The Danger of Forgetting the Past in Recovery — Steve M.

My name is Steve Mitchell. I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here and congratulations to the lady on three years. There's a guy in here that celebrated 17 years last night, Bill Clear. And if anybody's ever been told that you can't tell what an alcoholic looks like unless they're drinking, You can go look at Bill Clear, and I guarantee you that you'll be disabused of that. I could pick Bill Clear out in Yankee Stadium if I'd never seen him. So anyway, somebody lit a candle on him. It's over 17 years, and we're going to celebrate that Tuesday night at Fox Hall. I'm going to try to be there, Bill. Congratulations. I'm really glad to be here. In fact, I'm thrilled to be hier. And up until about 11 o'clock this morning, this seemed like such a great idea. and I think I had forgot I had to do this and then all at once I remembered it and moved across my stomach and it hasn't left yet but we'll get through this I got here last I had a wonderful day yesterday you know you wonder sometimes how it comes to be that you got here to do something like this let me tell you now I didn't record the conversation when Mike called but this is pretty much how it went he said Steve this is Mike from Omaha District 20 I never heard of you. I guess you live in California. The people we wanted to do this, we're not able to get a hold of or won't call us back. And we want to know if you'll come and do this. Now, we're trying to get somebody to talk on the steps and somebody else to tell their story. We really want blank whoever it was to call us back, but he won't. We're still working on it. on the case that we can't get him will you do both and I said well Mike after an invitation like that how could you refuse so I wondered about this guy he got slightly better yesterday it was a wonderful day I've really been rolling I've had a tremendous amount of AA stuff a lot of work stuff, a lotof family stuff we didn't leave Raleigh Durham until almost 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon which would have been about 1 o'clock here. So we got here about suppertime last night, and Mike had improved a little bit, and I noticed that he was quite a bit nicer when he picked us up. So we were walking, and he said, I've got to tell you something. I said, well, I couldn't imagine what is it. I mean, have you been canceled out at this late date? I thought maybe they decided, well maybe we really don't need you. And he said I'm going to need to borrow some money to get out of the parking lot. So I thought, well, I'm going to find out who this guy's sponsor is. They're feeding him raw meat or something. We've got to get this guy calmed down. But anyway, good guy. We hit it off well and went to the meeting last night. My wife is with me. Julie, would you stand up, honey? My wife ist with me, love of my life. And I went to a meeting last time. Last night at the college, great meeting, and saw a lot of people that I've known over the years. And I felt better after I saw Madeline. I've always thought Madeline has a lot of class, and I've also always liked her. She always says she's going to come to my talks, but never does. I don't know what that is. She said, I assure you, I'll be there tomorrow. I don' t think she's here, is she? But anyway, she's on her way. And I fell a lot better after I saw Peggy and saw a lot o' people. And Dick and I had a great conversation after the meeting, the way you pick up with old friends. And the fact is we had to, they turned the light out on us last night and told us to leave the room. So it was a great meeting, and I really am glad to be here. It's nice to be asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. My sobriety date is May 26, 1975. I'm a member of the principal's group of AlcoholicsAnonymous in Raleigh, North Carolina. I don't have any idea if it's the best group of alcoholics anonymous in the world or not. I just know it'sthe best one for me. I don't know if I got the best sponsor in the world or not. I just know he's the best one for me. He's been sober two years longer than me, and he's fond of saying that they taught things in that two years that they don't teach anymore. And that's fine with me as well. I'll tell you, I was telling Dick about this the other day. I was at a thing just in August where I was the longest sober one there by five years. And I don' t want that, and you don' d want that. It may be true that the newcomer is the lifeblood of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I'll tell you, we've got a few problems on our hands if newcomers are going to do anything together and solve this thing. So, I mean, we need people that have been here a while and I've been more and more grateful the more and more I've seen of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've been associated with the people that I have and it's worked just right for me. So what I'm going to doing today, what I've been asked to do is to share my experience, strength and hope around the 12 steps. Now that's a little bit threatening for several reasons. One reason And it's pretty personal. And, you know, it's just going to be my journey, what I've learned through the 12 Steps and what I'm going to share with you today. What I've heard through the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, what people have shared with me, and what i've tried to pass on. The other thing that's a little bit threatening about it is I'm gonna share with things that I do, and trust me now, I don't do any of those things for benevolence or because I think I'm a good guy or wouldn't want you to think that. I got enough demons chasing me to keep me rolling forever. There ain't any doubt about that. So, I mean, what I do, like yesterday I talked to, we were at the airport and there's a little golden corral. It's like a miniature golden corrail there that shoots you through. It's not a big one like you got in a city or anything, but there's an miniature golden coral and we were eating there and there was a young man standing there. Now, I'm not psychic, but I walked up to him and I said, young man, are you in the Marine Corps? Right, I knew that. He had it all the way down his arm, USMC. And so we visited for just a minute. I told him I was in the military, I was into Vietnam, it's important work you're doing. And I told my wife afterwards if I would have thought about it in time, I would Have picked up the ticket because she was watching the young man and his wife and little child. And, I mean, if I get in a shape where I can't expect, you know, if $10 or $15 is going to hurt me, I'm going to be back on somebody's doorstep. So there's all kinds of things that we can do with these steps. There's never been a situation that hasn't been able to be made better as far as I understand through the 12 steps. Now what I understand about the 12 Steps is that they're perfect. What's wrong with them would be my application to the steps. But the steps themselves are perfect. There's no theory or any of those things in the steps, the steps yourselves are perfect, I don't think there's anything new in those steps. One of the things that Father Ed Dowling said, the man who Bill Wilson referred to as his spiritual advisor, said the first time he saw the 12 steps written on a wall, he said, my God, I've never seen the writings of St. Aquinas so clearly illuminated. We got our principles from men and women of medicine and religion and from people who understood what spiritual principles were. So I think that they were written different. God could have worked it out any way that he wanted to if he gave us this miracle, but he gave it to us that it only works when his children gather together and the illness breeds itself in isolation. Recovery breeds itself within the family. So while it is true, you know, you hear a lot of times that AA wouldn't matter if somebody left AA. In a very real sense, that's not true. We can't afford to lose anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. Everyone is needed here. And so I plan on staying here now. It is true that any alcoholic could get drunk. This is what I believe. If somebody asked me to explain what I thought AlcoholicsAnonymous was, I'd say it's a way of life slightly more powerful than the illness of alcoholism. If they asked me what I though alcoholism is, I would say that that means I can't live with drinking and I can live without drinking. That's what I think it is. So for Alcoholics Anonymous to be more powerful than the illness of alcoholism, that means to me all the jets of AA need to be in place at one time. And at the pinnacle of that, the cardinal thing at that is the 12 steps. So that's what we're going to talk about this afternoon. Now I also believe that all 12 steps are of equal importance. Never have any AlcoholicsAnonymous literature that I've read ever said one step is more important than another step. You can hear that in meetings, but you can hear a lot of stuff in meetings. I like to remember that Alcoholics Anonymous is a written program. It may be passed on through an oral tradition, but it's written down. And if we'll follow our literature, we'll be just fine. But you can hear anything in meetings. I was in a meeting one time when I heard a lady say that her sponsor told her to go throw some eggs at trees. I've been awful confused in my life, but at the chance of saying what I'm never going to do, I don't think I'm going to go out and throw any eggs at tree trying to get better. So you can here anything. So I think it's important to know what the literature says. And I think all 12 steps are, in fact, of equal importance to the well-ordered life. Now, quite obviously, they're not of equal important at the same time. That wouldn't even begin to make sense. But it's very much like the three, you know, recovery, unity, and service. They're given equal space on that. So it would seem like to the Well-Ordered Life they're of equal importance once we get going. I don't think this gift was given to me that it stops with me. I think that I'm supposed to take this gift and share it. We are a bit of a subculture in Alcoholics Anonymous. otherwise we wouldn't have closed meetings. But sobriety is the beginning of what we're supposed to be here. We're supposedto take this and be of service, maximum service to God and our fellows. Well, I certainly can't do that in isolation. So I want to read a paragraph. It's my favorite paragraph of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, so far as I know, and again, I wantto be really clear about this. I wanto be careful how I say this because it's very easy to misunderstand. I'm not an expert on the 12 steps. Any speaker should say they don't speak for AlcoholicsAnonymous. What I am an expert on is my application and my effort to apply these steps. I've diligently tried to apply these steps for the last little bit over 29 years with varying degrees of success. Obviously it's been successful enough. I've probably made every mistake in Alcoholics Anonymous but three since I got sober. One mistake I've never made is I've ever drank any liquor since I've got sober, obviously. Another mistake I'm never made, I've not quit going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And the third mistake I have never made is I have never trusted the wrong person. I got a drunken uncle I thought was going to be here this morning. I've got to quit calling him that. It gets my wife confused. He's sober almost 25 years, but it still is what I call him, a drunk... I have a number of drunken uncles, but I just call him my drunken Uncle. He's always surprised... I'm going to clean this up how I say it, but he's always surprise that I've taken to the guidance of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, to me, that's a no-brainer. One of the great things about AA is you get to pick your leaders here. There are people in AlcoholicsAnonymous that I wouldn't have drank with. Unless I didn't have any booze now. I've never ran into anybody I wouldn't drink with if I didn' t have anything to drink, but there's people I wouldn' t drink with unless I'd have been under duress. So the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is you get to follow who you want to here. I think it was Chris last night when he was covering the first tradition. He said something to the effect that's right out of our literature. He said that there's no society on earth that more safely guards the individual member's right to think, feel, operate, whatever it is how they want to. The great guardian in Alcoholics Anonymous if you're an alcoholic in my description is alcohol that's why we don't have anybody can kick anybody out of here we don' t need that. An alcoholic in my description if I don't conform to certain spiritual principles I'll sicken and drink so I like to remember that AA meetings are just one thing that we do in AA. Now they're fundamental I've always went to a lot of meetings and I do to this day but they're just one thing that мы do in AA there's many definitions of what Alcoholics Anonymous is and I could never improve upon the preamble but my very favorite definition of what AlcoholicsAnonymous is, is that little snapshot into the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions book where it says AA's 12 steps are a set of principles spiritual in their nature says something to the effect if practiced as a way of life it will do two things it says it will expel the obsession to drink I know what that means that's what they did to me when I was a kid in school it means to kick it out The other thing, and it's probably the correct use of the word enable. It says something to the effect it will enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. Now again, I don't know about anybody else, but when I was drinking, having the obsession to drink expelled and becoming happily and usefully whole was not even a good fantasy. So that's happened to me in so, so much more. What did the wise man say? We would have settled for table scraps. But what we got instead was a seat at the banquet with the king. And all I had to do was almost die from drinking and then come in here and begin to practice spiritual principles and start to grow up. So I want to read, so far as I know, there's only two reasons that we do anything that we doing Alcoholics Anonymous, whether it's stuffing envelopes, setting up chairs, making coffee, being a general servant, carrying people to meetings, going to the halfway house, picking up after drunks, whatever it is. There's only 2 reasons that I know of that we're doing alcoholics. That we do everything in AlcoholicsAnonymous we do. One is to stay sober and the other one is to carry the message, no matter what it is, stuffing envelops, no matter where. that's what we do so i want to read where we should end up this afternoon roughly about four o'clock i think what we're going to do is we'll go for about an hour and then about all you can take and about all i can take and then uh we'll stop and uh use the bathroom and tank back up on broken down nasty coffee and nothing personal against your coffee just that we some of the coffee we drink there's a guy in raleigh always likes to say we got a lot of people making coffee they shouldn't be. Probably some truth in that, so we'll load back up. There's Madeline. She didn't lie. We'll take a break in about an hour, then we'll come back for about another hour. We're going to start out here in a minute is where we should end up about 4 o'clock this afternoon. This is my favorite paragraph. A guy gave this to me that unfortunately the only problem with this is he gave it to me and he lived it out for a number of years. There's a man in Omaha going to either has or is going to celebrate 20 years anniversary, 20 years of sobriety that this guy that I'm going to tell you about in a minute brought into Alcoholics Anonymous. This guy called the hotline 20 years ago or so. Jeff was on the hot line, went out and got him, put him in AlcoholicsAnonymous. He's been sober ever since. Family has been restored. He is very He's sick now, unfortunately, but his family's been restored. And last time I talked to him, he'd either the second or third in his company. But the only problem is Jeff himself forgot about this. Now for my 10-year anniversary, Jeff had this blown up in a beautiful oak frame. I've got it in my house in North Carolina today. It's my favorite paragraph in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, well, in all of AA literature. And I think it really cuts to the chase of what we're supposed to be doing. We read this at the end of all my home groups, all of our meetings, just before the Lord's Prayer. It says, Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a higher power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world no matter what your present circumstances. I found that to be very true. I found all of Alcoholics Anonymous literature to be true. I found it all of the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous to be truth. There's only one thing in AA literature that I know doesn't pertain to me, best of my knowledge. It says in there something to the effect it's the great obsession of every abnormal drinker to be a regular drinker, something to that effect. I can't imagine anybody wanting to be an irregular drinker. What they were thinking of when they wrote that, I mean you might as well be poked in the eye with a sharp stick or go bowling or something or watch the grass grow or something, I mean to be irregular, normal drinker I watch people drink sometimes, and it just makes my gums hurt. You know, I wonder. I mean, it just fascinates me how they will just play with a drink and smell it and twirl it and all of those things. No sense at all to me. Anyway, we don't have time to do anything much with it today. It seems like a long period of time, but we're going to have to roll on with this. The time moves pretty fast. But I'm fascinated by Alcoholics Anonymous history, and it's always good to encourage people to understand a little bit about our history. I was probably sober 10 years before I found out why you studied history in school. It just never made any sense to me. It's so you don't have to relive it. That's why we talk about our drinking. I don't want to talk about my drinking or listen to other people's drinking in such a way that I remain a prisoner of my drinking. It's quite the opposite. I want to be free and in an electric state of mind. I want TO be enthused about what's going on, but the one thing about it is I want To make sure that it doesn't happen again. And I think when that one guy was the archivist, I think he's dead now, Frank Moser, And I suppose this is old. He was the first one that I heard say it, that one of the things that we know about civilizations that have went away is they always forgot their history. Anything that goes away, you forget your history. So, you know, I don't want to forget my drinking because I don' t want it to become my future. What's that old saying? If you forget you're past, it's getting ready to become your future. And it certainly could happen. I'd be a fool to say that I'll never take a drink now. What I will say is what Dr. Bob said. It's written down a couple, three places in our history. They asked Dr. Bob if he thought he'd ever drink again, and he said he didn't think he'd ever drink unless he quit doing what he'd been doing up to that time. I guess the good news is, is if we put all the jets of Alcoholics Anonymous in place at one time, it's impossible to drink alcohol. Can't do both. Simply cannot do it. Could I get drunk? Of course I could get drunk, but I would have to pull out of the miracle and then, you know, sicken and drink. But anyway, I want to just touch on the history and then launch off into this thing. I've been more and more fascinated over the last number of years with our history. Just last month I was at a thing where a guy who actually worked with Sister Ignatia was there and he's all bent over with spine cancer now but this guy is so pumped on Sunday morning I was talking to him out on this old farmhouse and I actually thought this guy was going to assault me I mean he's so hyped up with what's going on, he jumped up and he was poking me and everything but telling me stories about Sister Ignacia Now this is just me, it doesn't make any difference, it's just a statement I remain fascinated by all the people that kept this thing got this thing going and kept it going Dr. Bob is my man, he always has been he's always been the guy that I've always been fascinated by and I personally look on Sister Ignatia and Dr. Silkworth and Ann and Lois as equal founders I always forget the lady's name but Bill Wilson's secretary said some years ago, it's written down too she personally believed that Clarence Snyder would have been given, history would have given him an equal founder's role. The home brewmeister in the big book. I don't even know if it made it over into the fourth edition, did it? It's in the third edition. But anyway, she said that history would've afforded him an equal founder' s role if he hadn't had such a fractious personality. Now I don' t know if that' s true or not but we owe a tremendous sense of gratitude to all of the people who got this thing going and it' s fascinating to know about our history. What I did a few years ago is I took a project to try to read a book on the life of anybody that was there. There's a book on the lives of all kinds of people now. There's that guy in Hawaii who's written all of those books. We've got some great history books of our own, Dr. Bob and the Old-Timers, A.A. Comes of Age, Pass It On, are all great historybooks. And some of our pamphlets flirt with history. But there's a guy over in Hawaii, it's not conference-approved literature, but it's great reading. He's written a book about Sam Shoemaker's experience with Bill Wilson. There's A Book on the Life of Father Ed Dowling, a guy that was sponsored by Clarence Snyder, wrote a book on his life. So there's all kinds of stuff. I read a book. In the big book, there's that clergyman. It says the noted clergyman, Harry Emerson Fosdick. I went back and read a books on his live. We owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to the people. And even a casual observation of Alcoholics Anonymous history makes it clear that we'd have never got going without the non-alcoholic. Never would have happened. I always like to be mindful when I go to an AA thing, not about just the non-alcoholic who's helped, but there's been a tremendous amount of alcoholics who have come here and who have not stayed here. Like the man who carried the message to Bill Wilson. Now I heard his sponsor talk a little bit before he died that he said that Ebby was sober the last couple whatever it was years of his life, but he had a terrible time. You know, he carried the passage to Bill Willson and Bill Wilsons continued to refer to him all those years even when he was drinking as my sponsor. So it's fascinating to know all of that stuff and where we got going and to know about the Washingtonians. They were a group in, I think, like 1860 or something. They found a great deal of the answer. They grew much faster than Alcoholics Anonymous ever did. They took off like a rocket. So it's good to know, and I think that a lot of our traditions were born out of their failure. You know, they were doing very well. This was before the day of telephone or there wasn't no such thing as a fax machine or any television, nothing like that. It was carried by word of mouth. Depending on who you believe, Some accounts have it up to a half million people. Now, alcoholics have been known to exaggerate stuff a bit, but nevertheless, they had the answer. They found that the answer, by getting and sticking together, they could stay sober. And what happened is they got involved in outside issues. They got involved with politics. They got involve in the abolition movement. They got involvement in all kinds of stuff that they didn't have any business being involved in, and they sickened and they deteriorated. By the time that Bill Wilson and them came along and got AA going, Bill had never even heard of the Washingtonians. Also, the Oxford group played a tremendous part of what we're trying to do today. So it's good to know about our history. Anyway, I better get my time piece out here. Hey, big fella, how are you? My gosh, is it 1.30? I told you we've got to push on with this thing. The first step of Alcoholics Anonymous says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. Now that step, it says, and what I'm going to do today, I'm going to talk about these steps. What I've learned and what my experience is, what I've tried to pass on, but I'm gonna talk about them with the book Alcoholics Anonymous as well as the 12 and 12. I'll let you know I'm a fan of the 12 and 12, I sponsor a couple people that think that's almost bad to say that, but i think the twelve and twelve is full of wonderful information. Quite obviously the big book is written in a much more stark and bold way. I don't know of any of Bill Wilson's writings that are quite as grabbing, I mean he goes right for the juggler in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Quite obviously, the 12 and 12 is more, what would you call, global. Bill had been sober, what? I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years, 15. Whatever it was when he wrote that, quite obviously that he would have a different take and a broader take on it. But I'm a fan of the 12 and 12. So I like both of those. I'm going to talk about the steps out of both of those a little bit. The one thing about the first step, it does say, and again, remember I said that I don'T think there's any place in Alcoholics anonymous literature that says one step is more important than any other step. It does say in the 12 and 12 that it's the only step we can practice to perfection, and I suppose you could say it's the step that makes the other steps go, but I think you could Say that about all of the steps. What I believe about the first step is it's just a fact. It's like my name, my age, my sex, date of birth, anything. I could lie about it, but the fact of the matter is it is just a fact. it's a picture of my condition. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. That's the nature of my condition. Then there's a line in there, I heard a guy say what that means is a new thought and then it says that our lives have become unmanageable. I've always known, I think this might be a little bit unusual, I'm grateful for it, but I've also always known that not drinking was not an answer for me. Always known that. I remember one time, this was before they decriminalized public intoxications, I had been arrested a whole bunch of times for public intoxication and the county attorney in Dodge County was going to commit me to the state hospital for public intoxication. Now, I didn't know what any of that meant, but I was terrified of that because I knew that meant not drinking for a longer period of time. I always knew that not drinking was not an answer. The first time I heard anybody say that the majority of alcoholics who take their own life do it when they're sober, I didn' t need any edification with that. That resonated with me. That went off like a rocket. I don' t mind telling you now. A booze still did what it did for me when I was a 16 or 17-year-old kid. That's where I'd be right now. I'd be in one of them broken down country western bars my wife hates this but I mean I'd have one of those half-dressed slingstresses in there with me telling me how good I am she'd know it was a lie and I would too but what difference does it make I mean first liar barely has a chance in there but I think that alcohol for me was the it I was looking for all my life now I was slightly retarded emotionally as a child And also I think I'm a classic case of my ex-wife in graduate school studied gifted education and learned about what happens to people when they get in front of things that they can't do, and that happened to me. You know, I was moving along very well in life, and I'd come alongside long division. I never did learn how to do long division, and it became a behavior problem. Now, I thinkI was in trouble before that. I grew up in alcoholism, so I was probably retarded emotionally. I was behind the curve, but, I mean, I wasn't stupid. I could look around and see things. I knew what was going on in life. I was flooded with incredible fear as a child. And I also, I can remember to this day walking home from school and being terrified and sometimes logically being able to prove to myself there wasn't anything to be afraid of. Well, we know in this room that if you can do that and the fear doesn't go away, I mean, you're not going to treat a spiritual malady with a logical solution. We know that. I mean, that's why it says in the book that you're not going to reverse a killer illness by coming to a few meetings or something like that. This is a spiritual illness. It needs a spiritual solution. One of the things the great psychiatrist Carl Jung said, and it's very true, he said that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol is on a low level similar to man's thirst for God. It's that great longing. So whatever that was, I was always searching for something. I've heard this probably 10,000 times in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The first time I ever heard it, I was brand new. I heard it from Peggy that she said that she had like a hole in her body and cold wind blew through there, like there was a big piece in her buddy that wasn't there. And every time she tried to do anything, whatever it was, even in her own family, cold wind flew through there. And you just shudder with that. Well, booze filled that back up. It's foolish to think when I quit drinking that that's going to stay shut back up, and it just doesn't make any sense. So I always knew that not drinking was not an answer, that it was going to take something more than that. So I'm very grateful for that, that I understood that step very, very clear that just not drinking, I always knew that that would not be an answer. I don't think I came to Alcoholics Anonymous thinking it would work for me. What I did is I come running from what I had. I was running away from what i had. I knew the last couple three years of my drinking I either had to find another way of life or I wanted to die. My sponsor's sponsor heard a definition a few years ago he passed it on that I just love. He said, surrender is what happens when the demons you might get start to look better than the demons you got. And I think that's true and so I was convinced that something had to happen. There's a couple places in the book Alcoholics Anonymous where it says the alcoholic's past is his most vital asset. There wasn't any way for me to know that but when I came running to AlcoholicsAnonymous I was convinced that I had to find a new way to live or I wanted to die. Now lots of things happened from my drinking. All kinds of stuff happened. Some of them are hilarious. There's a lady in this room, I passed out in her front yard. Remember that, Mickey? 38 years ago or something like that, I just passed out. Police came and got me. I mean, all kinds of stuff happened with my drinking. I woke up one time at 23rd and Broad Street and the policeman was driving my mom's car. I'm sitting next to him where a girl sits when you're on a date. You know, I'm wondering, how did this happen? You know? I mean those things happen all kinds o' stuff time after time. And it is very true. And, you know, that's not alcoholism. Those are just occupational hazards of the illness. You know, all kinds of stuff happens with that thing. But, I mean, at the bottom line, what alcoholism is, it's just that you don't know what's going to happen. You know? You simply don't think about it. You don't even know what was going to happened. I'm in trouble if I'm drinking and I'm in trouble If I'm not drinking. So, you know, it got so bad in the last couple three years of my drinking, I had two or three plans. One was to marry a rich woman. Even as confused as I was, I was fairly certain that wasn't going to happen. One was to get a job. That was looking more and more bleak. I got out of the military the summer of 1972. I only worked about six weeks until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in May of 1975. Chances of getting a job weren't good. And my other plan, and the one that I played over and over in my mind, was to kill myself. And you can imagine now, I hung out in a place where they played country music all the time. Even to this day, I question people's alcoholism that don't listen to country music. They may not even be alcoholics. But I would play out in my mind my own funeral, and I would see people coming through there. I'd say to myself, they'll be sorry now. They had plenty of opportunity to do something about this. They could have done something about it. All this stuff that they're worried about is really of no account. I've got some real problems right here. And I can remember to this day sitting at Bill's Bar and a guy, that was when people, this was in like 1972, 1973, 1974, or 1975. I can remember to this day, I still remember, God, I can see it in my mind. I used to sit at Bill's Bar and there used to be a guy that in 10th grade, him and I sat right next to each other in Spanish class. And this guy used to copy my paper. And he would drive down Main Street in his blue Lincoln Continental on his lunch break. He was the vice president of the First National Bank. And I'm thinking now, this guy was too ignorant to do his Spanish. He had to copy off my paper, something's wrong with this picture he's the vice president of bank and here I am I mean this just doesn't make any sense now I didn't take into account I didn' work or any of those kind of things but day after day and I would always think and there is a time in there you know when you approach this stuff logically now logic doesn't work on a spiritual illness but there's no way for us to know that it makes sense it's like you know what I first started getting drunk as a kid I'd get drunk and I'd get hungry we'd always go out and eat and walk out without paying then as you keep drinking there's a time in there where if you'd stop drinking right now and go eat you could eat but a little bit more to drink takes care of that and it's the same way I'd sit in there day after day and figure out how I'm going to get a job and how I'M going to GET MY LIFE GOING and I'd always think this is what I'm gonna do it's gonna be tomorrow when I do it it's kinda like saying you ain't gonna drive a car if you don't have a driver's license and you're drinking well that makes sense while you're not drinking once you take a drink all that changes it's kind of like this This made real good sense to come and do when Mike called me. Just before I had to get up here, I was thinking, man, I wish he'd have called those other guys. Now you know that's not true, but just applying logic to stuff. So as I look at all of that time, my drinking, I Was in serious, serious trouble. Well, stopping drinking isn't going to do anything with that except make it worse. So what happened to me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous? What happened, I won't bore you with the details of that, but I ended up sober. It was Memorial Day weekend of 1975 And it's easy now to look back and see the hand of a loving God during that time. But, of course, I was years away from being able to do that. I ended up with my great aunt. My great aunt, if she were alive today, she would be an attorney or a professor or something like that. She spoke three languages. Plus, she was a lifelong student of Latin. I was a beat-up character. I hadn't seen her. I was 19 years old on my way to Vietnam. The last time I'd seen her, I'm now 25, almost 26 years old. My great ant takes me in. I'm about seven days without a drink. I'm already going to meetings. I'm going to Meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous every day. I'm terrified. This, again, this is just for me. If somebody asked me to describe the illness of alcoholism in one word, I would say fear. That's the word I would use. That's what I would call the illnessof alcoholism. I would just call it fear. And it breeds itself. I mean, there's nothing more self-centered than staying stuck to a bottle. I mean it's not that I'm not capable or the alcoholic isn't capable of other things. It's not we don't experience love or compassion or anything else. it's just that the illness always wins if if it comes push to shove over anything or booze booze is going to win well the first summer that i was sober now this is on the basis of what i learned after the fact i couldn't put this in words but the very first summer i was sober i knew something happened i couldn'T begin to put it in words BUT WHAT I KNOW NOW HAPPENED IS THE SECOND STEP STARTED TO MOVE IN MY LIFE IT SAYS THAT THE SECONE STEP CAME TO BELIEVE THAT A POWER GREATER THAN ourselves could restore us to sanity. Now, I did a lot of crazy stuff when I was drinking. I left the bar in the wrong car one time. You couldn't possibly make something like that happen. I had all kinds of crazy things happen, all kinds OF stuff. Nothing would ever become as crazy as taking a drink when I'm sober. That's the craziest thing I could do. But I began to go to meetings and I began TO hear stuff. Now I'm very grateful that I was introduced to AA in the way that I was because where I was introduced and by the people if you wanted this you'd have had to been brain dead to miss it one of the things I was told to do was to read Alcoholics Anonymous literature on a daily basis to go to meetings every day and read AA literature on daily basis now I still go probably to four meetings a week just because my home group meets twice a week and then if you're doing other stuff you just get asked to do it or you go to see people or you go to be with people or whatever it is or there's events like this going on at home or whatever so I probably go to four meetings a week. I've always went to a lot of meetings. I don't go to a meeting every day anymore, but I practice the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous on a daily basis. But what I do is I read AA literature on a Daily Basis and I began to see myself come alive in there. I've Always Thought, again this is just my take on it, I've Also Thought one of Bill Wilson's greatest jokes was the chapter to the agnostic. I think that you can hunt till the cows come home for a spiritual piece of writing as profound as that chapter. I mean that thing is so powerful it says in there it says in that chapter I read it every day in my life that failure is impossible that's what it says it says all kinds of stuff in there there's a line in there that's always been a little bit confusing it seems like to me it should be a little bit further on in the book but it says that God either is or he isn't what was our choice to be well there's no way that I would have understood any of that stuff but what I was understanding what was happening to me I was becoming moving into Alcoholics Anonymous I was going to a meeting every day I began to hear things. I heard Peggy that first summer. She talked about being 25 years old. She talked About hemorrhage and blood. I've hemorrhoaged blood. I'm dedicated to drinking now. I ain't in here on moral grounds. I've literally had blood come out both ends at the same time And continued to drink. When she talked about her feet being all swollen up, My feet may have still been swollen when she was talking about it. But she talked About that at 25 years, That she was 25 years Old when that stuff was going. Well, what was being born out of all that experience for me Was hope. Now, I couldn't have put that in words. There was an old guy. He was kind of an institution out around where my sister lives, out around Euling and West Point and all out around in there. But his name was Herman Myers. And Herman came and talked in that very first summer about the same time Peggy did. And Herman talked. This made no sense to me at the time, but I never forgot it. And somehow I knew it must be true. It's funny how when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I mean, I thought everybody had their price and everybody could be bought. and I had all kinds of anger with, confusion with women. All kinds of stuff and I was cynical and hateful but when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous all that stuff didn't stop obviously but I automatically believed what the people in AA were saying. I automatically believe that but I can remember and I guess I've learned about as much from people who have not been able to quit as I have from people. You got to know what not to do as well as what to do but I remember going to this guy and as far as I know he never has got his life turned around. I was in the state hospital with him and his brother at different times and I remember asking him the question, I said all of this sounds really good what these people are saying at these meetings but for the life of me I couldn't understand what going to these meetings did for people that kept them from drinking and this guy looked at me, you know how people will look at you like you're nuts how could you ask such a stupid question? This guy looked over at me and he said well that's easy he said you can't just go to those meetings, you've got to live the way those people live So I believed that Herman was telling the truth, but I heard him say in that first summer that whatever it is that brought you here, you will learn to be grateful for. He also said that if there were any way for... He was sober probably as long as I am now then, and he said that if there was any way for me to quit going to meetings and keep the life that I have today, which there isn't for me, but he said if there Was, he said I wouldn't quit coming to these meetings because this is what I want to do. This is where the people I want to be with. So all of these things were starting to move in my life. The very first summer I was sober, an awareness came to me that almost everything about me was going to have to change and I wasn't able to change. That I didn't have any power to change So it's clear to me that things were happening Now I couldn't have put them in words if I was as terrified as I had ever been I was probably sober five years before I found out how angry and resentful I was I experienced everything as fear I was just terrified I don't know what I was scared of It would have been easier to say what I wasnít afraid of I wasjust terrified I was just afraid. I was absolutely terrified. But what I was doing was going to AA meetings on a daily basis. And I'll tell you something, if you've ever had the experience of, I learned many years ago to look into people's eyes, but if you have ever had an experience of engaging somebody in conversation around a rescue mission. I'm interested in the homeless situation and rescue missions and skid row work and things like that. But you can't engage a homeless person, really a homeless, I'm not talking about somebody down on their luck, but a real mission rat. You can't engage that person in real conversation for more than about 10 minutes before they tell you what they used to be. And the reason for that is because the dreams are all gone. Now I was perilously close to that place. When you look into the eyes of somebody who has sold their soul to continue to drink, obviously they're alive in a sense I suppose because our organs are beaten. But when you look in the eyes of someone who's not home, you've got a whole other situation on your hand. So hope is a very healing quality. Like I said when we started this, I personally believe all 12 steps are of equal importance but I tell you my favorite steps are 2, 6 and 7 because that's how I understand Alcoholics Anonymous, that that's what happens, that we come together around those things, we surrender to this thing and great things happen, that don't make them happen. like to me people approach Alcoholics Anonymous in two basic ways. This may be a little bit of an oversimplification, but I think it's true. It looks like to the man or woman who comes in here who puts these principles first in all their affairs. They're taught to do that. That you go to meetings and you learn about the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. You talk to your sponsor over here and you talk about your problems, but this really is not about problems. One of my best friends' sponsor died not too long ago, This old gentleman that was his sponsor always used to say in North Carolina, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't know anything about problems. That's not the business we're in. We're in the solution business. But it looks like to me that if people approach Alcoholics Anonymous that way, that's the way I was socialized in day. You practice these principles, this becomes your life. It's not a way of life. It is a life. It's a life, this is what it is. If it's not for this, then all bets are off, then there is nothing else. So if you practice these principals in all your affairs and and everything else happens automatically. So far, right up to this moment, I've been watching this thing for 29 years and whatever it is, four or five months. I've never seen one single case of failure with that. I've ever seen one case of success I've seen one man or woman get drunk who's done that. Not one. And the other way it looks like people approach Alcoholics Anonymous is they try to patch up all areas of their life thinking their alcoholism will go away. That makes sense, doesn't it? I sponsor a guy. He says he's a mathematical genius. I don't know if he is or not. we ain't got anybody who can check him. But he says he is, but he figures stuff out. You know those people that prove things? He's an engineer. You know how they prove things. It makes a lot more sense. I tried to explain this to a well-educated lady recently. She's a dentist and very open-minded. Her brother's an emergency room physician. She was very interested. It just made no sense to her. It makes much more sense if you just look at logic. I'm a while without a drink. Everything about my life has changed. I just got my wellness physical that if you work for the Department of Correction and you're over 50, you get a wellness physical every year. I'm fine. Everything is fine. All kinds of stuff has changed. I've got self-esteem. I've gotten regard from other people. I got a family. I have got a job. I had an incredibly busy life, tremendous amount of friends. I mean all kinds of stuff. It's a much different case than it was 29 plus years ago. It makes a lot more sense if you don't understand anything about the illness of alcoholism other than logic. It makes a lot more sense that I could take a drink and get away with it than it does that I couldn't. Alcoholism is a very illogical illness, it doesn't make any sense. We know that it's a killer illness, we know you ain't going to reverse it by not drinking but that doesn't makes any sense so I need to know what the issues are here. Well, the first issue is surrender. I've got to surrender, I've gotta give up. Surrender is so powerful, You know, sometimes people will say about what steps are spiritual and what steps are not. It probably doesn't get much more spiritual than surrender. That's a spiritual happening. Something happens. Give up. There was a bad fight here, but I lost. It was a mad fight. I don't want to do it again. I mean, I did not give up easy. I'm convinced to this day, it doesn't make any difference, but I'm convincing to this today if there had been any family money or any way to stay there and just stay drunk, I'd have done that. Didn't give up because I wanted to. Gave up because there wasn't any other choice. And then the thing that happened with the second step, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That happened to me through the people of Alcoholics Anonymous, through the literature of AA, through going to meetings, through listening. And it was an element of hope that moved into that. Something happened. My sponsor often says that today, like if you've got a problem. What you need to do is get that problem to the second steps. You know what's not working right here. You knowwhat's wrong. you need to get that into where you've got some hope. And that's a second step. That's a wonderful, if you've ever been hopeless about a situation, I know for me today some of the most difficult times in my life and my sobriety is when I felt like I had no choice about anything. I just felt like i had my nose being rubbed in it. And so a sense of hope, a sense that, you know, I've got something to say about this, that this is something that I can do, I can move forward into this, that this thing will work for anybody who's willing to give up the farm, surrender their life to it, and move forward. So a sense of hope, and that happened to me that first summer. Cindy and Mickey, I think Julie know Big Harold. I sobered up with a guy. He's almost six foot tall. He's still sober today. He's getting fat now. But in 1975, I gave him the name Big Harold because he weighed 115 pounds. He was almost six feet tall. Pictures from this time will support what I'm saying. He looked like a prisoner at war. And one night we were sitting outside Chapter 5 in Fremont and right between two bars, which didn't make any difference because I wasn't allowed to go in either one of them bars anyway, but we were sitting on the hood of a car. And it was this kind of weather where it's cool at night and about 10 o'clock at night after a meeting where you need a jacket, it's cold out, and we were siting on the hood of a cart. And Big Harold looked over at me and he said, I'll never forget this, he had those eyes of a beaten man, somebody who's perilously trying to hang on as tight as they can. He looked over to me and said, Man, if this thing don't work, there ain't nothing. Well, I believed that that night in the summer of 1975 and I believe it right now today in 2004. The good news today is I've got a tremendous amount of hope. That second step has moved in my life and it stayed current in my life. Now there's been times where I think I came close to giving up that. I don't think I've come close to drinking since I was sober about a year and a half. I've come close losing my mind a couple of times at eight years and at 19 and a a half years that the night was so dark and so deep and so long that it's hard to touch pain. It's hard capture pain. It's harder to capture time. I go home at night sometimes, I can't hardly remember the morning it seems so long ago but the last year is just a blur how fast it flew by. Pain is like that. It is hard to capture pain that's one of the reasons I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is an awfully good place to run a little green, to run a little ignorant and to stay in awe of the gift. I don't ever want to get to thinking and this is the way it's supposed to be. But the best I can remember from those periods of time, that eight-year and 19-and-a-half-year thing, both of those lasted from about six to nine months in that year period, some period of time. Both of those times seemed to me, the best i can remember, that it made being homeless seem like kid stuff. It really felt like I was being strangled spiritually. It just felt like i was being choked and that i was going to die and then eventually the wages cleared. So i've come close to losing my mind a couple of times. but what I found out is that the power of Alcoholics Anonymous is slightly more powerful than whatever the problem is it has to be that way, that's what Dick and I and Mike were talking about last night if it wasn't that way problems would take us out of here my observation is problems have very little to do with drinking you know I've had far more problems since I've been sober I've Had to deal with life, I've HAD real life problems when I was drinking now I had some big problems I was in a flop one time in 1974, early 1975 where the rent was $7 a week. You can imagine, I'm not exactly in Methuselah's age group, but you can imagine that was not a very nice place. You didn't have your own bathroom. We'll just leave it at that. When I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, I ran into a guy that had been in there years before me. He said the rent Was $5 a week when he was in there. But it really didn't make much difference. Neither one of us could make the rent. But those problems could just be broken up by leaving town. When I Got Sober in my early go, and I'm just there. it's very much it must be like being nude in front of a whole group of people I mean it's just like the world is looking at you well what happened now we're going to finish up our little block here around us and take a break but I went through the element on my knees with my sponsor turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him I know now that I wouldn't have done that with my life with a gun at my head I know today we usually don't talk about it in these terms I've never seen an alcoholic come to Alcoholics Anonymous that wasn't in deep deep spiritual distress God knows how could you get in here if you weren't in spiritual distress. It's a spiritual illness. I sponsored a college professor one time that went up in an electrical storm in a tree, drunk, to shake his fist at God, to defy God. You think he was confused? But I mean, I wouldn't have turned my will and my life over to the God that I understood because I blamed God for the direction my life had taken. You know, I was horribly angry at God. I don't think, again, I could have put all that in words, but I blamed Gott for the Direction My Life Had Taken. There'd been some horrible stuff that happened. My drinking had caused the death of another person. I'm a good bit responsible for that. I mean, horrible things had happened. I was so confused and so blocked off. I know today that what I did is I turned my will and my life over to the care of my sponsor and to Alcoholics Anonymous. I've seen that done time after time after times over the years, and I know that you guys here have a wonderful sense of sponsorship. Dick and I again were talking last night. When you see sponsorship firmly in place in a group or a district or an area, then you see all the other problems that Alcoholics Anonymous has been experiencing in the last 15 or so years. You don't see them there because it's all being taken care of. But what I did is I know today I just turned my wasted and busted life over to AlcoholicsAnonymous. Now, it wasn't a hard decision at that point to make because, I mean, there wasn't lot of other takers. I mean I didn't have a busy social agenda. I mean, what are you doing? At the ripe old age of almost 26 years old, I'd ended up living with my great aunt. If it hadn't have been for the kindness of her taking me in, I mean I would have remained on the street and would probably be dead today. So I needed to know what my will in my life is. It was explained to me, and I still have this with me today, it was explained that my will was my thinking and my life was my actions. It was explaining to me that it's much easier to change the way you act than it is to changethe way you think. That what we're about here is actions. if I would do the right thing the way I think, feel all those things will change but what I need to do is to do the Right Thing that's to stay sober every day it's broken down very simple that's the try to be of service in any way that you can go to these meetings on a daily basis read this AA literature on a Daily basis and I also began to see myself in the literature that began to come alive for me the book Alcoholics Anonymous gives us a prayer on how to approach God but it also says the wording is optional it's the idea and what it's talking about all through there is destruction of self-centeredness that's what it is talking about. What did that one guy say if man would empty himself of man he would automatically be full of God? You know, so it's destruction of self-centredness there's nothing more self- centred than staying drunk because everything else is out all bets are off and then the 12 in 12 talks about the principle of willingness so those two things must be of paramount importance I I must be willing, and I must try to reduce my self-centeredness. The book's Destruction of Self-Centeredness. It says in there we were reborn. Church people like to use that word, but Bill Wilson used that word. We were reborned. One of my dear friends always likes to say in talking about surrender is that the old man has to die so the new man can live. There's too much wrong here to be fixed. It can't be fixed, there's got to be a death experience. That's what surrender is. I've got to die. That's why I'm here today. That's where it is. So the element of hope can come into that. So I know today that what I did is I went through the elements of that, of doing that step, of saying those words, of holding my sponsor's hand. And I do that today with guys I sponsor, try to have the experience of the book. But I know that what i was really doing was turning my will and my life over to the Alcoholics Anonymous because that's what I do. I know a day that somewhere along the line I made that decision and I was going to go all the way with this thing. This is what I was gonna do. You only go through this thing once and so it's important to know what I'm trying to do how am I going to get through this what is it going to be I remember that I'm going to finish up with this thought and we'll take a break and come back my friend the guy that looked like the prisoner of war and this is the kind of shape I was in all this summer while this stuff is going on my buddy came to me and said he had a real revelation he said I found out why Bud and all those other old guys down at chapter 5 are so happy I was trying to figure that out myself I said, well why is that? He said, they're old. They found out they ain't going to be around here that long and they're happy about it. How do you reverse something like that? It takes something awfully powerful. So made that decision. The other thing, and this is the last thought I'll have, and again it could probably be said about all of us, it says that the rest of the AA program can only be practiced when a consistent effort is made on the third step. Think that's in the 12 and 12. to turn our will and our lives over. It's important to know what we're turning over. Thank you, and how long is the break? Five? Five minutes. That's a short break. All right, see you in five.