Step 2 and the Sanity He Had Never Actually Known – Dave C.

I'm Dave I'm an alcoholic hey everybody thanks for inviting me over this morning and thanks especially for having Bud introduce me that was a joke you know there's there's some people around Modesto and ripping that are talking about about bud getting a little old but apparently him and him and Norma were having some troubles remembering stuff and so they went down to the doctor and talked to him the doctor said why don't you just write stuff down and that'll help you remember and and norma said well that's a good idea and bud said i don't like that you know bud's not going to take any direction from anybody he hasn't yet why would he start now you know and so there's it at home that night and and bud gets up and and to go in the kitchen he says norma do you want anything And she says, yeah, well, yeah bud, I'd like a dish of ice cream. And she said, you want to write that down? And he said, I'll remember. And she goes, well I want vanilla ice cream, maybe you should write that. He said, no, I will remember. And she went, well i'd like some nuts on it too bud. And he goes, I'LL REMEMBER. And she go, and I'd love some chocolate sauce, you might want to wright that down bud. And he says, I WILL REMEMBE. So he goes out in the kitchen, he's gone for half an hour, 45 minutes. and he comes back and he's got bacon and eggs. And he sets it down in front of Norma and says, here's your bacon and eggs and she looks up and he says, well where's my toast? Sorry you gotta have some bud jokes anybody that knows Bud, I've known Bud way too long I'm losing money every year on the pool, we're still waiting for Norma to leave him in a fit of good taste, but it hasn't happened yet. But anyway, I guess you invited me here not to talk about Bud because he does enough of that himself and I'll tell you a little about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And I was thinking, you know, I, when I was about 12 years old, I went to the drag races with my brothers and they, that was the first time I ever got drunk. You know, then my brothers took me up there and they were filling me full of Coors beer, you know, and I got drunk and made a spectacle of myself as any 12 year old boy would. And, and that was my first experience with drinking and it was okay. It wasn't great. it wasn't bad. It was just okay, and over the years, you know, I got more into, I lived three miles from the Mexican border in the late 60s, early 70s, so that'll tell you what I was doing at that point over the ears, and then the drinking age in Arizona, I lived in Arizona. The drinking age was 19, and I could start going into bars, and my first night into a bar. I went in to this little place, I can't remember the name of it, and they had a band and there was a bunch of people in there and I started drinking and I got up and got on the stage and started singing with the band and just having a great time. And I came to the next morning in bed with this woman named Peggy, and I won't say her last name just in case her husband's around. And I said, this is a good deal. And and I said this is what I've been waiting for my whole life for bars. And and I started drinking in bars and and just having a great time. Just oh I was drinking and dancing and and just happier than heck. And i was always meeting all these new friends and and it was a wonderful time for a couple years. It really worked well for a couple years, but that a few months after that first drink I was at a bar called the Bum Steer in Tucson and they had 49 cent drink night and I had $20 in my pocket and I was drinking something with tequila in it, I don't remember what and I didn't buy anybody else a drink and I doesn't give the bartender a tip and I used that whole twenty dollars and i went home that night and i had a girlfriend and we were having an argument about something and and behind our house behind where we were we're living there was a big ditch and i parked the car in the ditch on the side like that and went in and she came in and started yelling about the car being out there so i went out and jumped in the car and slammed on the gas and i pulled into these people's backyard over their fence and their gas meter and uh i couldn't get the car out of there so i i walked down to the grocery store to get a pack of cigarettes and i walked home and i saw all these lights and police cars and all this stuff and i said i wonder what happened because i didn't remember any of it and i went in and i i and she said the cops are out there looking for you and all that's oh gee so i went and i hid under the bed bright move and uh they came and they knocked on the door and i heard her go he's in there and they came in they arrested me and I went to jail for the first time well no I went to jail that wasn't the first thing and got a DUI and I spent the night chained or the next day chained to this marine that was about six foot six probably weighed about 250 pounds and we were chained to each other, going to court. I weighed about 110 pounds and every time he moved, I moved and, and I said, I don't want to do that anymore. I don'T think that's a good idea. I DON'T, I DONT WANT TO DO THAT ANYMORE. And so I sold my car and I got a bicycle and a couple of days later I was driving out, riding down the street on my bicycle and I was pretty drunk and, AND I WAS GETTING TIRED AND I HEARD A CAR COMING SO I, I STUCK MY ARM OUT AND It was a Volkswagen van and it hit my arm and I screamed and they stopped. They took me to the hospital and the officer investigating the accident was the same one that had given me a DUI. And he just said, you're just not safe on anything, are you? You know, you can't drive a car. You can't ride a bike. Maybe you better give it all up, pal. And I didn't. And it went on like that. And I ended up, I was living in Phoenix. Ended up one August afternoon going out for a couple cocktails. And I came to and it was September and I was in Anchorage, Alaska. And it was a little different, a little chilly. And I had to, I don't know why I went to Anchorage. I never planned on, I wasn't a blackout drinker. Every time I drank, I blacked out. It got towards the end where I would just walk into a bar and blackout just to get it over with. you know and I just I was blacked out I came to and there was always somebody mad at me and I didn't know why or what what the cause was what the reason there is always somebody upset and so I went I had to get a job so I got a job in this bar called Miss Kitty's and everything that you just thought every thought that just went through your head about what Kitty's might look like, it was worse than that. Miss Kitty's was the place where lower companionship went to seek lower companionsship. It was like the lowest of the low of the Low Bars, you know? Miss Kitty was not a place that anybody told anybody else they went to. You never said, hey, I was down at Miss Kitty last night. You didn't want anybody to know you drank at Miss Kitty because that was like the last stop on the bus. So I'm working in Miss Kitty and the bars are open at Anchorage at that time from 6 in the morning to 5 in the morning. They close for an hour, give you a little chance to go outside and shake and puke and then you come back in and do it all over again and so I'm working all these hours and it's just getting weird and Anchorage at the time, this was in 1980 I think or 81, something like that and it was a crazy place. They were building the pipeline so they had all this money coming in and it was crazy and you go into a bar and it's like the old west people would start shooting at each other just sitting in the bar everybody would just fall to the ground wait until the shots stopped get back up and start drinking again like nothing had happened Anchorage was a strange place and the longer I was there I don't know about you guys but when I drink sometimes I get a little paranoid and I realize that they were after me them you know who they are The problem with them being after you is you don't know who they are because they don't identify themselves, so they could be anybody. They could be right here right now, and you've got to walk around wondering who they Are and when they're going to get you. And it's a terrible way to live, and all you can do is leave. So I left Anchorage, and I ended up back in Arizona in a town called Huachuca City. And I moved into government housing, the projects, And my rent was about $3.61 a month or something like that, and I never could quite come up with it. So I got evicted from the projects, which is always something great to have on your resume. I got Evicted from The Projects, and I moved into a mobile home, a 1973 Pinto. there's somebody after my heart yeah and the great thing about living in a pinhole is no matter where you are your home you know you don't have to worry about it you know and i always drank in bars because i love bars i loved being around a whole bunch of people when i was by myself and and you'd leave the bar and you just walk out the parking lot and you get in the mobile home and you pass out. No matter where you were, it was a great thing. The bad thing about living in a Pinot is everybody knows you live in a pinot. People come up to you walking down the street and say excuse me do you live in a PINOT? And you go how in the hell do you know I live in a PINO? And apparently when you when you pass out on the steering wheel there's this pony and it gets embedded in your forehead. That's that's the Pinot Homeowners Association logo for when We'd have those meetings at the Pinto Homeowners Association. So I'm living in the Pino, and I was working at another bar called Stallion's, which was right up there with Miss Kitty's. And we're down there, and it's a little bit of a mess. And I don't know what's going on with life. As soon as I'd catch a break, everything was going to be okay. You know, as soon as the economy picks up, I'll be okay. You know? As soon as I get married, I'm going to be okay, you know? As soon has. It was always as soon has I was going to okay and I was never okay. And so I'm living in the Pinto and one night I'm drunk. I'm in a blackout and I called a brother of mine that lived over in San Ramon. And him and his wife had stopped drinking. And one of the things you never want to do when you're in a blackout is call a brother who stopped drinking. Because they remember. And they can't wait to find you to tell you everything they remember, all this great stuff. And so he caught up with me somehow at another brother's house. I come from kind of a large family. I've got six brothers and sisters. We're kind of like the Brady Bunch with guns. And we're a little dangerous sometimes. And so this brother calls me up at the other brother's house and talks me into moving out to San Ramon to go to work in his construction company that he had. And so I loaded up the Pinto, and I drove out, and pulled into San Ramón, and the first thing I did when I got off the freeway was to find my bar. I pulled off a Crow Canyon exit, took a left on San Ramó Valley Boulevard, and there was a bar called Selway's. and i stopped in there and introduced myself let them know that i'd be in town for a while because you got to be sociable when you come into your new bar and i went i sat in my bar for a while and then i went over my brother's house you know you've got to find where you're going to drink before you find where it's much more important and uh he had this construction company and the weirdest damn thing that i found out about these construction companies because i hadn't worked an honest day in probably my whole life but years at least and and the weirdest thing about these construction companies is they start at like six o'clock in the morning. And I never knew that a day started then. I knew a lot of days ended then, but I didn't know that people got up and got moving at six o'.clock in a morning. It was a whole shock to my system. My brother and his wife said that I could live at their house, stay at their houses as long as I wanted to, as long as I didn't drink or come home drunk and and so I stayed in the pinot a lot because uh that was kind of a tall order for me to go through and and I um was working doing all this stuff and one afternoon I went over to Selway's after work and and afterwards I drove by my brother's house and nobody was home so I decided to stop and and i went in and while i was there i i must have gotten hungry and i decided to cook one of those frozen pizzas and while that was cooking i must have got tired and decided to take a nap on the couch there and a little while later i came to and the house was full of smoke and and i was laying on the coach and i looked up there was my brother standing there and his wife and and my nephew and my niece and my other nephew and they all had that look on their face that look that our families get the people that love us get all the time of what in the hell is wrong with you? What is wrong with you say that look that says every time you leave the house, we don't know if you're coming home. Every night when we sit up and we hear a siren, we think, is that Dave? Did he get in an accident? Did he kill himself? Did he kill somebody else? Is he get arrested? Is he in jail? Is in the hospital? What in the hell is going on? What's wrong with you? We ask you one simple thing. Don't drink around our house and you almost burn our house down. I guess there was this rule with frozen pizzas that when you cook them, you're supposed to take them out of the box. I didn't, I wasn't aware of that. And my sister-in-law went back to the bedroom where I had been staying and she got all my possessions, both cardboard boxes, and took them out and put them on the front porch and said, you are out of here. And so I did the only thing any self-respecting drunk could do. I begged, you know please don't throw me out don't throw me and and so we went through a series of negotiations and and we decided that I was going to stop drinking now I didn't have any idea that drinking was a part of the problem you know I didn'T drinking really had never occurred to me as being something that was wrong the hangovers were a little bit bad you know and and kind of coming to and not knowing what was going on was a little bad but I don't you know I think we're going to a lot of extreme when we start talking about stopping drinking but i wanted to stay there so i agree to this and and my brother's wife was a nurse and and she was going to help me detox by giving me valium she gave me the blue ones for any of you that remember valium and uh they helped i love her and uh um we did this detox for a while on these volumes and a few days later, she said, well, you should be done. And I said, I'm sure you're mistaken. You might not understand my case is different. I'm a little more sensitive than most people. And I will feel pain deeper than most People. And she said no, you're done. So there I was in San Ramon, California without booze and without AA without anything, and trying to act like everything's okay and trying to, trying to act sane. And I don't even know how to act sane because I've never been sane. You know, that deal on the second step where it says restore us to sanity. He couldn't restore me to sanity because I'd never been there. Had no idea what sanity looked like. So I'm in the suburbs here and there in San Ramon trying to actsane and trying act like people act and I don' t know what to do and I'm going crazy. So this went on for an interminably long period of time, three or four days. And I came home from work and I took a shower. I was going to go back to Selway's. I was gonna go back and because I knew that all my friends there would be worried about me. You know, my good buddies, oh what's his name? And the other guys, they'd all be sitting there, where's Dave? Where in the hell's Dave been? And so I took the shower and I'm walking out the door, and the next thing you know, I've got the phone in my hand, and I'm calling Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I didn't plan on calling Alcoholic Anonymous, I had no desire to call Alcoholics Anonymous—wouldn't even know how to look up Alcoholics Anonymous in the phone book, but I had AlcoholicsAnonymous on the phone. And I got the hotline, and i got some newcomer—I didn't know that then, but i know that now—because he was just so glad I called! You know? Dave, Dave, I'm so glad you called. It's Wednesday. Woo-hoo. And we have a meeting for beginners on Wednesday night at 630 down at Tri-Valley Fellowship in Pleasant. You just got to come. You just gotta come. I go, yeah, I want to be wherever you are, buddy. Can't wait to get there. So he gives me directions to this meeting for beginner's. I've got no intention of going to it. I didn't write them down. And I leave the house and I'm on my way out to Selway's. And the next thing you know, I pull up in front of Tri-Valley Fellowship in Pleasanton, California. Now for anybody that's never been there, this place you can't find when you're looking for it. And I wasn't looking for It. You drive down 580, you get off on Santa Rita Road, and you go this way. And then all of a sudden when you are going this way, you turn and go back this way on old Santa Rita road. And then there is a bunch of old metal buildings and industrial buildings. And it's in there. Now, nobody could find this place. And all of a sudden I pull up right in front of it and I'm not even looking. And I'm Not even aware that I pull over and the front's covered with glass. You know, they have all these glass windows. And I looked and I saw them all with their faces to the window. And they're in there going, he's here! He's here, Dave's here. Yeah, at least that's the way I want to remember it. And so I didn't want to hurt their feelings. So I decided, all right, I'll go into their stinking meeting and then I'm leaving. And I'm going to go down the cellways. And, and I walked inside and, and inside they had those rectangle tables like that. There's a couple of them put together and there are some chairs around it. And there were some guys sitting there playing pinochle. I found out later that's the real sobriety. And one of them looked up over his shoulder and pointed to the door behind him and said, meeting's in there. I didn't know how he knew I needed a meeting. And so I opened the door and there's all these tables in a big rectangle and all these chairs, and there'S about 40 people in there. And I walk in and I do what any self-respecting drunk would do. I saw the first chair and I said, oh man, I don't want you to see me. I don'T want to see you. I just sat down, you know, and I sat in this chair and up in the front of the room, there was the president, the vice president of Alcoholics Anonymous up there. And they were doing president and vice president stuff, you know. And they're doing all this stuff. And finally the president says, is there anybody here for their first, second, or third meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous? And my hand went up before I could grab it. And he said, would you introduce yourself by your first name only? This is just to get to know you. It's not to embarrass you. Yeah. and I said, my name's Dave and I'm an alcoholic. Now I got no clue I'm an alcoholic, I don't believe I'm an alcoholic I don' think I'm an alcoholic the only reason I said I'm a alcoholic is because everybody else when they said their name they said they were alcoholics and everybody said hi to them so I figured you know I'd want to be a part of. So then they do the deal that we do in AA meetings all over the world every day every night they all turn their little AA faces over to stare at me and they had their beady little AA eyes focused on me. And they got their sickening little AA smiles on their face. They're all so damn happy about something, yeah? And they got that sickeningly sweet little AA voice. They all said, hi Dave, we're glad you're here. Oh, me too. And then the vice president starts telling this story. And And the weirdest thing, as he's telling this story, you guys are weird as hell. Every place you're supposed to laugh, you cry. And every place you'RE supposed to cry, you laugh. He's talking along and he said, And I came home and my wife had thrown everything I owned out the windows. And my underwear were hanging in the trees. And my clothes were all over the yard. And you guys ARE ROLLING! And I'm going, Come on man, his wife threw him out of the house! What in the hell is wrong with you? you got no pity you got no compassion and you're just rolling and then a little while later he says in the evening before I left for the meeting my little boy climbed up on my lap and kissed me on the cheek and said I love you daddy oh and the tears were flowing and I'm going oh my gosh what have I wandered into what did I do and then he gets done telling his story and then they start going around the room taking pot shots at me it appears that everybody in that meeting had sat in the chair i sat in because they all said i remember when i sat on your chair dave when i sit in that chair if i would have known it was such a damn popular chair i would has sat somewhere else yeah i didn't want to be in everybody's chair when i said in that year oh god and then and then they start talking a code you know they sit there and say do 90 and 90 easy does it first things first and no self-respecting drunk's going to go excuse me what the hell are you talking about i said i go oh yeah yeah did 90 and90 yesterday i'm gonna first things fast tomorrow got no idea what they're talking about and then they start talking about everybody it seems to be the greatest thing though when they're talking to a code is they're so proud of themselves yeah this guy I never get this one guy he looked he said easy does it man and he looked the guy like I told him easy does it just saved his damn life man you know he's so proud of himself and I go oh yeah thanks well I've got no idea and then they start talking everybody starts this chant about get a sponsor and I'm going what in the hell is a sponsor but I'm not gonna ask anybody I'm just going to sit here and think about it for a while use that green intellectual machine that I've been carrying around for all these years yeah and I started thinking and at that point next to the Tri-Valley Fellowship across the big ditch there there was a there was these big buildings and they house Pacific Bell Telephone and I thought I'm going to have to go over there and say excuse me, my name's Dave and I'm trying to join Alcoholics Anonymous and I need a sponsor. And if you'll send them money I'll wear your t-shirt to meetings. My name's Dave, I'm an alcoholic brought to you by Pacific Bell. The alcoholic is once again your friend. All this is going on in my head because I'm not listening to anything you guys are saying. You guys are all impressed with yourselves enough. I don't need to be. You know? You're saying all this wonderful stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And finally it gets around the table and this guy starts talking about how the night before him and his sponsor had done a fifth. I want one of those. Why in the heck didn't you just tell me the sponsor's the guy you do a fifth with? I'll take two. Yeah? So I got this A.A. thing all figured out. You know, and all of you when you're talking, you're saying, Dave, you just got to come back. Oh, just, you know, come back tomorrow, you know. Come back. And they're doing all this stuff and I'm wondering why. I'm wondering why I know that you guys are in the same boat I am. There's not a whole lot of people say, hey, come on back. You know, there's a whole lot of people, hey get the hell out of here. But nobody's saying, yeah, come on back so I wonder what their deal is. So they get finished with the deal and the president starts handing this basket around people start throwing money in it. I said, that's the deal. They want my money. So I stuck my hand in my pocket and I was thinking I'm going to give them some money and then I'm out of here and I'm never coming back. And the guy next to me grabbed my arm. Now this guy, by the way, looked like he needed to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. He was in bad shape. He grabs my arm and he says, you don't have to put anything in for your first, second or third meeting. I says, well then what happens? You you take it all? My whole estate, the pinot, both boxes, all my money. And he said, no, he said then when the basket comes around, if you got a buck, put it in. If you need a buck take one out. I'm the last guy in AA history they said the last part to. I believed them. I believe them. Sorry. So we get done with this and then the president says we will now close in the usual way. Well, the usual way for me is to stand up and get away from you, you know? So I do this. I stand up, and I start to turn, and this guy over here grabs my hand, and these guys grab my other hand. And I go, oh my God, what are they doing? You know? Are they going to do some kind of human sacrifice here or what, you don't know? And then they start praying. Oh no, I found a prayer group. Oh man. And they didn't pray like normal everyday people would pray. They prayed like alcoholics. Oh, mother! They're just screaming this prayer. You know, and I'm thinking, they're thinking if they yelled out enough, God will just open the roof and come on down right now. You know? And then they get done. And I'm like, all right, it's time to go. And I started, and this guy grabs my hand tighter. And then this guy grabbed my hand tight and then they spread out and they start flapping their arms up and down. They're doing one of these. And I'm going, what in the hell? And then they start screaming again. Keep coming back! It works! I've been in some groups, man, where we go on for a half hour. We go, keep coming back. It works if you're working. So work it. You're worth it. Buy a big book. Call your sponsor. And it just goes on. We could actually get some air in some of these groups. We could levitate, man. When we get going on that stuff. But they said, keep going back. It works. And then, they let go. And I said, I got to get out of here. you know i don't know what i just experienced but i'm leaving and i started to turn around and all of a sudden i looked and the posse was coming towards me yeah all these guys whose sponsors were there i didn't know that then but i know it now you know and they all had these little scraps of paper about this big and it and they had scribbling on it and they all came up saying hey man call me at two o'clock in the morning man hey call me at two o'clock in the morning, man. And I'm thinking, why? Number one, I don't like you. Number two, I do not want to like you and number three, what the hell is going on at two o clock in the mornin? And apparently they were saying even at two o clock i n the morning but I heard call me at two o clock of the morning. You know and so they also and then I am wondering why is it only guys coming up here giving me their phone number? There is not one woman giving me her phone number this AA thing is weird I don't like it and and I got this big wad of paper and I walked out the door and I threw it in the garbage and I gotten a mobile home and I went home and I went to sleep I was on my way I was On My Way to Selway's and all of a sudden I I was asleep I don t know how that happened and and and the next day I got up and I Went To Work and I came home I was getting cleaned up my brother said what are you doing I said I m gonna go down there one of those a and a meetings. And he said, uh, again? I said, yeah. He said, didn't you just go last night? And I said yeah. I said well why are you going again? He said I don't know they just told me to. And that was the best AA I ever had man. I just did whatever you told me. You walk in sit over there okay. Stand up okay. Wipe off the tail okay. Empty the ashtrays okay. Sweep the floor okay, just whatever you said to do. I didn't know I could tell you to go screw yourself. I didn'T know I can say no, I don't want to. And I just did whatever you guys said to do, you know, and you're doing the deal. And after about 30 days, you let me start pouring coffee, you Know, cause you don't never trust anybody with less than 30 days with a coffee pot. They can go flying around. Yeah. And so, so this was the good old days when, when all we had was coffee, You know, we didn't have decaf. We didn't we had coffee you know and that was easy simple enough for a newcomer to figure out the black stuff in the jar pour in the cup you know. And I and and so I was going around and I was pouring coffee and then finally one one evening I'm pouring coffee and this guy looked up over his shoulder says yeah Dave I'd like some coffee. And a couple of people later this lady says thanks Dave. And people started saying thanks Dave. Yeah Dave I'D like some copy. And all of a sudden I realized I was a part of something. And I was a part or something because I didn't, I was doing something for fun and for free, not expecting anything in return. I was just being a service that I didnít even know I was being a service. You know? I was just doing what they told me to do. And it was a neat thing. And so this went on. We get together. There was a 630 meeting, an 8 oíclock meeting. And we go to the 630. We go to 8 o'clock. Then we go over to this place called Carnation over in Pleasanton and eat ice cream and tell lies and smoke cigarettes till 2 oí clock in the morning. Go to work and you know go home go to bed go to work do it all again the next day and this is what i did man and i just did i just glammed on and i don't know why i didn't want to i just did i couldn't help myself you know and and you guys kept telling me to do stuff in the early on somebody said these people got together with me and said you know you got to get on your knees every morning and every night and pray as i no no i i don' t believe in god and they said that's okay dave he believes in you and i said well what do i say to him and they said in the morning say please and at night say thank you stupid as it was i decided okay i'll do whatever you say in the more than i say please at the night i said thank you and and it went on like this and i got sober on march 24th 1982 and on my nine month anniversary it was christmas eve i'll never forget this i got on my knees and I'm praying, and I'm going, God, I'm nine months sober. Got this sobriety thing down. I'll probably be sober forever. And what I really need now is a her. Amen. And then I got up, and I went about my day, and that night I went to the meeting, and I opened the door, and I looked in, and there she was, right across the room from me. And they had these fluorescent lights, and they were bouncing off her blonde hair you know and and our eyes caught and there was like little moon beams and hearts and stuff it was magic man it was real i knew it and i knew her name right from the start her name was god's will for dave and and so i sat there through the meeting and looked up at her it was well you know checking her out and then after the meeting was over i wandered over to her and and i said hi my name's daveand she introduced herself and i say what what step are you working, which is AA for what's your sign. And I just knew this was God's will for me. I just know this was the most perfect thing ever. Now every month when I write that check, I think maybe I made an error in judgment. So anyway, pretty soon we got married and started producing young future members of Alcoholics Anonymous and uh and we had the thing going on and I was all involved in my fellowship man I was I was on the steering committee I was I was a general service rep I was an intergroup rep uh I worked the coffee bar I was the grape buying rep man I wasn't I was doing AA I was keeping AA going you know and and and I didn't really have time for these step things, but I was doing all this stuff. And after five years of this, I came home one night and my wife said, we need to talk. And we lived over in Dublin and I said, well, let's talk. Yeah, that's what I said. And she said, I think we need to move. And I said, great baby, where do you want to move? And she says, well I've got an apartment over in San Ramon I don't know where in the hell you're going and so all I could do I ran down to the fellowship you know because in an AA marriage whoever gets to the club first wins you know yeah and I go down and I'm gonna plead my case you know and and I was sitting in the meeting because I know that after this meeting some of the women in there are gonna call us oh Debbie you're making such a bad mistake Dave is so wonderful just ask him he'll tell you He just told us, you know. And I knew that she was going to know how wrong she was, you know. And I'm pounding on the table and I'm going, I'm working my program and she's this. And I point out all her defects so that they can be sure and point them out to her in case she had missed them. And I was working my program and my program this and I my program. And I am going on and on for about nine or ten minutes. And finally, this guy that had just moved to town from Colorado, he had like 20 years sobriety. And you know how those guys are. they think they know everything yeah and he was sitting across the table and he goes on the table he says i've heard enough that's i'm not done and he said he said i've been sitting here listening to you spewing on and on about your work in your program this and your program that and la la la he said I only know about one program it's called the program of alcoholics anonymous he says it's got 12 steps and if you're not actively working one of those 12 steps you're not working the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, you may be working your program. As a matter of fact, by looking at you, I'm convinced you're working your programme. But you might want to try working the programme. So I did the only thing I could do. I stood up, shouted some curse words at him and left. He wasn't going to talk to me that way. I was the grapevine rep. I wasthe intergroup rep.I was the general service rep. And this guy didn't even know and he's talking to me like that yeah so then a few days later I called him and asked him for help because we always call the person for help when we're desperate enough that's told us the truth see because I had all these other people hanging around me and they were telling me oh Dave it'll get better Dave just keep coming oh Dave you know you really need to you know she'll figure it out Dave you Know and and feeling sorry for me and working man all this stuff and trying to, you know, just care about me. And this guy cared enough about me to tell me the truth. And I was attracted to that because when the 75 foot flame starts shooting out your butt, you need some truth. Only truth is going to put out that fire. You know, ain't somebody going to come up, put their arm around you. Oh, Dave. Yeah. You're doing great, baby. Cause I wasn't doing great. You Know? And then there's this guy, his name was Dick and that was very appropriate, but he starts, we start getting together and he starts wanting to work these step thingies all the time, you know? And I'm saying, Dick, you know, I've been sober five years. And I said, you know, and I gave him my list of credentials, you know, all the AA service I was doing and my friends in the fellowship and all that stuff. And he said, you know, Dave, you can stay sober on the fellowship for a while. And you can stay sober on service for a while. And you might even be able to stay sober for a long time just doing the fellowship and the service and not working the program of recovery. But eventually what's going to happen, you may not get drunk, but you're going to sit around here and you're gonna become a miserable old son of a gun. And you're to be ruining other people's lives because they're going to be looking at you thinking this guy knows something he's been around here a long time and you're going to be lying to them because you're not going to be telling about the program recovery. And most guys and women, believe it or not, when we stick around doing that, we become sexual predators on the newcomers coming in the door. New girl walks in, hey baby, you need a higher power? You know, and he says, you got it. You might want to start working this deal. And I resist him, man. I said, Dick, I'd love to work your little step thingies, but I got some issues, you know? And as soon as I get these issues taken care of we'll start doing that step stuff you know and we used to get together and have lunch and breakfast a lot you know. And one day we're having breakfast and he starts talking these step things. I said Dick, Dick I understand that you're really up very locked into that step stuff and I want to get there but I found out what my problem really and truly is. And he said pray tell. And I said I was at a meeting the other night and they were talking about it I'm a people pleaser. And he said, well, let's see, Dave. He said, he said your wife threw you out of the house. You lost your job and you owe every bill collector in Northern California money. I don't know many people that are pleased with you. I wouldn't worry about it. I had another issue. Yeah. And so a few days, a couple of weeks later, we're having lunch and And he starts on this step thingy again. And I said, Dick, I said stop. I said I know what my problem really, really is now. And I had some tears man. And he said, what's that Dave? And I was like, what the hell is it? And he looked at me and he didn't miss a beat. He looked at him and he said well let's get the little bastard sober Dave. and you know that's not putting down anything about inner child and and and people pleasing all this stuff you know because by the time most of us get here we're broken in a lot of ways and we got all kinds of issues going on but what he was saying was dave we've got this toolbox of things of tools to help you recover let's use them and then if you need more let's go find it but let's see if you can, if the tools we have are going to fix your issues. Oh man, what could I do? I had to start working the steps. I was out of excuses. He wore me down, you know, and we started working the footsteps and some amazing things started happening. Amazing things started happenin', you know. And while we're doing this, you know we get to the, we're talking about this God thing and I'm saying, Dick, Dick I have this huge problem with God and And I, you know, I've had a problem with God. I had the problem with religion. I had a problema with anything to do with God and churches or God and anything, you know? And it just tore me up, you know? And he said, Dave, why don't you do this? Why don't you every day, every morning and every night for 30 days pray and say, God, who are you and what do you want with me? Who are you and what do you want with me? And so I started doing this. And I started finding out that I didn't know, I had no real problems with God. God had never done anything to me. And i had no problems with religion. Religion had never done anything to you and I have no problem with churches. Churches have never done anything. Nobody had ever done anything negative to me about church, God, anything. But in my head the story was different because I've heard other people say they've been harmed by religion or harmed by their pastor or harmed church or harmed by their priest or harmed by God. Or I saw it in movies or I saw It on TV and so I just took that on and it wasn't mine. It wasn't Mine. So I'm praying every morning, every night, God who are You and what do You want? And I'm living in an apartment over in Oakland and every night about 2 o'clock in the morning I would wake up and the voice would be booming on chapter 5. The results were nil until we let go absolutely. Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. And it went on and on and on. So finally one night woke up, it's pounding on me again, and I fall to the side of my bed and I'm on my knees and I said, alright God whoever you are, whatever you are I'm ready. Do with me whatever you will. And I gave him some instructions and I went back to bed. And a couple weeks later God revealed himself to me in such a real way that I can't explain it to you i don't have the words i cannot articulate what happened with this god and with me but all i can tell you is the god that i've come to understand is the God of the universe the God that was sitting up there one night and said i think i'll have a universe and bam there it was and there was this universe in all its glory it wasn't i i don' t know if you guys remember when we when we were kids we used to at third grade we had to make the universe and you get cardboard box and some strings and some styrofoam balls and you paint them, you know, and we make the universe. It wasn't like that. That's not the universe that God made. He made a universe where the moon and the tides work together. He Made a universe, where the sun and all the planets are all turning to get at lightning speed, and they don't bump into each other. If they were a little bit off of the planets were a Little bit off a little bit this way a little But that way, they'd be bumping into each other. The universe could not exist. If the sun was a little bit further, we'd be freezing to death. If it was a Little Closer, we would be burning to death, and this God made this perfect universe with just a thought, bam! And I've come to believe that this God that made the perfect universe with just the thought that it's more important to Him to have a conversation with us than it is to create a whole new universe, that it is more important for Him to create such a magnificent thing and when you find out that you're that important to the god of the universe nothing is ever the same nothing is ever the scene so this wife and I got back together we moved out to the valley moved down there around Modesto where I finally started trying to help bud get sober and uh and and we're living down there and doing stuff and after a couple years she came to me and she told me that she was in love and I said baby I'm in love too and she said well, I'm not in love with you. I'm in love with one of your sponsees. So I copped a resentment. He wanted what I had and was willing to go to anything to get it. He got it all right. Anyway, so we, it just started getting crazy. We started having, you know, I was, I wasn't, I didn't I was nuts. I was insane and I was doing crazy stuff and I ended up, I had to get out of Modesto. I just had to leave. And so I left Modesto, I moved back to the Bay Area and I'm at a meeting one night and, and this guy's talking, and I'm talking about how I got to pay child support and I was pissed off. Now I wasn't pissed off because I had to pay childhood support. I was pissed off because I had paid her child support. And I didn't want to give anything to her. And after the meeting, this guy comes up to me and he says, you want to get her? Yeah. He said, do you really want to mess with her mind? I said, yeah. He says, here's what you do. I said what's that? And he said, you take that child support? And I said yeah. And he says you give it to her early and you give her more than you owe her. And I said, maybe you misunderstood. And he said, when you give her that child support early and when you give more than your or she moves out of your head for 30 days. And i was willing to try anything and i started doing this and within a few months her and i were talking because we have kids to raise. It wasn't about her and it wasn't about me. It was about us raising these kids and those kids didn't choose to have old derelict dad no weird mom. They got who they got and it was our job to raise them. And we didn't get to use excuses about, I'm pissed off at her. I'm not going to pay my child support. I'M PISSED OFF AT HIM. I AM NOT GOING TO LET HIM SEE MY KIDS. THOSE KIDS DIDN'T HAVE TO BE INVOLVED IN THIS DEAL AND IT WAS AMAZING BECAUSE WE STARTED DOING THIS DEAL TOGETHER, RAISING THESE KIDS AND THESE KIDS TURNED OUT PRETTY AWESOME. BUT AS A RESULT OF THAT WHEN THEY STARTED HAVING PROBLEMS WE WERE able to come together and get them help. And these kids are 17 and 18 years old, and they're awesome. These kids are so unbelievable. I wish I could stand here for an hour and tell you about them, but you'd probably get tired. I've got pictures. Anyway, great stuff happened. So we move along, and I'm sitting there, and one night when I'm going through all this, and I'm just hating her. This is back when I was still hating her and and all of a sudden it became i had this awakening and i started looking at every relationship i'd ever had and they all had two things in common one was i was in every one of them and two was they were all over maybe it wasn't her maybe it weren't the hers so i talked to this sponsor i got a new sponsor because dick had passed away and i start talking to this sponsor and he said dave we need to do his sexual inventory that's oh i did that inventory he said you did. He said, what did you do? And I said, man, I came up with this great ideal. And he said, well, what's your ideal? And i started describing this person and he said you're such a spiritual giant, Dave. He says the ideal is a behavior. It's not a person. It''s not their behavior. It's your behavior. And I go, you ruin everything, man. I had a great ideal, you know, and we started going through this sexual inventory and he had me start listing out all these relationships I'd had and everything that was involved in them and what was going on. And as we looked at all these, they all had common themes and they had all started the same. Every relationship I ever had started with sex. And then we moved on from there and they never worked. And it was crazy. And my relationship with my wife started that way. We met in a meeting, we started having sex. Then we got married and we don't know how to communicate. We never got into communication. We just, you know, we were social. We had a good social life. We could hang around AA and talk AA with people, you know? And we had a great time. We had no communication. So when you'd have problems, what would you do? You'd have sex and everything's okay. Until after a while, you can't have sex anymore because the resentments are so deep and you don't know how to discuss them with each other. And then you walk around with each another and you're just angry all the time. And then why wouldn't, you Know, everything I was telling her through my behavior was your value is in sex, honey. not through my words, through my behavior, through my actions. And when you look at it that way, why wouldn't she go off and sleep with somebody else? She had to go where she was getting her value because I told her that's where your value is. So maybe I played a huge part in this. Maybe when I look at my part, it's huge and maybe I got us to do things different and he had me pray. He said, I want you to pray every morning and every night and ask God to give you a sexual ideal. So I started doing this and I came up a few months, a few weeks later with this sexual ideal. And it's my sexual ideal, nobody else has to buy it, nobody has to live it, it got nothing to do with you, it's me. And my sexual ideal was that I could have sex with any woman I wanted to as much as I wanted to, as long as I was married to her. I see guys back there going, la la la, don't hear him, don' t hear him. And that was my ideal and as time moved on I was involved my church and doing stuff. And I went to this meeting at my church, and I met a woman in there, and we started talking to each other. And eventually, we started dating. And we're dating and getting to know each other and talking. And it turns out that she had the same sexual ideal I had, except put a man in there instead of a woman. And she was not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. She didn't drink worth a damn. I tried to get her drunk once. It was sickening. you know and and and we had the same ideal and so we spent a couple years dating and we decided after a couple of years i said this thing just isn't going to work and we broke up and during the next two years after we'd broken up we we started just being friends because we need you know one of the things i learned through this whole sexual inventory is how can i be in love with somebody how can I care so deeply about somebody and if i break up all of a sudden their scum what's that say about my decision making process what does that say about my character what does it say about who I am so we broke up and we remained friends and we started we helped each other do a lot of stuff and after two years we decided all the sudden and I long story that it was that we needed to get married and so we planned this marriage and it was an amazing thing we got married on November 8th 1997 and on our wedding night was the first time we'd ever made love together and when we got married we had that we had away the goals of our marriage in our head and nothing was in stone but we had a plan we knew how we were going to do our money we knew how we're going to pay bills and who was going to manage money and what what our goals were with the money we know how we are going to raise the kids what our goal is where with the kids we know what we wanted to what the goals are marriage work because the God that we understood he didn't get us married just to acquire and consume just to buy new stuff and work hard he got us married because he wanted us to be able to help his kids and we had those goals in line in our marriage we put that together that was part of the deal and we found this stuff out because when all the other relationships i was forming i was busy having sex this relationship we were busy getting to know each other we were busying learning how to communicate we were business learning what was really important about each other's character and if we meshed and we mesh and things came together a lot of great stuff happened throughout the deal. And over a period of time, after we were married 11 months, she got cancer and we went through a period, you know, and it was crazy. She had radiation and surgeries and all this stuff. And I got to tell you that AA showed up at our house when she was sick and that our church showed up in our house and you guys came and you brought food and you did our laundry and you cleaned our house and you took us took her to doctor's appointments when i had to work and and you cut our grass you wash our car you did everything you were there my neighbors used to think it was like the keystone cops because this little bitty car pull up and 20 people jump out they'd have casseroles and they'd be trimming bushes i mean it was just amazing drunks were everywhere and you guys were everywhere and it was amazing she went into remission and and we celebrated we had a party at two years from the date she was diagnosed we had this party to thank everybody for helping and we invited 180 people there's 180 people that had helped us during this period it's amazing how you guys came out so we celebrated we did a bunch of stuff over time she started feeling bad her back started hurting we were trying to figure it out it was scar tissue this and that and from the surgeries and all that and eventually she couldn't walk and eventually we found out on july 13 2001 that the cancer was back and it's kind of amazing that day i was at work it was a friday and and my immediate supervisor came over and asked me if i had any more he was putting the time in for the paycheck he asked if i had anymore sick leave or vacation time and i said no i don't because i'd used it up taking her to doctors trying to figure out what's going on i said just you know i'll just go without pay for the days you know whatever time i missed and he came back a few minutes later and he said voo and voo who's our manager he said Vu said don't worry about it he's got you covered so I got up and I went over to thank Vu and I said Vu thanks that's awful nice of you to do that and Vu looked at me and said what are you doing here and I'm trying to do this and this and he said go home your wife needs you don't Worry about money I've got you Covered we'll make sure you get paid amazing thing so I go home early on Friday July 13th and the phone rings and I am there and they say the cancer is back and there's a tumor in your back and it's eating away the vertebrae that's why you can't walk and there is a tumor on your pelvis and there are tumors in your lymph nodes and there are tumors on your lungs and it doesn't look good. So I talked to Vu and decided to take the next week off and the following Saturday I'm at home and the director of my department at my company, one of the big managers came over and he brought us dinner. And I'm in the bedroom putting together the hospital bed for Lynn and he said, why don't we just have Dave work from home while you're sick so he can take care of you? And they let me stay home and take care of my wife during the worst economy we've had in years. While they laid off 1,400 people in my company they paid me for staying home taking care of my life. And because of you guys, what you guys taught me was to be a husband. And what you taught me about being a husband is a husband is there no matter what. No matter if it's good or bad, you're there. And a husband takes care of his wife and a husband gives up everything that he thinks he needs to make sure he meets the needs of his wife. From reading the family afterwards, that first page, those first two paragraphs, that a marriage isn't a competition. It's not a battle to see who wins, to see who's in charge you know that a marriage is about being a part of and giving up for each other and laying down my life for her you know and as I did this I took care of her every day man you know. And I had to carry her and put her carry her from bed to the wheelchair give her a bath take her to the doctors do the deal. And and I'm not saying that so much about me I'm saying that about you that you could take a guy as worthless as me and teach me to be that useful. And we did some stuff, you know. And for 10 months I slept with three feet from my bed. There was two bottles of liquid morphine. There were two bottles of Oxycontin, 100 pills each, 30 milligram and 60 milligram. I wasn't thinking about it though, huh? Yeah, there was Dilaudid. There's Ativan. There was all kinds of pills. And I never once thought, hey, I think those would help. That's how amazing Alcoholics Anonymous is. So finally, June 6th last year, she passed away and the world stopped and I couldn't go on. For a year, my whole life had been taking care of this woman and I didn't know what to do. I loved her so deeply, so deeply that sometimes I just couldn't even get out of bed. I couldn'T breathe. I couldN'T move. And my prayers were, I'd fall on the side of the bed and the only prayer I could think of was please, please God, please God, PLEASE. And you guys kept coming over and you kept calling. And it came down to where I had to do the same things I'd been doing for 20 years. I had a job. I had it get up. I had go to the same meetings I went to, had to call three drunks a day because Dick used to tell me call three drunk a day and ask them how they're doing. Don't tell them how you're doing, ask them they're how they are doing. I said well what if they ask how I'm doing? He said then they're on their own, they have their chance. And I kept doing the same thing over and over and I'm trudging through it and it's not easy. It's the most difficult thing I've ever been through. It hurts so much some days I just can't stand it. It hurts bad. but because of you and because you guys carry me, we're getting through it. And I always like to close with the same story. It's my story, and I'm sticking to it. But when my kids were about seven and eight, maybe eight and nine, we went to a Fourth of July festival in San Ramon. And we got there. It was about 730 at night, and there was plenty of light, and I had them each in one hand holding their hands. And these paratroopers were jumping out of the sky, and they had smoke on their feet. and there is nothing nothing cooler to a seven or eight year old boy than smoke on a paratrooper's feet and he yanked out of my hand he went running into the crowd and I thought okay I'll find him it's early you know it's light I've got plenty of time to find him and so we're wandering around it's you know they got booths they got all kinds of stuff going on all these people and Jessica and I are wandering around looking and we're you know we're looking for day but not too concerned with it you know and as and it starts getting dark you know as it's getting dark I can envision my son going, oh man, I need to find my dad and starting to go off this way. And then he'd see something over here and he'd go that way and go, oh no, no, I got to find My dad and then see something over there and go that kind of like us. You know, you see a shiny object. Oh, let me go over there. No, not me over here. Yeah. And, and finally it got dark and I got worried. I got really scared. And I went up to the sheriff and I said, I've lost my son. And she asked me what he looked like. And when I described him and what he was wearing, I told her and, and she said, stand right here and wait, wait right here. And they put out the call, you know, and, and over after a few minutes probably about 15 20 minutes my son had gone up to this lady sheriff and said excuse me my name's dave and i'm lost and she stopped hey we've been looking for you let us take you to your father and they called on the walkie-talkie and and they said to go up to the front of the stage and my daughter and i were in the back and we start walking up there and and we walk up and as we get closer we see each other we all start running together you know that is really sappy i told you yeah and and and we grab each other and we're in the grass we just fall down and we're crying i'm so grateful that my son is okay i'm so grateful to be reunited with my son and he's so happy to be with me and his sister and his sister is so happy and we are just so thrilled to be together and we were crying tears of joy it was so amazing on march 24th 1982 i walked into alcoholics anonymous and i said my name is dave and i'm lost and he said ah dave we've been waiting for you let us take you to your father and when you took me to my father he was so thrilled to have me he cried tears of joy and I was so thrilled to be reunited with him that I cried tears and joy and my life has never been the same and there's nothing better than what it is today thank you very much