Step 5 and the Jesuit Priest’s Definition of Heaven – Steve M.

I don't know what I'm checking my timepiece for. I never, I get nervous. I never can remember what it said anyway so. When I first got to North Carolina in 1989 a guy told me he said you never have to worry about being alone in Alcoholics Anonymous in North Carolina unless you talk five minutes after nine at night. So I'll try to be mindful of that. It really is good to be here and had a lot of fun. Gosh, I've seen a lot of people that have a tremendous amount of regard for. Friends that have done stuff over the years. My good friend Max and I used to... We're pro wrestling fans. I just want to let you know we're ahead of our time. Everybody watches pro wrestling now. But this was some years ago. We had a WrestleMania party. And I was going to the professional wrestling matches when the average IQ there was 72. I'd been watching it a long time. I actually had a thing one time. There was a whole bunch of AA people watching some professional wrestling up in this front room. And this woman, sober, this is a true story in every detail, sober about a year and a half, came out of the back. She said, turn that crap off. I'm not watching wrestling. It's phony. I want to see Star Trek. Somehow, that must have made sense to her. Anyway, I really am glad to be here. I've had a lot of fun. Great groceries. I was telling the chef that I used to be a Mexican at one time, and so I know a lot about Mexican food. That's when I was in South Omaha. But anyway, it's been a good day. I was just thinking about how much fun there has been in here and all the people. I saw my dear friend Al Johnson. I always feel better with him. And Heinous Bradley, wherever she's at, I haven't seen her. We go back 25 years. Gosh, what a great thing. You know, we come together around something like this and clear-eyed men and good-looking women. And I had this thought before the meeting started. Can you imagine if we were all in here drinking? I mean, what you'd have in here tonight, you know, you'd be drinking and you'd drink and you drink and drink. You'd have all kinds of stuff going on and you would have somebody step on somebody's foot and get knocked down and you'll have people getting in the wrong rack with the wrong person and you will have all of that stuff going on that goes on wherever alcoholics gather. What a great thing that we've got together that we come around and, you know, the book says we come. God. Can you imagine needing a drink with that thing going off like that? It reminds me of my days when I was homeless and walking down to try to find a drink and, You know, a dog comes up by you. You know they drop a pin a block from you and it scares you to death. It's one reason I think I can't stand a dog today. Those dogs always come around you when you need a drink. Making that noise. anyway I'm a member of the principals group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Raleigh, North Carolina we're one group that meets twice a week Tuesday night is our closing meeting the first Tuesday night of the month we study the book AlcoholicsAnonymous the second and third Tuesdays we take topics from AA literature that are common to all alcoholics in their quest for sobriety the fourth Tuesday we do a tradition in conjunction with the months so that we circle the field every year and I think there are four or five months that have five Tuesdays We study Alcoholics Anonymous history. Believing that our history is as important to us collectively as my individual history is to me alone. One of the things Bill Wilson said, I think it's well said too, he said if we ever fall apart, it'll be from the inside. We need to know our history because that's what keeps us from making the same mistakes. That's why I need to understand my past. I needto clearly understand what our global history and our collective history means. Tremendous relevance and wisdom in our collective history. I one time made the statement, it was kind of a blow-off statement. I really didn't mean anything by it, but I just told a guy, an old gentleman. I'm still in contact with him. He's retired over in Iowa now. He is 85 years old. I call him periodically, great old man, sober many, many years. I called him General. I told him one time, I said, General, you really don't need to know the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's very interesting, but it's kind of like eating ice cream. It is good, it is fun, but you don't need it to stay alive. I'll never forget what he did. You know how they always kind of shake their head at you. And I know people always preface these stories by saying old-timers called him son or Sonny, but this old man still calls me Sonny to this day. And I'll never forget, he got that look and that kind of resigned kind of thing, like he was going to start to cry. And he said, Sonny—he said, how could you not need to know the history of the program that saved your life and is now teaching you how to live? How could you even make such a statement? I said, well, General, I'll tell you, I'm a quick study. I won't make it again. But it is important to know our history. And so So I'm fascinated by the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I think there are four or five months that there are five Tuesdays so we study Alcoholics Anonymous history. And then on Thursday night, we have our open speaker's meeting. I believe you've been there, haven't you? Guy sitting back there? Haven't you been at our meeting in North Carolina? Yeah. We're on 4400 Buffalo Road, but on Thursday night is our open speakers' meeting. So if you're in Raleigh and you're looking for a – we're a good group. Speaker meetings are my favorite meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous. I try to remember that AA meetings are just one thing that we do, and AAA itself is a way of life. But speaker meetings are my favorite kind of meeting because I think they're the purest form of meeting that we have. It's not being the speaker now, but sitting out there where you're sitting. I was thinking about something. It's funny the things that go through your mind just before the meeting. I was at a thing a while back, and the Saturday night speaker was a good friend of mine, a guy named Dennis from Charlotte. And I was going out to use the bathroom as Dennis was coming into the hall, and he had on a brand-new suit, and he really looked nice, but he had that look in his eye. you know, kind of that glazed look. And he said, well, I said, Dennis, how are you doing? He said, Well, I'll tell you this, I'm in too deep now to get out. And he says, What I'm going to do is go give these folks whatever I got and get out of here. And that's really what we do here. There's no such thing as the good helping the bad. I guess what you could say we are in Alcoholics Anonymous, we're a mutual aid society. One of the things that Bill Wilson said is that we're a society of colossal failures. We come together around our own greatest defeat. and in our own greatest defeat comes our own greatest strength, our own great rebirth and our own regeneration where we die here we surrender to live we grow up, we start to move out and then we start carrying this message to our fellows so we really come full circle very glad to be here I won't forget this weekend it's been a real thrill and I'm honored to be in your presence I don't take this lightly one night at the boxing matches there was a fighter In North Carolina, almost everybody's Baptist. And kind of like they're Catholic around here. But anyway, at the boxing matches one night, every time the bell rang, a fighter stood up and crossed himself. And you've seen like a batter or somebody step into the free throw line and cross themselves. Well, this boxer stood upand crossed himself and there was a Catholic priest down in the front row and on the other side was a drunk. And you know that collar is a beacon for a drunk but anyway, everytime the bell ringed, the guy got up and cross himself so pretty soon the drunk wandered over to the priest and he says, that's one of your boys, ain't it? And the priest says, well, yes, he appears to be a Roman Catholic. And he said, well what does that mean, the way he keeps crossing himself like that? He says, Well, he's crossing himself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the drunk said, Well, what I want to know is will that help him? And the Priest was a rather practical old hard-bitten boy and he leaned back over and said, It'll help him if he can fight. And that's what I think Alcoholics Anonymous is. It'll Help You If You Do It. Won't do much for you if you don't do it. I mean, I don't think that just coming here is going to do much for you. I've talked to some guys today. I talked to a young man out here today that said that he's been coming to Alcoholics Anonymous for X amount of time. I talked him on the break, but he said he's never done the stuff. He's never gotten any of the stuff done. Well, then he's not going to be able to do it. He's got the demise of things. One more of those quick stories. There's 1,000 of these stories, but I think they have meaning and I think we're doing here tonight. I think there was a story. There was, I'll guarantee you, you've got to be careful what you say you won't do because it's just not a good thing to say. I've learned as I've gotten older. But I think I'm safe on this. I don't think I'll ever buy one of those old houses that you have to restore. I can't fix anything. I mean, this is the God honest truth. I've had three razors in my life that I've thrown away because I couldn't get the blade in. I mean I can never fix anything I can' t fix anything I thought it was a major coup when I learned how to work the self-service pumps at the gas station. If I get a flat tire, I'm just down until you get there. I fixed one of those things that's bulb-like things that hang over lights. The light went out one time and I got on a chair to fix it and I was so happy. I got the light back in there and I had the bulb to stay up. The bowl or whatever it is, it stayed up and the next day it fell down and shattered. I can't fix anything. So I'm pretty sure I'll never do this. But there was this couple that bought one of these old houses. It's very popular in North Carolina and probably Nebraska too. people buy the house and over a protracted period of time, they restore it. Well, there was this couple that took this old house over out in the country and the house was falling apart and they started working on it. And over a period of times, it went from the shambles to being something that was pretty nice. There was this old country minister that every time he got done holding services, him and his wife would go buy this house on the way home. And they watched this over a time. The house go from falling apart to starting to look very nice. And the minister was a little bit of a sanctimonious old guy, and he was a little bit taken by the fact that he never saw this guy in church. But he told his wife, one of these days I'm going to stop and talk to those people. And so he did one Sunday, and he struck up a conversation with him. He said, you know, I've been admiring the work of your house. And he said, I watched this come from pure squalor to something that looks very nice. And he says, it's very impressive. He says, isn't it wonderful what God can do? And the guy that had been working on the house for the last year said, yeah, it is. But he said, you've got to remember what this place looked like last year at this time when God had it all by himself. So I think that's where we come in. So far, right up to this very moment, and again, this may just be my take on it. There may be exceptions to this, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody speak in Alcoholics Anonymous that hasn't pointed their sobriety to another person. We say in the ABCs that no human power, and it says in our literature, it's replete with it throughout our literature that there will come a time when no human power and it has to be a higher power. We have to have done these things. We must do this, all kinds of stuff. And so it seems to be contradictory to that, but I don't think it is. I think it's God. Of course it's god, but god chooses to work that out through his children. It seems to me that it would be impossible to trust god without trusting his children just doesn't seem like it would work long before i could ever trusted a loving god that I have a relationship and an understanding with today. I was able to hook up to my fellow man and begin to move forward that way. It just seems to be the way God worked it out for us. So I think that my job is to try to stay here and try to make that for the person behind me. And in the doing of that, I get so much. That's what Dick and I was talking about last night and again today and other people. I mean, it's the greatest thing because you get to come here and you get do all kinds of stuff. You get to meet all kinds OF people. It's the most amazing thing. All you have to do is nearly drink yourself to death, almost die. You have to be dead in everything that counts except you've quit breathing, and then you can come in here and start to rebuild your life. In fact, you probably can say correctly that the only way Alcoholics Anonymous works is a court of last resort. I think any self-respecting drunk of any kind of quality at all is going to stay with this thing until the very end. There was a guy, I never could stand this guy. He always rambled in meetings. This was years and years ago. I was in a giant discussion meeting, maybe 60 people in there. This was years ago in Grand Island. They called on this guy first, and I thought, oh, no. And he said his name, and then he said this. This is a quote. He said, you know, I knew for years I couldn't drink, but I stayed with it until she almost killed me. And that's all he said. And I started liking that guy right then. I mean, I always liked him after that. But, I mean., that really is the nature of the illness of alcoholism. So what I'm going to do tonight is share my experience, strength and hope And very much like my sponsor-sponsor likes to say You won't be any smarter when I'm done in here tonight There's no doubt about that The good news is I'm not going to make you any worse either I hope to help somebody in here Tonight I hope somebody's been helped by my effort at my contribution this weekend But the good news Is there's a certain amount of freedom In knowing I'm Not going to hurt you any I mean, if you're in here tonight, you're bad enough. There isn't anything I'm going to do to make you any worse. And, you know, we really are a pretty accepting lot, aren't we? I mean it doesn't make much sense to get so nervous. Sometimes I get settled down once I get going. Sometimes I never get settled out. None of that makes any difference. You know, you just simply show up and give whatever you have to give at that time and that's what we do. But we're a pretty expecting lot. If I was to fall out up here tonight somebody would probably, you now, go on with what we're doing, finish up a talk and then next year somebody will say, I wonder what was wrong with that guy from North Carolina. It's just not that big a deal, is it? So I'm going to try to share my experience, strength, and hope in a general way. A lot of people in here tonight, I was getting a chair. I was reminded of the bar back there. I was get in the chair. All the chairs up here disappeared, and I was worried about getting out of there with a chair, and there was some kind of intent-looking young man back there, and I asked him if I could have the chair, he said I could, And I said, well, look, any trouble back here about this chair, I said this is what I want you to do. You fight and I'll go for help. And I'll try not to be gone that long. But it's not quite as important as it was in the bar. There's chairs to go around for everybody. I want to give you my experience about how I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous. I wantto fast forward you to the end. The miracle of AlcoholicsAnonymous started to move in my life. I mean, you could track it back many years before this, but the end started to come in a place called Bill's Bar. Now, everybody ought to have an opportunity to drink in a place called Bill's Bar. I'm well aware of the fact that the majority of people who drink alcohol anywhere drink it with control. I'm also well aware – I think the book Alcoholics Anonymous says they drink with impunity. I think that means you can drink and get away with it. It ain't going to cause you any trouble. I'm all so well aware the fact everybody in AlcoholicsAnonymous diagnoses their own alcoholism. I can't decide for anybody else. You're an alcoholic if you say you're an alcoholic. We keep our own time. great guardian in Alcoholics Anonymous is booze. If you don't conform to certain spiritual principles, you sicken and drink. Nobody can decide anybody else's alcoholism. Now with all of that said, I'm going to take a chance on those people in Bill's Bar that they were alcoholics. At that time, you literally could have backed a farm truck up to Bill's Bar and put everybody in there and called them to AlcoholicsAnonymous. You wouldn't have missed a person. You had to be drunk to stand it in there. Bill's bar was on Main Street in Fremont, Nebraska. I sobered up about a block and a half from Bill's bar. It's not there anymore. I always feel bad about that. They turned it into some kind of a computer place, and first it was some other kind of a bar, then it turned into a computer place. And I don't know what it is now, but it's not a bar. But everybody in there was drunk, including the people who worked in there. Bill bought that bar as a toy for his drunken wife, Phyllis. We had some colorful characters in there, we had a guy named Vibrator Hartman. And Vibrater got drunk one New Year's Eve and burned up in a fire. We had a guy under the name Rodney Montaney. Rodney got drunk and got in a fight with a guy in a wheelchair and tipped him over. That ain't good. The way Rodney described that, he said, he hit me a good one, Steve, but I tipped him over before they got me out of there. We had another guy under named Leonard Larson. Now, Leonard had no neck. Leonard's head sat right on his shoulders. And Leonard had taken one too many shots to the head. Leonard was punchy. And he would get drunk and crawl around on his hands and knees and lift bar stools to perform feats of strength. He used to get me to jump off bar stules onto his stomach. And Leonard would literally crawl around in the bar on his hand and knees and lift bars stools. We had a guy said one time at midnight in the Bar, Leonard can lift everything in here but his own body. And you know Nebraska's got a lot of old laws on the books. Leonard went out in the country one day and stumbled out in a country or drove his old pickup truck out in country and went out there and shot a cow. and he stumbled out to a country road to help him get somebody loaded in his pickup truck and he waved down an off-duty deputy sheriff. Got one to two years for that. We had a guy named Pee-wee Holtgren. Now, Peewee would go drunk and wherever Peevee was at, he was just dead weight and Peeway would get drunk and he would pass out. You couldn't hardly move him. I mean, he was like moving a car or something and Pooey would just go drunk and the police would walk through there on Friday and Saturday night and PEEWEE would be passed out in the bar and somebody would hold PEEWEY's head up so they could see it in the mirror He'd get on the other side and just drop peewee, but it didn't matter. He didn't know it. All the time, and in there that country music played all the time. There was country music going from the morning until the night. Even today I question people's alcoholism that don't listen to country music. They may not be real alcoholics. They may just be heavy drinkers. But at that time we had two brothers come into that bar. I'm not long out of the military. Now I got out ofthe military in the summer of 1972, And I had been involved with, I'll just say, some very unsavory people up in the state of Washington when I came back from Vietnam. And I got discharged in the State of Washington. My time finished out. I actually finished out my hitch in the military. It was a mistake. It never should have happened. But a very kind doctor kept me from getting kicked out of the military Doctors have a lot of power, military doctors and chaplains. And this particular doctor kept from getting me kicked out the military I later, years later made direct amends to him. He's a great guy, just didn't understand anything about alcoholism. But he took a real interest in me and kept me from getting kicked out of the military. He diagnosed me one time as having infectious hepatitis and put me in a tent upstairs to get me out of The Way. People were scared to come up there. I was just drunk. But anyway, in 1972, I'm not long out ofthe military, and so my plan was to come back to Fremont, Nebraska and stay a little while and then go back to Washington and fall in full-time with these guys that I was involved with kind of on the peripheral. But anyway, two brothers fell into Bill's Bar at that time by the name of Billy and Tommy Walker. Now, you know, I've always known things that I didn't know how I knew. I've Always Known, like when I was a little kid, I always knew stuff that I didn't Know How I Knew. My mom was telling me that things were all right. I had a drunken aunt and uncle who would come out from Omaha, and I pieced this whole thing together long before I should have. You heard that story about Watch Out for the Milkman? Well, that was really true in this case. There was a milkman who lived across the street, and I had this aunt and Uncle who would come out from Omaha and there was all this stuff going on and all the men would be drunk around there and there were a lot of drinking going on. And I can remember trying to explain some of this stuff to my mom and I remember my mom telling me that everything was alright. I knew that things were not alright. I always knew things were wrong. I've always known stuff that I didn't know how I knew. Sometimes that happens to me today. I'll hear myself say something particularly to a new person and I'll say, I wonder how I know that. But I've also always known things that I don't know. I didn' t know how i knew. And so I can remember being terrified as a little kid and some, you know, bad situation. But anyway, I'm in this bar, and Billy and Tommy Walker come to town. And when I first met Billy Walker, I knew immediately that day. Now, when I First Met Billy Walker he told me he was out of the 101st Airborne. That's been whatever that is 34 or 35 years ago. I knew that day that Billy Walker was not out of 101st Airport. It's 35 years later or whatever it is today. I know today that he wasn't out of the 101st Airborne. I knew that day without any training that where Billy Walker had come from was a penitentiary somewhere. He claimed to have been from Texas, and I'm looking for him and his brother because if he's living, he's either locked up or in here. The way we were going, there was precious few choices, but when Billy and Tommy Walker came to town, they fell into Bill's bar. Now, that's really true about water seeking at its own level, ain't it? I mean, it wouldn't have mattered if we were in downtown Los Angeles. They would have found us. But I was basically a beer drinker. Do you remember that old deal about when you were a kid drinking yourself sober? I never have known if that's true, but there was literally a time when I could drink beer for 24 or 28 hours. Now, I'd be drunk, but I could talk to people. I could drive a car. I could remember what happened. But you let me take one drink of booze with that, one drink a wine or straight whiskey, and I would never remember what happens. So I'm basically a beer drinker, butI'll drink anything. And so when Billy and Tommy Walker came to town, Billy Walker drank dry gin and chased it with squirt. And his brother Tommy Walker drank bar whiskey and chased him with water. Well, when I started drinking with them, I started drinkin' that dry gin and squirt now. If you ever run into anybody that says they're drinkin', dry gin for taste, I really think we oughta get em evaluated. Not to find out if they're an alcoholic, but their elements misfire. I mean, that stuff is nasty. You might as well be drinkin'. Hair oil or perfume. It's just nasty. I mean even the smell of it's rancid. But anyway, They come to town, and Billy Walker's drinking this dry gin and chasing it with squirt, and Tommy Walker's drinkin' bar whiskey and chasin' it with water. So I started drinkin'. This is the kind of brains you had in Bill's Bar at this time. Billy Walker told me, he said, that the way we're drinkin', this gin, he said there's a couple things you gotta remember. He said, what you do, he says, you get the gin in a separate glass, and then you get to squirt in a seperate glass. I guess they still have squirt around here. I've never even seen it in North Carolina. All it is is a kind of soda. But this is what Billy Walker said. He said, you drink the gin down real fast, but never breathe. And the reason you don't want to breathe, he said, is that gin is nasty. So as soon as you swallow the gin, you drank the squirt down and then you can breathe again. I said, all right, Billy, that's fine. And it made sense to me. He said the second thing you've got to begin to do is use a lot of pepper on your food. Now that threw me a little bit. We weren't eating much anyway. And I said well what will pepper do? And he said, well, the way we're drinking this gin, it's been known to hurt your liver. And he says, if you use a lot of pepper on your food, it will counteract any liver damage. Now that's what he said. There was a couple reasons I like to drink with Billy Walker. One is I had a big mouth. And along with that, I was a coward. Now that is a bad combination to have. Same person shouldn't be stuck with both of those things. It's kind of like today. I can't stand a mess and I can not stand to clean a mess up. I don't think I'm too good to clean a mess up. It just doesn't work out. I've always wanted to live in one of those houses that doesn't look like it's been lived in, but by the time I walk across the room once, it doesn't looks like that again. So I think my wife is about giving up on me helping do anything. It just does not work out, but anyway, I had a big mouth and I was a coward. Now, when I got sober, I went up a pant size a year the first few years I needed to, but Billy Walker at his biggest was never any bigger than I am right now, But he would attack people. He looked like that dog on the Greyhound bus, just that dog kind of going through the air. That's how he was. The other reason I like to drink with Billy Walker, I've tried to think of some other way to explain this, but there just isn't any. I've seen a lot of people that could get a lot women in bars and all of that old stuff, but I've only seen a couple people that actually attracted women. And Billy Walker was one of those people. Well, my game plan was is I'm going to hang out right here with Billy Parker and possibly get in on some of the overflow. Now, that's the kind of brains you had at Bill's Bar at that time. And the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous really did start to move in my life from there. It was the Thanksgiving season of 1974, and I had just come back from California. And I guess they're still doing that. I don't know if they're doing that in Bellevue or not, but I can assure you somewhere around Fremont, Nebraska, somebody's leaving for California tonight. People go to California to start their life over. I made several trips. And you can imagine my consternation when I woke up, and there I was. I went one time, you know that deal about how smart the alcoholic is? You can hear that. You hear it in meetings sometimes and you can read something that kind of flirts with that in our literature that says something about the alcoholic is usually bright and builds up people and then pulls them down through a series of sprees or something like that. I was hitchhiking one time from Fremont, Nebraska to San Gabriel, California, which is part of Los Angeles and I was running away. I had written a bunch of bad checks and Phyllis had paid off a bunch on them the lady that ran Bill's Bar, but she had gotten tired of that, so I was hitchhiking to California. And I got to Little America, Wyoming, and a guy picked me up in Little America Wyoming and took me to Portland and dropped me off. I'm now further from Los Angeles than where he got me. You know, those things happened over and over. But anyway, it was the Thanksgiving season of 1974, and I had come back from California, and I tried to work again. You know from the time I got out of the military in the summer of 1972 until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous to stay Memorial Day weekend of 1975. I only worked a period of about six weeks, so you can tell it was a pretty lean time. But I was in Bill's bar and a lady named Libby came up to me in another town drunk. I had been in a horrible tractor-trailer accident with this guy. In fact, as I was on the sleeper when the trailer came around and crashed through there, my buddy that was driving the truck said that he watched the trailer come around in the mirror and hit. He said it didn't even spill the beer between his legs. but my head was sleeping behind the driver and my feet were out there and it gashed a big hole right above my head I just slept through the whole thing but the jagged edge of the trailer ruptured the fuel tank on the driver's side so there was diesel fuel all over the highway and the highway patrol was there what had happened is in Holden, Kansas a lady with a carload of kids in a station wagon pulled out in front of the truck in the rain and you can't stop one of those things like you do a car and so when my buddy tried to stop came around and jackknifed but anyway this lady named Libby and her boyfriend invited Butch and I to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. I said something about this today, but it's always good at these things to be mindful of the people who have played a part in us getting here. It's always mindful. You know, if you took out the contributions of the alcoholics to Alcoholics Anonymous who have not stayed sober, we'd have a vastly different fellowship of AlcoholicsAnonymous today. There are many, many alcoholics who have been served by alcoholics who didn't get it. I'm one of them. But anyway, Libby, who was permanent party at Bill's Bar herself, And you've got to remember now, I mean, I don't want to, I'm given to overstatement anyway. I don'T want to be melodramatic about this, but Bill's Bar is a bar. You would not need any particular training or anything to know that this was not a place where you would go in and have a couple drinks. This was a place, I means, this was a, this was the place that was very serious about drinking. Bill had made his fortune in the garbage and septic tank business in South Omaha, in south of town, and he basically bought that bar as a toy for his drunken wife Phyllis. Well, anyway, Libby and her boyfriend invited Butch and I to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. Now, I'm that kind of sick where I remember stuff but I'm not sure it really happened. I think I saw somebody, but I don't know if I really saw them or if I just think I saw them. I don' t know if it's true. I don''t know if It was yesterday. I don ''t know If it was three days ago. I wake up and I'm absolutely drenched in my own sweat, but I'm freezing. Everything runs together. Libby's buying me quarts of beer in there to drink, and she had this great big beautiful Thanksgiving dinner, and I wasn't able to eat. She had her kids there and her boyfriend and this other drunken friend of mine and I. Libby knew something about alcoholism. It's funny the stuff that you remember and how clear you can remember it and how indelibly etched in my mind this is. This was Thanksgiving season of 1974, and I don't remember much of that few days, but what I do remember is crystal clear. I'm horribly sick physically. Now, depending on when you caught me, it might have looked like I knew everything in the world except how to shut my own mouth and how to quit drinking. It might have looked like that. Or if you caught me at another moment, it might have looked the way it really was, that I didn't have enough dignity to hold my head up. The first real spiritual dignity that ever moved in my life was a byproduct of the first step. I was never very good before I started drinking. I always confused about stuff, always felt like I just didn't belong. Things were just not right. You hear it from this podium over and over and over. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that they began to get sick, the day they got drunk. I mean, it does look like an illness you could treat on a couch because every alcoholic I've ever heard share always talks about being in deep trouble before they started drinking. That's what booze did so much for me. It lit me up. I mean it was an answer. But anyway, Libby had a talk with me that went very much like this. She said, I've been around alcoholics all my life. I've married to two alcoholics. Now you've got to remember Libby herself was permanent party at Bill's Bar. She had her kids there for the holidays but she's in bad shape herself. Anyway, she said that there's a man in town who helped my last ex-husband. My last ex husband has now been sober a year. He's got a full time job. He's paying his child support and he's doing very well. If you want me to, I'll call him. Now, you can get very spiritual in Nebraska at Thanksgiving season when it's freezing and you don't have any place to go. And on the other hand, I mean, I really was dead on the inside. I was looking for a way out. I had been for a long time. At some level, I knew something had to change very much. I mean, it was just too heavy to pack. You know how that is when we're getting near the end and it's just, I mean the day is just too long, it's too heavy to pack, it' s just in too deep. And a man by the name of Bob Brannigan made the first call that was ever made on me and it was the last day of November of 1974 and I don't remember much of that but what I do remember is very clear. I know now, I understand that he spent most of Saturday afternoon in with me. And I know now that what he did was just a traditional 12-step call. I remember very little of that, but I remember asking him the question, how do you get the willpower to not drink? I remember what he said. He said, I look on that a little bit different than you do. What I think willpower is, is the way you take that drink knowing it's going to come back up. That's what I think. Willpower is. I've always remembered that. I remember asking them the question how long since you drank and he said if I can make it till September, it'll be 11 years. And guess that's what now 40 years or 41 years or something. He's still sober, I guess, because he's still doing the same stuff. But anyway, that was it. There was nothing else. I don't remember much of anything else about that and the next day he carted me off to the state hospital in Hastings, Nebraska. I remember that ride. I Remember in North Bend we picked up another guy the same age as me and I remember I was horribly sick. I had terrible cramps and I needed a drink but I didn't get one. On the way I remember another great line. Bob Bob Brannigan bought me a carton of cigarettes and a can of 7-Up. I had horrible cramps. Just bought it to me, and I gave him that great line that I probably said 3,000 times while I was drinking. I said, I'll pay you back. And he said, no, that ain't the way this works. He said, you'll be expected to help someone else when you're able. And I'd like to think that's what I've been doing these last 29-plus years. But anyway, we went on to the state hospital, and I got put in the state hostel, and I was in the hospital, and then I got drunk in there. After about three weeks, I got a hold of some Darkport wine And at least at that time, I was talking to a lady today. I don't know where she's at, but she's from Hastings. And I got drunk in the state hospital. At least atthat time, in 1974, if you got drunkin' the statehospital while you werein' there, they didn't figure you werecatchin' on. And also, when I got out ofthere, at that timethey wanted you to pay 1%of your lastyear'searnings, which for me would havebeen 82 cents. It hadbeen a lean year. I didn't have a job, and I didn t have an address to give them. So that's where I learned the word incarcerated. I didn' t know what it meant, but the guy ahead of me, they asked him why he didn't make any money last year. He said incarcerated. He went right through. So when I got up, they ask me why I didn d make any last year, I said incarcerated, went right on through. But I didn quit drinking then. I got out of there and back to drinking and, uh, but anyway, Memorial Day weekend of 1975 right up to this very moment has been the last time I drank. I get put in jail a couple times after that and drank some more. But it was, you know, it was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous and something began to move from that point I know now. Booze did so much for me that it's no secret why I stayed with it so long. It's no secrets why I had to be so badly mangled, it's because it did so much for me. You know, that what alcoholism is means we can't live with drinking and we can live without drinking. What Alcoholics Anonymous is a way of life slightly more powerful than the illness. But I didn't know any of those things. So, you know, and I look back now and I think back to when I was a kid and watching what was going on. And, you Know, I watched my own dad drink himself to death. Didn't drink much the last couple years because he wasn't able to. But I looked at all of that and watched those people. You know, Nebraska and North Carolina to a very real extent is very similar to this. If you wanted to study textbook alcoholism, you could just go out in that farm country and study it. You've got people out there who have a wonderful sense of right and wrong. There were people, some of them were related to me, that wouldn't go fishing on their own property without a fishing license. They had a very righteous sense of right and wrong. It's the kind of honesty, if you went in a grocery store and bought a carton of cigarettes with a $50 bill and they gave you change back for $100, they'd give it back to them. Now, I was introduced to all of that. I was never afflicted with any of it. I knew about it, but none of it ever took on me. I knew what it was, but I never bought it. But those same people who believed in shared purpose and who believed In Right and Wrong and hard work stayed right out there and drank themselves to death. So I don't ever want to think that this illness, you know, that it responds to goodness or that I've been given this gift because I'm a good guy because AA is full of people that said I'll never be like him or I'll never be liked her. And how often you hear that same person say I ended up worse. So I'm certainly not in here on any kind of moral grounds. I mean I'd be in one of them broken down country western bars tonight if it still did what it did for me there would have been absolutely no reason to leave. I mean, you ever have that moment? I remember one time I was in Bill's bar and there was this guy. He was a little bit of a, I don't know what you'd call it. Well, it doesn't matter. He was just a little kid. He was kind of a little but of a celebrity. He had a case go to the Nebraska Supreme Court that was overturned and he got out of prison quick. But anyway, he was telling me that, I'll never forget this. Now I'm drunk sitting up at the bar or half drunk anyway and he's sitting up there too. And what you've got is two drunks telling each other lies. and he's telling me about the year he was married to a girl named Karen now I knew Karen, that was the point of reference and he was telling me how much money he'd made that year as a burglar so he would tell me a story I burglarized this place and it was the year I was married to Karen, so two drunks sitting up there and I'll never forget this, for just a second it was like I had good sense and I looked over at him and I said well Stuart how much did you make that year And for just like a second, it was like he had good sense too. He looked back at me and he said it never was enough to make a living. And then he went back to lying and I went back to lying. I mean, it's the most amazing thing in there. Probably the highest, most intellectual thing in here is a game of shuffleboard. One drunk shoves it down that way, other drunk shoved it back. The most amazing things. It's just the most, and it just goes over and over and over of that. I remember one time I was admitted to the VA Psychiatric Ward in Lincoln, Nebraska with a diagnosis of nerves. Now I was about as nervous as a man could possibly get. There was absolutely no doubt about that. I was actually the ping pong champion of the VA psych ward. I don't know what that will do for you. But as I started drinking when I was a kid, booze just did so much for me. It was the answer to everything. This is the way I remember it now. It couldn't have been this way, but I remember the first time I got drunk outside of my home, I was a 15-year-old kid. Now, I drank before that. I think I can track my active alcoholism from age 15 to almost 26. But the first time I get drunk, I remember it very clear. I remember people I was with. Both of them had a lot of trouble since then. One of them killed a man driving drunk. I know that he did because I was at the bar when he left that night and I was there when he came back after hitting the guy. We knew the deputy sheriff. He wasn't charged with it. It was a much different time. The other guy has had a lot of troubles. Last I heard, they were both still drinking. But I remember that night, I drank a six-pack of beer. Remember that Colt 45 and Big Cat and all that? And at this time, you could buy three quarts of beer for a dollar. Now, I'd made a few runs past those little neighborhood girls, and I was interested in that. And I wasn't sophisticated enough to know that other kids were lying about what they said they were doing. I suppose at that age, I was an average enough kid, a little retarded emotionally now growing up in alcoholism, a Little bit confused, but I suppose I was an average enough kid. I was interested in sports and girls and motorcycles. I had about three things come over me at the same time that's a death sentence as far as sports. I quit growing, I got a bad attitude, and I started drinking. Now all three of those will put you down. But anyway, along about this time they were selling three quarts of beer for a dollar. Nasty, but what difference does it make? I mean three quartz of beer per dollar is that old Milwaukee and Falstaff. This is the way I remember it. Here you have a guy, I watched my own daughters go through that difficult period of time of trying to learn how to date and relate to people, there wouldn't have been any way I could have done things responsibly. I mean, I tried sometimes, but it was always just, you know, it just never was right. I just never could do stuff. What it looked like other people had a plan to life, it looked equally like I was that blocked off. But this is the way I remember it. We would buy those case of courts and I would drink a couple quarts of that beer and I went from lockjaw to orator. I mean, you don't give up something very easy that moves you that fast. I mean it, you know, booze is much quicker than Alcoholics Anonymous. That's one of the problems. AA is slower. That's how come I suppose people bail out of here. You know, Booze is. It's quicker. Well, so it's no secret. It just did so much for me and I took off with my drink and, you now, it was just absolutely magic at the time. It caused problems right from the very beginning, but it was well worth it. I went off into the Air Force when I was a kid, and I not only paid to get into the Air Force, I know now I didn't have any way of knowing that at the end, but I paid a dishonest recruiter to get in there. I cheated on the test, and the next thing I know, I'm supposed to be an aircraft mechanic. Now, you know, that wasn't going to happen. But anyway, I went out into the military. I got immediately in trouble in there you've got to wonder there's places in Alcoholics Anonymous literature where it talks about the alcoholic being defiant now I believe everything it says in AA literature but I don't think you have to read AA literature to know that I end up in Wichita Falls, Texas and I'd never even heard of Wichitar Falls they give us that basic talk you're one step closer to the regular Air Force now you can go anywhere in town this weekend with the exception of Flood Street or Ohio Street you can't go there they're off limits well I got drunk and went down there to find out why they didn't want you down there. My military career was unremarkable. At that time, they always threatened you that if you didn't do your school, they'd turn you into a cook or a cop. That's what happened to me. Even today, I can't cook anything. I could probably boil a hot dog or something like that. Anyway, that's what they did to me and it was the most amazing thing. This was in the late 1960s and they sent me to Arkansas. The Civil Rights Movement was going on there and there were all these women with long straight hair and that country music And they had those little bitty miniskirts on, barely covered their butt in those boots. And it was just a wide open time. It was like putting a hog in a corn patch. It was just the most – it was – had a lot of trouble in the state of Arkansas. I was just child. You know, first thing that happened to me, I got arrested for minor possession and I got arrest for public intoxication and I get arrested for drunk driving. And again, there was always somebody who rode into the rescue. I was offered a 3912 discharge. My experience with that stuff is I don't know why I'm talking about all this military. I guess I used up all my other stuff today. But at that time, you know, I'd never ran into anybody that they offered to give you a 3912. I know today all the 3912 discharges means you're a misfit. It's a general discharge. You're just a mis fit. You can't conform. Well, I got arrested for all these things, and about this same time, I had a shipment to go to Vietnam, so the first sergeant called me in and said he'd talk to the commander, and they gave me my choice. I could either go to Việt Nam or I could get out on a 3911. Now, I didn't know this. I wouldn't have been able to put this into words at the time, but I didn' t want to get kicked out of the military. I didn't want to be in there either. I mean, I don't know how you get all that stuff to wash at the time, but I knew I always wanted to be somebody else somewhere else. I wanted things to be different. But I was allowed to go on my shipment, and I went to Vietnam in January of 1970. My alcoholism was in full glory at that time. There's no doubt about that. But the racial riots were going on in Vietnam. I had real long hair. I had much longer hair than I have now. I had a fatigue cap, seven and three quarters, the biggest one you could get. I looked like Spanky. I had that hat pulled all the way down like this. and it's just a mess I came back from there I was in a horrible condition in early 1971 because of alcoholism and hatred and the way I was living I was partially responsible a good bit responsible for the death of another person now what happened to me from that period of time is I think my drinking just went into another kind of a thing the military didn't do anything as far as causing my drink and it just created a forum where it sped it up where I was just out of control And I guess I was insulated. That very kind doctor band-aided me over and over and over. I worked in the hospital chow hall up at Fairchild in Washington, and he kept me from getting kicked out of the military. And I think what happened, my drinking went into another level, and I just sort of went to another zone. Things went out of control, and I was just kind of gone. And you know, I don't think it would be accurate to say it didn't bother me what I did, but it didn't bother me like it would a regular person. I mean, I was so blocked off from my drinking. And what I learned years later by doing inventory is that what I really thought that person got is what they deserved because of what they did. And it just kind of went from there down, and, you know, I was just in awfully dangerous shape. It was just a – you know when you see – when you look into the eyes of somebody who's not home, I guess you get some kind of a picture of what I'm talking about. I mean it's just not a life. It's not going on, and that's what was happening with me. And so by the time I got out of the military and got back to Nebraska, that's what you had to work with. And, you know, I did try to work a little bit, but it absolutely did not work. So by the Time I Came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had a good run at running away from what I had. I had good run of that. That's the way I think AlcoholicsAnonymous works best. I didn't come to AA thinking it would work for me. I came running away form what I have. I absolutely knew I had to find another way to live or I wanted to die. It's awfully hard to look on alcoholism as an asset, but it says that in our literature. It says it at least twice in the big book, that the alcoholic's past is his most vital asset. One place it goes on to say, and oftentimes it's almost the only one. You know, it just proves that I don't know what's good for me today because time after time after times things that have looked one way have turned out to be another way. Everything I have today is a direct result of my own greatest defeat in life. It's a direct result of my own alcoholism. It's the direct result of my dying to the illness of alcoholism." So, you know, and it's so true where it says in our literature that the story of any alcoholic is a mixture of so many things. Some of it is, it's absolutely hilarious. Some of its tragic and some of it's just in between. You know, most of that stuff you could never recreate. I remember one time up in the state of Washington I left the bar in the wrong car. Now I drove a white car to the bar and I left the bar in a white car. Both of them roughly the same size. I want to be a little bit careful how I say this. I don't want to disparaging or disregarding from the podium. I had this woman with me when I left The Bar. There wasn't anything wrong with her. She wasn't ugly. She was, however, old. I told this story one night in Decatur, Alabama and a lady right down there with that lady in the red shirt says, you mean mature, don't you? And I said, no. No, I don't. But anyway, what happened is I had this white car and I drove it to the bar. I have a vague recollection of this. I remember this woman I had with me. She had on these shorts that, you know, her butt was coming out the bottom of her shorts. It's rough now. And I have vague recollections of this and I went into the bar and then I don' t remember much that happened after that. What I understand happened is, is I left and just one of those things that was a fluke. there was a poor guy, there was an old guy up there that had driven a white car to the bar. He wasn't supposed to be driving he was driving on suspension but he drove a white card of the bar and went in. He left the keys in the car he was driving and I left the key's in the card I was driving. So I left in a white cart and I was arrested several hours later for drunk driving and stealing that car and put in jail in this little bitty town out in the country in Washington with this woman. They put us in the same jail cell while they tried to figure out what had happened and it took me a long time to figure out what had happened. Anyway, the next morning they let us out. Now I've told this story so many times but actually this story is absolutely true. The only thing I pretty well believe that they even gave us the beer back but I remember the next mornin' standin' out in front of that jail and that state patrolman was out there and we'd been at this a couple three hours by now tryin' to get this straightened out. It's light. And they let use out of jail and we're standin''t out there and this patrolman is jabbin'' me in the chest talking to me you know how the he's talking like that and he's saying she has to drive you're too drunk i said that's fine so we're walking off to the car and this lady and i are walking off and this was rough there's just no other way to describe it she had these shorts they were white and about half of her butt was coming out the bottom and she was old and i looked back and i about where that guy sitting behind peggy with the blue shirt and the yellow tie is. I look, I was about right there and the patrolman was about where I am and I turned around and looked at him and our eyes locked. They just, you know how our eyes just locked and he went like this, he went... And... If I could have put it in words at that time I would have said those are my sentiments exactly. I know it hurt him, it hurt me. And those kind of things happen time after time after time. You know, to start out to do one thing and it ends up another. Over and over and over. That was the nature of it. It continued to go downhill from there until I wound up at the ripe old age of almost 26 years old, more dead than alive. What happened is that my great aunt took me in. Memorial Day weekend of 1975 I remember, I have a vague recollection of being in a place called the Lakeside Tavern out by the state lakes in Fremont, Nebraska being put out of there and the next thing I remember I woke up and I remember I had two quarts of Darkport wine and I guess like you always hear I hid the booze from myself I suppose if I would have found that booze no telling what would have happened A guy named Richard Mackley did find it and he's dead now I don't know if that had anything to do with it But when I woke up at about 2 a.m., I couldn't find those two quarts of Darkport wine, and I searched madly for it. I've never had a drink since then. And you can kind of see the hand of a loving God now start to move pretty clearly in this. My great-aunt was 75 years old. She had just lost her husband of 50 years. She was born in 1900, and my great-аunt spoke three languages. She was a lifelong student of German, Spanish, and English, obviously, and she studied Latin. I'm given to understand that you don't speak Latin, you study Latin so that you know about words. And she researched words and studied things like word, I think the word is word derivative, where words came from and all of that. That was her deal. And if she were a young woman today, she would be an attorney or a professor or something. But anyway, she invited me to come and live with her. She had just lost her husband of 50 years. Now, I didn't know this for several years after I was sober, but she had told people in the family, I don't know if he wants a chance to be decent or not, but if he does, I'm going to see that he gets it. And you would certainly have to say that she was a friend of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, she tried that same thing later with my dad. It didn't work. But she knew about AlcoholicsAnonymous. She never went to an AA meeting, but she knew about it from the beginning. She knew about it for her reading. That's why it's so important that we do public service announcements, that we use CPCPI work, that we get our message out. We want our principles publicized, not our personalities. We want people to know about us. We just don't want our personalities publicized. Our names. We want ourselves to be publicized by people. We want what our principles publishize. People need to know what it is we do. But she told me, she said, I have someone in mind who will take you to AA if you will go. Well, I had already started going to meetings, and that's what happened to me. I started goingto meetings on a daily basis. And I fell into the care of people who really understood this thing. They understood that not only would I not take a drink if I would follow out these principles, that it was impossible. We usually don't talk about it in those terms, but drinking ain't going to happen. I mean, it simply ain't gonna happen. You can't practice the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to the best of your ability and drink alcohol too. It won't happen. It can happen. You've got to stop one to do the other. Could I get drunk? Of course I could get drunk. Any alcoholic could get drank, but I'm not going to just walk off and get drunk because I'm protected by the cocoon of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got all kinds of protection in here tonight. I've Got a Loving God. I've recovered from alcoholism, from the illness of alcoholism through the steps. I've followed out the actions. I've done the stuff. This way of life is so powerful that I'm protective here. I'm no longer going to walk off and get drunken, but I was a long ways from that then. But what happened is I began to go to meetings on a daily basis and I got with some people and we began to go out of town to meetings and we literally went to meetings every day. Now during that period of time where I really started to find myself in my early going was the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm so grateful that this is written down here, that it's not garbled. I heard Dr. Bob's old son, you know he just died I guess back in April, but I heard Dr. Robb's old father and Dr. Dr. Robert's own son say and he was just giving a little talk about how it took both his dad and Bill Wilson and the other people because had Bill Wilson and been left alone with this thing, there's no telling what he would have done. I mean, he might have tried to franchise it and sell it or whatever. And Dr. Bob's son went on to say if I had been left up to his dad, AA never would have got out of Ohio. You know, he said that his dad married his mom after a whirlwind courtship of 17 years. So, you know, Dr. Robb was not a fast mover. So, I'm so grateful that it's written down. I'm grateful that I fell under the care of people who had done these things. And it was such a wonderful time to sober up. I mean, it was a great time. I was thinking about that today, and somebody asked me, I don't know who it was that asked me if Larry was coming here from Fremont. It was a wonderful thing. It was right at the end of real active work with others. It wasn't a time when you had to hunt for 12-step calls. It was an active time. We used to take them two at a time. I remember one time we had a guy in the back seat of Larry's car who couldn't walk, and we stopped at another guy's house, a call had come in, and the guy's girlfriend threw a whiskey bottle through the window. I mean, it was an exciting time. People were getting sober and go out and make a call on somebody. And as soon as I was responsibly able to get around, there were people who were doing stuff, and I was always invited into this. It was a little bit confusing to me. Have you ever noticed how when somebody doesn't get sober, alcoholics always have a reason? They always know the reason why. There was a guy named Elton. He's now long since dead, but we made call after call on this guy. and we went out and called on him one night and his wife had hit him in the back of the head with a coffee mug and there was a hole in the bag in the black of his head with dried blood and when we first looked at him I actually thought he was dead we picked him up carried him over our shoulder and put him in the hospital but I remember I would go back down to chapter 5 and I would ask why doesn't this guy get sober and they would say something like he ain't sick enough yet and I said well that may be but he's too sick right now to get off the floor you know it just didn't make sense And so I think, you know, the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous is just that. It may become a gift and it may be ready for it by what we do. But I don't ever want to think that if I was to ever take a drink today that that gift would ever manifest again. I believe, you Know, it's so true. Dick and I was talking about this, but this is my experience. The more firmly grounded somebody is in AlcoholicsAnonymous, when they take a Drink, the less chance they've got of getting back here. Or even when they quit going to meetings. You know, very often you see somebody in Alcoholics Anonymous that quits going to meetings that they don't take a drink. They don't get back into meetings either. I don't have any illusions that if I was ever to take a drinking or leave here that I would get back. I never say that at the end of the meeting. Keep coming back? I never said that. At the end to the Lord's Prayer, I just end it with Amen. I don' t say anything. I don''t intend to leave so I have to come back. I'm just going to stay. But this thing is so powerful, I don ''t have to worry about any of those things if I'll do them. So it was a wonderful time to sober up, and great stuff happened. I mean, I guess you could say that I've made all the mistakes in Alcoholics Anonymous you could make. There were three mistakes I haven't made. I haven'T taken a drink, I haven' t quit going to meetings, and I've never trusted the wrong person. One of the great things about AlcoholicsAnonymous is you get to pick your own leaders. You get to Pick the People You Want to Follow. Sherry's interested in leadership, and she was talking about stuff she wants to do on her doctorate. One of The Great Things About AlcoholicsAnenomous Is Somebody Cuts a Path for You, and then you have the opportunity to do that for someone else. So it was a wonderful time to get sober, and I got a job doing lawn work in my early going. Now, you can be fairly confused and still do lawn work, but it was too early for me. Lawn work got me. I did the best I could. You know that bird seed you put on the lawns? I got an address one time, and I went to put it on. I got the right address, but the wrong end of town. You know, the same address is on both ends. So I put the bird seed on the wrong place and got out of there. but eventually things started to change and eventually I did get a job and my life started changing the day I was sober two years I got married to a woman I met in Alcoholics Anonymous by this time I had a good job the judge who married us was a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous he ordered the courthouse opened at night mounted the bench I've been saying for a long time that it was a marriage that never should have really happened but a buddy of mine a while back told me to quit saying that because I had two beautiful daughters from that marriage so he told me to quit say it but I guess the right way to say that It was boy met girl on AA campus where it never should have happened. But people ask me sometimes, I've asked them why that's a good question. I mean, why did it take you 17 years to figure that out? That's a Good Question. I've been wondering that too. But I was married to that same woman for 17 years, and in 1994 we got divorced, and then I stayed single for six years and got remarried in 2000. The same program saw me through all of that. All kinds of stuff has continued to happen. And, you know, people have always rode to the rescue in Alcoholics Anonymous. I sponsor a lawyer who's a divorce lawyer. He handled all that. I did everything in the world to try to pay that guy. I've sent money to him. I've done everything inthe world. You know, everything that's happened in my life has happened because of the people of Alcoholics Anonymous . There has always been people that came together around whatever the problem was, and so my life has continued to change. I've had all kinds of stuff happen here. My children grew up here. They're grown women now. I have a granddaughter. They've never seen me take a drink. I mean, I can't believe myself that it's been 29 years. I've always thought I've been sober a long time. I was at a meeting one time. I think it was Bergen Mercy. And you know that deal they ask about the 30-day thing? I think that's where it was. And they asked some kid, how long you been sober? And he said, a long-time 30 days. And that's my sentiments exactly. You know, I've also been sober for a long, long time, and I've never always been surprised that I've be sober this long. The good news is, is the power of Alcoholics Anonymous makes it impossible to drink. Just exactly what Dr. Bob said. It's written down in our literature. You know, they asked Dr. Bob if he'd ever drink again and he said, I don't think I'll ever drink again unless I quit doing what I've been doing. Otherwise we'd have no miracle here. We would, what we would have is a plain old crap sheet and anybody that's been sober knows we have anything but that here. So all kinds of things have happened. And you know, I look at the fact now, you know that we went to North Carolina in 1989 and how that's really become home. My life has changed so much. I guess I was sober a number of years. You know how you've been doing something for a long time before you realize it? I didn't realize I was doing this for a long time until afterwards. It was just sort of automatic. I automatically think of my life in terms of prior to Alcoholics Anonymous or after Alcoholics I mean, automatically. Things shifted so much and have continued to change so much that sobriety is the first gift. And I think it's a good thing to remember now that that's what we're doing here, that if one drink and all bets are off. There's been some horrible stories. There was that guy out there in Texas that took a drink at 44 years of sobriity, took a drank of table wine at Thanksgiving, and he went into that desperation drinking, drinking in bed, going to the bathroom in bed. He lasted two weeks and he died. There's a guy in South Carolina in 1990, 41 years sober, had quit going to meetings, great old man. He'd quit goingto meetings and gotten away from meetings a long time before this, but his wife passed away. He got very depressed, ended up going to the doctor, getting put on prescription medicine, and the next thing you know, the old gentleman was drinking. So, I mean, could it happen? Of course it could happen. It won't happen if I'll do what I'm supposed to do. And it's not brain science. Ours is much more about the heart than it is about anything else. You really don't need to know much about alcoholism. You need to Know if you got it or not. I mean, what else do you need to Now? And this thing starts to change so much. You know, I was thinking about that today, and I was thinking about That chapter, the chapter to the agnostics, how it talks in there about what's going on. And there's that paragraph in there where it says basically that a failure is impossible. I think it's on page 55. I can find, I don't know if that's the right page or not, but I could find it. it says that if we'll do certain things, there's a little paragraph it says you cannot fail those are powerful words for an alcoholic of my description that not only will I not take a drink it's impossible to take a drank unless I demand to take a drink. So the good news is that I'm protected here, I'm safe here and when you think of a gathering like this and all the people in here, we've certainly defied all the odds that we come together around our own greatest defeat and we stay here long enough that the whole thing shifts and changes. And that we can take our place. You know, and I think too of the, you know, all the things that have happened in the last few years. And, you know, I think about all the stuff that's going on. And you know, what I really think gratitude is, I don't think gratitude has much to do, everybody wants to feel good. We were talking about that with the sixth and seventh steps today. When you first look at that, it looks like just sort of a vehicle where you want to feel better. Well, who wouldn't want to feels better? But I really think that feeling good is a rather elementary kind of understanding about what gratitude is. I mean, I don't know anybody that doesn't want to feel good, but when I'm the most grateful at a real cellular level, what I really understand gratitude to do is when I can carry on when the bottom has fell out, when I kan take my place and I kan do what I'm supposed to do. I've been so deep into the valley at times in Alcoholics Anonymous I didn't think I'd make it through the night. There's been two times at 8 years and at 19 1⁄2 years I think you could have cut it by a cat's hair what was going to happen to me. but what I did is I hung on because of Alcoholics Anonymous and what I learned from that, it's a very simple thing but it's also very profound What I learned is that there's no problem can possibly be greater than the power of Alcoholic Anonymous Otherwise again you'd have a crapshoot here You'd have people bailing out because of problems When I look at my own life and compare it to my drink and I've had far more problems in my sobriety I mean why wouldn't he? I've taken my place here My ex-wife had three cancer operations My oldest daughter, who ended up graduating from college, and she's got a great job. She's got her own townhouse, and she'S doing very well, gotten great promotions in her job. But when I was sober 15 months, she contracted spinal meningitis. Well, if she'd have had that same strain of spinal meningitus a few years before she had it in 1978, she wouldn't have made it. And before they were able to actually make the final diagnosis, nobody knew if she was going to make it or not. And I'll never forget, the lady who took care of her was this very young woman from India. She was a pediatrician. Her name was Dr. Gomes. And I remember when she made the diagnosis, she said, We can help, but I think you better go down to the chapel. Well, here you had a guy just a year and a half before that was so overwhelmed by life, you know, I had to be hospitalized, I couldn't do anything. But now I'm just ayearandahalf removed from that. The difference is simply the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the only difference. There is no other difference. And because of that, we got through that. My daughter was healed from that spinal meningitis like as if she never had it. The doctor, after the doctor found out that she was going to make it, she came in and told us, she said, I think we're out of the woods, but her fever has been too high for too long, and there's a good chance that she's going to have serious learning problems and have serious training disabilities. Well, that didn't happen. In fact, a few years ago, my daughter, I was trying to talk to her about some problems, and it was going fine, but I just wasn't getting through. And she looked at me and finally she said, Dad, you've got to understand. I don't have a lot of the problems you have. You know? I mean, that's the same kids. I mean because of Alcoholics Anonymous time after time after time I've been able to come through these things. You know, and the only thing I really did is I just kept going to meetings. I just kep practicing these principles. I didn't do anything else. There wasn't anything else to do. You know there was nothing else. I mean one of the great lines that Abraham Lincoln made, And it's so true. Abraham Lincoln said, I've been driven to my knees many times by the inescapable conclusion there wasn't nowhere else to go. And I mean, what a better sort of a thing what Alcoholics Anonymous is pointing to. The man who heard Bill Wilson's fifth step, Bill Wilson called his spiritual advisor, Father Ed Dowling, made this profound statement. He was not an alcoholic, but what a great statement for the alcoholic. This man was a Jesuit priest who spent his entire life trying to be of service to his fellows. he was caught by the simplicity of Alcoholics Anonymous he's the guy when he saw the 12 steps he said never have I more clearly seen the principles of Saint Ignatius illuminated that's what he said but this is the statement he made it was good enough for him, it's good enough for me, he said that never he said if I ever do get into heaven, it'll be from back and away from hell you know that doesn't sound like much but what that clearly does is that points the path to the alcoholic I mean, that's what's going on here. I don't do what I do. I mean it doesn't have anything to do with goodness or anything. It just has to do that this is the way I found out. This is the deal. I'd have to be a fool to quit doing this. I mean why would I quit doing it? What would I do? I mean you know what I found here is exactly what I want to do. I love that definition of happiness about happiness is wanting what you have. It's a great definition. So these things have come my way and I guess the part I have had to play in it is you know i've had the willingness but that willingness has been bound in what it's been bound by the idea that this is what's going to happen if you don't do it so in a very real respect you could say the whole thing has been a gift but that's what it is and the best is yet to come my sponsor continues to tell me that that it continues to get better i've been talking to him about every day because or every other day because he's moved from wilmington to ocala florida and he's by himself there his wife hasn't joined him and and i know what that's like to try to move to another part of the country, and even though he's got a lot of friends there. So it's just that we have someone to stay in touch with. We have someone to follow. I want to... It's a little bit close. I don't think I've told... I think I only told this story once. It was at UC Moyo's anniversary, and we've been at this a long time and going to head for the homestretch on this. I guess this is kind of like at the end of the long day. It's kind of being in the bar this time of night. You don't have to go home. You just got to leave here. Remember that old deal about this time of the night, you know, and talking to your best friend that you met about two hours ago? And remember that old deal in there about, well, you had a couple things. You had the last call for alcohol and the last chance for romance. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it worked, but the cure was worse than the illness. I ain't got any doubt about that. I mean, sometimes it would have been a way better deal had it not worked. I think I've only told this story once, and it's still pretty close. You know, my sister's here tonight, and last year in November her husband of approximately 30 years was diagnosed with having cancer, and he passed away Memorial Day weekend. But anyway, I'm sitting in North Carolina, and a couple days before he passed way I told my wife, I said that, you know, I'm a little bit worried about my sister. I'm not sure if she's tracking what's going on here. And when something happens, I called her husband, the councilman. He was on the city council of Euling, Nebraska. They've got about 20 people in that town. But anyway, I call him councilman, and I said, When the councilmen passes away, I want you to go with me to Nebraska. And she said, Well, I'd be glad to if I can help. Well, this was on about a Thursday. Well, Friday, her 80-some-year-old mom gets there, and they're going to the beach for a couple weeks, and her brother and sister coming from other places and sister-in-law and all that. Anyway, I remember it real well. The last Friday night of the month, of every month, if I'm home, I always go to a speaker's meeting about 50 miles from where I live. I sponsor some people down there and they have a big dinner and it's great. We always have a couple carloads from my home group going. Tom Ivester was going to be the speaker that night and I remember well. It was the last Friday Night of May this year and I'm thinking Tom's going to want to spend the night at the house in Raleigh because he's going out of Raleigh-Durham in the morning to Portland. So I got all this stuff on my mind, and I told Julie now when he passes away, I want you to go to Nebraska with me to the funeral. And she said, that'll be fine. I'd be glad to go. Well, anyway, when her mom got there, I didn't go to the meeting that night. I spent the night with them, and it was early Saturday morning. My sister called and said that her husband had passed away. So I said, well, we'll be on our way. Well, I knew Julie couldn't go. She's got her 80-some-year-old mom there. So I get a hold of my kids, explain to them what's going on. One's in Greensboro and one's in Raleigh. They both want to go. So even if you've got frequent flyer, I was like, I had miles, but they had to get it. You can't just get on a plane even with miles. You've got to get all that worked out. So the kids started working on it. And so all of this is going on, my best friend, he wanted me to mention his name here tonight. Max used to sponsor Jimmy Home. He wanted me tell everybody hello. He's doing the same thing we're doing here tonight, he's doing it in Greensborough, North Carolina. you know. But anyway, so Jimmy was in the hospital having an operation. So I'm running around all day and Keith, my sponsor, had been, I had seen him Thursday night. This is now Saturday. He had been at my home group Thursday night to speak at my 29-year anniversary. And he's getting ready to move to Ocala, Florida that weekend, the 1st of June. He's moving. So anyway, I've got all this stuff going on. And so I'm runnin' around that day. I'm on my way out to the hospital to see my buddy jimmy and i got a hold of keith on the telephone so i'm telling him what's going on and um i'm tellin' him that the girls are goin' and they're gettin' it worked out and i said you know all of a sudden it hit me twenty-nine years ago this weekend i sobered up on the councilman's farm they had two little kids at that time two little babies i don't like animals on a good day i was in a parking lot one time sober and there was a guy in there with a horse. He had the horse on whatever, you keep a horse on a bit or a string, I don't know what all that stuff is, but he had a hold of this horse and he said help me with the horse, I need help. I said, I ain't helping you with the force. He said help me, I said I ainít helping you. I ainís helping you with the horse. He said hold the horse, the horse wonít hurt you. I said how do you know what that horse will do? The Titanic went down. I ainít touching that horse. But anyway, what had happened 29 years ago, I had three days without a drink, I'm crazy. I'm seeing and hearing things that ain't there. And she got up in the middle of the night and took me to town and called a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who came and got me, put me in a motel room. And I've never had another drink. So I think how many times over the years, I'm telling my sponsor this, that over and over they took me in. I remember my sister carting me cigarettes when I was in the county jail on my birthday. I remember that hitchhiking to California, you, my sister giving me a $10 bill. I remember my sister and my brother-in-law time after time after time. He could have put a stop to that stuff anytime. If he ever said anything derogatory about me, it never got back to me. He's just a good guy. So I'm telling all this stuff to my sponsor. You know how sponsors just hear you out. And when all of a sudden it hit me, I said, Keith, this is the day 29 years, this was the weekend. It was the same weekend, Memorial Day weekend, just the dates changed. But I said all of the sudden it hit me. This is the day, 29 years ago, this is the weekend, 29 years ago I sobered up on their farm. I got to get there. The girls are getting our tickets worked out. Looks like we're going to be on different airplanes but we're gonna be able to make it. And I remember what he said. It's one of those things that'll stay with me forever. He just heard like, he said, well that's why we can never pay it back. No matter how long we stay here, we can never get it paid back. Doesn't matter how many times we're asked to do something, no matter how many times I do something I could never pay it back. This would be what I would say, just for me. If I had to bet everything on one prayer, this would be my commitment to God as I understand him, to Alcoholics Anonymous, to my sponsor, to myself. And I think that if Mike would have followed out Dick's instructions, that's very true, that the best thing you could say about anybody is that they were an active member of AlcoholicsAnonymous and they really tried to live according to these principles. I think that's the kindest thing that you could say about anybody in their life or in their death. But this is what I would bet the farm on, if I had one thing to bet everything on. A long time ago, I didn't know I did this, but a long time before I made a decision that I was going to give my wasted and busted life to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was gonna go all the way with this thing. That's what I was gonna do. This is what i would say, as long as I could suck air, I'll be willing to keep doing whatever it is I'm asked to do in AlcoholicsAnonymous. If it's stacked chairs, if it's stuffed envelopes If it's picked up after people at the halfway house, if it's to give a talk, whatever it is. Let's go talk to the minister at the church about can we rent the room. Whatever it is, that's what I would be willing to do. As long as I could suck air, I'd be willing to do whatever it was I'm asked to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I really want to thank you because it is true. There's absolutely no way to pay it back. We've been given too much. So I want to think you for my life and by the grace of God and the power of AlcoholicsAnonymous, thank you for having me here. God bless you. Thank you.