The Difference Between Saying Sorry and Making Direct Amends – Gary T.

It's time. My name is Gary Taylor. I'm an alcoholic. God ain't a sponsor. I was in February 16th of 94. I tell you that because when I was in Wichita, I was telling my sponsor now this, and my sponsor down there said that every time you speak, you should give your sobriety date. And I said, why? And he goes, because sometimes when you speak there's not a lot of other evidence. I want to congratulate the Primary Purpose Group on their 6th anniversary as Doug was reading the history it dawned on me that I never got my coffee pot back so well I know there's some new people here and I've got a couple pieces of bad news for you you're at a potluck in a church basement. That's the first piece of bad news. Second piece of bad news is you're in an AA meeting. I know before I got sober, I thought a lot of things would help me. More potlucks was probably not on the list. Can you hear me okay? Alright. I'll talk loud. I only got what I got for a voice, but I came to AA and And I just so badly didn't want to be here. And I went to a meeting really to get some heat off, but mostly I went so that you could tell me because I knew who you were. I'd never been to a meet-up, really never read anything about AA, but I went through a meeting and I kind of knew who your were. And I knew I wasn't anything like that. So I really thought I'd go to a meetings and you could tell me, look, you're really not like us. Go home if it gets worse, you can come back. And what I was pretty sure I knew about you, even though I'd never read anything about you Was that you were homeless, all of you And I had a beautiful, beautiful apartment I was two months behind on rent, but I was still in it And I know that you didn't have cars And I was in a car there was wire involved in part of it but I had a car and I had a job and I knew you didn't have jobs and I was actually on double secret probation but I was but I had a job they thought I had trouble getting up in the morning and getting there but I didn't they just had a total lack of understanding of exactly how great my potential was and And all these different things that I just, you know, I had money. I had tons of money. I had, well, okay. My checking account balance was minus $2, but I had $7 in savings. And I had$7 in saving because the minimum withdrawal amount was $10. But I had%$7 of savings. And I was sure you didn't have bank accounts. And so I came to a meeting and you guys, none of you said like you're not ready yet. So if you're new here, I always can remember just how weird it was to be in AA. You know, you go to AA for a while, and it doesn't seem that odd. But I really try to remember just How Odd This Whole Thing Was. I mean, really, you know? And everybody was so happy about stuff and stupid. And I knew that they meant they were happy. You know, I remember I was like three weeks sober, and I got sober in Lincoln, and a bunch of people were coming back to the district to a mini-conference, and they were real excited about this mini-coference, and I didn't know what a mini conference was, so I said, what's a mini confidence? And they said, well, we go up, we drive up to Omaha, and we go back and forth for three days, and they have AA speakers, and you listen to them, and you drink coffee, andyou hang out. Wow, that really does sound like fun. I just, because I know that, and I believed you enjoyed that stuff, but I've always needed a little more fun than the next guy, you know? And people enjoy walking, and people enjoy riding in cars, And I'm really kind of a strip joint in Vegas kind of guy. And so I just always try to remember how odd this whole thing was. I really thought what would fix my problem for the most part would be a great infusion of cash and a wife that wasn't quite so cranky. Those two things would make my life a lot better. Everything else could wait. I first drank, I grew up in Council Bluffs, which maybe should just be the end of my drunk log. and i grew up in a in a we were baptist you know we were and not those holy roland talking out loud kind of baptist we were the sit in the pew and shut your ass up kind of baptism um and nobody drank and uh we didn't know people that drank and we didn'T hang around with people that drink and nobody drink and uh and if you're me for some reason and you grew up in that environment, you just can't wait to drink. And so I had my first drink. A friend of mine stole a fifth of Canadian Club when I was 14 years old and never had even had a sip of booze before that. And we went to some school and went down some steps and we split the fifth. And when I say we splitthe fifth, I don't know if we split the whole fifth or if we both had a drink or whatever. But really what happened to me that night happened to be just about every time I drank, especially at the end of my drinking which is i don't have a clue um no if if i if i'd have known i was ever going to have to talk about it i'd paid a lot more attention and i remember you know i was kind of bashful i was 14 years old and and i kind of came to in the middle of the interstate and i was like doing toro with cars and flipping people off and went into playland stock car races and They'd jump the fence. I'd never do that. That was cool, and we got in trouble there a little bit, and then there was like this old woman wearing leather, and she was like 30 years old or something, you know? And I knew she wanted me immediately, and so I walked up and offered myself to her, and her husband wasn't excited about that. And my friend drug me out of there, and I woke up the next thing, and everything was fine. and the best way I've heard my drinking career described is Clint Hodges used to talk about how his alcoholism was like a prize fight and it was him and alcohol in the ring and when he first started the first few rounds it was just a riot, you know he's dancing around, it's fun, he's winning and then just out of left field Booze just nailed him, just dropped him and he said the problem was that Booze is always a gentleman and it would always lean down and say man that was a lucky punch come on you can take me and so he'd get back up and that's really the way it was I mean it was fun most of the time and I'm not a complete moron if it wasn't fun I wouldn't have done it but when I started drinking it was fun and I was fun and I had a lot of fun and I felt like I was self-contained when I drank that's what I felt no need for friends no need for family give me some booze sit me on a bar stool, and I'm good to go. You know, I am my own party. And I don't need anybody else around. And so it came and went, and it got good and it Got bad. And I was going through a particularly bad streak. I'd gotten married, and for some reason that kicked my drinking up into another gear. And so after a few months we had split up. And so we were trying to get back together. and uh and i decided that i would quit drinking and i had moved back in and i did that for about two weeks and after two weeks i don't know what it was i didn't think about it you know sometimes when i hear people talking hey it sounds like there was a lot of thought process involved there really was not a lot of thought process evolved in me it was just kind of reacting to stuff but after about two week it was like she was gone and that was enough And we had one of those big jumbo Kmart things of aspirin, and I ate the whole thing, and I went to bed. And if you've ever eaten a lot of aspirine, your ears ring. And so I went back to bed, and about 2 o'clock in the morning, I got up and answered the phone. And there was nobody on the phone, and so I got to the hospital. They put my stomach out and did all that fun stuff. and they sent a psychiatrist in to see me. We were talking about this early. I was up at Emanuel, and they put me on the fourth floor or whatever it is up there, I don't remember, but I couldn't leave, but it doesn't really count because I didn't know I couldn'T leave. Do you know what I mean? So if you're locked up and don't know you can't leave it's really not like not being locked up. The last day I realized I couldn' so I would say that day maybe I was locked up. So they sent a psychiatrist in to talk to me and I kind of did what I always did with people when the pressure was on is I got the guy laughing and he let me alone. And what he said was, he walked in and asked me a bunch of questions and he said, do you think that you'll ever do this again? And I said, I am sure that I will never do this Again. And he said how can you be sure that you won't ever do This Again? And i said because we're out of aspirin. And he laughed, and that was it for me. My wife, who's always kind of been an overreactor, sent her uncle up to talk to me who was in AA and sober for a few years, and he sat down and told me his story, which is fascinating. And I nodded a lot, but here's the deal. I did this sober, okay? So drinking's not my problem, right? And so, I mean, that was 10 years before I came to AA. So that was proof positive to me that drinking wasn't my problem because I had never tried to kill myself when I was drinking. And really what I'm interested from there is the last couple of years I drank because it was like the same day for two solid years. Okay? I went to work if I could. Okay? If I had any vacation time or sick leave left, I knew exactly how the sick leave policy worked, how many you had before you got in trouble all those kind of things if I had some time left I'd take it off but if I did go to work I'd get to work as best I could and I'd just hold on and then afterwards I would think you know you just gotta stop this and tonight's the night not to drink and that was a great idea at 10 o'clock in the morning and then it got to be about 3 o' clock in the afternoon and it became you know what that is the plan but tonight I gotta have a couple just to kind of take the edge off a little bit. I'm not going to sleep at all. And the next morning it was the same thing all over again. What I started doing in those two years was, I decided that, I was pretty sure I was crazy. And so I decided that there was probably, maybe, if I was lucky, some medical condition that was causing me to drink the way I was drinking. So I started self-diagnosing myself with things and going to the doctor. And it started with an ulcer, and he ran hoses a lot of places and said you don't have an ulster, which would sound like good news to you. But to me it meant I had stomach cancer. And so I went back, and they looked for some stuff there. And then I decided I had Tourette's syndrome because I'd seen something on L.A. Law, if you remember L.А. Law about Touretbe's syndrome, and it seemed to fit me to a T. I was always saying inappropriate things. In the morning, I would, like, twitch really bad, you know, and react to stuff. And I couldn't drive my car, you knows, unless I'd been drinking a little bit because I just got, you know, this, it's just too much to handle. And so, but I didn't have Tourette's Syndrome. And so finally, after going to the doctor over and over andover, he said, you know what, there's a specialist that I want you to see. And I said, all right, thank God. We're going to get some help finally. And so he said at this point when I'm over, it was a psychiatrist. And I knew then we didn't want to go poking around in there. You know, the – I knew that somebody poking around and there was a bad idea. So I left the guy, and that was it. That was the end of my medical search. So I really just hunkered down to the point, which is what I always thought, which is I'm just crazy and people don't understand that. and I drink just to stay kind of sane that's really the only reason I drink is I want to stay just a little bit sane and that was it and nobody seemed to understand that I remember calling booze medicine I told it in public a thousand times give me another shot of medicine that's the only time you know I really thought for a while I was maybe the fattest bulimic in the history of the world because I was puking all the time and I honestly just I just decided that at some point I was going to have to quit drinking because it was going to get too bad and at some point shortly after that I would just snap and I don't know what that meant I've said this a hundred times, I always felt like I was a rifle and bell tower kind of guy you know, that I was just waiting for the snap to come, grab the rifle, climb the bell tower. That's the end of me, and I was just waiting for that time to come, so I had to drink as long as I could just to hold that off. What happened to me on February 16th of 1994 is nothing. It just was another day. It was another day. I took a half a day off because I had a half-day vacation left because it was February, okay? And I went home, and I was getting sick in the toilet at noon. And the thing I'd gotten in the habit of doing was I would get to work. I'd hang on until noon. I lived right across the street from work. I'd walk over there. I'd sip a little gin for lunch and go back, and the afternoon didn't go too bad then. It was really kind of where I got. And then you've got to do the whole thing about filling the gin up. It gets too low because you knew at some point it was here, and now it's down here. So when I got sober, my wife gave her sister that bottle of gin. So they're sitting somewhere in Illinois having a tonic and water, I think. But I had gone home at noon that day because I did have a half-day vacation left, and I had my head in the toilet. And for the first time ever, and I don't know where this thought came from, was maybe this isn't normal. All right. And I do not know where this thought came from. I walked in and called Alcoholics Anonymous, and they told me there was a meeting down the street that night. And I've been sober since then. And I tell you that because when I first got sober, it seemed like everybody I heard relapsed. Everybody I heard had to slip. And I was like a year sober before I heard anybody that had come into AA and stayed sober ever since. I didn't think it was possible. You know, everybody I'd heard had gone to treatment. I remember staying at my first sponsor like three weeks sober. I go, do I have to go to treatment? And he goes, no, we can do that here. He goes, but it'll make you feel better. You can give me $5,000. And I opted not to do that. So I walked in and they said there was a meeting down the street. And the real reason for this is I was at that spot at home that called for a big move. I don't know if you've ever been there, but all the saris and the flowers and all that stuff's gone. You've tried it over and over, and it's time for the big move. The biggest move I can think of is my drinking. We had one of the things that started happening to me that I never talked about. I used to wet the bed a little bit, And I was 34 years old. And you can't go tell somebody at work you wet the bed, you know? Because you're pretty sure the other 34-year-olds in your office aren't wetting the bed. And I thought it couldn't get any worse than that. And then I wet the couch, you Know? And you Can Only Wet the Couch Effectively Three Times. Depending upon how big the couch is, You can only flip them three times, and then you've got to start over, and it's a bad deal. And on the fourth couch went, and you've Got to Buy a New Couch. That's just the rules. So anyway, I don't know where that came from. My wife came home. I said, Hey, I'm going to an AA meeting, and boy, she was impressed. So I went down to this meeting, and I went Down to this Meeting with the thought they're going to say, not yet kid you're not ready we're bad and I went to a meeting and walked in the wrong door and I couldn't find the meeting and I started to leave and some guy said are you looking for an AA meeting and I said yeah and he took me in there and I don't know where I go from there but that guy's dead a year later from drinking and so I walk into my first ever AA meeting and it was exactly what I thought, a bunch of ignorant people that were not very bright that had no money and no life oh god, sorry but that's exactly what i thought when i walked in, and not that i was judging i was really observing and i walked into the room and i said, i don't know what your first meeting was like but my first meeting went like this they're going around the table there's about 40 guys there and they're coming my turn what are we going to call ourselves because they're all alcoholics and I'm visiting so they got to me and I said my name or something I don't know what I did and I gave him a, you know, hey. And got through that and thank God there was another new guy there and so the minute the meeting was over of the 40, 20 attacked me and 20 attacked him and they were all giving me their cards and gee thanks for your cards I'll call you all, just wait and this one little guy walked up to me he would hate it if I said that but anyway, this one guy walkedup to me and he gave me a big book And then he gave me a meeting list, and he had some meetings highlighted and said, here's the meetings that the guys that go to this meeting go to. And he handed me a big book and said go home, open this book read it until you get to page 164 and go to bed. And that's what I did. And what I found in that book I mean, I started reading through that book and don't get me wrong, we weren't memorizing it we were reading as best we could with one day of sobriety and i kept flipping back to the front cover going this has to be like the latest thing you know they had to have just found this out because this book talked about things that i never talked about this book explained things to me that i didn't talk about this book told me why when i started drinking i always finished drinking okay it didn't matter when i was when i could control it i just wouldn't start but always when i started drinking i knew i was going to finish whatever that meant until i ran out of time money whatever okay i knew that about me it told me that in that book it told мне why i went back out drinking why i could lay off for a little while at times you know and kind of get it together and you know spit and sputter and then i'd always end up back doing it and and uh the line that just and it seems melodramatic really but the line that just got me was terror bewilderment frustration despair I knew exactly what that meant in the morning I knew exact exactly what that meant when they said anybody interpret that for me I still don't I know exactly what it feels like in my gut it's waking up and going oh my god you did it again and the night before starts coming back and it's not like a memory, it's just these flashes of you know they're never good, I mean they're never, you know I was like giving somebody CPR you know it's like you peed in the electric fireplace, boom you know you know you goosed your mother-in-law, boom and just these things would hit me, and I'd just lay there. I mean, my mornings consisted of just... We woke up. Where are we? We're home. That's probably good. Oh, God, she looks cranky. You know what? Oh, Jesus. Is the bed wet? the bed's wet it calls for another series of actions that we have to take right we have to wait for her to get out i flip the mattress move it around redo the sheets um i get really good at making the bed but uh and then these images of whatever it was the night before sometimes it's not terrible don't get me wrong just just these images and never quite knowing how things fit i was in a bowling alley one night drinking and i had gotten drunk drunk i mean you know we got drunk but I mean there's the drunk drunk you know and I was drunk drunk and it was uh it was drunk drunk bad enough that when I'd be back the next week I had to drink before I went to the bar that kind of drunk drunk where you got to have a few beers just in case and I knew I was junk drunk and so I'm sitting at this bar in the bowling alley and this big sucker comes walking towards me and he's eyeballed on me and I kind of vaguely remember him being there the week before and I thought this is bad you know and he walks up and he gets right in my face and I think alright here we go I'm not drunk enough to fight gotta give me a couple hours for that and he goes really want to thank you for giving me a ride home last week no problem so it just explained the things to me and don't get me wrong And God's grace in my life, I believe, was always there. But it started being noticeable to me that night because I didn't go to another meeting until the next Thursday because I'm a Thursday night guy, right? But I didn' t drink that week. And that's the longest I'd gone in two years without drinking. A few days was it prior to that. And I didn''t drink that weekend. I went back the next Tuesday night to that same meeting and the same guy come up to me and he says, you know, maybe if you try more than a meeting a week, it'd be better. and I thought, well, I could do two a week. That's not a bad deal. I sent a bunch of us out to Eagle, Nebraska, which is outside of Lincoln, about 15 miles on Friday nights. Why don't you meet us out there? The meeting starts at 8. I said, okay. And first of many mistakes I've made in Alcoholics Anonymous is I misgaged how long the drive was from Lincoln to Eagle. And I got there at 5 till 8. And if you're there at five till eight, people will talk to you. And so the same guy came up and he said, do you have a sponsor yet? And I said, no. And he goes, you need to get a sponsor. And I go, yeah, I probably need to Get a Sponsor. He goes, no, you really need To get a Sponster. I said yeah, probably do need To Get a sponsor sometime. He says, no you need To go in right now. And I say, would you sponsor me? And he said Mike, yes. And then he just, you know, one of the amazing things In my life, this is not something that I do. This is something I do for 30 days maybe, you know? The A kind of thing is something I do für a little while and then I get all the knowledge and then I'm back out. That's how I work and so he said call me tomorrow I said alright, so that was Saturday and then he said, we'll call him next day he goes, we go to a meeting on Sunday night and I go, jeez it's three meetings a week, that's a lot but you know, I'll try it So I went to the Sunday night meeting and the Sunday night meeting he goes we go meet on Monday night And I thought, really? And you would like me to go there too, I'm guessing. And he said, yeah. And Monday night he said call me tomorrow, and I did. And Tuesday night he says we go to a meeting on Wednesday night. So I'm adding this up, and that's like a lot. And I kept doing it. And he just got me involved. I cannot tell you how many times when I was new in sobriety that I was ready to go drinking at work, and it dawned on me, you know what, I've got to make coffee at that AA meeting. I'm going out tomorrow night. And the next night, I'm ready to go out, and it dawns on me, he's making me pick this guy up over here. But Friday night, Iím going out. And I kept doing that. And the thing Iíll always remember, and honestly, Jeff has been a great example to me for this, but I quit AA a bunch my first year. I quit, skipped the meeting. Iím out. Iím done with the ANA. you going to watch TV tonight? I'd stay home and I'd watch TV and my phone would ring and I knew it was him he's driving back from the meeting and I'm just going to tell him exactly how I feel and he said, you weren't there tonight and I go, very observant of you and he'd say I'll pick you up tomorrow night at 6 click and then I'd go the next night and I was back in AA And didn't want to be I mean, I just was And I didn't know you had a choice Because I was with a bunch of guys that were doing all the same stuff You know I thought you had to do this stuff I didn' t know you couldn' t do this I just thought you HAD to You know, I didn''t know you could'nt take the steps I HAD TO TAKE THE STEPS Everybody else was taking the steps He told me to take steps, took steps Right He said, write an inventory Well, I don' t want to write an Inventory He goes, don't. You're another sponsor. Okay. We over at my house Saturday at 2. I run an inventory. I don't know why I did it. And he just kept me busy, I believe. He kept me busier than Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, we talk a lot about, I was told when I was first time I ever talked to an AA, that guy told me there's four things to make a good AA talk. If you talk about meetings, God, sponsorship, and the steps, it's a good talk. It doesn't matter how bad you present it, it's a good talking. So remember that. And so it really what it was I believe for me is somehow God got me to a meeting, he got me to a sponsor, got me the steps, who got me God? Who got me doing meeting? Got me a sponsor got me steps and got me God. And then that's the way my life's been. And he told me to write an inventory and I went over and I did it, and I'd made the decision when I was writing that thing. There were three things in my life that I was never going to tell anybody, and he didn't need to know them. And so I wrote them down, but I wrote them in code. And I wrote him at the bottom of the page. And so the advantage of me doing an inventory with another alcoholic is this. I was giving him all the stuff, and it dawns on me. I mean, I've been at AA a couple months by now. I It's about three or four months sober. It dawns on me that I'm looking kind of lame in my inventory. Do you know what? I mean, I'm look a little lame. So I thought, well, I am going to throw one of the big ones at him. And so I took one of big numbers and threw it at him, and he topped it, which surprised me. So I threw number two at him and he top did. and then I threw number three at him and he went and I remember thinking yes and and I walked out what the hell did you do that for you weren't going to tell him those stuff and I know that the big book will describe how you're supposed to feel after an inventory I will tell you exactly what I felt after the inventory is I walked outside and I thought I'll bet you this is how they keep you in AA okay, I'm going to call up to resign some night and he's going to say, oh really can I talk to your wife and I would say hey, I'll be there to make coffee and uh and he took me through the rest of the steps and and you know there's some things that i've done in my life and and they're maybe not big deals to you they were big deals to me and and um and as i'm sitting trying to figure out how to make amends on this stuff and what my character defects are and you know i don't know about you i know the rest of you have been around a while you got six and 7 said, God take them away and that's it. Not quite so much here. I keep slugging them out and then they come back and then you slug them out and then this one pops up and it feels like my character defects if you've ever been to a state fair and played whack-a-rat. That's really kind of my character defect. This one pops out Lost Greed Envy Lost Lost Greedy You know there's only there's three things that get alcoholics in trouble lust, greed did I mention lust? and so there's some things I've done in my life that you just can't make better and one of them, and it's not a big deal to a lot of people But if I had one, a couple of fans in my life was my mom and dad. My dad died in 89, and I was still drinking. And the day he died, my dad was a stash guy. My dad was the guy that kept a couple hundred bucks in his wallet, you know, and I knew it was there. Nobody else knew it wasn't there. And the date he died I went and took that money and we went to the funeral and I went out drinking. And then that's one of those things that just, you now, My mom's house wasn't wealthy. It just kind of sits there right here, and it's not a big deal, just right there. And I carried that with me, and I'll be very honest with you, it wasn't even on my inventory. And that's how much I'd stuff that stuff down in Wichita. And I'd move down there, and my sponsor, and a pop said to my head, and I said, I don't know what to do about this. And he said, we'll figure it out. and it was a while and my mom called me and I had the opportunity to do a couple things for at his direction and one of them was and this wasn't an amend, this was just being a son but she was on some medication that was like 600 bucks a month for a period of 4 or 5 months and she couldn't afford it and it would kill her and he said do you have the money and I go yeah and he goes I want you to call the pharmacist have him put that on your credit card and I want you to tell her you got her in some super secret program that the drug companies have that that's not going to cost her anything and I said okay, and I did and I made some calls, I got this deal done and it's not gonna cost you anything for this medication God she was so happy the bad news for me is every old person in Council Bluffs called me I wanted to know where they could get on this program. I kept saying, it's closed. They don't do that anymore. But this thing kept sitting right here with my dad. We were talking to my sponsor one day about it, And he said, can you get that money to her without her knowing it's coming from you? And I said, I don't know. And so we talked about that. And what I did is my mom was going through some financial trouble. And she wouldn't, you know, I wanted to give her some money. She wouldn't take it because, like, I'm the kid, you known one. And so I took my dad's Bible. Occasionally my mom got really stressed. She'd take my dad Bible to church and she'd open it up. And I took the money and I just put it in the Bible and left it there. And we were up one weekend and it was a couple weeks later. And she calls me on a Sunday afternoon. She goes, you won't believe this. I've been having this money thing and I didn't know what to do about it. She goes I was praying and praying. I took your dad's Bible to church and opened it up and these $100 bills started falling out of it. And I said really? That's cool. And I asked her how much was it because I knew what I put in. If she missed something I was going to go get it. And she said how much it was, and she goes, you know, it feels like your dad's still taking care of me. And, you know that changed. I mean, that just changed. That changed the way I looked at that thing and what I thought the minute that happened is where else can I do that? I mean where else do I go to get that? How do I fix that any other way? If I go tell my mom and say I sold this money for my dad when it happened? It'd kill her. I can't do that. How else do I do that? And that's Alcoholics Anonymous and that sponsorship. That's not my idea. That' s not a great Gary story, that's a great A story. You know, that' s how you get this stuff done. And they, I just, I think that maybe the thing in my life that has made the most difference for me has been the amends I've made they've just come out so many different ways that I didn't think would ever happen you know I had an amendment to make for a guy I used to work for and he had been transferred with our company over to when I started with this company and I spent there a long time I started there in 86 they hired me to do sales on the road as a marketing position and uh I was out for about a year and a half and they decided I was drinking a lot and I was I couldn't get up in the morning and I couldn't do the job. They pulled me back in, and so I had to work for this guy in a peripheral manner, so I made amends to him. I was in Des Moines doing something and I called him and made amens to him and geez, it was awkward. You know, it's just awkward and it was ugly and it wasn't good and it didn't look bad and he didn't want me to do it and you know, all those kind of things you do and I just plowed ahead and did it. So I made Amends to Him and a year later the guy is the head of my office and he's there three months and he calls me And he says, I think you're ready to go back out on the road. And I got a job I love. And, you know, that's AA. I mean, that doesn't happen. That guy's not going to come back here. That's just not how it works. If you know the way my company works, he's not going to go home. He's not coming back here and run the whole thing. And, uh, uh... You know, those kind of things for me have just happened boom, boom, boom. You know? It's just boom, boo. You know my mom died. I tried to make direct amends to my mom saying it's right or wrong he took me back through the steps we didn't do them all, we just kind of recapped them and he said you got some amends to make and he says I want you to read what the book says it made direct amens wherever possible he goes a lot of people talk about living amends don't know what they mean think they're taking credit for just doing the right thing I'm not saying that's right I'm just saying that is what he told me just taking credit for doing the right thing it says make direct amends wherever possible and so he said I made amends to your wife and and I was probably five years sober then and I said no I mean she knows I'm an AA and we're getting along better and he goes make direct Amens to her and so I did and I sat down with her and told her I was making amends tour and it was awkward it was awful I can tell you here later we had a completely different marriage there is a difference between saying sorry hun and you know what I was wrong I was bad and I don't want to be that way anymore those are two completely different things that you hear and and I didn't know that one of the things they have me do is go make direct demands to my mom and it was she wouldn't take it she would not listen to me I started to do it she goes no I'm just glad you're doing better her, honey. Just, you know, do this. And she died three years ago. And when she died, she wrote, there's three of us, she wrote all of us a letter. And all she talked about was me being sober. And how glad she was she did. It was an answer to prayer and all this stuff. Now, the bad news is, all I was talking to my brothers about is the fact that they weren't. So it wasn't exactly a fun reading of the letters. But, you know, I was, I don't know, maybe talked enough. If you're new here, I know this seems weird. It's okay. Let it be weird. Just jump in and be weird with us for a while, you know, I know it looks lame. I mean, it looks so lame to me. It was just unbelievable how lame this thing looked, you know? It's like, Jesus Christ. You know, it seemed to me I might get better, but it would take a team of specialists and the latest technology to get me turned around. And, you now, it took kind of a cranky little carpenter, to be honest with you. And a couple ex-cons. I mean, those are my three sponsors. And, you know, those guys have just, you know, Those guys told me what to do. The thing I know that if you're new is you don't know what to do. How would you possibly know what to do? Okay? And this isn't a popular thing to say. It's our job to tell you what to do. Okay? It's your job to do it. And, you know, I didn't know what to do. I had a sponsor when I was first here that was loud enough, louder than my head. And he would say, go over there and do that right now. Go do it! I'd go, go do it, do it do it and I'd go do. First miracle I saw in Alcoholics Anonymous with the pocket of enthusiasm meetings in Lincoln, Nebraska. They were having this sheet go around for sign-ups and I was three months sober. And I prayed and prayed and prayed that the sheet would be full when it got to me and there's all these different service positions and first prayer I ever said and the sheet came to me and it was completely full. I was so happy. I mean, I almost wept. And I looked at the top of the list, and my name was there already. And I got to make coffee for six months at the Pocket of Enthusiasm. First time I ever made coffee at any meeting was at the Thursday night meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Back to Basics 2 meeting. And I had asked them the week before, having never made coffee in a large coffee pot, how much do you make? And they said, well, you fill it up. I thought they meant that's how much coffee you put in. So I filled it all the way up and made the coffee, and it was kind of thick. And my sponsor was there. And he came, and he took a sip of coffee and went, Jesus Christ, what the hell? so he went back to fix it and some other guy walked in and got a cup of coffee and took a sip and went who's the moron that made the coffee and my sponsor was behind me and he said he was here making it asshole where were you and I thought, yeah it sucks but it's mine so I learned how to make coffee if you know I'm going to tell you this, a friend of mine's mom died when I went to the funeral Wednesday and the preacher was giving this sermon and he said, you know, Helen, that was her name loved this story and she said, we thought about doing this and he said that there's a story of this lady who goes to her preacher and says I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand and he goes why in the world would you want to do that and she says because I go to a lot of potlucks and a lotof church dinners and we're just having a riot and then it's over and they're taking the stuff away and somebody always says hey hang on to your fork and she goes and I always know something even better is still coming and if you're new here tonight or newer hang on to your fork it's good to be here, it's great to be sober