Step 1: I Am a Footwork Guy, I Am Not in Management – James T.

face I saw when I walked into the rooms. Please give a warm welcome to James T. from Auburn. James, alcoholic. I'm in good company here tonight. Happy birthday to everybody. Thank you, Ingrid, for inviting me. It's a real important day in my life today. Today's the day I don't drink. When I was drinking, I used to always think that I could quit drinking, but it was always tomorrow that I was going to quit drinking. It was never today. I could quit maybe on a bet on my birthday or maybe on Saturday or maybe at Christmas time, but to quit today, I couldn't do that. What I've learned in AA is that I just kind of switch those things around. I may drink tomorrow, but today's the day I don't drink. It's a very gentle shift in my perception. Today, I'm going to do whatever I need to do to not drink. I think that I'm going to be okay today just standing up in front of all of you. My sobriety date is December 6, 1982. It's the last time I smoked pot. I was smoking pot because I had a problem with alcohol. You relate to that, huh? I got to a place in my life where I just didn't want to drink anymore, but I didn't know how to not drink because I hadn't found you yet. The best idea I could come up with is I know what I'll do. I'll smoke pot, and I won't drink because my problem is alcohol. I had clearly identified my problem as alcohol. I happened to be a gardener, and I was growing some nice organic pot, and so I quit drinking. I did that for quite a while. During this time that I was not drinking, my sister came to AA. We have a family disease. Every time I was going to see her, I would take a bunch of Visine and a bunch of Listerine, and I'd tell her how good I was doing because I wasn't drinking. She would tell me how good she was doing because she was in AA. She kept inviting me to come. All she ever said about it was, I would like the people and the people would like me. Boy, was she ever right. She nailed me. I was so lonely when I found you. The book talks a lot about the alcoholic loneliness, and I identified with it completely. I didn't have to ask anybody what incomprehensible demoralization was. I was just like a walking dead man when I found you. So, I come to AA. 0000 Karlie. 0000 Komain. 0000 Kelley. 0000 Long. 0000 Biff. 0000 Rick. not alcoholic, I'm not even drinking. If I had to describe my drinking, I would certainly not say I was an alcoholic, because I wasn't. I could take a lie detector test and I wasn't an alcoholic. I was a heavy drinker with a lot of problems when I was drinking. So I come to AA, and I introduce myself as an existentialist, which I was. And I sit around the meetings, and I listen. I was able to listen. I could hear what you were saying. I didn't agree with you. I didn't really believe you, but I could hear what you were saying. And I started to identify with your stories. And I started to realize very slowly that I drank like you drank. And it took me several months, but finally I raised my hand one day and said, I'm alcoholic. I got a round of applause. I'm kind of a slow study. So what happened to me is I ended up catching this damn. I got a disease from you guys. So if you're here tonight and you're not an alcoholic, don't sit next to me, because it's contagious. I'd love to give you a case of it. So I thought, you know, I wonder if the book mentions anything about marijuana. And I thought it must be in there someplace, because my understanding is if you're smoking pot, anybody who's smoking pot tonight is not sober with the people. So I'm looking through the book, and I'm looking through the book, and I can never find anything about it. And then one day, I find something buried on page one. Here lies a Hampshire grenadier who caught his death drinking small cold beer. A good soldier is near forgot whether he died by musket or by pot. They don't talk about hard drugs until page seven. I sponsor a guy named Steve in Auburn whose sobriety date is the last time he did nutmeg. His name is Nutmeg Steve. When you do that kind of thing, you get a name in AA. And, you know, I'm meeting all these people like Boxcar Bill and, you know, some of these guys, and I'm like, I don't know. I'm not sure what to do with it. And I'm like, well, I'm going to have to go to a barbershop and get some drugs. And I'm like, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And I'm like, I don't know. And I'm like, well, we don't know that guy. Maybe cause I know Tom ooh, David Love, and I ain't got any rails or anything man. I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to lie, I was trying to be up to sure here, down here to have a look. But, you know, you talk about how long we took the way down there. Streamed a bunch of scores, about 120,000 people. Today you're the chairman. I don't know. You're 20. And you're smart. We had trying to plan you. Now they're saying that the show has flower real Cooper, doesn't just I got nowhere in the business of the show. who can do this kind of thing. My so-called movie next week is Now That Baby's Ih LSAA TV, We're off to the city dangerous live with all the difference there is to this чyтр20 encoding is, this is it. So here we are on a Saturday night, and we get to not drink because we're willing to do this work. I'm here in AA about, I don't have the timelines exactly right, but I was going to meetings regularly, not drinking and obviously not smoking pot, but I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't have a God. I'd given up on him a long time ago. I didn't think the book was very well written, and I was doing nothing. I wasn't doing the steps. I was just not using and drinking and going to meetings. We only could do that for so long, and you unravel eventually. And so I'm about, I think it's around six months, and I got to do something. It's like blow my brains out, get drunk, or work the steps. And at this point in my life, I went to my sister, and I talked to her, and I just told her a little bit about how crazy I was getting, and she couldn't tell already. And she said she knew somebody in Sacramento that I could go see, a man named Howard. A lot of people know Howard and have talked about him tonight. And I went to see Howard, and I'd been to psychiatrists before, and I'd been to shrinks before, and counselors, and I just lied to them, paid them money, and left, and nothing ever changed. I sat in his office for an hour, and I told him the truth about me. I kind of snot cried for an hour, you know, and I shared all these secrets that I had. My drinking career, my perception of my drinking career was I was very sleazy. I did a lot of sleazy things with a lot of sleazy people. I was the sleazy person in a lot of that, and I looked at my life like a garbage can, and I had a lot of just, I was very secretive about it, and I didn't, I had a perception of what I wanted you to believe I was like, and then I had another persona that I had. The book talks about that quite a bit, too, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I wear a suit in the daytime, and then go drinking these places where your feet stick on the floor. And so I had, and I was afraid. This was a real fear that I had. If I shared who I was with you, you would ask me to leave. That's how little I felt about myself. And I told Howard the truth. And at the end of the hour, he got out a piece of paper, this is a yellow legal pad, and he wrote prescription to the top. He's not a doctor. He just wrote prescription to the top, and he wrote, get on your knees and pray. And he handed me this, and I handed him $50. He charged $125 just, I think, more recently before he died, but it was a $50 fifth step, is what it was. I had, but I didn't have four steps. It wasn't really a good fifth step. And I don't know why I did this, but I started to get on my knees and pray. I didn't even believe in God. I knew it wasn't going to work, but I was at a point in my life where I just, somehow I got some willingness to try something, I guess. And I, Howard had given me a number of a woman named Anna, who gave me another number of another woman named Donna. And I called Donna and asked her to be my sponsor. I've never met her before. And she agreed to do that. If I'd go to four meetings a week, I'd write in her journal and see her once a week, and I'd work the steps. And I agreed to do that. Also, about the same time, I bought a new car. Prior to that, I had an alcoholic truck. I don't know if there's any out in the parking lot tonight, but you know what they look like. They're like, one of the door panels is a different color. The tires are bald. Some of these tags are on the back that aren't yours. The windshield's cracked. The springs are popping up through the upholstery. And I bought a new sports car. And it was the nicest car that I ever had. I never had a car that nice. And I started going to a lot of meetings. I was kind of trolling for a date. I hadn't had a date in about five years. Because if, if I could have found a woman who would have gotten in this truck with me, I wouldn't have wanted to go out with her. It was, it was bad. So that was a lot of the loneliness too. I was, I was afraid of seeing it the other day. a 40-year-old bachelor, and I had no relationships with really anybody at that point. And so I'm going to a lot of meetings, mostly to show my car off with the hope of maybe getting a date with somebody. And I'm starting to see Donna and journal, and I'm praying every day for the will of God in my life and the power to carry it out, and I'm starting to feel better. And it was one of my early spiritual awakenings where I was doing something I didn't believe in, I didn't agree with it, and I knew it wouldn't work, but I was feeling better. And I kind of equate it to like going to the gym. If you go to the gym and you work up the weights, it doesn't matter what you think about it. You can have any opinion you want about going to the gym, but if you take the actions, you get the results. And I've been doing that. I was taking these actions and I was getting the results. So never ask me about what I think about something, because my opinion of it doesn't really matter. It's that I was willing to take the actions. So I'm starting to see my sponsor, and I'm seeing now that there's little numbers in front of the steps, so I have to go back to the beginning to one and do them in order, because I've done this $50 fifth step, and that's about all I've done. So I look back over my journal, and I see that I've done it. And I'm like, I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. I've done it. And I'm drinking, and I could see very clearly that when I took a drink, I couldn't predict what was going to happen, other than I was going to want another drink. And when I wasn't drinking, I was thinking about drinking. And that's all alcoholism is. I thought it was like somehow it was a moral issue or something, but it's just that I have an allergic reaction to alcohol. And I had one example that stuck out in my mind particularly is one of the times just prior to COVID. I was drinking, and I was drinking, and I was drinking, and I was quitting drinking. I was a bartender, which seemed like a good job for a person like me. And I decided to quit drinking for 30 days so I could prove that I didn't have a problem, because people who can't quit have a problem. And I didn't want to have a problem, so I was going to quit to prove to myself I was okay. So I quit drinking for 30 days, and I did. I might have been smoking pot. I'm not sure. But I didn't drink for 30 days. At the end of 30 days, I decided to have a glass of wine to celebrate not drinking. You understand that? I had a glass of wine at the pepper mill on a sunrise at noon, and I was in jail at midnight. When I take a drink, it went so well. That glass of wine went so well, I decided to have another glass of wine, and so it went. So I was able to understand that I was powerless over alcohol in my life. And then that's part one. That's actually a step up. I was able to understand that I was powerless over alcohol in my life. And then there's step one, part A. And then there's step one, part B, that my life is unmanageable. Now, I thought my life was still manageable because I had a job. I had an alcoholic truck and a bad job. And that meant my life was manageable. What I've come to realize, it's taken me a while to do this, but I understand it down to my gut now that I'm not the manager. And I don't ask the question why. Why is a management? That's a management question. When I want to ask why about something, I ask instead, what can I do about it? Because I'm a footwork guy. I'm not in management. I'm in footwork. And I had a chance to walk my talk about that recently because I just retired from work a few months ago. I didn't really want to, but I did. And I decided I was going to join the Peace Corps because I like adventure and I thought I'd like to be in a service. And so I talked my wife into it and we're going to join the Peace Corps and we got as far into the processes and we're going to go Africa in August. And I did some blood work and it turned out that they didn't want me for medical reasons. And I was really okay with it because I'm not in management. It's like I walk, I knock on doors and I go through the ones that open and that door didn't open. And I realized shortly after that I don't have to go to Africa to be of service. There's plenty of things to do in Auburn. And I got a job, I got a job, I got a job, I got a job. And I started working in the field, and I got a job in the field. And I was doing well in the field. And I went to Africa, I was doing and I got two new sponsees within a week of that. So I'm not going to Africa. Step two, I thought, well, I'm not crazy. I found a little loophole in step two. I'm always looking for, I'm a loophole kind of guy. And it says, when I first read it, I thought that you had to believe in God to take the second step because at that point in my life, I still didn't really believe in God. But it says, came to believe that a power greater than our self-conservative sanity, but you don't have to believe in the power, just that the power would restore you if you were insane. I studied philosophy in college, so I'm always trying to think my way into a better living. But what I realized when I took step two is that I did a lot of crazy things drinking, and we all have stories of what we did when we were drinking. We all have lots of stories. Some are funny, some are tragic. But the most insane thing that I ever did, I did it when I was sober. I picked up another drink. I would have to go crazy first to drink again. I've been restored to sanity. So I'd have to first go nuts before I'd pick up another drink. So that got me through step two. Step three, I'm still struggling with this God thing. You know, I just had a lot, and you said, you know, it's underlined on the steps, God as you understand it. I had trouble believing you when you told me that I could do that. Because I had this idea that God was just this mean old man, and he's going to poke your eye out and turn you to salt, and you can't do anything about it. But you kept telling me, it's God as I understand it. And so when I was taking step three, the word that I focused on the most was the word decision. And what I did is I decided to work the rest of the steps. And then what has happened for me as a result of doing that, I ended up having this power in my life that's working for me. So I got a relationship with a power as a result of making the decision to work the program. But at the time, I thought, I kept saying, this stuff is too confusing. You know, it says in the literature sometimes we have to resign ourselves from the debating society. But I wanted to argue about things. I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to argue. And you hear things in AA like, one person will say, let go. The other person will say, hang in there. Well, do you hang in there, or do you let go? And then they say, you know, you have to surrender to win. What in the world does that mean? Or you have to give it away to keep it. Now, that doesn't make any sense at all. Don't make any major decisions in the first year. Decide to turn your will and your life over to the care of God. That sounds like a major decision. Don't get any relationships the first year. But get a sponsor and tell them everything. That sounds like a relationship. Or someone will say, think, think, think. And I like that one a lot. Where's the chapter about think, think, think? My two favorite hobbies were thinking and drinking. Think, think, think, drink, drink, drink, think, think, drink, think, drink. The chapter's called Into Action. It's not called Into Thinking. You ever seen the smart water? One of my sponsors gave me this smart water the other day. I couldn't get it open. I don't know. You have to drink it to get smart, I guess. The one I like the best is Half Measures Avail Us Nothing. Turn the page a couple pages. You'll be amazed before you're halfway through. There's another one. On one page it says, There is one power. May you find him now. Oh, that power's God. May you find him now. Turn the page. God could and would have sought. We have to find him. We have to look for him. This is the kind of stuff that I want to think about. So I go to my sponsor and say, I'm confused. She says, good. That means maybe you don't have all the answers. Maybe this is showing you some open-mindedness. So I got open-minded. And I had some willingness because I was talking to her about it. And then the honesty came later. So those are the essentials of recovery. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. So I get to my fourth step. And I'm doing this journaling. So I'm learning how to do the tenth step. And I look at this blank piece of paper. And I'm trying to do this fourth step. And I can barely remember being in high school. I have what's called purposeful forgetting. I don't want to remember a lot of stuff. And so I thought, how am I going to do this? I can't remember anything. But as I was doing this journaling, I started to... I go to my sponsor with this journal. And I was amazed at the things that I was writing down there. Because I write it down without thinking about sharing it. And I found out I was so out of touch with me. I had no idea that I... I thought I was just a really nice guy who had a little bit of a weed drinking problem. And when you don't have relationships with people in your life, you don't have any reality checks. And I'm out by myself. I'm out by myself all the time. And I really didn't know me at all. And this journaling process started to let me know about myself. And I put my... I had... I hated my father. He was what I think was the designated problem in our family. And I hated alcohol. As a kid, I remember working in a grocery store in high school. And I'd shake the beer up. So that when people would open it, it would blow up in their face. And I thought I was doing my part. But that was before I had a drink. But I hated alcohol and I hated my father. And so I put his name on a piece of paper on my four-step. And I started to write about how I was victimized by him. How mean he was to me. And how much hurt I had. And I started to feel this. And I started to cry. And these... Tears just washed over me. And I couldn't even write anymore. And I ended up calling into work sick that day. And I called my sister. And I was sobbing on the phone with her. And I just pretty much spent the whole day just kind of crying and sobbing. And feeling all this hurt over this lost childhood or whatever it was. And I stopped hating him that day. And it's like... When I was willing to try to put my part on things, I saw the thing in the book. It talks about, you know, we treat him like sick... We wouldn't treat sick people that way. So we treat him like he's sick. And he was. And it just washed away when I did that. God was on my fears list. I still had problems with God at that point. Women was on my fears list. I was... I heard a guy in a meeting say he was afraid of women out loud in front of a crowd of people. Whoa. I didn't realize that. I'd still be a virgin if it wasn't for alcohol. It gave me courage. So I didn't have a lot of resentments other than really my father particularly. But I didn't have a lot more. I finally got my fourth step done. And I went to do my fifth step. And it was kind of a rainy November night. Afternoon rather. And on the way, I went out to... We did my fifth step out at a place I lived. Out in... Lincoln. I had some property out there. And my sponsor was commenting on the way out there that she's seen a lot of trash strewn around on the street. And she said she needed to change her attitude because she realized that when she focused on something, you know, that's what she's going to see. And I did my fifth step. And it was like dumping a garbage can. And on the way back from that, we saw a rainbow. And it was like... The book talks about some promises when you do the fifth step. And those promises... Came true for me. The drink thing seemed to go away. And I felt like I was... I was really... I felt like I really belonged in AA. I was doing the deal. It's like paying my dues somehow to be with you. I was willing to do what you did. And it talks about walking through this arch. And it's... I had those feelings when I did that. Six and seven, I did those... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... And I thought, wow, this is... I'm really moving along now. And there's like a little paragraph or two about six and seven. It's very misleading. That seems like it's... Oh, that's easy. Yeah, okay. Well, it's not. It's like a lifetime. And... When I was doing this trolling with this car, this sports car that I had, which I call my sobriety car. I had a teddy bear in the back and a box of Kleenex. And... And... I met... I met Betty sitting over along the wall. And I started dating Betty. And we'd go on a date. And the date for us was going to a meeting. I was scared still, okay? And that was... You know, I hold hands and I don't know if I should kiss her or say the Lord's Prayer afterwards. Well, I wasn't too sure what, but... We... We dated for a while and we decided to get married. So, I have an AA marriage. And we just celebrated 25 years of marriage not that long ago, so... She's the love of my life. My best teacher, too. I got a little package in the deal. Betty had two children. She had a 7-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy. So, when I married Betty, I got a family. So, I'm a husband. And I'm a dad. And she had a sister who had some kids. So, I'm an uncle. And I'm all these things that I've never been before. And I got to work six and seven, you know, a lot. I had all these great teachers. And I have this... I've been blessed with this skill to know how to do things. And I call it the internationally accepted standards. There's internationally accepted standards ways to do things. And I know what those are. And it's amazing how many people don't know what they are or don't do them the way that I think that they ought to do them. And what I learned from doing a lot of inventory work is I was able to put a name on what I think is my biggest character defect. And what I call it is fault finding. I'm going to find something that you're doing is wrong. I'm going to find a lot of things that you're doing wrong. And I'm going to push you out of my life. I've done that all my life. And that's how I ended up as alone as I was. My best thinking before I came to you is I had a little piece of property where I'm growing pot. And I wanted to... Is that for me? My best thinking was to build a barbed wire fence around this property that I had to keep the teenagers in the neighborhood out of my pot. And I was going to... Just be in the middle of this little chunk of land. I was shitting in a bucket calling it composting. I didn't have any plumbing where I was. And I'm going to get a... I got a case of brewer's yeast and a case of vitamin C and a bunch of wine. And I'm just going to live my life inside this compound loaded. And later on, in many years of sobriety, I ended up going to work. I ended up going to work for the state of California. And the prison system is a teacher, a landscaping teacher, pot grower, landscaping teacher. And God has a sense of humor. And I realized that the worst punishment we have in America is we put somebody by themselves. That's the worst thing we can do to anybody in America. We put them alone. And I did that to myself and my disease. So, and a lot of that had to do with my character defect of finding fault with you. So I could push you away. So I could push you away. So I could be by myself. And then I could be with my bottle. And that doesn't work well as a stepdad or a husband or an uncle. And I had to start learning how to have these relationships with these people. And what I started to do is I remembered how you treated me when I came as a newcomer. I felt this sense of love. And it was a love that you showered on me that I had no defense against. And there's no defense against the love that you feel here. And so I started treating my stepchildren like newcomers. And started thinking of my wife as a newcomer. I tried everybody, people on the highway. I thought if everybody's a newcomer, how would I treat them? Well, I'd treat them with love and respect. And I wouldn't criticize them. You didn't criticize me when I got here. So I started doing that. And one of the places where I learned a lot of these lessons was doing the dishes. Because I got a lot of the dishes. And I got so tired of everybody not doing them the way that I thought they should be doing them. And me criticizing them, I decided to do them myself. So I'd stand at the sink. And I wanted to do them peacefully, too. I did not want to do them full of resentment and anger. So I'd stand at the sink until I could get peaceful to do the dishes. Just do the dishes. And I read someplace later on there's over 60 ways to do the dishes. I thought there was only my way to do the dishes. And Angela, my daughter, she had a Dalmatian, which is like a dog from hell. They have no brains whatsoever. And I could see myself, as I was coming home, I'd get madder and madder and madder until I drove into the driveway and I was like fuming and I hadn't even gotten out of the truck yet. Because I knew there was going to be dog shit. I'd have to step over or step through to get into the house. And a couple times I turned back around and went back to my sponsor's house. I said, step over it. Okay, I'll step over it. And what I started doing with her is I started leaving her little notes about how much I loved her and how happy I was to be her dad. And I stopped criticizing her completely. If her room was messy, I'd just close the door. Many, many years later, she came to me and wanted me to walk her down the aisle. How do you get from there to there? And I got to, at the wedding, her natural father came up to me and thanked me for raising her daughter. I got to write the checks for that, too, because I had a good job and I wanted to do that. I raised her. I was her dad. And I was proud to be able to do that. I'll talk about the boy in a minute. I'll talk about the boy in a minute. Step eight seemed like it was easy. Just the list. It wasn't a long list, really, for me. The people I hurt the most were my mom and dad. I was 37 years old when I said, hi, mom, I'm home. I hadn't seen her for, you know, 10 years. Wasn't on a winning streak again. I got to be a son for her and see her. She wasn't the most fun person to be with, but I got to show up at her place and take her places. And be a son for the last few years of her life. She died of cancer when I had about five years of sobriety. My dad, he was married to my mom for like 20 years. And he had another 20-year marriage. And he was not on a winning streak. And I invited him to come live with us. He was living in Arizona. He moved all his stuff. He came up to Lincoln. He moved in with us. And I was willing for him to live the rest of his life with us. And I had a lot of love in my heart for him. And about 30 days later, he got mad at something and said, I'm out of here. And off he went. And he died a very lonely man. But you taught me how to be a good son. And how to make amends to him by trying to make it right. By doing the right thing in sobriety. But the amends that touched me the deepest were a couple of financial amends. And one was a $5 amend and one was a $10 amend. Doesn't have to be a lot of money. The $10 amend. And I was at a restaurant after the noon meeting in Auburn one day. And I got $10 too much in change. And my opinion has always been, if you can't count, it's not my job to tell you how to count. So I just took it and put it in my pocket. And we were probably on step nine at the time. I don't know. And I go to the restaurant a couple weeks later. And the woman says, she's selling the restaurant. And I'm thinking, oh, if I'm going to give the money back, I've got to give it back today. And I said, can I talk to you for a minute? And she said, sure. And I said, I was here a couple weeks ago and I got too much money and I wanted to give it back to you. She said, are you sure? I said, I would not be giving you this money if I wasn't sure. And I handed her the $10 and I started to cry. Wow, that's the best $10 high I ever had. And I just felt like I was getting right with the world. And it gave me a lot of courage to pay the IRS back. So I owed some other money. But that $10 one just really helped get me going on the path. The $5 one. The $5 one. I mentioned my sobriety car. Well, it was several years after marrying Betty. Sean was 17 at the time. He got drunk. He was in his disease. And borrowed my car. And he smashed it and almost killed his passenger. And his passenger was in a coma for a week. And we got a call like 1 in the morning, 1.30 in the morning. And Sean was in the hospital. And we went to the hospital. And he peed in the back. He was a mess. And I was mad. I wasn't feeling very spiritual that day. Because he had smashed my sobriety car. And I was upset. And the next day, we had a house call from Al-Anon. They do house calls. I didn't know that. And one of the women from Al-Anon said to me, maybe it's his sobriety car. That was when he had his last drink. And he just celebrated. He'll be celebrating. He's got two years of sobriety this year. Yeah. He got sober at 17. And he has a wonderful life. He met a girl in AA. He got sober at 16. And they've been married a long time. And they have master's degrees. And their life is fabulous. So if you're young here today, you can get sober young and stay sober young. It's possible. And Sean went down to school in San Diego. And he called me up one day and told me he'd been stealing money from me. And I had a, I was a waiter when I got sober. And I had a jar, I had a pottery jar full of money, all my change I threw in there. I was like, what? A lot of money in there. And I looked in the jar and it was all nickels. He'd taken all the quarters out and all the dimes out. And he'd been smoking pot with it or drinking or whatever. And he wanted to pay me back. He asked me if he could send me five bucks. I thought, wow, he's got it. You know, we talk a lot in AA about how it works, that's the steps, and why it works, the traditions. And then when it works is step nine. And when he started sending me that five dollars, I thought, he's got a hold of this thing. And I wanted him to kind of get a sense of the spiritual power of that. So I started sending him a hundred bucks every time he sent me five. And the five started coming fast. You know. Step ten is one of the steps that's been probably the most instrumental in my sobriety. Because I've really, I've internalized this concept that, that if you're the problem, there's no solution for me. I'm, I'm the problem. It's me and my attitudes. And when I can take an inventory of that and I can see that, I can do something about that. It's not the Lutheran's fault. It's not Obama's fault. It's not Bush's fault. It's not, it's, it's me. I need to concentrate not what's wrong with the world, but what's wrong with me and my attitudes. And the, the tenth step, it talks about if I have to watch out for selfishness, I have to watch out for the world. Watch out for selfishness, dishonesty, fear, and resentment. Well, all of those things, I mean, fear is something that I don't, I'm not getting my way in the future, I don't think. And dishonesty is I'm not getting my way now. And resentment, I didn't get my way yesterday. It's all selfish. It's all about me, me, me. And when I can, when I can identify that, I can, I can quiet that disturbance inside of me. And I can live in a peaceful place. I have not looked driving down the freeway to see how many people are in the carpool lane for a long time. But I mean, that's a concern of mine. You know, is there two people in every car? Um, it's like, I think the most misquoted line in the literature is what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. That's not what it says. It's what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. If you go out there on the corner, there's a stop light out there, and it goes green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red. It does it all day and all night, every day. And it goes, that's all it ever does, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red. If I pull up into it and it's red, that's because I got a story about it. And if I don't like it's red, I'm fighting reality. And if I'm fighting reality, I lose. But only 100% of the time. I always lose when I fight reality. So what I try to learn to do is embrace reality. I've heard a couple people talk about red lights. And one guy says, when he gets to a red light, he thanks God for his sobriety. So instead of thinking a red light's negative, it's a way to make it positive. Guys that have these court cards, you can look at that as a gift certificate. You can look at it as a get well card. I came here as a result of DUI. And it's been a get well card for me. Somebody else I know, he closes his eyes for a moment and gets in touch with his higher power. He says, somebody will always let you know when it's green. Step 11. I've come to find this power in my life that works for me. I read something that I liked a lot. It said, rather than saying, sought through prayer and meditation, it's sought by paying attention. When I pay attention, when I'm right here, right now with you, that's where God is. And when I can pay attention, no matter where I am, I can be where I am. I can be where the power is. And so I make an effort to do that. I do a lot of gardening. When you're on your knees pulling weeds and stuff, you're really in the present moment. And when I was drinking, I was always about two drinks from where I wanted to be. So like one more bar and I'd meet Miss Wright or whatever. And when I was working, I was thinking about being at home. When I was at home, I was thinking about working. I was never where I was. And I've learned in sobriety to be. I've learned in sobriety to be here now. This is a very good place to be. It's where God is. Step 12, I love carrying the message. And it says carry the message. It doesn't say cram the message. It says carry the message. One of the things that I've done, one of the little passions I have is sharing speaker CDs with people. Working in a prison for 15 years, there's a lot of guys in prison that want to be sober, that want to have a better life. But there's not a lot of people there to give them a lot of hope. And sharing speaker CDs with people is an awesome way to share the message of recovery. So I try to do that a lot. Practicing the principles in all my affairs. I'm pretty good at that, I think. I work hard at it. I admit my faults. And I've woken up. I've woken up as a result of that. I've woken up as a result of doing this work. And a couple things I think that are important to me in this waking up process, or I see the beauty of them, is two things in particular I want to talk about real quickly, is gratitude and forgiveness. And both of them, I do them for probably selfish reasons. I like to forgive because that's the way I can be forgiven. And gratitude, I used to have two piles of gratitude. I used to have a little bit of a pile of gratitude. I used to have a little bit of a pile of gratitude. I have a, I like this. I'm grateful for this. But I don't like this. I'm not grateful for this. And I heard a story that I like. It's a poem. But I can't recite the poem. But I'll tell you the story of the poem. It's a woman who is at the airport reading a novel, waiting for her plane to come. And she has a bag of cookies in the chair next to her that she's eating. And there's another guy sitting in the chair past the cookies. And she eats a cookie. She's reading. She looks over and the guy is eating a cookie. One of her cookies. One of her cookies. She looks at him kind of funny. She's kind of shy. She didn't say anything. And she has a cookie. And then he has another cookie. And they're waiting for the plane to come. And finally he's down to one cookie. He breaks it in half and gives her half of it. And she thinks, my, this guy's got a lot of nerve. She gets on the plane. Gets settled in her seat. Gets her bag out. Gets her book out. And there's her bag of cookies. She was eating his cookies. And she's sitting there. And that's what I have now. That's been a lot of my life is where I think it's one way, but it's really another way. And that's been true of gratitude. I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was to be alcoholic. That's in the bad pile. There's no way in the world I could be grateful for that. But it turns out, that's in the good pile. And I get to be with you. It's the best thing that ever happened to me was to be an alcoholic, when I found you. So I don't know which pile to put things in. in. So I have one pile. And it's a pile for which I'm thankful. So I can just say, thank you, God. I don't have to sort it out because I don't know. I see a lot of people in AA, and you've seen them too. I mean, we call it the passing parade. A lot of people are in AA that don't stay in AA for whatever reason. And I equate it to wanting to be sober is not enough to keep you sober. Wanting to be drunk doesn't keep you drunk. You've got to drink to stay drunk. Well, you've got to do something to stay sober too. So it's more than just desire. It's action. So what I see sobriety a lot is it's a lot like an escalator. And the escalator is going down, and I'm walking up the down escalator. So I have to keep walking in order to not go down. There's no coasting in AA. Coasting is going backwards in AA. Coasting is that way, down. So I've got to keep walking on this escalator. If I don't keep walking, I'll have the results going backwards. So what I wanted to do, and I thought about this a lot, and I just, I wanted to describe to you what I think it would look like if somebody worked the steps backwards. So I'm going to do this real quick. Twelve. There's a principle that I abide by, I live by. It's called dog eat dog world. I've got to get mine before you get it. There's not enough to go around. Eleven. I've got two prayers. God get me out of this, and me, me, me, more, more, more, now, now, now, amen. Ten. I take inventory, yours. You're a lousy driver, you work a bad program, you're not a good dresser, and you're probably bad in bed. Eight. Nine. Nine. Sorry. Nine. You know, I, it's like, I've never pled guilty to anything. So if you don't ever make any, if you're never wrong, you never have to say you're sorry. Eight. I've got a list, it's a shit list, and your name's on it. Seven. Humility's not one of my faults. If I had one, I'd choose humility. Six. Willingness. I love that Frank Sinatra song, I did it my way. I'm willing to do it my way. Five. I'm not going to cop to it, even if you have pictures. I'm taking all my little sick secrets to the grave, thank you very much. Four. I'm a good inventory taker. I can never get a break, and the world's picking on me, and it's like this shit fairy follows me around, and is dumping on me all the time. It's awful. Three. I'm not going to, like, turn my will over to God. What if he messes up my life? Two. Now that I know the profound inner workings of my mind, and I have all this information that you've shared with me, it'd be impossible for me to relapse. One. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the captain of my fate. I'm in charge. Tarzan. I think I'll have a drink. When I have a drink, very shortly thereafter, click, click. That means you can't even be trusted with your own hands. Empty your pockets, sir. Take my watch off. I don't need my watch anymore, because it's time to have a drink, right? Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. if I don't need that anymore, because I'm going to be lying here in a second, and I don't need any money either, because, I mean, that's all going to go. Car keys, that goes. Wallet. Picture of my granddaughter. I won't be able to see her. Driver's license, that's going to go. ago. Credit cards. Didn't have any of those when I got sober. Wedding ring. I'm a little chubby now, but I'll be hawking that pretty soon. I won't have a marriage. I can put my teeth out here, too, because I didn't have any of those when I got here, either. Everything good in my life, everything good in my life comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. You think I want to give that up for a drink? I'm going to work the steps. I'm going to keep working the steps. Forward. I love the life that I have, and I love Alcoholics Anonymous. 1-2-3, wake up. 4-5-6, clean up. 7-8-9, make up. 10-11-12, grow up. Thank you very much.