The Disease of Being Fine – David

My name is David, I'm an alcoholic. It's a pleasure to be back here. I came here in April of 94 for the first time. That was my third time speaking at a conference, and it was a wonderful place. It still is. Seaside is gorgeous. I want to thank Zan particularly for all the extra touches she has done. She and Harlan have been wonderful, and I mean that. We have been fantastic, fantastic. Thank you. If you ever call them again, you'll notice that on their recorder they have a little message that says, please repeat your number twice because our recorder has a problem or something like that. And so what I've been doing for the last several months is everything I say, I've been repeating twice. Hello, Harlan. Hello, harlan. This is David. This is david. We go through the whole thing and um and so we've had this little running a double recording going of course i blew it the first time i got to buy and i didn't say bye bye so we had to make that one up it's a pleasure to be with you thanks to the committee and terry over in the, thank you so much. And Cheryl, I think the committee and the work that's been done here. In fact, Harlan came to me over two years ago. He said, David, if we can put this together, will you come and speak in Seaside again? And I told him I would. And then he wrote me a postcard and said, you're committed. I knew I was, but it's a pleasure to be back. I want to talk with you today. No, by the way, we do have a, this is of course the new millennium, this being the new year. And I want to thank Wayne last night for starting out, leaving the 1999 in a beautiful way. What a wonderful sharing. Thank you. Good job. And I've also found that Wayne and Nora shake a mean leg on the dance floor too. I want to tell you they were out there last night, but nice dancing too. But I want to tell that we're bringing into the new millennium and this first speaker meeting perhaps for you, it is certainly my first speaker meeting, a new concept. You can see in the center of the room the ball is still turning right at the top here and I don't know what that means except it's been burning all night long and so I guess we'll have lights at some point. It's the new way to celebrate. Just a little sidebar humor. It is early, I know. I want to talk to you about a dis-ease I have, and I want to talk to you about it in a very real way. As Zan said, I look like maybe I lost a car. I did find it, but that was at a Holiday Inn one night, but it took a little while the next day, but I did found it. But the truth is, I really don't know how to describe this disease or disease I have except to tell you that it affected every fiber of my body. One of the things that this disease or disease I have does to me is it allows me to be perceived by most people as being okay. You know why? I tell them that. How are you doing? I'm fine. In North Carolina, somebody asked me about North Carolina. I think it was Joe. And I was showing him some dialects so he could impress one of his friends. But yeah, he got it. He got it! Y'all can see Joe after the meeting. He'll give you his dialect. But the point I'm making is that I was in North Carolina when we were born. In fact, it's just a moment or two before birth. You have to start smiling and you have to mumble these words. I'm fine. How are you? I'm Fine. I'm FINE. I'M FINE, I'M fine. You have shake your head like this just a little bit, Michael. Not much, but just a lil' bit. You know, not... I'm not even Japanese, but you know, it just... I'm fIne. How are YOU? I'M fIghe. I'M fiGhe. And you go through life. It's called finin'. We perfect finin' into a fine art. How are You doin' this morning? I'Mfine. How are you doing? I'm fine. I'm good. I'm okay. I'm cool. I'm all right. I'm great. I'm going to be fine. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm back. I'll come back. You need anything? Oh, no, I don't need anything. What do you want for Christmas? Oh, you'll comb or something. So I got getting combs. I just finally figured that out this Christmas. I'm find. You see, my disease says to me that if I'm not fine, you will not like me. If I'm not fine, see, my worst fear is you're going to find out that I'm afraid. See, if you think I'm scared, if your know me as afraid, then you will not want me to be around you. And so my whole drive in life, this whole disease for me is that feeling of having to be okay and inside I'm absolutely collapsing. Having to be OK and inside it's like there's this explosion inside of my gut And it's like chronically there every day. Having to be okay and say the right words and not knowing what the right ones are. Having to dress the right way or maybe not dress the way or lose weight, gain weight depending on my age and never having it right. That's my disease. You see, there's a section here in the big book that to me absolutely summarizes and in fact Wayne mentioned it last night but it's on page 62. This disease, this disease, I have come to know as alcoholism, says this. It says this on page 62. Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of all of our troubles, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self delusion, self seeking and self pity. I stepped on the toes of my fellows and they retaliated, seemingly without provocation. But we invariably find that at some time in my past, I have made decisions based on self which have come back later to hurt me. That is a summary of my life, including the lost car I had. I could stop right there. Hundreds of forms of fear. Hundreds. Do you know what it's like? It's like, am I the only one? That feeling, am, am i okay? Am i okay ? The first thing I remember, I was, I don't know, five or six. My mother asked me to, well, we were going to a relative's house. I don't know if it was an aunt or uncle, but we went. And I was in the back seat and my mother pointed and she said, don't you ask for one thing when we get there. My brother Larry and I, he was 16 months, two days older at that time. He still is. Nothing's changed at that point. But she pointed and said, now, don't You ask for One Thing, not even a drop of water because I don' t want Aunt Sue to say, Lifa and Claudia, my mom and my dad are welcome back here, but those mean young'uns had better never do this again and never come again. And so I sat there. I don't know if you ever did this. The next memory, I was on a wooden bench at the back door and I was sitting on my hands. Have you ever done that? Stuck them under my thighs so I wouldn't touch anything so I didn't want to get in trouble. And I remember people walking by and I'd go, I'm fine. How are you? Do you want something to drink? Oh no, I'm okay. I'm good. I'm doing fine. Thank you. I'm fined. I'm find. I had to go to the bathroom so bad and I would not. Do you know what I learned it was okay from my counselor in treatment at the age of 40? She said I could even leave the group and go if I didn't have to go. I said, but what do I do when I'm in there? This is a true story. And she said just go in there and kind of look at yourself and wash your hands and come back. So I tested her. And it worked. See, it wasn't so much going to Bethlehem. It was coming back. I just knew they all knew where I'd been. It was that fear. That fear. So I got in the car. The first thing in the card, I said, Mom, how did I do? How did I get here? Do they want me to come back? And I don't know if you know that fear, that base fear of never ever being accepted back. And you've got to do more than you are. You've got say more than your are. You've go to be more than or you're not because you're not enough. I just didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I was supposed to be. Hundreds of forms of fear. Hundreds of form in every way possible. Hundreds of self-delusion. Some people asked me last night when I shared this because it's something I haven't shared, I don't share every time now, but I think it's very important that I don' t forget it. In 1989, I met a guy named Joe. I want to give Joe credit. They say after three times, it's yours, but I'm going to give him credit because Joe changed my life. He said at a meeting in downtown Dallas, Texas, he said in this meeting that alcoholism is a disease characterized by pyramiding thoughts. That's pretty highfalutin. I went, yeah. And I didn't understand it, so I went to Joe. I said, Joe, what do you mean? And he said, it's like this. It's an upside-down pyramid. It comes right out of the center of this head of mine. It has all my life, and it works like this, I can be sitting in my office 9 o'clock in the morning, good morning, how are you doing? I'm fine. How are you? Good morning. Good morning, how are you doing? Dean York, I'm good. I'm okay, I don't mind. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. People, my boss walks by about 930. I'll go, good morning, Don. He doesn't speak. For whatever reason, he doesn't say. And here it goes. Starts right here. So a thought process comes right out of the center of this wonderfully active brain I have. Well, what do I do to speak, first off? Second thought, he's probably upset with me. Third thought, I bet it was that report I gave him this afternoon, Joe. He didn't like that report yesterday. Fourth thought, we got a meeting at 1 o'clock. I bet he's going to fire me. Some of you have been there. Man, at 9 o'clock, I'm fine. How are you doing? Good morning, I am fine. 9 o-1, I've fired. I haven't left my desk. I haven'T left my office. Nobody's come in and no phone calls have come in, but I'm fired. And then I take that pyramid, that's enough, but I'll start and build another pyramid on top of that pyramid. And I'll think, well, if he's fired me, so that's a given now. I don't have to negotiate that anymore. It's a giving. Well, he's hired me. Okay, so then I have to go down to Ray Avenue to the unemployment office and apply for unemployment. Well, what if they won't give me an unemployment check? Then I started up a few minutes. Well, I'll go by the Marita Day-Old Bread store and buy bread for my family. Nine o'clock, I'm fine. How are you? Good morning. Fine. Nine-oh-one, I'M FIRED. Nine-o-one and a half, I AM BUYING DAY-OLD BREAD. I HAVE NOT LEFT MY OFFICE. Now, understand the interesting part about this. if anybody walks in during the course of that thought process, guess what I will say when they say, how are you doing this morning? I'm fine. How are you going? That's some fine thinking is what that is. Some fine thinking. I had it honed. You know, it's like this. You wake up on Tuesday morning feeling pretty good, got to go to work and you scratch a pimple. It's right here on your calf. For those on this side of the table, I'll do it on this site. It's on your cap right here. And you get in the shower. You scratch it a couple more times. you're sitting down, you're putting on your socks, getting ready to go to work. It's 7.15 in the morning. And you look down and you see this pimple now. It has a little red circle around it. Here it goes. I wonder what that is. It looks infected. You start rubbing a little bit. Oh my gosh, it's got a knot in it. It must be a tumor. Well if it's a tumor or they're going to cut my leg off right there. For this side of the table, they're gonna cut it off right then. Well, no, they'll probably cut it off right here if knowing me, they'll cut it up above the knee. I'll have to go get a prosthesis. I have not gotten out of my house yet to go to work and I'm worried about a prostheses. Do you know what I'm talking about? See, I thought I only did it with bad things. I do it with good things too. I was in a, this was about nine years ago, and I was in the show one morning humming a country and western tune. I don't know why, because my life was going along pretty well at that time. But I was humming this country and western tune. I got out, dried off some underwear on, I was shaving, and the next conscious thought I had was, where am I going to get a tour bus? For those of you who have not been to Insta-stardom, let me take you there in my thought process. Here it goes. I'm humming this country and western tune. Hmm, this sounds pretty good. I bet I could sing country and Western music if I tried. If I practiced a little bit, Michael, we've got a band around town here, a couple of gigs. We go out to Nashville. And in Nashville, we'd get a couple contracts and get a bigger band and get our contract to go on tour. And I'll need a tour bus. I mean, it's out there. March 22nd, 1966. I was 19 years old. Now let me share this with you. I went to the Rathskeller Bar because my girlfriend had broken up with me. And I bought two tall Pabst Blue Ribbons and drank them one at a time. And guess what happened? Please hear this, for the first time in my life, that thinking stopped. And I was fine, really. You know what I'm saying? I was there. I was present. I was fined. I was okay. It was all right. Whatever was going on, it didn't matter about the exam on Friday. It didn't matter about that. You know how many times I took exams in high school and college? About four or five. And I'd take them on Thursday, take them on Friday, take him on Saturday, Sunday. And then I would finally take it. I was so exhausted when I finally took it, it didn't do well. You know what I'm saying? That thinking, it went away. I mean, I looked out and I saw all these women that needed dancing with and I went out and asked them to dance. I was singing. My feet were moving. I mean I didn't have pimples. I wasn't skinny, 120 pounds, 6'2". I was absolutely muscular and I felt absolutely good. In fact, I saw so many people that needed things, I needed to share with them. They were really asking things. Tell us about the world, David. How is it going? And I stayed there as long as I could until they had that last call. I'd never experienced that before and they said you'll have to come back later. And so I said I've got to go now but I'll be back Thursday night. That's the way it started. You see, I drank for 22 years, but please hear this part. Do you know what I did every time I drank? And Dr. Silkworth says this. I was reading it this morning. He says it in a beautiful way. We drink for the effects produced by alcohol. This cessation is so elusive that we desire to drink again to get that feeling, that feeling. And I drank per 22 years every time just trying to get back to Greenville, North Carolina, March 22nd, 1966. and guess what started happening to me? I could do it at first. Hey! And then I'd see Greenville coming. Vroom! It'd go right by me and I was roaring drunk. I mean, what happened? I just wanted to get to Greenville. I couldn't figure it out. I want to tell you about my last year of out there. It was basically 13 years ago starting today, 1987. I wantto tell you about my wonderful year of 1987 because I did lose more than my car. You know what I lost? I lost myself. I lost my dignity. I lost every value, every principle, everything that I felt was neat and needed in life. I lost it one year at a time for 22 years. And the last year of my drinking, at this date, in 1987, I was in the hospital. Now let me tell you about why I was In the Hospital. See, I had this thinking process that told me that since my father died of cancer in 85 of the liver, that I had it too. Please hear that. And it was so real that the pain was so unreal, I went into the hospital between Christmas and New Year's, called my doctor and said, I've got a real bad problem. I didn't tell him how much I was drinking. And he said, come on in. And so they ran tests for 10 days. I was in the hospital at High Smith Rainey, the old hospital, and I was doing tests today and tomorrow. And after 10 days, they came and said we can't find anything wrong with you. And I said, but you don't understand there's something wrong with me. I mean, this is unbelievable pain and I've got to get some help. So they sent me to Duke University Medical Center, which is about an hour and a half away. And they kept me there for 12 days all the way in, actually into the early part of February. And I basically was there for more tests. And in fact, I'll tell you how real this disease is, this disease. One of the days at Duke was the national convention. I was CEO of a multinational company. And we had our international convention in Florida. And guess what we did since I could not be there to give the opening address? We hooked up a phone line and put a speakerphone tied to the speaker system in this convention hall with about 700 people from my bedside on my death bed. I addressed them for the last time. I'm so sorry I can't be with you, but I'm fighting cancer here. It's true. Do you know why I was in that hospital? Please hear this. Do you know why, looking back now, I did not want to go to that convention? Do you know why? Because I had to speak and be there and be okay and fine, and how are you? I'm fine. I have answers to questions, and I had run out of answers to questions. I had no energy left to be fine because I knew inside I was dying. I didn't understand it, and the only thing I wanted to do was to kill myself, but I couldn't tell you that because I wouldn't be fine and you would think I was a coward. Does that sew it up pretty well? And so rather than go to a convention in Florida or to say to people I can't do that, I found myself going into the hospital. Please hear this. For me, for 40 years of life, you know what I did when I could not face reality any further? I got sick. I got flus, viruses, I had lower back, upper back pain headaches, nausea bad leg, broke a foot one time playing tennis that lasted about a year. That worked well. Can't go tonight and my foot's bothering me, I can't. I dropped out of social stuff, I dropped out of business, I could not face this reality of life because I was so frightened and so full of self-delusion with this thinking, so full that I could not, I would get sick. And that was my perfect permission to not function that day. You see, I realize today that in my recovery, that's a form of being a victim. And I have to look at that very carefully because what I'm not willing to do is show up. And I'm trying to blame it on something else, not me and my ability or inability to do it. I would suggest to you that that 1987 year was interesting in many respects because every Saturday, a day like today, guess what I started doing about 9.30, getting drunk, and I started thinking about drowning myself in the lake I lived on with a boat that I had, and I was going to tie two 55-pound sunblocks together and put them on my left ankle, tie the rope around and throw them in, and I Was going to get dragged down, and it was going be over. See, it wasn't bad. It was basically very good. It was that it was Going to End Finally. Hundreds of forms of fear. Hundreds of forms of self-delusion, hundreds of forms of self seeking and to me that's the ultimate form of self seeking is that I would dare look at that as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But see to me it was very permanent problem. I couldn't figure my way out. The only way I felt safe any longer was in my bathroom five feet by six feet. I got to tell you about my bathroom. It had a toilet, it had a tub, it had a magazine rack, it has exhaust fan, had a door with louvers and a lock and I could go in there and be by myself. Do you know what that feels like? I could stop. I could let down. I could take my beer and put them in my coat pockets like this and I'd walk humpback down to the bathroom so nobody would see that I had beer. I'd hide them in the refrigerator. See, nobody knew I was drinking wine. Nobody at all. I was hiding them under the vegetable tray in the fridge. You know, celery, carrots, lettuce. And I just put them down in the back and they'd cover the stuff up and nobody knew it was there. I'd sneak in and I'm out of here I knew that my family honestly my children must have thought I had the worst case of dysentery of any human being that ever lived see I'd go to the bathroom I'd turn on the exhaust fan I'd pop two tops I would basically drink my beer read a magazine and I'd hide my cigarettes because I was a closet smoker for the last five years nobody knew I was smoking right and I had them under the magazine right and I would light up a cigarette drink me a beer and look at a magazine and read it sitting there on my toilet how much better could you want? I mean, I ask you how much better could you want? What a life! What a life! I would get my family mad with me so they'd leave and guess what I would do in 1987 if they left and the phone rang I wouldn't answer it. So guess what my family had to do with me they had to work out a calling code And basically, if they were out and needed to reach me and I was by myself, they would call six, let it ring six times, hang up, and on the second ring, I'd always call them. I mean, I'd answer it. I only blew it one time because the second ringing was somebody else. If somebody came to my door, please hear this, I would crawl on my belly, out of my chair in the den, down the hallway, and close the door and hide because I was scared that you were going to find out that I was drunk. other than that it was a great year in 1987 hundreds of forms of fear hundreds of forms of self-delusion hundreds of forms of self-seeking I want to tell you a story I was two years sober and I had left the office was leaving the office and my boss came by see I was there for 21 years at that time and you know what I knew every day that my boss was going to come in and say okay we figured it out, you don't know what you're doing. You've only been doing it 21 years, but you don't own. And that afternoon he came by and he said, I don't like this and don't like that. And you know, you need to do this over. And by this time, I mean, absolutely I was just crazy. And so I went home. It's about 930 at night. I'll call my sponsor Keith L. He said to please say hello. And some of you, I know Jim, you have sent some greetings back to Keith. But basically I said, Keith, you know what my boss said to me today? He said, what? I said, he said, and he gets real quiet when I get angry like that. He said well uh what time is it David? And I said it's 9 30. He said is that a.m. or p.m.? I said it's nighttime Keith, it's p. m. He says what time did your weekend start? The only weekend you're going to get this week to celebrate your work. What time did it start? I say five o'clock. He said so it's nine thirty. I said right. Then he said look down at the floor and tell me where you're standing. I'm standing on brown carpet in my den. He said, good, you're in your den. I said, right, right. He says, David, when are you going to let this go? When are you going to choose to let it go? He said now if you want to just choose this, he said you can choose this Wendy, you can choose to hold on to it until tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock and mess up your, he didn't say that, mess up your whole Friday night. He said now if you really want to go for a good one this weekend why don't you hold on to it until 6 o'clock Saturday afternoon and you'll mess up your whole Saturday. You know, you can choose to do that too. He said of course now if you really, really want to have a good time with your family and your work time off this weekend, just hold on till Sunday morning 10 o' clock. That's nice. You'll messup your whole Sunday, Saturday night and Sunday morning. He said, now of course David, you have options And if you choose this weekend to hold on this until Monday morning at 9 o'clock, you can mess up your whole weekend. He said a little bit different. He said it's your choice. Please hear this part. I said, I don't have a choice. He said, yes, you do. And then he said this. What do you get out of being a victim, David? You know what I said? I don'T get anything, Keith. He said, you must because you keep doing it to yourself. And he slammed the phone down. I called him back. I called him back and I said, what do you mean by that? You know what he told me to do? He told me go for treatment. I was two years sober. He said, you need treatment. I went for codependency treatment for 24 weeks. He said you don't know how to let people let them live. You don't have to draw boundaries. You don' t know how say no. You do not have any of those skills David. And you have got to get some help. And I did. Now the interesting thing about it is this. I did not understand that I have choices. I did now understand that. You see for me when I was working on my fourth step, Keith asked me to do something very unusual. It's not unusual. I thought it was unusual. I was trying to write my fourth step. In fact, I was writing it so well that I was looking forward to having some type of publishing rights. We could go with it afterwards. I wanted to make sure that we had it, you know, right. Right pen, right notebook. I was really working on the rightness of it. I'd ordered everything from out there in Minnesota, and I got all those books in. I had everything going. And he gave me a legal pad, a yellow legal pad. He gave me two number two sharpened pencils. He told me it would be more interesting if they were sharpened. And he also told me to write with pencil because I wouldn't have to lie. Because you can erase your answer. With ink, you'd have to live. Because you don't want to erase it. I said, okay. And then he put on the top of the front, the first sheet of the first pad, he put fears. And he skipped a couple of pages and put resentments. And he skiped about 34 pages and he put sex and left the rest of the pad. I don't know if that was any indication but here's what he told me to do he said for you to sit down at night David and say this prayer and I had to write the prayers down and the first prayer I had commit to do this 15 minutes every night you see I think I know when I've worked the third step when I work the third third step I've made a decision to begin the process of turning my will and my life over And to me, the very manifestation of that decision is I sit down with a legal pad and two number two shopper pencils and for 15 minutes every night. And when I do that, I've made the decision. And until I take that action, I have done nothing but think about it. Okay? And he said to pray this prayer, God, please show me in your time and in your way my fears. Amen. And I was supposed to say that prayer, get quiet, hold my pencil in my lap, and basically write down any word that came to me. I was not to write a sentence or a paragraph. I was to write words or phrases because he did not want me to write a book. And my goal was to writing a book in this inventory. And he knew that. And then after I finished my fears, after I had worked with that until I felt like my fears were there, guess what I was going to do? Sit down with my resentment page and God, please show me who my I'm resentful at what happened and what my part in the resentment is. Now, I did not like that last phrase in the prayer because it was like the big book I had to work on. You know, basically, my mom, who it was, what happened. She kicked me. Third, what it affected me, my physical security, my self-esteem, my fear. And then on page 67 of the big books, it's a kicker. What was your part? Oh. you see resentments for me were justified do you know why because i was a kid or i was an adult they did it to me i mean what's the problem they did it i'm doing it you know what they did i'm doing it you see i came here in 1987 please hear this when i was sick when i could not function do you of what I did all day, most days, I thought of how I was going to get even. Please hear that part. It took and consumed so much energy from me that I could not live. It says in the big book on page 63, 64, that it says, you know, resentment robbed us from the sunlight of the Spirit. It squandered the very moments of life, and it did for me. It's gone. You see the interesting thing about it, Jim? I thought I was getting them. You know what I'm saying? I was like, whew, I'm going to get her. I got to treatment and my mother and I had had a very embattled childhood. It was not a pretty sight in many days. Wonderful lady loved me. We just didn't see eye to eye with it. And I got the treatment and my counselor, Claire, she said to me, she says, why are you so angry? And I smiled as pretty as I could. I said, me? Angry? I'm not angry. And she said, yes you are. You know how they kind of in the jump, the group jumped in, you know how they do? They got nosy is what they did, Bob. Yeah, you're angry. Yeah. Okay. So I'm angry. She said, who are you angry with? I said my mother. You see, I told a lot of people about my mother, but only told one event at a time. I never told any one person all the events because if you say anything bad about my mother, guess what I did? What are you talking about? My mother. She's a fine lady. How's your relationship with your mother? Oh, it's fine. It's fine." Just never went to see her for 20 years. Truly. Saw her Christmas afternoon, Thanksgiving. Didn't call her, didn't write her. Truly. That's the relationship we had, but it was fine. I thought over every day. Most days, some unpleasant thoughts. And she said, who are you angry with? And I said, my mother. And I told her what happened when I was 13 and I told her all this stuff and I agree with Wayne. There's not a reason I'm an alcoholic, okay? But the resentments I carried with me caused unbelievable pain within me and thinking within me which I then took alcohol to numb those pains. And what I have to do is look at pain. You see, what I had to look at was the fact that, and Claire said to me, she said, what happened? And I told him what happened. I was 15, 17, 19, all this stuff. And she looked at me as she has this dumb question. She said, David, where's your mother right now? I said, she's in Raleigh, North Carolina, Rock Garner. And I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She says, how far is that? I said 1,200 miles, 1,000 miles, something like that. She asked, what do you think your mother's doing right now. And she said, well, she retired. She's 69 years old. She asks, what did you think your mother had for dinner last night, David? And I'm thinking, I have no clue. I'm here in a detox center my third day in. This was fun. I said I don't know what she had for the dinner last night? And she said, what would you have wanted if you had been there? And I said, well, if I'd been there, I wanted fried chicken, potato salad, green beans, a lemon rain pie, a little iced tea and a roll. That's a good Southern meal, by the way. And she said, David, what did you have here in detox last night for dinner? And I thought, I wasn't too hungry. You know, Claire, I was a little upset. I'm going to go through some changes here, a little frightened. I wasn'T too hungry, I had a little roll, a little tea. You know, I wasn't too hungry. She said, how much sleep, David, do you think your mother got last night? I don't know. I wasn�t there. She says, well, take a guess. How much sleep do you thinks she got? I said, probably six, eight hours. She say, David how much sleep did you get here in detox last night. I said well Claire, I was thinking about a few things and I was trying to change my life here, a little change and I wanted to smoke and I had to go to the day room to smoke so maybe an hour and a half. The nurse already told her all this. And she said, David, what do you think your mother had for breakfast this morning? I said, I wasn't there, Claire. She said, well, what would you want? I said, okay, eggs over easy, grits, sausage, toast, strawberry jam, orange juice, a little coffee. She says, David what did you have here in detox for breakfast this morning? And I said well, Claire, I was dealing with a few things. I smoked a little bit too much last night and I was a little congested this morning, a little nausea on my stomach, you know, and I just had a little toast and a little coffee. She said, David, what do you think your mother's doing right this red-hot second? I said, well, she's retired. She's probably talking to a friend on the phone, visiting with a friend, watching a soap opera or something like that. And she said, oh, okay. She said, Dave, what are you doing right now? For the first time in my life, please hear at 40 years old, I stopped. Do you know what I mean by I stopped? I never stopped thinking about that. I was never going to let it go. I was going to prove. I was going to show my mother. Do you know what? I was going to show her. I was going to show her that I did not need her. It almost killed me. You see my and again Claire said she kind of rubbed the salt into the wound. She said well it seems like your mother's doing pretty well. And it seems like to me you're killing yourself. I don't know if you can grasp that. I had never stopped enough to see what it was doing to me. I was killing myself. And she said, you've got a choice. Back to these choices again. She said, you can choose to let this go. I said, let this be. Let this go? I'm going to show her. she said, David, you're killing yourself. And she said I would encourage you to let it go. I said how do I let it Go? And she says something very crazy. She said first you have to admit that you're powerless over alcohol. That's an interesting way to let a resentment go. That your life has become very manageable. Secondly, that you are powerless over your mother and that your life regarding that relationship is very unmanageable. And thirdly, that your powerless over what happened or didn't happen to you in your life. That your life about those things that happened or didn't have become very unmanageable. And she said, and thirdly, you must pray for your mother every day what you want for yourself. I could go for the one or two of them, but that was a tough one. You see, I'd pray for my, but it was not that kind of prayer. See, I thought my mother was a mean woman. I didn't realize my mom was sick too. And so what I had to agree to do to stay, because she told me this, and I think she meant it, she said if you don't agree to pray, you can't stay here. Because no human being in this world can help you and your condition, your spiritual condition, unless you agree to let go and say you're powerless. So I told her I would. And I went to the shower the next morning, turned on the shower, turned on and flushed the toilet so it would have all kinds of noise. I got in the shower and said that little prayer. And I said, what do I pray? And she said, pray for her what you want for yourself. She said, What do you want? I said I want to be happy, sober, and free. She said pray that for your mother. I said but my mother doesn't drink. She said that's okay. Pray for her to be sober anyway. And so I did. And I got to a group and nothing really happened except the group said, Did you pray for your father? You know how to get nosy. And I said, because they were doing it too. And some dads and some moms. And she said, I said yes I did. You know what she did? She said okay then will you agree to pray every day for the next two weeks? And you know what happened? I was there in inpatient treatment, residential treatment for a month and then two months in a halfway house and guess what? I was here two weeks at a time. Did you pray four for two weeks or did you pray for the last two? Did you pay four for the rest? The last thing Claire said to me when I left She said, David, please pray for your mother. It will free you. I want to go back to that and not leave that story there. When I got to the fourth step, I had to list my mom. She kicked me when I was 13, and I was frightened, my self-esteem, physical injury. And she said, what's your part? Were you selfish, dishonest, or frightened? And I think it says on 67. And I said, all three, I guess. You see, I didn't mind my mom that day. It was a little slight of hand I forgot about. She told me not to ride the bike and I pretended I didn' t hear her. And I did. And so what he said is, what is your part? Now here's the important thing. You see I took the act as a justification for the resentment which was 25 years, 30 years. and what he said is what was the act and what is your part in the resentment David, the big book is not asking you to say your part in the act as much as what is your part in the resentment very important see as a child I think child anybody physically sexually abused their children I mean how not much fault there we're children they're adults but what my problem was what my malady was what my issue was was that I took that act as a springboard justification to then resent that person for 25 years. You see, my part was in the resentment, not the act. The act ended at some point in time. I picked it up and ran with it for 30 years. And because I did, and in fact he said to me, I said, Keith, I don't think I have any part in this resentment, any part of this resentment with my mother. He said, if you don't, you're in real trouble. He said it another way. you're in real trouble because if you have no part no part in the resentment David you will live with it till the day you die and that put responsibility back on me didn't you see as a victim do you know what I get from being a victim and he asked me that he said what do you get out of being a victor you know we did the next week after that night with the boss story I had to sit down and inventory my victimhood. That was a fun experience. What is it like for me to be a victim? And he kept saying, what are you getting out of this? What do you get from this? What do You get out of being a victim?" And you know what I get? I get a sense of power. I get the power. I get that sense of power. Because, you know, I would go into the bar at O'Brien's over on Rayford Road and I'd say, give me another one. And finally He'd say David, I think you've had too much and I'll say something like this. Well, if you were raised by the woman I was raised by and beat like I was beat, you'd drink too. Oh, I'm sorry, David. Here's another drink. You see, my victimhood justified unjustifiable behavior for me. My victimhood explained and excused unexcusable and unexplainable behavior. That's what I got. I had a permanent excuse. Sorry about that. My life is really messed up. You just have to understand. Can't be responsible. Can't Be Happy Today. Got to drop out a little bit. Okay, so I'm drunk. What's the problem? That's how my life was. When I got to her, he said, what is your part? And my part in the resentment was that I would not forgive her. That simple. My part was thatI was selfish. I was going to show her. I wouldnot forgive her as an incident happened. I had let it go. Now, when I was two years sober, he asked me, actually a year and a half. He said, I want you to, we started working on my eight-step list. And he said, now, you're working on your eight-stop list. I wantyou to start acting differently so people will treat you differently, David. I said, what does that mean? He said you've got to startacting like an adult so people won't treat you like a child. I did not like that. I was 42. He said but you're acting like achild with your victimhood. and you're sulking and everything's emotional. He said, you've got to start acting different. I said, how do I do that? He said write your mother. I said what do I write her? I don't have anything to say. He said go buy her a funny card at Eckers Drugstore with her little smiley face and put dear mom thinking of you David and mail it to her. She only lives 65 miles away. I said but I don' t really want to do that Keith. He said well then hold on to your victimhood. It's fine with me. I said okay I'll go get the card And I mailed it. Three weeks later, he said, did you get a response? I said, no. He said, mail her another one. I said what do I say in this one? He said write the same thing. Dear mom, thinking of you, David. So I mailled that one. Guess what happened? It was a year and a half sobriety. My mother mailed me a letter back. She put a little cartoon of Donald Duck in it. And she said, well thank you so much for letting me know that you're thinking about me every day. I didn't say that. You know, when Keith told me to write, dear mom, I'm thinking about you, David. I said, but Keith, I'm having bad thoughts. Importantly, he said, that's okay, David, she does not know you're fighting her. It's in your head. See, I knew she knew. See, if you're fighting somebody and they don't know you're finding them, how can there be a fight? How can I show you and prove to you if there's not a fight so guess what i did i wrote her back thank you for the donald duck cartoon thank you so much yes what she did she wrote me back guess what I did I wrote her back it's funny how things work that way so I called I said mom why don't you come down and visit us my sister lives in Raleigh so she brought her down to visit my brother Larry and I now please hear this my mother was 71 years old she walked into the room she came in and sat right here where you are uh maryland and set just that close and she said to Larry now she looked at us, she didn't say hello, she said these words. She said when I was six years old I sat in my grandmother's lap grandmother honeycutting, she rubbed her fingers through my hair and said what a beautiful little girl I was and what a nice person I was and everything within me wanted to say mother, I've heard that dumb story 300 times in my life we're here to visit but I didn't and what I did is I stopped again and guess what I saw in this woman she was scared to death to talk to her children and I can identify with that she didn't know what to say to us so she sat there and told this story this old familiar story how she felt comfortable in love at some point in her life you see what I saw in her that day which is the whole miracle of this program and working these steps is by praying for her I really believe I could stop and see in her that I saw me in her I saw my fear in her. I thought she was mean. I didn't know that she was frightened. We continued to ride and call. When I was four years sober, I invited my mother to go on a trip. We'd never been together. On the weekend, just the two of us. We always had family. And we drove to Washington. That's where she wanted to go. Excuse me. To see the cherry blossom. My father had taken her before his death. And so we went. And along Interstate 95, guess what she said to me? She looked at me and she said, David, when I was 10 years old, I burned two biscuits in a wood-burning stove one day and my father, your grandfather, took a tobacco stick and beat me with it. And she said I was scared to death every day the rest of my life around him because I knew I couldn't please him. She said, have you ever felt that way? I said, Mom, whenI was 13 and I broke those eggs, I want to tell you that I'm very sorry because I did not mind you. You told me not to ride the bike and I heard you, I told you I didn't and I lied about it. Please forgive me. And she said, please don't mention that. She said, it's been 37 years, David, and there has not been a day in my life in 37 years that I have not thought of that incident with tremendous pain and tremendous regret and tremendous shame. And she looked at me and she said can you ever forgive me? It was enough. You know what I mean by enough? It was Enough. Enough time, enough showing. It was just enough. Since that time, I've had the privilege of walking through my mom's open heart surgery with her and washing her back and feet, giving her permission to stop breathing if that's what she needed to do. I've been with her for a hip break and a new boyfriend. In fact, I've got to tell you that story. We were with her last week at Christmas Day and my mom's now 78 and is a neat lady. What a sweet lady. Anyway, in fact, he told me if I keep praying for her every day, which I do, that the things that bother me the most would become cute. And they have. they would become kids and they had and so uh and so what i did is basically i went to see my mom one night it was called i call it lisa's hotel because i worked in raleigh at the time and i grew up and stayed with her and she loved it and i loved it but i didn't know what to do with it and i talked with herand she she was sitting there and i said mom she goes to garner senior citizen club good lunch 75 cents 325 friends she likes me to go there so she can introduce me this is my son david how you doing remember mrs penny no i don't remember so this is mrs tennis. And I go around the whole room. Wonderful time. And so, I was sitting with her. I said, have you been to the Senior Citizens Club this week? You're making any new friends. And she blushed. This was a couple of years ago. A couple of years. 1976. And she flushed. And I said. Mom. And she started to grin. This little grin like this little teenager. And she turned her head and kind of buried her head. She said. Yes, I have. And I said what's his name? And she said. Lawrence. I said, well, tell me about Lawrence. Well, she told me about his open-heart surgery scar. She told me About his teeth. She just... The only thing she didn't talk about Was the hoof. It's like, what is it? I said Mom, I said Well, this is great. I said well, Tell me more about Lawrence And so we went to bed And she said Are you upset with me? Please hear this. She's 76 years old. My dad died 12 years before And she was wondering If I was going to be upset because Lawrence was taking her to dinner. Hundreds of forms of fear. And I said, no, Mom, I will pray for you and I'll pray for Lawrence doing that too every day. I wish the best for you. I got up the next morning at 7 to leave and I went and sat on her bed to say goodbye and she put her head on my shoulder. Please give it. She put her hand on my head and she started to cry. And she said, son, thank you so much for accepting Lawrence. She said, it's so lonely. And she said, Lawrence just takes me out to Captain Stanley's and we go to dinner to her favorite place. And she says, but don't worry son, he has me in by 7 o'clock. Because we enjoy watching the Dukes of Hazzard together. Please hear this. She had her head on my shoulder crying and I put my arm around her. Please hear this. If it had not been for this program, if it had Not been for people like you who shared your recovery with me, if it Had not been for a sponsor in the big book and the 12 steps and the miracle of what we have here, if It had Not Been for that, I would have gone to my grave or her grave never ever having experienced that moment of intimacy and I would have been the loser. That's what would have happened. That's what would have happened. When I left the treatment center, my counselor said, I want you to go home and enjoy your family. Don't fix them. Now that's a challenge. Now I've got to tell you about this deal because I'd worked the first step. You know, I'm powerless over my life. I'm powerless over outcome. I'm powerful over my mind. I did all that power stuff. Come to believe. Came to believe that there's a power greater than me. That coming to believe, that process was really for me the praying that I was asked to do my counselor and my sponsor. Pray for this person. Pray for your children. I didn't want to do that. I'd never done that. And I thought, well, what does that mean? They said, well you're coming to believe. You're making a decision. You're coming into belief so you can make the decision. Come to believe So Claire said, go home. Don't fix your family. Enjoy them. Now let me tell you about my family. I had a 17-year-old son 6'5", 225-pound tackle on the football team who had in my absence threatened suicide numerous times had punched holes in the walls of our homes. He just walked down, I don't know where he knew, I knew the Maryland where the studs were. He'd just go boom out of his anger and just punch a hole right through the wallpaper and a sheetrock and hold it up. And he would destroy this room a couple times. He knocked the windshield of his girlfriend's car who was sitting inside, got mad at her because she broke up with him and punched the windshield out from the inside, knocked the whole windshield out of the car with his fist. Very, very angry, strong dude. Go home and enjoy them. Don't fix them. Our second son, Scott, was our last child. He kind of... We don't know where Scott was raised. He was at John's or John's or Todd's or somewhere else. He was on his bike. I mean, if we came home, he was an emotional brawner taking his little emotional thing going on in the house. His mom and I were yelling or something. He'd jump on his bite and leave. He'd come back and test the water if it was still kind of hot, he'd grab a pair of underwear and he'd leave again. Which then the next day, truly, Scott was just not there. David was there trying to fix his boat. Enjoy your family, don't fix it. So I got home and I didn't know how to do that. See, the big thing that hit me is I did not know how to enjoy my family. You know how we laughed in our home in my 22 years of drinking? And by the way, I took Valium and pain pills. Don't want to talk about pills, but it was a part of my story. So there was not a moment of my day that I wasn't affected in some way. Every day for 20 years. And so what happened in our family is we laughed like this. Hee, hee, hees. You know what I mean by it was like hee-hee-hee. We never could belly laugh because we're waiting for the next shoe to fall. Who was going to get mad next? Who was gonna blow up next? What was gonna happen now? It was the next catastrophe. The next problem of the hour. The next crisis of the day. Okay, what's going on tonight? To go to dinner was a major decision. Was a major decision that got so, so crazy. I don't know if you did this, but we had, we called it diagonal arguing. That's the name I gave it. We had little emotional bats. We all carried vests. And they had vests, imaginary vests that had little bats in them right here. All kinds of bats. And they'd play with somebody and say, well, how do you like the blue on this cover? and somebody would say, well, you didn't like that blue dress I bought last week. Do you know how much that blue dress cost? Not as much as that three-piece suit you bought for that wedding two years ago. And we'd go all the way back to the day we met. We never talked about the blue cover. That's why I call it diagonal. Never talked about the question. And then I would go sit in the room and she would go somewhere out. The children would be out in the far corners of the earth. David would be hibernating in his room. And that was our night. and it was finally open. I don't know if you can identify with that. That was our quality of life in 87, 88. And so when I got home I went and bought a joke book by Milton Berle. You can have it. It's in my trunk. 10,000 jokes. If you're going to do this buy a better quality joke than Milton writes. And I would take this book and put it in the front seat of my car through story and on the way home I'd memorize two or three jokes. And I'd come in, and I'd go, da-da-da, da-na-na, how's it going, guys? Let me give you a couple of jokes. Boom, boom, boom. And they would look at me in utter amazement. And I would say, I'll be back. I'm going to practice. And I go back into the bedroom, and as I changed my clothes, I would save them loudly again. Now, my son was, one was 17, one were 13. And so I'd comes back out and go, how is this? Da-na ta-na fa-sun. and I'm talking about nothing. Zip. Nothing. And they'd stare at me. Like, this guy's gone to treatment and boy is he strange when he got back. I did this day after day and guess what happened one day? They started to laugh at me because I couldn't tell the dumb jokes. It wasn't the jokes. But we started to last and they would bring home jokes stayed heard. Well, I got a joke too. We started to introduce laughter into a home that was void of it. Our home was tension. Our home with anxiety. Our homeless fear. Our homes with crisis. Our home with arguing. Our own with all kinds of those things. It wasn't laughter. I've been home about four days and I was going back to work for the first time and my 17 year old decided to watch TV. It was Monday morning about 430. He had the TV serial you know TV running through studio and had a wide open type thing. So I went in there, and it was 4.30 on Monday morning. I had to go to work, and I said to him, David, I did it my best treatment motif way. I said, David. I need you to cut the TV down. I'm feeling a little bit tired, and I've got to go work in the morning at 6.37, and I really need some rest. Could you please cut it? I need for you to cut it down. And you know what he did? He said, I'm not going to cut it down and you can't make me. Been in treatment now 90 days, 93 days in the program. I'm cool. I said, no, David, let me explain my needs to you. I'm feeling very frightened right now and I need for you to cut the TV down and I can close the door and get back to rest. And he jumped up and he came over to me and he started punching me in the chest. I'm looking up at him like this. He's going, I'm not going to cut it down and you can't make me. So I lost my treatment motif at this point. And I started to claim property back. I don't know if you've ever done this. But I started punching him in the wrist. I said, it's my TV. It's my sofa. I bought those clothes on your back. This is my house. See, I knew at that moment what had happened. I'd been gone 93 days. This 17-year-old tried to take control of my house. That's what the problem was. And what I needed to do was just gain it back. We'll shake this place back up. I'm home again, like I did a great job before I left. And he yelled as loud as anything I've ever heard, Dewey. He yelled at me and he looked at me right in the eyes and he said, you alcoholic! You've destroyed my life! Get out of it! He used some other words I won't use from the podium. Because I had never had anyone call me an alcoholic at that point. I'd identified myself as one but no family member had called me that nor in that way. And everything within me wanted to just hit him just to show him I was going to take care of it. And I walked away. Don't know why. And I walk down the hall and I started to cry. You know what was happening at that moment? I knew that this program that I had started to come to believe in a power greater than me that would relieve me and others in my life of the insanity I was living in to restore me to sanity, I started zu believe that that wasn't going to work. It wasn't gonna work. Look at this. Come home and enjoy my family? This is like a zoo. And it was. And so I got to the bedroom and I called my sponsor. It was about five. I said, good morning, Keith. Are you awake? Do you know what my son called me? He said, what? I said an alcoholic. And you know he said real quietly, well aren't you? I said, well, yeah. He said, well, he just called you what you are. I said but he was yelling at me and poking me in the chest. He said were you yelling at him and poking him in the breast? I said yeah but he provoked me. That's not a good term to use with my sponsor. You know what he told me to do? I'm on the phone now it's five o'clock in the morning 445 he's saying David is David my son is David he said is your son still there? I said, yeah. He's down in the den playing it as loud as he was before I went down there. What am I doing? It's like I'm held up in my bedroom. Some of you may have been there too. I can't get out of my house because I've got to go buy him. The only way out of the house is I've gotta go to work. He said if he's in the din I want you to go in there and tell him, David, I'm very sorry I yelled at you and I'll try not to do that again. And then I want You to look at him genuinely, David and say, son, may I have permission to hug you? Thank You, Keith. I am so sorry I woke you up. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I will never do this again. Please forgive me, Keith. Have a good day. Thank you so much. You know what I knew? I knew how to handle that situation. Do you know how I handled situations like that? Very important. I handled it with my disease. I handle it this way. I just wouldn't look at David for two weeks. I'd walk down the hall and he'd say, Good morning, Dad. And I'd look straight ahead and pretend like he wasn't even there. I'd sit at the dinner table with him and he would say, pass the potatoes, Dad. And I'd get the potatoes almost to his hand and put them down and not look at him. I'll show him who's in charge here. See, we've got a little in-charge problem. See, I have the purse string so I can handle this. It may take me two weeks. I can't handle it. And I took a shower. I went to work. Sworn right through the den. I got there about 545. I was the first one there. I went in my office. I'd been gone from for three months and saw stacks and mounds of paper and an explosion occurred right in here. Please hear this. I had an explosion of fear and anxiety of not knowing what to do. I was back in reality. I was at work. I knew my son was at home. I knew what had happened. I did not know what to go. I was confused. I was frightened. And I knew this program wasn't going to work. And I thought about it and I said, I can go to that same liquor locker that I stole vodka from for my chairman of the board of the company for six years and filled it back up with water. I could do that because I know how to get in it and do it to take this pain away. See, it was the pain. It was the painful pain. Hundreds of forms of fear. Hundreds of form of self-delusion. Hundreds of formas of self seeking. Hundreds of formats of victimhood. Hundreds of formulas. Or I could go home and do what my sponsor asked or suggest. So I got in my car and drove home. Sun was just coming up and my son was walking across the lake in the backyard across the leg just absolutely angry. He was just angry. And I walked over to him in the middle of the backyard and I said, David, I'm very sorry. I yelled at you and I'll try not to do that again. And he looked at me. He said, What did you say? I said I'm sorry. I said what did you think? I said I'm really sorry. I yelled at you I'll try not to do that again. And this is important. He looked at me as if I was a stranger. And in fact, I was. I had never said that. I had to be right. You know, part of being right is being right. Part of being a parent is being white. We're wrong. We have trouble. And then I said, may I have permission to hug you? He went, what? I walked over it was like hugging this podium he was sitting here he was going he was so rigid and so I put my arms around him didn't touch him I closed my eyes and you know what I was thinking my sponsor is full of bull you know why I was thinking that because I had said the two lines he gave me I don't know if your sponsor gives you lines to say but he told me those two lines I said them and I knew I was going to have to let go and put my tail between my legs and go back into the car and go to the office and I've lost control of my house forever that's the outcome of this mess he got me in too thank you very much and just the second just the second that I started to let David go guess what he did he grabbed me and he hugged me and he wept on my shoulder he said dad please forgive me please forgive me for what I caused you please know that I support you please know that I am with you I want to do everything I can to help you in AA I want you to have a new way of life I love you. And I was able to hug him and tell him how sorry I was that he lived in my home for 17 and a half years not having known me one second of one minute of one hour of one day of one week of one month of one year without alcohol or drugs in my body and I was very sorry that when I was 13 laying on the ground trying to plan my life I did not plan that. That was not in my plan. Please forgive me. and we stood and we cried. Two very, very, very important things happened. First, we started over. David and I were very fortunate because we started over that morning and we have since that time. Our youngest son Scott it took us eight years. Eight years and one day even in another country he came to me and said can we start over? I'd like to have what you and David had. he did and we are david and scott and i are in business together now in fact i just went this week and helped scott get his home and he did some things this week that were just an answer to truly prayer the dreams that only this program has been able to give me and we love each other i told i told david the important part of that morning though as i told david i said i don't want to take credit for this because my sponsor he suggested i do this it was It's not my action. He said, let's go call your sponsor. So we went back in the house and called Keith. It was about 6.15. Hey, Keith, did we wake you up? David is on the other line. He wants to say something to you. And he told Keith how much he appreciated him. how much he appreciated him and what he was doing for his dad. And I thanked Keith as well. And I said, I'm going to go to work now, I think. It's been a long night. And he said to me, don't leave yet, David. I need to talk to you. And David Jr. had to go to school when he did. And he says, he said, he said David, I want you from this moment on to not be a parent to your children anymore. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, David, your parenting is about to kill them. I didn't like that. I thought I'd done a pretty fantastic job. He said, I want you to start sponsoring them. I said but how do I do that? He said don't parent them. I want You to sponsor them. I said But how? He said, don't you tell them one thing to do. Don't you give them one piece of advice anymore. If they need you, they will come and ask you a question and you only give your experience, not your opinion. If you have no experience as an adult in that area of your life, then you refer them to someone else in the program or to someone out of the program, but you get them the experience they need to give them the help they need. You see, I was doing things in my drinking when my son was 16. This is exact... This is what dignity... This destroys you. It sounds silly, but it destroys your dignity. My son came to me one Saturday morning. I was drinking, thinking about killing myself. It was another fine Saturday for me. And he said his best friend, Hughes, had a transmission, an automatic transmission that broke his car the night before and they towed it down to Ed's on Rayford Road and they were going to work on the transmission. He said, Dad, do you know anything about automatic transmissions? And of course you know what I said. Of course I do, son. What's the symptom? He said, well, stop pulling. I said, oh, it sounds like the front pump. And I told him about all this stuff and probably that differential. I was giving him all this staff. I said you might want to mention that to the mechanic. So my son with this latent piece of golden news I had given him goes and gets Hughes, his friend, his best friend and drives to Edge about five blocks away and starts to just impart this knowledge on an automatic transmission mechanic. and the mechanic with my son and his best friend said I don't know who in the heck has given you this information but they have never seen an automatic transmission who was the lunatic that told you that my son was too ashamed to say his dad but his best friend did. So Keith told me that I need to stop doing that. That I didn't have any experience I didn' t share anything. And you know what I said but Keith they'll never ask me anything they don' t want to know what I've got to say. You know what he said isn't that wonderful that part of your life is over. the hardest thing in recovery for me has been to honor that. You see, my dis-ease, my disease, hundreds of forms of fear, self-seeking, self-pity, self-delusion, those hundreds of form manifested itself in my family and slowly and slowly, year by year, I destroyed with my disease the dignity and the caring and the charity and the love. That's what I did. Now, it's important that I know that because it's also therefore important that I give that back to watch two children scared to death of their dad sit and listen and we started talking about feelings. The first thing we did we started taking feelings I said, I'm sorry it frightened me my son Scott I'll never forget he said Dad you can't be frightened you've never been frightened and I thought oh my gosh I've set them up to be perfect to never be frightened never be angry never be anything just be perfect be okay are you fine okay fine that's what we were a bunch of fine people until we got by ourselves it wasn't so fine before they put us in public we sparkled and I had to give them their dignity And I'd have to say something like, Scott, I don't know. What do you think your options are? What do You mean options, Dad? I said, well, what are Your solutions? What doYou think Your solutions are? You tell me what You think Yours are. And I started to turn it back and have them start thinking and working in their lives. And it's been a wonderful process. It's beena wonderful process and it's absolutely, to me, it's phenomenal because it's freed me to be what? Their dad. Just their dad. And that's enough. That's enough I want to share this with you. To me, it's an important step, six and seven. When I got to step five, I did my inventory of my sponsor. He asked me a question. He said, is that all? Do you need to share any more? That was a great question. It was a good answer to say, no, I'm through at this point. I think I'm true. And then I looked ahead in the big book before I went to see him, and I saw that after that, I was supposed to spend an hour by myself reconsidering the mortar joints in the archway, looking at how it was arranged, make sure the first five steps was the arch way that I could move forward. Then I saw step six and one paragraph, step seven, and so step three and I thought eight on the bottom of the next page. And so I said to him, do you think we can go ahead and work step eight tomorrow afternoon or the next day? And he said, what's the hurry? I said, because I want to make sure we get through these steps. I mean, I'm really ready to go. He said, but you haven't worked the two most important parts of the steps. I said, what are they? He said, six and seven. I said keep your own paragraph. Just a few words. I mean it's not like a lot. And one's a prayer. I said we could say that prayer right now. And he said, no, we're not going to work it that way. He said what I want you to do is I want you to go home and inventory yourself with the seven deadly sins in chapter four of the 12 and 12, step four. And he says I want to look at pride, greed, lust, the indigestible cloth in anger. I may have left out one. And he said, I want you to tell me what it means. Look it up in the dictionary. I'm below that. Show me how you use it in your life. And thirdly, most importantly, tell me which of these is what price you pay each time you do. He said, then I want to read step 6 in the 12 and 12 one day, step 7 in the12 and 12 the next day, step 6, step 7, step 6 ,step 7. He said just read that for a while. I've read step 3 for 30 days. as our rule was in our sponsorship line, is you have to read Step 3 and the 12 and 12 every day for 30 days. If you don't do it one day, you start over for 30 nights. And if you fall asleep the 29th day and don't get it, you start OVER for 30 dates. And I said, but why do I have to do it like this? This is like discipline. He said, right! The question is, are you willing to go to any way? But you're trying to tell me how to run my life. He said no, I'm just trying to give you a new way to look at life. and so I said six and seven I said okay so I showed them the inventory we had six, seven two weeks later I said Keith I'm reading six and Seven just want to let you know he said great he said are you angry yet I said oh no Keith I'm fine I'm sorry I've worked the third step Michael and you know I'm trying my will my life over I'm five he said well keep reading then until you get angry end of a month I thought well this is a month now I can stop 30 days third step 30 days six and seven. I said, okay, Keith, I've read a month now. He said, well, how angry are you? I said well, I'm pretty angry. He said at whom? I said a lot of people. He said you didn't name the right people. You keep reading. After the second month six one day. They're longer than step three and twelve and twelve. I want to tell you they're longer. Takes longer every night. I was pretty hacked off. I was hacked off at God and I was cracked off at me. And I called him back. It had been two and a half months and he said, you're angry at the white people. Let's talk. And so I went over to my inventory that I'd been working on and what I understood and what he helped me to see is that I am not able on my own to accept the acceptance I'm given freely every day. And on my own, in my disease and in my life, what I have tried and thought I had to do was to earn it, prove it, be okay, be fine, do something. But I was not enough just in and of myself. I was Not Enough. And what He helped me to see that my working the sixth step is to really look at the defects, what they do, and what they cause in me. And every one of them, every oneof them, pride, greed, lust, envy, jealousy, you know what lust causes? It causes me not to be able to have female friends. It robbed me of that wonderful friendship. It made me feel separate from them and from myself and from God. And that was the price I paid on every one of them. Gluttony, too. And he said, you can keep paying that. He said, and those are the tools, the defects, David, you have are the rules you have developed and fine-tuned beautifully to survive in the life you lived in. But they will absolutely haunt you in the life you're trying to move into. You don't need them. You need faith. You need prayer. You need to go to meetings. You need read the big book. You need talk to other people, work with other people. That's what you need. And so we said the prayer together and he said this to me. If you will accept your acceptance and I want to share this with you. On the days that I can accept the acceptance that I have been given freely I don't need them I don' t need the defect on the days that I feel like I'm not enough guess what I need to survive all my tools and they come right back step ten and I'll finish with this my sister called me when I was about two years sober and asked me to sing in her wedding I wasn't a singer so I thought it was an unusual request She asked me to be in her wedding. I thought it was an usher. I said, sure, I'll be an ushers or something. She said, I want you to sing. I said. I don't sing. And she said, well, you sing in the choir. But I'm not a soloist. She said we'll sing a duet. So we sang a duets. She sent me this song by Lee Greenwood and Barbra Streisand. It was To Me or To Be or something like that. She sent this sheet music, a little cassette that I played in my car in August, September up to October 15th. I was singing Lee Green Wood every day at the stop signs. You know, to me. And I was really practicing. I had gotten the pianist over at the church to help me out. They were playing for me. and oh man, I was good. And we got to the church for the rehearsal party or the rehearsal Friday night and my sister and my brother-in-law were standing in the back of the church all my family was there and I got up with the pianist they had, Elaine and I opened my mouth and this brick came out. I'd never heard this note I don't think anybody else had. And my sister I'll never forget it she buried her head in her husband's chest and she went like this and all I could think was like you were saying I was thinking what was she saying I wish I could find him, but I can't because he's my brother. And you know what I was thinking? I've got to sing this again tomorrow with more people. You see what had happened in that process of two and a half months as I practiced with Lee Greenwood? Dave's Wedding Songs Incorporated. Dave's Chapel Service. Lee and I could probably do this one day together. I am serious. You see, my sister did not think I was Lee Greenwood. I did. Do you know what I'm saying? And so I went home. I couldn't sleep. I had a little upset stomach. I was drunk. I was in trouble. Then I get up in the morning. It was 6 o'clock. I've got my big book and I'm going to meditate and my big, big book and I pray and meditate and I did just like this. I really did. I went, Yale, this is David. I woke up this morning with a real sore throat. I don't think I can sing in your wedding today. I can't do that at my sister. So I'm meditating and getting real spiritual. Yale. And here's what I did. I laid down my books. I went to my bathroom gym to get sick. I used to do that when I'd call in after a drunk. I'd practice before I got on the phone. Yeah, this is David. I'm feeling real bad this morning. I don't think... I got a little flu. I think a little virus. I don' t know. And they'd say, Oh, don't come in. You'll give it to every one of us. And I'd go, Yes! For about 15 minutes and I felt guilt because I knew I was lying about it. I went in the bathroom and I was getting sick and I took my glasses off and I always looked in the bedroom to get sick. I had to look sick so I could sound sick and I would get like this. And I glanced up at my mirror. I was practicing. Yeah, this is David. And on my mirror when I was three months sober my sponsor had me write something which was there for 11 years until I moved out of that house this past year, a year ago. And on that mirror it said, David, you're wrong. See, my sponsor told me I had a problem with being wrong. I could be right all day, but being wrong was hard for me and I had to understand it was an ego trip. And it was okay to be wrong. And he said the most spiritual gifts, the biggest spiritual gifts the biggest blessings of this program is when you're wrong, not when you are right. You'll learn from it. And so I was able to glance up that morning and see David, you're right. You're wrong. And for the first time, I understood why it was there. You see, I took a 10th step inventory and I said, if I am right right now, if I Am Right... You see my sister was living in another city, my mother, my family was asleep. There was no human being in the world at 6 o'clock that morning making me afraid but me. Me. And you know why? Because I wanted to be Lee Greenwood. Thought a lot. Set myself up. You're wrong. And by being wrong, Jim, I did not have to live that way anymore. You see, my sister wanted me to be of service to her. That's all. That's the tenth step. Am I selfish, dishonest, afraid, resentful today? And if those things are present, I can't be of services. I'm not able to be. I can't be available. And so I went back and I sat down and I went to that wedding and you know who I sang to? My sister. I was there for her. I didn't care if anybody was there. I was singing to my sister because she loved me and wanted me to be there. Without you and out this program, I can not get there without you. This year has been unusual. I have separated after a 30-year marriage as I said to you that each family member recovers in their own time and David and I started over fairly early. My son Scott and I, eight years of starting over until we finally did, trying. And my wife and I never could, unfortunately. And this year has been a wonderful year of freedom, a wonderful Year of looking at other horizons and new places, a wonderful Jahr of finding out that I can really love and be loved, a wonderfulYear of feeling okay. In fact, I called my sponsor last April and I said, Keith, I feel as free as I've ever felt. And he said something very important. He said, isn't it amazing, David, what happens when you remove yourself from bondage? I said, how long have you known? He said since the second week I started to sponsor you. I said why didn't you tell me? He said because you had to come to that conclusion. And if I had told you I would have been meddling. you see this program allows me not to ever have to stop growing the 12 steps for me in fact I think it's this way it's not like just work I thought the 12 sets were work from one time it's like I'm going to get there and when I have a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and whoop I'm gonna get it hasn't happened that way for me in fact what happened is I had to with alcohol I had worked the first step I'm powerless of alcohol I had come to believe that power greater than me is going to restore me discerning regarding alcohol in my life. Third step, made a decision to turn my will of my life over regarding alcohol to a power greater than me. Fourth step, fifth step, what is my inventory about alcohol? Sixth and seventh, what is it that I need to pray for? What is my part in it? Eighth and ninth, who do I owe amends to as a result of my alcoholic behavior? Tenth, who do i need to pay for continually? And look at my side in 11th and 12th in prayer meditation and having had a spiritual awakening as a results of these steps regarding alcohol in my heart and my life but then I had to turn back and go, but about my mother I'm powerless over my mother I had become the believer of the power greater in us would restore us to sanity on and on for my son there had to be an over never ending process this year it had to be about the marriage I'm powerless I have to move on and I've prayed and sought advice and I'm going to do that and I have I think the important thing is this it's like South American Indians capture monkeys in a very unusual way they build this large clay pot it's solid clay and they put a cavity in it and a long noose neck and they put sweet beans down in this pot and they put it out in the opening of the jungle and the monkeys get real curious and they go over and they smell these sweet beans and they put their hand in the pot and they grab a couple of them and they can't get their fist out. All they got to do to be free is let go. Just let them go. They can pull their hand out. They'll stay there all day jerking on that pot, captured till the Indians come and club them over the head and knock them unconscious. Put them in a cage and then they'll let go when they're unconscious. They pull their hand out, use the same jug, the same beans for the next monkey the next day. I am like that monkey. Everything that's been done or not done, said or not said, I have held on for whatever reason. Hundreds of forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self pity. These 12 steps you and sharing in this program and a sponsor in the big book have allowed me one at a time to let go of each beam. And I find I'm willing to let go when it's painful enough to let go. A fellow in Wilmington, North Carolina, my sponsor suggested I pray when I after I got sober and my dad had already died he said pray for someone to come into your life that you could give the respect and love that you did you could have to your dad if you were sober at the time and so this guy's name is Bob and Bob's an AA and he chairs the Cottonmouth group in Wilmingston, North Carolina. I speak for Bob every six months. I go down to It's the Wilmington Treatment Center. It's in a treatment center meeting. And Bob calls me and he says this. He says, son, how you doing? Bob's about 75. And he said, I'm fine, Bob. How are you in Maybelline? Da-da-da. And finally he'll say, son I gotta go but I want to tell you one thing before I do. I said, what's that? He said, I love you and there's not a thing you can do about it. So I want to tell you with a tremendously grateful heart a tremendously grateful spirit to be able to be back here and are tremendously appreciative of your being here today and allowing me to share that I love you, all of you. And it's not a thing you can do about it. Thank you. Thank you for listening.