Tenth Step Is the Cheat Sheet to the Fourth — Four Defects, Three Instincts, Seven Sheets of Paper – Bill D.

I'm Missy, and I am an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday 8 p.m. Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual and their own personal stories describe in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts a bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, Yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing. Tonight's speaker is Bill D. from the 7.30 Daily Early Morning Study Group here at NAVA. I'm more excited. Hi, guys. I am Bill Dillon, and I am an alcoholic. I haven't done this in a long time, so I had to, like, take notes. I know what not to say, and I got to have dinner with some friends beforehand, and we agreed on some of the stories that I would leave out. So, even sober, some of my stories I have to leave out. So, yeah, what it was like. What happened. What it's like now. Now, I am a 62-year-old recovering alcoholic with 45 years of sobriety. I have three kids, one wife of 30 years, no arrests or fistfights since I got sober. I don't think I've been fired since I got sober, either. I have a bunch of friends here tonight to support me, and that feels really good. When I was drinking, that never happened. When I was drinking, I never got... I never got invited back anywhere, okay? I might get invited somewhere, but I never got invited back. When I came into AA, I was 17 years old, and I was a 129-pound, angry, soaking wet, furious, resentful young man, and I had to go to these meetings. People, I didn't want what you had. I wanted your signature, and I wanted you to leave me alone. And as soon as I could get done, you know I wanted to get out of here. That was plan A. And after about 90 days of going to meetings, and the meetings, I was this old French guy. I got sober down in Louisiana, so Louisiana, the drinking age, is about 11. I didn't start drinking until I was 12, okay? So I grew up in a Catholic family with seven kids, and my father was a raging, violent alcoholic, and my mother did what she could to take care of the kids. I was the sixth of seven. At the time I was 12, I had started drinking, of course, because it was Louisiana. By the time I was 14, I was drinking regularly, and by the time I was 16, I had a job, and was working 30 hours a week, and had a car, and spent every dime I made on beer and cigarettes. And I realized at that point that as long as I didn't stay out too late, I wouldn't get in trouble at home. And because we had seven kids, and nobody was doing a bed count, too late was a breakfast. And so as long as I got in before everybody woke up for breakfast, I was going to be okay. Now, I wasn't exactly a successful student in high school. I'm just going to say that right now. They had people that were voted most likely to succeed, and I was not that person. In fact, I was voted least likely to live to be 21, and I'm glad to know that I've surpassed that mark now. I like to say that my routine today is I like to hit the gym four days a week. And I like to hit AA meetings two or three days a week. And every day of the week, I read a few pages out of the big book. Now, I go to the gym because I don't want to get sick. I've got to stay in fit spiritual condition. And that's my main job is to be in fit spiritual condition because if I don't do that, all the rest of it is going to be gone. And I know that because I've been coming to these meetings for years and watching people get so excited. I'm not like, go take a break or something. I'm just like, I don't want to die. I'm going to get over it and have great lives. This guy right here, he's having a great life. when he came in a year ago. This is a room full of miracles. And that's why I come because I like to see miracles. And that's why I'm here tonight because this is a room full of people. This is a room full of women that are supposed to be dead. And you got a second shot at it. You got to ask yourself, why do I have a second shot at it? and I'm still alive. The only reason that God didn't give me a pink slip is because every now and then I do good work with some drunk. And he says, well, all right, we'll give him another day. Because that's my main work is today. So as I was saying, I grew up in Louisiana. My father was a violent drunk. And I never knew the reason for his violence because I never saw him drinking. Never drank at home. But he would come home violent. And when I was 12, my mom sat me down and she explained he was an alcoholic. And I can still remember crying because it answered so much about the insanity in our household. Because I never understood why things were the way they were. And so when I was 12 years old, I started to go into Allotine meetings. And it's about the time I also started drinking. In fact, I also started drinking with a lot of the kids in Allotine because they were predisposed to alcohol as much as myself. My father was a he was a wildcat oil man. And so he would drill oil wells in Louisiana. And if the well hit, then he was like a millionaire for a year. And if the well didn't hit, then we all got our clothes from the Salvation Army and got our food from the food banks. And nobody ever explained that to me. And so growing up, we lived in this boom or bust scenario. And I never knew whether or not we were going to have groceries or clothes or, really, anything in the house. And so, I, like each of my brothers and sisters, had to learn to be self-reliant. Now, I thought that was a great thing because when I got here, I had great survival skills. But today, I want to do more than survive. Today, I want to thrive. And so I really had to recognize that those survival skills were fine and they got me here. But I had to get better tools. And the tool set in this room is hanging on the wall back there. 12 steps. Or the tool set for living your life. And not, you can get by and you can survive. You can have the kind of life you want to have. And that's why I'm here tonight. That's why this is a room full of miracles. Is because we get to pick how we're going to live. And when I came in here, maybe I could get a job as an auto mechanic somewhere. Maybe I could join the service. Service wouldn't have me. But I managed to squeak my way into a college in my little hometown. Started waiting tables and doing construction work in the summertime. And I got through college and I stayed sober. That was the first four years. But let me tell you what really happened the first year. Because the first year, I didn't want to work steps. I didn't want to do anything but get my little slip sign. And after about 90 days, there was this little French guy named Ronnie in my home group. And he pulled me aside one night and he said, Little Billy. I think they called me Little Billy. Because I was so small. Little Billy, do you like Jack Daniels? Yeah. I said, yeah, I like Jack Daniels. And I thought he was going to buy me a drink. And he said, go to Cass's Liquor Store down the street and buy yourself a fifth of Jack Daniels. He's had my attention. I really, the first time, I liked what somebody had to say in the meetings. He said, go home and pour yourself a shot. And the next day, pour yourself another shot. And the day after that, have a shot. And you drink one shot of that liquor every day to the end of the month. He said, and if there's anything left in that bottle, drink two. Celebrate, because you don't have a problem. I stuck the key in my ignition and I'm sitting there in the car and Cass's was just like two blocks away. I'm like, you know, I knew that I could buy a fifth of Jack Daniels and just throw it in the trunk of the car and never touch it and drive around with it for a month and I'd be fine. But I knew as soon as I broke the seal on that bottle, I couldn't guarantee you how much I was going to drink. And 45 years later, if I had a fifth of Jack Daniels, I would not break the seal on that bottle. I could not pass that take a drink test. I am certain. And I've been to enough AA funerals that I know the people who have what Bill Dillon has, they don't live on it. They do the compulsion of drinking, it's been removed. And so if I have a good reason, I go to cocktail parties. I go to bars. I go to concerts. I can go anywhere on this planet that I want to go as long as I'm in good spiritual condition. There's a reason to be there. And if I'm not, I don't go. I wanted to drink. And I was at the World AA Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. And I was sitting in the top row of the Superdome. I'd gotten separated from my sponsor and the group of people that come. And I came with a bunch of people and I got separated. And I'm sitting in the top row by myself. And I'm listening to the keynote speaker and I'm going, this is just total bullshit. I do not, this is just not working. I had been, I had been to rehabs years over. I had been to rehab. They kicked me out of rehab. Even with insurance, they kicked me out of rehab. They said that I was ruining it for everybody else. There was nothing they could do. And so the gates of hell are clanging shut and I go to this convention and I get cut off from my people and I'm sitting in the top and it's like, you know what? I am done. This has been a wasted year of my life. I am, I knew where to go in New Orleans. I had $5 in my wallet but I knew where I could get drunk on $5 in New Orleans because I'd done it before. And so, I'm in the top of the Superdome and I said like, every SOB's got to leave before I can get out the door. So I'm angry and that was my normal state of mind to say I was angry and I throw open the door of the Superdome and there stands my sponsor in the slide. 50,000 drunks and there stands my sponsor in the slide. Now that was the first just can't deny this is an AA miracle. The only guy that was going to be between me and getting drunk was that guy. And years later I got to be that guy for somebody else I won't tell you that story because we don't have all night but that was enough. And Mike was a he was a hell of a sponsor. Mike had done our first sponsor had not done the steps and so we were kind of trying to work through the program together and I'll tell you if you get a sponsor who hadn't worked the steps you really you're just kind of wasting your time. There's a lot of people in this room that have worked the steps. This old guy with the beard he's a step worker. And these women over here that are all sitting here smiling they worked the steps and after the meeting they can talk to them and you get their phone number they'll be glad to talk to you but all these guys over here don't even talk to them. Don't get their phone numbers don't talk to me after the meeting just kind of no. But Mike Mike knew that I hadn't worked the steps. So Mike sits me down and he's like well you need to do a four step inventory. I'm like well I've done two of them already. They were horrible because they were too long. So Mike said you need to cheat. He said you go to the tenth step. Tenth step is the cheat sheet to the fourth step. But I like the cheat sheet because that was the only way I even got out of high school. So I said well what are you talking about? He took me to the book and see I brought this up here because in case I run out of stuff to say I can just read from the book and I know it would be right. But here on page 84 in the big book in the tenth step in the middle of page 84 right there where the words are and I had read the words the tenth step says continue to watch for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear. He said the key word here is continue because that relates back to the fourth step. And he says Bill you only have four kinds of defects. Selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear. And so what you're going to do is you're going to go home and get four sheets of paper and you're going to write something and you're going to write selfishness on the top of the first one and then dishonesty and then resentment and fear and then you're just going to go down and fill in each of those four pages. And then when you get done with that get out the twelve and twelve and the twelve and twelve twelve and twelve is a brilliant book. You should get a copy of that group. The twelve and twelve talks about how we have three instincts that lead us astray sex security and society and so he let me get three more sheets of paper and write sex security and society on each of those three pages and then fill out my little list. Now the four character defects and the three instincts all have the same stuff on and it's like they're a little cross-indexed but that let me see the path and my resentments were the same. They fell into the same group every time every boss every teacher every parent every relationship that there was a power play in fell into the same sorts of resentment patterns time after time after time every sex relationship that I ever had the same problems over and over again it was just different hair colors that was about it and it was the same with my dishonesty and my fear. I had so many fears that were unnatural fears and I didn't even realize today. I can get out my inventory every two years I could get out my inventory and look at it today and it would still have those four character defects. The manifestations are a little different than they used to be but they're still there because we make progress here we don't make perfection none of us make saints. After four years I wasn't a saint. After eight not a saint. Sixteen nope thirty-two nope forty-five not even close. My wife of thirty years is not here tonight because she would stand up and go oh hell yeah amen I'll tell you right now he's a cop and if you give me five minutes I'll tell you why he's so bad. So I told her stay home. I would feel self conscious I think was the word I said and she's like well I would come I said yeah you would you'd be fine. I want to talk about the first in the first AA miracle that I had and eight years older than me his name was John and John was in law school I was a senior in high school and John was halfway through law school and John comes home one afternoon and the dean of the law school at LSU has been disinvited him from further attending classes and he has been drinking blackout drunk for years and starts going through all of his behavior and stuff and I'm listening to him and now he's going to AA meetings I'm listening to him tell me his story stories it's just that he's been doing it for eight more years than I have so I made a decision at that point that I was not going to end up like him and troll my drinking because I knew that I wasn't going to end up here. And so I controlled it. I was highly successful that one weekend but then I went back for more and during the next 90 days of controlled drinking I got into a gun fight with some people that it was actually more of a fist fight I had a gun they had a big fist I was really drunk she took away my gun the police came I outran the police and I felt like that was really a successful evening. You see what had happened is have you ever been to Mardi Gras? If you've ever been too drunk to participate in Mardi Gras you might have an alcohol problem. I'm just going to say that right now. So I had gotten to the point where I was too drunk to continue further in Mardi Gras so I was I had a rule. I had a rule that assured that my drinking was responsible and my rule was if I could no longer walk or sit in a chair it was time to get in my car and drive home. I was driving home in the rain in the afternoon of Mardi Gras and I did side swipes by another car and the operator of the other car was Officer Green and he was in his own car and apparently Officer Green was even more over served than I was because he did not want to give me a ticket. He just wanted me not to call his supervisor which I was willing to do because that would have been other law enforcement and I felt certain that I would not succeed on a surprise test. So we traded numbers and he agreed to fix my car and of course once he got sober he disagreed to fix my car and I'm a 17 year old kid. This car is my this is this junker that barely runs but it's very important to me so I filed a lawsuit against this police officer and I served him papers at shift change at the police station. If you have to walk on thin ice you might as well dance. So I sued him for this thousand dollar fender bender and after the fist fight gun fight unpleasantness where I got disarmed and the police chased me. So that was on Saturday night. Now on Monday night I was due to appear in court because I had this lawsuit against Officer Green and got to appear in front of Judge Saloom and I don't know if you've ever been in front of Judge Saloom or not. I went way back. I had been in front of him several times and he let me present all my evidence and then he asked Officer Green what he had to say and Officer Green said I got nothing to say. He said we're going to recess for ten minutes and see if you guys can't work it out. Officer Green puts his feet up on the little desk and he cleans his nails for ten minutes and doesn't say a word. And the bailiff knocks on the door letting us know that the judge wanted to come back in. Officer Green folded up his little knife and he looked at me and he said I heard you dropped your gun the other night. So we settled that case. We settled it although I still got $200 out of him just because I saw a general principal although I got a lot of tickets after that too. One of the things that I had done when I was drinking was I got a job at the donut shop in my town. And so I was working nights and weekends making donuts but that assured me that I knew every police officer in my hometown. So when I would get stopped on the side of the road they would take me home. And that worked really well for a while. But after I sued Officer Green it didn't work so good. Now the last night that I got drunk I crossed the center line on the main drag in my little hometown and I hit another car going 50 miles an hour head on and nobody had seat belts nobody had air bags and everybody ended up going to the hospital except for me. The first AA miracle. Because my brother who was then sober 90 days was I walked in and I said everything is fine everything is fine. And everything that had happened during my drinking career. Now I didn't believe in God at the time. If you spend two hours discussing your alcoholism with somebody and you're in a blackout for that whole two hours you've got a problem with alcohol. And my brother wrote me this long letter. I still have a letter. He wrote me this long letter laying out everything that I had told him. And I got it in the mail like a week. I didn't remember even talking to him that night. I didn't remember him being home. I knew that I had told him all these things. And so I knew that I had to come to the meetings where the judge also. I knew that I at least needed to go and listen. And that was the first day of a miracle that really happened. There was no denying that I was as bad as you guys. You guys had a real problem. So I came to the meetings. I didn't buy the liquor that Ronnie suggested. And I went to the World Convention and I didn't drink them either. I did do the inventory. And I did have a fifth step with my sponsor. My fifth step with my sponsor took about an hour. And it's because it was really simple. It was really easy to see the patterns in my life that occurred over and over again. And it still is. And when I sit down with my sponsor now and I go through a fifth step inventory with him, it takes about an hour. And I walk away feeling peaceful. And if you get that feeling of contented usefulness, then your recovery is going well. Because that's really what we're here for. We're here so that when we're walking around, we feel a peaceful contentedness in our life. And that's not one of the promises, but that is what happens to people that have a little twinkle. And that's a great way to live. Now, I didn't have that for a couple of years. Once I got a good sponsor and I started working my way through the steps, then things got better. I saw that part in the big book. It was like, damn, these people have been reading my mail. We didn't have email back then. We just had mail. I didn't drink. I didn't drink at the convention, but I didn't believe that God was on my team. How do you come to believe if you're angry agnostic? And so, instead of going to church every Sunday, which was kind of how it was brought up, I would go to the park every Sunday. And I would sit down in a quiet place, a meditative spot, about all the bad things that had happened in my life. I'd been born in this alcoholic household and had this terrible car wreck and had this big lawsuit over the terrible car wreck and the police were on me. Even sober, they were on me all the time now. Couldn't turn around, couldn't stay in school, quit college, had to go back, worked offshore for a while, got run off of the boats, a whole lot of jobs where I got run off either for being drunk the last year I drank or being poorly sober the first year I was dry. And so I would cuss at God for an hour. After doing that for a couple of months I started realizing that a lot of the bad things that were happening in my life were as a direct result of decisions that I was making. It wasn't the weather, it wasn't some cosmic thing that was going on, it was Bill Dillon doing things that was inhibiting the things that I said that I wanted. I wanted to succeed in school, but I didn't want to read the books. And I wanted to, I wanted to keep a job, but I didn't want to show up for my shift. And I wanted to have a nice car, but I didn't want to pay for the oil. And you got to do the maintenance on all those things. I wanted to have a nice relationship with a girlfriend, but I didn't want to be worth a shit. There's a lot of that going around with guys, I'll just tell you right now. And then I started getting really clear that, you know, actually, God had kind of dealt me a pretty decent set of cards that were a lot easier than a lot of people in the rooms did. Because I was healthy and I wanted to do. I saw people that were starting to have fun and enjoy their sobriety. I saw people like Henry back there that would have a chip on their shoulders for a year and then suddenly they're smiling and laughing everywhere they go and you go, damn, I want what Henry's got. I don't know how he does it. And then I would get with Henry and I would have a cup of coffee after the meeting and Henry would be glad to tell me how he does it. And I would go, well, I'm going to try some of Henry's stuff. And I made a few friends like that when I first got sober. We've got a whole group of people over here that have two years of sobriety. And the people that I got sober with, they all have 45 years of sobriety now. They're some old suckers. But they're having successful lives because they're getting to do the things they want to do. And all the people over here with two years of sobriety, raise your hands over here at the two-year club. Come on, Drew, you're just a latecomer. You're in it. Come on. These are the guys that have got what you want. And they had the same disease that you had when they walked in, but they found the solution and they're working the steps. And when you come to the middle steps, you come to the sixth and seventh, and you start talking about the willingness to have God remove these defects. Like, well, shit, I don't want that. Dishonesty? Come on, I'm a lawyer. I've got to eat here, all right? I can't be having that. That's just terrible. Resentments for what I fed on. Now, the one thing that I want to talk about, because this is really important to me, and probably some of you guys have this, too. I know some of the guy guys have this. I came in and fear was on the list. And I thought I had some anger. And so I went to my sponsor and I'm like, I need another sheet of paper here, because I'm really angry. And he said, no, Bill, you're really not. You're frustrated. But really what you are is fearful. You have a lot of fear, but you've covered it with anger, because that's socially acceptable for a guy. And so you can have these violent rages and all this and blow up, but really you're just scared you're not going to get what you want. And if you write down on your resentment page, you start looking at that, you're going to see that that's where a lot of your fears are. The fear that you're not going to get what Bill wants. To this day, I confuse my fear and my anger. It talks about it so well. It talks about how self-centered fear is the root of our problem. It's the root of my problem. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but Bill Wilson seemed to nail it on the head when he wrote that book. This is the root of my problem. And I'm trying to get good. I was just a sick guy trying to recover. And I'm still here to get saved. I came in here to save my ass. This was the place that if I followed the steps, I could live through it. And my father, who I mentioned earlier, was a violent alcoholic. He had been sober when I was like a young boy. And he had like four years of sobriety from the time I was six until I was ten. And then he started making money. And he decided that he would. That he had this thing. And he didn't need AA anymore. By the time he died, he never drew another sober breath. Five years I spent the weekend with my dad. And I was talking to him about going to an AA meeting because his wife was getting cirrhosis. And he didn't want to talk about going to the means. He didn't want to talk about recovery. And he looked me in the eyes. He's hugging me as I'm leaving. And he said, I'm just not ready yet. Three-letter word during this whole program. The word is not God. Not so much over here. But here, there's a lot of young people and you're sitting there going, well, it hasn't gotten that bad yet. And if you wait, and if you keep doing what I was doing, it'll get bad pretty quick. And a smart person, most people learn from their mistakes. But a smart person is going to learn from the mistakes of others. And so that's why we get phone numbers from these people. Because when you look around the room and you say, well, I want what she's doing. You get her phone number and then you find out how she did it. Because the stuff on the wall is actually literally how it works, but the people in the chairs know how to make it work. And you may listen to me and go, well, you know, that guy might have said a few things. But after the meeting, if you get with somebody, in just five minutes, just tell me how you did it. How do you scrape together a year of sobriety? They're going to be able to pray and meditate a little bit every day. I just pray and meditate a little bit every day. Three pages out of the book. I'm not bright enough to take in more than that anyway. I sit quietly with my eyes closed for ten minutes and then when I'm done, I go, God, give me strength and guidance today. Let me see your will and let me do your will. And then I walk out the door, I am going to have a good day. Guaranteed. And I will stay sober. Guaranteed. And it's been working for 45 years that way. And I was not good at this when I got here. And I want to tell you right now, my brother John, the one I was telling you about, my little A-miracle, found out that son of a guy had bet $20 with one of his friends that I was never going to make it a year. I stayed sober out of spite the last two months of that year. And then the next year I said, hey, let's go double or nothing. And you know what, if you take $20 and you do double or nothing for 45 years, he owes me a lot of money. A lot of money. But you know, we're still close. And I see him three or four times a week. And my first sponsor, the one that never worked the steps, he's finally worked the steps. He was the best man in my wedding. And I still hang out with that guy. He's still a knucklehead. Great guy. And all the people I got sober with, my sponsor's 80 years old, sharp as a tack. Still working the steps, still going to me. 748 years to survive. It is a day at a time. It is not, I don't have anything more than the guy that worked the steps and been doing this a year. I've just been doing it longer. And some days I'm in really good, good spiritual conditions. And other days I am self-centered and angry and fearful. And I got to sit down for 30 minutes just to quiet my mind. Because I'm totally insane again. And the people from my home group know that because I share it with them often. But see, that's the thing. I don't have to come in and be insane. I just got to be Bill. I got to be honest. And learning how to be honest with Bill is the key. Now, I'm still a bullshitter. So I got a sponsor. I got a sponsor who I trust. And I'm pointing at you because you're the old duty guy. I have to have that because I am not a good judge. You have my own spiritual condition. And so we have sponsors in here. We have the steps in here. We have the meetings. And if you go to the same meeting week after week, people will get to know you and they'll call you on your shit. Which is why home groups are so important. And we do all these things and it's not for money. It's not for fame. It's because we kind of like to see people live through this thing and have a good life. And if you decide you want to get sober, that's great. If you I've been to a lot of funerals and I carry those stories. You know, the first Thanksgiving, I hated Thanksgiving when I first got sober. Absolutely hated it. My family, when they all got together, it was not pretty. I went to detox and I checked out a drunk. In my little town, you could check out a drunk from detox and take him to a meet. Took this guy to a meet. And he had had DTs twice. Doctors told him you're probably not going to have DTs three times and live through it. I bought him some cigarettes and we had a little lunch and did this. Two weeks later, this guy was dead on the train tracks. Now, I don't even remember his name, but I still carry that guy because I know that that's what it's waiting for. I can do the maintenance. And thank goodness I've continued to do the maintenance and you guys are part of it. I love the opportunity to do this every couple of years because it just makes me sit down and realize all the things. I'm grateful for it. All the things I can't share in public. I had my little sounding board earlier. I'm going to drop the story. All of that stuff. If you do this, you can have the life you want. If you do the four-step inventory, you can decide what it is you want to do with your life. You're not going to get to be an astronaut, but you can have a loving relationship with a spouse. You can have children. You can have a job. You can travel the world. You can be a woman. Thank you so much, Bill. That was amazing. I absolutely love how you incorporated humor into the realness of your story. That was fun. We've asked, or we rather volunteered Jonathan to come out and hand the chips out. Thank you. Hey, I'm Jonathan. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, everyone. Journey starts off with this white chip right here. Start this way of life. Come back to that. This one is a silver chip for 30 days and 39. This one, I've been told, that's the because a camel can go 30 days without a drink and gets on its knees twice a day. Anyone for a 30-day chip? This group gives out a hitter the bottle down gets sold a grill from a