The Difference Between Waking Up and Coming To – Karl M.

Good evening. My name is Carl. I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to thank Stephanie and Kai and Natalie and Jeff or whoever had anything to do with me coming out. Actually, I shouldn't thank Jeff. I think he lobbied against me coming. Oh, goodness sakes. There is nothing more important that I can tell you about myself other than the fact that I'm an alcoholic. It's the dominating feature of my personality, drunk or sober. My sobriety date is January 21st, 1987. I'm 57 years old. I've been sober and Alcoholics Anonymous significantly more than half my life. And like I said again, drunker sober. The fact that i'm an alcoholic is the dominating feature of who I am. The reason I believe I'm a alcoholic is really very simple. It''s not complicated at The reason I believe I'm an alcoholic is because I've got a really bizarre, and bizarre is actually an understatement, a really bizarre relationship to alcohol. That's it. That is why I'm a alcoholic. And this strange relationship that I have with alcohol takes on a few forms. The first part of this strange relationships that I had with alcohol happens when I drink it. A really strange thing happens when drink booze. I never knew it was a strange reaction, but get here and find out this is an abnormal or allergic reaction that I get when I drink alcohol. The book says the symptom of this allergic or abnormal response that I have to drinking alcohol is what they refer to as the phenomenon of craving. And the best way that I can describe this thing that the book calls the phenomenonof craving is that whenever I drink booze, it seems like the more booze I drink, the thirstier I get. It's really weird. It doesn't happen with anything else. An example of that is they gave me this bottle of water, and over the next 45 minutes to four hours that I'm talking with you, a couple people got really nervous right now. Over the next45 minutes that I am talking with you, I will probably drink half this bottle. I don't know. If my mouth gets dry, I might finish this whole bottle of water, but once I finish this bottle of water I swear to you I am not going to go get a case of water and lock myself in a motel room. Right? There's no chance that I'm going to be in that motel room, man, need another case, need other case. You know, tell Jeff, come on, I'll turn the pink slip of my car over. Come on! Right? It's not going to happen. But if that was the only thing that made me alcoholic, this bizarre physical reaction that I get, this craving thing that happens, if that were the only things that made you alcoholic, well then, just say no would have wiped out alcoholism. Right? Early 80s, Nancy Reagan came out and said, just say no. I would have. And I imagine you would have gone, no. And just gone on and lived a happy, successful life just saying no. But I've got this other strange part of my relationship with alcohol. And strangely enough, it happens when I'm not drinking. You see, what happens with me is that up and by myself, if I don't drink for a day, a week or a month, I seem to have this mind that is always able to paint a picture that makes it okay for me to take another drink no matter what the pain, humiliation, and suffering was a day, a week, or a month ago. And it never, and I mean never, does it enter into the equation whether it was my pain and humiliation or your pain and humiliation. I could care less. But sooner or later, my mind has always been able but will rationalize and justify my walk back to the next drink at all costs. So therefore, because of these two components of my relationship to alcohol, number one, I cannot drink successfully, nor do I want to. Drinking successfully just makes me nervous. The idea of drinking successfully, you know, that's just two drinks and stopping. You know that, right? That just makes be nervous. That's like fingernails on a chalkboard, like two drinks and no more. So I can't drink successfully, but at the very same time, I cannot not drink successfully. I'm damned if I do, and I'm doomed if I don't. It's the ultimate catch-22 we call alcoholism. I'm going to harp on the physical feature a little bit more because it's the one thing, bar none, we all have in common because really, if we all get honest, we've got a lot of things that we don't have in comment. If you travel the world in Alcoholics Anonymous, heck, if you just drive down the 101 by about 8 miles, You will see the meeting looks very, very different. Every single race, creed, color, religion, every single background, type of family, education level, every single class of person, we're all here. We are a wide cross-section of society in Alcoholics Anonymous. We are such a wide across-sectionof society that really AA is about the only society where the bank president, the bank teller, and the bank robber are all right here in the same room. They're all telling a very different story about what just happened. so our stories are different based if you're listening to the backgrounds and family stories and stuff it'll be very different we also drink differently than each other we really do if you listen closely when people tell their stories in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous you will see we drink differently from each other to illustrate that let's say let's imagine this let's uh we crack open one of these back doors we wheel in a giant cart with all the kinds of booze we all love. If you're a top shelf, expensive drinker, right? We got that. Remy Martin, Cavassier. If your bottom shelf drinker we got that too. Mad Dog 2020. A couple of guys in the back just started to salivate like. Right? We wheeled that in the middle of the room and we all took a good four or five stiff drinks. Real drinks. No umbrellas. No mixer. Good four or five stiff drink. We'd all be acting very, very differently. Right over in this corner we'd have the good time crowd, right? Four or five drinks. Ha ha ha. Talk, talk, talk. Fun, fun, fun. Talk, talked, talk at a little methamphetamine. We talk a little faster. Right. But we're having a good time over in this corner. Over in that corner, we'd have the sobbers. You know them. They get a little drunk and like, hide in the closet. Right over in this corner, you'd have a fighters, you know, you get a a little drunk, got to fight. Over in this corner, a bunch of us would be naked. I personally would be visiting each of the other three corners trying to find a couple of friends to come over here with me. Just what I do. So our stories are different based upon which corner we're drinking in, right? Over in the good time crowd, it's always next bar, After hours, we're out driving a lot, right? So they get a lot of DUIs. Over in the sobbing corner, they don't get arrested. They don't even leave the damn house. Worst thing they do is call you at 3 a.m., blah, blah, bah, blah. Or God forbid these days, drunk Facebooking. That's all they do, right. Fighting corner, their stories always have probation, parole, court dates, mom paying for bail again, right, that's their stories. over in this corner, children show up by surprise. That'll change your life, drunk or sober, I promise you. Just like that, it'll change their lives. So our stories are different based upon which corner we're drinking in. But no matter which corner were in, there's one thing we would all be doing. We'd all be back at that cart for another drink. It's really important for me to understand that when I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous to know what I was supposed to identify with. Because if I'm listening to what kind of family I came from, Where did you grow up? You know, what level of education you got or how many jobs you lost. Did you go to prison? All of those are insignificant things to try to identify with. You may or you may not. But if I listen to what happens to you when you drink, do you crave when you drink? And then when you try to stop, do your lie to yourself about starting again? Then I can listen to anybody in AA and I'm you, you're me. I set this relationship up with alcohol that I just described to you right from the get-go when I first started drinking. I mean, right off the bat, I had that relationship. And I started drinking very late compared to most people. I was 11. That's kind of late these days. I mean over in my area, Covina is a part of L.A. We've got like 12-year-olds taking one-year chips, man. They've been to treatment three times already. I'm not kidding. So we lived in Seattle. A typical morning for me in seventh grade, we'd show up early for school, not for study hall or anything, but to meet my new friends at the very edge of the school property, Loser's Corner. Every school has got a Loser'S Corner. It's 10 feet off of the school property where kids would smoke cigarettes, try to look cool. And the school was always trying to push us farther and farther away, just like AA is doing to smokers these days, you know, farther and further away from the building. And we'd be there early in the morning smoking cigarettes, trying to look Cool. We'd also have what I like to call the playground cocktail. That is a jar full of whatever you could rip off out of the parents' liquor cabinet the night before. That jar is scary because none of us have been to bartending school yet. And plus, when you're ripping off the parents', liquor cabinet, you're not sitting there measuring out drinks. You're just grabbing whatever you can. So that jar on any given day might have whiskey, vodka, cream de menthe, vermouth, all in there. You can imagine six or seven of us 11-, 12-year-olds handing that jar around early in the morning, choking it down. Of course, it was the early 70s, so we're smoking that commercial pot. Anybody remember that stuff? Four-finger lids, $10 a bag, seeds and stems and the whole bit. Even before Ziploc baggies were invented, it would just be a regular Glad sandwich bag. And as you'd roll it up, there'd be like nine people spit on it. Oh, man. So by the time I'm 14 there in Seattle, I'm the neighborhood drunk. I'm a neighborhood pot dealer. I forgot to mention. But my father was a neighborhood Lutheran minister. You didn't find anything funny about this at all. My parents, they're good people, and they tried to, you know... But they blame my problems on people placing things. But the problem is, when you blame people placing things for the things that are going on in a guy's life like mine, all that happens is that I wind up loaded with different people. in different places, ruining different things. That's all that happens. My parents decided when I was about 18 that Seattle was a problem. Get them out of Seattle, things will get better. They sent me 300 miles away to Washington State University. I spent three years at that university and in that three years on my parents' money, I got almost 10 credits. At any given time, my grade point average matched my blood alcohol content about a 0.25. By the time I was 22, this little story I'm about to tell you will let you know exactly where I stood with my family. Now, my father was Swedish. My mother is Icelandic. Therefore, I look like a polar bear, and I don't know whether this custom I'm about to tell you about is Scandinavian or whether it's Lutheran. I don' t know, but at Christmas time, my parents wouldn' t just send out Christmas cards to their friends and relatives. My parents would send out this big, long Christmas letter that said everything the family had been doing that year, and when I was about 22, I got a hold of one of these letters that had been sent out the previous Christmas, and as I read it, it let me know exactly where I stood with my family. Now, the first paragraph talked about what my parents had been doing that year. Another impressive year, I'm sure. The next paragraph talked about what the Morris children had been going that year and that paragraph went something like this. Our oldest daughter, Christina, just graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York with a master's degree in human resources. She is now working for a a large pharmaceutical company in the Midwest. She traveled to Europe this summer, she saw this, she saw that. Her hobbies are this, this and this. She's a very happy young woman, we are very proud of her. Our oldest son Eric just graduated from Western Washington State University with a degree in marketing. He's now working for a large advertising firm here in downtown Seattle. He loves to golf, he loves to travel. He's engaged to be married to this wonderful woman named Mary Lou who works for a very small company here in Seattle named Microsoft. They were small at one time And they love to golf together. They love to travel together. He's a very happy young man. We are very proud of him. Our youngest son, Carl, just turned 22. They were actually being very kind. So about this same time, long story short, it really would take till breakfast to describe everything involved in the next thing I'm going to say, so I just break it down one quick sentence. A really bad night happened, so I joined the Navy. It was a bad night. What I'm about to tell you should concern you if you care anything about the security of the United States, but on my way into the Navy, I passed a potential test. It's called the ASVAB test, and this test that I took qualified me to become a nuclear engineer. That should concern you that the United States Navy would have any type of system in place that even maybe possibly or even remotely, allow somebody like me near anything nuclear. However, they made me take another test when I showed up at that baseball boot camp and I could not pass that particular test. That test is called a urinalysis test is what it's called. I never knew how to pass those things. I should have been kicked out of the Navy, but through a series of events I was kept in the Navy and they took away that nuclear status thing made me a regular electrician. A little side fact, I'm scared of electricity. They didn't seem to care. A year and a half later, I am a lower rank than when I first came in. It's kind of like this. I knew I was in the Navy. It was obvious. All I had to do was survey my surroundings on any given day. It pretty obvious that I was the Navy, I would notice that by God I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I am on a large gray ship. I'm in a uniform. No doubt about it, I am in the United States Navy. However, that ship would pull into a port, I would leave that ship and take a drink, and I literally, literally would forget that I'm in the Navy. When I would briefly remember in the middle of these two- and three-day drunks that I was going on, I wouldn't care. I could care less anymore. There's something happening at this point in my life that was confusing me. I was 23, I'm 24. I was 25 years old, and whereas as a teenager and in my early 20s before being in the Navy, I knew how to go on a three-day run. I knew what I needed. I know how to get it done, but now I'm triggering these three- day drunks by accident, and what I mean by a three‑day drunk is you kind of go in and out. You might pass out for a few hours. You wake back up, and you just take a drink, and you fire it right back up. It's really a profound spiritual experience, to wake up in the morning, you know, drink a couple of drinks and fire that drunk right back up. It's something that I think non-alcoholics really, they're missing out. They really are. It is a wonderful part of life. When you fire that junk back up again, it's a weird thing having somebody going in and out of the bathroom right there. It is. I've been at thousands of meeting halls. That's different. It is. This is different. Now, where was I? See, I drift in and out, even sober. I told you. Right? Anyway, it became a very, very difficult thing to explain to the people around me when I would come out of one of these three-day drunks and I would realize that I'm in a foreign country. I'm on a large pier and at 6 a.m. in the morning, I'm going, There was a destroyer here the other day. Been in the Navy approximately two years at this point. Been in the Navy about two years at this point, and I came out of another one of these drunks in a little motel room in downtown San Diego, late getting back to my ship. My car is held together by rubber bands, and I'm trying to get back to my ship, and one of the tools for living I had gained at this point is that At the end of these two and three day drunks, I'd always try to save a pint. And I would drink half that pint on my way back into the ship. And then I'd try to say the other half a pint, hi, how are you? OK. I tell you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It's not like nobody noticed you already, right? You know, it's not I'm pointing you out. Aren't you glad you sat next to me the meeting? Not at all. I know, I know. She got put there right before the meeting. She's thinking, oh, what an asshole. All right. So now I don't even know where I'm at again. Oh, oh. Half a pint. And I'm trying to get that half a pint in me. And at the front of every Navy base, there's a guard shack where a Marine will stand duty. And you're supposed to slowly and politely pull up at that guard shack, show him your military ID. He'll check the sticker on your car. If everything's in order, he'll allow you to proceed onto the base. This particular morning I was paying more attention to getting that half a pint in me than where the car was going, and all of a sudden my eyes came into focus and the Marine had his head out of the guard shack like, and I'm wondering what is he so excited about until I look down, I'm going still 40 miles an hour. And I tried to yank the wheel and swerve around but there's this big cement meeting on the right hand side the car glanced off that and flipped over and bang! Right through that guard shack. I can still see that Marine doing this big dive out of there. He did a quick somersault back up, weapon drawn, thank God those guys are in good shape. And it was one of those mornings where everybody's angry and yelling and running in circles, and I'm just like, what? What? What? And you know, I hate those mornings. I just hate those warnings. Marine was alright. They're patching me up to the hospital for minor injuries and they're reading new charges on me. And this is nothing significant. New charges. that's just what happens in a guy's life like mine about every 90 days if you're living the way I'm living so there's nothing significant about new charges but the most significant thing that happened that morning is the navy doctors prescribed this stuff called anabuse for me I always hear the groans when I say anabase like oh no no no and I was now under orders to show up at sick bay every single morning before quarters and I would have to sit there just like Stephanie sitting there, and the corpsman would walk over with his little white pill between his thumb and forefinger, and he'd put it on my tongue and make me sit there for half an hour to make sure it actually got into my system. Over the next seven to ten days, I started to experience the most cunning, baffling, and powerful side of this thing we call alcoholism, and that is I had no alcohol in my system, and I was literally going insane. Throughout my life, people that loved me or had authority over me had always been trying to take alcohol away from me, and then they would put me in front of some sort of psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, or a pastor, or some sort of somebody. And each one of those somebodies would always have a general framework of questions that would always culminate with, what's the matter with you? And I did not have the vocabulary, but if I would have had the vocabulary I would've said back to this person that was saying confronting me or trying to talk to me or console me, whatever their little game was I wouldve said, you know, I'm with you on this I see that the price of my drinking is getting very high. I'm not happy the car is on fire either. I'm with you on that. I wish it wouldn't have happened, but if you knew how I felt when I wasn't drinking, you wouldn't be asking me why I drink. See, there's only one thing worse than the price I'm paying for my drinking, and that's the way that I feel when I'm not drinking,and I don't have the vocabulary to tell you that.I don't even understand it myself, let alone be able to put the right words to it. I would just sort of fold my arms and say whatever, Whatever. And I just can't hear it. I cannot hear the words of well-meaning, highly educated people that are trying to talk to me. I just cannot hear it, it's like Charlie Brown's teacher, wah, wah. I remember counting those days on that Antabuse. It's been four days and I'm on AntabUSE. now it's been six days and I'm on anabuse now it has been eight days six hours and fifteen minutes and I'm on anabase and I started to look around that ship the other men they're talking behind my back. All 300 of them. Have you ever felt that way in AA? The only difference is in an AA, we are talking behind your back. It's not an illusion. We're really doing it. Only with love and tolerance in Scottsdale, I'm sure. On the 10th day, I just snapped. I went AWOL from my ship. I locked myself in this little hotel room in downtown San Diego at the Plaza Hotel. It was on 4th Broadway. This would have been May of 1986, and in May of 1986 the Plaza Hotel cost $13 a night. They have rehabbed that whole area of downtown San Diego, and the Plaza Hotel now costs $19 a night! I locked myself in this little hotel room when I had a bottle of vodka and a shot glass sitting on this regular lens table, and as I sat on the edge of the bed looking at the bottle of vodka and the shot glass, I remembered that the Navy doctors had given me a very stern warning about drinking on top of antabuse When they prescribed it for me, they had told me, son, you need to understand that if you drink on top of this antabuse, you will get one of two reactions. One reaction is you will be killed. You will get violently ill. The other reaction is, you might die. I remember looking at the bottle and I thought, well, wonder which reaction I'm going to get. I took one shot and nothing happened. Authority had lied to me again as far as I was concerned. I waited about two minutes just to make sure, and I took another shot. All of a sudden, I felt tingly in the face. So I looked in this cracked little mirror in this hotel room and a bright red, blotchy and purple in places. Took another shot. All of A Sudden, I could feel my heart going boom, boom, boom, looked at my shirt. I was drenched in sweat. And all of a suddenly like hyperventilating. We're doing all right so far. You guys are sick if you think this is funny. I took another shot and up it came. My second sponsor was a man named Eddie Cochran. He died in 1999 with 47 years of sobriety. His sobriete date was December 2nd, 1951. He was one of the pioneers of Southern California Alcoholics Anonymous. He called the next thing that happened to me projectile regurgitation. This is a new level of puking I'm unfamiliar with, right? Because we all know normal pukING, right, it's one of tools for living we gain out there. You're out there in the middle of a good drunk, you get that little warning, right? A little sour taste in the back of your throat. Maybe a little bit gets up in your mouth and you kind of go, hmm. And we all know, based upon experience, we have 30 to 60 seconds to find a bathroom if there happens to be one. If we're driving, we've learned our lesson before. Get the window down, man. You blow it all over the dashboard, it gets in the ventilation system, it's weeks that you still smell it, right. That's also a total blow if you get pulled over. But you get the warning, right? But here on the Antabuse, no warning. It's just, sort of this Linda Blair spray across the room. Thank God the Plaza Hotel is the type of hotel room where the toilet is in the same room with the bed. It''s a design feature, I believe, maybe to make convicts feel more at home upon release. I'm not really sure. But I found the magic of drinking on top of Antabuses that if I were to hang in there, and that's an important feature here, if you're going to drink on top of antibodies, you have to hang in there. You cannot half measure this. You might need to reach down deep for a level of commitment you did not know you had. What I found is that if I kept drinking and kept puking and kept drinking for about an hour to an hour and a half, enough of the antibodies would kick out of my system and I would quit throwing up and I'd just be left with red face, hyperventilating and sweating and I'm alright with that. So I drank on top of antibodies for the last seven months of my drinking. There's no other words to describe this other than desperation drinking. My second and my last drunk, I was left for dead in a motel parking lot in an area of San Diego called National City. All I remember is that all of a sudden I saw lots of fists flying. Apparently they were not mine. Then I saw a lot of blood. That apparently was mine. And the next thing I knew is I came to and I'm on an operating table. Now again, tools for living we gain out there. When you come out of these blackouts, you start, we survey the surroundings to try to figure out good night, bad night. I quickly figured out that when you come to and you're on an operating table, that usually indicates a bad night. I also got a little frustrated with you. I was getting very close to meeting new people in AA at this point in my life. And I got very frustrated at first with the way you were describing your coming out of blackouts. I often heard people, and I still do every once in a while, people say, I'm just so grateful to be sober because now I wake up instead of coming to. It was just so horrible out there when I'd be drinking, I'd come to, and i'd look next to me as if you were always the good-looking one. There's two sides to that story. See, I'd been coming out of blackouts. I'd see a girl that I'd known for a while and I'd go, wow, I like her. And she would wake up and go, not Carl! God damn it! And run out. I'd stand there kind of, my last night of drinking, I'm being let out of the San Diego jail, I'm being transferred from civilian authorities back to military authorities is another one of those mornings where everybody lots of people in uniform and Everybody's angry right different types of unit civilian uniforms and military uniforms and handcuffs are extra tight Neck muscles are not working Well, they're shifting it shuffling me here shuffles me there and that morning when they tried to bring me back to my ship the officer Deck put his arm up and said wrong answer Orders have already been processed on this loser last night The orders are 90 days in the brig, bad conduct discharge, or treatment. But we are not to accept him on board. And I remember sitting there in handcuffs kind of going, hmm? Apparently some sort of option was thrown out on the table. Don't remember thinking it was a good idea to go to treatment. I don't remember think it was bad idea to do that. I don' t remember thinking about what I thought about the decisions that were being made because I was in handcoffs. It doesn't matter what I think. Never before in my life had I ever, whoever had me in handcuffs, never once did they ever turn to me and say, so what's your opinion on this matter? When you're in handcoffs, you go where they sit. And they took me up to this military treatment center, and when the doors were locked behind me, they took the handcuffs off me. There is no better example of the way that the society that I was living in or the country I was supposed to be serving felt about how Carl Morris acts out there in the world without Alcoholics Anonymous than that. They're willing to take the handcuffs off me when the doors are locked behind me. So I'm in this 45-day military treatment center thing, and as far as treatment centers go, I've got to tell you the United States Navy has one of the best in the World. It's not because they have some sort of new medical idea or medical treatment for alcoholism or any type of special counseling. They're just as good as anybody else, and they did everything that a hospital-type thing should do. They separated me from alcohol medically, and then they gave me some counseling that every single human being could benefit from. But the reason I believe they're the best in the world is because every night they took us to you. You can still see us down in San Diego and in military towns, and you will see the military sitting along the back road. The vans will pull up. Every single night we were brought to you, and they would brief us before they would send us to your house or before we got in the van. They would say, hey, those people there at that meeting that you're going to be at, they think this is a life and death matter. You need to stay in your seat. Now, they don't do this part anymore, but they used to send an armed guard with some of the vans because some of us had charges and they were thinking about processing us out. They would send an arm guard, and if they were at this meeting, he'd be sitting over at that door, and he used to be able to smoke in the meetings. He'd be right by the door, make sure you see his weapon here, and he'dbe smoking, right? And we'd stay in our seat. It was sort of their idea of strong sponsorship, I guess. I don't know. I got to tell you, I know that many people have a million different stories about their first impression of Alcoholics Anonymous. I gotto tell you 95% of my initial impression of Alcoholic Anonymous was this. Oh my God, they know. They know. My God, they know. Now if you would have seen me sitting back there and you would have said to me, okay kid, what is it that they know that you think you know? I would have gone, I don't know. But they know, right? And what it was is I was identifying. What was happening to me is what Alcoholics Anonymous wants to have happen to any new person. And I don' t know whether it was a I now think it's a combination. The reason I was having that experience I believe is a combination of two things. I believe that drinking on top of antabuse for seven months kind of tenderized my ears a little bit, right? To maybe be listening to the fact that maybe I'm not a social drinker and the party's over, right. Combined with, I really believe that those people at those meetings in San Diego knew that we were there. And they knew that they were talking to people that may only have two experiences, three chances at hearing the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they took being at the podium seriously. and they were telling their stories in the way that Alcoholics Anonymous asked us to tell our stories, and I was identifying. They were talking about alcoholism and the recovery from it. I'll never forget the very first time, first couple of meetings hearing when they said, if you don't take the first drink, you can't get drunk. I was like, if I don't takethe first drink I can'tgetdrunk. I've always fancied myself to be mildly intelligent and I can dance my way around most anything you say. But I couldn't dance around that one. No matter which way I looked at that, it was true. I had a minor spiritual awakening from that simple little thing. And we used to be able to smoke. If I don't take the first drink, I can't get drunk. Did you guys know that? If I Don't Take the First Drink, I Can't Get Drunk. Now, just because I'm having a mild experience about this, I encourage you not to call the people that love you That are not alcoholic To impress them with what you're learning in AA When I could use the phone back at the treatment center I called my mother And I said, Mom, you wouldn't believe it I heard in the AA meeting They said if I don't take the first drink I can't get drunk There was silence on the other end of the line After about 10 seconds she said Hmm, bunch of philosophers They're in that AA program, huh? But to me, it was life-changing news. It was huge. After 45 days, I got out of that treatment center, and the only thing I knew is that I felt safe when I was in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's all I knew. I felt safer when I felt like I was safe. When I was physically in a Meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous, I felt unsafe when I wasn't in a Meetings of Alcoholice Anonymous I got off of that Treatment Center on a Friday afternoon, and I was in the 6 o'clock, 6 p.m. gong show meeting in Pacific Beach, meeting about this size and I'm sitting in the back corner and one guy that night operated on his primary purpose came over and found me sitting there and he said, hey, kind of aggressively, hey, never seen you here before, what are you doing? I didn't think quick enough to lie to him and I swear to you if I would have thought for one more second I would've lied to him but I accidentally told him the truth and I said, I don't know, I just got out of a Navy treatment center an hour ago, I don'T know what I'M doing. This guy's eyes went BING, big smile went across his face At the break of the meeting, he's like fighting his friends off. Mine, mine, my newcomer, mine. I didn't know you marked your newcomers around here for God's sake. But there was something going on in that guy's life that particular Friday night that made him especially glad to meet me. This guy's girlfriend had left him the night before for one of his friends in his home group. So he was wondering what he was going to do with his weekend. Homicide, suicide, get loaded or grab this newcomer. He's like all over me all weekend. And we went to like 18 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this guy was insane over this woman, flat out insane. In between this barrage of meetings he dragged me to, in between each meeting, he'd throw me in the passenger side of his car, he'd start driving and he'd started yelling. He wouldn't even look at the road. He had like one of these AA radar cars that just made it to the next meeting, I guess. And he'd be yelling at me, you've got to go to meetings, you've gotta read the book, you've GOTTA GET A SPONSOR, GOD DAMN HER! YOU'VE GOTTA GO TO MEETINGS, YOU'V GOTTA READ THE BOOK! And I'm like... Dude! He was spitting on me, right? Now, I didn't know it, but I was getting a very early introduction to your typical AA relationship breakup is what I was getting. I'm so very glad that that guy, that night in his pain was a guy in Alcoholics Anonymous who had done the work of Alcoholics Anonymous, had taken the steps of Alcoholic Anonymous and therefore he understood that the solution to his pain without a self, out of self, out of cell. I am so glad that guy that night in his pain, was not at home, underneath his covers, whining into his sponsor's answer machine. You guys know what an answer machine is? Whining into a sponsor's answer machine, sponsor where are you? Fix me! Give me the golden answer! Hate to tell you there is no golden answer. And now that I look back at it, I am so grateful that it seems like that guy's sponsor sponsored him something like this. Yes son, I most certainly will be here to give you answers and try to answer your questions and guide you an Alcoholics Anonymous, but son, if you learn to work with new people, you will have a lifetime of solutions at your fingertips. And that guy understood that concept. I guarantee you he was not dragging me around that weekend because I was alcoholic. He was dragging me around that week and because he was alcoholic, he had no idea whether I would stay sober or not. And really, if he put him on a lie detector test, he might not have cared when it really boiled down to it. But he cared whether he stayed sober and didn't act take some sort of action he was going to pay a price for. By going to so many meetings in the same area of town with this guy, I learned something really valuable about how we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when we're new. Now I saw multiple people at multiple meetings over that weekend. Now, I didn't see anybody else doing 18 meetings, just me and that guy. But I saw other people because we went to all the meetings in this same area of North San Diego, I saw other people that were at two or three meetings over that weekend. And what I learned about how we goto meetings of alcoholics anonymous, especially when we're new, I'm going to correlate it to a football game. Now, a football team is out there on the field for one reason and one reason only, to win the game. And how do they win that game? They huddle up, they make a plan, and they do one play. Then they hudble up again, they make another plan,and they do 1 play. That's exactly what we do here in Alcoholics Anonymous and the game around here is one day without a drink, you're a big winner. And how do we do that one day? We run in here and we hudle up. But remember, we're bodily mentally different from our fellows. Break! We go out there, and we try a little of this. We try a Little of that. We run right back in here. I got back to my ship after that weekend with that crazy guy, and the one other sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous on my ship was waiting for me. His name was Bob W. He had 14 more months than me, and he was going to work with me whether I wanted him to or not. He knew he had a captive audience that I wouldn't have to jump overboard to get away from him. But you know what? But it was absolutely the most perfect situation. He had caught fire with Alcoholics Anonymous, he was going to carry the message no matter what. And you know what? It was... When our ship... I spent the first two years of my sobriety as a nomad in Alcoholics Aonomous. We were going up and down from South America up to Alaska out to Hawaii, and we just were guarding the west coast of the United States. It was doing those Tom Clancy war games, chasing Russian submarines, that's what we were doing. And out at sea, this guy became my first sponsor, Bob, who was 14 more months ahead of me. And when we were out at see, he would make me meet him in the aft end of the ship, way down at the bottom of this engine room in this little battery shop. And one of the very first nights, he'd show up with that blue book, and he'd toss it down the table like, I've been hounding about it for weeks! Have you read it? And I'd say, well, here's how it works. We antagonists. Some doctor has an opinion about something. And he literally did something that saved my life. He opened up that book and started to read. When he was tired, I would read. And he shared what little he knew. Remember, he was only 14 months ahead of me. He was no expert. Thank God Step 12 says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried. It does not say successfully. It does nicht sagen gut. Es sagt nur, wir haben versucht, um diese Botschaft zu be. Und er war einfach nur, um die Botschaft auszuhalten. And I've got to tell you, when I look back of the year of all of 1987 and half of 1988, down in that little engine room, it was Alcoholics Anonymous in its purest form. Two men in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a Navy ship in this little battery shop with this big book of AlcoholicsAnonymous trying to have an experience. Neither one of us knew what that experience would be, but we both had it. I'm still sober. He died sober in 2009 of cancer. At his funeral in Portland, Oregon, about 10 men walked up to me, all of them holding this beat-up, beat-upped big book held together with rubber bands and strings. And they handed it to me and I go, what's this? They go, he wanted you to have this. And I open it up and there's both our sobriety dates. And it was the book from the ship. That sits in my office right next to a couple of first editions. Way more valuable, that one. Two years sober, got an honorable discharge out of the Navy. That is the result of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, an apparently merciful God and a personnelman that lost half my file. That's how that happened. One of the amends I was unable to make while I still was in the Navy was that my parents had paid for a bachelor's degree. I didn't have one. I was given two choices. I either had to pay them back every single nickel they had wasted on that or I had to go get what they paid for in the first place. So I used some VA benefits, and I found a university up near this town called Covina, California. I had no idea where that place was, but I packed up my—I still live there now. Thirty years later, I still live here. Packed up my little Volkswagen that had a hole in the floorboard that I pushed start. Again, right? I got a Navy paycheck for two years, got promoted. That paycheck got bigger and bigger, and all that meant was more amends, more amens, more amends. I was still push starting the same car I got sober in, 68 Volkswagen. And had to use a screwdriver in the steering column and wiggle that while push starting. It was really quite a deal. One headlight that flapped up like this with duct tape on it. And I was driving up to Covina on the LA freeways and it's only hitting on a couple of cylinders. I'm thinking, I'm two years sober. I deserve better than this. Some guy comes by in a nice BMW, I heard, loser, loser! And I'm thinking, I need to get a life. I really need a life, I've heard people talk about having a life in AA. I need one of those. And I knew I was going to go to school and I knew I was gonna have to work and I started thinking, you know what, I'm gonna cut way back on the AA. And once I get a wife, I'll do more. And I pulled into this Solano AA clubhouse, much like this, it's called the 502 Club in Covina. And the man making coffee at that noon meeting that day They had this medallion that said 1951, big gold chain, you know how they used to wear those things. It hangs in my office right now actually. And that man was Eddie Cochran and he came over to me and he said the very same thing that guy said to me when I was fresh out of that treatment center. He said, never seen you here before son, what are you doing? And I said sir it's very nice to see your meeting hall here. I'm two years sober. I'm fresh out the Navy and I'm going to be going to the university here. won't see me very often because I'm gonna be real busy. I need to get a life and once I get a like, I will get more active in AA but I'm not gonna have much time." And Eddie had this laugh. He always wore Hawaiian shirts. He said, oh son school and work are wonderful things to do but that's what we do in between meetings. What he was really telling me is one of the secrets to long-term sobriety comfortably. What was really telling me, his son, you need to live in Alcoholics Anonymous and visit the world instead of trying to hash it out there in the world and visiting Alcoholics Anonymous when convenient. First thing he told me to do was put new guys in that car, and he told me my life would get better if I did that. And I didn't see how that could possibly happen. But the very first night that I put new guys in my car, followed his direction, my life got better. The new guys could push start my car. He didn't say how much better, he just said better. But I've got to tell you, in the 31 years that I've been here with you, I didn't know life could take on this level of meaning and purpose. I didn'T know that I could feel this way about who I've got to be in this world. I just didn'T KNOW that was available. I didn'T know thatI could love other people the way I've learned how to love other peopLe. And how I really learned that one was having kids. My 17-year sober, I got married, we got divorced. Now, you've never heard of that in AA. We all get married once around here, right? But we had two beautiful kids. They are 11 and 13 right now. Your Facebook friend of mine, I'm irritating about putting pictures of them up, but their names are Madison and Ryan. And I got to tell you, having kids, I know there's got to be another way for you to feel what I got from having kids. But having kids made me, it felt like I met who I would die for. I have never felt that before in my life. I know, I mean, literally, I've never felt that. The Navy made me raise my hand and say I would die for you but I was really hoping it was not going to come to that. I didn't say, oh yeah, sure, no problem. I was like, oh really? All right. But I do. I love other people. Jeff, how long have we known each other? 28, 29? All 30? I've known you since you were brand new and I've probably known him for 30 years. I love Jeff, really do. But if we're out at Starbucks later and some guy comes in and says, one of you's got to carry a gun and one of us has got to go, I'd say, have you met my friend Jeff? I mean, just bang! Just like that. Sorry Natalie, but but if it was my kid I would dive right in front of that bullet. I've never felt that. I've ever felt that Every day remember I told you when I first got up here. I said, the fact that I'm an alcoholic is the dominating feature of who I am. The reason I say that is every morning I wake up, I want to be a good dad. I think, how can I be a better dad? We had to take the house 10 years ago, separate it into two townhouses. The kids go back and forth. I have to get along with my ex because we both love those kids. She loves those kids and she's a good mom. And we have to work this out. It's a strange situation, but we have to work that out. We've had to for 10 years. We got divorced 10 years ago. What was the point? Whenever I talk about my ex-wife, my mind just goes bing. Does your mind dance around like a ping pong ball too? Bing, bing, bING. It does when I'm up here and say, don't go down that road. That's a dead end, Carl. I just hit the dead end. But anyway, why did I bring that up? Why did you bring that? Oh, the fact that I'm an alcoholic is really the dominating feature of who I am because I wake up every morning wanting to be a good dad. Literally, I think that. How can I arrange my day so that I can play Uber driver for soccer and volleyball and all that stuff? I rearrange stuff every day to be able to do that. And I would never trade my kids for the first drink. Never in a million years would I trade my children for the second drink. I would trade my kid for the third drink. however I am alcoholic I know what it means to be alcoholic although I would never trade them for the first drink I would trade them for the second drink like that wouldn't even think twice the minute see once you add alcohol into a guy like me all bets are off I'm the kind of dad you had a drink there will be restraining orders against me from my ex-wife because you You know what a guy like me does when he's drunk and has kids? Oh, I leave them alone. They're about ninth on my list, and I don't see them, I don' t see them. I don''t see them until I'm in the middle of a good three-day drunk. Then I got to see them! And I start making demands. Got to see him! Right? Then boom, restraining order. That's the kind of guy I would be. So therefore, the only way I have a chance of being a good dad is that I stay in the center of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're new or fairly new and you do not know what it means to be in the Center of Alcoholic Anonymous or you have this feeling like you're on the outside of AA looking in, don't leave here tonight without talking to somebody that can teach you how to get into the Center for Alcoholics Andonymous. A meeting like this is a great place to learn that. Get a commitment. Start greeting at the door. Ask to help with the coffee. Be part of the setup group. That's the first step towards the Center of Alcoholical Anonymous, getting involved. See, if you're sitting here just coming to meetings once in a while and watching and listening to see if the speaker's kind of funny, sitting by the door so you can sneak out if they're not, that's the outside of Alcoholics Anonymous, watching it. And I know this for a fact. Many people think that only 5% of AA is staying sober. You hear that? You guys hear those statistics? Only 5% are making it. It's not true. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. I've been here a long time, and that's still true. Everybody that does this stays sober. But the reason it looks like that these days is because more than ever before in the history of AA, outside agencies have been sending people to watch AA. Why would we throw them into the statistics of the success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous? My son and I like to go to Seahawks games. Never once while we're up there in the stands in Seattle has... has, we've come to see a couple games here too, never once when we've been in the stands has a statistician come up to my son and said, hey, how many passes did you complete during the game? That'd be ridiculous, right? So why would we throw the people that are just watching AA into the success statistics of Alcoholics Anonymous? Do you know how ridiculous would it be if after a game my son went home and told his mother, I'm a pro football player. his mother'd say no you want to be one you're not one do you know how many people that watch AA go home and tell their family they're in AA then they wonder why they keep getting drunk and keep getting drunk and they say AA doesn't work no AA works really well it is a profound what happens to me what happened to me here is that by taking the actions that you guys made me take you completely altered the way that I look at the world. It's literally a complete change in attitudes and ideas about what I think is important in the world, and by changing my attitude towards the world drugs and alcohol don't even fit in there anymore. It just this weird transformation that happened without me knowing it. So I urge you if you're new find the Center of Alcoholics Anonymous and thanks for having me. we have service commitments available at this meeting as you know a service commitment is