Step 11 and the Patience to Overcome Impatience – Don M.

Hello and welcome to SoberCast, where we provide AA speaker meetings and workshops in podcast format. We're an ad-free podcast, and if you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by visiting Sobercast.com, look for the donate link, and drop a dollar or two into our virtual basket. We hope you enjoy the podcast. Have a great day. Hello, everybody. my name is Don and I am an alcoholic and my problem is me it's privilege to come up and share with the people here tonight I want to welcome our new person I want us a congratulations to their birthday and I want to welcome our visitors. I am here to share me with you. And I feel good tonight. I've felt good for a long time. I came here to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous August August 1970 and I had a hole here. And I was thinking on my way up here tonight that there is no hole there. It's filled beyond my greatest expectations. I never dreamed ten years ago that I would be able to stand up before a group of people and they would listen to me. me. For years, nobody listened. Everybody turned and went the other way. A few months ago I was handed a government study, a government report studying alcoholics, and it kind of struck me that when I came they didn't have the help around that they have today. They guide me and to tell me if i would have had this maybe things would have been different then i would know what to do but i have to go to the bottom and then come there and i'd like to just read you a couple of passages of it to uh i won't bore you with all of it but there is a couple of lines in here that i think is is rather funny it says how to avoid a drinking problem You can be pretty sure alcohol is not a present problem for you and is never likely to become one if you never grab a drink. If you feel you have to have one right away, force yourself to wait. I didn't know that. It says drink slowly and don't gulp. Something else that I didn't know, because I always seem to gulp it pretty fast. No matter how thirsty or anxious you may feel when going to a party, put off your first drink until you get there. Now, i didn't know that either and it goes on to several there's several more of them which i won't won't bore you with at this time but it seems to me that maybe today it may be a little easier it is never easy for an alcoholic like me to come out of the situation that he's in and live the rest of his life, or even one day at a time, without taking a drink. It's something that I did for years. It was natural for me to escape. But I was kindly fortunate when I got here I realized that drinking wasn't my problem. That drinking was only a means of escape from the reality that I had created for myself. and that the problem lied within me. And so I think it made it a little easier for me to sit and listen to perhaps some of the clichés that were said around the table. I had a little time off today from my job. Sometimes I just shut my business down and I go to a noon meeting, and I walked into this noon meeting today for about 30 minutes, and I wasn't there when the chairman opened it up and started talking but they called on me and I talked and there was a lady sitting there and apparently it was her first meeting and she said, I want to know something. She said, this man wasn't here when you talked in the beginning of the meeting but yet he said the exact same thing that you said and he said, well, we come to an awful lot of meetings and we hear a lot of sayings and a lot of things and we have a lot of cliches. What I'm trying to say is what I'm going to say to you tonight or what I hope that I'll say to you tonight will come from here, not cliches I want to open me up and let you see what's inside I want to let you know who I am and what I have been and what I would like to be I want to share me with you and that is a privilege I remember that you see I was raised on a ranch we called it a farm out here they would call it a ranch because the rangeland that we run our cattle on covered about nine square miles And we farmed about four or five hundred acres, but it was still just a farm. But times were a little bit rough so my father made a little white lightning and I was introduced to it very young. I discovered at the age of twelve years old the miracle of Avahar, what it will do for you and what it'll do to you. I discovered that it takes away the cold The shiverings It takes away The fear And that it gives you false comfort inside Which I was to indulge in For years to come And I drank for 35 years After I pulled my first drunk At the age of 12 And I didn't drink To be social I got drunk and I passed out On my very first drunk I was what you call maybe a cowboy and I kept at least a quart we had booze we didn't have it in a bottle but labels on it we just had it in the fruit jar and we had at least a quart in my saddlebag all the time but I found my dependency on it more and more until I came to the state of California and there and here in the lower part of the state I began to drink in earnest. I began to need it more and more and more and I tried a lot of things I tried a geographic cure I went all over the country I got married I tried everything everything that I could think of. I even learned to fly and become a pilot and owned my own aircraft. And I remember that I used to, I had many hours in the air and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I used get up about 9,000 feet and I would sit there and trim the airplane out where it would fly itself back and I was sat there and I looked at all of this beauty below me and I felt like God I felt like I was in full control of everything all the troubles was down below everything that I feared was down there but yet there was a hole that was not filled and then I did foolish things I would come down and hedge hop and go underneath and over telephone wires. I would come in without fast on my wheels, trying the way that I feel perhaps today maybe to commit suicide, pushing it right to the limits because of the hole that was not filled within me. And it went on and on and became a very vicious circle. And everything that I did or I attempted to do failed. It didn't do what I thought it might. But I never gave up. I kept seeking and searching. I had four boys by my first wife, and she raised them. They're all raised now up out on their own. And I had something very unique happen to me today that I wanted to share it with you a little bit later. But it means so much to me that I want to share it with your family and your friends. I'm going to share this with you now. My oldest boy came into my shop, and he walked around for a while. And I can always tell when there's something on his mind that he wants to say. It takes him about an hour to say it, and he walks all around. and finally he walked up alongside of me and he put his hand on my shoulder the first time that he's ever did that and without another sound he said, Dad I want you to know that I love you very much The first time ten years he's watched and waited to see what's happening to his dad it was an experience. One of the byproducts of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the my products of the steps that Louise was talking about. But things never got any any better for me. My wife finally got to the point to where she couldn't take it anymore, so we was living in Los Angeles. And so she moved to Sacramento. All of her family lived here. So I stayed for a little while in Los Angles. Now that's a pretty good town for a drunk. That's a putty good town an alcoholic to be in because you can get lost in that town. You can find a bar that your wife can't find you in. There's many down there. And many times that I got home that I don't know how I got homes. Many times in Los Angeles I woke up in strange beds, not knowing whose bed that I was in. Get up and sneak out of the house, get in my car and go home. I suppose I was fortunate in many ways because I was always alone when I woke up. Now I understand why. But I learned a great deal. Everything that has happened to me before I got here, all of those experiences was necessary so so that when I arrived, there would be nothing left out there for me to go back out and investigate. So then I decided that maybe Sacramento was a better town than Los Angeles, that I wouldn't drink here near as much as I drank down there. So I moved up here and went back together with my first wife. And while I'm thinking about it, I'm now married to my second wife that I've been married to now for five years who's on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some people say that whoever gets up out of bed first in the morning has the most sobriety. I get up every morning out of bed first but for me to stand here and tell you that I have got more sobriety than she wouldn't be very honest and I'd like to introduce her to you as she's sitting right over here and she celebrated her 24th year say hi to Emily I would like to tell you a little more about her a little later. But anyway, I came up here to Sacramento, and the drinking got worse. It never got any better. I went to work at a dealership. I was working, usually making money, spending it, drinking every day and every night. Sometimes I wouldn't go home until the weekend, and I lived right here in town. So it never, never got better And when I was home My wife would always try to keep me from drinking I remember on the Sunday She'd get up bright and early And she would follow me all the way around the yard All day long And she'd watch me that I didn't take a drink Sometime during the night I'd got up and went out And poured garden hose hose full of booze. And she would follow me all over the yard, and then I'd go up and I'd turn the hose on and take a drink out of the hose. About three o'clock in the afternoon she would give up because she could look at me and tell that there was something wrong. someplace she had slipped up, cunning and baffling and powerful. She used to know that I'd hide whiskey inside the house, and so she'd come home and she'd go all the way through the house looking for it. And she'd literally tear that house apart because she knew in that house someplace was a bottle. But she always made one mistake. She set her purse down, and that's where the bottle went, inside of her purse. The minute she set it down, so she never found it. Sometimes I would hide it in her house coat. If I put as much effort in my staying sober as I did my drinking, I don't have too much much problem. It makes it much easier. She kept after me to take her for a drive on a Sunday. She said, you never take me no place. You never go no place with me. And the reason for that was because I couldn't drink. If there was something along the side of me driving out, then I reached over in the glove box and take out a bottle and take a drink out of it. She would have hit me over the head with a purse for the next 10 miles. So I kept putting her off and putting her on, and finally I decided that I was going to have to take her for a drive, so I began to think up this little plan. And I found out where she wanted to go. She wanted to go up to Lake Tahoe and down the lake and come back down the other other side. She wanted to go up 50 and then back 80. So I took the windshield washer bottle and I wrapped it in tinfoil, a gunny sack, set it down in a bucket and packed it with dry ice and wrapped it again. And I took off the hose off the wiper blades and I run run it through and tape it right along the side of the upholsterer, next to my head. And we'd be going along and I would say, look at the pretty scenery over here. And she would turn to look and I'd stick the hose in my mouth and push the button on the windshield washer. Once in a while she would say what was that funny noise I just heard? So we got up to the lake and I jumped out of the car And I ran into the bathroom And I came out right quick Because I didn't want her to think That I was standing there long enough to get drunk And when we got home I stepped out ofthe car and I couldn't stand up She stood there and she looked at me And a surprised look on her face was how in the world can this man get drunk and there's something right there looking at him. So I went to any length to get drunk. It was necessary, and I needed it. It was one more step to bring me here. Finally one day, down at work, the sheriff came up. And I knew the sheriff. He was well acquainted with all of them there. It was in West Sacramento. And he came up and he was standing there and he said, Don, I got something for you. I want to wait till five o'clock to give it to you. so I walked outside and he handed me the divorce papers it was quite a shock she didn't appreciate me all the hard work and everything that I did she didn' t appreciate me so I went into this thing and of course I went to the closest bar and then to the liquor store and when I got home I found the sheriff standing there telling me that I couldn't even go in and get my clothes so I moved to the river and I continued working and I would bathe and I was shaved in the Sacramento River every morning and I'd go off to work and I'm come back and I drank almost all night and it got into a vicious thing for three years years. And I have a sister who lived here in Sacramento that I was very fond of. My mother and father separated when she was very small, and I put her through school, and I raised her up. And, I met her on the street, and she turned around and she walked away from me. She crossed the street on the other side, and And I tried to catch her, and she run and hid behind some buildings. And it hurt me. And I didn't know what to do. I felt, I think, for the first time that I had no friends whatsoever. So I went and I rented myself a little small apartment, three rooms. and I'd go by this apartment every once in a while and I looked at it and I lived in that apartment for eight months and I remember that I've said for years that I was different that it wouldn't happen to me it always happens to someone else never to me me. But it did happen to me. I went in and I shut the door and I pulled the drapes, and that's where I lived. And I let no one in. Close by there was a little grocery store named Farbus'. And I would call him and he would deliver three or four cases of Red Mountain mountain wine, a loaf of bread and a sack of beans. And I would slide the window back in the curtain a little bit and I'd hand him the money out and then he'd hand it in to me one piece at a time without allowing him to see me. And almost in the end he would stand and beg to open the door so he could carry it in because it had become almost impossible possible for me to lift it through the window. And when I realized that I couldn't do it anymore, I had him to bring me several cases, enough to last me for quite a while. I sat there in my self-pity and my fear and my anger, and I died inside, inside slowly, a little little at a time. I deteriorated physically, emotionally and spiritually as a result of the disease of alcohol coupled with my thinking. The last three months that I lived in there Now, I couldn't walk, so I crawled. I would crawl from my bed to the bathroom. The last two months, I could not use a commode, but I would still crawl from the bathroom to the bed tothe bathroom. Then I couldnt get up on the bed anymore, so I cut the legs off of the bed and lowered the springs down on the floor so I could make it easy for me to get upon the bed. And then the time come when I couldn't lift the bottle. So I tipped it over on the floor and I drank it off of the floor. I crawled around and slept in my own human waste, filled with worms. And it couldn't happen to me. me. I was different. But the suffering there in that apartment was not physical, it was spiritual. And I remember it today as if it was yesterday. And it helps me to stay sober today. It helps me to know and to understand who I am and where I come from. And one afternoon about four o'clock the door opened and there stood my sister standing there, the one I had raised. And she let out a scream and I I looked at her, and I couldn't realize why she was screaming. My first thought was that something happened to my family. Something serious has happened in my family, so she left. And a little bit, she come back, and she said, Don, I'm going to take you home. I'm going to take you out of this mess so she wrapped the blanket around me and she took me home and she fed me soup she bathed me and she gave me a room a bedroom of my own and for the next few months I began to recuperate physically and she thought that I would die if I didn't have my booze and so she made sure that there was plenty of booze. They drank scotch, plenty of scotch in the refrigerator that I could help myself to whenever I needed it. But I felt ashamed to drink in her home the way that I had been used to doing. So I slacked off and I got a little bit a little bit physically sober. I would only drink when it was absolutely necessary. Her husband was was a man who was making about $80,000 a year but he traveled around the country a great deal and she came to me one evening after I I had kind of got on my feet a little bit, and she said, Don, my husband and I are going to have to go up to Washington, and we're going to be up there for a while. We don't know how long. And I want to leave you here to take care of the place while we're there. My two daughters are in school, and I want you to take good care of them. Take care of him. Now, I've made arrangements down at the grocery store, down at The Liquor Store, that we'll pay all the bills, so whatever you need, all they have to do is call them up. They'll deliver it here. I don't want you leaving this house. I don'T want you dying somewhere else. And she said, I want you to take over our bedroom and in the closet I have put some scotch, enough to last you a few days. and so they they left and they boarded the plane that afternoon that evening at five o'clock I walked into the bedroom and I slid the closet door back and I looked and there was seven cases of scotch stacked in the closet that's all there was in the pocket was the scotch fifth So, excitement. I went back out and I made all arrangements for the kids to be taken care of for the rest of the evening. And I went into the bedroom and I shut the door and I locked it and I went over and I opened up a case and I took out a fifth of that scotch. And I got me a puzzle and I spread it on the floor and I sat down in arm reach of the scotch And I spread it around and I took the scotch and I took the top off of it, and I looked at it. And I thought about my sister who had come and took me out of that apartment and had given me the only kind of love that she knew. And I felt ashamed. And I knew that if I drink, I would drink myself to death. But how does an alcoholic sit in the middle of the floor with a fist of scotch in his hand and a closet full of a dare and his body craving for a drink and not take a drink? I did the only thing that I knew to do. I began to pray to a God that I did not understand and a God that I had went to many times before and made many promises but this time I said, I cannot go on. I cannot do it no more. I began to shake and sweat began to pour out on me and I knew that I was going to die because I knew that if I drank I would die and if I didn't drink that I would die. And I sat there all night long and I remember the next morning that I woke up and I looked out the window and I could see it was breaking day. It was getting daylight. And I looked at the scotch and it was still full. And I got up and I looked into the case And there's only one missing The one I had in my hand But I set it down in the corner And I went in and I sat down at the table And I thought, I need some help I called my mother Because my mother has always been willing to help me When I needed it maybe she can help. And so I went over and I got the phone and I brought it over and set it on the table and I picked up the receiver and I couldn't see the numbers. So I dialed an operator, just a number, an operator came on and she said, number please. And I said, give me Alcoholics Anonymous. I do not remember thinking of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this man's voice came on the line, and he said, Can I help you? And I said, I am looking for AlcoholicsAnonymous. And he said I'm a member, what can I do for you? And I want to stop drinking. And he asked, What do you want me to do about it? I said, I don't know Take me to those meetings that you go to Or whatever they do down there And there was a hesitation for a while For a minute And he said, do you have anything in the house to drink? And I said yes He said, well do you think that you can go The rest of the day Without taking a drink And I says, I'm not going to I said I don' t have the slightest idea idea, but I will try. He said, all right, if you can go the rest of the day, I'll be there at 7 o'clock and I'll pick you up and I will take you to one of those meetings. And so I walked the floor all day long and convinced myself that I did not need Alcoholics Anonymous. The only thing that I needed to do was just discover that willpower that I'd I'd heard my wife talk about it for so long that I didn't have. And so I convinced myself that when he comes, I'll tell him that I'm not going. And I pulled the drapes in the front so that he couldn't see me peeking out the window watching for him. So when he pulled up in front of the house, he parked his car and he got out and he put this big cowboy hat on and he pulled it down and he slowly walked around his car and across the yard and to the front door and I watched him as he come across and I got the strangest feeling here is a man that's going someplace really doesn't know where he's going but he's glad that he's gone. He came up the door and he knocked on the door and I opened it and he said, my name is Joe. I said, my name is Don. Come on in. And then we walked in and I expected him to tell me all about me and how bad I looked and everything but he didn't. We talked about everything else. He made me feel comfortable as comfortable perhaps maybe as I could be And then he said to me, he said, are you ready to go? And I said, I'm ready. And I went to my first meeting. And I was half carried and half pushed through that door of the North Sacramento group. And I walked in and I sat down. And I think there were probably about 12 or 13 or 14 people at that meeting. and there was a lady who was chair of the meeting who is still here in Sacramento today that time had 12 years and she said to me she said Don I have not drank for 12 years and it was unbelievable I could not imagine anybody going 12 years I could now imagine one month one week. So I kept watching her all through the meeting. She had a little white hat on that made her look very, very pretty and a little kind of a tassel that hung down one side. And she had the most beautiful sparkling eyes. And every time I looked at her, she would kind of blink them at me. And a very pleasant smile. The first time in years that anybody had ever looked at me and smiled. And I was sitting there with one sock on, the sleeve out of one shirt, and a tore in the back. I hadn't shaved in a long time, and I smelt like booze. And some place during the meeting she looked at me and she said, Don, we need you. Man, that was a slammer. Those people sitting in that meeting looking at me and saying, We need you? I went home and I thought about that. I couldn't shake it from my head. What in the world do these people need me for? I had to go back to find out. So the next night I called up Joe and I said, Joe, I want to go to that meeting. So he took me to the meeting. And the next night, and the next night. For four years I went to a meeting almost every night. And this man took me until I got my own transportation and never said a word about it. Always willing to do. But But one thing that he did for me in the very beginning that I want to share with you, after the first meeting on the way home, I said to him something that I had heard in the meeting. Someone said that there's only 3% of the people who come into Alcoholics Anonymous and die sober. And that hit me. That didn't give me very much of a chance. events, even if there was only 12 people in that meeting. It kind of took the hope out of me a little bit, so I asked him about that. And we pulled up in front of the house and he kind of turned sideways in his seat and he stood there for a minute and he pushed his hat back a little and he looked at me and he said, Don, I'm going to tell you something. If you think that you're going to come to our meetings and you're gonna sit there, stick Stick your feet on the table and something is going to rub off on you. Something as good as we've got going there is going to just happen to you. Don't waste your time and mine. But if you're willing to come and sit at those tables and hear things that you don't want to hear and do things thatyou don't want to do, put into action the suggestions of that program and attend meeting after meeting after meeting then he said don't worry about that three percent because your chances then is 100% but if you think that it's going to be handed to you on a silver platter there is the front door of your house I would suggest that you go through it and get on with what you were doing but we may have an answer for you you if you keep coming to our meetings. And so I did. I came back and back and back. After I was around about a year, this same man came up to me after the meeting. He did many things for me, this man. He set an example before me. Not not only told me, but showed me by his actions. He came up to me and he said, Don, he handed me this book. And he said do you know what this book is? And I said yes, it's a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said all right, he said I happen to know that you've been borrowing one and reading it. I'm going to give you this one, but he said I'm gonna ask you a question before I do. so that perhaps maybe you will understand the importance of this book. If you're going to take off and go from here to any city in the United States, Mexico or Canada, and you had never been to that city before, what would be the first thing you would do? Probably I would go down and fill up my gas tank with gasoline. And he said, no, the first thing you would do would go get yourself a road map. You would get yourself a road-map that would tell you exactly how to get to whatever city or town that you was going to get to. Then he handed me the book and he said Don, here is the road- to sobriety, follow it. Now you have the choice of taking shortcuts. You have the choice of rewriting it. But I'm telling you that if you follow this roadmap to the letter, sobriete will come. And I'm grateful for that. It was very simple and straight to the point. And I read it daily. I've read it many times, and I read it today. And each time that I do, I get more. And finally they made me a chairman of a meeting and I began to feel the hole begin to fill. I made a discovery. I discovered that when I begin to love other people, then other people begin to love me. When I begin give of myself, then you begin to give back. So then I knew what to do, everything in my life must begin in me first. And I heard about the steps. I heard them read over and over, and I had read them and studied them, but I kept hearing about the principles, the principles that I'm supposed to be working in my daily living. them, what are these principles that I'm supposed to be doing when I'm out there, when I'm at work and when I am at home, wherever I'm at. So I began to ask people, What are these Principles? And I got many answers. And as they're supposed to be, I finally had to dig them out and seek them amount for my own self, to what the principles to me, the things that I need to be doing in my daily living today to maintain my sobriety, to buy insurance for tomorrow, to have peace and to have comfort within me. And I'd like to read to you what I have discovered for me is the things that I should do daily with no reservations and it all has to do with the steps step one the spiritual principle is honesty and it helps me to overcome dishonesty. And the spiritual principle for step two is hope, to help me to overcome despair, the hope that I received at my first meeting and all the meetings thereafter. after. Step three, the spiritual principle is faith. To help me to overcome fear. We all know what fear is all about. And step four, five, and six, the spirit of fear is the spiritual principal is courage. To have me to over come cowardice. When I used to hide in the closet when I heard somebody walking down the sidewalk, when I used to crawl underneath the bed, when the mailman would drop a letter in the mailbox, and the courage to do the steps. The courage to look at me as I am today with no justifications. And step seven, the spiritual principle is humility, to help me to overcome arrogance. If you would have have known me 15 years ago, you would have known about my arrogance. In step 8, 9, and 10, the spiritual principle is responsibility to help me to overcome irresponsibility. And step 11, it is patience to help me to overcome impatience. And step 12 is charity, to help me to overcome selfishness and self-centeredness. I have a son that's the last Last count that I had, he had about 10 or 11 502s in the last three years. Certainly, I would like for him to sober up and to find an easier way. But I must love him as he is, without expectations. expectations. I must love him today as well as I would love him if he were sober, because it's in the loving, it is in the giving that I receive. All of my life I've asked, give, give, give. In my prayers it was always God, give me. My wife, it was always gives me, my employers always give me. Never what do I have that you want? What can I give? And when I begin to give, the hole began to be filled. When I begin begin to love and to be concerned and to care about my fellow man as he is, without expecting any change for me. I began to be free. When I let each man be himself, I set myself free. My first wife I was married to for 22 years. And I owned her body and soul, and when I said frog, she was to jump. And when I wanted my dinner, I expected it to be on the table. I expected my clothes to be done, and I expected her to wait on me like a slave because the the minister had given us a little piece of paper saying that she was mine. That I owned her. So therefore, I could not be free. It was impossible. And since I've been married to my second wife, I have tasted the sweetness of freedom simply by allowing her to be who she is and let her do what she wants to do when she wants to do it. Who do I think that I am that I should control another human being? I am not trying to play God anymore and as a result the hole is filled there is no pain the results of these twelve steps and these eight principles to accept situations in my life today, accept those experiences and learn from them. And when I learn from an experience, I need not have it again. But if I do not learn from that experience, then it will repeat itself. As my son knows, he says it's the Sheriff's Department and Highway Patrol and the city police and a couple of neighbors that's got it in for him. He can't put it to the fact that he drinks while he's driving or drives while he is drinking. It's a lie that they keep throwing him in jail. He keeps doing the same thing over and over again and he keeps being caught over andover again. Until he learns from one of those experiences or from all of them, he will continue doing it. So when I have an experience happen to me today, I know that there is something for me to learn from that experience. And I sit down and I do the best I can to learn from it. And then I move on to something else. And it's a constant learning process in my life today. This road of sobriety, this peace and this comfort that I have within me. I was in a meeting not long back and I said, I've never had a bad day since I walked through the door of Alcoholics Anonymous. And after a meeting, a man came up to me and he said, Don, you're a damn liar hour to sit there and to say that you have not had a bad day since you've come to A.A.? Who do you think you're kidding? If he would have been in my sister's shoes when he opened that door and saw me here crawling my own worms, and for me to come in at the sundown at a table at Alcoholics Anonymous with a clean shirt on and not had a drink today and a couple of pennies in my pocket to jingle and to say I've had a bad day, how ungrateful would I be? No, I have not had bad days since I came. Just experiences that is teaching me how to live, how to live the A.A. way to go this day without taking a drink alcohol no longer is attractive to me they are more beautiful things I'm living better today than I've ever lived today is the best day that I've every lived in my life and i hope tomorrow will be better every day that i live is a daily reprieve that god has seen fit for me to live one more day and to enjoy me every day is a deadly reprieved so long as i keep myself in a fit spiritual condition Fit spiritual condition, that's what the Principles is all about. Because it works in here on me where I live at, it eases the pain. There is no better medicine. Aspirin can't even touch it like a step. pick up the steps and read one of them, sometimes when you're feeling a little bit off kilter. I take daily inventory, and I learned this when I was around about four years, that it had merit, that there was a miracle in this daily inventory. I would stop once a day and I would look at me. What did I do today? today? What was my attitude today? What did I do to mean? And what could have I done better for me today? And I was always surprised with what I came up with. You see, I believe that my inventory is sort of like driving a car down a freeway at 60 miles an hour and I take myself off of the road for a few seconds and I plow into something or somebody. In the same way in this journey of sobriety, if I take my eyes off of me for any length of time at all, I'm going to crash. So my daily inventory is very much a part of my daily living. Today I am living for me and no one else. Everything that I do, I do for me. I come here tonight for me because allowing you to see what's inside of me means that I don't have to hide anything anymore. I don't want to ever have anything to run from so I show it to you and I tell it to you whether you believe it or not as long as you know it and as long as I know that you know it there is no more secrets so I don' t have to be afraid of who I'm going to bump into when I walk down the street or when I come to Auburn or wherever I go. I may experience a love that I have never experienced before. It's a soft and gentle kind of love that there is no pain. The love that i've had in the past had pain associated with it. This love that I am now begin to experience has no pain, because there is no expectations. I do not love today for you to love me back. I love you because I want to love you. you. I do things for you because I want to, because of what it does to me. And I want to share a little thing that happened today with... A man came in my shop that had been many other places and he had the same problem every time. And And I spent about 30 minutes, and I discovered that one little rod was out of adjustment. So I reached over with a pair of pliers and I bent it just a little bit. And it solved the problem. And he said, how much did I owe you? And I said, nothing. And the guy couldn't believe it. He had already spent $190 to have the problem repaired. And he says, let me give you $10. And I say, no. He says, well, I don't feel right. And I said, let me do something for you, simply because I want to. But I'm not doing it for you sir, I'm doing it for me. Another gentleman came in my shop not long back to have a thermostat installed. And I installed the thermostat and made out his bill and the engine sat there and it rocked like this. So I picked up the screwdriver and I did a few other little things on it. And it smoothed out and it ran real good. Two weeks later he came in and he said, Don, he said I didn't realize that a thermostat had that much effect on an engine. But I felt good when the car went out of there running smoother. It made me feel good. good. I was given of me, and I wasn't taken. I always want to remember my past. I want to remember that apartment because that's the truth, and the truth will not hurt me. I neither resent it, hate it, or like it. But nevertheless it's there, and there was a great deal that was learned in that, and it contributes to my sobriety today. I don't need that anymore. I know what alcohol will do to me. I know one drink will do for me. mean. I have an addictive personality. I can't even eat one potato chip. Everything that I do, I overdo, or I don't do it at all. And I have made another discovery in the last two years. I'm always making discoveries through these steps and through the program of Alcoholics synonymous. And perhaps maybe this is one of my greatest discoveries. It's been there all the time, but I just now found it. In my business, you know, everything is going up nowadays. My bookkeeper was taking a lot of money. So I decided that I was going to bypass the bookkeeper and I went out and I got me a computer to put all my books on. Now, I had never seen a computer, let alone learn how to operate one. So after I bought it and I paid all this money for it, then I went down to get a man to write me a program, and he said, well, it goes from $5,000 up. And so I scratched my head and I said, well, no, I don't have that kind of money. So there's only one thing left me to do is to try to program it myself. And soI sat down at it, and I began to experiment. And I began to try this, and I tried that, over and over and over. And I kept getting errors here and errors there, and nothing seemed to be going right. Everything was wrong here. How hard I worked, how late I set up or what I did, I didn't seem to be able to get it to do what I wanted to do. But I tried it again and again and again, and today all my books are on the computer. But I discovered that the computer is a great deal like the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you've got it in its right perspective, the end product, the answer, sobriety is there when you draw upon it. But if it's not and you ask for it, you get an error. perhaps maybe that happens to a lot of us. Today I can sit down and I could punch three or four keys, and I get all this beautiful readout, and it's accurate, and i can depend on it. Today I depend on the program that I carry because it kept me sober. If I can't depend depend upon it, it's not worth a dime to me. And so I don't worry. I go today and do what I can do, keeping in mind who I am and where I come from and where sobriety comes from. That it comes from sitting around a table, sharing myself with people like you, and allowing God to come in and run my life, and to accept situations as they are, whether I like them or not, and live this day the best that I can without any expectations or without declaring war on it, to change it around to fit me. This is the old way. another discovery that I made a wife and I had been married one year and we went to a conference in Reading and a guy came up to me and he said Don how's married life and I said great we've been married 1 year and we haven't even had an argument yet and he looked at me and he says Don you're either the biggest damn liar around or you're not human and it was quite a shock and I thought about it And since he'd been around much longer than me, I didn't say anything back. What I didn' tell him was that we haven't had disagreements. We have had disagreement, but we don't have to argue about them. Argue and that's the old way. That's the way it was before I came. So we sat down and we have our daily discussion. She tells me about her, and I tell her about me, our feelings, our attitude toward situations today. And in my home it's a sharing and caring home. And I sit on my couch and I look at the nice carpet on the floor, and And I look at it and I think, there's no worms there. I'm not calm on my belly anymore. And I looked on the coffee table and I see the big book of Apollos Anonymous laying. Then I feel the feeling that I have inside. side. And sometimes I pinch myself to see if it's really real. Today I didn't sit in the weed patch and feel that alcoholic loneliness. Last night I didn�t cover myself up with sand, try to keep warm. Last nigh I wasn�t in a bus car riding across Montana freezing. reason. Last night I wasn't in a hobo jungle. Neither am I tonight. I am at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where the greatest people in this world come. People who are trying, who recognize a problem and recognize their lives and who are crying to do something about on it. It's something else to know you have a problem, and it's something else to do something about it. I didn't want to look at me. I didn't wanna see what I really was. I didn't want that. But I was forced to. I didn't come to AA because I wanted to. I came because my back was against the wall. There There was no place else to go. And they didn't have these instructions around for me to follow. There were many things that I didn't know about me. So I came and I'm learning. There is many things there are that I don't know. Things that I do not know tonight, but I do know where to come to get it. I know where all the answers are. are. If it's not here, it's here. I have friends all over the world that's never even met me or heard about me. And it's a good feeling. I am proud to be an alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't shout it from the housetops, neither do I deny it. I am who I am. And I was thinking about what this program has done for me and I I have wrote down a few of the things that I feel, and I'd like to share it with you. And it is my inner feelings that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous gives me the right knowledge, to supply me with the tools necessary for my voyage. Wisdom to assure me that I am using this accumulated knowledge of the past in a manner that will best serve the discovery of my present. My now. Compassion to help me accept others whose ways may be different from mine. With gentleness and and understanding as I move with them or through them or around them on my own way. Harmony to be able to accept the natural flow of life. Creativity to help me to realize and to recognize new alternatives and uncharted paths along the way. Strength to stand up against fear and move forward in spite of uncertainty and without guarantee of payment. Peace to keep me centered, joy to keep my songful and laughing and dancing all along the way. Love to be my continual guide for the highest level of consciousness of which man is capable. Unity with which brings us back to where we started, the peace where we were with one, with ourselves and with all things. So the ability to love has brought me to life. To live in love is to live in life. Life is God's gift to me. The way that I I live my life is my gift to God. Thank you for allowing me to share with you. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free, and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar or two a month, Visit SoberCast.com and look for the donate links. Thank you very much.