The Difference Between Conscious and Unconscious Surrender – Jerry E.

Can you read something a little shorter, Molly? Sure. How about I just read the first paragraph on how it works for Chapter 5? That sounds wonderful. Okay. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with ourselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Thanks, Molly. And Molly met Jerry at the first Ultimate Weekend. Yes. and you spoke there and she's been a fan ever since. That's also where I met Jerry and I think Gary's on now, I think I just saw his name on there as well and then he came back and he spoke at our 75th inaugural banquet which was quite a gala It was quite a gale Yes it was and so I've missed you, I love you and I give you jerry from manhattan kansas take it away all right we'll go from here i tell you what give me the name of the young lady i was just listening to just a moment ago the first speaker what was her name don i i tell you what don i enjoyed listening to you so much and i was thinking i wonder if i can just asked Don to keep going and I would be delighted to listen to her. So anyway Nan you are a sweetheart to ask me to do this. I have long had a deep fondness for the folks there in Indianapolis of course Gary has been a dear dear friend for years and years I first ran into Gary out at Colorado. And so I've just had a wonderful time with Gary for years, and he kind of tries his best. He works awfully hard to keep me squared away. And I don't know if he's having much luck or not. But anyway, enough of that. My name is Jerry, and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date It is January the 17th, 1977. And I cannot thank Alcoholics Anonymous enough for what the freedom that it has given to me. And with that in mind, I will simply tell you that in the year of 1976, the year prior to the beginning of my sobriety. By the way, is the sound coming through okay now? Good, okay. In any event, that year, 1976, that last year of my drinking career, I was married, I had three children. One of them was a brand new baby son. another son who was three years old and a daughter who was 13 and uh i i tell you i i wanted to stop drinking for them so badly and no matter what i did i just could not stop i'm a guy who if you come to me and say jerry would you work with me uh i don't know about working with you but i tell what, I would share any part of my experience with anyone who asks. But I remember that last year and like I say, I was about ready to lose my wife and my kids and they were, my children have always been maybe the dearest thing to me in my entire life with perhaps, and I'm not sure about this with perhaps the deep affection I have for AA. And as I tell you my story, you will begin to understand why. Anyway, during that year of 1976, I had already been in and out of some mental institutions, to put it very, I dress it up as nicely as I can. I also spent some time looking, visiting with the sheriff's department in a couple of places. And don't get me wrong, I'm too much of a coward to be violent. but i but i sure could manage to somehow find myself in all sorts of troubles and you know god i've been at this so long i just don't want to bore anybody with the nature of those difficulties because they're so so similar to other folks in any event but what's important is uh i really did want to stop drinking i mean i in the world's worst way i wanted to stop and i don't know if anybody can relate to this i would get up in the morning and i would say okay today today i'm not gonna drink um and i would manage to maybe last maybe an hour. And before that hour is up, I think, well, you know, I think all I need is just one drink, just one. And so I would somehow, because my wife was watching me pretty closely in those days, surreptitiously, I would some how get off into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. And in order to get what I really needed, I would put some vodka into that coffee. I'm getting a message that says my internet connection is unstable. So Nan, would you just wiggle your hand at me if you lose my sound and I'll do whatever you tell me to do? So anyway, I would take a cup of coffee. I'd make it as large a cup as I could find because I wanted to add vodka to it. And I don't know if anybody has ever tried that as a mixed drink or not, but it is absolutely terrible. But when our book says we drink for the effect produced by alcohol, I have a cat that is the most unfriendly rascal until now. I'm sitting here trying to talk to y'all and all of a sudden he's decided to be very friendly. But in any event, I would be determined today is a day I'm not going to drink. And somehow I decide I'm going to put some of that vodka into my coffee and I would go back into the living room and I would drink that. And somehow, just that, what I could, I know Vivian, I could get just enough alcohol out of that cup of coffee to kind of hold myself together. And I would do that a couple of times and then it wouldn't be long until I would determine that, you know, I needed to do something more than just this. And so I would make some excuse to my wife, I need to run to town. And I would somehow manage to slip away in my car, go to town, and I would find enough money around someplace that I could go get some of the cheapest booze I could find. And at the latter, that last year of my drinking, I discovered a real cheap vodka that was 120 proof. and I had never had anything like that before and I remember the first time I had a bottle of vodka that was 120 proof. I thought, my God, where has this stuff been? It just, it worked so wonderfully well. I'm watching you, Nan. Can you have a little? Okay, everything is okay still? Okay, I love it. Double thumbs up. We're in good shape. Thank you, sweetheart. By the way, I don't want to go much further with saying how much I appreciate you guys asking me to come and be with you today. As you hear what I have to share with you, you'll understand that it has become vitally important for me to carry this message. and I would talk to the to the lamppost out in front of my house if I had to it's just that important that I try to carry this message and give it to someone and uh once in a while I'll have a non-alcoholic who who will bump into me and they say hey Jerry I understand that you you used to be a pretty heavy drinker can you tell me about that and I tell you what there's no no greater compliment that you could give me uh to ask me to talk about my experience drinking and i because giving giving this away uh giving what has been and you know so much of our our messages are cliches and i don't know any way to avoid that uh i i simply don't uh And the simple truth of the matter is, if I get up and I have a little very simple prayer at the beginning of each day. First of all, it's a conscious surrender because my first several years, and I'll get into this here shortly. My first several year as NDA, I had surrendered, but I was unaware that it was an unconscious surrender. I had just been beaten up so bad that I was willing to do anything that anyone told me. And 13 years into the program, it dawned on me that I needed to be very conscious of what I was doing, which is where I came up with the idea that I need to make a conscious surrender. And so I've been doing that now since the year 13 in sobriety. And there's more to that story later. But anyway, I struggled along and I got into AA and I learned early on that we've got to give this away to other people. And so I became a real almost wanted to stand on the street corner with a tambourine and try to give THISAWAY. And I about that time, a fellow came in with the name of Jim and Jim and I ended up each buying motorcycles. And we began riding around that part of southeastern Kansas on those motorcycles. And we thought we were really carrying this message to a lot of folks. And in our own rather crude fashion, that's exactly what we did. We loved what we were doing. We went to a lot of other meetings. And what I have discovered now is that I don't know if I helped anyone or not. But what I do know is that all those times that I was out there trying to carry this message to others, they were helping me. and it's been working that way ever since. The folks in Alcoholics Anonymous have been so terribly tolerant of me. I got here. I knew absolutely nothing about staying sober. I really, truly didn't. I despised anything in the nature of spirituality because I had grown up in a very religious church environment and so i thought spirituality i i had i equated uh uh spirituality and religion as one and the same and i was doing this for many many years when an old guy told me that spirituality has to do with the state of mind and uh the first time I heard that, I thought, yeah, yeah that works for me and that's to this day spirituality is a state of so I've gone along with that understanding ever since and I have never had any reason to change that thinking in any event I was threatened and well, I had been locked up a number of times. I'm not talking about serious, serious being locked up. I just spent overnight in jail and I'd like to exaggerate that a little bit but the truth of the matter was I'd get picked up by the police in this little small town there in Kansas and they would take me down to the local jail and somebody would take my car and park it and so I'd spend the night or two nights in jail and of course then I would have to go home and face the music there and that was not pleasant at all but by this time I'm beginning to recognize that my oldest child which is my daughter and by the way just a quick side note every man every man should have at least one daughter there is nothing in the world like a daughter to uh to be such a great and wonderful support in your life and that's the way it's been for me and then of course the two boys uh but anyway i would i would get out of jail i would somehow manage to get a ride because my car was in the impound someplace i'd managed to get aride i'd get home and i'd i remember walking up the steps to that house and uh and i thought I'm going to have to face the music once I go into that front door. And sure enough, I did. And it was not pleasant. It was not unpleasant for my kids. It was Not Pleasant for me. The good news is I am not a violent man. And so I never had any inclination to try to physically hurt any of my children. but what I did was perhaps even worse because what I did was there were a lot of times that I just was not present for my children and I'll never get over that and I've talked to them about that and the good news is in the process of trying to make some form of amends to them, I've always tried to be present anytime that my kids come and talk to me or i see him uh i try to manage to be fully present and i listen to what they want to talk about instead of me telling them what i want to talked about and that's turned out to be a wonderful way to have a relationship with your children my kids don't need uh my kids don t need me to tell them anything all my kids need for me is just listen would you listen dad and so that's that's what i do and it's been a a brand new experience for me to to park my ego and and listen to what my children want and we're uh i've had just an absolutely marvelous time all the way from when they were small and playing baseball and my daughter was going through dating boys and um and you know our daughters are are unique in that about the time you think you can manage a girl uh you're about ready to have one of the rudest uh understandings you may have ever had because you don't manage a young girl they manage you and she my daughter did a marvelous job she still does by the way uh but anyway at that point uh i'm not sober yet i can't stop drinking uh i i can even get 24 hours i i start off i think i'm going to make it um and i i just i just want one drink i count almighty that's all i want is just one drink and and i think then i'll be okay i have one drink and then somehow my mind turns in a way that I think, well, if I had one more, I'd be better. And I think I can manage two drinks. And you guys know where this is going. If I have a full quart or fifth of alcohol, I'll drink it all with in mind of, i'm just gonna have one more drink and all i'm trying to do is just take the edge off now what i didn't know and i know today and it's part of the message i want to carry uh when i talk to any alcoholic or any group of alcoholics i think one of the characteristics that goes with alcoholism is just unbelievable fear. From the time I was small, I had, I just had a unmistakable fear. And to this day, I can't tell you what caused it. It was just, I was, I just had fear. When I was four years old, I had to go to vacation Bible school. I don't know if anybody else ever had to do that or not. But Vacation Bible School, I saw one hand shoot up there, and it was Vacation Bible School. But my mother made me go. So anyway, I was in Vacation Bibleschool. I got out. I was walking home, and I walked past a neighbor's house, and he had some of those big yellow irises or flags some people call them beautiful big uh uh blossom on them and they were sticking out through this uh fence and I thought well you know I'd take one of those home to my mother and so I actually picked maybe six or seven maybe eight I don't know uh of those uh irises and put them together to make a bouquet. And I went home and I went in the front door of the house and I'm carrying these and I am going to give these to my mother and I will really be in good graces with her. And as I walked into the living room that day, she turned and looked at me and I was carrying these flowers and I would give them to her and I were just really ready for all sorts of accolades and approval. And she turns and she looks at me and she says, where did you get those? And gang, I'm going to tell you something. I'm 79 years old. That happened to me when I was four years old, so that's 75 years. And I can tell you today exactly where I stole those flowers. And I didn't think of it as stealing then, but today I know it was. But my response when she said, where did you get those flowers? My response was quite simple. I don't know. That was my answer. I do not know. And my mother says, if you do not know, who does? And I did not have an answer for that. I just did not have an answering for that and so I kept trying to figure out some way that I could get out of the jam I was in and the reason I am belaboring this story just a little bit. This is kind of a story of my entire life. I would do things, somebody would say, Jerry, what are you doing? Or why did you do that? And my stock answer was always, I don't know. And they would insist that I was the one that did something, so I should know. And anyway, I remember telling my mother, I do not know. She said, well, you are going to have to tell me. But anyway, so I was in trouble. And I thought I had done something fabulously wonderful. And it was not. Today, I understand that the reason it wasn't is my mother was disturbed that I would steal flowers and bring home to her thinking that I was going to get some sort of an approval from her. and it really was uh the beginning of of a of a way that i tried to get through life uh you asked me what i'm doing or why i'm doing something i have a wonderful gift and that gift is i can figure out in a short period of time what you want to hear and i'll tell you what you wanna hear and that's the way i began to try to get through my life and that was a pattern that followed me for a long time in any event so i'm i'm a four-year-old boy the next thing i know i'm 18 and i'm 19 i'm 20 i'm 25 i'm a young man and i don't drink i i grew up in a very religious household and i didn't drink uh and so i entered the united states navy still didn't drink got out of the navy went home, became a young banker in this whole small town. And I'm about 30 years old. And somebody says, Jerry, why don't we go to this business meeting tonight and we'll see what we can learn. So I went with him and they had a little cocktail hour. And so I had the beginning of a cocktail and i had a drink and uh then i decided you know one one was pretty good i think i'll have another and i belabor that point just a little bit because that particular night i had two of of these uh you'd laugh if i tell you the truth the truth is they were orange juice and vodka. And that was my first experience with real alcohol, but I had two drinks. And so anytime somebody talks to me about a drink, I am real clear that I have never had a drink. For those of you who might be challenged by the English vocabulary, A drink implies one. I've never had one. I've always had more than one, and I still think about that a great deal. I've Never Had a Drink. In any event, I'm 35 years old, and I'm experienced with alcohol, and And they just, I've had a low grade or a high grade sense of fear as far back as I can remember. And it was always, I remember I used to tell people that I just kind of dreaded. I have a sense of dread. I just dread the thing about Monday morning. I remember having a weekend and I'd get through the weekend. And on Sunday night, I knew that I was going to have to do something on Monday morning And so the beginning of this deep sense of dread came upon me. And so I found out that if I have a drink, I can make that go away. And that was kind of the best I can describe. Why did you drink like that, Jay? Why did your keep drinking when you were in so much trouble? And the simple answer is because I always had this deep sense of dread, which is another way of saying it was fear and alcohol. Always, always, always made that fear or dread or whatever, that uncomfortable feeling go away. And so from once I got into AA and began to look at some of this stuff i i am pretty clear that i have always drank for the effect produced by alcohol and i think our book even might say it produced it at once and uh i don't know if anybody ever remembers when you know you take that first drink of alcohol and it slides down your your your throat into your stomach and and it produces that wonderful warm feeling and a sense that everything is okay or it's about to become okay and that was uh that was a an experience that i was looking for my very first drink on i just wanted to be okay and i didn't know what uh what not being okay looked like because i had always felt that way uh and i had something else uh float through my mind. It was a point that I wanted to make. For those of you who are young, don't get in too much of a hurry to be old because you have these wonderful thoughts and they come into your mind and they go out of your mind just about as quickly. And you think, God damn it, where did that go? Because I really wanted to share that and now I can't recall it. In any event, so get back I'm 35 years old. I have three kids, and I'm trying to get a handle on this drinking because I'm going into hospitals, andI'm going in to lockouts. I'mgoing in to all these places, and finally the folks began to get started. At the time of my drinking career, I had a conversation that involved my wife, the county sheriff, the local police chief, uh my doctor and myself and they were all stacked up against me and i don't have any real good answers as to why i do what i do and today i understand and and if i'm talking to somebody who's in a similar difficulty i understand one thing simply this i am an alcoholic and it's no more complicated than that and I will drink when I know I shouldn't. I will drank against my choice. In fact of the matter, when my alcoholism is in full bloom, I don't have a choice and I didn't understand that for the longest time and so if I only get one point across to anyone sitting here today and listening is if you're really an alcoholic, you don't any choice except to drink And so when I hear alcoholics anonymous and we say, well, don't drink no matter what, we may be sentencing that person to a very unpleasant experience because my life became tolerable when I was introduced to the spiritual aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it took me a while to fully comprehend that as I go through the 12 steps and people talk about working the steps, I'm a guy who came to terms with the fact that I can't work the steps because if I work the steps I will inevitably get them wrong. On the other hand, if I comply with the spiritual conditions of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I have a reasonable chance that everything will work out just fine. And what that really entails, if I look at it carefully today, is I surrender and then I surrender some more and thenI surrender. That's the way I get through the 12 steps. I comply with the spiritual conditions of this program. And the very first time that I went through the steps, I had a wonderful man. I was 13 years sober and my alcoholism had progressed to the point that the pain of just waking up another day without some, which I got from alcohol. i would uh i wake up and and the idea of a full day without a drink without any form of relief was almost untenable for me and uh so anyway i'm 35 years old and i've been in aa for 13 years and i run into this guy and i i heard him speak and as i heard Him speak i thought now And I, whatever this guy has, that's what I've been looking for these years in AA. I just, there was something in that man's message or in his voice. The bottom line was I was attracted to it. And so I went up to him after, I listened to him for three weeks. So each meeting, we had meetings once a week in those days. and so I would go up to this guy finally after the third week I called him by name I said would you be my sponsor and he looked at me and he said huh I don't think so and I thought wait a minute you have no idea how I had to humble myself to come up here and ask you to be my sponsor and then you give me that lame ass answer I don t think so but before I could get too much of that thinking uh solidified uh he said but here's what i would do uh i would be willing to be your aa friend and i thought you know what if he's willing to me my aa friend i will consider him my aaa sponsor he can consider me his aa friend and we'll go down the road that way and i'll be just fine And I had a few other choice words in there that went with that. But anyway, so I said, yeah. And the very first thing he did was he put me in his car and we drove around. By that time, I'm in Denver, Colorado. And we rode around Denver. And he says, Jerry, do you know what it is to surrender? And I said. Yeah, I think so. And he said, well, tell me. And so I gave him some lame answer. You know, I've never wanted to say I don't know, except when somebody is accusing me of something. But he said, Jerry, he said you know what it means to surrender? And of course I said, you know, he gave him the name. He said here, how about this? And I had been in the Navy and so I knew a little bit of military situations. He said, you know, if you lost a battle and the other side came by and said, OK, Jerry, sit down here on the curb because you're going to have to surrender. You lay down everything that has been a weapon for you and you just lay it down here and we'll tell you the next thing to do. And, you Know, that's really the prescription that Alcoholics Anonymous does for us. Take everything you think, you know, and lay that aside and open your mind up to something new, which that's where I came up with the idea of complying. And so this guy said, OK, now, Jerry, here's where we're going to start. And it started with can you do a surrender? And so I said, well, I tell you what, I may not be able to do it right, but I'll do it to the best of my ability. He said, that's all that I ask. And so I surrendered, and we kept driving around Denver in his car. And I tell you what, I listened to him, and he listened to me, and I began to have a wonderful sense that there's something different about to occur in my life. And what it turned out to be was I was beginning to get ready to have a spiritual experience. Let me just give you a quick aside. uh the spiritual experience i had that particular time and at that point my a sobriety i'm 13 years i i say sober but i was really 13 years dry and uh and i and i surrendered to the best of my ability i'm riding around in the car with him and i had the minute that i i i truly surrendered uh i have a spiritual experience what i've had many more sense in uh anytime it turns out if i look at it closely uh somehow i think i know more than i do and i get myself into trouble and i need to just pause going to surrender and that's always been the thing that gets me back on track i i think i know something but i don't know if i'll just surrender uh the spirit's a wonderful wonderful uh protector and uh my my sponsor used to talk about going to a garden uh to a place of peace and quiet and solitude where he could pray and meditate. And so I learned from him that that's probably the best prescription that I will ever have as a way to get through life. But Nan, if I get too long here, somebody stop me because I enjoy listening to Dawn so much. And I don't want to destroy the message that she gave us because it was absolutely super. And Dawn, I thank you right now. Anyway, my sponsor, he helped me and I understood that I needed to surrender. I did. And from then on, my entire spiritual life has been about surrender. I start each day by saying when I wake up, my first prayer is God, I consciously surrender. My next thought is I will again, I go back to my time in the service and I remember that we had to report for duty someplace. And every day that I'd go on to the base, the first thing I did when I caught my accompanying commander was I reported for duty. And so I've been consciously surrendering and reporting for duty day in and day out now for a long time. At the end of each day, my prayer is simply, God, I thank you for another day of sobriety. I truly believe, and it took me a long Time to get here. I truly believe that the whole thing about sobriety, it's been a gift. A gift that there's no way that I'll ever be able to repay. And the kind folks in AA that have been so good to me for many, many years. You know, I remember last time I was out there in Indianapolis, as a matter of fact. One of the things that I never told anyone when I was out there, I have to take a certain medication for neuropathy. And I went off and left it in Manhattan, and I got out in Indianapolis, and I did not have it with me. And for anybody who suffers from neuropathies, you know that it's a very uncomfortable situation. And so I'm there in Indianapolis. I can't hardly sleep at night. I can't hardly get around during the days, and there's nothing I can do about it. And I think I spoke on Sunday, I think. And so I'm not getting any sleep. I can'T rest. I'm just having a heck of a hard time. And the folks there in Indianapolis, and I think I gave probably the worst talk anybody in alcoholic synonyms could ever, and Nan's shaking her head. Bless her heart. I gave the best talk I could under certain circumstances. And I remember when I got in my car and drove back to Manhattan, all I could think of was it's going to take me about 10 hours to get from here back to manhattan but as soon as i get to manhatten the medication that i need to say the neuropathy just causes your hands and feet to burn uh very i don't want to go there uh it's uh it was good oh since i got home i was going to be okay but anyway the folks there in indianapolis were like all of my experiences and all the years i've been doing this The folks there in Indianapolis were just absolutely wonderful and kind. I can't tell you how much kindness I have received during my time in the Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think of all the years that when I first got here, I thought it was a hot ticket, and I wasn't. All I was is a young man who put a whole lot more value on himself that I had any right to. And the longer I do this, the more I realize that, hey, Elkins, the only reason that you're here is because of the wonderful kindness that Alcoholics Anonymous has given to you over and over and over. To me, this guy, the first guy that was willing to carry me through the steps and talk to me and taught me about surrender and complying with the conditions, listened to my inventories, and they weren't all that pretty. Just over and over and ever again, it's just, like I say, it's a tremendous kindness that folks in AA have given to me. And so as I go through my time these days in AA, one of the things that I try to do is I try to carry that same kindness and tolerance into the meetings that I have with folks here as a way of trying to repay everything that has been given to me. I mean, our program for sobriety is so absolutely complete and thorough. It gives me a chance to wake up and I no longer have the feeling. One of the things that I try to talk about from time to time when I have the opportunity is I always had a feeling of being unclean, and AA has enabled me to have a wonderful feeling of Being Clean. i'm square with my wife uh her name's gail and she's absolutely super to me i have three kids i'm clean with them i'm cleaned with my aa friends and all of that's a direct result of what you all have have been so great about giving to me and uh so when nan called the other day and ask you if I would participate in this gathering that you guys are putting on today, I couldn't answer yes quickly enough. And you're so terrific, and I can't thank you enough. And I tell you what, I could go on and on and On, but the message wouldn't change that much. uh so uh nan i don't know what you want to do now i would i would answer questions if anybody had any