Step 1: Unless You Are 100% Convinced You Will Drink Again, You Will – Joe K.

What happened to that introduction I wrote out?
My name is Joe Krogan. I'm an alcoholic.
It is truly an honor to be here this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it.
I promise you this, that after this talk, the speakers are going to get really good this weekend.
So I'm looking forward to it.
This is exciting to be here.
I want to thank Jimmy and Mary Beth and whoever else was on the committee
who had anything to do with getting my wife Tammy and I here.
I'm here with my wife Tammy, and she is ITP.
She's ITP. Don't feel bad for her.
I learned what that is tonight. That means in the program.
She's one of us.
And thank God she's the better half, and I'm honored that she's here with me.
And George and Jeff who picked me up, that's some quinella.
Thank you guys.
And George, I want to tell you about George.
George takes this anonymity thing too far.
I got off the plane. He has a sign.
It's a blank sheet of paper.
True!
Thank you, George.
Great for the self-esteem.
That's the first time I've seen that.
But I love Alcoholics Anonymous, and I am so looking forward.
The men and women that are speaking this weekend are people that I've heard for 20 years.
Over 20 years in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I truly believe that if you don't have people that you emulate,
you will not grow.
And these are people that have...
And not because we're brothers and sisters in virtue.
We're not. We're brothers and sisters in defects.
And I love these people, each and every one of them,
because they have bared their souls and given me a safe place to be.
I can't thank them enough for that.
They saved my life.
And I love Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's the greatest thing in the world for me.
It's a place you can come at the darkest time of your life
or at the brightest time of your life.
So,
I want to welcome anybody in here, if there's any newcomers in here.
And I want to take a moment first, and I want to just...
If you'll indulge me, I want to take a second moment of silence.
I want to acknowledge the presence of my Creator.
And you can do with that moment what you see fit.
Normally, I pray for the speaker.
But...
No, on a serious note, on a serious note,
what I...
You people were...
You people were victims of a hurricane.
Last year, and perhaps some of you have seen the news the last few days.
So, I know that your hearts probably really bleed for a lot of these people.
And I know a lot of you people are still going through some of the wreckage of it.
So, I'll see you back here in a couple seconds, okay?
Thank you.
All right.
I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say tonight.
Step one, right, Lee?
Oh, he's gone.
I can do whatever I want now.
And I probably will.
My home group...
Oh, I love Alcoholics Anonymous.
I told you that, and here's why I love it.
We are...
This is the only place I've ever felt comfortable.
This is the only place I've ever felt like I fit in.
I love this.
I'm talking to people in the lobby, and people...
You know, they say, well, where are you from?
I'm from Florida.
Oh, Florida.
I got arrested there.
Only in Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's not we played a nice golf course there,
or you got nice beaches.
Another guy said he had his fifth DUI.
So, we speak our own language in here.
And then newcomers, when we talk to newcomers in Alcoholics Anonymous,
we don't give an answer, we explain the answer.
And simple...
You've got to realize that most simple questions
are like trick questions to alcoholics.
Like, do you have a job?
Or where do you work?
And we always start the answer...
You know you're in trouble when they start the answer with,
well, where do you live?
Well...
So, I was right at home here,
because I'm still, well, you know...
My home group is the Lifes of Beach group.
We meet on A1A in Palm Coast, Florida.
Perhaps you heard of that street.
I know Peter did.
And I love living there.
But I really am looking forward to the recovery this weekend.
I want to tell you a little bit about my drinking.
My sobriety date is September 12, 1990.
I don't remember a heck of a lot about September 12, 1990.
I remember a heck of a lot about September 11, 1990.
That was a bad day for me.
And I didn't plan on becoming an alcoholic.
I didn't grow up to be one.
I set out...
And it might amaze...
I ask people this all the time.
I have the privilege of taking meetings in the detox treatment centers.
And I ask them, I said,
did you ever get up in the morning and say,
today I'm going to put a hand grenade in my life?
Today I'm going to put a flamethrower to my life and I'm going to blow it up?
Absolutely not.
I got up every single morning of my life until September 11,
five days before my 40th birthday.
So, September 11, 19...
And I tried to be successful and happy as best I could.
And where it brought me on September 11
was to a Skid Row motel room in Fort Lauderdale
with my two-year-old son in that room and his mother.
Absolute, total degradation.
You know, there's three words that I did not need to find when I got here.
And I didn't understand really what my problem was when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I know that might sound strange,
but I really didn't.
I knew I drank a lot.
And I knew I did.
So, I was one of the lucky ones.
I did a lot of drugs, too.
I find alcoholics like drugs.
I don't know why.
They do.
And if you haven't done any too bad, it's too late.
But,
I didn't set out to be an alcoholic.
And I didn't set out for...
I didn't set out to be in that room on September 11, 1990.
And I could have been in jail for the things that...
for what my life looked like.
But, that was the day.
And I really believe this.
I believe that I did step one.
I think I believe that for a lot of us.
I believe that I did step one before I got here.
Because I think step one is an internal thing.
I think it's an inside job.
It's one of those...
It's one of those intense...
interior things.
It's not out here.
And by the way,
John was magnificent with his presentation.
And they talked about those two different types of religion.
And that one religion that's personal to you.
And I think that this whole program is personal.
And I don't think that I could have gotten here
until I absolutely...
something inside of me screamed out
in mortal pain.
And that's the day it did.
It screamed out.
But I had an epiphany that day.
And I'm not going to tell you your story.
I'm going to tell you...
mine.
And this is my experience.
And it may differ from a lot.
And I know the book talks about the different types of alcoholics.
There are those that...
It talks about those that are normal in every respect
outside of their drinking.
My wife's one of those.
Then it talks about those that have grave mental and emotional disorders.
I'm one of those.
I knew I was a screw-up.
But of course...
And it says in our book.
But it did not satisfy me to be told
I was maladjusted to life in full flight.
I was an outcast from reality
or an outright mental defective.
Although these things were true.
To some extent.
I don't know how some extent you're a mental defective.
But to some extent I was.
And...
But I believe that day I took step one.
And it was an internal thing.
Something happened inside of me.
What happened for me that day
was unlike the previous days.
I'm going to describe a little bit
of the alcoholic...
I'm going to describe a little bit
We talked in the doctor's opinion
about alcoholic torture.
And I thought alcoholic torture
was seeing a guy living under a bridge.
I thought that was torture.
I didn't realize for me what alcoholic...
I'm going to tell you what it looked like for me.
Here's what it looked like for me.
Anybody ever remember
cracking your eyelids open after a binge?
Or a spree or whatever you want to call it?
Remember that?
When you crack your eyelids open
and the first thought in your mind goes,
damn, I'm not dead.
I know there's people in here
that felt that way.
And then...
And then the terror comes on you.
It's all gone.
The money's gone.
The alcohol's gone.
The drugs are gone.
The job's gone.
She's gone.
It's all gone.
And you sit there in absolute horror.
And then I would mount my defense.
Merging from a spree remorseful
with a first thought,
a firm resolution not to do these things again.
Not to drink again.
It was my pattern.
And I would mount a defense
and I would buy into this defense every time.
I would buy into my own BS.
I would say, that's it.
I'm done.
I swear to God I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm going to go get a job.
I'm going to turn my life around.
I was always turning my life around.
I was always going to grow up.
I was always going to straighten out.
And that's it.
I mean it.
I'm going to be a dad.
I'm going to go get a job.
I'm going to put some food in this place.
I'm going to get my life...
I'm going to put my life together.
And I absolutely meant it from the bottom of my heart.
I would look at my little boy
and I'd cry tears.
And I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
And I don't know,
sometimes it was an hour.
Sometimes it was a day.
But it wasn't very long at the end
when I would simply forget that I quit.
It was that easy.
I'd just simply forget.
And I would come up with some trivial excuse
like the book talked about.
You know, I'd look at the newspaper.
I'd be looking for jobs.
And I'd say, you know...
And I had that terrible...
You know what it was called?
Sobriety.
I was sober.
That's what it was called.
And I was...
Because I didn't know that's always been my problem.
And I would sit there
and I would look at the jobs
and I would...
You know, ah, heck,
all the good jobs are taken.
You know, tomorrow I'm going to get up real early
and straighten my life out.
And I did that over and over again.
Until September 11th.
And on September 11th,
I'm going to tell you what happened.
September 11th, I woke up,
cracked my eyelids open.
Damn, I'm not dead.
And I started the same thing.
And it was all gone again.
I burned my life to the ground one more time.
And I started to mount the defense.
The alcoholic dance.
And I started to mount that defense.
And something inside me said,
and I said, that's it, I'm done.
I'm not going to drink anymore.
And something in me went,
yes, you are.
You can't quit.
And that was different than any other day.
Now, I know that some people come here
to straighten out.
I did not.
I can't tell you that.
This is the day before my last drink.
And what happened to me that day
is I had an awakening.
And I realized what my real problem was.
My problem was not alcohol and drugs.
My problem was lack of alcohol and drugs.
My problem was sobering up.
I couldn't take it.
For me,
sobering up at this point,
my drinking was like holding your breath.
I could only do it for short intervals.
But sooner or later,
I needed to gulp.
And George read it.
The ease and comfort
that comes at once with a few drinks.
And I would be in this motel room
in absolute poverty
and in degradation.
And I would take a few drinks
or I would smoke something
or I would snort something.
And within a few minutes,
I would do this.
Oh, hell, things aren't that bad.
What was I so worried about?
And I would do that over and over again.
The delusion.
But that day, I couldn't do it.
And I realized, I said,
I can't quit.
And I'm going to go on to the end.
And I knew for a fact,
something inside of me knew.
Something inside of me broke.
I knew for a fact
that I was going to die of this disease.
I didn't know when.
I didn't know how.
But I knew it wasn't far away.
I was pretty close to death at this point.
My teeth were falling out of my hands.
I was in a coma.
I was in a coma.
I had huge sores all over my body.
I was absolutely unemployable.
And I knew that I wasn't going to last long.
Whether it be in the gutter
or whether it be in jail,
I knew I was going to die in a short time.
And I made a decision.
I said, that's it.
What's killing me is quitting
and then failing over and over again.
And I made a decision that day
to quit quitting.
I'm not going to quit anymore.
I don't care.
I'm going to drink until it dies.
I'm going to do whatever it takes to do that.
Now, it's crazy,
but I was,
I had a meeting last night
and there was a new guy sitting there.
And you could tell this guy was in pain.
And he told that exact same story.
He had five days sober
and he was so angry.
He said, I don't know why I'm sitting here
and listening to these stories.
They don't do anything for me.
They only make me more angry
that you people are happier
that you're getting this.
He goes, I know I'm going to use again.
I know it.
And I don't even care.
When I do it, I say the heck with it.
I knew exactly what this guy was talking about.
And he stormed out.
He stormed out of the meeting.
And that's what happened to me that day.
I surrendered not to get sober.
I surrendered to this disease.
It beat me.
It had me licked.
And if you look in the big book later on,
when I finally read that book years later,
there's this passage in there
where I believe Bill
actually experienced his first step.
Where I believe he hit bottom.
And it's on page 7 and 8
is where he said,
he said,
so now I was to join the endless procession
of sots that had gone on before me.
Quick sand stretched around me in all directions.
I had met my match.
Alcohol was my master.
He wasn't surrendering to get sober.
He was surrendering to die.
This disease beat him.
And that's exactly what got me here that day.
And I would have died.
It doesn't sound like that's the last day I drank,
but it is the last day.
I drank except for an act of providence.
And it says that in the 12 and 12.
It says that we have warped our minds
to an act of self-destructive drinking
that only an act of providence will cure.
And what happened for me was that
somebody knocked on the door of that motel room.
Now, at this stage of your drinking,
you do not open the door, okay?
You got tape on the peephole.
Right?
Right?
I mean, Publisher's Clearinghouse
is not out there with the big check.
There's no good news, okay?
The phone rings, you have a heart attack,
if you have a phone.
So, but there was a knock on the door that night
and I didn't know, but I opened the door.
And for years, I wondered after I got here,
why did I open the door?
What made me open the door that night?
I finally figured it out
because I had nothing left to lose.
I wasn't afraid anymore.
I didn't have to pretend anymore
to be anything other than what I was.
A drunk.
And I was going to die a drunk.
That's the liberation that happened.
I mean, it's kind of a crazy way of looking at it,
but really, that's how it happened to me.
I didn't start out to be like that.
Let me assure you, I loved to drink and drink.
I used to own a bar on South Beach.
I loved drinking.
It was wonderful.
Wonderful experience for me.
I set out.
I moved from a little town in upstate New York,
Niagara Falls.
I moved down to Miami.
I went to Fort Lauderdale for spring break
and I never went home.
That was it.
I said, man,
somebody stuck something in my mouth.
They gave me something to drink.
I said, this is it.
I'm going to do this until the day I die.
Anybody said that?
I had found...
What was it?
The truth that he talked about in there.
I'd found the truth.
It was nothing less than an absolute,
absolute spiritual awakening.
I'll tell you, not only did it...
You know, I remember early on in the 70's
because we read it.
The feeling is so elusive.
We can't really describe the feeling
because it's spiritual in nature.
For me, that's the way it was.
It was spiritual in nature.
And I remember I used to read up
on what happened to me.
I'd get high one night.
I'd be drinking.
And I started using other substances,
but it was always to control and enjoy my drinking.
Because the first thing,
the first thing you've got to do
is control that throwing up thing.
If you've got to control that thing,
that's embarrassing in the bar
when you're talking to a girl.
Excuse me.
I'm fine now.
So, there were other substances
and I found that I could quit drinking too
for long spells with enough drugs.
And it kept me out of the bars.
But it brought me to jail.
It brought me to jail a lot.
But,
I have severe ADD.
You're going to have to keep me on track.
Can you rewind that and tell me where I was?
Tell me where I was.
Okay, no.
I know I was someplace in New Jersey.
No.
Yes, I opened the door.
No, I was talking about why I drank.
And I love to drink.
That's what I was talking about.
Because it was spiritual to me.
And I remember reading an article one time.
I did some cocaine and I remember.
I thought, wow, that was pretty interesting last night.
And there was an article in Life Magazine
or Time Magazine or something about cocaine
back in the 70's when it first came out.
And I read it.
And by the way, it did say it was non-addictive.
But here's what it said when it described the effect.
You know what it said?
Creates a sense of well-being.
That's what I always wanted.
That sense of well-being.
That's an internal thing.
It's not an external thing.
It's not an external thing.
See, and I didn't know it.
For years, I thought alcohol...
And people used to accuse me early on,
you're drinking and doing a little bit too much.
And alcohol was...
I thought it was an accessory to my life.
Tonight I'm going out.
We're going out dancing.
I'm going to go out and meet some girls.
I'm going to go out and get lucky.
And, you know, we'll go out drinking.
Alcohol soon became the main event.
Who cares about the girls?
Who cares about the dancing?
Who cares about the sunshine in Florida?
I didn't.
And I loved it.
I never saw the beach.
I might as well have grown mushrooms
for the last five years I was there.
Little by little, I gave up everything
that meant anything to me
that had any joy in my life.
And I substituted it.
And there's a line in Bill's story.
I love this line.
There's a line in Bill's story.
And he said,
they shipped us over there.
I soon became lonely.
And I turned to alcohol again.
See, that's what I did.
I turned to alcohol for everything.
Fixed my loneliness.
Then he talks about when the stock market crashed.
I had a few drinks
and that old fierce determination came back.
I could keep that lie in place.
I could mount that defense.
I'm going to be alright tomorrow.
I'm going to fix everything tomorrow.
And I did that for years.
Over and over and over again.
Meanwhile, life is deteriorating
and we can't differentiate the true from the false.
And the thing is that I really thought
the only time I felt normal,
that's why I was spiritual,
the only time I felt normal,
we can't...
that the alcoholic life seems the only normal one,
the only time I felt normal
was when I was high.
That's when I felt normal.
I liked the guy I was when I was high.
So it was a spiritual experience for me.
And like my friend Scott always says,
that's why it's going to take a spiritual experience
to fix it.
Because that's what it did for me.
And in that motel room that night,
I opened the door
and my brother walked in.
And I hadn't seen him
for many years.
I owed him money.
I had a motto back then,
if I know you, I owe you.
I owed everybody money.
And he walked in and he took a look at the room
and my little boy in these filthy diapers
with watered down milk in a bottle
and the horror that was my life at that moment.
And I saw my life through his eyes
with no rationalization,
no justification, no excuses.
I was absolutely horrified.
For the first time I saw my life
through your eyes.
And I couldn't hide anymore.
The truth broke through.
I heard somebody describe the bottom
as when bad things start happening faster
than you can lower your standards.
I couldn't lower them any lower that night.
Well, what happened that night,
he took one look.
He didn't admonish me.
He didn't say anything.
He took a piece of paper with his phone number on it
and he said,
if you want help, I'll watch your son.
Call me.
Now, I don't know why,
I just hours earlier,
I made a decision to drink till I die.
And I was willing to go to any length to get it
and quit pretending.
But somewhere when he said that,
there was a little light at the end of a tunnel
and I said, you mean there's a way out?
But I knew I didn't have the way.
And I think what happens in step one,
I think that, you know,
we were talking about it before this.
And there's a book out.
It's called, Not God.
And the premise of the whole book is really quite interesting.
It says that there is a God in Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's written about Alcoholics Anonymous.
It's a history of it.
And the premise of the book tells about
what our whole kind of mission is.
There is a God and He's not us.
And that's it.
See, I never had room for God.
Now, if you would have asked me in my life,
do you believe in God?
I was always hedging my bets.
So I would say, yes, I believe in God.
But if you followed me around with,
with a video camera,
you would go, crap,
there's a guy who does not believe in God.
Because he had absolutely no influence in my life.
I was the final authority on everything.
I was the final authority on who you were.
Because I would judge you.
I was the final authority on everything in my life.
But I thought I believed in God.
And what happened for me was that
that night,
I don't know why,
but the only faith I'd ever had,
the only religion I'd ever had,
the faith in me,
my God broke.
And I lost faith in me.
And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that night
that I could not,
I was trapped in a life I could not get out of.
And I didn't know there was a way out.
Didn't even know if there was.
But I made the call because there was nothing else to do.
And on September 12th I made the call and He came and got us.
Now I tell you what,
I really am an alcoholic.
I'm going to give you my drinking,
my drunk-a-log.
Here's how I drank.
I didn't stop.
I ran out.
I didn't quit.
I got caught.
I never drank to escape.
I drank to show up.
That's all you need to know.
That describes my drinking career for 20 years.
That's what I did.
And I thought,
and I had rang out the last bit of joy and fun
in the drinking.
But that night I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt,
and we tell this to newcomers all the time,
there was no more fun in it.
There was no more joy in it.
You couldn't ring it out.
There was no way.
I couldn't bring one more.
I couldn't bring myself to even use.
I was trapped in that place it talks about.
We can't picture our life with alcohol.
We can't picture it without it.
We were at that jumping off place.
We wished for the end.
That's what I did.
I wished for the end.
And so I believe that step one for me
was an internal process,
and that process happened that night in that room.
I usually call it,
and I hate to, you know,
unfortunately I'm the guy that gets to do step one,
but step one is the bad news.
The rest of the steps are going to be good news.
I get to give you the bad news.
Here's the bad news.
That's how my sponsor gave it to me.
He said, let me give you step one
in a language you can understand,
and I won't step on Polly's toes
because I can't wait to hear on step two,
but step one and step two are so connected.
Unless you know you're absolutely drowning,
you won't scream for help.
Unless you know you're in an absolutely
hopeless situation,
you won't scream out for help.
So that's step one.
And here's what he said to me.
He says, let me explain step one
in a language you can understand.
You're screwed.
That's it.
That's all of it.
And I said, well that doesn't sound
very good.
I said, sheesh.
He said, unless you're absolutely
100% convinced that you will drink again,
you will drink again.
I went, what?
Can you run that by me again?
That was like algebra.
He said, unless you're 100% convinced
you will drink again,
you will drink again.
On your own power, you cannot stop.
There's a line in the book,
in Fred's story.
It says, my friends prophesied
if I had an alcoholic mind,
the day would come
when I would drink again.
We can prophesy it.
If you're an alcoholic of my type,
Kreskin says you will drink again.
Right?
You will.
And I said, well Jesus,
that's terrible.
I said, according to you,
it's going to take a frigging miracle.
He said, that's step two.
And that's really what it is.
Because there is no human power.
I was absolutely,
and we went on,
and I'm not going to get it.
I'm not an expert.
And I'm not a teacher.
All I am in Alcoholics Anonymous
is a satisfied customer.
Somebody asked me,
how did you get invited here?
I said, I'm a blowhard
that doesn't say no.
It's the best to my recollection
I can tell anybody.
But the truth of the matter is,
I'm not going to tell you about it.
I mean, I'll touch on it a little bit
about the phenomenon of craving
because he started to explain to me
because it was important.
I didn't understand.
It's kind of like back in medieval days
when they thought that the sun
revolved around the world,
around the earth.
And you know,
you could make a case for that.
You'd get up and say,
look, the sun comes up over there.
It goes down over there.
I could make a good case for that.
But none of the maps fit.
There was always these things.
The stars didn't kind of go
in the right place.
You'd have to kind of,
well, we don't understand all that.
But we know that the sun
doesn't mean that there's an order to it.
But when somebody finally said,
wait a minute,
if you reverse this order,
if you realize that the earth
goes around the sun
and all the maps worked
and the stars were in the right place,
everything seemed to make sense.
And there's a joke about a woman,
a man whose wife has a hearing loss.
And he calls a doctor.
He says, see,
you've got to understand
what the problem is.
He says, doc,
my wife's got a hearing loss.
She can't hear.
He said, really?
He said, what makes you think so?
She's right on top of her
before she hears you.
He says, well,
how close?
I don't know.
He says, well,
tonight when you go home,
find out.
So he goes home that night.
He opens the front door.
He says, honey,
I'm home.
What's for dinner?
She's at the kitchen sink
washing dishes.
Doesn't turn around.
He gets a little closer.
Honey, I'm home.
What's for dinner?
Nothing.
Gets to the kitchen door.
Honey, I'm home.
What's for dinner?
Still doesn't turn around.
He grabs her by the shoulders,
turns her around.
He said, honey,
I'm home.
What's for dinner?
She goes, you know what?
Twice the time.
So I was that guy.
I thought it was you.
I had it wrong, man.
I was the sun revolves around me,
and that's what I did all those years
and couldn't figure it out,
but he explained it to me,
there's a chance
of ever moving in to T.C.
Graves.
There, begs to be heard,
a part when it talks about Dr. Bob
and it says that he had tried
spiritual methods to recover
and never could get sober.
And then Bill said,
here's what Bill did,
he said,
when I told him about Dr. Silkworth's
description of an alcoholic,
meaning the phenomenon of craving,
and the hopelessness of the disease,
meaning that you will drink
when you don't want to,
he said,
Dr. Bob started to pursue
that spiritual remedy
with a fervor he had never had before.
The missing piece.
I'm not saying,
we know this isn't self-knowledge.
We know that.
This is not a self-help program.
This is a God-help program.
But unless,
it made so many things clear.
I thought I was a screw-up.
This is not about getting good.
This is about getting God.
And it doesn't matter
where we come from.
It doesn't matter what background we come from.
Everybody in this room
is absolutely doing the best they can.
You are.
And sometimes even I can be so intolerant about that.
You know,
he explained to me a little bit
about the phenomenon of craving.
Because I didn't understand it.
When I heard that word,
the phenomenon of craving sounds to me
like a guy sitting around doing this.
I need a drink.
I need a drink.
Now, it is that.
But here's what it looks like in my life.
I'll have another.
Right?
I'll have another.
And I remember I'd go out
and then things eventually get worse.
You know, I would go out.
I'd get my paycheck.
I hated people that could get paid on Friday
and show up for work on Monday
with lunch money and cigarette money.
I hated those guys.
I would get my paycheck.
I said, that's it, man.
Here's the electric money.
Here's the rent money.
Grocery money.
I'm putting it in this pocket.
I got 20 bucks.
I'm going to go have a couple drinks.
And then little by little,
I'd say, who the hell needs groceries?
I could stand to lose a few pounds.
And then a little later on,
you know, I like candlelight.
Who needs electricity?
And eventually, you know,
my mom will take us in.
Give me another round, you know.
And little by little,
I would rationalize and justify.
It was all okay once I had a few drinks in me.
The old fierce determination,
that illusion.
So that phenomenon of craving,
once he explained that to me,
see, my whole life was...
My son was born.
I remember when my son was born,
I thought this will straighten me out.
And I'm going to have a child.
And I always wanted a child.
And I went to the nursery the day he was born.
I fell madly in love with that little boy.
Okay.
He was in the...
In the nursery.
And I picked him up
and I held him in my arms
and I cried like a baby.
And I'm telling you,
it was like a light switch went off in my life.
Something changed that moment.
I have never fallen in love
with another human being like that.
I knew there was a person in this world
that I would do anything in the world for,
that I would lay down in front of a bus for.
And I meant it.
And I put him down in the crib
and a couple of my buddies said,
let's go have a drink
to celebrate the birth of your child.
Eight days later.
I don't even know how they got home from the hospital.
See, when I drink,
that's what I do is drink.
And it doesn't matter what it is.
I had a job one time.
I remember when my son was born,
I tried to get a real job.
I was 36 years old.
I'd never had a real job.
And I went down to get this job
and I applied for this job.
Back in the mid-80s,
some of you will remember,
they would make you take a polygraph test.
And they would make you run your credit.
And then they would make you take a urinalysis, right?
And they'd come back.
And the next day,
they sent me to do all those things.
And they came back with the reports.
And they looked at the reports
and the guy said,
geez, you lie.
You do drugs.
And you owe everybody in the world money.
He goes, you're perfect.
When can you start?
I started selling cars that day.
Now, I know it's hard to believe,
but I really took to that profession.
And listen, you want to talk about the phenomenon of craving?
I'll tell you what it looks like.
Here's what it looks like.
The boss liked me.
He says, kid, he was my age.
He called me kid.
Kid, he must have been from New Jersey.
He said, kid, I'm going to make you my superstar.
I'm going to take you under my wing.
That month, I became the top salesman.
At the end of the month,
they had a meeting.
There were 18 salesmen in the room
and they were handing out commission checks.
He gave me a commission check for $7,500.
Calls me up and gives me a check for $7,500.
My first legitimate job.
And then, he says,
in the salesman of the month,
and he had every bonus there was,
and he calls me up again.
And he gives me another check for $4,500.
It's $12,000 if you're new.
I don't want you to spend the next 20 minutes
figuring that one out.
Go back to looking for her.
So, he gives me, I get $12,000 my first month.
I thought, jeez, what was I so worried about?
I think there's a story like this in the book.
I swear I said this.
Boss, I'm going to be back after lunch.
I've got to go show a car.
16 days later.
Now, wait.
That's not the crazy part.
I know you guys have done crazy things.
You've done crazy things.
You've done crazier things.
Here's the crazy part.
On day 16, I put a shirt and tie on
and went to work like nothing happened.
I just showed up.
They didn't even remember me.
They yelled at me for a little while.
I said, get out there and sell a car.
I said, I love this job.
That's what the phenomenon of craving
looks like in my life.
But that's not the crazy part of step one.
That's not the part.
On the top of page 24, it says,
there comes a point in the drinking of every alcoholic
when the strongest desire to stop drinking
is of absolutely no avail.
See, some of you used willpower.
Some of you used self-knowledge.
Those are the only two tools I think we have available to us
is willpower and self-knowledge.
And Frank explained to me what that statement meant
because I didn't quite understand.
Frank always said, wait,
you're putting things where you felt more confused afterwards.
He would say, what that means is that
wanting to stop drinking has no effect on stopping drinking.
I went, what?
See, I thought, armed with a firm desire,
a true resolution not to drink again
was good for something.
It was good for nothing.
Anybody in here quit?
Ment it from the bottom of your heart?
Ever drink after you've done that?
Ever done it more than once?
Well, you're either an idiot or an alcoholic.
Frank told me I was both.
He liked me.
We can fix alcoholic.
But, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous,
because of you,
I get to move virtually undetected
to normal people today.
It's true.
Anyway,
that's step one.
I'll tell you what step one is.
And now, it was easy to admit
and have step one in my life
when it came to the alcohol and drugs.
And I,
when all of a sudden,
a week turned into a month
and a month turned into six months
and six months turned into a year,
I started to have,
I started to come to believe.
I started to come to believe
that just maybe,
see, because I'll tell you why.
I sat there in this,
I ended up in a treatment center
for indigents in Miami.
It was a six-month treatment center.
And I remember the guy,
that's where I got introduced to you.
Because I was five days before my 40th birthday.
Let me tell you how dumb I was.
I'd never been to a detox,
never been to an AA meeting,
didn't even know you existed.
There was something so prideful in me
that I could not admit I was wrong.
I was going to get up,
and fix this thing again.
I was going to do this thing until,
I was going to fix it.
And I ended up,
and this guy brought this meeting in,
and I remember him because
he had what I wanted.
He had a full pack of Marlboro Reds and a watch.
I thought if I could get my hands on those,
I'd be gone.
But he was a young guy,
about a 28-year-old guy,
clean cut, nice clothes.
He came up in a car,
and it was a Friday night.
And I'm sitting there on my 40th birthday
in a treatment center
for indigents.
And I thought,
look what my life had become.
Three words I do not need to find.
Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
I remember hearing those in a meeting.
I did not need the definition of those.
That was inside.
Matter of fact,
when people introduced themselves as alcoholics,
I thought it was too clean of a word for me.
I didn't belong here with you.
There was something much worse wrong with me,
is what I thought.
I didn't belong here with you.
I didn't belong here with you.
I didn't belong here with you.
I didn't think this thing would ever work for me.
And this guy said a couple things that night.
I didn't agree with one.
He said,
you never have to take another drink or drug again
if you don't want to.
And I knew that was crap.
Because I had not wanted to.
And I drank again.
But he said something else that I hung on to.
He said,
you never have to feel the way you feel again tonight.
And that's what I needed.
I got out of that treatment center
and I went where every good alcoholic goes.
Mom, I'm home.
And I had six months sober.
And I met the man that would change my life.
You see, I believe that we're all here
through the kindness of strangers.
This man, I was moved in Central Florida.
There's a retirement community.
You've got to be a thousand years old
to live in this county.
My folks bought a,
you know, they call them manufactured homes.
They're like a trailer in a house.
I call it a halfway house.
It's a halfway trailer,
halfway a house, right?
So, I'm living in this house with Mom.
And my son and his girlfriend were put in an apartment,
but she was still actively using,
so I couldn't go back there.
And this guy, this old man,
was watering his lawn next door.
This guy was so old.
And he was my age.
He's the age I am now.
But he looked older.
He looked like Bob.
No.
He looked old.
And he said,
hey kid, I hear you had some problems with alcohol.
You want to go to a meeting tonight?
And you're staying home with Mom.
A meeting is better than nothing.
So, yeah, sure.
And I went to a meeting with him.
I smoked all his cigarettes,
burned up his gas.
And of course, you know,
we go to a meeting
and there's probably 50 guys.
They're a thousand years old.
You can't put together a whole set of teeth.
I'm sitting there angry as can be.
Just like that kid last night.
And I'm sitting there.
These guys are,
they're so lucky I'm desperate
or I wouldn't be here.
But I didn't know that's how it works.
Because you need that desperation.
I heard somebody say one time to a newcomer,
he said, I don't know if I can stop drinking.
You've got to have a little faith.
No, you don't.
You've got to have no faith.
That's the prerequisite.
You've got to be broken.
And here we acquire it.
We approach it.
And you're going to approach
what they talked about in that,
what John so eloquently talked about.
Where you're going to find a God
that's personal to you.
We don't care what you call Him.
We don't care who He is.
It's going to be a God of your own understanding here.
One of the guys I sponsor
taught me something one morning.
He said, if you want God to be real in your life,
you've got to treat Him like He's real.
And I've taken that to heart.
But he took me to meetings
and Frank began to take me through the steps
and talk to me about this
and talk to me about step one.
And I watched Frank.
Frank was not a big book thumper.
Frank was a big book liver.
We never went to meetings with that car
not full of people.
He was a guy that set me free in so many ways.
When I talked to him about God,
I talked to him about prayer.
I'd say, I have an issue with God.
And he'd say, that's alright.
You don't need to believe in God.
You've just got to start living like you believe in God.
Let's see what happens.
He set me free and I fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous
and I began to do this deal.
But what I did was,
I just realized I was powerless,
powerless over alcohol and drugs.
See, I didn't realize there's a thing...
We call it, with some of the guys I sponsor,
we call it PMS.
Pride, Sex, and Money.
And little by little,
step one, for me, over the years,
I've had to get current with step one
in each one of those areas.
Unfortunately for me,
they say there's two ways to learn.
The feather or the brick.
Now the feather is that little, small,
small voice or you learn from somebody's advice
and you follow it.
The brick is the blue lights in the rear view mirror.
I'm a brick guy.
And usually it has to be ripped from my hands.
And I've had over the years,
the great thing...
Here's what happens in step one.
Here's the great thing that happens in step one.
It's like the Matrix.
I don't know if anybody's ever seen that movie
with the red pill and the blue pill.
Remember that?
If you take...
Take this blue pill, you'll go back to sleep.
You won't ever remember this happened.
Go back to drinking, everything.
You take the red pill,
and all we promise you is the truth.
But you can never go back to the way it was.
And I've heard it said in here.
If you've really done step one,
you've enjoyed your last drink.
You may not have had it,
because it won't keep you sober,
but you've enjoyed it.
And that's exactly what has happened with me.
Not only with the alcohol,
but also with these other areas in my life.
I've had to get current with step one over the years.
At five years sober,
I built a life out of self-will
because the alcohol and the drugs were gone,
so I was now able to have the best job I'd ever had.
I married a beautiful woman
that I met in Alcoholics Anonymous
who was an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
We fell madly in love.
Boy meets girl on AA campus.
That was us.
And we moved to West Palm.
Got a big house down there.
It was the best job I'd ever had.
And...
But I wasn't going to meetings anymore.
I was a little busy.
And what happened is after a short time,
page 66 it says,
the alcoholic insanity returns
and then we drink again.
You see, my problem has always been the insanity.
This craziness that makes me drink when I don't.
The delusion.
And the illusion, as Bill calls it.
And here's what happened.
We started fighting.
I was busy.
I couldn't get to meetings.
I was absolutely the same character I was before.
See, I believe step one, part A,
I didn't have a problem with it at that time.
I could see the phenomenon.
I could see when I drank I wanted to continue to drink.
Better not drink.
But I forgot.
I thought step one, part B said
that my life was unmanageable because of the alcohol.
And I took that as far as I could get it.
And I didn't realize my life is unmanageable by me,
not by the alcohol.
This is not a half way, there's no half measures here.
There's no middle of the road solution for us.
This is a way of life.
If you're an alcoholic of my type.
Now some people can do it.
I mean, our hats are off to you.
Right?
That's what the book says.
And I've always been one of those guys.
I've been looking for graduation day since I got here, you know.
Is it now?
Is it now?
Yeah, go ahead.
Try and see.
Rest on your laurels and see what happens.
And that's exactly what happens.
I'm waiting for the day when I have the power.
I'm waiting for the day when I have the power again.
And I've just experienced that in my life again in a different way.
Well, what happened was my wife threw me out of the house and divorced me.
And the last word she said to me as I'm leaving the house was,
can't you see that all your relationships end the same?
This was five years sober.
Five and a half years sober.
And I'd never heard that.
Shortly afterwards I was so angry,
so enraged.
That it affected my job.
And within a few months they fired me from the best job I ever had.
So now I'm back on the street.
I've got my little boy.
We're back in a little apartment.
I'm angry.
I can't eat.
I can't sleep.
I'm just a total basket case.
And I'm going to a meeting.
To go to a meeting, I have to look at a where and when.
I've got no program.
My sponsor's up north.
I don't even talk to him anymore.
Because how many times can you say, oh, I'm okay.
And finally one night, I got a call.
I circled the bar.
And I thought, you know, if I ever go back out and drink,
I'm going to drink there, man.
That's the bar I want to drink in.
There was something real attractive about it.
It had a name I liked.
It said, Bar.
I thought, I could be a big shot in there.
It had the parking lot in the back.
Opened at 8 in the morning.
You know, my kind of place.
And I drove by that bar like a buzzard for six months.
I mean, for six nights.
But it's hard to go drinking when you know that your lifestyle is about to change.
See, I don't know about you, but I know that when I drink, my lifestyle changes.
There was absolutely, and that's where step one, I believe, saved my life that night.
There was absolutely no illusion that I would be drinking at the piano bar with stemmed glassware.
I may have glass stemware, but it won't be at the piano bar.
And on day seven, I was so enraged, I left my little boy asleep in that apartment and I walked,
I got in my car and I drove across town to that bar and I said, I'm going to drink tonight.
And I don't care.
I was in so much pain, I didn't care.
And I knew, just like that guy last night, that young guy at the meeting said, I don't care.
That was my only relief.
I had finally, that's my only relief.
Quitting is not an option.
And I knew I was going to drink.
I knew I was going to drink.
And I drove across town to that bar and I was parked at a red light one block away and I had butterflies in my stomach.
I can feel them.
Because I was nervous.
I knew what I was about to do.
Matter of fact, I knew I needed the drink was the only way to stop these butterflies.
Because it's hard to drink when you've got five and a half years sober and you know what's about to happen.
And I looked over on the side while I was at the red light and there was a broken down van with its hood up.
And the front license plate said, have you prayed today?
And I did something really stupid.
I said the serenity prayer.
And I ended up in what I call a sober blackout in a meeting across town I'd been to one time a year earlier.
And I walked into that meeting and I stepped in the back of the room and I sat down.
I was ten minutes away from taking a drink.
And I stepped in there and the guy at the podium just like this.
And he said, is there anyone else celebrating an anniversary in the month of September?
It was my sixth year anniversary.
And like a dummy I raised my hand.
And he said, here's what we do at this meeting.
We all share a little bit on how we stayed sober.
All the celebrants.
There's about six or seven.
But we have a visitor.
Why don't you start us off?
And I'm thinking, oh, God, I've got to come up with some classic stuff here.
And I got up to the front of the room and this is what happened.
Once again, the kindness of strangers saved my life.
See, I believe step one really saved me that night.
I believe my...
That thing inside of me that knew what was about to happen.
And I got up and I turned around and I looked out at the crowd and I couldn't talk.
All I could do was cry.
And I started to sob.
And I just...
I think I blurted out, you know, I don't know how to do this thing.
I need help.
At six years sober.
And I was sobbing.
And now the treatment center had a van full of kids there.
They go...
So they rush me off the stage.
They go, that's not how it is at six years.
He's just humble.
Do I look humble to you?
But there were some guys that got me in the kitchen.
And they grabbed me.
And they did just what I did to that kid last night.
They pulled me aside.
And they said, I'm going to show you this one more time.
We're going to be at your house at 7.30 in the morning.
We're picking you up.
And they spent the entire day with me.
And they let me bellyache for months about how bad my life was.
How bad my wife was.
How bad everything and all these things that had happened to me.
But they started taking me to detoxes and treatment centers.
And taking me to the prisons.
And making me sponsor guys.
They took me through the steps again.
They got me current with step one again.
The powerlessness.
And I got...
Which means...
See, here's how Frank would tell me about step one.
He'd say, I want you to imagine this.
Because if you don't know you're screwed, you won't do it.
You're screwed.
You won't do what it takes for the rest of these things.
For the rest of these steps.
He said, pretend you're in the middle of the ocean.
No land in sight.
And you're treading water.
You can tread water, right?
Yeah.
How long?
I don't know.
Not forever.
He said, you know it's coming.
The end is coming.
Now, you don't know when.
Might be 10 minutes.
Might be 15, 20.
But you're screwed.
You're going down.
And outside of barring...
There has to be something outside of you
that has to come and help you.
Now, of course, he says, being a typical alcoholic,
and little I know about you,
if you're hoping for a helicopter,
the Coast Guard shows up,
or a big cruise ship comes along,
or a power boat is going to come along and help you.
That's not what happens.
This is a spiritual problem.
What happens is some goofball, like me,
comes along doing the side stroke.
And the back stroke.
And comes and says, hey.
And you go, I'm drowning.
He says, yeah, come on, follow me.
And where?
If you weren't absolutely desperate,
if you had another choice,
you wouldn't follow him, would you?
Think about who you followed into these rooms.
I followed an old man watering his lawn
in a retirement community.
A retired postman brought me to you.
How does that work?
I'm going to wrap it up right now.
I want to tell you a quick little story
because a little bit about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now I get to hear the good speakers
for the rest of the weekend.
And I am so thrilled.
And I love all of these people.
Love them with all my heart.
There was a bar in Miami I used to really love to go to.
It was an after-hours club.
It was the kind of bar you see in a movie.
When I used to own my bar in South Beach,
we'd get my little entourage
and we'd leave at about 6 in the morning.
And this place opened at about 6.
And you'd go and there was no sign.
All the limos would be out front.
All the criminals and characters.
Anybody bad was in there.
And you had to ring a doorbell
and they'd slide the door open,
just like in the movies.
If they didn't know you,
you weren't getting in.
And they would open the door
and you'd come in to the most magnificent,
best place you'd ever been in.
It was about 500 people.
No windows.
Everything in the world went on it.
People were getting shot, stabbed.
They would throw out the people who got shot.
And the people would say,
Hey, you're bleeding on people.
You've got to leave.
It was the greatest bar in the world.
I love this bar.
Now, but here's why I really liked it.
You would be in there for hours
and then this is Saturday night, right?
And I'm in my Don Johnson outfit.
You know,
this is my Miami Vice period.
And they would open the door
at about 11 o'clock in the morning
on Sunday morning
to throw you out, right?
And they'd open that door on Miami Beach.
You know what it's like.
Holy cow, the sun's out.
They would give you a full glass
of whatever you drank.
I drank scotch.
They would give you a full glass of scotch
and they would give you cardboard sunglasses.
Who's got it better than that?
And I'm leaving there one night,
I'm leaving there one night,
cigarette hanging out of my mouth,
glass of scotch,
my cardboard 3D sunglasses on.
And I get in my car
and I drive about a block.
And I stopped at the red light
and I look next to me
and there's this little car
with just a humble little family
and a guy and his wife
and you could tell they're all dressed up
with a shirt and tie.
And the little kid's in the backseat,
a boy and a girl,
and they're in a shirt and tie
and the little girl's got curls in her hair
and a dress
and it's Sunday morning
and you know where they're going.
And I look over at them
and I go,
what a bunch of losers.
And here I am.
And they look over at me
and they go,
hey Dad, look,
there's the Antichrist.
But today,
because of that mailman,
because of you,
because of the program,
because of a loving God,
I'm in the other car.
Thank you for letting me be here.
Thank you for letting me be here.