
They didn't promise me a bed of roses when I got sober.
But they did promise me I don't have to drink and drug anymore.
So today,
regardless of what happens,
it's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay not to be okay.
So,
you know,
all I can say is keep coming back.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
But you don't have to drink or drug.
Uh…
I've never met our speaker,
but I'm certainly looking forward to hearing him,
Father Terri R.
And,
uh…
Hello, my name is Terry, and I'm an alcoholic.
I thought that bright light was the sun.
Someone has just a light up there.
I'm grateful to be sober, and I'm grateful to be here at an AA meeting.
I'm grateful to be here because I'm here kind of free.
One of those guys called down.
I had an automatic reaction the other day that I thought was instructive to me.
I'll share it with you.
We were here a day.
I went in my room, and there was a basket of fruit.
There was two apples and two oranges and something else,
and a whole leaf.
It was a liter and a half of water, mineral water.
And I thought, that's nice.
Next time I saw Steve, I said,
yeah, those have got a basket of fruit in the water.
He said, yeah.
We give him the list of the distinguished visitors.
I said, do I get it every day or just once?
I didn't say thank you, but it's only once, you guys.
That gave me some food for thought later.
Gratitude doesn't come naturally to me.
A sense of entitlement grows very quickly.
I'm somebody who has been dealing with alcoholism
as a principal theme of reflection in life and everything
since as long as I can remember.
The very first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
that I can remember,
was the first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
that I can remember was the first serious discussion in my family in Hawthorne, California,
was on the disease concept of alcoholism.
We talked about the first drink, get some drunk.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
They got a disease.
My mother told me, don't think badly of your father
and your Uncle Bill and your Uncle Matt
and your Uncle Ed and your Uncle Jack.
They have a disease.
Pray for them.
That's the way it started.
And I was fascinated by it.
This was a lot of reflection right off the bat.
I was going to school.
My father had a slip.
My father was in the program in 1943 and 1944.
And he was in and out a bit.
And he died in withdrawal in 1945.
So that was early.
And my mother had three brothers, alcoholic.
And one of them came around a lot.
So I was very much accustomed to reacting to alcoholism.
And I thought about it.
Since I had all this high-proud discussion,
I know one of my first theological reflections on the disease,
I was about eight.
And I learned about the doctrine of grace and redemption
and heaven and hell.
And I thought, hmm.
I think at the last judgment,
there would be some advantage in being an alcoholic.
Because just before the gavel comes down
for the final judgment,
you could say, just a minute.
I had a disease.
Couldn't help it.
This is my fantasy life when I was eight.
You can imagine the way I think now.
I went ahead.
And made a pledge not to drink until I was 21
that Catholic kids did in the 50s.
And went to the seminary to be a priest.
I wrote a paper in college called Alcoholism,
the longest paper I ever wrote.
I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous
and about six other books on this disease
two years before I had a drink.
And as I was as prepared as anyone has ever been
to have a drink,
there was,
I could have got a license.
I could have gone to the National Council
and laid out my credentials
and they would have stamped the papers.
He's ready.
Give him a drink.
And I waited until I was 21.
I did sneak some beers as a little kid before.
In fact, I never mentioned that.
I hate it when people go on and on about their childhood,
but this is an old thing that happened.
I was around, I think around 10 or 11,
and Tommy Bernard and me,
one of my old friends I had,
his dad opened up a new business
and they had beer there.
And we got back there and drank a few cans of beer.
And for a kid, alcohol is supposed to put you down, you know.
And I went home after a few cans of beer
and for the first time in my life at the age of 11,
I was...
Wired.
I was stark awake and could not go to sleep
and I wanted to go out on the town.
But when you're 11 and Hawthorne in the garage,
in the bunk bed in the boys' room,
it's hard to get a start on where to go.
And I...
So when I turned 21,
I knew it was the day I could drink.
And I...
That didn't escape my attention.
And I went...
It happened to be in the summertime
and I was grateful for that.
Because they allowed no drinking in the seminary.
And I went straight to the store
and bought a bottle of bourbon,
sweet vermouth, bitters, maraschino cherries.
Got a recipe book for Manhattan's
out of U.S. News and World Report.
The Southern Comfort ad
with the 16 most beloved cocktails in America.
And I followed the directions scrupulously.
And even the dash of bitters,
I went and bought this specifically.
Somebody mentioned at the time
that I probably would not have any trouble with my drinking
because nobody in my family's history
had taken that much trouble to make a drink up until that point.
But I...
It's the last time I took that much trouble.
Anyway, it was...
I crossed the invisible line sometime in the early afternoon.
There was no warm-up time for me.
It was instant...
Deep, pervasive, imaginative, strong, focused obsession.
And when's the next time I could drink?
I had the next few times I could drink laid out in my imagination.
I was looking around for more right then.
There was no more.
Other people drank it.
I couldn't get over it.
I just thought, this is...
This is terrific.
Whatever you do, don't become an alcoholic.
That means you can't drink at all.
You know, be careful.
So I was...
I had alcoholism in my mind the first day I drank.
And it wasn't so much that this was a...
I was...
Figured I wasn't an alcoholic right away.
I didn't act like my Uncle Bill.
In fact, my Uncle Bill gave me great comfort for a number of years.
Because I figured that he was...
My father died when I was too young.
But my Uncle Bill kept going.
He was...
He got in the program and didn't stick to it for...
I think he was three years sober.
But he lived in the Shoreham Hotel in Grandoulette.
And I met Holly Hall when I was in the seventh grade.
Went down to a meeting in the basement.
Some people remember the Shoreham.
And...
But he was my alcoholic.
He was my model.
And I thought, well, as long as I'm not like Bill,
I'll be in the clear.
And if I ever do get the disease,
I know that I will quit.
Because I'm hip to this thing.
I did all this reading and this writing.
And one thing I knew for sure,
if you're an alcoholic,
you cannot beat it.
You have to quit.
You cannot learn to drink right.
You know, you can't...
That was settled.
And the reason I thought I was...
I was so confident that I would quit is that I...
I just didn't think I'd do...
I knew I would never, ever do what my Uncle Bill did.
You might think, well, what are you, some crime?
Well, there's a lot of talk about child abuse now.
Feeding kids up, sexual abuse.
He didn't do either one of those things to me.
And he did...
He was in jail a lot,
but he did community crimes that bothered me.
What he did do that I couldn't imagine ever doing,
that I know I would immediately quit,
is that he would...
When he drank,
he would occasionally come to our house
and he would trap me
and bore me to death.
And I thought,
I would never do that to a kid, you know.
I would never trap a kid,
breathe on him,
quote poetry and tell stories of the old days
and give definitions of words
until you just...
murder.
It was all I could think of.
It was a net dragging him away,
the cops coming, anything.
Get him out of here.
And I thought, I would...
I'd never do that.
And I was sober in the program for some time
before it dawned on me
that the minute I began to drink,
I set out in search of people
that I could bore to death.
It wasn't apparent to me.
It doesn't seem like you're...
The bore-er
sees things very differently than the bore-ee.
But I knew how to forgotten these.
Goodnight Prince.
Bye, darling.
Whatever, it's good.
Welcome to our home.
Let's borrow,
I think it's referred to as
the home for all of us in the audience.
I've done my best to getome a boner normally
than this last heading,
or at least something like that.
It's true.
So let's look back.
It is true because
what the bott knitting just meant
is not a bad thing
is not that bad a thing.
Not that bad a thing.
He contributed to that.
You run around the house,
to drinking. We just, oh, neat, this is wonderful. But in my earliest drinking, there was always
a cloud. The minute I would begin to get high, there was kind of a cloud hanging back here
someplace. It was kind of a depressive feeling. And I think, I'm not too sure about it, but
I think it was a feeling that once I began to drink, I wanted to get high, but I wanted
to stay high. I'm not in this for a little drink. I'm in this for ecstasy, liberation,
transcendence. I'd like to get a little higher and a little higher and a little higher, break
through the clouds and see the face of the living God. That's all. And the minute I begin
to drink, something in me knew that I'm going to have to stop. I'm going to have
to come down, and I'm going to have to come down ridiculously soon, you know. The bar
is going to close. We're going to run out. You don't get to drink. You're going to have
to stop after a few, or after this night, and it's going to be over. And that's very
depressing to me. I don't want to have a lousy two or three or four or five-hour drunk. I
want, and if you were to stop me and say, you know, what's wrong, I wouldn't know what
to say to you. I think if I were wired in, I'd say, well, I'm just a little depressed
that I can't stay loaded forever. That's what I'd like. And that's so shameful. It's such
a no-class feeling that I, you've got to be sober for years before you can, we've got
to deny that stuff. That's too embarrassing to ourselves. And I went along as a student
drinking when I could.
I always drank alcoholically because I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholics always drink alcoholically.
But boy, I was an alcoholic who didn't get much for a long time. Didn't have much money,
didn't have much freedom, social freedom. But in a way, I could see my alcoholism even
more clearly in those early days than later, because it was like a hothouse thing, you
know, a hothouse flower under laboratory conditions, this alcoholism in order of a pure thing.
You get this little polite little thing.
And I was there with a riveting concentration of, I would get more than anyone else there
easily, unless one of you were there. And then I'd, and then I'd like to think
I'd beat you. You know, I'd, I'd think I'd beat Mofi. It's a big deal. Drinking is a
big deal to me. It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal to me.
It's a big deal.
The first day I drank, it's a big deal today. The big deal, the biggest deal of my life
is that I get to be sober. But the sense of some security that God gives it to me a day
at a time. I don't have any worry about God. I have a little worry, the concern is about
my willingness to receive the gifts. Seems that different things get in the way of being
interested in the gifts.
arrogance and fear
and pride
and lying a lot
making you feel bad
being
living a life
where there's no real
connection and then you get feeling
if you get miserable enough
so that the misery you're in
is not hardly distinguishable
from the misery of the isolation of drinking
the motivation goes down
and I think we're open up to that
and that's my understanding of the program
is being drawn into
a way of life with the 12 steps
that
as a person is drawn in
you just can't
say miserable enough
to have to drink
you just have regular pains
and tragedies
and all that, sure
but not the oceanic ache
not the empty
hollow
dreadful
I don't care whether I live or die
regular feeling
that's the feeling
I don't care whether I live or die
I've never met
a dope cleaner, an alcoholic
who was unable to identify
with that sentence
and that's the enemy to me
anyway
I have a very unspectacular
story
I try to make it as interesting as I can
just by making wisecracks and everything
but I'm afraid I'm not going to do that
I'm a very
run-of-the-mill
quick-developing alky
raised in a social situation
that discouraged drinking
so I kind of was held back a little bit
I got an education because I was in a school
that allowed no drinking
and
as soon as I was ordained a priest
I went down the tubes
very quickly
and I'm deeply grateful for that
for the quickness of it
I have a special
I have a special
place in my heart
for all my brothers and sisters
who were able to
you know get some kind of equilibrium
and drink a fifth a day
for 20 years
before they noticed something was wrong
and I just
there's a lot of wear and tear
on everything
and I became a social menace early
to recognize one
and it just went down the tubes
I just had
whenever there was drinking
I was ahead
I was
going with it
and I just had to
these very polite occasions
and they'd be over
and say goodbye
and I didn't mind leaving
but once I was drinking
I wasn't done yet
I was never quite done yet
I had to get done
before I went to bed
how am I going to get done
I know a few more to get done
and you stop at a bar
buy your own bottle
or steal something
and
it's funny that there are certain things that
represent alcoholism to people
some people that say
drinking in the morning
says oh
then you do anything
not to drink in the morning
to prove you're non-alcoholic
I never had that problem
I drank in the morning
don't bother me
other people is missing work
they'll go to work dead
to prove they're all right
didn't have that trouble
somehow it got in my head
if you buy a big bottle
after midnight
If you buy a big, tall bottle of booze after midnight, you're an alcoholic.
So I tried not to do that.
I would go to bars instead.
And I was quickly going down.
I started to quit.
I'd given some thought about being an alcoholic before I ever drank.
And as I told you, because of my Uncle Bill, I just knew I'd quit.
And so I was noticing symptoms.
I was noticing I had blackouts.
And I was noticing that I was preoccupied.
I would admit it.
I didn't seem to be as bad as the alcoholics I knew.
But something was wrong, and I had that sense of impending doom that's...
You know why we have a sense of impending doom?
It's because doom is impending.
Because if you drink it away...
I would drink in two different ways.
In one...
Two different...
Two different alcoholic ways.
The one way I would have this kind of upbeat thing where I'd try to keep track of things.
I'd be drinking, and I'd say, well, be careful.
Remember when you're supposed to get up the next...
Tomorrow morning, you had it up at six.
Get up, and remember where you are.
Remember...
And remember how many you're drinking.
Now, count the drinks.
Be careful.
I'd have that kind of attitude.
It's a booze fighter attitude.
And then I would all of a sudden switch.
And I never knew when the switch would happen.
It was...
It was on some panel control that I wasn't around.
It just would happen.
And I would switch into...
I don't have to keep track of things.
I don't care.
Usually I care when I'm supposed to get up tomorrow.
I wonder why I don't care tonight.
Usually I care who I'm talking to.
Usually I care who's in my car.
I wonder why I don't care.
Usually I care what freeway I'm on.
But I don't care what freeway...
This...
I don't know if...
I loved it when I found out I didn't care.
It was...
It was...
I was after that, in a way.
I'm after being unburdened with all of this stuff
of taking care of every little thing and being good and being...
You know...
Let me out of here.
And when that would happen,
I would have a sense of exuberance and freedom.
And a sense of impending doom.
Because if you don't care, you're going to die, you know.
If you don't care what side of the road you're on,
you're going to go on the other side, you know.
You don't care when you get up.
You won't get up one day, or you won't go home here.
Something will happen.
And somehow that's in my bones, you know, I knew that.
Now I think I knew that.
I think that was the big, you know, feeling.
Anyway.
Um...
I...
I quit.
I thought I'd quit, and by golly, I quit.
And I lasted...
I thought I was pretty good.
I got a few months of sobriety, and I thought,
uh, not bad.
This is not just good intentions.
You're...
This is performance.
This is pretty good.
And, um...
I began to feel very spiritual.
And then a few more months went by, and into the fifth month,
I had a big shift of attitude, and I began to get worried
that I just might stick to this.
I thought, um...
If you don't drink for the whole rest of your life,
it might not be good for you.
This might be a little premature.
You're kind of young.
And, uh...
If you don't drink at all, maybe you might just flip out.
And they'll find you babbling in a corner someplace.
And no one will know what happened.
He waited too long to have a drink.
Uh...
And I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
I...
And I...
who identified with that at all?
And you're a little new, and you're thinking,
elective thinking,
huh, he has a point!
Um...
I want to assure you that you will not go crazy
or have a breakdown from being sober
clean and sober.
You can have one why you're clean and sober,
but not because you're clean and sober.
The way to have a breakdown of why you're clean and sober, if you have any choice about it, is very simple.
Just never tell the truth to anybody, and never sit still long enough for anyone else to tell the truth to you.
And you'll get nervous and feel bad.
But if we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's funny that someone's always trying to tell the truth,
and most of us can't stand to let anyone else hog the show for long.
And they don't want to have them be the only people to say something interesting and true.
Let me get my turn.
And so I began drinking after that period of time.
And, well, it's just down the tubes.
I was still in my working as a young priest in Los Angeles.
I was in South Central Los Angeles.
It was in New York.
I was in the curfew zone during the Watts Riots in 1965.
By early 1967, I was drinking a fifth of scotch a day and just being totally desperate.
I thought about me not showing up for things, and we decided I shouldn't drink anymore.
And then I drank more.
And we did that again, and I drank more.
We did that again, and I got...
Cardinal Archbishop, you know, when we finally get...
That happened all one way.
I got fired, and I was put in a hospital for alcoholics.
And up until that week, I was all right.
I was an upstanding, regular person with a good record.
And then after that week, I was someone fired for alcoholism and treated in an aversion treatment center.
And so that...
I came out, you know.
It's great to come out.
Before that, it's so much energy to...
Keep giving me...
Keep giving me the impression you're all right.
When you finally break your mother's heart and disgrace your family and your neighborhood,
you're in constant danger of getting help after that.
And it's actually...
The odds increase in your favor.
Anyway, I went to the hospital and went through aversion treatments, nausea, drug, warm salt water,
throw up, get a connection between the taste and smell of booze and nausea.
And that's supposed to discourage you.
If you have a sense of good sportsmanship and take these treatments, you're supposed to stay sober for the rest of your life.
And I was a good sport.
I thought, well, they got me, fair and square.
I agree I'm an alcoholic.
I guess this is it.
And I lasted about four months.
And I was just sure I'd never drink again.
It wasn't even on my mind.
I wasn't saying, gee, will I drink again?
No, no, it's settled.
It's settled.
It's over.
It's over.
And I was going along one day, and I just got a message.
In 20 minutes, you're going to have a drink.
So I'll be damned.
Had a drink in 20 minutes.
And I was off on a round-the-clock drunk instantly.
And was back in the hospital in four days.
Took all the treatments over again.
And I lasted almost a year.
Never thought to go to AA.
I thought if I went to AA, all they'll do is tell me what I already know.
Now, I've been there.
I read the book.
They'll try to tell me it's a disease.
I know that.
They'll try to tell me the first drink gets you drunk.
Let me tell you.
No, I'll tell you a story.
And then some disaffected Methodist is going to try to tell me I have to pray.
And I didn't relish the instruction.
I'll pray on my own.
Thank you.
And I lasted with my self-pity almost a year.
And I was drinking again.
And I got to go back to that hospital three more times.
And the fifth time, they asked me never, ever to call them back.
And I got to go to a psychiatric hospital and detox for my sixth time in downtown Los Angeles.
Queen of Angels Hospital.
They had the locked part of the hospital.
It was called St.
Francis Hall.
I thought that was kind of cute.
The birds, tweet, tweet, tweet.
You know, the St.
Francis and the little animals.
I thought this was...
You see them planting.
Let's call it St.
Francis Hall.
Anyway, I was there.
And after I...
And it was a while there that a new thing happened.
In my sixth detox, it came to me.
It was the beginning of the...
It was the first step.
But it did not seem like a step or anything nice.
I was in there and it just came to me that you're going to be drunk pretty soon.
You're the type that gets drunk no matter what.
No matter what book you read, what prayer you pray, what resolution you make, what insight you have doesn't matter.
You're a loser.
You're an asshole.
You are a person.
Who there's no use talking to.
It's over.
You just get drunk after everything's set.
And it's true.
And with this, I didn't feel good finding that out.
I felt a little relieved, though.
I didn't have to get my hopes up again.
And I went from there and I got to go winter in Jersey at that point.
Thanksgiving Eve, we got to...
By the way, there's a certain point in the career of an alcoholic if you're in California.
You can raise money for a one-way ticket to Jersey.
They'll do that for you.
Almost anybody you know will do it for you.
Anyway.
And I got back there and I was in a recovery house for priest alcoholics in Sterling at the southern edge of the Great Swamp Bird Sanctuary near Summit.
And we went to meetings every day.
And we...
I had no idea.
I was so sure that Alcoholics Anonymous would not work for me that I was relaxed at meetings.
I would go in on no suspense for me.
I just came in with the boys.
We all had a...
We had a dress code that would make the Pacific group look very lax.
We wore our black suits and Roman collars, everyone, to every meeting we went to.
And we would be, five or six of us, troop in.
And we would stand there, shaking snow off our shoes, and when they saw this phalanx of black come in the room they were not waiting for spiritual inspiration, I'll tell you that, because they knew we were coming from that place up on the hill where they sent them, you know, there was no one there in their first place, you know, this is where you went after they gave up on you.
And...
And...
And...
And...
And I went to be...
I had no idea that...
I connected with the program immediately.
I'd like to say where my first sponsor was a guy named Ralph Monk.
His name was Monk, Father Monk.
And...
And he was a bald-headed guy with a red toupee from North Carolina, who got sober, and the meeting was Bill Wilson in New York.
In the late...
In the late 40s.
And he was kicked out of North Carolina, he grew up there, and he was a chain gang, and we let him out on a condition he'd never return to the state, and he went up to New York and got sober there in A.A. and then went to the seminary and started to be a priest, and I didn't even think of people going to A.A. meetings when you're in the seminary in those days.
And he was ordained and returned in triumph to North Carolina and got drunk again, and was in his sixth or seventh detox and treatment when I met him, and he never had a drink after that.
And he showed me the ropes, and this was wonderful.
I was under Ralph's wing as we went to give me all this stuff.
And the hope just started coming...
I fought off hope in this program.
I couldn't stand to get my hopes up again.
No, not...
I just couldn't stand that maybe it'll be all right, and then this dreadful, empty, self-hating, run-away-from-everything insanity.
I just couldn't...
Damn that.
So I wanted to be stoic until the next drunk happened and try to be cool and get through it.
And I was there five months.
They recommended a three-month stay, and so they kept me five.
I liked the meetings.
I looked forward to going to the meetings a lot.
Remember, we had negotiated which meeting we were going to go to this night, and I'd think, you know...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then...
And then I'd get there, and I'd get in the meeting, and the meeting would start, and I'd immediately look at my watch
and wait for the meeting to get over.
I was very anxious for meetings to get over.
Always have been.
And if the speaker went over time, I would just go berserk.
I would start to twist my chair apart.
The deal is until nine o'clock.
I've got to get back to my 12-step house and sit there.
And...
No, I have a thing about waiting in line the same way.
Waiting in line or having a meeting go over time is something that I'm way short of being emotionally mature enough to handle.
I can wait in line too deep if they're moving.
But checking baggage in for one of these trips is almost...
You almost want to go home, you know.
If you're sufficiently immature.
And as I went to meetings, this hope creeped in.
And I...
The big surprise to me was instead of telling me, giving me pep talks and saying,
Come on, do better, try a little harder, make sure you build up a good attitude,
I was always so self-conscious and so kind of keeping track of my emotional maturity and my insights.
And I thought I had to build this stuff up to a critical mass.
And then I would kind of come together.
The insights and the therapy and the prayer.
And then I'd be able to do whatever I had to do.
And...
That's not the approach.
That's not the approach I saw, you know.
The approach said, no, no, no, no.
You are deeply ashamed of being alcoholic.
You hate it, being alcoholic.
And you'd like to be as little alcoholic as you can be.
We'd like you to turn that around now and kind of relax.
And you're a lot more alcoholic than you think.
And your situation's a lot worse than you think.
And it's all right.
God has a lot of experience working with your type.
And you'll be fine as long as you don't mind being, you know, a far-gone, dingbat alcoholic
who is pathetically immature,
sort of an egomaniac looking for a lot of applause and praise,
full of fear about most everything, especially any disapproval at all,
and have a dirty mind.
And we'd like you to get used to that condition.
And thank God for giving us a variety today.
Now, I thought that condition was so awful, was so disgraceful,
that it wasn't worth being sober.
I mean, you have to get your act together and achieve a certain level of maturity
and aplomb and that kind of stuff,
or...
life's not worth living.
And they said, no, no, no, no.
It's the other way around, you see.
You've got to be willing to be what you're discovering
and then show up.
Don't have a drink till the next meeting.
And you play ball.
Just play ball.
Do the next step.
Talk to the person.
When they say hi, say hi back.
Go to the meeting.
Hang out.
Do your little thing.
Do your little chores.
Read the book.
Tell your secrets.
And everything that has been suggested to me in Alcoholics Anonymous
seems wholesome and irrelevant.
It seemed wholesome and with no promise.
I could not...
I didn't see there's anything wrong with going to a meeting
or writing an inventory
or saying,
perish for heaven's sakes
or telling the truth.
I thought all of this was wholesome stuff.
Most of...
I was trying to do something like that most of my life.
But I didn't have one drunk talking to another thing.
I didn't have the spirit...
the spirit of...
You know, it's not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I think it's...
any time people get on the track,
the spiritual track,
and really have a life,
they kind of get this thing
of...
The point is
we are very fortunate
to be children of God
who get to be led by the spirit
and have a life
while we're as goofy as we are.
And I...
I am, you know, profoundly self-centered.
And I think...
God is kind of on the periphery.
God is sort of a bit player.
An important one, but, you know,
out there on the edge.
And the great drama
is Terry.
How is Terry doing?
And how does Terry rate?
In every single imaginable way to compare.
You know,
IQ,
how fast I run,
how much I weigh,
how my hair's doing.
This is the drama of life.
How is Terry doing?
And when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous,
everyone was profoundly uninterested
in how Terry was doing.
This was a very boring topic to everyone.
No one ever brought it up.
No one ever gave any indication of caring about that.
And as I allowed myself
to be drawn into this fellowship
and find sobriety
a day at a time,
I've been under the illusion
a number of times.
Especially in that rush
of new life.
You know, when you finally just...
The first thing you think,
by golly,
maybe it won't be necessary
for me just to be...
to die drunk
and be a heartbreaker,
be the neighborhood asshole.
Maybe it won't be necessary.
And I just get so excited
and I started regaining
some normal interest in people.
And things...
Oh, I'm getting better!
I'm getting better!
The inside of me
is very interested in how Terry rates.
But, hey, your rating is going up!
That's not what was happening.
What was happening is
my rating's the same.
I'm kind of an introspective,
goofy,
alcoholic
who's
the introverted type
who gets philosophical
at the drop of a hat,
who never got any muscles,
who's pretty
right-brain instead of left-brain,
and is self-indulgent
and self-obsessed,
and on a good day
can do what he has to do.
And this is...
It's the big news, you know?
It's the regular stuff.
The big deal was
my higher power
batted down
my defenses
and I became willing
to play ball.
I became willing
to agree
that I am what I am
and do the next thing.
That's the big deal.
The change is
just
stopping resistance
and playing ball.
And my...
I get so excited
if I show any improvement at all,
I go bananas
in this excitement
that I think I might be getting.
And it's...
That's not what's happening.
I've...
These last few years,
I've been more aware...
It kind of discourages...
I'm not claiming...
I'm not telling you,
oh, my friends,
this is the secret
of the spiritual life.
I'm not saying this.
I'm giving you a report
that what I discover
is that at rest,
me,
by myself,
having my usual
reflection,
walking down,
walking to a meal,
being in my room,
brushing my teeth,
driving a car,
my automatic
reflection,
the train of thought
that I get into
is profoundly sick.
It's old ideas,
egomaniacal introspection
as a rule.
It isn't too hyper.
It isn't too serious.
It isn't too intense.
It's just the old thing.
And I have to be interrupted.
My God and my program,
my faith,
have to shake me and say,
Terry! Terry!
Look over here!
I'd much rather...
No, I wouldn't rather,
because I'm always grateful
for the interruption.
I'm grateful for the phone calls
that people call about.
People who are more desperately,
at least they're more in touch
with their illness
than I am at the time.
And they call me
for some advice
and I give them wonderful advice.
And I get right out
and I'm talking to somebody else.
It's terrific.
And then I feel more like
a human being
and I hang up
and I get back to worrying
about how I rate in the universe
and if I'm ever going to be significant
or happy
or ever really disciplined
or moral.
And then I need another
interruption.
Thank God for meetings.
But I've decided that the
that life,
that the program for me
is more and more
a matter of
constant interruptions
on the
meta-meditation
I have
of me.
And as long as I can be
drawn out,
shaken out of this little meditation
of how I'm doing
and how I'm rating in the universe,
I'm saved.
I'm saved again from this
dreadful, boring,
who cares?
No way to, you know,
this is a dead-end street.
Nothing happens with that meditation.
All it is is just kind of a funk
of despot.
And so I want to report in
that I'm deeply grateful
to my higher power
for interrupting me
in my path
walk towards death
and the disease of alcoholism.
And in a day at a time,
I'm grateful for the interruptions
my higher power gives me
with every aspect of the program
and meeting all of you.
Because if there's just one thing
that perks me up,
it's to meet another damaged,
terrible alcoholic
who,
especially when you don't mind
to be sober,
when you actually don't mind
being sober,
the wonder is there again
and it's the most exciting thing
in the world.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Father Terry.
Tonight, Kim has been asked
to read a vision for you.
Kim?
Kim?
Kim?
Hi, I'm a grateful member
of Al-Anon.
My name is Kim.
A vision for you.
Our book is meant
to be suggestive only.
We realize we know only a little.
God will constantly disclose
more to you and to us.
Ask him in your morning meditation
what you can do each day
for the man who is still sick.
The answers will come
if your own house is in order.
But obviously,
you cannot transmit something
you haven't got.
See to it that your relationship
with him is right
and great events will come to pass
for you in countless ways.
This is the great fact for us.
Abandon yourself to God
as you understand him.
Admit your faults to him
and your fellows.
Clear away the wreckage
of your past.
Give freely of what you find
and join us.
We shall be with you
in the fellowship of the Spirit
and you will surely meet
some of us
as you trudge the road
of happy destiny.
May God bless you
and keep you until then.
Amen.
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