The Compulsion for More and the Bitter Morass of Self-Pity – Kenny D.

Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you for the to the invite by the Covina speaker, Sunday night speaker group. It's a great pleasure to be here with you guys. And I'm really excited about tonight. And, and that was really cool. I don't know all about what's going on there at the 202 house but i looked like a sobriety house and that was really really cool to and uh and uh and i liked i liked the birthday deal too aaron i think did a great job with birthday and singing then um and i noticed it before we started she gave three last calls for the for the uh for the birthday so i was thinking she must have been a bartender at one time and she'd have been my kind of bartender because you know i i like that because with every last call you can order two more drinks you know and and and have them stacked up and get them down before they kick you out that's the kind of you know that was the kind desperation i i drank uh i was you know the i was always in a big panic about running out the i i started you know you know, I came from an alcoholic home. My mother is sober. She's was an alcoholic. My stepdad who I grew up with was an alcoholic and perhaps one of the worst drunks I ever knew. And I've been at this my sobriety date is June the 8th of 1989. So I've Been at this for a long time. And I've got to see a lot. I've Got a chance to work with a lot of drunks. And one of the nice things about this format is that i get to be here right and this is the room and it's down in uh in my basement in my house here in seattle and this isthe room where i come and work with my guys and and uh you know it's been nice weather so we've been meeting out on the deck i've been trying my best to still meet with guys in person to the best of my ability the the um so you know it's really comfortable here and i you know i had took me a while to get used to this this kind of a format and um and you know I've had a chance to to speak quite a few times now doing this format and I really like it I just really really love the the uh um I love the comfort that everybody's at you know i um it you know it hit me months ago you know just how deeply i really miss everybody um so this is not a much of a proxy for that but considering everything it's a pretty nice format um you know that kind of desperation that i talked about on my drink. And that was typical I, I ended up in on June 8 of 1989 out behind a McDonald's restaurant here in Seattle, Washington out across the front of that restaurant was a another building there was the McDonald's and then there was another building. And next to that, across the front of that building, it looked like a facade there at but really, it was two separate buildings and if you went around in behind there was a big u-shaped parking lot it was on a corner a big U-shaped park lot it was a little strip mall kind of a place um and you could there I could go through a couple of uh bushes up a little hill a little grade and in behind and I got between those two buildings and that's where I was prior to get sober I drug a big piece of cardboard back there with me I was back there behind the McDonald's restaurant and you know I didn't get there overnight. But it wasn't too long of a trip for me either. I was 28 years old when I got sober. And, you know, alcohol from the time I started drinking alcohol was a huge issue for me. I got into alcohol and I got in the drugs, you Know, shortly after that. And you know that the area that I was from things were readily available. And so I was just one of these people that was off to the races, and it was uncontrollable from the very beginning. You know, there was a I had some, you know, prior to getting sober, there were a few years there, you know, from the time I was about 17, I started going up to Alaska. My grandfather got me a job with a family that he worked with, and I would go up to Alaskan these fishing boats and, and, know it was just great man because you could you know everybody was on these crews in those days and and it's it's much different up there now you know there's so many they're just you know uh um it's still a business that i'm in i don't go up to alaska we're having for many years uh on the fishing boats but i'm still in that business in the seafood and fishing business and And, and the, you know, it was like just such a magical time for me because there was, you know, I, there was I kind of got some traction in my life, even though I had this overwhelming compulsion for more every time I started drinking that, you know, we could we were we wouldn't just work hard and play hard. We were playing hard while we worked. And that was the deal for us, you know, that we would drink and drug while we were doing this really hard, really dangerous work. And it's a miracle that, you Know, sitting here today that more people didn't get killed. But there was part of it like I got some traction somehow. I was making some money and I started getting some possessions in my life. And these guys, you Now, these were the guys that I was drinking and drugging with were the same guys, but they were my mentors. You know, they were the first men in my life that really showed me about how to work hard and, you know, how to kind of, you know, these guys had careers going for themselves and a few of them had families. It was really, really just an amazing time in my wife and all that came crashing down. These same guys that I was doing drugs with and drinking were the same guys that passed the hat for me twice and put me through treatment. and uh the second time I got out of treatment uh I tried to go back and those guys were just like man you know we can't have anything to do with you I was loaded out of my mind one day out of treatment and that's the way it was for me there was a um you know there was always an urgency to my drinking and there's there's a part in the book where it talks about you know these men weren't drinking to try to escape. They were drinking to try to come, uh, to, um, overcome this compulsion for more, you know, this overwhelming compulsion for more. So that was, uh... That's my little dog. It's, it's, uh.. Somebody probably dared to... One of the neighbors dared to walk by the house or something. So she's on guard here. The, uh.... Um... But, you know, that's, that'S a miracle too, man, that I've I live in a nice house today, but I was back behind the McDonald's restaurant. I didn't even like to say that I was living back there because I was trying to survive, but I quit sleeping. I quit eating a long time ago. I was only living to try to overcome this compulsion for more. and the compulsion was was so great for me that that uh you know i couldn't get anything else this idea out of my mind and um you know and i was absolutely convinced at that time that if i could get the right amount in at the right type of substances and if i Could drink all the right amount and everything would be combined that I would, there would be this moment where I would be able to take a deep breath kind of whoo. And I would from that place, I was going to be able figure out how to stop. And the problem with that is that one day turned into a week and then a week turned into a month. And for the last three years of my drinking, that's the way it went you know i was um you know I was prior to that I knew that I had to stop drinking I knew then if I was to take even one drink it was gonna mean curtains to me I knew that if I you know if I didn't stop it was going to probably mean my demise I knew you know that I would, I was going to lose my job and the respect and of all the people in my life. I knew that I couldn't control it, all of those things. And then I drank for another three years. And, you know, when I think about the times behind the McDonald's, like I would sit back there and I would listen to the people go, I could hear from where I was, these people driving through the drive-thru and I could, I Could hear them, you You know, like every 20 seconds or 30 seconds would be another car pulling up and they would order and they would say something like I'll have a super, you know, I'll have a number three meal supersized with the Diet Coke or something. And I thought I'd hear him say, hey, the FBI needs to be called. There's some freak over here shooting Coke. And it was like, you know, it was it was a nerve wracking way to live because it was like on and i swear to you i was uh probably a couple months sober before i had the realization in my mind that well perhaps flushing out alcoholics and drug addicts from behind the mcdonald's is left to a little bit lower authority than the fbi that perhaps maybe it would be left to somebody like the assistant general manager of the mcdonald's or something you know like um and maybe all these helicopters and black suvs and people you know that were had camera maybe all that was just part of this delusion that i was living in during that time and you know there's we're so lucky we have bill we you know we have the our book you know the the big book and um you know that i i was so fortunate you know that i got in early sobriety i got some guys got a hold of me and started taking me through the big book kind of word for word and we would go through paragraph by paragraph this guy frank that i was hanging out with at the time he called it special education aa and he'd been through the process of working these steps and i could tell that something really remarkable had happened in his life and for that reason you know i just looked at that and uh um and when especially when i sit here today i'm just like so grateful man that that uh um that uh i just gotta okay sorry about that I had a little glitch in my computer here was didn't look like I was I was on for a second but you know the the thing that that came to mind for me was that uh you know just how fortunate I was and how fortunate we are to have that book you know and to have had Bill Wilson you know as the guy that was the author of most of what's there. And, you know, for all of perhaps some of his shortcomings, or some of his tendency to exaggerate things, or anything that you might want to say, you know, the guy was a really phenomenal writer. And he had a way with words, it was just, you Know, outstanding, and, you know, poetic. And you know this is the guy that that wrote these things, you You know, when I was going through the book with these guys, we would go through and look at every paragraph. If there was a word there that I didn't understand, we were going to look it up in a dictionary. And the people that, you know, the people I got sober with, you now, there was lot of words I didn' t understand. But when Bill wrote that I was to plunge into the dark, nobody had to get a dictionary out for me to look that up. And when he wrote about the hideous four horsemen, terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair, I didn't have to get anybody to ask him, ask me, well, what's that word despair me you know what's that word and you know bill it's just you know wrote the the the great fact is just this and nothing less that we've had deep and effective spiritual experiences that have revolutionized our whole attitude and outlook on life the the uh you know, he, the guy, one of the best pieces of advice that I was ever given was to go back through the big book again and to read the book as poetry. You know, I got to a place where I had really intellectualized everything that was there and it really didn't sink down in my heart. And one thing I've learned about poetry is, you know it's not meant for the intellect it's not meant for the intellect any more than the spiritual stuff that we have the spiritual material that we Have you know it's got to you know, it's great to go to meetings it's Great to go To things like this and to be around the solution but the solution had to be inside of Kenny. It had to Be, you know I had to find that solution deep down and it had to be something that was in me. And so when I, you know, when I look at that, you know, the stuff like I was overwhelmed, you know, that, that you know drinking means conviviality, this companionship, this colorful imagination, these kind of things that Bill wrote about but at the end of his drinking he wrote something that really got my attention. This guy that was so masterful with his words and was such a great writer was able to to say that uh um you know in the end of his drinking at the very end of history you find this and it's it just says no words can tell and that's the way it was for me behind the mcdonald's you know that that That, you know, no words can tell of that bitter morass of self-pity. That this, you Know, this idea that quicksand stretched around us in all directions. That's a mean, that means, you Now, from where I was, there was no friendly direction. There was no direction I could think of that was friendly. And the miracle really, in that same parking lot that I was coming and going out of to get to my little spot was an AA hall and in that back parking lot everybody would pull up in the back and they would all go up on this big back porch and there'd be people standing out there you know by the dozens between meetings and I knew a guy that had gone to some meetings there and i knew that he got sober and i just was like you know the miracle of aaa was is i got sober on a day i wasn't trying to get sober i didn't want to get sober and I didn't wanna get sober because I thought even if I do want to get sober and try to get so where it's going to be one more attempt and one more failure that that's gonna that was the lot for me in life um you know to to so i somehow got out from behind the mcdonald's i was out of money my my plan and this you know this was my plan for the next day you know had i not got so my plan was that i was there was a bank across the street from that and i was going to walk into that bank and rob that bank in the morning and uh you know it was the only thing i could think of to get my hands on enough money to keep me going um the uh but you know was eight o'clock meeting it was a thursday night the name of this meeting was called b1 and i walked into that meeting on that thursday night and i i didn't go go in through the back porch because you know it's just like how i was like i couldn't imagine having to walk through all of those people i walked all the way around and i came in the front door which nobody at this hall used the front door but i guess you know was the only way i could could get in there was that i didn'T have to walk past anybody because i was so ashamed about the way that I looked, and how dirty I was. And I got into the meeting. And I sat down in a chair and something happened to me that I hadn't expected. And I started crying in this meeting. The meeting ended was an eight o'clock meeting was an hour and a half meeting. So it was 930. And i didn't know what i was going to do. You know, i was in a place where i got really, really, really sick when i stopped. Andi was already starting to get sick. And didn't know what i was going to do and then the meeting ended and everybody was kind of breaking up and i like to say that i learned about giving from experts in alcoholics anonymous because a couple of guys came up to me and they said listen if you'd be willing to go to detox we'd give you a ride and a matter of fact we already have a bed for you we've called ahead and they got a bed waiting and of course in my mind i'm thinking how the hell do these guys know i need to go to detox and uh the the you know i put you know i got everything that i had in a little plastic bag i walked into that meeting and in that bag were my shoes and the reading the reason that my shoes were in the bag and i was barefoot is because my feet had abscessed and my my i couldn't get my shoes on because my feet hurt and i was emaciated and my eyes were sunk back in my head and i had track marks all over my body and um you know i hadn't showered in a long long time um um, you know, I'd been living like an animal. And, uh, and so, you know, these guys asked if I wanted to go detox. Yeah, I got it. I got to get my affairs in order. You know, let's not rush this. And they're like, well, geez, affairs in or how long is that going to take? And I told him about five minutes, 10 minutes, I need to run behind the McDonald's over here and gather up some stuff. And that was it. And I, you know uh i got my first five days in a detox up in everett washington these guys again you know there's a part in our book that talks about inspiration and the 10-step inspiration the intuitive thought the ability to make a decision you know they the 10 step says that we've entered the world of the spirit and and these guys had that you know They knew that if they drove me to the Seattle detox, which was probably 10 minutes from where we were in that meeting that I was going to walk out the back door, but up in Everett, which was, you know, 45 minutes or so from Seattle, but I'd been through the game. You know, I knew it. I knew that if I went in there and just, you know, once they got my clothes, once I was in those pajamas, I'd been through that before having to argue with these guys to give me my clothes back and give me my possessions and to try to get out of there and to have to you know threaten to call 9-1-1 and tell them i was being held prisoner and all that stuff by a detox and all those kind of things you know that i and i just didn't have it anymore you know there was like no game left you know it was just complete hollowness in here and uh um you know had they taken me to some you know somewhere closer i probably would have left but i just didn't have it in me i didn't know how to get my clothes back even if i did get my close back i didn' know how to get a bus from seattle to from everett to seattle i didn''t know how to where i was going to get the money to get the bus and then if and if i did get to seattle you know what kind of a pack of lies am i going to come up with to try to get me through that day that was the dilemma I was in. And, you know, on my fifth day at detox when I left, I was still sick as a dog and and, and I'll be one of the guys that had drove me up there. And the first guy that talked to me in AA, and my first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous was there to pick me up. And he owned a little car lot down on Highway 99 in Seattle here. And it was about 82nd and 99 which is it's it's not a good neighborhood today and it was even maybe a worse neighborhood then and but he had this little dirt car lot it was like 12 cars for sale on a piece of dirt you know it was just uh um not much of a business but in the back of that car lot was like a little kitchen in a bathroom and i you know was able to stay there in my early sobriety I got my first sober job, my first. Sober place to live. Um, eventually working at the car lot, I got a sober car, you know, it was $100 car and that was hundred dollar tax license included, you know? Down the road I went, um, because Al and, um. You know, a lot happened to me there in that car lot when i like i i look about looking back at that and i think you know i had a huge experience in step three you know a huge experience where i went back to my bed after i alan i did this this third little third step deal we sat right there we just pulled a couple chairs together out on the car lot and uh um you know during business hours and we did a third step prayer i went and i had this experience where I just you know felt like elated and And I did, uh, um, I did my first fist step, uh there at the car lot. And you know, and it was the first time where I'd ever like really released everything in this guy had told me that, that, uh him, you know he told me these deepest darkest secrets from his past and there was in that. You know, if we weren't to reveal everything and we went through all the resentments and the fear and the sex inventory and, um and the biggest awakening that i had you know is the was in step nine you know i remember there was a guy that was coming around the hall named jimmy r in those days and jimny was coming in i was still shoplifting you know I would leave the car lot I would go up and I would boost a couple packs of cheap cigarettes from this little store a hoagie's corner and or a bartell's drugstore and I got a chance to go back and make amends to those stores and a lot of other stores that I shoplifted from but at that time you know we were still smoking in the meetings I'd be smoking in the meeting and here you know on these stolen cigarettes here'd come Jimmy R and Jimmy would stand up and say I made you know five amends today to places that I used to shoplift from and I'm still stealing sober and I like so making me so nervous I'm like lighting one cigarette off the other you know it was just uh um you know lighting one stolen cigarette right off the another and you know I just had this realization that man these guys are living there's some kind of sobriety that they've got that is so drastically different from what I'm doing um you Know and I asked him what's going on he told me but man these Guys are reading a book to me you know and his sponsor was a priest here in Seattle that was heavy into the big book and you know it just took me on this incredible ride you know. And so I you know I like that part of these kind of meetings you know sometimes we spend some time talking about what it was like and then we talk about what happened and then We Talk About What It's Like Now and you know one of the things that's really been on my mind lately is is you know just how big this what happened part was you know what happened well i had a spiritual awakening as the result of working the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous you know it was what happened wasn't that i came to aa and then things got better and i stayed sober and i went to all lots of me all those things are true you know I did come to AAA I did go to lots of meetings things did get better um but you know the in the in The Spiritual Awakening they talk about in the the appendix on the spiritual experience the back of our book they say well really what is this spiritual awakening? Well, it says it's a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. That's it. You know, that's what it looks like on the outside. And one of the things I got to do is I got go and make amends to a lot of the people that were people that I would drink and drug with. And these guys, you know, several of them, um, and, uh, and you know men and women were not sober. And with several of them when I went to him and made my night step amends to look at the things that I'd done wrong you know that I got that I was taught to to do a couple things in amends to ask you know where um you know did I leave anything out you know when i made amends to my to my sister she said yeah you left some stuff out you know i thought she didn't know anything about a lot of the stuff i was doing you know so i would just keep everything to my this back bedroom i had and i still had a place to live and she'd come to live with me she's a younger sister eight years younger and she graduated high school and was going to go to college here in seattle and came up and was uh lived with me for a short time so I was just like always hanging out in the back bedroom you know doing my deal and uh I made amends for that because my you know the house fell apart and when I asked her well what is it that I can do to make it right she said well you can you know you can uh um you knowyou can listen to me for a little bit did I leave anything out yeah you left some stuff out you know I used to go back and check your pulse and see if you were still alive i would i was afraid you were going to die i couldn't eat or sleep i was up throwing up if i ate anything because my nerves were so you know i was such a in such a panic about what was going on with you and you know this is the kind of you know we alcoholics are hard on other people and uh we're especially especially hard on anybody that loves us or anybody that gets close to us we treat them you know they get the short end of the stick worse than our enemies do um you know so when i i think about that kind of stuff um today and and uh you know i i realized that that uh you know this what happened part you know is such a miracle for us, that we get to have that peace. And, you know, nobody can have the spiritual awakening for you. You know, we've got to have one of these things. No one can have it for you. One of the things I do, I sit right here in this chair when I do my meditation in the afternoons. I like to take some break in the mid-afternoons and do some meditation. And I'll sit right hier in this chair and sometimes i put some music on and you know the uh um i've come to you know i like some old some of these real old time you know like from these old believers kind of spiritual hymns that's not you know any uh plug you know for any kind of religion because even if i i did have something to plug i wouldn't do it you know because it's like roland you know the guy in the big book that uh the certain american businessmen they call them in the bigbook you know he went to carl young and and carl jung you know you was like is there no exceptions carl jones like yeah man there's been exceptions from time to time but uh and he thought about it he listened to it he said well that's great news because he considered himself religion you know religious and oh i'm well thought of in the church you know i've been a church member for a long time this is good news and young had to tell me this doesn't have anything to do with religion you know that's not going to help you out here you know it's uh um and that's the way it was for me you know but i like these old tunes and and there's there's one of these is called the the lonesome valley and one of the the lyrics in there it says no one can go to the lonesome valley for you you have to go there for yourself and that's the way it was for me you know nobody could put the time in you know that that that trip then that i made in those three years of those last three years of my drinking and drugging when stuff got so bad and i wanted to stop so terribly and i couldn't you know i there's you know I had to go through that myself to get what I've got today and it's the same way when i had to have one of these spiritual awakenings and we have this you know this perfect perfectly designed uh path through the steps um i'll tell you just uh you know that one of the you know this is like i didn't i didn's i started had pretty humble beginnings in in alcoholics anonymous you know the um you know i i think about al a lot you know he's still in my life you know he was 13 years sober when he drove me to detox that night and the um and the uh and you know i'm 31 years sober now so al's third uh 44 years sober and we've been together that whole time and man i'll tell you what there's a there's sweetness in that relationship you know know i've had other sponsors and i have other people i use as spiritual advisors but al is always got that place you know that that he was the very first guy you know he would come every day for six months without missing a day that guy because he was trying to make his business work he was working seven days a week every day for seis months that guy came to the car lot knocked on the window woke me up drove me up to uh he would i'd get up we'd do a couple things and he'd drive me upto jack in the box buy me a breakfast jack and a cup of coffee and talk to me about alcoholics anonymous and uh um al was the i was 28 years old al was the first man i ever said a prayer with in my entire life i'd been you know i spent almost all of my high school years incarcerated i was on an abuse uh as a teenager i mean you know this deal took me out big time and and uh you know i was the first guy that i'd ever become willing to kind of you know get with the the program with um the uh you Know I've got a um i had this this this is like one of the analogies that i can that i i use today is when i was i was homeless for a little bit before i got sober and i was homeless a lot as uh a young person because there was just days when it was better just to wander the streets at night than it was to go home where i had a bedroom and a bed you know it was safer on the streets than it wasn't my house And the, I would go to, you know, I had one of these guys, I would Go to this guy Steve's place and he just had this beautiful garage that his parents would let him stay in. And the garage was like, you Know, a few steps from his parents house. So it was just a killer deal. And now I think about I think I don't know what the hell was going on with guy's parents because he was a young guy but he always had booze he always had you know beer he had this huge stereo system where you know this is back in the days when the bigger the speakers the better you know he had speakers that were bigger than i am you know and we just have that thing cranked listening to um you know pink floyd dark side of the moon and just you know taking hallucinogenics and smoking dope and drinking around the clock. And then he had this really mean dog, man, one of the meanest dogs I ever met in my life. And so anytime anybody would rattle the door, try to come through the door of the garage, that dog would be on him. And I saw that dog, you know, chew on some people pretty good. And, uh, so I'm telling you, it was a cool place. You know, it was like really, really cool. And when I was homeless, I used to think about that and I used to think like well man you know I would walk around and I would see these clearly underutilized garages and I would think to myself man wouldn't that be great if somebody else would let me live in their garage I put some blankets up I put a little mattress in there I have a little dresser drawer i'd have uh a hot plate you know a microwave and i'd have couches i'd you know just like steve that blacklight posters and lights and you know i'd make it really good and people would come over to my garage you know it was going to be like great and it was just one of those things that that you know years sober somehow i was thinking about that you knows days back when i was hanging out at steve's and then i'd become an unwelcome hanger on her and he'd tell me hey you can't really live here at my garage and i'd have to be on my way for a while and the um the things that that uh um you know that came to me a few years sober was just all about this you know and i just think it's such a beautiful thing and a big thing to find in our sobriety is this intuition this inspiration the intuitive thought, you know, that we can't ever have anything in our life that we can't imagine, that, uh, that мы can't have, you know, that our, our vision is only limited by our own wrong thinking. And that was the deal for me that, you know, I thought about this. I thought I used to walk around and see these garages and think if somebody would let me live in their garage, life would be wonderful. And a few years sober, I thought, you know, well, I never saw the house. Every one of these places had a beautiful house that was there. Every one OF these places that had, you Know, a home and people were living in and there were pets or kids or, you know, a family. And, you know, it was this thing that was right in front of my eyes that I couldn't see. And so today, no matter how good it gets, I look at things and I think, well, maybe this is just the garage. You know, what am I missing in my life that's right in front of me, but I can't see it because I'm blocked through some superstition or some belief that I have, or some voice that's whispering in my ear. And a lot of times it's what other people think. And I'm not able to realize these, these dreams in my life. And, you know, today I'm, you know, I'm married, I married 21 years to my wife, Shannon. I think she's on the call here somewhere. Maybe not. She's heard me so many times. I just, you know, but she, she's on the collar maybe somewhere, but we've been married 21 years. We raised my daughter. I had a daughter, um, that was about five or four, four or five. And we met, she came to live with us when we were, when I, when she was six and we've raised her, um... A lady that I sponsored, um… Had a young boy that I got very, very close with. And she ended up passing away from HIV when that was killing a lot of people. and uh um and she asked us before she passed that you know if anything ever happens to me would you be willing to take jake and jake is you know came to live with us when his mom passed away and we got a chance to raise him too and um you know i mean nobody was coming out to the mcdonald's behind the mcDonald's and asking me hey you might be the guy if anything never happens to me would you be willing to take my child this thing that i love the most in my life and you know i was there with them when his mom passed away and i walked in with a guy with a young boy to say goodbye to his mother his dad died a couple months before i met him of a heroin overdose and uh um you know he's my son today he calls me his dad he's you know know he he's got a career he's you know he's an absolutely wonderful guy um you know that there's just so many things in my life that uh um you don't have to worry about you know i guess i'll i'll end with this you know there's there's there's a couple things that I've come to realize and that is that the you know the terms for different people that come into Alcoholics Anonymous are different there's different terms for differently people and what I mean by that when I say that is that that for you know for some people I see them come into the rooms and I'm going to admit that this is you know it i i don't you know maybe it's judgmental on my part but i've been around a long time and i've be paying attention for a long time people come in and they don't seem to ever sponsor anybody i don t see them talking about making their amends or working their steps or listening to fifth steps with other people you know all these things are the greatest joy of my life and they just kind of hang out in aa and go to the potlucks and the picnics and the thing that's the most frustrating about it is that they're relatively happy you know these people are doing fine and they're staying sober a lot of them and uh so i think there's different terms for different people some people can come in day and stay sober like that and god bless them and then there's on the other side of that spectrum there's the guy that comes into the program that gets a sponsor and he gets a home group and he starts working the steps and he, you know, he's gets, gets through his work and he does his third step prayer on his knees. And, um, and he started writing inventory and he does a thorough complete inventory. He does his fifth step, doesn't leave anything out, tells everything all to take it to the grave stuff. Everything is out. He humbles himself in six and seven. he makes his eight-step list out he goes out and starts making his amends he stops making amends for one week and he's drunk and you know those are the people that those are that that's the kind of person i am you know i'm a i'm the chances are less than average guy you know from how it works you know i couldn't grasp some i wasn't capable of grasping developing some manner of living that demanded rigorous honesty so my i have to do more than the normal person in alcoholics anonymous i've had to do that i've been continuously doing this and um you know that there's a part of the book and it says whether a person can live on a non-spiritual basis or not depends upon the extent that he lost control over his drinking it's simple how far did you lose control over your drinking well i left it so far that you know one drink led to another to it and then a week turned into a month and i was down the road i could not stop you know it took total control you know i was that shivering denizen of the this mad realm um and then there's you know like people that are sober a long time and relapse and you know what it always is and i've had a chance to work with a lot of guys that had this they did all their step work and they were sponsoring other people and this is you know so sad when you see people that were awake and then you can watch them slowly slowly slowly start going back to sleep because monetary things get more important to them that that uh um their work gets more important to them and they um and slowly they start going i've seen it to the extent where i thought i was talking to a stranger before they drank it was like talking to a stranger somebody that i've known in this work and when they come back and they're lucky enough to and i've had seen of course you know this works not for the faint of heart i've seen a lot of people that have not stayed sober but when i've seen them come back they've always said the same thing well i was living this double life and i was carrying a good message in aa but i was stealing from work or my credit cards where i was way in debt way over my head i was trying to uh you know play some stage character that i didn't i knew in my heart i couldn't live up to i was gambling i had something going on with uh some affair or some sexual conduct um or you know i hurt my ankle i was playing softball and i started taking some pain i think i might have took more painkillers than i was supposed to all that kind of crap you know all that stuff they kept it to themselves and so you know in there my my i'd seen 45 minutes is up and and uh so i'm gonna stop but um i've had a great time tonight i hope i've i've carried a message to the group and hope I've made your Sunday night somehow a little bit better. Thank you.