The Daily Reprieve and the Default Position of Self-Delusion – Don M.

thank you thank you bradford and so good to see you tina and joe thank all of you for making me a part of it my name's don and i'm an alcoholic and i am so grateful to be here today uh the miracle of this zoom thing is just amazing i shudder to think really where we would be be without this technology because we feed on the fellowship of one another and without this I don't know what would happen to us but I'm at a great place there and what a great lineup of speakers except the clown you got at two o'clock this afternoon. Good afternoon. Larcine, I sent you a chat that you are just as fabulous on Zoom as you are in person and it's so great to see you and said I was an alcoholic. If you have any doubt about this, maybe this will help you along the way about me being an alcoholic I did miss the morning speakers, including my dear friend Polly and Chris and Jeff But I'm going to go back and listen to them. But the reason I missed them was that at 76 years old, still recovering from serious leg surgery, I was busy with the logistics of getting the motorcycle I bought yesterday in the middle of Cornwall Valley from 100 miles away home. So maybe that will bolster my credentials. I mentioned my sobriety dates, April 9th of 81. My home group is the Calm Down Group. That's a discussion group that meets at 530 on Wednesdays right across the river from downtown Louisville. It's actually in Clarksville, Indiana. And I have a sponsor. My sponsor is Bob B. from St. Paul, Minnesota. and I try to follow directions and do what I need to do. I go to four or five meetings a week all by myself and I tried to be there anytime there's an opportunity to help another alcoholic but for the last 30 odd years I try to be here when there's an opportunity to help just another human being. Now it's working with the other suffering alcoholic alcoholic that will most ensure my immunity from drink. The big book's very clear on that. As absolutely indispensable as the steps and our meetings and fellowship, sponsorship, is absolutely indispensable is now the big book very clear that nothing, and that means nothing, will so much ensure our immunity from drank as intensive work with other alcoholics. And I want to tell you that the 39 years that I've been sober are an absolute testament to the truth of that. Because I think I've made about every spiritual mistake in the book. But by the grace of God, I've always been willing to be there when there was an opportunity to be of help. And I have no doubt that that has saved my sobriety hundreds of times over the last 39 years. But anyway, I'll tell you a little bit about my story. Joe said this was extemporaneous and that's really dangerous. Turn me loose, talk about anything I want to. Always started talking about my motorcycle first. But I'm going to try to follow some directions still. And, of course, there are the simple directions that we hear all the time in AdWords, a little bit about what I was like and what happened and what I'm like now. And there's another set of directions in the big book that we don't talk about nearly as much. And it's very precious to me. It says words to the effect that our personal stories tell in our own language and from our own point of view. how we've been able to form a relationship with our creator and I really hope my story carries that because you see I was 37 when I got sober and for the first 37 years of my life I was an evangelical agnostic it was a big part of my mission to disabuse the superstitious of their They're superstitions, and I needed to help the weak of will and mind understand to put away those foolish things and live in the real world. This is something that I only built up the courage to say from a podium just a few years ago because it sounds so insane, but it's true. When I had to be four years old and I grew up on a tobacco farm farm in southwestern Kentucky, right on the Tennessee land. And a little less than a mile down the road from our farm was Locust Grove Baptist Church. And around Christmas time when I was born, I was sitting in that church and I've got a specific memory of still believing in Santa Claus and not buying one word that minister was seen, and I have no idea where that came from. But the bottom line is even though I had never even acknowledged a power greater than myself that had anything to do with my life, much less having asked anything of such power, in April of 1981 a loving God gave me the most beautiful life-saving gift I've ever had in my life and that same gift has stayed with me every day for 39 years and and that gift enhances and saves my life today. And it wasn't any sort of great spiritual experience or epiphany, in fact my thoughts feelings and beliefs didn't change about anything. And I only know by looking in the the rearview mirror that anything had changed. But looking in the rear view mirror, about the most important thing in the world had changed, and what it was, was for the very first time in my life, I began to follow directions about how to run my life, even though I didn't understand them, I didn'T agree with them, I didn' t think they would work, and I certainly did not want to do And that, folks, is the only reason in the world that I'm here speaking to all you sweet folks through this miracle of the internet instead of having been rotting in a pauper's grave for about 39 years. So I really hope my story carries the story of how I've come to let a relationship with my God build. I was actually born and grew up on that tobacco farm, and the most informative thing I could tell you about my childhood and early life is that it wasn't a thing like I thought it was. Just no comparison. My capacity for self-delusion is astounding, and if I haven't done what I need to do today day to maintain my spiritual condition and to get my daily reprieve, I'll go right back to my default position. And that involves the self-delusion being fully intact. And up until I got sober, I would have passed a lie detector test when I told you the really riveting, interesting, and romantic saga, it was way past a mere story, about my early struggles and my subsequent rise to power. And of course it was all about how by my iron will and my sterling intellect I had pulled myself up by the bootstraps from the depths of poverty to those staggering heights I'd reached in life, and I believed that crap so sincerely I'd have us both crying before I got done telling it. And I don't think I was really sober a week until I realized man, what a load of baloney. First place, we weren't even poor. We weren't anywhere close to poor. We were middle-class farming people who had everything we needed and most of the things we wanted. We were really better off than anybody else in the community and my father was the most respected man in the country. And you can bet that those heights I thought, those staggering heights I taught I'd reach turned out to be a whole lot more staggering than they were hanging. What really went on the first 12, 13 years of my life was selfishness and self-centeredness. The big book says that's the root of our troubles. And what that's meant to me ever since I've been sober is that the first thing wrong with me, the thing that is wrong before anything else, the bedrock of my alcoholism, is an ego disorder that I've had all my life. And it's been stuck to my nose every day when my eyes come open for 76 years now. And without divine intervention, that ego disorder makes me so obsessed with myself, so obsessed without belief, I stack up against other people and so obsessed with how I feel, that I believe right beside that ego disorder and really part of it, that the bedrock of my alcoholism is this one sentence. Without divine intervention, I will always wind up letting how I feels be the most important thing in the world. Now without divine intervention I can give some lip service to something being more important and I might be able to act for just a little while like something is but if i haven't done what i need to do today and if i've learned anything in the time i've been around i've heard that i don't get much divine intervention on saturday based on what i did on friday it's truly a one day at a time thing and if I haven't doing what i needed to do i'll go right back to letting the way i feel be the most important thing in this universe and all that obsession with myself has always created so much pain and emptiness and difference and apartness down inside me that I've never been able to stand the way I feel inside without even just running as hard as I can and or stuffing something in there to try to make me feel good enough that I could stand it now by the grace of my loving god for the last 39 years the 12 steps that are the only program of alcoholics anonymous and you sweet folks who are the fellowship of alcoholic synonymous coupled with mal willing to follow directions that i didn't understand didn't agree with didn't think the work didn't want to do has filled up all that emptiness it's taken care of that pain it's done something about that apartness and that difference. See without divine intervention I don't have any peers none at all and my ego disorder makes me an eco maniac with an inferiority complex and what I mean by that is that I'm perfectly capable of feeling too good for someone or something at the same instant knowing and I'm not nearly good enough for that same person or that same thing. All my life, I've known I could do anything. At the same time, I have known I couldn't really do anything. You see, I can't be a fellow among fellows. I have no peers. I can be above you. I can be below you. And insanely, I can be both at the same time. But I can just be okay. Well, when I was 12 Well then, that's a mess. I thought that's all that was really going on the first 12, 13 years of my life. What was a really abnormally self-obsessed kid suffering all those byproducts of self- obsession and desperately trying to stay a half step ahead of a screaming fit. But I got drunk the first time when I was 12 or 13. And that first night I got in an awful lot of trouble. I puked, I blacked out, I passed out. And I woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover. The four horsemen were already gathered around me that morning. I was sicker that morning and over the next 25 years was sick for 80% of the days than I had ever been in my life or believe I will ever be if I don't drink again. if I were as sick as I was 80% of the mornings in my life for a quarter century, I would call 911 but at any rate when I woke up in that horror and that remorse I swore that all those Baptists there were world southern Baptists around that tobacco farm and I didn't agree with them on anything else else. But that morning, I agreed with them on one single thing and that was the booze. And I swore I would never touch that crap again. And not only was I sincere, it was actually fairly effective because it's nearly a week until I got drunk the second time. And I got the second for just precisely the same reason I got drunk the other thousands of times. Because the magic had happened when I got enough of that booze in me and I had no idea the magic that happened all I knew until after I got sober was that for a few minutes on my way to puking and all those problems I had passed the right pleasant neighborhood well of course it was magic because when I got enough of it in me for the first time in my life I had found something that made me feel good enough inside myself that I could stand it without running, without stuffing anything else in there. It made me for the very first time a fellow among fellows. I had peers. I was okay with you, I was okay with me and remember that the way I feel without divine intervention is the most important thing in the world. So I don't think there's any mystery at all about my powerlessness over alcohol and things like that because for 25 years I didn't know there was any other game in town. I didn' t know there was anything else that could make me feel the way I needed to feel. So the bottom line was tragically and sociopathically simple. It didn't matter what it cost and it didn't matter who it caused when I childishly wanted to change the way I felt it was the most important thing on this earth and you know I've been convinced for an awful long time now that after we really have done step one and to me doing step one is not really a do it's an acceptance You know, steps one and two involve reaching conclusions rather than the action that the rest of the steps involve. But for me, if I have accepted step one, I have accept that I'm in a humanly hopeless position, just absolutely humanly helpless. and I didn't know that though even though intellectually admitted I was an alcoholic from the time I was in my mid-teens. I didn t know that about step one but at any rate I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow on my drunk log today there's some other things I really really on my heart I want to talk about. But I am gonna tell you this, from the first time I got drunk until I got sober 25 years later, ethyl alcohol dominated everything in my life. Of course alcoholism did too but in my case alcohol itself did. From that first drunk until i was 16 and left home for good I was drunk two or three nights or days a week at least in the 1950s in trig county kentucky if you were cute enough and smart enough and had the right last name you could practically get away with murder and i practically did a kid who acted and drank the way i did in today's world would find his young butt in an asylum before his 14th birthday but i was still holding on things by my fingernails when i was 16 getting out of my junior year and I wound up getting on Greyhound bus going 200 miles up to the big city or the biggest city in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville wound up an early admission student at the University of Louisville with Africa with an academic scholarship. My reaction to that was stayed so drunk that I lost all concept of day and night it truly was just a matter of past now coming to. Pushed through scholarship and then the next seven and a half years I worked full-time, drank full time, went to school full time and somehow finished undergraduate in law school and I have no idea how that happened. When I look back on it's just a swirling gray mass of alcoholic insanity. I don't have a handful of clear memories that I could sit down and tell you let me tell you what happened. Spring of 1968 I graduated from law school, took the bar right away past the bar and my daughter Dana who a few of you know I think was born and Dana was my only child for over 20 years. I have a wonderful 31 year old son now but Dana was born uh and I hung out I quit my job, hung out at Chamberlain's and said, world, here I am. I'm a criminal defense lawyer, self-employed, and that's what I've been for 51 years. I was either cursed or blessed with a good deal of early material success, good deal money, good deal publicity. But things got crazier and crazier because alcoholism progresses and everybody did everything. A little law firm of nine or ten lawyers built up around this other guy and myself. And in my 10th year of law practice in February, February 10th, 1978, I got full of scotch vodka and four outside issues. And I drove Corvette off the road at over 120 miles an hour. Horrible things to my body. I'm not going to go through the litany. But I was in the hospital more than six months of the first year after that wreck, had a half dozen major surgeries. The early prognosis was that I would never have a urinary function again and that I would never be able to walk without at least a brace on one of my legs. It turns out those doctors were wrong. I've been sober 39 years and haven't owned a brace for over 40 years. and about a year after I got so after the wreck the head of urology at Duke University put my plumbing back together and restored my urinary function but I didn't know that was going to happen when I got well enough that I could have people come in to see me from that time on in the hospitals to the best of my recollection every single day my friends brought me booze and more dope than the doctors would give it I would lay in that hospital bed and say really brilliant things. I would say things like you know fellas and that's my prognosis never peeing again, never walking without a brace. I'd say fellas anybody can stop drinking when the going gets a little rough but it takes a man to land there with it when the bills start coming in and then I'd explain that a man ought not be out there doing the doing the crime if he's not prepared to do the time and just because we'd hit a bump in the road they weren't going to hear me whining give me another drink it's gone but of course that's insanity it's total powerlessness and when you really think about it it's letting how i feel in that instant be more important than my child more important in my profession profession, more important than whether I ever walked, more important than weather I ever peed, more important then whether I lived or died. Childishly living the way I feel and my desire to change it. And if I'd had a relationship with higher power it would have been more important than that, learning to be the most important thing in this universe. At any rate, I didn't get back. I didn't practice law until five years after that wreck. I lost absolutely everything. The law firm, the partners of my law firm I'd found in nine or ten lawyers had to kick me out because of the social and legal pressure that my behavior brought on them and the state of Kentucky jerked my law license right after that and I had a young lady married I married a young lady after the wreck had been with me when I had the wreck, and that's another whole story that I'm not going into today. But I got a brand-new divorce right after the wreak and married her. And she had to leave me on account of insanity during that period and was seeing with some girlfriends and died in an accident. I last laid eyes on Dana in January of 1980, my daughter, in January of 1980 and I didn't have any contact whatsoever with her for over three years. Then Tony Ramney took me to downtown Louisville and a couple things like that and the mortgage companies took us home, the ex-wives were in it was all gone and for about a year up until the fall of 1980 which was six months before I got sober I lived without an address I did not sleep under the bridge but the only reason on earth I didn't I could always talk somebody into taking me and often it was strangers I went oh and during the two and a half year period leading up to my getting sober I was in some sort of asylum 18 times to the best of my memory I've always suspected and had to put on my reapplication to the bar that I suspect there are more trips but I just can't remember. If you find any more, I'm sorry. But I know for a fact there were 18 of them. Half of them were psychiatric hospitals and half of them was some form of jitter joint. But at any rate, asylum number 17 was Nashville, Tennessee, and I wound up there in the fall of 80. I had no home. I have no car. I hadn't no clothes. My teeth were rotting out of my head. uh they knew they wouldn't get paid anything if they let me in um but they told me later they were afraid that i wouldn't live a week if they left me on the street so they did let me in uh i stayed in there a little over 30 days and it was time to kick me out and had no place to go no way to get there and i had a roommate there and his sweet family lived in nashville and they felt sorry for me and said Don why don't you come home with us and stay a few days while we try to figure out what to do with you and I went and lived with them a year and the first six months I didn't stay straight but it got better and I had to get better before I could grasp anything this is not a joke or an exaggeration it was 60 to 90 days after I got sober before I regained the ability to use a knife and fork not properly, effectively on food. And I was just embarrassed to ask anybody to give me lessons on it. So I needed help. And during that six months from the fall of 80 until my sobriety, April of 81, I did get better. I went to World of AA meetings, most of them at a clubhouse there in Nashville called the 202 Club. I got to where sometimes I could go two or even three weeks without getting ripped and that was a world record for me. And how I really know I got better is they only put me back in a rubber room one time in that entire six-month period, and the rate I'd been going twice a year in the asylum looked like the picture of mental health. Well late March of 81 one i got on my most recent drunk and it was another one of my pop-off slash listerine drums and uh on that most recent drug i was drinking and taking everything that i could get my hands on i neglected to mention that the latter part of that first 10 years practicing law i began to use and did use a world of things other than the boots but now don't get your singleness this a purpose nigger is all in a knot let me clarify that for you my story is exactly like Bill and Bob's now I may have not my idea I used more and I use more different things but it's the exact same story everything else that I used was some kind of side show to the booze it was something to have some impact on my drinking maybe just change the effect maybe increase the effect, maybe decrease the effect. Maybe help me try to function on the hangovers. But it all went back to the books. And by the time I got sober, the last couple of hundred times that I came off ethyl alcoholism, the phenomenon of craving had progressed in me just that's the physical addiction to alcohol had progressed and made the point point where once something separated me from alcohol and it wasn't going to be me because that phenomenal craving had progressed and made the point where I had physically lost the ability to stop. And when something did separate me from it, it was three or four days before I was physically able to do something like sit up in a chair. Or somehow not knowing anything was different still having that same insane mixture we get of of ego and pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization one minute one of you guys would tell me how he had saved your life changed your life and my brain would go yeah i know i know it works for you and i'm really glad it does I'm glad it worked for the relatively simple-minded, but you folks don't understand really the width and breadth of my intellect and my understanding. So Lord, I'm wounded by my own understanding, I am so different and so insightful and intelligent and my situation is so complex. days. You folks can go to your group therapy sessions, you call meetings and talk about your myth of higher power. And I'm so glad it helps you. But alas, I'm doomed by my own magnificence. And then the nightmare of it, my sociopathic illness and my alcoholism is the perfect sociopath. It has absolutely no reason for existing other than giving itself up that next dream and it will do or say anything on earth in order to do it it'll do they'll say and do things it'll kill me you both of us it doesn't care it'll sling totally inconsistent lines up against the wall one after another hoping i'll believe one and if i'm not doing what i need to do to maintain my spiritual condition the disorder of my perception as part part of my illness will make me believe one of those lines. But at any rate, shaking out that in the very next instant when you tell me how it saved your life and changed your life, the same brain would go, I know, but you don't know how bad I am. You don't Know about the parts of me that are just missing and always have been. in. You don't understand that anything in my life that looks like it was even okay, much less good, is some kind of pack of lies and a house of cards. And you don't know the things I've done. And I really did practice criminal defense law at a very high level that first 10 years. And as you can imagine, my behavior became very unreliable. And I thought it might be that if I did get sober, it would just be blown into by a sawed-off shotgun. So it wouldn't work for me because I was so terrible. Next instance right back wouldn't work for my because I'm so great. So I didn't know anything had changed at all, but three or four, probably four or five days after the most recent drink when I was able to stumble. I stumbled back to the door of that clubhouse in Nashville. I didn't think they'd let me in and in today's world, they would not. I had passed out in their AA meetings and had to be bodily carried out. They had warned the people they sponsored to stay away from me, that I was a loser and I was gonna die. They So about two months before I got sober, I was walking through that clubhouse and a guy who became a great friend of mine before I left Nashville. He's been dead many years. Joe Wall. Joe was about 6'5". And for those of you who don't know me, I'm a little short guy. And Joe walked up, looked way down at me and said, you know, Don, I'm beginning to think that you really are too intelligent for this program. And I thought he was giving me a compliment. My knee jerk reaction was, well, thank God these people have finally figured out who they're dealing with. But Joe went on. And I believe it saved my life. and he said and that's a shame Don because we have never had anybody too dumb for this deal and we bury you buttholes all the time and that felt like an icy hand floating over something inside me and that icy hand thank my loving God has never completely gone away you let me get a couple of stitches up where I'm supposed to be doing God's will so far I'll feel the tips of those icy fingers and it jerks me right back where I need to be Right back on the beam of Alcoholics Anonymous and trying to help my fellows and do my God's will But to my surprise they did let me in and I remember exactly what was said and who said They said come on in Don. You're keeping us sober And I said, well you all tell me one more time what I may do if I want to live them they said sure don't drink don't take go to meetings and by the grace of god the first 60 days i went to over 150 meetings didn't want to go to one of them did not know when i was going to them it was still obvious to me that you all were religious fanatics my brain was still assuring me that what we needed to do was get our head out of the sand get a butt back to louisville get a law license some money, a good looking woman a big car, be somebody for God's sake but part of that beautiful gift that God had given me was being able to turn around in my brain and say yeah you're right you know I agree there's no way in the world with simple little myth based things that they've got can solve our complex problems but we have options we don't have anything else to do so we're just going to go to these meetings and by the grace of my God I had the same thing backwards about that that without divine intervention I've had backwards about life every day of my life I make it without divine invention all about what I think, feel and believe you see in nature if I don't feel like doing right it doesn't cross my mind to go ahead and do right. I want to get some way to get me fixed so I feel like doing right so I can do right. All my life I was absolutely convinced just never thought about it to question it that the difference between good people and me was that they felt like doing right and if we could just get me fixed so I felt like doing right I could be good people too well I've known for decades now that those good people and they were good people even though they may have been mumbling obscenities under their breath even though the man may have had really suspicious or suspect suspect motives, even though they didn't wanna do it, they did right and that made them good people. And despite all my grand intentions and my great rationalizations, I did not do right and that make me bad people. See the revelation was that those good people may not have felt a bit more like doing right than I did and the even bigger part of that realization was that these thoughts feelings and beliefs that had kicked me around all my life see i was convinced that i had to get my thoughts feelings beliefs in line with this a8 thing because before i could possibly benefit from it turned out i had it completely backwards my thoughts feelings beliefs have never one time left a footprint on reality in 76 years. It's all just kind of a will-o'-the-wisp swirling around amorphous and shifting and changing between my years. Now, if I abdicate my behavior as I did for 37 years to that old crazy picture showing the back of my head, it'll leave a great big boot print right in the middle of reality. reality. But the great revelation was I can behave better than I feel. I don't have to childishly continue to demand that I feel like doing the right thing in order to do the right things. And my experience has been that the value of doing the right thing not only is not diminished when I don t want to do it, it is greater. I think the most spiritual I can get is when I take that next stitch in the right place where the divine spark, that part of God that's in all of us, knows to take that neck stitch and when my brain is flashing red lights and saying oh no man you've got to take care of yourself. You don't need to be doing that. I think when I do that it's the most spiritual I can possibly become in this life. But anyway, you see about the meetings I thought in order for AA to work, I had to believe it would work. I thought it had to feel like it was working when it was working and I think I thought I had to be able to see the causal relationship of A causing B. Turned out had nothing to do with it at that time, at that juncture. I just needed to get my raggedy butt into meeting after meeting and let my old sick brain and soul get get dragged in there behind the raggedy buck. And they also told me when I'd stumbled in that sub house that if I wanted to live, I was going to have to read the big book. And I said, well, I've read the Big Book a few times. And they said, we know, Don, you've been quoting it to us while you've bee dying. They said, first thing you need to understand is this book is not a philosophy book. There's nothing in there that you can learn or somehow master that's going to just transport you to a state of sobriety. There's nothing there you can learn to keep you sober for a heartbeat. In fact, they told me, you've had enough information about Alcoholics Anonymous for over two years to stay sober a day at a time the rest of your life without learning one single new piece of information. What's killing you dummy is not what you know and don't know, it's what you're doing and not doing. and they said if you want to live better you better come back to that big book like little child do say the set aside prayer start at the front cover and go through it land for land reading only the black part not looking for anything that it says that to learn or anything to distinguish or memorize look only for what it says to because what this book really is is a simple instruction manual for your your actions. That was about the time they explained to me that the first nine steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, or rather the action that is the first 9 steps and the action once the first man steps have brought me to a state of recovery, the action living every day of my life on the action, that is steps 10, 11 and 12 to maintain that state of recovery, that those actions, the actions of the step are their prescription for alcoholism. They work precisely on alcoholism the way a penicillin works, where penicilin works on an infection. If I've got an infection that's going to kill me if it's not treated but it will respond to penicillon, I don't need to understand the origin and nature of my infection. I don't need to aggravate the medical profession and people around me whining about it. I could learn everything there is to know about that infection, and if I don�t take the pills, I'm dead meat. What does it make a difference what I know about my infection? I don �t need to understand how penicillin works in the human body. I don t need to believe that that little bottle of pills can take care of all these terrible things wrong. on. And probably most importantly to me, I don't need to want to take the pill. Whether or not I want to Take The Pills is irrelevant. If I take the pills as directed, I'll get just fine. And folks, the fact that I'm here with you guys instead of in that pauper's grave for 39 years is proof that it works that way. And I've seen it work in hundreds of lives just that way Then the time I was going to get on my knees and pray every morning and every night and I remember explaining tearfully to him how the second step had been killing me, that I'd been trying for a couple of years to change my thoughts, feelings and beliefs so that I thought and felt to believe more like make it look like to me, you thought, felt and believed. And I just couldn't do it. And a family heard them when they said, oh Don, you've got that backwards too. We have never suggested you think, feel or believe anything. They said in the first place, you're way too sick to have any valid thoughts, feelings or beliefs. And they said the second place, The issue of whether you live or die is going to be determined solely by what you do. What you think, feel, believe won't have a thing to do with it. So if you want to live, you get down on your knees and start saying those words and don't worry about what's going through the old crazy picture show because it won't leave a footprint on reality. Your behavior will leave a foot print on reality and I remember nodding at them carefully and and thinking that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. I'm not going to do that crap. But I had the gift of didn't know I had it. And in the latter part of April of 81, over my brain's loud veto, embarrassed even though I was by myself, I found myself getting down as far as I was concerned talking to the wall, asking something I did not believe was there to do something I didn't believe could be done. but by the grace of God I continued doing it and to this day I could count on my fingers the mornings and nights I missed getting on my knees and asking thank you God and I don't know how to stay sober without it I don' t dictate behavior to anybody on earth but I do tell them I don''t know howto stay sober without getting onmyknees every morning in life. So don't ask me to give you any hints on what you've done. I don't know how to do it. I've never been able to do it in my life. And as a result of getting down there and doing that, the twin miracles of the second step happened. The first part of the miracles is that when I began to behave like a person who believed the second step, who mentally had accepted that there was some sort of higher power out there that could get me out of the The Humanly Hopeless Dilemma of Step One, I began to get most of the benefits of being a believer. And of course, the second part of that miracle was it turned out that faith and belief, much to my surprise, are just like everything else in my life. I can never think my way into right acting. I have to act my way into right thinking. And as a result of behaving like a person who believed, faith and belief found me. I came to believe. Guys, I got my law license back at a year and a half sober. It's a pure body, back life, except it's 89. And my sobriety has been an absolute wonderful journey. The first nine years I was sober, they had stuck me up in front of 2,000 people to speak. at 22 months sober i thought that was horrible wound up being the basis of the rest of my life since i've been sober and i've spent a lot more time on alcoholics anonymous most importantly working eyeball to eyeball with one alcoholic going through the steps of alcoholics anonymous but traveling to speak doing various things for aa talking spot scenes things. I've spent a lot more time on aid than I have Braxton Law, and God's taken care of me absolutely beautifully. My law license had got put back in order as a result of steps eight and nine. If I'd tried to make it about getting my law license back, I'm sure I'd never gotten the law license and I think I would have been dead of alcoholism. But when i began to behave like a person who just wanted to follow the directions the real miracles started happening but anyway uh first nine years of my sobriety were great i started speaking all over the country some say way too soon i started sponsoring loads and loads of people my law practice started making money i saw dana for the first time in february of 1983 the month after after I got back in town the same month that Stoke meant for all those people. Two months later, she moved in with me, lived with me throughout her high school years. And she and I are dear friends to this day. We've been texting each other today. She's been in Al-Anon over 30 years. We occasionally speak at the same place. That's just wonderful. But anyway, the first nine years I was sober, the relationship with jobs and sex and financial chaos likely killed me. They like to beat me to death. And in May of 1990, I began to look at step six and seven a different way. I began To Realize, part six and seventh. And through that, realizing, and there's so much difference in knowing. You know, I thought all my life that to realize something and to know something were essentially the same thing. They're not even saying universe. Realize is a form of the word real. When I have realized something, that literally means that it has become real inside of me. And I could have quoted, given enough time, the seventh step very backwards. But I didn't realize what it really said it meant. Doesn't ask God to remove all my defects of character. Certainly doesn't ask out to remove the ones that are inconsistent with the self-determined objective objective that I formed through my fourth and fifth step of what I thought a spiritual dialogue looked like. And it darn sure doesn't ask God to remove the character defects that are embarrassing and making my self-centered but uncomfortable. I don't know how I missed it for nine years. The book is absolutely clear. In fact, it says praying for our own ends is so off base and won't work that the book just kind of assumes we'll says we can easily see it well I couldn't see that wanting character defects to be gone and praying for them to be gone because I want them gone was my own ends because what's that prayer ask is only that God removes the defective character to the stand in the way of my youthments to God and my fellows. And it's not just six and seven. It's the end, our heart of the program. Third step prayer. Take away my difficulties, not so I can be sober and spiritually happy. That's a back line up. Take away my difficulties that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help of God's power, love, and way of life. Eighth and ninth step. all about the practicality of putting our lives in order right okay but look on page 77 it says specifically yeah we're doing that but that's not our real purpose our real purposes to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to god and those around us folks i've got an illness that is at its core selfishness and self-centeredness i cannot not effectively treated by any form of self-obsession. My A.A. hero is Chuck Seaton, the water walker. And I'm right down the line with him on that. When I try to take care of me, for instance, I go down to that law office and I try out to win cases, look good, do my job, make money, cover my butt, I wind up in the snake pit every single time. When I try to get you to love, comfort, and understand me on any level, I wind up with convoluted and discordant human relations. But when I go down to that law office, and instead of trying to take care of me, I try To help God's kids do what they need to have done for fun and for free because I want to. God's so much better lawyer than I am the Bar Association has really embarrassed me over and over with the awards and accolades they've given and it's just been from trying to take that next stitch in the right place and trying to help God's kids do what they need to have done and my relationships Relationships began to straighten out when I began to realize six and seven were not where I go to work on me with God's help. They're where I stop working on me and where I lay all myself back at the feet of God, sort of like an enlightened third step, and say, Mom, Dad, I don't know where we are or how we got here or where we're supposed to go. And I accept that I cannot comprehend the patterns of my life. See, I thought it was all about me figuring out the patterns so I'd know where to start stitching. Turns out I've got less capability of comprehending and figuring out the patterns of my life than a chimpanzee does of mastering quantum physics. My job is stitching, listening to that divine spark and taking just that next stitch. My God lights my path, but God lights it with a pin light for one step. God never lights it mit the searchlight to let me see a hundred yards down the road. Well, and when I pray instead of trying to get you to love, comfort, and understand me, me, when I pray to give my entire interest, attention and love to you. And pray to seek to set aside whether I get any love, comfort or understanding at all. And seek to love comfort and understand you. My human relations are just, they're charmed. It's unbelievable. It turns it around in a heartbeat when I remember to pray that and change my angle of approach to you rather than me. It's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. My sweet Sharon and I have been married 29 years and been together since May of 1990. The same month I started trying to go a different route on six and seven. and I'm on that route of trying to just take that next stitch and do God's will and help my fellows. Trying to love, comfort, and understand rather than be loved, comforted, and understood. If any day in the last 30 years you'd ask me, Don, have you done that well enough? Have you done any good? I don't think there's been a day that I would say, yeah, I did. I did, I think today I got over it. I got out with the bar. Every day I'd have said, oh no. And I held up 50 or 100 times and had to start over. But despite that, if in May of 1990, at nine years sober with a great life, God said, make a list of all the best you think you have in life. I'm going to give it to you. And I had done that. And God had given me that. I would have shortchanged myself in every single area of my life. when I'm willing to behave like a person who's willing to give up all of their self-determined objectives to try to do my God's will one stitch at a time. My God has things in store for me that are more beautiful than I could ever imagine. My sweet Sharon and I, I'm going to close with this. We got together in May of 1990. 1990, we've been together for 30 years with no intervening divorces or separations. And we've never had an argument. I sponsored some guys who are psychologists and counselors. They tell me that that's not healthy. And I tell them they're welcome to the healthy relationships. I'm doing fine. And in closing, I'll say this. just arguing in general if anybody has caught me arguing in the last 30 odd years somebody was paying me to argue I will not argue with you about something to prove to you that I'm right God has relieved me of that awful burden in the first place nobody knows and is right about anything and what difference does it make God, relieve me of the burden. I love you all. Thank you all so much for putting this together and for inviting me and this wonderful, wonderful group of speakers other than me that you've got here. Thank you and God bless.