Step 4 Showed Him He Was Immobilized by Fear – Howard P.

My name's Howard, and I'm an alcoholic. Some of you showed up after I sat down, and a lot of you here. Can I see the hands of the newcomers again, please? People in their first 30 days of sobriety. Good to see you, a bunch of you. Welcome. them. I want to thank Bob for inviting me to come over today. We've had a good day today and life was good. I am going to, as always, look at my watch while I'm talking. I don't do that to see what time it is. I do that to give those of you that are worried about it a sense of optimism that I care what time it is I don't really care but I want you to relax For the newcomers, there are no authorities in Alcoholics Anonymous. We all just share our experience, strength and hope We insist, most of us, that the only real authority other than loving God, as he expresses himself to us, is the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I'm asked to speak, I make up stuff and say that it's in the big book in order to add credibility to my talk. I give page numbers and nobody ever checks. uh i also don't you guys know uh the drums but uh i i hadn't seen them since in the canyon in oklahoma i think it's been that that long ago it's good to see him norm alfie used to say he comes here to see some old friends and make new ones and and i've done that tonight i've made a new friend, and I've seen some old ones. We got that done. I was born in Los Angeles, California, 1,200 years ago. And I don't remember living in California when I was a kid. The first home I remember was in a little town in Kansas, about 45 miles southwest of Wichita. we thought we were in the bible belt when i got away from there i found out everybody thinks they're in the Bible Belt you know well Californians don't think they are they know they are not in the Bibel Belt but uh they're happy about that too you know But so nobody knows where the Bible Belt is, but I know it buckles about 45 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas in the Methodist Church, where I began to learn about life. And while I was in that town, I saw a travelogue movie when I was a little kid on training wild elephants in India. And they start out by putting a rope around the elephant's right front leg, a baby elephant. And then they tie it up to a huge tree and the elephant fights and pulls and tugs and fights and pulls and tug until his experience causes him to come to believe that when the rope is tight, it's futile to pull. then they go ahead with the rest of the elephant's training in the movie they showed this big elephant pushing trees over they hooked the tree up to his harness and he pulled the tree out of the forest for harvest and at the lunch break in order to hold the elephant where they wanted him they put a rope around his right front leg and they drove a relatively short stake deep enough in the ground that when they wrapped that rope around the stake and the elephant walked around and he got to the end of the rope he just stopped pulling he just began and and the rope didn't hold him the stake didn't hold him the limiting belief that they imposed on the elephant when he was a baby is what held the elephant and when I was in Alcoholics Anonymous just a few months I listened to Don Gates talk he said something that reminded me of the baby and I realized I come to Alcoholics Anonymous with approximately 157 and 2,000 beliefs, just like the stake in the ground, just like the rope. And I didn't know I believed this, yet it had a profound effect on my life. One of the things that had the most profound effect was that I was taught in the Methodist church that I was separate from God. God was an anthropomorphic being up in heaven behind the pearly gates on the streets of gold. And I was in this little Kansas town, so I knew I was separate from God. I was taught that God created the universe, but he was a miracle worker. And I Was taught just to pray. I didn't know I was thought, but I was talked to just to pay for miracles. the first time we prayed and I knew who I was praying to and what I was paying for was for it not to rain because wheat harvest started the next day and there's a lot of reasons if you're a farmer cutting wheat that you don't want the field wet and so we prayed Sunday fervently for it not to drain, it rained Sunday afternoon It hailed Sunday afternoon. The wind blew and destroyed all the wheat in Sumner County, Kansas Sunday afternoon and nobody pointed the finger at me but I knew whose fault it was. I knew who wasn't doing what you have to do to have God answer your prayer. I knew I wasn't and I thought all the rest of you guys were. and if you're four or five years old and you've assumed the entire responsibility for wiping out the Kansas wheat crop what you have is an ego problem the old ego assuming more responsibility than you have the power to get done and I learned to live my life that way I learned to base my sense of well-being on me being able, like the little train that could, is to never give up and make it work. And it never made me feel good. I never had the power and never knew it. And when I was about 12 years old, I drank about a half of a half a pint of whiskey, and I solved the feeling good problem. I remember sitting there thinking, this is what they mean when they say, let's have a few drinks and get to feeling good. God, that was a good... I had never ever had a feeling good feeling before. And now I had answered the problem for feeling satisfied and happy. then i could really put some effort into straightening you people out so that you would do the right thing and what was right was what i thought was right and if you didn't think the way i thought then it became very important to me that you know you're wrong and i lived my life that way And the funny thing, it doesn't work very well. But I just stuck with it. I met this beautiful red-headed girl when I was in the seventh grade and I fell in love with her. I know in retrospect, I'm 74 years old now, and I know I loved her from when I first saw her. And she was my girlfriend for about three weeks the summer between when we were in the seventh grade and eighth grade. And then she said, why do you get in so much trouble? I didn't do what I wanted them to do was the reason I got in trouble. But she stopped being my girlfriend. And I went through high school just obsessed with her, but I could never tell her. And I got in the Navy during the Korean War, and I heard that her and her fiancé broke up. And I knew I was a loser, but it dawned on me I was an illusory loser. Now, a loser is somebody that will ask the girl to be his girlfriend and gets told no. That's a loser. But a loser's loser is afraid to ask her. And I was a loser'S loser. And as soon as I heard they had broken up, I put in for leave, and I went home. and I had a couple of drinks but I told her I loved her and we went dancing my sisters had taught me to dance you just move your left foot away from your right foot about a foot then you move your right food up with it then you put your left food forward then your right put forward then you right put out and your left put to it it's called a box step I got very good at it, but they'd get tired of it. And so I'd be doing this, and then I'd turn, throw them off, and then we'd have to start over again. This night, I danced like Fred Astaire. It was that See the Ocean from a Silver Plane. That was the song. God, I dance to that beautifully. And I had learned some Shakespeare. I don't know what the hell, well, I just liked Shakespeare. Once I got out of school, I liked a lot of things that I didn't like and I should have liked in school. But I told her, did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eyes against whom all the world could not hold argument persuade my heart to this? She fell like a ton of brick. And we got married. We had a son in 11 months, and then we had another son, and then мы had a daughter. And things were going pretty good for us. We moved after I got our name, we moved to San Diego, and I was working as a toolmaker. And it was a good job, And we were drinking, but there wasn't any big problems until about 1959. And I got a job as an entry-level engineer. The job title was process analyst. We analyzed processes. And I was good at this. But they want you to write a report. And I not only couldn't write a report when I tried, I just seized up with anxiety and was immobilized and I couldn't do it. And one Wednesday, I hadn't even started on the report and I took it home to work on it at home. And just after dinner, the table was cleaned off i sat down and i just was immobilized with fear and with i knew i couldn't do it you know and i and i got up with no specific purpose in mind but went to the refrigerator to see what was going on in there and what was growing on in their was a pint of whiskey that was about half gone of jim being at the patio party i was the captain of the neighborhood patio party and i bought a beer called 80 wives that you could get for a case of it for a buck and a quarter and it would get you there it just had a kind of a sour taste to it and this neighbor of mine brought some whiskey over which he drank at the patio party and then he left the whiskey and my wife put it in the refrigerator I was going to give it to him and I just poured myself about a double shot and put some ice in I never drank during the week well, I did once in a while but it was at a party or something or at a bar but not at home but I sat down again and I started sipping that whiskey and all at once the thought occurred to me you know, if I started out by explaining what prompted me to do this analysis to start with. That's the way I could start this report. And then I could briefly describe the significant analysis results. And as a conclusion, I could make recommendations based on the analysis results." And I got up and went to the refrigerator and got Bandy's whiskey and came back, and I wrote the best report that I had ever written. I discovered a technical vocabulary that I didn't know I had. That's the truth. This stuff just... And I wasn't drunk. I was smart. and i took the report to work they typed it up everybody approved it that needed to prove it the next week at about tuesday my boss's boss brought the report out and he said howard did you like this report i said yes sir he said this is a good report i say thank you he said we knew you could do it if you'd just give us the effort pass through my mind effort i gave you effort it wasn't effort it was whiskey but it occurred to me don't tell them whiskey let them think effort they'll give you a raise for effort ain't going to give you anything for whiskey but the important thing was i knew it was whiskey and whiskey it was and i solved the report writing problem and i get little bigger and better assignments so i discover in a little bit you don't have to wait till wednesday night to start this process you can start it monday night and it's working and I'm getting promotions and you can start at any day at lunch and then you can start at anytime of any day it's four o'clock in the afternoon someplace and I am in trouble although I had been promoted from a process analyst to an engineer to a senior engineer I moved to Hughes and Culver City as kind of a senior senior engineer and I promoted an engineering manager that's not setting the world on fire but that's a steady progressive series of promotions that I got because I drank whiskey and if I hadn't have drank whiskey I couldn't cut it, I tried it and I couldn'T cut it And it's just that pretty soon I had to drink so much whiskey before I was smart that my speech was slurred and I was spilling things. And if you didn't know any better, you'd have thought I was drunk. My wife did. My boss did. And I just kept, you know, I could not stop. And you can't tell them. I could tell Pat, but I couldn't convince her. Pat needed Al-Anon when we were in the seventh grade. And she never heard of Al-A-Non until I came to AA, so she was all, I bet you, I wish I'd have counted them, but let's just take a raw number. A thousand times she was going to say, don't you think you've had enough? How many of you alcoholics ever thought you had enough, you know? Of course I don't think I have enough. Let's have another one. And in 1972, my boss demoted me, took me out of management and said I'd lost credibility with him as the manager and with the people that I was supervising. And that's what you could call a bottom. And bottoms aren't bad for me. Bottoms are good for me once I'm on bottom for a little while. it occurred to me that I was drinking too much and I can't drink that much but I can drink some more then my wife was going to take the kids and leave me don't leave me, I'll quit drinking I won't drink at all in about 4 days I said we got to talk I do not want you to leave me I want youto stay here with the kids and we'll make our lives work and we will make them wonderful but if I can't drink it all I guess you have to go I told her that I had hoped it wouldn't come to that she stayed she stayed and I would say I'm just going to drink a half a pint a day That's all I'm going to drink. In a little while, I had a convulsive seizure. My son took me to the doctor. By this time, you see, I was in so much trouble and I didn't know it. I didn' t know I was into trouble at home. Pat had decided that the only solution to her problem is Howard is going to have to die. And Al-Anon, when she tells your story, they applaud then. She said, don't drink. Don't drink Thursday. We've got to go to this PTA thing. It's very important. And I don't know how I got so drunk. I had no idea of getting that drunk. But I was drunk, and I was in the shower, and I chewed my tongue because I thought if I pass out this time, I'm dying. I thought I was dying. And I did pass out, and I Was sitting in the corner of the shower with the water running on me when she came in and blood was running down my face. And she says, I thought, If he just keeps drinking, he's going to kill himself. I'm not going to have to kill him. And she stopped telling me to stop drinking. Now, they teach them that in Al-Anon. I don't know if any of you have had the experience of, you know, you should just get off my back. She was off my bag. Now, if she would argue with me, as long as I could argue, I was right. And I believed I was wrong. But when she stopped arguing, I started believing I shouldn't be doing this you know and I was about $2,500 in debts that she didn't know about and she paid the bills and there was no money coming in to pay anything on this but at work I had an opportunity to sell some equipment that I didn't own equipment that I found right before Hughes and lost it I gave it to a fence And he was going to sell it We were going to split the money I gave It to the fence And the only thing that split Was the fence And I got nothing And I was sitting in The tattletale The bar I drank at Ten days later And I Was trying to sell One of those entrepreneurs some test equipment for their factory. And, you know, I'm telling you, whiskey had stopped making me smart. The next morning when I woke up, I was on page eight in the big book. I didn't know anything about the big books, but there were no words to express the bitter remorse that I experienced. and there was quicksand stretched out in every direction. And that is the bottom. When there is no bottom, there's the bottom." And the fact is, the equipment's gone. I don't know where in the hell it is, but I know it wasn't owned by Hughes. It was owned by the federal government. I know its value exceeds the amount that will require ultimately an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigators. And I feel what it describes on page 30 is pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. My kids, I'm a candidate for a hard time in a federal penitentiary and my kids are a candidate für die Disgrace that goes with that. And I thought, I've got to stop drinking until this blows over. And I used to drink with a guy named Kenny Sixberry, who joined AA and became Kenny S. And he had become the president of AA worldwide. We got that information in the tattletale, and we always got it right in there. And I called Kenny and asked. I drank a half a pint that morning, and then I called him and asked him if he was still in AA. He said, yes. He said are you drinking now? I said no, which was the truth. I finished the half a pipe, and I ain't drinking right now. He said try not to drink anymore. It took me a long time to get it that he didn't believe me. I drank three more half a pints, which is what I did. And that day I took a lethal dose of a little number called Benzedrine. And so about 630, I thought, why did I call AA? Things are not that bad. I hope he don't come. But he came in a pickup truck with a motorcycle in the bed of the pickup truck, which was just the way I expected the president of AA Worldwide to be coming and I got in and I said I am not an alcoholic he said I don't know if you're an alcoholic or not Howard but I think we're going to the right place and he took me to the Culver City Studio Group which is an old group on the west side and Kenny was a big tall ex-marine, a great guy and he introduced me to this dour, sour-pussed old guy. And he said, Frank, I want you to meet Howard. This is Howard's first meeting. And Frank looked up and I didn't know it for a long, long time but he looked up and smiled. It was hard to see him tell him he was smiling and he shook my hand And he said, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous, Howard. I hope you find what we have found. And if you do, we'll help you find it. And if You Find It, you'll have a life magnitudes better than you ever dreamed. Now, I not only drank in the tattletale, I studied philosophy in the Tattletail. We were philosophizers. We knew things like nothing is as easy as it looks. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And at the worst possible time, put that up on the wall. Life sucks. And then you die. Put that on the walls. You know your Betty's so brave and true. Well, you get to him before he gets to you. put it on the wall. Don't trust anyone. Don't trust anyone and I trusted Frank. I liked him. He said, I never smiled but I believed him. I trusted him. Now, I was puzzled about why I did that when It was not my philosophy. Now, if I would have said to you, wonder why I trusted him. If you would have sad, that's God's grace, Howard. God just slipped you enough grace so you could trust Frank and you'd join us. I would've said, who else can I talk to about what went on? I was convinced. I didn't know my baby elephant belief system, but in my baby elephant belief systems, I did believe I was separate from God and there were no miracles coming. And God was a miracle worker or he was nothing. He was up in heaven and you just had to carry your cross so to speak. And then and then you were going to go to hell burned forever. Well, I disengaged from that in favor of drinking whiskey, and I know why I did. The whiskey worked, and the other didn't, and I knew it never would work. And I told Frank, and he said, That's all right. Don't worry about that. and they had a guy named Chuck Ennis who I think had 29 years when I first came to AA and he passed away not very long ago over 50 some years and Chuck worked at MGM as a film editor and he talked about getting out of work and stopping by the backstage bar just to have two drinks three at the most next thing you knew it was your last call for alcohol and he's arguing with the bartender, your clock is set fast and I've got time for more to drink and I'm going to take it and he didn't want to go out into the parking lot because he had insulted some guy who he thought was out there going to straighten him out afterwards and I thought, Jesus, I'm just like him and he talked about doing it Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, every day but every day he was just going to have two through it the most until he came to a and they told him what an alcoholic is an alcoholic is a man or woman who has lost the ability to control their drinking that the loss of control is characterized by an insane obsessive belief each time we start to drink that this time I'm going to have two, three at the most. This time I am going to just baby this half a pint through the day. I drank four half a pints every day. Do you know why I drank half a pipe? Half a pint because that was all I was going to drink was the half a punt. And at the end of the day there would be four, you know, well I had told my wife that I was just going to drink a half a pint so I would bring the fourth half a pipe home and in front of her I would break the seal then I would take a drink and I'd say boy it's a god damn jungle after today you know and I drink that half a pint and I go to sleep on the floor she calls it passing out He can't even drink a half a pint. He's getting convulsed with seizures and everything. I identified with you guys as you each got up and told your stories, except I didn't remember craving a drink. And Kenny, I talked to Kenny at the break, and I said, I don't think I crave to drink. He said, what time did you start drinking? I said, about 6 o'clock in the morning. He said why did you start so early? I said because I was hungover. Now as far as my half a pint was concerned the couple of double shots I had in the tattletale at 6 in the mornin did not count on today's drinking. They counted on yesterday's hangover so then I would start on this today's drink king and then along about noon i'd think well hell i won't want a full half a pint tomorrow i think i'll get tomorrow's half a point and have a drink out of it today you know and uh i'm getting smarter all the way along and uh And I identified, Kenny said, when you had your doubles, did that get rid of the hangover? I said, yes. And he said, did you keep drinking? And I said yes, I did, but only because I wanted to drink. I didn't crave it. he said there's a type of alcoholic who once they start to drink keeps slugging them down so fast that the craving doesn't have an opportunity to set in i immediately saw myself in that category i explained to him after the meeting that god wasn't going to be part of my life it's very clear that you guys i'm not putting you down i'm telling you you guys are looking good and doing good and if you can do that because you've conned yourself into the fantasy that god's helping you then that worked for you but i have to live in the real world which that real world that day was four half a pint and a lethal dose of benzedrine how's that for the real word uh and uh he said uh well let's don't worry about god he said i i didn't think god was in my life but uh um he said I I found some people in AA who I could see their life was working and I'd come to meetings to hear what they would say and if it sounded good i'd try to do that and he said they all said don't drink and don't take benny i don't even know how i knew i took benny unless he noticed i said the same things over and over real fast uh he uh i did that i got drunk one more time drunk as i've ever been drunker than I'd ever been and I started coming I stopped drinking on the 4th of August 1972 and I came to meetings to listen and I heard a guy named Tommy O'Mara say if you make one mistake and brood about making that mistake, you've made two mistakes. Heard Ski from San Diego say I was 36 years in learning that all the people that I hated didn't feel it. These were things that gave me hope. I couldn't do it, but I thought they were, and I was encouraged, and it brought me back. I heard Flo D., who had shingles and fell and broke her arm, and at 3 o'clock in the morning, she couldn't sleep. She sat on the foot of her bed, and she was enraged at God, and she shook her fist in God's face and said, Why me? So the voice come to her ear and said, because Flo, there's something about you that pisses me off. And I loved Flo and I loved her God. You got to be sick for that to be true, but I was sick. I heard Archie Johnson say, I was so busy today wanting what I was getting that I didn't have time to worry about getting what I wanted. And in AA, we try to learn to live in the now. Right now. And whatever's happening right now, love that. Because that's what's going to happen anyway. And our biggest trouble is not loving what's going to happened anyway. And my thought was, well, let's stick Archie in the eye with a sharp stick. Let's see him love that! I went outside, and it is raining as hard as it can rain in the Pacific Palisades. And I've hated the rain ever since I wiped out the wheat crop. And when I got to my car, the thought came to me, love the rain, Howard. That's what Archie's talking about because it's going to rain anyway. Now, if somebody would have said, God will give you just enough grace to love the rain. And then when it stops raining, to love it not raining. But I had that grace. Now, there was a ton of things that I wasn't able to do that with. But given the weather over, worked for me. I used to quit AA every little whiff of snitch, and I quit this one Saturday. And I went to the meeting. I always quit in the daytime and then forgot I'd quit, and then I went at night. I didn't miss any meetings, but I'd quite during the day. Damn thing don't work. I ain't going to grin like a baboon and say, isn't wonderful. About halfway to Malibu, isn' t this wonderful? You know, and Don Gates was the speaker that night. And he said, if you're new in AA and you're not working the steps, AA will stop being fun. And you'll decide AA doesn't work. You're not going to drink, but you're not going go to the meeting. Now, you don't go to a meeting for a little while. You go back to the bar, and you'll order a drink. And if you do that, and the bartender says, what's the matter? I thought you were going to AA. Don't AA work? said if you're not going to meetings if you are not working to step be honest Mr. Bartender and tell him you don't know if it works or not because you wouldn't try and there was nothing in my head to pop off about that I decided to do an inventory I had had my dad in my hand he was an old German that used to spare the rod and spoil the child and he just beat me half to death he really did And I never, I mean, I don't make you an alcoholic, but I never got where I liked it. I understand there's some people over in California that... We're close to two minutes. I know we are. And I, you know, I forgot where I was. But I went to the meetings. I worked the steps. When I did my fourth step, it was magic. My dad was not my problem. I was afraid. That's my problem, I'm just immobilized with fear and I can't do anything unless I get the strength from being angry because I don't have anything else to turn to for strength. And I saw that. That's an outstanding thing, I was going to say a miracle, but it's divine order. It's just the way God created the world. You know, in this atmosphere right here, you could fly a 747 if you could get in here and get it moving because the laws of aerodynamics are inherent in the atmosphere. And I've come to believe and know for me that there are spiritual principles that are an inherent part of my life that I can experience by working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it gives my life lift. I took the equipment back. My sponsor tracked the equipment down. My wife and I went to the bank and borrowed the money, and I took her home and I got the equipment and took it back. And my boss called me back in the next day. I took it to him and said, I stole this and I'm bringing it back and he said, go home and I'll see you in the morning. And the next morning he said I don't know where the equipment's been but I know if it was stolen I wouldn't have it and I have it. Our procedures require us to fire anybody that steals from us and so I don't want you to ever tell anybody about this and I haven't. I mention it tonight because there's some new people and this is the truth that I experienced. The next morning when I woke up and I realized that the equipment thing is no longer weighing on me. The weight of the earth was off my shoulders and I felt good. Now, if you remember your first drink and you know how good you felt with your first drink, that's how good I felt that morning. And it was a clearer good feeling because my thinking centers weren't muddled. Now, I don't know how long it lasted, but it embedded itself in my memory so that when I'm meditating, I can sometimes bring that memory in and re-experience it. And as I keep doing this stuff, more and more and more good feelings happen so that I wake in the morning feeling good and know I'm going to have a good day. And I know it because I know my life is in divine order. There is no separation between me and my higher power. The big book describes God as the spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things. It says manifesting precise law in every aspect of all being. It's either everything or it's nothing. The big book describes God as an all-powerful, guiding, creative intelligence underlying the material world and life as we see it. There is no separation. My life has always been in divine order, but I didn't trust it. I came to AA, you have put me through the steps so that I can experience it and trust it. What a gift and how grateful I am to you for that. I was reading a book on meditation. I've read a lot of them. Meditate every day like for a hundred years without missing. And that's a little exaggeration, but I don't miss meditation. I was reading this book on meditation, and it says whatever way you experience God, that's the right way for you. If you intellectually convince yourself that God is present, that is right for you, or if you just sit quietly and you experience god's presence in your feelings, that' s right for you but remember wherever you see god pass mark that spot and go sit in that window again this is my window thank you for letting me come