Step 4 Through 9 Emptied Him of Self – Bill C.

Thank you, David. I'm Bill Crawford and I'm an alcoholic. I've got two names, you know, of people now that have got one name, kind of like Prince or Cher, Madonna or something. And I just haven't gotten trendy yet. I'm not going to preach about that, but I'm kind of sorry that we've quit using our full names. And I hope if you're an old hen like me and you're still saying your full name, you'll keep it up. And that's the end of that sermon. I need to thank, too, the committee. That's the committee, I think, sitting over here for asking Kay and I to come down here and share at the Pine Mountain Fellowship. This is a beautiful place. I have never been in a more impressive location, I don't think, anywhere in my life. And, of course, this is a nice conference. We've met some mighty good new friends and have had a good time. We've had a great time with your other speakers, we're sort of sweet mates with Walt and his running mate Jim. Of course, Walt can't remember Jim's name, keeps calling him John. He says he's only known him 12 years. It makes you feel good if your sponsor can't remembering your name. It kind of keeps your ego in check. We've just been delighted with Kelly and David And, of course, Sandy and Wendell have just been a treat. And other folks too. Just enjoyed the people here so much and have enjoyed this conference. Almost makes me wish I had a decent talk here on Saturday night. So many of you, a couple of you have mentioned listening to this tape. You know, trying to think of little changes in there I could maybe tell a little bit of David's story or something to inject a little something different. But basically, all I have is what you've heard before except I hope how I am today has changed. That adjustments go on, growth goes on, setbacks go on in our sobriety and I hope that will come through a little better. I was born in a home with a dual problem. We had alcoholism and southern baptism right there in the same place. And both of those things you never get over. You know, once you're one, you're always one. If you've got alcoholism, you never fully recover. And you know, once a Southern Baptist, always a Southern Baptist. You know my boss is an Episcopal priest. But he was raised a Southern Bastard to become a priest. I don't care what you call yourself, you're still a Southern Bat. But I came up knowing like a lot of us, I know a lot of us come up in homes where there's alcoholism, where we have alcoholic parentage. And I used to think that it was unusual or at least sicker than most that someone who came up under the horrors and embarrassment and insecurity of active alcoholism would begin to drink. But I think more than half of us are that way. And I don't know what the explanation for that is, but I knew I would never drink. I knew that what I experienced in my home was my daddy's drinking. And really, I need to say this before going any further, my daddy was a pretty good drunk. He was a very gentle drunk. He was well-loved man and really he was just, other than the fact he embarrassed us and would lie down in the wrong places or this kind of thing, he was a fairly good drunker. He was never the mean, unpredictable, ugly drunk that I later came to be. but I know now as I said that it's not really unique or unusual even for that to happen but I knew that I'd never drink I knew that I would never do that but I was having trouble right from an early age we hear a lot of alcoholics say this so I know this is not different either but I Was Having Trouble At A Very Early Age Fitting In And Getting Along And Adjusting To The System You Know We're Having A Little Trouble With Our Grandson Now It looks like it's going to be all right, but he was not fitting in and acting right and doing right in school or kindergarten, I think is his grade level now. I can remember how. You know what they do now? When a kid's kind of like I was, they give them drugs. They give them speed. I missed the speed deal. When I was bad in school, nobody offered me any hits of speed. They'd hit me and they'd send me out there in the hall. Now I kid sometimes about that and it's sort of half true. I tell my children I'd have never learned to read if people hadn't put graffiti out there in the hallway because that's where I stood because I couldn't keep my mouth shut and couldn't act right in the class. Now I didn't do that really on purpose. I determined that I was going to be better tomorrow and do my homework and sit still and all this kind of thing and that never happened. And so, you know that part in the big book that Bill writes as a symptom of the progression of alcoholism where he says we sought lower companionship. I was doing that in the second grade. I was trying to find somebody whose behavior made my behavior seem okay. And as I got older and drifted into the crowd where it was not fitting into the system too good. That's why I learned to smoke and do those things that we do, peer pressure they call it. Peer pressure is that thing that makes us do things to be included in a group that we want to be including, usually things that мы shouldn't be doing. now it's kind of a big deal to learn how to inhale a lucky strike now with young people now they're not too impressed because what they put in their lungs now I mean a lucky strike doesn't hold a candle to but I can remember practicing with a lucky trying to get a big wad down without my knees buckling so that when I was with the group I could inhale and I became a pretty good inhaler since it's a kind of different group I'll talk a little bit about this and I promise I won't stay here alone but um there was a period there i became a cat uh now you young people don't know what a cat is old walt knows what a caddy is i guarantee that uh that's when you put grease in your hair and you would comb it back we make a da haircut square it off in the back and turn your shirt collar straight up we'd wear draped breeches and for young people drape breeches meant pants that were tapered down at big knees and tapered downs a small cuff and wear them real low. And during a period in my teens there when I wanted to be a rebel and I wasn't fitting in with the well-adjusted kid, I became a cat. And I can remember working on that cat thing and getting advice on how to be a cat and having trouble with my hair because it was real fine. And I couldn't get it all laid back like I want to. And that was back when they had stuff like wild root cream oil and stuff like that. And I'd put enough of that on my head that it looked like I had some condition where pus was coming out because that's kind of white, sort of milky looking stuff. And I can remember one of my advisors told me about pomade and that would keep your hair in place. And I laugh nowadays where they have like the final net commercial where they got the gal that has a hectic day and at the end of the day she's pooped but her hair's still in place and final net people just tickled to death with that pomade to hold your hair for three months. How you combed it is how it stayed. I kid and say if a train hit you and they could find your head that hair would be in place. Well, that didn't have anything to do with anything other than I hadn't talked to this group before and you've never heard that except that it put me in an element, in a group, where the use of beverage alcohol was going on. Now back then, although I had heard of other substances, other chemicals, other drugs, I never had any first-hand experience, certainly not then. We used alcohol. Now I had fear and guilt associated with the use of alcohol from what I told you because of my religious training but because of what I lived with and witnessed in my home. But I began to drink simply because of that thing I said earlier, that thing called peer pressure. I wanted to be like them, with them, included among them. And I had me a little social drinking period there, I reckon. It was about, best I can figure, six or seven weeks. I was a social drinker. Every how long it took me from the time I first tasted something and drank a sip of this and a half a can of that until I got enough in me one night to feel intoxication. And that ended anything that would be like social drinking. That ended anything like drinking with impunity, as Bill Wilson says. Now, the experts, and the experts know right much about us. We laugh about all these scientists and doctors and everything, but they're out there sober studying us and they've probably got a pretty good fix, a pretty Good Handle on this disorder. And the experts say, and somebody contradicted this just recently, but I'm going to stick with the figures I've heard. The experts have said that about 1 in 10 people who experiment with alcohol gets from that drug, alcohol, something that causes them to develop what we call alcoholism. One in ten get something special from the use of this particular drug that later causes them to addict to it. Or the way I like to put it, nine in ten waste every drop they drink. And we know them. You know, we marry them and go to work for them. They outnumber us. There's nine of them for every one of us. And so I was the one in ten, apparently. Because right from the beginning, and we've heard this talked about already. We've all talked about this. Right from the very beginning there was something special done for me. It was like something incomplete, a hole there, something missing, whatever that this filled up, that this completed. This was like something I had needed all my life when I was 15 and a half years old and finally discovered. Now I'm not over dramatizing you know that. I'm not waxing poetic up here this is the truth with folks of our class the alcoholic and so right then I was half an alcoholic I guess if an alcoholic is as our big book defines it is a person with a mental obsession and a physical allergy then certainly the mental obsession was there they didn't know it I assumed what it did for me it did für everybody I can remember who I was drinking with that night I can remember where we were. We had the old downtown cemetery there in Greensboro, North Carolina. I can recall I was with Charlie and I was with Sonny. Let me tell you something interesting about this disease. Sonny's still alive. Charlie's dead. These are two boys about my age. We sat on tombstones that night and drank old Mr. Mack wine, cheap wine and felt intoxication. Let me tell you Something about those three boys. Two of us caught it, one didn't. Two of Us became alcoholic, one never could. We all three drank from then on and raised hell and went to places where drinking was going on and partied and did the things. And Charlie caught it just like me and about eight years ago a doctor told Charlie if you take another drink you're going to die because your liver is so cirrhotic. It's so diseased that you can tolerate no more alcohol and alcohol becomes poison and you're gonna die and Charlie drank again and he died just like the doctor promised. And here I stand recovered fully clothed and in my right mind and all those things that we call ourselves when we're an alcoholic in this program and not and incapable of being grateful enough. Sonny ran with us too and drank and raised hell and went to places where drinking was going to be done and did all the things that we did and he couldn't catch it. Now Sonny and I just lived a block apart. Both of his parents were alcoholic and it was a sick and ugly thing in his house. When he was 15 years old, he had to go down to the courthouse and testify in the trial where his father was being tried for murdering his mother because in one drunken, sick particular evening at that home she was killed. And he couldn't catch it. Now Sonny's still alive. But Sonny has to be heavily medicated. And every once in a while he has psychotic breaks. And he has to get treated. He has to go back to be hospitalized. And here I stand. Recovered with you in this place of miracles and I'm not capable of being grateful enough. So as life went on for me like it does, now if you get back far enough from an alcoholic, he or she looks back like a regular person will do that. Now, if you're close, you can tell the difference right up front. But if you look back, we'll sort of... If we don't die or something, we'll get older. I got out of high school and went to a little bit of college and then went in the Army. Made me a neuropsychiatric technician in the army. I worked in a nuthouse for almost three years. now as a type of I always had that kind of ego paranoia Walt calls it if I'd hear about something I'd have it I was a kid, go see a movie and somebody had some rare disease I'd get the symptoms right there during the movie my mom would have to take me to the doctor well I'd hear all these things they were training me and I'd heard about schizophrenia and stuff like that and I said my god I've got that well it's a heck of a deal uh to be working in a nut house you got your white suit there and your keys and knowing you're a nut too and i i'd have that fear i'd be standing on the war diamond you know they're gonna find out i'm on i'm gonna fly apart they're going to take a look at me and they're going to put me in those blue pajamas and take my keys. Well, this is the interesting thing about alcohol and how it relates to the alcoholic that's different. And if you're thinking about going to get some education and studying up on addiction or alcoholism, let me give you a real quick education on it as I understand. The difference between us and them. The difference between us, one in ten, and them, the nine in ten. Now they've spent lots and lots of money and great brain power has been invested in researching us. They've killed a zillion rats probably running through those convulsions and this kind of thing to understand us. now to my knowledge they've never spent a dime studying them the nine and ten and we all know they're a lot more interesting than us well I tell you what I've done I've sort of gone on my own and done my own little project without a grant my wife who many of you heard talk this morning is one of the worst cases of non-alcoholism you'll ever see in your life. If you were looking for a classic non-alcoholic, she'd be it. Now I'll tell you what she's done. Over the years, she'll drink a little bit. Twice a year we'll go out and have a very fancy meal at an anniversary time or something and she'll bring glass wine. And a few times over the years she has ingested enough to feel it. You know what she does when she starts to feel him? She stops. now that demands research it's high time somebody looked into that so I've taken upon myself sort of use her as my control group and I've said why do you do that why when you get the pilot lit do you stop and she said well i tell you when i start to feel it i feel now listen to this i feel as if i'm losing control and i don't like that feeling so i stopped when i would leave that nut board afraid i was going to fly apart lose it be found out and go up to the club that night and begin to drink and the feeling would start to overcome me was the only semblance of control I had in the day. Ain't that interesting? Same drug, same type of central nervous system, same whatever that makes up us human beings. The very thing that makes her lose control was the only thing that gave me any kind of idea, any semblance, any feeling of control. Now, I don't need to know any more than that. They don't have to kill any more rats. They don'T have to do any more research. All I have to know is there's some difference that we can't help. She can't health it. I can't heal it. Now, the progression of alcoholism, and I'm going to be real quick. I'm a drunk-a-law because if you're new, and I've spent some time with some good new folks today, and I really enjoyed Reba, and she's getting a toehold in this thing, and she'S been in the program something less than two months. And if Reba is like most of us, she'S feeling not exactly like everybody. You know, we're to come on in, and you're just like, Well, I'm down if I'm like most of you. Well, after you've been around here for a while, you'll find out that we are a lot alike. In fact, we're so similar to me that it's almost uncanny. It's almost scary that we have such a disease where the symptoms and progression is sometimes so predictable that we're a lot like. Now, some of us are rich and poor and smart and dumb and black and white men and women and all kinds of those kind of differences but the disease as it manifests itself as it progresses is real similar. And what happened to me I suspect is what happened to you. And sometimes we get real bogged down on how many families he lost and how many DWIs he had and how much and how times he went to jail and all that business. But what happened to me is what happened to you first of all were those amnesia spells. Those things we call blackouts. Now, I had those when they first came out. I didn't drink for a long time and get them. I had them as a young fellow. You know how it is? You don't know you're having them at first. You think you remember everything. Somebody will give you a report to get you mixed up with somebody else. No, it wasn't me. And then they got a witness or something, and you know. Well, I forgot that. Well, if I forgot it, then other people must forget. Not true. If you knew, let me give you another little piece of it. you catch. Non-alcoholics never, ever have blackout. You want to do it? We just had that period of time that we just, that holiday period where those non-alcoolics out there drinking. New Year's Eve, they're out there drinking. We're not the only ones that get drunk they can get drunk or that's what they call it uh you know use these uh dangerous times about their driving them non-alcoholics out there drinking and so you there's nothing more dangerous than non- alcoholic with a bag on out in a car i'm telling you he can be blowing about a 0.07 just be all over the road you know not us experience we can be blowing 28 have one hand over eye going just as straight might be going 16 miles an hour they don't have blackouts if you want to experiment with one go out with them on New Year's Eve and they'll just get them comatose. They'll remember everything until the time they fell out. And I was having those blackout periods, those periods of amnesia where I was walking, talking, functioning and didn't remember. That's alcoholism. I began to lose control over the amount I was drinking. That's alkalism. Non-alcoholics never ever lose control from the first time they find out what it would do. They don't lose control. That's alcholism. i went down i'll tell a real brief story i were was working for an insurance company and they sent me down to equitable life as a matter of fact and i was in my mid-20s and they sent me down to uh school in atlanta down around these parts and i was supposed to be down there for a week well i was down there for a night out some of us went out went to strip joints drank we were away from home and i i was the only one in group it ended up in atalanta drunk dying. I was the alcoholic they weren't. At the end of that week I almost got fired didn't get fired at the end of that week a young man came to me who lived in Greenville South Carolina which is right on the way back to Greensboro which I was returning asked for a ride and I said if you'll help with the driving you can ride back and as we pulled out of Atlanta he was driving the car and I reached under the seat and got that brown bag and took a drink and he looked at me like they look at us because he knew I'd been in jail he knew i was almost fired he knew i had suffered humiliation and embarrassment and everything. And he asked me something about it and I said something macho. Yeah, like I really enjoy that. I really have a good time with this. And he told me a story I'll never forget. I know now why I didn't forget it. I didn' t know then why it meant so much to me. But he was a fellow about my age and similar background and similar in many ways and he told be that when he was 18 years old and he pledged a fraternity in college, he got drunk and just did some awful things. It didn't sound so bad to me with my background, but he tore up a room or something and it just went out of his head and he was determined to never drink again and he said, I haven't had a drink since. Two young men. We were probably 25 years old. Probably that was about our age and as I said, we were so much alike if you shook us up in a sack you probably couldn't tell the difference. We came from the southeast United States with both young married men. I think we both had a couple of kids. our backgrounds were so similar you could almost not tell the difference. We were so much alike that both of us couldn't drink. He just told me when I drink it's like fire water to me I mean I go crazy and he described his inability to drink and handle alcohol he knew from first hand experience in what he had witnessed in my life that I couldn't drank neither one of us could handle alcohol neither oneofus could drink but the difference between us that separated us beyond any mutual understanding was that I could not drink. See, I'd made that decision even by age 25 many times that he had made. I had secretly said, I'll never do this again many, many times. But for the past seven years of his life from 18 to 25, he had easily lived up to that pledge and I couldn't. That's alcoholism. I lost control of my behavior. That's alkalism. I began to act in ways, do things that not only humiliated me and others it hurt me and other people. And I began to say you know what I did too? I got married. You heard her today. We're bad to get married. We won't leave people alone. That's why we've got a family disease. You know, if we'd just go off in the woods somewhere and progress, we might wipe this disease off the face of the earth, but we don't do that. We may have young'uns and everything mess up other lives. And by then, this was my situation. I came out of that army, that sick, unusual situation in the army to come back to have a regular, normal life where everything would be okay and I was going to drink less. And he came back and it got worse and it Gotziker. And my behavior got worse than it Gotzer. thicker and I drove people further and further and further away from me. And the people who were still there and still cared would look at me and say why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me? Why are your hurting yourself? Why do we have this embarrassment and humiliation and uncertainty and insecurity? And that's when you know the lower companions come in. Don't we love those lower companions? Lower companions that Bill Wilson talks about That's the people who are at the places where my behavior, my drinking looks acceptable. So I can run down to them. I can running down to Ham's or the Bamboo Lounge or the Varsity Grill or the Ivan House or one of these places and they'll say, you're right, you know, you're okay Crawford. I could tell him about her. They were on my side. Why don't you kill her? And then I'd always have to come running back home with my tail between my legs because I was sick and there was no other place to go. I discovered the morning drink. We alcoholics like to say we discovered the morgen drink like nobody thought of it before us. But I found out that what my daddy had done worked. If I drank some in the morning because what I was doing as I was suffering the withdrawal that anybody that's addicted to any drug suffers. My drug was alcohol. those hangovers that come to the true alcoholic when the physical allergy is truly manifest is where you look back fondly on those things you used to call hangovers. Those hangovers like those non-alcoholics have. They have them good hangovers, remember those good hangover? By golly, I woke up this morning and my head hurt a little bit and I had a thick tongue. I could barely eat my waffle. That's a hangover to those non alcoholics. I'm talking about when they develop into the hangovers where you come to. And every fiber of your being hurts. And everything is screaming for more of that stuff, whether you know it or not. And the fear and the shame comes, and I would be the only person in the world. What a selfish disease alcoholism is. And all the trouble and everything, because my drunks, when I got into the morning drinking, and that went from morning drinking to bender drinking. And I would come to at the end of those things, and I'd begin to tell myself that lie over and over that we tell ourselves, I'm never going to do this again. I've learned my lesson this time because my drunks always had a little damage attached to them. I didn't have uneventful, nice little drunks. I had drunks where you went and picked up checks or you had her do it. That's poor Al-Anon. I had those drunks where damage was done. I had drunks where you didn't answer the phone. You know those kind of drunks. Phone ring, you didn' t answer it. You definitely didn' d go to any front doors or anything. That was that kind of deal. I had drunk where you hid and you couldn' t hide from yourself. And I would tell myself that lie that I was trying to live by and trying to convince myself I' ll never do this again. I know this was not a lie to other people although I'd say it to other people i know this was a lie to me and i know that now when i have the privilege of calling on someone who's still suffering from the active throes of this disease and they tell me i've learned my lesson this time i'll never do this again i know he or she means that but you see i was an alcoholic and i couldn't drink and more importantly i could not drink and so i would come out from under these deals and pick up checks and repair the damage and wait for the heat to blow over and this kind of thing. And then I tell myself that other line. And it'll come out in all different kinds of ways. Sometimes it'll be, this time it's going to be different. This time I'm only going to drink beer. I'm always going to do this. I'm not only going drink at home. This time, I'll mix drinks. Somehow, that was always magic to mix drink. You never hear anybody in trouble on gin and tonics. Mixed drink. and then I'd begin to drink again and I'd began to drink again not for any mysterious reason I began to drinking again because I was an alcoholic and I must always at some point return to drinking in the middle of summer of 1966 I'm 28 years old and I'm working for a crooked company because that was all that was left to me and I was up in St. Louis working for this company and I'd been up there for two weeks, and I've been drunk for two years. And at the end of that two-week period, I flew back to Greensboro. Tapering off. And that's what I called it. That's what my daddy called it。 I found out if you quit drinking abruptly that it was bad. And so I found OUT just like my daddy would say. I'm tapering off, and I would tell her I'm not really drinking. I'm papering off,. You know, it looks alike. Drinking and tapering OFF looks alike, and especially to wives and husbands and people like that. And I'd have to explain that to her over and over. I quit drinking yesterday. Today, I'm tapering off. I'm sort of dosing myself down. If I'd known the term detoxification, that's what I'd has said. I would say, I'm detoxifying now. But I'd had a little dosage problem from time to time and I'd get drunk again tapering up. And so you have to start over. and so I'd be I was in that state and I was a fun drunk drank a lot of underwear you know we went marriage counseling with the preacher there for one time she and the preacher and Kay want to talk about my drinking all the time and I want to talk about her lack of affection well if you hadn't changed underwear in about a week you don't eat You're just drinking. You get a little gamey after a while and romance goes out the window. Well, I was in that state tapering off. And she had picked me up at the airport and I was sitting in the airport lounge there dosing down some beer and so I had her stop on the way to get more and I'm standing there and I called Alcoholics Anonymous. Called AlcoholicsAnonymous. Now, as I mentioned in one of the things, I'd done all kinds of things. I'd gone to a psychiatrist when I was in the Army and talked with him at length about what I thought my problems were. As I said, we'd gone into counseling with the preacher. I'd been to a doctor. I'd had done all kind of things I got me a book one time on yoga because it had several testimonials on the front cover one of which said how a young man overcame his battle with the bottle and I got that now yoga probably would have worked but I never could stand on my head and all that stuff because I was a drunk. That day in the middle of July, sometime in July, standing there in my underwear tapering off, I called Alcoholics Anonymous. Now it's an answering service or it was at that time in Greensboro. This is 1966. A man by the name of Bill Norman who was and is a good member of AlcoholicsAnonymous up there called me, returned that call from the answering service. And we talked a little bit and I found out he was about as narrow-minded about tapering off his cable. And so he didn't want to rush to my aid. But some things happened in that conversation. One of the things was I asked him how long have you been sober and he said something like four years is a colossal astronomical amount of time to me and i asked him how did you do that he said a man can do almost anything one day at a time i remember that just as clear as a bell and we talked for a while and he said i don't want to come out there while you're drinking tell me when i can come out when you're not drinking and i said we'll get back together and i made some promises about when we could do that and i hung up the phone so when she got home i had the man's name and number so before you open yeah you do now all kinds of things i'd probably call to get the heat off i don' t know for mostly maybe I just needed that grandstand move to say I've called A&A. So shut up, you know. Hold that name and number out like that. Before you open your mouth, here's that name and number. I turned myself into AA. Now he and I agree I'm not ready yet. But when I am, I'm going to call him back. And so here's the name and the number in the drawer that she put I'll tell you one thing that name and number didn't listen because she found that anybody could help me or help us with what was going on in our house she wasn't going to lose the contact information and sometimes later and she told you about it some months later when things were sick enough in our home in our own house when she realized I was not going to call that number again she did she'd been doing things too you know how the spouse of the alcoholic will try to keep a secret for a while and hide things and cover up and then they'll start reaching out for help and then it'll just go anywhere. I was accusing her of just stopping people on the street and saying, you know, got me a drunk at home. But she had reached out to some people and she had done some things. She had gone to some places and everything to seek help for what was happening in our home. And this day, so I've heard, or this evening when she called this number, she told a strange voice when she asked, is this Bill? Is this the Bill Norman? She told a strange voice on the phone what was happening in her home and according to what I know now, she was talking to someone for the first time who not only understood, but who had a solution. And the solution was as you heard this morning. My wife Lib is in Al-Anon. Let me put her on my phone. And Kay started going to Al-Anon every Wednesday night. and some of you have heard my tape before you know I like to say that if you're a drinking person and your loved one gets indelinon it probably won't cure your drinking that ain't its purpose but it'll break your rhythm I'll guarantee you that dear friend of mine we buried a few years ago Ronnie Cates said it better than anybody ever that I've ever heard he said when all else failed he could play dead in the living room floor and his wife Ruby would come over and say are you alive and even the kids would kind of get shook up. And he said, Ruby joined Al-Anon, she could vacuum around him. All that means is somebody started getting well in the house and all that needs to happen a lot of times is someone needs to start getting well. Somebody needs to be able to do it. Somebody needs being free of the power of alcoholism. That's all that happened to her. Just a little bit at a time. An inch at a 10. the power of my disease began to lose its power over her. So I credit Al-Anon as much as anything in the world with my coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, with my at least getting to the doorway. On June 2nd of 1967, I'm sitting there coming off a drunk. Another one. The 50th drunk, the 100th drunk. The 200th drunk the same set of scenes. I can't think that this drunk was any worse than the 20 before or the 50 before. I was in that good place for alcoholics. I was in that place that we need to be to be a candidate for this program. I was out of schemes and plans. My bag of tricks was empty. I was outta lies, I was outer dodges and I was oughta delay tactics and all those things that we use to survive in the throes of active alcoholism. She looked at me and she said, can we call Bill? And I knew who Bill was. And she dialed the phone and she's in Al-Anon and knew I was supposed to be doing things for herself but that was back when you had the holes in the phone that was before the punch. And she knew in my condition I couldn't get my finger in there seven times so she ran around for me and handed me the phone and Bill said and I remember this clearly too are you about ready to throw in the towel now. And I was out of schemes and plans. And I Was Out of Delay Tactics and I Was Out of Lies. And I said, I sure am because I sure was. And this was a fairly late hour on a Friday night and he said, I'll come see you in the morning. And as sure as his word that Saturday morning June the 3rd, 1967 Bill came to my house. And he came in and sat in the Big Shot's living room and I'm sitting in a little house with the payments of $100 a month and I can't make them and Cameron Brown is going to sell it on the courthouse steps. And he's as generous with himself and information about himself and attention to me as we are when we're calling on that new drunk. Or I hope we still are. And he did the things he should do. And he had the attitude that he should have but more important than that, he asked me to promise to not drink for the rest of that day and go with him to Alcoholics Anonymous that night and I was out of delay tactics and I didn't have any more dodges in me and so I agreed to do that I might have thought I'd get out of it later because I was pretty sick but she had heard the deal you know she was listening there at the door now I took my own car I remember that had some pride. He wanted to pick me up, and I might not like that, I thought to myself, so I'll take my own car. I'll meet you there. And so we did. Let me tell you about that first meeting. First meetings, you know, miracles happen here. Miracles are going on here. It's not just a place for us that can't drink anymore to hang out. Miracles happen here, I got into that room as rum-dum as you can be. I'd been sober one day. I was in bad shape. And I walked in. It was a little meeting back then. It wasn't so little comparatively speaking, but 18 or 20 people in an open speaker meeting. That was about average then. Maybe a little bigger than average. I don't know. But I got in there and sat down among those people and thought everybody's looking at me. You know how that alcoholic ego is, our center of attention. Figured everybody's wondering why I was there. Now I know alcoholics ain't paying any attention to anybody but themselves, whether they're sober or drunk. You can walk into AA with two heads. Everybody's checking themselves out. But then I thought I was the center of the universe and I had that feeling. Everybody was wondering about me. And I listened to the reading that didn't mean anything to me. And if you're brand new and this reading didn't means anything to you tonight, I know what you're talking about. And somebody, to some applause, got up and did what I'm doing tonight. Told his story. Now a lot of miracles that happened to me, of course, to get me in that seat that night, of course. And I don't discount that, but I'm just going to talk about two singular miracles that happened right there that night and they can happen to you if you're sitting here new. They can happen for you if you sit near old and you don't feel this thing yet and you're not part of it yet. Number one, I understood this old boy's message. Now my attention span wasn't too good. Been sober one day. But I understood that he was telling us that was sitting there in front of him that he had drunk alcohol hopelessly and that he'd come here and he wasn't drinking and life was good. It took him 50 minutes to tell it like all of us do, but I understood that's what the bottom line. Miracle number two, and the hook I guess that saved my life was I believed Him. I believe every word He said. And I hadn't believed anybody or anything in a long time. I didn't even believe in God. And here's an old boy that had no reason to have any credibility with me and I believed him. I was hooked on Alcoholics Anonymous that night without knowing it just like I was booked on that cheap wine 14 years before that. Now I didn't have a... I went into the other room because at that time the Starmount group there in Greensboro met in the plush ladies' study and we had to move into another room more like this one, a larger room where those members of Alcoholics Anonymous drank their coffee and ate their cake. An amazing thing for a new drunk. See, I had just been kicked out for life from the bamboo lounge. I could no longer go back. I couldn't go back to the Varsity Grill, but my most recent kick out was the Bamboo Lounge. I don't need to describe the Bambool Lounge to you. You can tell by the name that it should have had a sign Lower Companions Only. And even the lower companions couldn't tolerate my behavior anymore. And here I'm standing with decent, clean people. Who's clothes matched. And they're standing there drinking coffee. And they'd offer me coffee. That's how you tell a newcomer. You throw that coffee. You want some coffee? And the guy goes, no, no. You want to ask a new man? Coffee made me nervous. Want some cake? I hadn't had cake in years. I thought I'd outgrown my taste for sweets. Now I know I kept my blood sugar jacked up I couldn't stand to be in the same room with a pie. But at that time, I just thought it was a phase of growing up. Want some cake? Boy, they could eat cake and drink that coffee. Recovered alcoholics can do it. AA members can do this. And they're spitting cake crumbs out and slopping coffee down and whopping each other on the back and having the best time you've ever seen in your life. And I knew without any kind of real deductive powers that those people were better off than me. Those people were better off then the people down at the Bamboo Lounge. Those people presented something, had something in their eyes they were made up of something different and better than where I'd been. Now I knew drinking, I'd be in enough sanity was in place or enough desperation was in places or something I knew that drinking was killing me. And I knew in some ways without knowing the words that I was powerless or I was hopeless and I knew there was hope in that room I didn't have those words in my head but I know now that in retrospect I knew that and like I say I came to Alcoholics Anonymous a lot I work with alcoholics now they're new for a living I mean I have a little follow up program with a company I work for I work mit people new in the program and I laugh, I kid them sometimes because they've got a schedule of AlcoholicsAnonymous That's around their other deals, you know. Well, let's see, I've got soccer practice there on this night, and they'll schedule AA in. And I tell them about my introduction to AA. My nights were free. When you've been kicked out for life from the bamboo lounge, you don't have to run to your calendar to check if you can come to AA on a Monday night. My days were free, I didn't have a job at the time and so she would deliver me down at the club down on Green Street and I would sit there all day at the AA club where it was safe. And the people would come in and out and share themselves with me. And I'd go to Alcoholics Anonymous that night and recovery started. That was a long time ago. That was 30 plus years ago. And what an empty vessel I was. How needy I was, how ready I was You know you're going to find out if you're in Ereba you're gonna find this out that I can remember a talk I heard 30 years ago in more detail than when I heard the night before last because I sucked it up like somebody a hungry man that hadn't eaten in days people would do food and we've got in with these people and back then and I'm not going to complain about Alcoholics Anonymous now because in many ways AlcoholicsAnonymous now is much better than it was then. Please believe me. Some of the things will bother me a little bit but back then at least the fellowship and sticking with the winners. The winners stuck with me and they included me when we went up and down the road. Back then my old sponsor the sponsor I ended up with did a lot of 12-step work and we'd go call on drunks. Wet drunks all kinds of places. at all kinds of hours too. And we'd do anything. We'd go anywhere under any circumstances. At least he would and he'd take me with him. And I started getting better, coming to believe. I can remember when Bill, the guy that brought me there, he said, I want you to do all these meetings but don't go to the Sunday night discussion meeting. There was only one meeting at that time in Greensboro and it was the Sunday Night Discussion Meeting. There are two screwballs there that will confuse you. Don't go. I couldn't wait to Sunday night to get up that Sunday night discussion meeting and then I got up there and I could talk about my agnosticism turned it from a two screwball meeting into a three screwball and I laugh about it now because I can see the other people kind of drifting away it got down to about just me and those other two screwballs there for a while but great things happened to me because somebody called me aside You know, people don't argue about God in AA. Isn't that wonderful? They will down to Bamboo Lounge. You can get a fist fight going on there. I don't believe in God. Somebody says, my mama believed in God and they'll bust you one or something. You didn't get something started there. They won't do that in AA Somebody was kind enough to pull me off the side and said, I'll tell you what you do. Why don't you get up in the morning and you ask for this day without a drink If that works, whether you think it's coincidence or otherwise, you say thank you. Don't you love that first paragraph in chapter 4, the one to agnostics? I read that chapter a hundred times. And I like the 44 questions and all other kinds of tests we have decided to determine whether we're really alcoholic or not. But the best one I've ever seen is right there in those last two sentences of the first paragraph of chapter 4. It makes it real simple. it says if when you honestly want to you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take and this is where Bill gets kind of polite you're probably alcoholic like if you've got webbed feet and waddle with a bill you're possibly a duck you're properly an alcoholic then he says the next sentence as that be the case you're suffering from a condition that only a spiritual experience can conquer. Not among other things, not one of the ways, not the best ways, but only way. The only way to recover from this hopeless, fatal, deadly malady is a spiritual experiment. That's pretty plain. That's inarguable. And so I would read that over and over. And I would find myself saying those prayers. Not out loud. I don't want my old buddies to find out I was praying. But I'd sneak one. God keep you sober today. That night, thank you. And I walked up to the front of an AA meeting one night and picked up a red chip for three months sobriety. I'd never come close to that. I knew something was working in my life. And I didn't care what I believed it was then. I just knew something beyond me was working. And prayers came easier. And I worked steps. And I found out that I wasn't only just upset sometimes and confused sometimes. I was mad as hell all the time and I was angry as hell all the times and I wasn't scared to death all thetime. That's what the inventory told me. And the manageability of life began to return to my life when I believed in God and I began to know what the manifestations of self that was the cancer that was killing me and started doing the things that emptied self from me. Now, if you're wondering the mystery of alcoholic synonymous. Why does it work? Why does this moral psychology, as Dr. Silkworth called it, work when other therapies have failed with the alcoholic? It's no great mystery. Now, when you're new, your sponsor is going to say, just like they tell me and just like I tell people, why should I do an inventory? Shut up and do it. You'll know after you've done it. And that's what I did. I said, why, why? Just do it, then you'll know. Now I know when I look back what happened from steps four through nine was just I emptied self. that they just take self and as I empty self God comes in as an inch of self goes out God fills the vacuum the emptier I am of self the fuller I am of God reading great books going off to mountaintops sitting in a preacher's lap or whatever doesn't bring God to me as self leaves He comes in and I was running up and down the road with sponsors I was doing what I was supposed to do and good things and we were talking earlier yesterday and I said I've been fired in alcoholics now I was a great job in AA I was poster child for AA and my boss calls me and fires me he didn't ask are you making coffee for your home group or anything he just fired me because I wasn't doing anything for him that kind of guy and I knew soon after that I should have left that job a long time ago He should have fired me a long time ago. That this was something that I was able to let go of through the power of the program and it was taken from me to let other good things come in. That's the way it's always been for me and those that I've been close to in this program. Everything that seems like a tragedy, a loss, scary, this is it, I'm going under this time, I'm gonna fly apart this time. I'll never get through this. It's always that thing that sets us up for something good. It's always that bottom where we're letting go of something. That bottom where we're dropped into something else. Freeing ourselves or letting God free ourselves of something else so something good can replace it. Over the years my kids were 5 and 6 when I came in. Now they're middle aged. They're 35 and 36. We raised them in AA. I mentioned to somebody today at lunch, they were talking about raising kids. I said if you're going to have teenagers, you better to have some kind of program. If it ain't AA or Al-Anon, shoot yourself or get some sort of program and AA and Al-Anon is a good place to and you heard some of that that Kay talked about today. You want to know if you keep doing this thing what will happen? If you keep doing these things yeah, if your sponsor is like all the rest of the sponsors they're going to tell you the same thing. You're going to go through them from everything from hangnail to losing your family and they're going to tell you the same thing well you know double up on your meetings and pray more and inventory that situation and help more drunks and i want to you know i don't want to help drunks i need more money i don'T WANT TO MAKE COFFEE FOR MY HOME GROUP I NEED TO GET HER STRAIGHTENED DOWN AND IT WAS ALWAYS THE SAME SOLUTION YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT'LL HAPPEN IF YOU JUST KEEP DOING THOSE SILLY THINGS YOUR SPONSOR TELLS YOU TO DO JUST KEPT PUTTING YOUR BUTTON CHAIRS LIKE THIS Keep bending those knees and praying those prayers. Keep working those steps. Keep helping others when you think you need help more than others. Let me tell you what will happen. You're going to be sitting someplace with somebody who's probably hurting worse than you and a feeling like you never have is going to overcome you. And you're going wonder what it is if you're in the line of aim. You're not going to look back on it and you're not really going to realize that just for a couple of seconds you cared more about somebody else than you did yourself. That's the miracle of this program. I can remember when that first happened, where I actually for just a brief time cared more about someone else than I did me. Now, I didn't get selfish when I started drinking. I got selfish when i started thinking. I got selfless from my earliest memory. That's The Program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything that's good in my life, everything of value, everything worth your knowing about. anything about me that would help somebody else is directly attributable to this program there is nothing else I had a lot of good things in my life but they all came from alcoholics and I I got a good job I don't mean I'm getting rich but it's a job that fits me good and they treat me good and they respect me but that job is alone to me because of you and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got a family that loves and respects me and it's reciprocated. A wonderful family. And sometimes Kay and I will just sort of sit and be awestruck at just how wonderful and good they've come out. I don't mean that they've become brain surgeons. I don'T mean that. I mean that there are good people. But they're there in my life and part of me because of this. I go to church now. I'm not the greatest church member in the world, but I clean up good and put money on the plate. Go to Sunday school. But I can be a decent church member because of you and because of this. So if you don't see me in a while and you do happen to run across me and you say, where have you been? And I say, well, I'm spending more time with my family or I'm devoting more time to my business or I've got a job. I'm now in my church now and that's where I'm finding and I hope you'll grab me and take me to a meeting. because anything that happens in my life is good. The seed was here. It came from here. To be asked to come and share with you, there's no way you can get here from there. Thank you. All right. I told you that was going to really be something, and it was. I see one of these Chuck back there. Where are you, Chuck? Did he leave us? Chuck's here. Today's his birthday, 18 years. Is he outside? Give him a hand. Yeah, okay. Well, when you see him, tell him we're going to recognize him, but he wasn't here like me, you know.