Step 6 and the Man Who Said He’ll Never Be Entirely Ready – Bob S Jr

Thanks Jack. Well tonight our speaker is from the Owasso group. When he met him about a month or two ago, he didn't realize that tonight was his wife's birthday. But everything went smoothly. He took her out to dinner the other night. So please welcome Bob S. Hi everybody, I'm Bob. I'm an alcoholic. This night is my wife's birthday and she's happy I'm here because she's shopping. We didn't love to do this the other night. The guy, when he called me, he said, how about September? And I said, no, I've got a couple of things going. I said it was a Friday night. My anniversary was tonight and I wasn't sure when that was that turned out to be a Sunday. My daughter's birthday is Monday, and I knew I had a couple birthdays. She said, right? And I said, 21st. And I thought, well, I'll stop and go on up tomorrow. Oh, well. Everybody's happy. I'm glad to be back here in New England. It's been a while since I've been up here. Nothing's changed. It was a big room, but a big boom, and it's hot. But it's good to be here. What I'm going to do tonight is just share a little bit of my life. with you people you know like make what's how it was and what it's like now some of the stuff in between from the good times to the bad times it's just a personal opinion based on a private experience if you can pick up something and use it that's fine if you can't don't worry about it nothing i'm going to say tonight's original i found I've never done or had an original thought in my life, and there was a time when I didn't think that was true. I thought I had all the original thoughts and they had all of the neat answers, but that's changed since I came around to this program. If you're nervous and wondering why the hell you're here, there's two of us in this room so don't worry about it. Yeah, she did a good job. She came over there and said, I remember this about reaching it that day. It made me feel good because I remember the first time I got to get up here and read something. Boy, I was scared stiff. And then we had to give a talk sometimes. This isn't too bad, you know. I heard a funny story today. Oh, I haven't told it yet, but I'm going to try and tell it for the first time. There were about six of us in the room this was told that about three of us got it so if you don't get it don't worry about it did you hear about the i gotta get this in order the alcoholic agnostic dyslexic uh insomniac he got drunk one night trying to figure out there really was a god i got the poor apartment he got dropped you got drunk stayed up one night really trying to figure out, or tried to figure it out, but it really wasn't done. There you go. Oh, that's a dyslexic part of it. Don't worry. Like I said, I didn't get anything. I had to take the bus for about an hour and I called the guy up and I said I think I got part of this. If anybody wants to know what it is, come see me after the meeting. I came to this program, and I'll get to all of you, at the age of 34, and that's almost 15 years ago, And I thought I had, you know, the world right by and right where I wanted it. I was married and had three kids and one on the way and had a good job and had lot of things out of the way that you have when you're young and life should've been good and it wasn't. I was very unhappy with me. I was really unhappy in my circumstances with marriage, being a father, being employed. I had everything going, everything I had I didn't like. And I had a drinking problem and I acknowledged that fact for many, many years. I have an idea of what an alcoholic was because I had friend who had an alcoholic father and I wasn't anywhere near what he was, in my own mind anyways. But the day came when I had to do stuff about my drinking and I knew where to go. This was the last place to go because I tried everything else there was to try in the way of trying to quit racing. And I had some good friends that had come to AAA, and they were sober. And every time I'd see them, I'd say, you guys still on the wagon? They'd say yep, we're on the wagons. We've got a chair for you. We've Got Your Name on it. One of those days you're going to come and see us. We used to laugh about that. But that made it easy knowing that I had some sentences in flow. I didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn' t know anything what the steps were. All I knew is that these guys drank like I did, did what I did acted like I and they quit drinking and when I saw them they hadn't changed too much else so I just thought to get the pressure off my back and make things easier at home and at work. I'll go to the AA meetings and see what it's all about and maybe six months down the road I can start drinking again or maybe I will drink or whatever. And I thought maybe I could be a normal person. I had a young guy tell me that the other day. He said, I want to be a Normal Person. And I said, no, I don't think you do. I don' t want to b e a Normal person. Hell, I saw a Normal Perso n the other da y. We were walking down the street. I was kind of walking beside this guy, and there was a dog in the car. The dog was barking like hell. And the guy's shouting, why are you barking? I said, well he can't whistle. He goes, oh, okay. And he just kept right on going, you know. But you don't know that people live in the same rut every day. They don't change. And I couldn't live like that. I like changing. That's what this program is all about. Anybody says to me today, what's AA about? It's one word. Change. C-H-A-N-G-E. From the word go, that's what you do. To change. I had to change everything that was about me. And that's those 12 steps taught me. They're the tools that taught me how to change me. because I was not a, by any sense of the means, a normal person when I got here. I heard somebody say, you know, we're not bad people trying to get good. We're sick people trying for good. And I'll buy into that today. I was a very sick person when i got here, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, every way and sense of what were you thinking. I had no idea what a God in my life would or could do I had been in a lot of jams and a lot trouble in my life but you know like everybody else I feel out there God get me out of this world I'll never do this again and the minute I said that I was thinking well maybe I was already cut and deal with God whoever that was I didn't have much of a conscience when I was young and I never felt too guilty about doing a lot of things I just did them and I had some kind of a moral sense about me that said you know God put me on this earth and he made me what I am and this is what I'm going to do and we're stuck with it there must be a reason for that so I'll just continue doing it and someday we'll get the score settled and I kind of went through my teens that way and through the early 20s that way and I got married when I was 20 that was going to bring me you know, that magic happiness and all that and Christ, I never gave that a chance to happen we weren't married very long my wife was pregnant kids started coming and boy, you know I was a proud father one minute and I hated the idea of being responsible the next minute And any time a bad situation came along, I was out and running. I was gone. I didn't want to face all the problems of raising kids and buying houses and all those things that go with it. So my kids didn't see a lot of me the first 10 or 12 years of their lives. My wife didn't seem a lot to be the first ten or twelve years of her life. Not in the sense of being a family anyways. I was a good provider, kept a roof over my head, kept clothes in the back, and food in my mouth. But my job had an occupational hazard, and I called it customer relations. And we drank a lot and partied a lot, and played golf a lot. We did a lot of things, and my family wasn't involved. It became a real serious problem. I was doing more customer relations with people that weren't customers. And I wasn't working very hard, and there were never homes. and everybody got pissed off about it and that's when I got here we had to do a lot of changing we started writing that first step I was powerless over alcohol and I didn't know what to think about that statement and I heard a good friend of mine today sponsor of mine but we're good friends total strangers when we met but he was as close to me today as anybody on this earth and he didn't know if he was alcoholic or not but he knew one thing that he had never drank successfully in his life and he had no reason to think if he started to drink again the day that he could get successful and this program says all you all you really desire to stop drinking would be eligible for this program and he doesn't want to drink because he knew that his days were over of ever find or thinking you can drink successfully and i bought them i said okay i never drank successfully the time i started drinking i was in some kind of trouble either at home at work at school with a law always and i'll challenge anybody here to compare their lives you know how many times you ever got in trouble when you were still sober at home a worker was alone but i always got in trouble when i was drinking you know i have a tendency to want to gamble a little bit when i'm drinking sometimes i gamble make sums of money that i don't have no right gambling i would take weeks paychecks and sometimes two weeks pay checks and put them on the line and lose When you win it's fun and it's neat, but when you lose that's a major catastrophe. Then you start finding things that don't belong to you and you call them in yours and then you take them out and sell them to get the money. And I found a lot of these before people even knew they lost them. I had them sold before they knew they'd lost them because that's how I made up that difference in my influence. i never felt too bad about that i could always justify what i was doing but i was never sober when i did i might wake up in the morning and say oh god you can't do that again but maybe by four or five o'clock the next day after that same afternoon i'll be right back so foods made me do a lot of things that i shouldn't be doing made me do a whole lot of thing and think a lot of things that i shouldn't have been thinking and i was powerless over it because once i started drinking there was no turning it off if i ran out of money well bartenders love me because i always paid my debts but they knew that i'd borrow them i thought 50 bucks from a bartender spend three of it on myself and buy all these people drinks you know and come back in the next day and give you another 50 bucks they couldn't sell this money on me so i could always borrow money and buy it. So I was never sure of cash, they never threw me out for that. What I had trouble with is my life being unmanageable because I already thought I had things going on. My own mind I did. I bought into this. I believed it. I believe I was successful. Money was a very powerful tool. I guess that's how I made, that's all I judged success. A person was financially able to do things in that way successful and i thought my life was very manageable because i had an awful lot of things and material things a lot of people hadn't attained when we were young so i had a little trouble with this thing called unmanageability because i thought it went clear back you know all my life but it says on that first episode and our lives had become unmanageable there's a thing in the big book and it says right after that second step this is we we have become reborn i was okay once my life at one time my life wasn't manageable and i screwed it up god gave me a free will and i and i took it and i ran My parents taught me right from wrong. They really did. I had good parents. That's a pretty good home. They did the best they could. My sisters are fine, you know. Normal people, you know. But somehow I got off on a bad track. And the more I thought I could get away with stuff, the greater I thought that I was and pretty soon I started to leave. I've heard people say, you know, you can't be God and believe in God at the same time. And I believe that today because I really thought I was God. Nobody could tell me what to do. My way was always right. If you had an opinion, that was fine, but you would do it yourself. I didn't want to hear it because I'm quick at making decisions. And I'm not good at saying I made a bad decision or I wasn't good at that. of that so if i made a decision that was wrong i lived with it and always thought i'd have to take that to my grave so they started to tell me that that uh i wasn't always sick i wasn t always twisted and all the things that i've done maybe i wasn' t really responsible for because i was under the influence of alcohol and maybe i'll be a little easier on myself and try to change things today and live today the best you can and forget about yesterday so i started putting that stuff out of my life a little bit and working on these steps and reading the big book you know they said get a big book and read it until probably uh i don't know first six months first year I read the little black 24-hour book. That I read, and I still do. I read that pretty regularly on regular basis today. But I went through the big books. The only book in my life I've ever read cover to cover. I can honestly say that. I never picked up a book in high school or college and read the whole thing. If I had made a book report, I'd cheat it. I found somebody else who already had one done, and then I copied it. It's a big book I've read on numerous occasions now, cover to cover, but at the age of 34 that was the only thing I'd ever read in my life. And I found it a very interesting book the first time I read it. I found you and my best friends and my uncles and my aunts and everybody but me. a couple of occasions i said oh yeah but most the time i was looking out at other people in my life and said yep that's it and i shared that at a meeting and they said you know this fellow said to me uh he said when i read that big book he said i stand in the bathroom because the mirror is running right in front of the mirror he said i hold that book like this and i look up and i knew he was trying to get a message he said when I read those stories I read about me and I don't look for other people and I found out what he was saying most of that big book is about me and I've heard open talks lots of lots of speakers a lot of guys share their lives and everything I've ever those guys are talking about me because we're all the same we all think the same way we all do the same things some of us do it from one extreme more or less than the others that we've all done the same things so anything that i read in that book and most of it applied to me you know once i got honest and once i started recognizing the fact that there wasn't a halo on my head and he was going off my back and i wasn't the neat guy that i thought i was and some of this stuff started to make a little sense the cobwebs started coming out of my head um the uh the bits of second step you know since we came to believe in a part of theirs themselves when we start the sanity and for the first time in my life i started to recognize that word insanity there's a definition in the dictionary that says insanity is is incapable to realize reality or comprehend reality, or something like that. And here exactly how it goes now. I have a block here. But I identified what I should do. I never got along too good with reality because I lived in that little dream world and I liked it. I had a lot of insane thoughts. I did a lot of insane things, but not so much when I was drinking. The ones that scared me the most are the ones when I'm sober. A lot of times, I had a lot tendencies the last year I was drinking. I was so unhappy that I had the tendencies to think of suicide. i had a couple times in fact i did once i just wanted to run just get my car and run and i didn't give a damn where i stopped because i was worried we stopped didn't matter but i want to get just as far away from owasso and the people in it and my family and my friends and everybody i knew i just want to go a million miles away change my name and start over And once I did that, I took off one night and had her blow up. And somewhere it says you gotta go home. And that was about three or four months. That was in the spring of 75. I came in October 75. But that was a bad year for me. But I started to believe that other people shared these things with me, and that's the way they thought. That's the way they felt. And there was nothing wrong with that. You know, I began to believe it was normal alcoholic behavior. That's what drunks think. We'd rather run from problems than face them. I had a lot of trouble telling the truth. I'd rather lie about a situation than tell the truth, I was more comfortable making up stories than i was telling the truth about it i was a very convincing liar and i remembered the lies it was easier for me to remember a bad story than a true story and but after a while you know it started all getting twisted i lied for years told stories for years pretty soon it was getting twisted and i couldn't remember who i told you I became very uncomfortable with that. A lot of blackouts were coming, and I'd had those for years. I've never remembered how we drove home on many, many nights, even back when I was 22 or 23 years old. But I just thought that came with drinking. They say those are blackouts, and that's signs of alcoholic drinking. And I've had them ever since I drank, but a lot of horrible blackouts. A little while, a day or two or three, and I happened to ask people, where was I Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday when you were ready for work? The worst thing that I had that I remember was I'm a salesman and they're going off industrial roads about four or five plants on them i started out at this point went down to this one and i was here at nine i was out there about 11 15. and i came back around to the first plant and sat in the lobby and asked to see the buyer got in his office about 11 30 and i walked in said hi how are you he's doing like this fine we got talking so you all right yeah i'm fine i said well you were just here two hours ago I said, no, I hope you're kidding me. He said, No, I'm not. You were here with your normal 9-5, 9-15. And that was the week before I gave him his program. That was one of the scariest days of my life. Because I'll tell you what that did. I embarrassed myself. That was total embarrassment that morning. This is a man that I've known for 25, 30 years. And did a lot of things with him and his wife, and this was total humiliation because he knew what was wrong with me. He knew I'd been out drinking the night before, and that's when I really got serious about thinking about committing suicide. I had about three or four days where I didn't know what I wanted to do. But I thought I ought to go see my friend Bob and come in there and see what the hell is going on. And that's what did, the total humiliation of being a drunk and a stupor and not knowing where I was when I was supposed to be sober. And I just saw Bill the other day, he's retired now, and I just talked to him the other night and he said, you still on the wagon? You know, and I said, yeah, I'm in her. I said I don't know if my mom is, but I'm on that wagon. And he said God I'm glad. He said you had me worried one time and I thought let's not even talk about it. I said man, I was a little worried too. He laughed. He was Muskegon, but he was in a lawsuit with me. You know, when you lose your own self-respect to the point where you don't even want to look at them anymore, and by that day I'll tell you, that hurts. But I stuck around this program for almost a year, and I worked right on the areas of the first three steps. I didn't know who God was or what God was. I really didn't care. I was sober and after being sober three or four months, the cobwebs were going away. Some people were starting to smile and say hello and a lot of people in this program are being off the mice and picking me up and taking me meetings and making sure I was there and we started getting honest and sharing with each other a little bit of what was going on and I developed a trust with the people in AA who most of them are total strangers. and the one thing I found out about him was when they shared something it was the truth gut level truth wasn't fireman bullshit I'd heard tons of that and I knew the difference and I didn't want somebody who was sitting there spilling his guts out in an honest sometimes very emotional way and not being ashamed of the fact that he was crying or not being ashamed of the things that he had done And not being boastful and bright. I'd never heard this before. I'd heard guys say they knocked the hell out of their wives and kids, you know? And by God if she does it that way, I'll do it again! You know, I've heard that lots of times. I've had guys tell me, boy you know, I'd say my wife would die. Hell, if she's my wife, I'd go home and lay a burden on her and forget it. I've hear tons of that. These guys were saying they'd done those things and they were doing and showing remorse. and they do all kinds of stories but they all felt remorseful and they felt guilty and they were ashamed of themselves and they sincerely wanted to do something about it so they didn't have to do those things again i've never seen this before and that struck home with me you know there's an old story unless somebody just talked in an ae you just let them talk long enough sooner or later they're going to tell the truth they're gonna recognize the truth I think that's what happened to me I think you people sharing with me the truth in your life brought the truth into my life so I can recognize it and share it with you and I had never done that before and I really came to believe that this program could work I wasn't drinking And one day I woke up and that desire to drink had left like they said that it would. I went through a whole day without thinking about taking a drink. That was kind of a miracle in my life, to go one whole day without seeing somebody or getting mad at somebody or getting upset with something making a mistake and saying, well, let's try to make it right and get on with our life. Didn't think of taking a drink. That was a miracle. And that was a promise that was made to me when I came into this program. One day that he's out here drinking, he'll leave you. And you'll get through that whole day, all getting all screwed up and messed up and yelling and screaming and wanting to go get a drink or something. Something was working. AA was working, the power of A.L.I.N. and myself was working in my life And I didn't understand it. I didn t know why. And the worst thing of it, I didn t have a thing to do with it. And I was totally powerless over that too. All I did was make myself available to this program and new people. And started telling the truth about me. There was a lot that I didn d love. And didn t like it to the point where I didn do another thing about it for the next 10, 12 months. I stayed, staying sober on 1, 2, and 3. And I heard people talking about that 4th and that 5th step, and you've got to take this gut-level inventory, and usually you've really got to share it with somebody else. God, if you understand me, I wasn't too sure about that. I saw two or three people go out I don't think they were going to take it. They said they got drunk because they took their fourth and fifth step too early, and they couldn't handle it emotionally. Congratulations, you won! I'm not sure what the reason was. I just think they took it because they were too scared to. I know these guys pretty well and I've heard them say things over the years and I think they just want I think they want to drink that's all hell he just wants for us to go drink again and he goes forth with this stuff but I had a good sponsor and he said you know if you just stay sober today you got the rest of your life to take those steps you just keep coming to meetings stay in contact with me share what's going on today I don't care about the past. I don' t want to know anything about the future, just share what's going on today. It will be okay and we'll make this program together." And that's what we did. We didn't talk too much about the Past. At least we didn't dwell on it. It came up, it came up. After about a year in this program, I became very uncomfortable with meetings. I got tired of going to meetings and hearing everybody saying, I took the fourth step and I'm sitting there after everyone's been around for a while and I say, no, I haven't gotten to it yet. Then I found people that came in behind me and they were taking this part of this stuff. I became very uncomfortable with meetings and I got uncomfortable with the meetings that I was doing and I get uncomfortable with people in AA. There's an old guy over in Pound and Fowler loving ever since i met him he said this at every meeting if he said the left he probably says it three times four times you know if i revert to the man i used to be i will surely drink again he says that you know he said that three or four times and i would be voting back to that person i used became very aware of that uh one night after driving over to power that's about 30-35 miles from a lot so it's a good drive it's about 30 35 minute drive uh good quiet time nice road really kind of lay back and kind of think what's going on in your life he said that you know and i went to follow that night to get away from people in alaska and that was they know i was starting to do these things that those tendencies were coming back closing up becoming private you know people saying how you doing oh just fine just fine everything's great lying like hell guts were rumba things weren't good at home again you know i was becoming very cranky edgy and cabin feverish couldn't stay put it was me it wasn't anything else i just wasn't doing what i was supposed to do when that was to tune you on in this program. And time had come for me to do it. So I took a pretty good force step. I went to a men's retreat in DeWitt and met a man, Patosky, one night. I was really cranky, real good. In fact, I guess Jim Cope was up here to state a conference last week and Cope was the retreat master at that retreat. He got me crankin' real good and really thinkin', and I didn't go to one of the sessions. I was standin' in my room, and this pretty old man from Petoskey came along, and he said, You got problems? And I said, Oh, yeah, I guess. And he said so do I. We sat in our room there and shut the door, and we shared our lives with each other about two hours. And it was an oh-yeah type of conversation. conversation he'd tell me something i'd say oh yeah well listen to this one baby you're looking at the exact important but it was nothing of them and uh we were both sharing things that we hadn't told anybody these are some of the real skeletons coming out of the club things we had done a lot of the emotional things we've gone through a lot of the mental thoughts we had you know the sick he meant it and mental stuff had gone in my mind anyway and uh he shared these with each other grabbed each other's hands a little prayer and walked out the door i hadn't seen them since i said goodbye from sunday and hell i don't know if he's dead or alive today but the irani thing is most of those things that i that i shared that night that i kept buried my life uh from the time i was three four five years old a lot of it yeah i shared it all mom open meetings lots of times lots of time some coffee shops, shared that with people. Once I got facing the truth and got talking about it, it wasn't all that bad. It was just something that festered my mind like a cancer. I felt guilty over it and depressed it. I depressed the guilt, I depressed their remorse and they just grew and grew and fester and fested. The more it got bigger, the more i tried to block it up but once i got it out hell it was just nothing i've talked about some of those things lots of times people don't even know what the hell i'm talking about but it was it was on the road to destroying me because once i got that out that afternoon that was in october that was about 1978 probably three or three eight or nine three or four years after i came into this program I had a monkey off my back they've been there more years than I've ever even tried to count I felt, I've had two great two real spiritual experiences if you will I don't know what the hell they are but I've got two experiences in my life in this program where I actually have felt this load come right off me one was a day on a Wednesday morning I left a Wednesday meeting at 11 o'clock and went back to work and that was the day that I truly accepted the fact i'm an alcoholic i want to be that way the rest of my life and i don't have to worry about drinking the rest my life because i'm not going to drink today i cried like a son of which i came into my office and i was crying and people looked at me and they thought oh my god what's wrong with him and i said just go back to work i'm okay you know but i couldn't stop the damn tears never gone through that in my life up to that point i couldn' t stop it good friend of mine came about these today you know you want to talk and i said yeah i want to talk with you i'm a full-blown alcoholic ain't that good billy james love that boy called he lives down in indiana he calls me about every two three weeks we got the other day good friend of mine and finally he came up to me a couple of years later are you serious i said yes what's going on i said i've been to an He said, good for you. A lot of time. Glad to hear it. I said, are you serious? Are you going to put this together? I said yeah, I think so. It's good. One of the other good experiences I had, a man named Jim Mahaney used to live up here. Owned a bar in Wausau. That was my bar and his brother is an AA over in Lansing. But a couple days after I came to meet him, I made a bet. I made the bet with Strow's Beer and Truck Drivers. Bet a case of beer. I won the bet. Football game was Saturday and I went to my first meeting on Tuesday. That game was on Saturday. I think he came in the following Monday or Tuesday carrying a case of Strow. He said, you win the bet! I said, take it! I said you ain't gonna believe this Danny! So that was an 8-8 meeting. There have been 4 8 meetings or 5 8 meetings since I saw you. I'm not drinking. He said, I don't want your damn beer. And he went over to that bar and he didn't even believe this but so he quit drinking and he's going to AA and Jim came over and he said, I understand you quit drinking and I said, yeah, and I spent a lot of money on this movie. He stuck his hand out and he says, congratulations. He said if you stick to this it's the best thing you've ever done and he goes, don't worry about your bar stools it's already been filled. I said I was down with that guy. 200 bucks a week for this guy And he said, don't worry about the bartender, it's already been filmed. What a big shot, aren't you? But I see him quite often and he told the bartend out. But he used to come in places of business all the time and he'd say, I remember once he said if you ever want to come over and just have a hamburger and a fun ice-colder for lunch, they have good food. They serve good food? He said, if you want to go over and have a hamburg you're more than welcome. And he said, do you want a coat? He said, they're on me and he said if anybody gets mouthy with you I'll take care of them. And I go in there every now and then. Never been the same since. My good friends all came up to me and said the same thing that Bill Keith said. It's about time. We're glad to hear it if we can help you and tell us what we should do. Why don't you come over to your house? Can you drink a beer? You know, can we bring beer? Should we bring beers? Keep going to our house. Do you want us to drink a drink? They ask good, decent, honest questions. The people that I drank with, they haven't seen them since. If I pass them on the street today, it's like two strangers in the night. They don't speak to me, I don't say to this. It never happened the day I quit. And I know this is happening to a lot of other people. and that hurt first the first time that i heard that i went through that it hurt but i see them today now they're just they look i always thought they looked bad then and they look worse today you know and by them you know so the grace of god that's not me you know somehow i came in this book there's a couple of guys who tried to come in today that we used to i used to drink with a lot on this part we're not good friends you know we're just we were just drinking buddies and morning buddies with his drinkers drumsticks sitting at a bar holding up cars look up on friday you know and they haven't made it sometimes i wonder you know why was i fortunate enough to be in the program up to up till today i've never had a moment necessary to go back out and drink I've never slept. I didn't have to go to a hospital or a dinner party where they call it the spin drive. The guys that were around when I came in, they grabbed us and they led us right by the ear. I was 34 and at the regular Wausau Wednesday night meeting that I went to there was one other person my age and I don't think there was anybody else below 45 years old and today I'm 49 and I'm the old man by 25 years everybody's young today but back then we were just a couple of young kids in there, you know that's what they called us new kids And these old timers, boy they grabbed right a hold of us and they led us around like this almost. And they had, there was Brighton and there was St. Lawrence. And there was a police decided, I wasn't general, I don't know what it was called, but there were only about three or four hostiles decided that we could get into. It was the way they missed a mile long. And we talked about it, you know, somebody said do you want to try getting into a hostel? And I said, Jesus, I don't know. What the hell is a hospital going to be for? And one of the boys said, no, we'll just fill him up with coffee and stay with him. And that's what they did. And I'm so grateful for them. Anyways, we got into that sixth step. And on that first step you become entirely ready. And I think that's the neatest step in this program. If you remember what I said earlier, I never want to be normal. Because I'm not entirely ready today, by a long ways. Because if the little bit of me becomes entirely ready every day that I live, because there's more and more things about me still being revealed to me that I didn't know yesterday. And normal people don't have those things happen to them. Normal people just kind of fly along every day. to be that way i don't want to accept things the way they are i want to give it my best shot and change the things i can and if i know i can't change things or people or places i got to change me i don' t get frustrated over there anymore i know where the challenge lies and challenge lies in changing me and my attitudes and that's what i've got to do that's why i become entirely regular every day there's days when i think god i've done it ain't gonna get no better well i started thinking i ain't going to get no better i'm on the downer i'll tell you a metal time now and the poor means start sliding in and because when i start thinking that i don't go to meetings two meetings this week i'll go to one next sunday This might be your Tuesday. I'm going to slide out until next week, because I'm okay. I get thinking that way. That's wrong for me. This guy's got to go to at least one meeting a week, share what's going on in his life, and I've got to see AA people. I live on AA people! I'm just like a damn parasite. I really do. I talk AA. I have to say a thing about drinking, honestly. A thing about 12 Steps or nothing. All I got to do is see you and say, hi, how are you doing? And I spend a lot of time around AA people. But there's a hell of a lot us in Owasso. There's a whole town. There's lots of drunks in that town. A lot of recovering drunks. We're everywhere now. White collar, blue collar, retired. You know, we've got more damn retired drunks from Owaso. And they're always downtown. I can run into them anywhere, and just seeing them. I'm not alone anymore. I'm no that odd duck out there trying to swim upstream. Hell, I'm in a whole group of people and we don't know which way we're going, and that's okay today. And I want to change every day. I want something going on in my life that's gonna make me do something to change me. My biggest problem today is attitude. The older I get, the smarter I think I get and that's the worst damn thing that would happen to me. When I start thinking, I'm in trouble. I heard that a long time ago. The worst thing an alcoholic can do is start thinking. That's bullshit. That's the truth. i start thinking i don't know how to think i know how to scheme i know a scam i know i thought i know how to be seen and cheating lie that's what i call thinking that's my thinking process when i start doing it i'm in trouble but i like challenges i want things that i can work on me something that i could change with me my attitude today has got to change there's a lot of things going on in this world that i don t like A lot of things. Things that affect all of us, and I want to scream and holler and raise hell about them. I got a daughter who's a super gal. I was cutting down trees this summer up the lake. I come out back, and she's got herself handcuffed with a pair of kitten handcuffs around this damn tree. I said, what are you doing? There's a hole up there. That's a Whitbecker's hole, you know. She's a green piecer. And she does that. She could be bolder. And she's a schoolteacher. She was a damn good schoolteach. but she's got all these little causes you know i don't know if she got this one but feel those little cars about me she's environmental that's what she is and she's a cookie and i wish i could do the things that she does but i can't do it the way that she doesn't because if i jumped into that i gotta make a big issue out of it you know i just can't give my piece and let it go i have to make a real big issue I can make causes out of some of these things, but I'd like to be able to, if it's the right for a congressman, sit down and write a letter that makes sense. It's not a bunch of BS. I can do those things today. I can, I can take a vote. I can give people telephone calls and ask somebody, ask them if I give them my opinion or tell them that I'd let them consider this when they're voting for something without losing my temper. I know our State Referee Law. We've talked about it. I could never talk to that man before because he'd say, well, I don't think that's the way it ought to go. Jesus, I lose it right then and there. What do you mean, you don't? Who the hell are you? I think it should be this way, and that's why you gotta do it. And I've used him totally. I can work on these things today. I can change my attitude. I can get my thoughts together and present them in a way that's logical so people can understand them, and if they don't agree with me, that's okay to do. At least I get a right to voice my opinion, and that's all I've ever asked for. And I get this strength, and I don't know where I get it from. Somebody asked me one time, you know, about three or four years ago, you know, somebody would like to say, how do you, what's your concept of God? I mean, seriously. I said, I don't know. She's got long blonde hair and, you know, above five foot five. And her name is Nancy. That's my wife. but I don't know what God is who it is, what it is but I go through a process in the morning of going through some prayers and asking Him to let me do His will whatever that may be and I start out God if there is a God because I think that's one of the most fascinating things about this program I've learned to believe in something and I don't know what, because I can't draw pictures. I used to have a picture that my grandmother was Irish Catholic and she had 19 pictures of the Pope and 18 pictures of President Kennedy on the wall with palm leaves all over the wall. That's the only vision of God I ever had, pictures of Christ with palm leaf and Jack Kennedy right next to him. Today I wish in my life I could say, which one's God? I think she'd have a hell of a time. But that never worked for me. And I've been to every religious affiliation and church that you can go to. I've gone to Baptist churches, Lutheran churches, Catholic churches, congregations, Presbyterians I've even been to a couple Pentecostal revivals one time or another and they all say they believe in God the boy can stand up to baptisters and tell them you're a Catholic you're going to get that you're not going to get thrown out because you're asked to leave I don't understand this thing about organized religion they all said they believed in something but if you're in the wrong place you're gonna get thrown out if you get Pentecostal and you're drunk you're going to get. Absolutely damn quick, I'll guarantee you that. There's some big boys who'll get you right out of there too, and that's another story all in itself. That was a good time. You know the guy that I believe in today doesn't really care if I'm Catholic, Baptist, doesn't care if I'm white, black, tall, skinny, short, fat, you know, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that I do the best that I can, give it an honest shot, stay sober, and when I get in trouble ask for help. It all walks in my life. I don't know nothing about nothing when it comes to living. I found that out. I don' t know nothing abut banking, I don´t know nothing the law, I don ´t know anything about medicine. When I am in trouble in those areas, I got to ask for help. And I find out the quicker I do it, the better off I am. I got a good friend laying up in Memorial Hospital right now with bacterial pneumonia. to kill Jim Henson. About 6'5", he went about 270, right now he's about 220. And I've been telling him for two months, here's a sick man wanting to go to a doctor. He used to carry, and he had a set of golf clubs that had to weigh 300 pounds. He'd carry his clubs and mine would go 18 holes and he'd be ahead of them. And he couldn't even pull a cart. The last time we played golf, he was so much out of gas. He was just exhausted. I said, Pete, you've got to do something. You're sick. No, I'm not. I don't care. The only thing he stayed on that doctor's office for was to go to my family reunion, which I didn't want any part of. I didn' t even go to it. I knew what it was going to be. It was going be a big full-blown drunk and And a lot of my relatives I don't like anyways, and I went up north. I didn't even stay home for it. For some reason he wanted to go to that. Two days after that reunion, he's from Churchill, Texas. But he likes all my uncles. They're all good friends. He was in the hospital with us. It almost killed him. And I used to be that way. I used To be that Way in my financial situation. I own a business. and I'm not a rich man and I have a shaky business for you we operated on shoestrings for a long time today we got some leather strings in out the salt cotton things are better today pay attention to your business but I never went to the bankers to get help until I was up to here in deep trouble there's always the warning signs if you recognize them go get help in areas where you're sick you're going to get well quick you let it go and let it fill it you're gonna be a fellow same with this program when there's things going on in your life that you don't understand and that you can't control and you don' t share them at a meeting with people you're gunna get sicker and the problems aren't gunna get any better and I don't I didn't like sharing all this stuff It isn't macho to say, I don't understand, you know, I've got financial problems. Or it isn't Macho to just say, I don' feel good and I'm taking three aspirin a day and I won't go away. It isn' Macho saying, I'm laying awake nice thinking about drinking. Because you've been sober for eighteen months. People that are sober for 18 months sure as hell aren't supposed to be thinking about drinking anymore. I remember that. Man, I was sober three years ago. I wasn't supposed to be doing a lot of things that I was doing at times. Especially thinking of drinking. Or especially thinking of running out on my wife. Or doing a lotta things. Sober people don't do that way. Oh, shit. They do. And you're gonna do it until you share it with somebody and get some answers as to why you're thinking that way, you know? These are called slur crimes. These things are what lead us into big drunks. Not getting honest with ourselves over the little things. I don't know if I ever got in trouble over big things in my life. Big issues, I can handle it. I always handled them once. The little ones that tick, tick,tick, tick. They grew and grew and drew that I can't handle. And I still can't those little things that give me something major. Give me a catastrophe and I'm as cruel as a cucumber. Give me little problem and I am going to bury it. I am gonna put it away to take care of it tomorrow next week next month next year before you know it I've got a handful of problems today and then I'm too embarrassed to go get help too embarrassed to say I failed too embarrassed to say I made a mistake that's me today and I've gotta work on those areas there's a part of the ninth and tenth step that or the eighth and ninth step you know it says you gotta make those amends and I think that's part of getting honest one of the real big areas that in my life was important when I got sober was getting squared away with things squared away with my folks When I came to AA, they didn't like them. They felt guilty for some reason that I was a student in this program. They didn't understand it. But the day that my dad and I got things squared away was a great day for me. And the great thing about it was that five or six weeks later he dropped dead of a heart attack. As bad as I felt about that, I felt just great relief knowing that him and I got the ax to it. We buried the haft in. We've been fighting for years. Years and years and years. And we finally became the slaves prior to him dying. I've got no regrets about losing him today because him and i were square. It was the first time we'd been square with each other in probably 15 or 20 years. like my dad i didn't like any of the things he stood for and it was because i knew i couldn't he had things i wanted he had respect he had friends he was success in in the way of being happy with himself despite of everything that's going on around him and i resented that We finally got things squared away. And I think if you haven't gotten squared up with your friends and your family and your parents, you better do it because you never know when these days are going to come. They might not be around to do it. It's damn hard going out to a cemetery. I met a friend of mine in this program, out to the cemetery. He was like, you know, he's crying like Alex, I didn't get to swear on my mom. I said, where is she? Went out to a cemetery. It was very difficult for him, but he had no other choice. The best he could do. But it was a lot easier for me to say to my dad, nose-to-nose, I always thought you were a son of a bitch, and I'd been wanting to. It was easier for me to say that to him than it was for Bill to say it to his mom. Or to make amends to his mother. It's a lot easier doing it face-to-face than just talking to him. So if you've got a chance to do it, do it. Because I don't know if I'd be here tonight if I hadn't got squid in my own hand. I wouldn't have the value of life today, but I've got any of this. I had it and I got the squid with me. The 11 steps, you know, like I said, I don't know who God is. I don' t know how he, yet her works. I just know that she does, he does. Works in my life. I've seen miracles. Things have happened in my life that shouldn't have happened. I never dreamt they would happen. Didn't think it was possible things like this could happen to me and my family. I see miracles happen to other people in this program I've seen people come into this program that I thought were going to die the next day. Hell, that guy can't live another 24 hours. John was yellow, couldn't even stand up straight, they were so weak. They're healthy non-human beings today. They got good health, they got good jobs. They're happy. This doesn't happen to other people often. Only happens to people who come and they may even stay in it. They've stayed sober. I think the hardest part about the 12-step is the last part. No. You gotta practice these principles for all of our affairs. On a daily basis, out there! Right out there. That's a son of a bitch right out there this is the center table of you people's easiest thing in the world it's easy to practice hey i know how to say the right things i know how to do the right thing i know i open a meeting i know how to close the meeting i don't know what i'm supposed to say and say let's talk about the first step fifth step seven step eleven step i can do it an hour i can do it my eyes closed in and on my head see one out there and practice this stuff you know that's the hardest part of that 12th step I didn't know what a spiritual experience was until after I had it. Says I gotta have one. I didn'y even know what else happened when it happened. Wasn't even sure what I'd gone through when I did it, until about a week or two later before I could put a name on it. I know I can get anybody out there sober and help others achieve survival. Bullshit. I can bring them to a meeting, I can show what's going on in my life in that meeting, I can give them a ride home, I could pump them full of coffee. If they want to quit drinking, that's their decision. If they wanna quit today and start next week, that is their decision, I've got nothing to do with it. Ain't a man out there that can say, he got me sober. And ain't no man out here that can stop me from taking a drink tonight if I want to take a drink. There's fifty miles between me and Owasso, and there's four old bars that I used to stop at regular. Well tonight coming up here, they can go buy wine. Well I know where the hell they are, and I can drive right down through St. Charles and Hemlock and get them all, you know, like she used to. and there isn't anybody in this room or an officer that can stop me it's my decision so i tell step easy the first part first part didn't even know what was going on sorry but i can't take any responsibility for getting anybody sober getting anybody done i think you're meeting somebody here to find the seed in them that's all there is to it hardest thing about that 12 step is me working this program out there with other people in this world i gotta love them i gotta accept them the way they are that's hard I've got to let them have the right to be right and I've gotta let them have the rights to be wrong without giving them a micro sense of it somebody's got an opinion they're just as entitled to decide we don't have to go far enough to handle because we disagree my wife and my children have a right to live their life the way they choose so I'll be pounding down how I think they ought to be I got a 15-year-old son who never saw a young man drink. Doesn't even know what the hell AA is all about. Doesn't know what it is to have a father come in and tear a house apart. And I've got three other kids that are older. My eldest daughter called me today and said, did you see Oprah? I guess it was on today or yesterday. There's a new organization for women. They're alcoholic and they have nothing to do with AA. Women's suffrage or something like that. She called me up today, this morning, she said... She called her wife and said, Did you see? I think it was over yesterday. And I said, no. She said, don't you guys have women in your AA meetings? I said yeah! This person on there with these ladies, said they don't have women at AA. It wasn't like women in AA. And I said, well, something's wrong because it says women. This is a program for women. It's pretty straight in the hopes. You know, it's an outlaw group. I don't know what the hell it is, but I really don't care. Because I don' t like the idea of anybody saying women can't come to AA because there's two old gals in this program. Betty Gee and an old gal named Layla from Lawson who moved when I was in California. They've been around this program for a while and they didn't have a car and I did. We went to a lot of meetings together, and I love these tales. But I had a lot problems in relationships with women. Not relationships, not sexual kind of things. I mean just getting along with them. Recognizing the fact that they have a place in this world other than the bedroom, the kitchen, the basement room, and the laundry. And that's an honest statement. They taught me women were real people. We went to meetings together for 3 or 4 nights and we used to drive out of town 25 miles this way, 15 mile cycle, 30 minute trip, stop and get a cup of coffee. I loved these gals. They were very, very instrumental in my early days of recovery. I had to share a lot of things with them. I didn't want to tell them. I could brag to the boys, but I didn't want to be honest with the women. Women are a very dear part of this program to me and I love to see them come in. There's a lot of women out there right now that need this program. And you know, I'm very big on Al-Anon too. It was very important for my wife to go to Al-anon and get her life straight. There's an old saying, if you sleep with a skunk long enough, a little bit of the stink is going to rub off on you. She was a pretty smart gal when I married her. You know, she was a damn good mother. In spite of what she had to live with, she did a pretty good job of raising her kids. And I can't take no credit for those first three. It's the absolute truth. But she was the mental wreck when I came into this program. two gals in Al-Anon got her head screwed back on straight. She's just as happy today as she was happy to be. And a long time ago, I came home from an A&E one night and she was on the telephone and all I heard her say was, this really threw me for a loop while I was there. She said, it isn't necessary for me, I don't need Bob to make me happy today. That's what I heard. And I just came through the back door, winging it in, and she was talking to somebody on the phone. She said, I don't need Bob to make me happy today. That really threw me. I said, you're a great little bitch. What do you mean you don't eat Bob to get you happy? I didn't talk to her for about three days. Finally, she said, You got a problem? You're damn right I do. Nobody could talk to you the other night when you said this. She was talking with some other gal in Illinois. And all she was talking about, you know, she finally found a God that she understood. That she could be comfortable with herself, with or without me. She doesn't need me to make her happy. I know that. We enjoy each other, didn't we? We enjoy one another's company. We enjoyed doing the things we did when we dated back in high school. I'm ready to get real stale when I was drinking. I'll tell you. Real stale. And today it isn't fluffy old stuff like it used to be, but it's a good relationship. It's a trusting relationship, and we're both happy doing what we want to do. She doesn't need me to make her happy, I don't need her to make me happy. We're just happy with ourselves. When you're happy with yourself, you're happier with everybody else around you. I found that out and took it I'm going to wait I want to thank you for being up here again have a good night