The Chapter to the Agnostic That Needed Doing, Not Interpreting – Bill S.

In keeping with the spirit of the weekend, it is told of two Irish buddies who for over 40 years gathered at the pub every day at 5 o'clock and tilted a couple of ales together. For over 40 years they did that Fergus and Danny And then came the day when Danny became ill And was bedridden And Fergus came to his bedside and said Old buddy, I'm going to miss you And he said, well go every day And still have that glass of ale for me And remember me every day at 5 o'clock And he promised that he would And for a number of years after that Fergus went to the bar and he had two glasses of ale set in front of him And he tilted one to his old buddy Danny and then drank his own And then one day he came in The bartender started to set the two glasses He said, only one glass please He said are you no longer toasting to your old buddy He said oh yes, yes, it's this way You see I've joined Alcoholics Anonymous But I see no need to punish Danny Boy for that Now, you newcomers, don't try that. Scott, there went my quarter. You've got to tell me how to do that again. For those of you who weren't here this afternoon, just tough. My name is Bill Sanders and I am an alcoholic. By the grace of God, I'm sober tonight and that's the single most important thing that I will share with you from this podium this evening. That it is by the grace of a loving God and the tender loving care of people like you in rooms like this from one end of this country to the other that I have awakened for the last 7,173 mornings without a hangover. Now I see some little alcoholic minds going to work out this thing. That computes to July 26, 1982. I assure you that you applaud yourselves because without you I could not possibly have done it. I am an Alcoholics Anonymous junkie and I make no apology for it whatsoever. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I love the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous and if that bothers you, tough cookies. I can assure you when I was growing up in a small town in the hills of North Georgia that it was never, never, well let me put it this way, when I made a list of all the clubs, organizations, institutions, country clubs that I wanted to be a member of, AA was not in the hot 100. But I can tell you today that for every organization I've ever been a member of, for every honor I've every received, for everything that has come my way, you can have them all if you leave me Alcoholics Anonymous. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. My story is a story of a search. It is a search for it. All of my life, I searched for it I didn't know what it was, but I was looking for it. I started at the earliest age that I can possibly remember because at the very earliest age of my recollection there was something that other people had that I didn t have. They had an it and I was missing it. As a result of it, I felt that I did not belong. I did not fit in. I felt always as though I were on the outside looking in, that people knew something that I didn't know. They had something thatI didn't have. Now, the kids that I went to school with would probably debate that with you. You could say, my God, he was a member of everything. Yes, I joined everything, church, school, scouts, you name it, Ijoined it, belonged nowhere. It could be in the middle of a crowd of people and somehow still felt like an outsider. But that all changed at the age of 15, and I'm not going to go into a long dissertation of what it was like that first drink because all of you know, but I do know that that first night sitting on the banks of the Savannah River in the hills of North Georgia when someone popped open I think what was a Pabst Blue Ribbon and I took my first drink of alcohol, the magic happened between the second and the third beer. I can tell you, when I took that first swallow, it was the most god-awful putrid tasting stuff I'd ever put in my mouth. And that's why I only drank six that night. But I got drunk the very first time that I ever drank because of the magic that happened. That in that moment of clarity that came through, that suddenly little Billy Sanders wasn't afraid anymore. And suddenly I was smarter and wittier and wiser and handsomer and sexier than I had ever been in my entire life, or for that matter anybody I'd ever known in my entire life. And in that moment several things went into motion. Number one, I felt as though I had made a friend that was going to be my friend for the rest of my life, and tragically it almost was. And the second thing that happened is a set of myths and beliefs were put into place in my mind that were to last until I reached the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was the belief that alcohol affected everybody that drank the way that it affected me. It was a very rude awakening when I came to this fellowship and found out it doesn't. alcohol does not affect everyone who drinks the way that it does us as alcoholics and when I learned that you people up in the balcony there pay attention I don't I remember what I used to do when I sat in the balcony in the dark on Saturday afternoons I can see you No, but when I came to that realization That alcohol doesn't affect everybody the way that it does Or did me It explained some things For example The person who'd say No, no, one's my limit What? What earthly good is one drink? the words don't even go together one drink can't even make it sound right better be a real big drink I mean you know or the person who says no more for me I'm beginning to feel it that's not where you quit that's where you start and and and after almost 20 years of sobriety today there is still a part of me a few weeks ago i'm sitting in a restaurant downtown atlanta and it's a business lunch and i happen to glance over at the next table and two guys come in and they sit down one of them orders uh a coke or something the other one orders a martini and they bring and they set the martini down in front of him and i glance over every once in a while and i realize you know he's sitting there stirring it with his finger and he picks it up took a couple of sips of it and he ordered lunch ate it took a cup took a few more sips of that martini and got up and left with half of it still there now after nearly 20 years there is a part of me that wanted to chase him out into the parking lot tell him get back in there and finish that drink and order another one I don't understand people like that I'm never going to understand people like that and you know what those people don't understand me they never did they never will and I've quit trying to make them understand because I found rooms full of people who do understand how my mind works but back then as a teenager growing up in North Georgia I was still on my search for it and when I found that putrid tasting stuff in those little cans I thought that was it but then it didn't quite do the job and so I continued my search for it and through the years that were to come I would search high and low I searched through women I searched through stuff I always thought if I had the right stuff cars, clothes the electronic gadgets, you know, whatever came along that everybody had. If I had that, that would be it and I would fit and I'd be okay. And I learned stuff is not it. I thought if I could make a lot of money, that might be it. And through periods of my life, I made a lot of money and therefore I was able to buy more stuff. and I could buy a garage to put the stuff in. But it still wasn't it. It didn't work. So I continued my search and I continued to drink. I drank my way through college. I'd love to stand up here tonight and tell you wonderful memories of my college career at the University of Georgia. I really would love to. See, I was beginning by then to suffer from what up in North Georgia the old hill folks up there refer to as spells. You and I today call them blackouts, but for example, 1961 was a spell. Gone. I spent a lot of time in college getting into trouble. I won't get into that. They're horror stories you could fill the evening. But in college, I again joined everything, really felt a part of nothing. I did learn one thing, though. I had my first taste of anonymity because suddenly I was thrust into a university whose student population was over three times that of my whole hometown, and nobody cared how much I drank. And so I started drinking every day. I also discovered that there were things other than beer and I found out that liquor was quicker and some of it even tasted better and my drinking career skyrocketed to a new dimension and I began to party a lot and one night I was partying in an apartment of a close friend of ours and there were a bunch of guys there drinking and telling lies and cutting up and at about 2 o'clock in the morning I had begun to go through one of my personality changes I wasn't aware that this was happening but there were different stages of my personalities I would go through during a given evening and about 2 o'clock in the morning I had reached my blithering idiot stage and I reached up on the wall the guy who rented the apartment had a big antique gun collection up there he was very proud of, thousands of dollars worth of old firearm hardware and I reached up and took down a long barrel Colt 22 pistol and began to wave it around and act like Matt Dillon or Wyatt Earp pointed it at my roommate and said stick him up and he stuck up his hands and I pulled the trigger and there was a sound like thunder and in a moment my roommate was lying on the floor in front of me in a pool of blood they would tell us a few hours later at a hospital in Athens, Georgia that my roommate would live but that he would never walk again The bullet had severed his spine Strange thing happened in that hospital room In the early hours of the next morning My roommate reached up from a hospital bed And he put his hand on my arm And he said, Bill Please, please don't blame yourself It was an accident It could just as easily have been the other way around Please don't blam yourself He had forgiven me immediately But I didn't forgive myself for more than 20 years Because you see, I didn' t know how it was not until you people gave me the beauty and the wonder and the magic of the fourth, the fifth the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth steps that I was able to find forgiveness to find peace and to find relief then my only answer was the answer that I used in most of the crises of my life and that was to crawl deeper into the bottle and to seek oblivion more and more often I found it eventually I exited the University of Georgia I did it with a diploma in my hand I've never been sure if they if I earned it or if they just got tired of me hanging around making trouble and said get him on out of here but I've had that thing hanging on my wall for over 30 years and I ain't giving it back I ended up in a town in North Georgia and found a great job there and I met a beautiful girl and got married within a few months It's funny, when I first met her, I thought, you know, I need to probably clean up my act and cut down a little on my drinking if I wanted this woman to be a part of my life. I discovered in my utter and total delight I didn't need to do any such thing. That woman liked to drink just as much as I did. And after just a few months of dating, she became my first wife. And we were off and running. I should tell you at this point a little of my profession because it plays into some of the rest of my story. I have been since I was 13 years old in the broadcasting business, radio and television. At the age of 13, supposedly, I was the youngest disc jockey in America. That's long been broken, that record, because there's a kid up in Minnesota or somewhere who has his own radio program, and he's three years old, so, you know. That record's long gone. But my wife and I had a very simple life that we lived in our early marriage. We would go to our jobs in the morning, and mine to the radio station, hers to her bookkeeping job. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, she would get off, go home, wait for me. As soon as I finished my 6 o' clock newscast, I would leave the studio, go Home, pick her up, and we'd head for the local club. We were a member of a local club, and we would drink. Yeah, we would drank until they closed, usually 1 or 2 o' o' lock in the mornin'. And we would stumble out of there, go home, pass out, get up the next morning, same routine over and over again. And, you know, for most people, when you wake up in the morning and you've tied one on the last night, you know you go to work and the people that sit at the next desk or people across the hall from you or whatever might know that they can look at you and tell that you had a rough night last night. With me it was different. See, I sat in a room, a studio by myself and had to turn a microphone on at six o'clock in the morning and sound cheerful. Now if you want to know what hell is, hell is trying to sound cheerful at six o' clock in the morning when your head feels like the Russian army did maneuvers on it the night before and your mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage. I saw that you gotta watch them my radio audiences never knew how many newscasts they heard me read at 6 o'clock in the morning literally lying flat on my back on the floor holding the microphone over my face reading the news the only way I could get the room to quit going and I could tell you a lot of wild stories that through my years of career in broadcasting and being on the air, I'll share with you one short one. I was working at WSB in Atlanta back in the early 60s or toward the mid-60s, and the news director came in one day and said, grab a tape recorder, get a mobile unit, go downtown to the Dinkler Plaza Hotel. You've got an interview to do. I grabbed the tape recorder. I said, who am I interviewing? And he hands me this envelope with a bunch of stuff in it. And he said, you're going down there to interview Lyndon Johnson. Okay. He hands me this stuff that has credentials in it that I'm to present to the Secret Service. And I get in the mobile unit and I start down there and I'm thinking there ain't no way I can go do this without a little fortification. So I swung by one of the local bars right on Peachtree Street and I jumped out, ran in, had a couple of shooters, got back in, went down to the hotel, rode up on the elevator to the floor they had sealed off, met at the elevator by the secret service and was first checked they checked over my equipment looked at my credentials and I was ushered into this suite and this giant of a man came over and engulfed my hand with his hand and said son come on in have a seat I sat down on one sofa facing him on another sofa and between us there was this great big glass coffee table and in the middle of that table was a tray with some ice and glasses and a big big bottle of Jack Daniels And he said, before we start this interview, let's have us a little bourbon. Sounded good to me. So he poured me a glass and poured him a glass. I should explain that back then things were different in the 60s from the way they are now. You did not walk in and do a cold interview with the President of the United States. You had to do what was called the pre-interview interview. That's where you've got to tell him what you're going to ask him and he'll tell you whether or not he's going to answer it, literally. And that's the way Johnson operated. Well, we sat there, and we talked back and forth, and every time I'd take a few swallows out of that glass, he'd pick up that bottle and fill it back up again, and filling his up again. And we're talking, and they're talking about the questions and the weather and a little bit of everything else. And I'm sitting there, and suddenly it hits me. My God, this man is drunker than you are. After a little while, he said, let's roll. So I turned on the tape recorder and started it up and started the interview. And I have to tell you, it was a very good interview. I understand there's still a copy of it around somewhere. It was a good, good interview I asked good questions, he gave good answers and I did great until I got down to a place where I asked him a question about his wife, Ladybug. Thank God he thought it was funnier than y'all did. That's the kind of thing, though, some of the avenues that my career went down. I always consider myself to be a social drinker. I'm here tonight to tell you that I have learned in this fellowship that if you have to drink in order to be social, you are not a social drunker. I can also tell you that Beth and I would have been wonderful on dates. We could have sat and just stared at each other all night because that's the way I operated, Beth. Hi. See ya. Couldn't deal, couldn't, you know, my relationship with women is a youngster. But, you Know, I got enough booze in there. and I would sit at the bar and this beautiful girl would come in and I was I would have a few drinks and just getting ready and bold and I'd get enough drinks in me and I planned exactly what I was going to say to her and just exactly the pitch I was going to make and I could swell up straighten my tie turn look her in the face and say I had fun in Minneapolis several years ago when I was talking and they had a person signing there and I looked over at her trying to figure out how to sign that and i can also tell you that that that i i really consider myself to be a pure old alcoholic uh i i tried some drugs from time to time on a couple of uh of occasions i i remember one time i was uh uh one of my side careers was backing this band and they loved to to to snuff stuff up their nose. And I decided one night that I was going to try that. They seemed to put great stock in it. They put great money into it, too. It was one of the reasons I got out of the business. But and I remember, you know, they put line it out there and I started to lean over and lick it. And they said, no, no. And somebody rolled up a bill and handed it to me and I did that and I sat there for a minute and all of a sudden I went I said somebody got another drink I need another drink somebody go give me a drink couldn't handle that stuff and one time you know when somebody lit one of those funny cigarettes and you know I did that thing of trying to hold it in and I smoked that thing hard and after a few minutes when I'm sitting there and I'm looking around the room and somebody said well I said what do you mean by that why did he say that that stuff made me paranoid see I went back to drinking because I could handle drinking couldn't handle that other funny stuff and I have to be honest that I am very grateful for that the only thing cocaine I think ever did for me was keep me awake so I could drink a little longer but I went back to booze because I thought I could do it I thought I could handle booze and that's what booze wanted me to think and it kept me thinking that for a long long time I was a bar drinker because I learned very early on that I could not stand to be alone with me. When I was alone with my wife, when I was with me, I was in the worst company I could keep. I had to be with a bunch of other drunks. And I cannot tell you how many nights I drove the streets of Atlanta at 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning looking for a bar that was open and a drunk propped on it so I could buy around and get them just don't leave me alone. or if the bar was empty if the bartender was cleaning up washing glasses i'd go sit right in front of him just so there would be somebody there somebody that i could look at somebody that i could talk to i was sharing with somebody last night you know i do believe that god leaves us little messages all along the way in our lives and we miss them we just go right by it and we miss them and i look back now and i realize god left me messages all through my drinking career One of the messages, for example, that I missed that he gave me. And I want you people who drank in bars to think about this. How many of you ever had a bartender say, You keep coming back and it'll get better? I didn't say that. And I kept coming back. And yet no matter how many bars I drove to, no matter however many places that I propped myself up and drank, I could never get rid of that feeling Of overwhelming loneliness And long, long after I came to the realization That the it that I was searching for Was not in those bars I did keep coming back There were things that came along in my life That any other human being Who is sane and sober would have been cornerstones of their life that would have changed their lives. For example, in 1970, my wife and I were blessed with a beautiful, gorgeous, little blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby girl. And I thought when that baby was born, I am going to clean my act up and I'm going to be a father. And I'm gonna be a good father. I'm gon' be a responsible father. And I held that thought And my wife had the same thought as a mother And we were, we were model parents We changed diapers We did 2 a.m. feedings We did all the motherly and fatherly stuff For, I don't know, three or four weeks And then we discovered The great American institution of the babysitter And we went off and running again Now through this period of my life my disease was now furnishing me something with something that I didn't know that I had and I didn' t know I had it until I got here to AA and that is that it was furnishing me with a set of blinders blinders that did not allow me to see that which was in the front of my face for example those blinders did not allow me to see that when I went to work in the morning and left to go to lunch and had one of those long liquid lunches and I came back to the office after lunch my blinders did not allow me to see that my employees avoided me at all costs they got out of my way they hid from me they wanted to stay as far away from me as they could because you see while the guy who came in in the morning was capable of being a pretty nice guy the one who came back from one of those long liquid lunches was not a nice person he was argumentative he was forgetful he was judgmental and at times downright mean But see, those blinders didn't allow me to see that. Those blinders didn't let me see that my little girl, my beautiful little blue-eyed blonde haired girl who is now three, four, five years old, doesn't invite friends to come spend the night at our house because she never knows when dad's going to come home in the middle of the night in a drunken rage, smashing furniture, throwing televisions through plate glass windows, dragging her out of the bed at three o'clock in the morning demanding that she'd clean a drop of milk off the kitchen cabinet all the time telling her how stupid and dumb and clumsy she was. Those blinders didn't allow me to see that the only look that was ever in that little girl's eyes was fear and hate and disgust. And even when it smashed into my face, I refused to see it. For example, my wife and I one day were changing the mattress on her little bed in her room. And as we lifted up one mattress to either put a new one in or to turn it over or something, a little notebook fell out. And I realized that it was a diary, and I did what I shouldn't have done. I opened it, and then I started reading. And on the pages of the diary, the words came out at me, I wish my daddy was dead. then maybe there would be some peace in our house my wife when I would come home in one of the drunken rages and half destroy the house the next morning I would wake up of course remembering nothing she would start to fill me in on all the details of my escapades of the night before all the while I'm saying I did not, could not, would not of course I'm say that as she's pulling my shoe out of the picture tube of the television set And I go downstairs, and there in the dining room is a little girl Hovered over a bowl of cereal, trying and hoping not to be noticed And I would say, sweetheart Mom told me what I did last night Yelling at you and calling your names And you and I need to take a walk And we'd go out walking down the sidewalk And I'd say, sweetheart, I know I did that last night I don't remember it, but I know that I did And I want you to know that it's never, ever, ever going to happen again those blinders did not allow me to see that there was not a flicker of belief in that little girl's eyes because we had taken too many walks and she had heard too many empty promises and she wasn't buying it anymore I was a traveling drunk in my business I had to travel a good deal because now I was in the administrative end of the broadcasting business which took me to various places to deal with things like Congress and networks and things like that I would go out to Hartsville International Airport in Atlanta of course I always got to the airport early so I could go to the bar and have a couple of drinks before I got on the plane it wasn't that wild about flying and I would sit down and have some drinks I don't know if you remember those commercials that Delta ran for years as a matter of fact I even did some of those commercials at one time that says Delta is ready when you are Uh-uh They'll go off and leave you I'd sit there in the bar And forget to get on the plane So I did what any good drunk would do I'd just get on another plane And go somewhere else Call home that night And my wife say How's the meeting in New York going? I don't know I'm not in Newark Where are you? I'm in New Orleans Only way I knew I was in New Orleans I'd open the nightstand drawer of that dumpy little motel I was In and pulled out the phone book and said New Orleans right there on the cover, that's the only way I Knew where I was Insanity InsanITY I used to think that drinking You know was so classy And I would drink in some of the most expensive Restaurants and lounges In Atlanta at least during the day I would At 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning I ended up in places, well, they weren't the nicest places in town. But I had restaurants in downtown Atlanta where I could walk in the door and the maitre d' and his tuxedo would meet me at the door and greet me good evening or good afternoon, Mr. Sanders come in, usher me toward the lounge, I would start to walk toward the bar, the bartender would spot me, wave his hand at me and by the time I sat down he had my drink sitting in front of my usual stool. And I used to take friends in there with me so they could see that, because I knew that this made a statement. It wasn't a statement I thought it was making, but it made a statement all right. And I was a snob. I would tell you that vodka should be drank at a temperature or optimum temperature of 31.5 degrees Fahrenheit. I later learned in my drinking career that that was not actually the truth. The optimum temperature for drinking vodka is 108 degrees, because that's the temperature underneath my front seat of my car where I kept a bottle. I used to think it was classy to drink in places like that, but I'm going to tell you something. There is very little class when you wake up in a downtown Atlanta city park at 5 o'clock in the morning and you look down and there's dew all over your clothes And you blink your eyes and realize you're looking out from underneath a bush up the nostrils of a policeman's horse. There's also no good answer to the question of what are you doing here? All I can say is, where is here? There's no class when you're dragged from a car that you've planted into a steel post on the side of an Atlanta city street. and you're frisked and handcuffed and hauled off to the jail the whole trip to the jail telling the cop I am not drunk, I only had two beers, I am not drunk. I am convinced, I am truly convinced that there is a school somewhere that when we're in a blackout somebody takes us to that says if you ever stop by the cops never admit to more than two beers. You ever watch these cop shows on TV? People crawl out of the cars and fall flat on their faces I've had two beers I kept telling that cop that he got there put me on that breathalyzer thing and I went into that machine registered 0.28 I said that's impossible ain't no way in a world I could be registering 0.2 8 on two beers cop agreed with me it was the only thing we agreed on that night my wife by now is drinking off in her places and I'm drinking off in my places we rarely would ever see each other really and truly more and more often I was waking up in strange beds in strange cities with strange people drinking in bars in Atlanta my wife as I said is off somewhere and I am off somewhere more and most often our little girl who is about 10 or 11 years old is home alone in an apartment in a big city, scared, on the phone, dialing memorized numbers of bars. Is my daddy there? Is my mommy there? The phone would ring and the bartender would answer it and say, here, it's your kid. And I would answer in a trembling little voice on the other end and say Daddy please come home, I'm scared. Please come home. And all of you know the answer. I will, sweetie. I'll be home just as soon as I have one more drink. And many hours and many drinks later, I would stumble into that apartment, and there sitting in the corner of that bed, trembling tears streaming down her face was this beautiful little girl. But the blinders were firmly in place, and I could not and would not see it. I no longer asked where my wife was going. She no longer ask where I was going, And so one afternoon when she left at about 6 o'clock in the evening, I'm sitting in my recliner chair with a vodka bottle in my hand staring at the television. She leaves and about three hours later she comes walking back into the house. And she comes standing in front of me. I'm still sitting in that same recliner cheer with that same bottle staring at the television was probably trying to figure out whether to turn it on or not. And she said, guess where I've been? I said, who gives a who? Who cares? and she didn't say anything. She flipped a white poker chip into my lap and I looked down at it and I look back at her and I don't know where you've been but if that's all you won you had a lousy night and then I noticed that that chip had two little A's on it and she told me where she'd been and I went into an absolute flying perfect rage because I knew there was no way on the face of this earth that that woman was an alcoholic because if she was an alcoholic she just couldn't be an alcoholic that's all there was to it but it didn't stop her she started going to meetings and going to meeting some fool nonsense about 90-90 and 90 something and I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall I kept waiting, you need this lot worse. You're worse than I've been. Just kept going to meetings and going to meetings and going to meets. Well, you know, it never said a word. Never said a word. Just kept going to meetings. Oh, you know, she'd leave little hints around the house like I'd go and lift the toilet seat and there's how it works. Or I'd come home in one of those rare nights when I'd sleep in my own bed and I'd flop down on the bed and run my arm under my pillow like she knew I always did and there's a piece of paper in there and I'll get it out and put my glasses on and close one eye and start to... By the way, I've got to share this with you. I have relatively new glasses. I had to go not long ago to my ophthalmologist and get new glasses. And he told me again, as he had the last time that I got him changed, he said, your right eye is virtually, it continues to get progressively worse. And I keep having to increase the magnification on your eye. He said, it's strange, your left eye is still almost 20-20, but your right eyes are getting terrible. So I'm going have to increase. And he said, I don't know why that happens. It just happens sometimes. About a month later, I'm driving along Atlanta Street and it suddenly hits me. I knew why that happened. See, I didn't use my left eye for years. I drove. If I had to read something, you know, it was like, eh. And God's been saving this eye for me because he knew I was going to need it. My theory. Anyway, I would unfold that paper and close one eye and I'd look at it and it's those 20 questions. And I'd get about the third question and go, this is the stupidest thing I ever got in my throat. And she kept going to meetings. And finally the other shoe fell. She said, I'm going tonight to pick up a 90-day chip and I would like for you to be there. Uh-uh, no way. A few tears, a few deals. I said, finally on one condition, I'll go as long as I can go in my own car. I said, where are we going? She said, we're going to a place called 8111 Club. I says, where's that? She says, you just follow me. And I followed her just a couple of miles from where we lived, and she turned in the driveway of this pretty little house sitting up on a hill in a grove of trees. I'd passed that house a thousand times on the way home from the bar. Now, I thought it was real ironic because I'd pass that house on theway home fromthe bar, and I'd look up there and say, you know, you ought to get to know the guy that lives in that house, because he obviously has a party every night. Well, that night old Bill went to the party. I slipped into the back of the room, sat down behind a post right at the back of the ring, peered around it at the front and for the next hour I witnessed the biggest bunch of weirdos I'd ever seen in my life. They read all that stuff at the beginning of the meeting and before they got through with the last reading, this guy's doing this. Waving his eyes saying, why don't somebody tell him to go on to the bathroom? Somebody pointing to him, the guy stood up and right out loud told him his name and said, I'm an alcoholic. And I'm sitting there thinking, I don't think I'd have told that if I'd been him. And if that wasn't enough, he said, I got three DUIs and you know what? DUIs, DWI, what do y'all call them here? Drunk driving awards is what I'm talking about. You know it. Anyway, everybody in that room busted out laughing. and the thought i don't ever want to forget it the thought that was going through my head was don't these people know what they are they're alcoholics they hadn't got anything to laugh about and i say that because today i thank god every day of my life for the laughter that we share in these rooms because there's magic and there's power and there is healing in that laughter. And I tell people wherever I go, if you don't have a home group that laughs a lot, go find one that does. I also like to caution newcomers, don't laugh all the time or they will come get you. Next guy raised his hand and said he'd gotten six DUIs and been arrested for indecent exposure. They came unglued. And i'm thinking, God, if they knew some of the stuff If it had happened to me, I'd sound like Richard Pryor. Well, everybody finally stood up and grabbed hands and started saying the only thing that sounded familiar to me that whole hour, and that was the Lord's Prayer. And then I was out the door heading across the parking lot going home. And I made it about two-thirds of the way across the park in the parking slot, and something grabbed me by the shoulder that felt like a steel vice, spun me around, and I found myself looking up into the face of a man that was 7 feet 11 inches tall. I know tonight he wasn't but 6'6 But he looked a lot taller that night I also remembered him from the meeting He was a little different from the rest of them The rest of people had introduced themselves My name's Joe, I'm an alcoholic My name is Mary, I am an alcoholic My name Sue, I m an alcoholic This guy was different When he introduced himself He said my name's Floyd And I m a grateful hillbilly drunk Give me a break he starts talking to me out there in that parking lot about his fifth grade education and about the DUI he got driving a school bus and I'm thinking why in God's name is he telling me all this the guy don't even know who I am found out later he knew exactly who I was because she'd been talking about me in those meetings I remember now I went in my own car now I ain't gonna hang around people come out get in their cars and leave he keeps talking and talking and talking pretty soon my wife comes out goes bye gets in her car and leaves and it's me and Floyd and he talked to me about getting drunk out in the woods in the winter time and falling down on the ground and his face freezing to the ground. I had to pour coffee on him to get him up. Of course, I'm not hearing most of this. I'm busy making a deal with God. Well, Floyd talked on there for, I don't know, three, four days. I finally got away from him, got in my car, drove home, walked in the house. My wife started to say something. I said, Don't open your mouth. don't you ever try to get me back into that nut bin again and she didn't but she kept going to meetings and my roller coaster ride continued down more arrest more staring out between the bars and i don't mean the drinking bars more loneliness more pain the search for it is over in the afternoon of July 26, 1982 I came out of a week-long blackout drunk whole week missing and when I came out of that drunk I'm sitting in my old recliner chair at home and I look down and in my left hand there's an empty bottle and in our right hand there's a fully loaded and cocked .22 pistol and I had not remembered picking up either one of them and the thought going through my head was is this all there is it's really all there because if it is you can have it and through the stillness of that Monday afternoon at about twilight time there came a voice the voice of God not exactly the voice of an angel not directly it was the voice of a beautiful wonderful lovable strapping hillbilly drunk named Floyd and the words that cut through the fog of that afternoon were so simply this when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I I expected God to open the gates of heaven and let me in. He didn't. But he opened the gates of hell and let me out. And if where I was on the evening of July 26, 1982 can be any closer to hell on this earth, I pray that I never know it. And I got up out of my chair and I walked into the bathroom and I cleaned myself up as best I could. Gargled about a half a bottle of Listerine drank the rest seemed like the thing to do at the time got in my car and drove back to the little house on the hill and walked into the door and slid down behind the post in the back of the room and peered around it at the front of the roof now I don't know about your God or the God you believe in but I believe in a God with a sense of humor when I looked around at the front of the room chairing the meeting sat my wife she didn't see me until the end of the meeting till a man got up and explained the chip system that we use in Georgia and that is that white chip is the surrender chip if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired and want to try a new way of life come forward and I got up out of that chair and I took the longest walk I've ever taken in my life to the front of that room and a man pressed a white poker chip into my trembling sweating palm, and I walked back and sat down. I choose with all my heart to believe that an old Bill Sanders walked to the front of that room that night and died, and that a new one walked away, because by the grace of God and the tender loving care of people just like you in rooms just like this, I haven't had a drink since that night in that moment, and i am eternally grateful for that. I learned very early that I needed to get a sponsor, which I thought was really weird. I've been broadcasting all my life. I got tons of sponsors. Pick one. Explained that wasn't the kind of sponsor you were talking about. And when you told me what kind it was, I did it in a very scientific way. I looked for the sweetest, kindest, roly-poly-iest, white-haired old granddaddy that I could find, one that I knew would pat me on the head on a daily basis and tell me that he'd never seen anybody working the program as perfectly as I was, and not to dare change a thing. Took me a few weeks and I found just such a person, snow white hair, roly-poly-er than I am with a perpetual smile on his face, and I asked a man by the name of Doc Crandall to be my sponsor. Biggest mistake I ever made in my life. The years that man was my sponsor, I don't remember him telling me one single thing I wanted to hear. and i knew i was in trouble the first night first thing he said to me is all right now i'll be your sponsor sure let's discuss the rules rules what what rules it's always very simple the first thing you're going to do every morning when you wake up is you're gonna roll out of the bed onto your knees and you're to ask the god as you understand him to keep you sober today and then the last thing you'RE GOING TO DO IN THE EVENING BEFORE YOU GET BACK IN THAT BED IS you're going to get back down there and say thank you well i kind of swelled up i said doc let me tell you something i grew up southern baptist church used to be from sunday morning sunday evening wednesday night when they opened the doors of the church we were there and and although i've gotten a long way away from it i know it's important and i know prayer is important god knows y'all open meetings and close meetings with prayers and you've got all the third press step and seventh and all that i know what's important but i gotta be honest doc i am not comfortable with this knee business. He said, I don't remember saying a damn thing about you being comfortable. And I got real cocky and said, Doc, my understanding is, I hadn't been here but a few weeks, but my understanding is this is supposed to be a program of suggestion. He says, it is. I suggest you do it or get you another sponsor. And that's how we began our journey together. Then he gave me this book, or one very similar to it. He said, I want you to take this book home and I want you to study, I didn't say read, I said study the first 164 pages of that book. And after you spend a few weeks doing that, you come back and sit down and we're going to discuss how we can make those principles work in your life and give special attention to Chapter 5. I thought, okay, I can do that. I'm a college graduate. Went to the office supply store and I got me some sharp pencils and a couple of legal pads, and I went home, cleared off my desk, spread that all out, and opened up that book, and then I went to work. And I highlighted and I underlined and I made notes in the margins, and struck through the steps that didn't have anything to do with me. I jotted down a few I'd thought of that you folks hadn't, and after about three weeks and a couple legal pads full later, I called him and said, Doc, I'm ready to talk. He said, come on over hot dog let's go i went over to his house sat down on the sofa spread all that out onto the uh the um coffee table he reared back in his recliner chair and said lay it on me i flipped the book over to chapter five and i pointed down to the first step down there and i said okay doc looking here at this first step as i interpret and that's as far as i got he said boy that step don't need your interpreting it needs your doing yeah but but but what i think it means is doc said son look at that real closely you'll notice it's in english it says exactly what it means if you look even closer you'll noticed they put little numbers by those steps so smart college boys like you can follow along. God, he was tough. And he was a nut about this book. I mean, I remember one day I had a personnel problem at work and I went to him and I said, I want to talk to you a little bit before the meeting if you've got a few minutes. He said, let's get a cup of coffee. Walked out under a tree. He says, I got a personnel program. You got a lot more business experience than I do. Let me lay out the situation to you. You see, I've got this employee. He said, hold it, just a second. He said before you lay that out for me, answer me one question. He said what step are you using on it? I said what? He said no, no, doc, you don't understand. I'm not talking about steps here. I'm talking about some real life stuff. He said go look again. I went home and I got the book down and I went down through the steps. Of course, there wasn't anything in there about personnel problems. Went back the next night and I said, Doc, I looked in the book. There wasn't any thing in the steps about personnel problem. Now let me lay out this situation. He said, go look again. I drove home thinking, how did I get hooked up with this crazy old bastard? But I went home and I got the book out and opened it up chapter five and I started going down through the steps again. There it was. Suddenly there was the answer. over and over and over again. He kept sending me back to this book, and back to those steps, until one day the little bell, ding, finally went off in this thick head of mine that there is nothing, there is nothing that is going to happen in the life of this alcoholic, that the answer is in that book and in those steps. Now, I know that all of us in Alcoholics Anonymous are making a great big whoop-dee-doo about the fourth edition of the big book being out. And it's wonderful. I grabbed one of the first ones that came out, read Beth's story and checked to see if this story is still in there and if that story is in there, what new stories are in there. Fourth edition of The Big Book, whoop dee-do. Guess what? I'm reading the 26th edition of THE BIG BOOK right now. Some of you are looking at me funny. you see that's how many times i've read the big book from cover to cover i'm in my 26th reading and i'm gonna tell you something every time i read it they rewritten that sucker there is stuff that wasn't in there the last time i reading i know because you see i told you i'm a highlighter and i make notes in the margin anything. And I'm reading along, just the other day, and I'm reading along and I look, whoa, look at that. I never read that. That wasn't in there before because it's not highlighted. Now this over here is underlined. I don't know why who did that? That ain't no big deal. But this, wow! And I know it wasn't there the last time I read it. I shared this one night from a podium and a young man came up after the meeting who absolutely wanted to argue with me about it. He said, no, it really was in there. You see, you just... I said, okay, I understand. I think he was a psychology major or something. I don't know. I, in truth, know that God reveals himself to me through this book and he does it when I'm capable of comprehending it and when I need it most in my life. and it occurred to me some years ago that if I don't open this book on a regular basis and if I do not read, I am going to miss one of God's messages to me at a time and a place when I am supposed to get it. So I read this book every day. I require that the guys that I sponsor at least open this book every night. I read it every day and God will speak to us. I also know that God speaks to us through people. I asked my first sponsor one time, do you think maybe God speaks to us through people. He looked skyward and said, what do you think he speaks through? Frisbees? I go to meetings. I pray for God's will, and then I go to meetings and listen to other alcoholics to find out what it is. My sponsor would say, you missed a fantastic meeting last night. Boy, did I hear something powerful. I said, What? He said, I don't know what you were supposed to hear. I heard what I was supposed to hear. You weren't there, so you missed what you was supposed to hear. What a wonderful sponsor I had, and I am a believer in sponsorship. My first sponsor when I was three and a half years sober. Doc, my mentor, my surrogate father, my spiritual leader, went on a 12-step call and never came home. As he and another man struggled to take away a shotgun from a suicidal young man that God had been trying to work through, doc to help keep sober. The young man accidentally, the shotgun went off and my sponsor doc caught a blast full in the stomach and died before he reached the hospital. In the stillness of that evening, I sat in his den and I went, how can I go on? How can I stay sober without the man who guided my path, who planted me in this program, who kicked me when I needed it, who put his arms around my shoulders when he needed it? How Can I Go On? And in the quietness of that evening the answer came you do it by doing the things he taught you to do that his sponsor taught him and his sponsor taught him in his sponsor before taught him all the way back to that fateful night in the spring of 1935 when the lowly stockbreaker and the has-been doctor sat in that gatehouse in Akron and said do you think we might stay sober if we help one another I believe we're the luckiest people that walk the face of God's earth. I believe that God and his infinite and compassionate wisdom in that May day, or if you choose in December when Bill got sober in 1934, that God looked down and said the lowly alcoholic has suffered for long enough. He's been the outcast of humanity for long enough. I've got to give them a way out. And what a way he gave us. He could have decreed that we all be put away in jails and the keys thrown away as many of us were and should have stayed. He could have decreed that we'd be put off somewhere. If that's for me, tell him I'll call him back. He could have decreed that we be locked in colonies like lepers so we couldn't contaminate the rest of society as most of us were. He didn't do any of those things. Instead he gave us each other and more love and more laughter and more joy and more happiness than most of us could have dreamed of in a hundred lifetimes and I believe he gave us one other thing. I believe that he gave us a one-on-one, face-to-face relationship with himself that few people on this earth will ever know. I think we're the luckiest people to walk the face of this earth. In the days and weeks after my sponsor's death, I was surrounded by the greatest young bunch of snot-nosed, long-haired hippie sponsees that anybody could ever have. Those kids dragged me to meetings when I wanted to stay home and isolate. they made me share when I wanted to hide and they loved me and cared for me and dragged me around from meeting to meeting until I could anchor myself in the program for them again and I thank God every day for these guys it took me a while and I don't recommend it it took my a while to find another sponsor as a matter of fact I learned a lesson that I hope none of you have to learn and that is that when I'm sponsoring myself I have a fool for a sponsor and a bigger fool for a sponsee. I am grateful to say that I have a great love for Omaha, Nebraska because it was when I came to speak in 1990 to the Cornhusker Roundup very nearby here that I met the man who was to become my next sponsor a dear, wonderful, beloved man for whom I am eternally grateful by the name of Dr. Paul O and I am eternally thankful for the ten years that I had that beautiful, wonderful man in my life and for the many hours that we got to share. And I have today several thousand emails that he and I shared back and forth together. And he was a great anchor in my life. And then when he died, I went into another moment of pure and total insanity and ended up asking a man by the name of Dick Martin to be my sponsor. Some of us are sicker than others and you can edit that part out. I told you that I searched and searched and searched all my life for it. Now, I need to tell you a couple of, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story in a couple of incidents. Number one, I was sitting in a meeting one day, and they were reading, and I had a spiritual awakening as I heard somebody read, if you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it. And I suddenly realized the it that I had been looking for for all of those years was right here in these rooms. You people were hiding it, waiting for me. And, I realized that that search that I have been out on for a feeling of belonging was here in this room with you people. Because, you see when I say to you, I'm hurting and say i know i understand i know you do know and i know you do understand i mean you walk up to somebody on the streets of omaha today and uh the earth people out there and you say hi how you doing and they look back and say how fine how are you and i said well i'm scared oh really what are you scared of i don't know don't expect them to say yeah i understand but in here you know and i know that you know what i'm feeling rest of the story number two i refer to the woman i married in 1966 as my first wife because you see i'm not married to the same woman anymore and thank god she's not married to the man anymore we're the same bodies but we're not the same people just a few weeks ago we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary. I can tell you today that that woman is the love of my life. She is my pal, she's my sweetheart, my lover, my best buddy and my dearest friend. Very often when I go to share, she goes with me. She recently had surgery just a few weeks ago and was not able to come this weekend. But I can assure you of one thing. she's back home now thinking about me sharing with you and she knows that I'm thinking about her the rest of the story number three I told you about all the walks that I took with my little girl well just about ten years ago I took another walk with her but this time down the aisle of a church and I cried all the way down the aisle and at the reception I danced I danced with her and she had refused to tell me what the music was going to be and as we began to dance and the music started the words of the song were did you ever know that you're my hero and everything I want to be I can fly higher than eagle you're the wind beneath my wings and I looked into her eyes and I saw instead of hate and fear and disgust I saw love and our assault respect and you people gave me that she hasn't often been able to travel with me when I go to share it at a gatherings but a couple of years ago she went me with me to a conference in Northern California and there were about 4,000 people in this big meeting room but you see I couldn't see any of those people all I could see was this beautiful blue-eyed blonde haired girl sitting on the second row looking up at me with a look that said that's my daddy up there you see you people have shown me how to be a daddy. I thank you for that. The day before yesterday, I went to a hospital with my little girl and she laid on the table with the help of a little device. I leaned over her and I heard the heartbeat of my grandson that's going to be coming in just a few months. And my daughter is telling me what a great granddaddy I'm going to be. You people gave me that. Now, you may be satisfied to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and not drink. And if that's all you want, it's here. But I told you at first I'm a junkie for AA. I want all the goodies that this program has got to offer every single one of them my grand sponsor died nine days after his 40th birthday in aa and his dying words were it's still getting better every day what a promise i want all of the goodies and until the day they take me away I'm going to keep grabbing, reaching, and grasping for everything that AA has to offer. And I pray that you will too. And I'm gonna close tonight in a way that couldn't possibly surprise you by saying, did you ever know? You are my heroes. You're everything that I've ever searched for and wanted to be. Thank God I found you. because I know tonight that every single one of us can soar like an eagle because he's the wind beneath our wings. Happy St. Paddy's Day. No green beer tonight. God bless.