Sponsorship and the Riddle of the Three Frogs on a Log – Paul L.

Hi everybody, my name is Paul LeClair. I'm an alcoholic. My home group is Saturday Night Live Group in Land O'Lakes and all I can say about this gathering is wow! Dick called me and said come down they're having a little gratitude dinner down there would I come down and speak And when we drove up there, I said, this must be the wrong place, Nanette. But it's a privilege to be here. And I want to thank Dick and I want to thank the committee for this great affair. We've been made feel welcome and at home. And like all AA gatherings, I feel comfortable amongst my friends. Thank you, David. I always say it's a privilege to be here, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart Because by rights, I shouldn't be here I should be either dead or locked away in a psychiatric hospital or a prison And I shouldn' t be here tonight And I wasn' t always that way I grew up as a relatively normal child In a little town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania It's called the Monongahela Valley and every little town has a little steel mill there Everyone in my town, it seemed like their fathers worked in the steel mill It was all blue-collar workers It was a great place to grow up I never remember looking at anyone and thinking, I wish I had what that guy had I wish we all had the same The people there were very friendly It was an honest place It was the kind of place when someone in your family would die or there was a death in the family, you would come home and there would be big pots of halupki. To you crackers, that's stuffed cabbage. In my neighborhood, we had a lot of people. Their last names ended in ski and oz, if you know what I mean. A lot of Italians, a lot Polish people. I'm Belgian, but my mother is a nice little Italian lady, so we fit in. And, you know, I always knew that I would drink. you know, my dad and his buddies all would go to the little corner bars and there were a lot of them. And as a kid, all the dads would take their sons or daughters to the bars and we'd sit up at the bar and have a mug of root beer or a chocolate pop and I would watch my dad and his friends over there and it seemed like they were all great big men and they'd be drinking glasses of Iron City beer and little shots and talking loud and talking about the Steelers and arguing about Pitt or Penn State and it just seemed like that was, you know, what would happen to me. That was where everybody went, it seemed. I had no desires to go anywhere else. To me, that was the perfect life. My mother and father weren't religious people. They were good people. They didn't attend church on a regular basis. They were Catholic by faith, but they were the kind of people that never harmed anyone. They were Good to People. if people needed something, they were always there. And that's how I grew up. I had a brother and a sister. And we didn't have a lot. We had a lot of love in our home. I was always kind of a shy kid. And I remember on some occasions we'd have to go to a Christmas party or something with my aunts. And there would be a lot up them. And they'd all be in there talking and having a good time. And it always seemed to be in the corner somewhere. So I remember when I was about 11 or 12 years old, I went to one of those parties. And this story is very familiar. I heard it time and time again in Alcoholics Anonymous. I started to sample those drinks. And a wonderful thing happened. I began to talk. I begin to dance. People began to tell my parents he's coming out of his shell. I was coming out in my shell, you know, and I didn't start drinking immediately after that. You know, I didn't go to the next day and drink some alcohol so I could talk to people. I just liked the effect. I believe to this day that alcohol had an abnormal effect on me. And for most of the time, that effect was good. It enabled me to get along in the world. It enables me to be friendly, successful, and at ease. The only problem with that was coupled with that was the phenomena of craving, which I developed. I can remember a time when I was about 14 years old and my dad and his friends always went hunting and I went hunting with them. And when they were finished hunting for the day, they would stop at a bar. I still remember the name of the bar. It was called Ray's Tavern. And we stopped there and I felt kind of important anyway, being with him and his friends. And we sat down at the bar and my dad said he'll have a Coke or whatever it was. And his friend said, no brains, he's hunting with us. He'll drink with us, give that boy a beer. And man, I felt like I had arrived. Now at that point, my dad had somebody take me home that was leaving and he stayed and drank. Incidentally, my dad drank a lot. I don't know if he was an alcoholic. I know he worked for 34 years outside along the river, chipping steel billets. And I don't remember him ever missing a day's work. He raised our family. We never had to move because the rent wasn't paid. We always had something to eat. And he never called himself an alcoholic, so I don' t think it matters if I do or not. If he was, there were an awful lot of alcoholics around where I lived. But what I did that day became a pattern. and I left that bar or went home, and I hitchhiked somewhere else, and I started to drink some more. And I didn't become an instant failure because of alcoholism. I was involved in sports. The area I'm from is a real big football area. You all know the Steelers, I suppose, right? And that was everybody's dream, to grow up, to play for Pitt or Penn State and play for the SteelERS. And it seemed to be the only way out of that little valley. And a lot of people got out of there. Joe Montana's from that valley, Danny Marino, Jim Kelly. They're all from that area. And so I got involved in that and I became pretty good. And I thought that was going to be my path. But things changed. I wasn't an outsider in high school. I had a lot of friends. I took the queen of the prom to the prom. I was a co-captain on the football team. I had lead role in the class play. But I drank all this time. I drank and we got in trouble sometimes, but it was nothing serious. It was nothing that I ever woke up the next day and said, you know, I wish I wouldn't have done that or what did I do? I feel awful about it. And, you know the football career didn't work out so I was ready to go into the mill like everyone else. And we did and at that time though the mills were starting to close down and people were getting laid off. This was in the late 60's and early 70's And there was a little college town there with a college, and I began to take some college courses. And I was living with some guys who were working in the mill, and that was quite an experience. I mean, if you remember those times, and here we are wearing hard hats with American flags by day and living on a college campus at that time. It's kind of a Looney Tunes existence. You saw both sides of the street. But I always enjoyed those little steel mill bars, sitting around drinking and talking to the guys. I enjoyed that. It was never a problem. I met my wife, Nanette. I eventually graduated from that college. And for some reason, I became a speech pathologist. I don't know why to this day. I think the line was short. I probably wanted to get somewhere. So I stood in that line. Nanette and I, at that time, the towns up there were really closing down. There were no jobs. So we left there. We had $600 in our pocket. We bought a new car. That keen alcoholic mind at work, no job, $600. We bought an old car and we went to Miami. Why not? It didn't work out in Miami so we ended up in Tampa. I found a job, Nanette found a Job. Things were good. You know, it was a bright area. And we had parties and we Went to the beach And we went down the Keys And we came down to Sarasota. and we had parties and we fished and we just had a good time and we got to know each other and we met a lot of friends and I worked and she worked and although I drank a lot Nanette hardly drank that much she tried to keep up with me but you know what that's like you Al-Anons out there and we had a daughter a couple years later we had another little girl and if you had looked at my family you would have thought We had everything going for us. We were a young couple, late 20s. Both had nice jobs. Two little girls, real pretty, perfectly normal. But something started to happen in my late 20's. It seemed like that line that we crossed over, I kept crossing over it more and more. I still didn't think it was a problem. Nanette did. When I was about 30 years old, I came home from a party or something. and I don't really know what happened, but I somehow got tangled up at the wrong doorway. And I was knocking on that door, and I thought she was just mad at me, and she just wouldn't let me in. Next thing I know, I was sitting in the back of a deputy's car. And they said, why are you trying to break in that house? And I said, I live there. And they says, no, you don't live there, call your home. And I called, and then it walked out, you know, it was just the next doorway there, so. They took me inside, and then they called Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, there's a wrong move right there. I didn't call Alcoholics Anonymous, and then it called Alcoholics Anonymous. And a nice man came and he took me to a meeting. And at that meeting you did what you do when a newcomer comes in. One man at that meeting told me he had been to prison. Another man told me that he lost his job. Another guy there said he tried to kill himself. He ended up in a mental institution. Another guy there went completely broke, lost their home and car and everything they had. And I left that meeting and I thought, my God, if I get that bad, I'll go back there. Well, over the course of the next 10 years, every one of those things happened to me. Every one of Those things that those people tried to, I guess, scare me with happened to Me. And l didn't see any of them coming. because my problem was I would take a drink of alcohol and the next thing I knew I had no idea where I was what I had done who I had offended who I'd hurt and I would wake up in the morning with that terrible feeling that we have of guilt remorse and fear and I will go into my daughter's bedrooms and they were little because I usually made a scene. I was a home drunk most of the time. And I would go into their bedrooms and I would sit on their beds and I Would tell them, Daddy's not going to do that anymore. I promise you. And I meant it. I meant It from the bottom of my heart. I Was never going to Do that again. And I Would make promises to Nanette and I Would apologize to people, mumble, I'm sorry. but I always did it again you see I always took that drink because it made me feel whole again it made me feel like a part of the world and I continued to work and we built a house out there in Land O'Lakes I thought if we moved out in the country I'd grow a garden and things would be different you know there's a lot of alcoholics in Land o'Likes And I don't think I'm the only one that had that idea. The problem was, you know, you need a little something to watch that garden grow. You're out in the country, there's not that much to do. You need a Little Bit of Booze. And I got progressively worse, as we do. And I would drink whiskey by the court than anything I could get my hands on. always waking up always making promises never keeping those promises then that's a little lady there sometimes I'd come home she's only about 5'2 and I'd walk in the house half drunk and she'd just roundhouse knock me out flat on the floor I didn't have that far to go but she would do it she didn't take any crap off of me now what happened to me is a part of our stories that says what happened if you would have looked at that home I had everything a man could want in that home I had two beautiful little girls that loved me I had a wife that stuck by me supported me kept our house clean and neat But I took a drink on one Friday afternoon. And I left that house looking for something, I don't know what. And what happened to me is I guess every alcoholic's fear, every alcoholic'S greatest fear. And I don' t think we' re mean people and I don''t think we mean to hurt anyone. I know I never did. You know, even my profession was a helping profession. I felt bad if I hurt someone's feelings the night before. But what I did is I went out, and in an alcoholic blackout driving my car, I killed a man. And I didn't even know I did it. And there was a deputy in back of me. And since I didn'T even knowI really did it, I didn' t stop immediately. and I came out of that blackout on the side of that road sitting in a police car once again ten years later. This time it was something and they called Nanette and she came up and picked me up. I wasn't arrested then. That's not how they do it. And what I did was the only thing I could think of doing I knew I could never live through that I knew there was no way that I could face that and so when I got home that night man it was just a wreck my daughters my little girls were sleeping just another night and they thought when they got up everything else would be normal again in their house and it would be a Saturday and we would do something and I went in their bedrooms and I kissed them goodbye and I had a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun at home. And I loaded it and I went out in the backyard. There was a gun I had learned to hunt on and I knew it very well. And I went and I sat in the back yard and I put that gun in my mouth and I pulled both triggers and the gun didn't go off. And I pulled them again and it didn't do anything. It didn't even go off and I was probably more ready to die at that time than I'll ever be again in my life. and so I got up and I took the gun over and back by the screen room and I looked at it and the safety was on and still being determined that there was no other solution I took took the safety off and I went back and I put it in my mouth and what happened next I don't know how you can describe it I guess most people would say I lost my nerve I don' t know I think what happened to me was I believe there's a God in all of us. I believe there was a spark of God in me left that was so revulsed by what I was supposed to do or what I would or what was going to do that I remember screaming out and probably the only honest time I had ever prayed I said, God, please help me. And it would be nice to tell you that I was transported that night and I walked through this with some type of dignity, but that's not what happened. Because I was right. I couldn't face this and I went completely insane and I was locked into a mental institution. This wasn't a treatment facility. It was a locked in mental institution and I don't remember much about that place. I remember four-point restraint I remember no sheets I remember screams coming from somewhere that I don't know existed You know, this wasn't a broken lampshade or a hole in the wall This wasn't wet pants or insulting someone This was a human being And I just couldn't I couldn't face it And every time the reality of that would come before me I would have to go off into some type of insanity I really don't know what it's called Thanksgiving Day of 1990 I sat in the hallway of that mental institution rocking to myself I was called into a room there was a psychiatrist in there and he talked to me for a little bit and he said we can't help you we can watch you forever but we can help you he said, I really don't know if anyone can help you. He said, well, I'm going to suggest something to you. He said when you leave here, you should contact Alcoholics Anonymous. It seems to me those people have had experience with people like you and you may find some kind of hope there. And so on Thanksgiving morning in 1990, Nannette came to that hospital and picked me up and took me home, if that's what you wanted to call it. Because there was two beautiful little girls there that I couldn't even look at. And my 76-year-old mother who had retired and my father had passed away and she didn't deserve this in her life. And I probably still should have been hospitalized. I couldn' face those kids. I could'n face my mother. I cou'n't face anything. And that took the children and went back up to Pittsburgh for a while. And my mother stayed with me in that house. And I believe what she saw and what she went through with me, only a mother could go through with her child. Because I just couldn't function. She would find me curled up in a ball in the hallways and in the garage and anywhere. and I would scream and cry and I just couldn't accept it. I couldn't except it. One thing I did, however, by some strange power, I don't know, they got me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on that Thanksgiving night in 1990 and I walked into a little group in Land O'Lakes and I didn't know what to do and I told them what I had just done. And I think the group really was kind of shocked. I mean, they didn't know really what to do with me. I think they were kind of scared, and I would have been too. You know, someone described me at that time. I mean you could look at me, and there was nobody home. There was nobody inside of me, just a shell. And I know we say a lot of things. You say you go to 90 meetings in 90 days, and you get a sponsor. I was lucky when they could get me dressed and get me coherent enough and my mother or Nanette would take me to a meeting. And I would sit there, and I believe I was such a nervous wreck and so distraught that nobody really wanted to sit by me. And I can remember people looking at me and they would say things like, there but for the grace of God go I. And that's not a very good place to be. I couldn't identify with anybody. It seemed to me that it was too late for me. It seemed in me that all you good people had come here to avoid these kind of things and had made your lives better, made your life safer and the people about you safer. And all I felt was that I was just full of destructive. I was a taker, a takER of life. I mean, when is it too late? and I thought it was too late. I was arrested. I was charged with two felonies, charged with manslaughter, leaving the scene with a death. I didn't run away. I just didn't know what happened. I drove about six seconds. The deputy turned his lights on and I pulled over. I didn'T know really what had happened. I was immediately fired from my job. It was in the newspapers twice. You know, my daughters were in middle school and elementary school at the time. You know, when something like this happens, it's not only, and I don't mean to be selfish about this, it's also a matter of it's just not only the loss you feel for the damage you've done to the person and their family, but you look at your family and you've destroyed them also. You've destroyed any hope they had of a normal life. And so, somehow Nanette Nanette had been raised in a Catholic faith. Her father is a good man. I used to criticize his faith. And now I look at it, what I was criticizing is here's a man who was a prisoner in World War II, was on the baton death march and survived. And he survived on his faith and who was I to criticize that? So anyway, somehow Nanette got in touch with a priest out in Land O'Lakes and she took me over to talk to this priest. And when I walked in and talked to this priest, he looked at me and he said to me, I know how you feel. He said, I've never killed anyone. He said but I too am an alcoholic. He said and I know how you feels. I know the emptiness. I know the remorse. And I was very surprised And we went to see him several times. And one time we went to see Him, He said, I'm going to call a man I know that's in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous out here. He seems to help people. He's a good guy. He says his name was Captain Bob. A lot of you may know him. I don't know. And so several days later, I got a phone call from Bob. And he said, I'd like to come and pick you up and take you to a meeting. and I said okay and I remember when he came to my house he came up in the driveway and I went out and got in his car first question I asked Bob I remember was do you know about me you see I felt that anybody that knew about me wouldn't want to be with me and Bob's the type of guy you know he always has kind of a smile and he shook my hand he said yeah young fellow I know about you so let's go to the meeting and on the way to the meeting he started asking me about my drinking of all the things. I thought that was crazy. I think what he was really trying to do was qualify me actually to find out if I really was an alcoholic. I couldn't believe that. He told me a couple of things that night. He said, you know, he said, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm a psychologist. I'm no lawyer. He said I'm only an alcoholic and so what I have to give you is all contained in this book. He said, I might not answer a specific question you have. He said I hope I can show you in the book how to find that answer. And he told me he wanted me to call him every day and he would come and get me every day and take me to a meeting and I didn't believe it would work. It still was in my mind that it was too late. I'm sure it would work I guess I just thought, why? What's the point? And I wouldn't call him. And he'd call me and say, why didn't you call me? And he would tell me to read things in the book. Read the doctor's opinion. I'll call you right back. And I'd read and he'd called me back and say what did you read? And I tried to tell him. He said, no that wasn't it. Read it again. And I thought he was nuts. You know, I needed something more than reading this book. they hooked me up to go see a psychiatrist not Bob the mental institution I went and saw this psychiatrist and I talked to her for a while and she said I don't want to see you anymore you need to be with Bob he can help you I can't and I thought God you know anyway We started going to a lot of meetings together, Bob and I. Walter's sitting back there. Walter's a member of our home group and he was involved in a lot of this early stuff with me because we went to meetings together. And we started to read the book. I remember one time I was riding back from a meeting with Bob and I said, you know, Bob, I think they wrote this book for me. And he said, no, they didn't. They wrote it for me so it was I remember we went to a Wesley Chapel meeting out there one night it was a small meeting only about 10 people were there it was at the first place where they used to have that meeting and we went back in the back room and we knelt together and we said the third step prayer and a few days later we were riding to another meeting and Bob said well what do you feel like about that third step and I was probably honest because it would have been my natural inclination to say just great I feel like I'm with God and we're one and I said well to be perfectly honest I really didn't feel that much Bob and he looked at me and he told me this stupid riddle that's probably meant more to me than anything in Alcoholics Anonymous he said if there were three frogs sitting on a log and one decided to jump off how many would there be And I said, two. They said, no, three. He just decided to jump off. And what you've done is you've decided to empty yourself of self and fill yourself with the God that you can understand. And so we began to do that. And we did it real simply. We did it out of the book and we followed those instructions. We did it in his car And we did it In back rooms of meetings And we didn't We did that on the phone And all through this time We were going through This trial For manslaughter I don't recommend That to anybody But I'll tell you what Going through Something like that I believe You'll be about as honest As you can be because when I came here, I had absolutely no fight in me. Anything anyone told me, I believed. Anything Bob told me to do, I would do. And that would not have been my natural inclination either. You see, I had been reduced to nothing. Something else helped me along that time too and I've got to share that with you. We talk a lot about and I hear a lot of speakers say, I'm not going to tell you I drunk a log. A drunk-a-log really saved my life When I first met Bob I told him, I said I can't identify with anybody You know I hear people say They say things like I had six DUIs But I never killed anybody So Bob gave me a tape And I know a lot of you Have probably heard of Tom Eye He was at our roundup A couple of years ago And I listened to that tape And I got something That's so important to all of us I got some hope because I knew if there was another human being that had done what I had done and it changed his life somehow to lead a decent, honest, good life, then it was possible for me. That was really my main motivation through all of it. I knew someone had done it before me. It was a rough time in our lives You know, when these things happen The problems that you have at home don't stop When you have children Sicknesses Financial problems We had no finances We were declared semi-indigent I really don't know what semi-Indigent means I kind of think it means You're not on the street but people don't know why. Because we really had nothing. And it takes a good lawyer, well, it takes a lawyer, let's put it that way, to go in and make that motion and walk out in the hallway of the courtroom and say, I need another $5,000, you know. And that's how it went. I finished my ninth step to the best of my ability. I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that night and I walked into a courtroom we threw ourselves on the mercy of the court we had run out of everything and Walter was there and they both spoke for me and they said this man's an alcoholic and now he's in Alcoholics Anonymous and things like that and the victim's family was there and it was always so devastating to be around them I wanted to tell them so much how sorry I was And the words just can't express that. It just doesn't do it. I stood before the judge that day, and he sentenced me to 12 years in Florida State Prison. And what I can remember the most about that day as I was taken back into the holding cell there, back of the courtroom, was just a sense of relief. a sense of relief and a sense of hope because I took you all with me you might not have wanted to go but I took you I took all the hope I had heard I took all of your experiences I took the strength of a room full of people like this with me because by that time I had found a God of my understanding and I had found a fellowship of men and women who share that God and so I knew I'd make it and it wasn't an easy time in our lives prison isn't a very nice place to be but I will say this God is in prisons Alcoholics Anonymous is in prison and there are people in prison right now that have far more faith and far more trust in their God than I can because some of these men that I met will never get out and yet they're sober and they're honest and they trust in this God I was no big time convict let me tell you I didn't know anything about prison I found that they are not very courteous when transferring you around the state and they seem to like to do that a lot it seems they wake you up at about 3 o'clock in the morning you pack your envelope all your possessions you get on a bus in the middle of the night they take you to some other prison where you go through the whole routine I remember I was driving down the road in a prison bus with some guys and we were on our way to the Tomoka prison in Daytona, Florida. And I asked the guy, I said, you know, I said why don't they just tell you, look tomorrow you're getting transferred to Tomoka. You can get up, eat breakfast, get on the bus and go. And the guy said well, hey do that so your buddies won't know where you are and break you out. Now all I could picture was Captain Bob and Walter sitting on the side of the road in one of their Lincolns with a meeting schedule. Where are we going to take the little prick now? There's a good step meeting over here. That day that bus stopped in front of a little place right outside of Samoka Prison. A little gray building. I had no idea what it was. It caught about six of us off of there. Now, up around where I'm from in Tampa, we have some wonderful names of treatment facilities, rehabilitation halfway houses, Sunrise House, Chrysalis House, Anon Anu. Well, the prison system has that too. Theirs is called the Reality House. And I don't know how you arrived, but I jumped off the back of a prison bus, my redneck with a shotgun, announced to another little skinny guy there, he said, we got another load of garbage for you. And I went in that place. I had never been in any kind of place like that. You know, I learned the program of Alcoholics Anonymous with a sponsor and his car and in the back rooms of AA meetings and from you people. And so I walked in there They put me in this unit in there There was a circle of chairs And they had a young guy in there He's only about 18 or 19 years old And they were hollering at this guy I mean, everybody would take turns And say something to him He was crying And they sat there for three days And did this I started yelling at this man I yelled at this boy too Because I figured if everybody yelled enough They'd let us do something it wasn't a bad place it was a place where I could begin to practice the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life there was a man there who was a guard he was a member of our fellowship he had 13 years of sobriety and I used to play Scrabble with him at night and I would swear that he had a direct line to my sponsor back in Tampa because I would be in these groups all day and I would hear stuff and they would say that, I would tell him, I'd say, Mark, I think I'm a codependent. And Mark would kind of look at me and he would never answer me. All he would say were things like, I think it's your move. And next week we'd play and I'd says, Mark I think have this shame-based personality. And he'd look and he said, are you sure svelte is a word? Never answered me. there was a unit there where they let you take naps. These people had some other problems, and they let them lay down and take namps, and we were never allowed to do that. It seemed you had to be suffering from depression to get in that unit. So I told Mark one day, I said, Mark, I think I have some depression. And he said, oh yeah? And the next day I got up and I had a notice on my door. I was the new grits man, 5 a.m. breakfast shift, seven days a week. Now you want to get a real picture of alcoholics, you serve them grits 5 a。m. every morning while they're locked up in prison. You get a really good picture. and I got mad and I did this for, I don't know how long it was going on for a couple of months and I saw him and I was really mad and I said, why do I have to do this? I'm one of the oldest people here and he said, oh, he said I see you lost your depression. He said, it looks like we have to work on anger now. That seems to be the way I've gotten everything I've gotten in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't want to leave Nanette out of this. During that time, she was alone. Two daughters. And she was working her job. And she took a job in a motel as a maid. And she did and she took sewing in. And she never took any welfare or food stamps. And she brought those girls over to visit me almost every weekend. And in that little visiting yard and those jails and all the prisons that I was in during that time, I believe we reestablished our relationship with our family. And it wasn't nice to have your daughters there. It wasn't a nice thing for them to see. And I hear a lot of people say, my children have never seen me take a drink. I can't say that. I can say, my children have seen me change. And to me, that's just as important. That's an important lesson. Something else happened to me there that I believe kind of made it seem like a full circle for me. They brought a man in there at one time and he had been in prison for four and a half years. He had killed his friend in a car accident. He couldn't forgive himself. he had never been to Alcoholics Anonymous he had never taken the steps that we have and he came there, and I don't believe he liked me very much, he thought I was running some game to get out and he would kind of stare at me and in the most natural beautiful way, we began to speak first slowly, and then more and more each day and we began to share with each other about what happened, about what I was doing, about what AA was. You know, I got to kneel down and say the third step prayer with that man. And I got a chance to see and I got the light begin to shine in his eyes. The light that I believe is God that's within all of us. i don't have a real difficult or complicated program i got my spirituality i got what it means right out of the book out ofthe chapter to the agnostic because it tells me in there the great reality lies deep within it was so with us and that's what's so great about the big book you know the bigbook isn't someone's philosophy it's what some people did to get sober. It's not someone thinking, it's what someone did. I was sitting at the reality house one day and they come and said, LeClaire, get dressed. I said, okay. Where are we going? Never mind, just get dressed because now you never know in prison what they're going to do. I didn't know what they were going to do with me so I got dressed. They took me down and met the governor. I said why are you taking me down to meet the governor? He said he wants to meet an alcoholic. We've looked in the computer and your name keeps coming up. So I got to meet the governor and ask him a question or something that they told me to ask. I don't know how you feel about it, but I was released very early from prison. They came to me and said, we've had no complaints. You've done all we asked you, and we're going to let you go home. I said last night when I was talking to a group, you know, I saw a lot of guys come and a lot OF guys leave prison. And I never saw them tell someone, you're going home. And I ever saw the reaction of, oh no, not that. You just go. And I went home to a life that we had to rebuild again. And it was great. I got in touch with my sponsor. We started going to meetings. I had a 10-year parole, so my first parole officer came around and she was a real wonderful woman. She was everything you could ask for. And she said, Paul, you have to get a job. And I said, well, you know what, Ellen? I said. My professional license hasn't really been taken away yet. There's going to be some hearings on it. The people I work for said they may support me and there's a chance I might get it back. And she says, well we can't wait for that. She said, you need to get the job. So I said okay. So I didn't make it in Publix. They didn't want to hire me as a bag boy. I went to a little hardware store out there in Land O'Lakes. And the guy said, do you know anything about hardware? Yeah, I know. What's your area of specialty? Now, I used to cut my own grass. I said lawn and garden. So he hired me. And let me tell you, people, for about the next six months, I gave some of the worst advice on home improvement that the people of Land O'.Lakes ever heard. I saw an ad in the paper one day, and it said speech therapists or speech therapist assistants needed. And I thought at least maybe I could be an assistant. So I applied for the job. There was a lady over in Palm Harbor, and she interviewed me. And I told her everything about myself and what had happened. And she said, listen, I'll contact some people, and we'll see what they say. She got back to me, and sie said, you know, Paul, they said they'd hire you. And they did. And, you know, I thought, geez, this is my Alcoholics Anonymous miracle. You hear all these stories of someone coming off a skid row or out of prison and getting a job and rebuilding their life. And it was. It was. We had a Christmas that year. We refinanced our house. We had some money. Around about February of that same year, the secretary at her office started calling me and saying, Paul, what kind of licenses do you need? And I told her. She said, well, you know, she said, I'm finding them around the office with all different serial numbers with the same name on it. What do you think that means? I said, it doesn't mean anything good. And what it was was, this lady was running a scam. She was defrauding Medicaid and anybody else that would get in on it and I was the big dummy right in the middle of it. I didn't know. and outside of the meeting one night I asked my sponsor Bob what should I do and he said Paul I believe you know who to ask and I knew who to answer it was the God that I came to understand this program and I went down and I told the people and a funny thing they said we can't keep you but we'll support you So I was unemployed again But it didn't feel bad this time You know, it says in the promises We will not fear financial insecurity And although it wasn't great I had hope I got a call that my hearings were coming up In a couple of months And I went before the State of Florida Professional Practices Commission and they asked me to talk to them and tell them what I could promise them what I know and I said to be very honest with you we can't promise you anything you know and I understand whatever your decision will be, I understand you're in a position where you're responsible for who you license and that day by a vote of four to three they granted me my license back And the people that I worked for before this all happened hired me back. They didn't just hire me back and treated me bad, they hired me back, they gave me trust, they give me dignity. And that really was a miracle. I've been blessed in Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, it's my privilege to be here. I mean that. I've felt the full effect of your love and God's love. I want everything it has to offer. And so far I've gotten that. Has my life been perfect? I don't think so since then. We have a pretty good life. We have little house that I was one time ashamed of I thought I should have bigger. I never thought I'd have it, and now I'm very proud of it. Those two little girls were growing up. My oldest girl, who started high school the day after her father was sentenced to 12 years in prison, graduated high school with honors. She got two college scholarships. She works, and she goes to college, and she bought her own car. And she's a fine young lady. Her sister, my youngest daughter, is a senior in high school. And although she's not as academically inclined as her sister, she has a heart as big as gold. You know, this past year at our roundup, I got up and it was my birthday, not my eighth birthday, my real birthday. And I opened my sock drawer and there was a little note in there from her and it said, Happy Birthday, Dad. And then under there she wrote, I'm glad you're my dad. And that made me feel wonderful. This is coming from two kids that I nearly took everything they hoped for in life and destroyed it. And it was nothing I had done. I got it from this program, from practicing these spiritual principles in my life. It led me to all these wonderful things. And as all of you, there are times when things don't go real well. This past February, that oldest girl had a mole removed and we got a diagnosis back that it was a malignant melanoma. And I kind of fell apart and I thought all the wrong things. And after three weeks and several other diagnoses and stays at Moffitt, another diagnosis came back and they said, no, it's not that. She's alright. They did a little bit of surgery and removed it. But something happened during that time. I was sitting at my home group and I didn't think I needed to be there. That wasn't doing me any good. And they were talking about something about the eighth step. And that really wasn't what I needed to hear. But something happened that night in that room. I felt the presence of God so strongly in that room coming from you people that it had a real effect on me and my heart. And I knew no matter what anyone was talking about that night, they were talking about the solution to our problem. They were talking about the God that was in them and expressing that to each and every one of us. And I felt that that night, and I knew that's where I belong. And when I came in here tonight and saw all you people, I was very nervous. But I was also very comfortable I'm probably more comfortable in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous than I am anywhere in my life and so as I stand here tonight and talk to you I look back Thanksgiving day of 1990 I sat in a mental institution some kind of a group therapy and they asked me what my goals were for that day and I simply put my face in my hands and I cried because there were no goals. There were no days. It was just blackness. And I got up today and I sat out back at my house drinking a cup of coffee and I thought about my goals for the day. They're quite different. My goals for today Today we're just to try to be a little better person. Try to treat people a little nicer. Try to judge a little less and to love a little more. And I found that all here. I found from you, and from what the people came before us gave us. I just want to thank you all for letting me come here tonight and share this great event with you. Thank you. Thank you.