The Divine Order and the Golden Thread of Recovery – Mike F.

All right. I'm Mike, I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is April 23rd, 1985. For that, I am grateful. You can believe everything he said. Congratulations. Happy birthday. Wow, that's... And I want Leslie to know I'm not nervous at all. I've got a pretty good idea what I'm going to say. You guys have no idea what you're going to hear. If anybody should be nervous, it should be you and not me. I gave my sobriety date. I got sober in Texas, and that's what they do, and I know you guys have that custom here, and that that's kind of cool. So I've stuck with that. Throughout my sober life, especially when speaking at meetings, I want to thank the conference, the committee for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to share. It's always a privilege to be able to represent Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, the tradition says we are, that we don't promote AlcoholicsAnonymous. We're a program of attraction. And I believe that's in public as well as within the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think that, you know, often we forget that we want when someone's coming into AA or even if they've been here a long time, we have to try to have our groups and our meetings something that people are attracted to come to and want to come back to. And I hope that I can share a message tonight to give you that feeling, especially if you're new. And I'm not going to ask who's new or anything like that. I know this, that I got sober hanging on the shirt tails of men and women who brought me to conferences like this. And they opened a world up to me of Alcoholics Anonymous that I never knew even existed. So I'm grateful that you're here. As I mentioned, I got sobre in Texas. And there was a clubhouse down there, and they were going around the room one night, and they were introducing themselves. And Tom says, I'm an alcoholic and I haven't had a drink for so many days. And then Bob says, I'm not an alcoholic and I've never had a cup of tea. I haven' t had a drunk for this length of time. And then Dorothy says, I'm Dorothy and I ha' n't had a drink for that length of time and Big Ed stands up and he says, I'm Ed and I have not found it necessary to have a drink for 14 years, six months, three weeks, two days and nine hours and David turns around and says Ed that's a lie I saw you Saturday night and you were so drunk you couldn't get down the street he says yeah but it wasn't necessary I'm certain as I stand here tonight that everything I did prior to coming into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous was necessary to get me to and keep me in these rooms. And I'm grateful for those experiences. I'm also grateful for our traditions because if it wasn't for the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn't have a home here. I wouldn'T belong here. There's no possible way that I would have qualified to be in any other program other than this program. And the only reason I qualified to be in this program was because the only thing necessary was for me to have a desire not to drink alcohol. And because I met that condition, that one condition, the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous extended that hand of kindness and consideration to me and said, come on in. Welcome home. And I'm grateful to them. I'm thankful for that. I'm greatful that that's the only thing that keeps us from coming into the room is our own decision to be here. You know, I said I wasn't nervous, and I'm not. I do have a pretty good idea what to share I just feel a little bit like a mosquito in a nudist camp yeah I know what to do I just don't know where to start I probably better look at my clock because if I don't do that we're going to run into about three CDs tonight because it's two hours earlier in Chandler, Arizona, where my home is. So I'm just now getting warmed up. I had about five cups of coffee after I got off the airplane. So I think we're going to be in good shape. My sponsor, Howard P., who's originally from Kansas, from a little place called Argonia, Kansas. And I talked to Howard just a few minutes ago. I had a little quiet meditation in my room after dinner, and I thought, man, this is Howard country, so I'm going to give him a call. And Howard asked me to pass his best wishes on to everyone here. I know many of you know him. He spoke at this conference either last year or the year before. I woke up one morning, and I had a concern. and I laid in bed with my concern and thought about it and it became a problem. Nothing changed other than I thought about it and I lay there thinking about my problem and it became a crisis and nothing changed. This all happened in about two minutes. I thought a little bit more about my crisis and I was immobilized. I finally got out of bed and made it to the phone and I called my sponsor and I said I'm going to come get you, let's go have breakfast. And we sat in a diner across the booth and I gave him my problem. And he looked at me and he said, Mike your life is in divine order unfolding into goodness. and I thought apparently he did not I mean he didn't really get the whole problem here because that was not the response that I was looking for so being a salesman I kind of repositioned what I had to say and I gave it to him again right just at a little different angle and he looks at me and he says your life is in divine order Unfolding into goodness Now I know at that point He saw that I was struggling And I'm kind of looking to see If he's got his hearing aid in And I think through his mercy He said Mike, if you go back through your life As far back as you can go And you look at all the circumstances And all the events that have occurred And you're honest about it you'll see how God has pulled a golden thread through each and every one of those circumstances and events that have led you to this moment right now. And he said the things that you were most afraid of through your life never happened. The times where you really wanted something to get your way, and you wanted it and didn't happen, the outcome that happened was the best possible outcome. now i listened to his advice and i went back and i and i began to meditate on my life and look back through you know bill says in the in the 11th step in the 12 and 12 he talks about prayer meditation and self-examination are our principal means for contact for our conscious contact with god and when these three things are logically interwoven They'll create an unshakable foundation for life. And that's what I want from my experience with Alcoholics Anonymous. I want an unshakeable foundation for life I don't think that's too much to ask So I was going through my life and I saw I'm 7 years old and I lit the house on fire I grew up in a little town outside of Buffalo, New York In a family of seven kids, my dad was an alcoholic. My mother was a member of Al-Anon. My dad got sober when I was very young. I don't really remember his drinking. I remember some of the dysfunctional behavior in the house. I remember the fights. I remember that kind of stuff. But I really don't recall the drinking. But here I am, seven years old. I light the house on fire. I'm sitting across the street watching the house burn down. There's all this panic in the neighborhood. The firemen are pounding the door down. The neighbors are counting to see if all the kids are there. I'm watching these events unfold, and the only thing going through my head is, I'm never telling anybody I did this. And up until tonight, I never have. A few weeks later, I found myself in the main street of our town, and I was in a store, and there was something that caught my eye. I didn't have the money. I took it, and I knew that was wrong. That wasn't how I was being raised. That wasn'T what I was learning in the Catholic school. It wasn'T What I was Learning in my home, but the behavior began. I can't explain why my behavior was going in that direction. I don't know why these things were a thrill. I don'T know why I had to keep these secrets. I don' t understand all of that, and it used to be important for me to actually understand this stuff, And when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and finally surrendered and accepted the surrender, none of that mattered anymore. But I will tell you that that behavior continued for a number of years. I remember after lighting the house on fire, you know, I'm just seven years old and I'm carrying that secret with me. And finally, after months, I go to my mother and I said, I did it. And she said, you did what? I'm like, I lit the house On Fire. She said, oh, we knew that. i had my first drink at my brother john's first communion he and i went and stole some beer out of the cooler and we went and drank it and i don't remember all the events that unfolded i don'T remember getting drunk i DON'T remember you know dancing with lampshades on my head i DON'T REMEMBER ANY OF IT okay i just remember there was something so thrilling about drinking alcohol that I went and took more, and I hid it in the woods so I could have it the next day. And I didn't tell my brother because I had already acquired this ability to keep secrets. I didn' t feel like I needed to tell him. Now I know why I didn''t tell him because I didn ''t want to share it with him. So I had become a daily drinker when I was eight but what did happen was I began to drink at every occasion I could and I if it was a weekend and I could get alcohol I had older brothers I would get it if we were playing a ball game in the summertime I would arrange for one of my brother's friends to get me some alcohol and then I would drink it any time that I would be invited over to your house, I'd be kind of looking around and see if there's any alcohol. And I would suggest, hey, why don't we steal some of your folks' alcohol? Maybe we could drink that. There was some direction, some purpose that I always wanted to drink. And i always wanted to seek that out. And by the time I made it to high school, it wouldn't be uncommon at all to find me sitting in the park at night drinking by myself. That was just where my alcoholism led me. There was something about it. I certainly wasn't a daily drinker, although I began to experience and have some problems as a result of my behavior in my drinking. I got introduced then to some other chemicals, and I began the treatment. I began doing those, and my story's not real macho. You hear some of these stories, and it's like, and the SWAT team came in. And, you know, my first detox was in Children's Hospital. It's kind of hard to be macho when that's your story, but that's it, man. And, here I am, I'm laying in Children'S Hospital and my dad and his sponsor and different members of Alcoholics Anonymous would call on me. They'd sneak me out the back door so I could have a cigarette with them. And they suggested I go to AA and then I go counseling. And I agreed to do both because I thought that was kind of a condition to get out of the hospital. So I got out ofthe hospital. I started to go to counseling, and the counselor and I, this was like in about 1974, the fall, maybe 75. It's kind of foggy to remember exactly when it was, but the counselorand I hit it off real good. I got to go there on Tuesdays, and we used to smoke weed together. So I'd be saying to my parents, is it Tuesday yet? You know, let's go. I want to go over there. I like that guy. It's the truth, man. It's like, that's the story. It's, like, I think about this now and think, wow, that was crazy. It was long before medical marijuana, I can tell you that. I went to my first AA meeting in the bottom of a police station with my dad and his sponsor in Orchard Park, New York. It was Friday night. It was 9 o'clock. It was the hillbilly group and it was his home group. And I went down there and they had a low ceiling and they have long wooden tables and the room was filled with smoke and I knew all the people because my mom and my dad had AA people at our house every day. My dad and he said his sponsor were 12-step maniacs. They would pull these guys out of the courtrooms. They would bring them home. My mom would feed them meals. The New York State Police would drop people off and put them to bed on the front porch. My mama would feed him meals. My dad would take him to meetings. We'd be getting ready for school or coming home from school and we'd see alcoholics in every stage of their sobriety. Some of them were not even quite in their sobrietty. We could see it all. One morning, my mom used to love to tell the story that my sister Mary was getting ready for school one morning and there's a drunk sitting at the table and this poor guy is just beaten bad. And he's just sitting there and shaking his head and he's drinking his half cup of coffee. And, uh, and he says, oh, I can't believe it. I am so ashamed of myself. I'm so embarrassed. I can'T believe that I'm here again. And my sister finally looked at him and said, and she was like eight. She looked at him and said we've seen way worse than you. That's a little ego deflation from an eight year old. So I'm in that first meeting that night and they go around the room and there they didn't give their sobriety date but they did give their name and they did identify themselves as alcoholics. So he had Bob and he was an alcoholic and Jim an alcoholic and Murphy and he wasn't an alcoholic. And Bob and so on. It came to me and I said, I'm Mike and I'm a problem drinker with alcoholic tendencies. And I didn't say it to be cute or funny or anything. It was how I really felt. And again when I was able to look back through my life and see how these events unfolded, I could see the golden thread. I could see the fact that they didn't ask me to leave. I could say the compassion. I could see the love and the understanding and the encouragement that they were giving me even then when I just couldn't quite say I'm an alcoholic. Because the reason I couldn't say it was I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to prove that I wasn't. And I wanted someone else to diagnose it for me. and the honest to god truth was i didn't want to quit drinking because this day of the time stuff just i couldn't wrap myself around that because here i am 15 years old and i'm looking at these guys and i know they hadn't had a drink for a long time and i figured man i just what am i going to do if i ever you know get a date or you know gets to do something and how am i gonna get through without alcohol how how can i do this without being part of my life i couldn''t articulate that and tell that to these folks and they welcomed me there and I'm grateful and I went to the meetings and I listened and I heard so many things and I saw so much in my early days of coming to meetings. I heard things like it's the first drink that gets you drunk and I would look and I'd go really? You guys call yourself alcoholics, you know? I mean come on and I remember I'd like debate my dad what do you mean the first drinking gets you drunken? And I remember my dad saying to me one day, he has to have been a saint, honestly, to put up with me. And he said, look, if you're going to get killed by a train, would it be the engine that killed you or the caboose? I'm like, why am I on the train track? they said stuff like if you waddle like a duck and quack like a duck you're probably a duck i'd be like going home looking in the mirror what are they talking about you know it was just way over my head okay so i because i had so much difficulty identifying with what I was hearing because I honestly believe that you would say something it would come out of your mouth it would go into the energy field okay and then it would come into my ears and somewhere between your mouth and my ears all this stuff changed okay so you said don't drink one day at a time okay I heard don't have fun ever okay you said it gets better I heard this sucks you said pray ask God for help I heard that stuff don't work What happened was, I was listening to the sound of the voices in my own head. I couldn't hear your voices. So I imagined that everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous was happy. They were all doing this magic because they were not drinking and their life was perfect. and I would come to the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and I wouldn't drink and I'd sit in those chairs and I think about how I could kill myself. I would think, I can't do this, man. This guy got a 30-day chip. This lady got engaged. This guy's wife got a job. This guy had his family back. This man got a promotion. I'd get a resentment I'd sit there going, I can't do this. So for 10 years, for the next 10 years I came to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous on a regular basis and I could never put 30 days of continuous sobriety together. I'm not proud to tell you that I went to the places they told me that alcohol would lead me to. I know what it's like to be in the hospitals in the psychiatric wards I know what it's like time and time again to see the disappointment on my parents face when they know he's in another jam they don't know where I am or I hadn't surfaced or I wake up and I'm in one of the the psychiatric awards this is kind of a funny story this young lady's doing an intake in the pediatric ward and she's just asking me the typical questions that you would ask at an intake, and I'm trying to convince her that a life with me would be a good move on her part. My first inventory was a blast, you guys. I'm telling you. I graduated high school. I was almost embarrassed to graduate because I didn't go. and when i did i manipulated them into giving me grades for things i didn't do and they found places for me where i would be out of the way where i'd be away from some of the other kids and the day that i graduated high school you know that's a proud moment in the in the life of you know someone in my family and my grandmother was there and my mom and my dad and the community that had it in this big auditorium and i'm walking across the stage to get my diploma and one of the kids yells out as loud as he can one of my nicknames and that was drugs and before I got that diploma one more time I knew I was nothing more than a disappointment I knew that I robbed them of of any joy that could come from that experience I knew right there that I robbed him of that again. And that was the way that my life had gone. That was how I saw myself. I knew that I would cheer up this room by leaving. It was like somebody licked all the red off my candy. I continued to fail repeatedly at every attempt I had at coming to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and every other place I went to try to get help. I thought that I was a victim. That you guys could get sober, but I couldn't because somehow I was different than you. And I've heard people talk, you know, tomorrow I'm going to actually do a workshop on some AA history and when I get to my story tonight, I'll share a little bit of that. But the honest desire, and I want you to know that all those years I came to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I believe I had an honest desire to get sober what I didn't know was how to do it I didn' t know that this was a program that required me to take action I thought if I could just think and figure this out I'd somehow know how to deal with it how to handle this thing but it has nothing to do with my ability to think and know. It only has something to do with the willingness I have to take an action and to do something. On April 21st, 1985, I broke into a house in Buffalo, New York, with the only intention of killing myself. It didn't go the way that I had planned, and you can see that right now. But I made it to the top story of that house, and it was beginning to be daylight and I couldn't find the gun and I'm scared and I am sick and I look out the window and I dive out the windows and I try to calculate if I dive on my head am I going to die or flop around in pain and the truth was I didn't want any more pain. And I am seeing these three ladies walk down the street and they are wearing these funny church hats and it reminded me of my grandmother that would come over after church on Sunday with her friends and they would be wearing these funny church hats and for some reason I thought of the God of my childhood and there I was alone in that room that night, that morning and I knelt down and I said the same prayer everybody here has said. God help me. God helped me. Bill Wilson cried out as a child in December 1934 when he was in Towns Hospital and he said if there's a God show himself. And he said the room lit up a bright white light and he could feel the breeze of the spirit blowing through and through as if he was on a mountaintop and he had been released. That did not happen to me. I drank all the next day. I had to do something to come down from all the other junk that I was doing. but that night i made it to a pay phone and i called the only person left that i thought might be willing to help me it was my dad and he and another member of alcoholics anonymous came and met me the other day and they called on me a 12-step call we met in a diner we had a cup of coffee and we were there to discuss my options i didn't have any options left and it was agreed upon there that I would go to the hospital. And the next afternoon, I walked into the Erie County Medical Center and the admissions counselor met me in the lobby and he put his hands up and he said, you can't come in here anymore. We can't help you. The feeling of impending doom. The feelingof the gates of hell coming down on me. The feeling of hopelessness at a level that I had never felt existed at that moment in a way that I cannot even begin to tell you, and I'm looking at this as I'm seeing God pull a golden thread, and i'm seeing this guy in the lobby saying, you can't come in here, we can't help you. The only answer I had, the only solution that I was armed with at that moment was to go have a drink and I said to the cab driver take me to a bar and he did and I went into the bar and I was having a drink it was April 23rd 1985 and the door was open it was probably around three o'clock in the afternoon and it was a sunny day and a city bus pulled up and a lady was trying to get on the bus and she fell down and I walked out and I helped her to get on the bus. For some reason, I followed her on that bus. And from that day to this day, I've never had to go back for that drink. It's probably warm. Now as I studied Alcoholics Anonymous history and developed some of the things that I was able to do in fortunate enough to do. Bill Wilson's spiritual experience was always something that was extremely interesting to me, and listening to many, many of Bill's recordings over the years, I noticed that when he described his experience in Towns Hospital, when the room lit up, what I noticed about it was Bill changed a lot of the things that he said over his life. He would share one story and then he would tell another and almost not even be the same story but the one thing that was so consistent in his ability to communicate is it's as if it was burned in his consciousness was what happened when he had that spiritual experience and throughout my history of AA and studying the history, I thought, man, wouldn't it have been cool to have an experience like Bill's? I got ripped off. I didn't even, I couldn't even tell you what my spiritual experience was. I don't have any burning bush. I doesn't see no lightning rods. I haven't had people appear in front of me. Nothing. Now I'm going back through my life and I'm seeing the ladies with the church chats. I'm seeing the lady that I helped get on the bus. And it's interesting, one of the things that Ebby said to Bill when they first met, when they met in the kitchen, was, Bill, in this deal, this is a new kind of giving. This is a giving without expectation of reward. And I looked back on that moment when I helped that lady and I thought, wow, you did something for someone without any expectation you weren't thinking about yourself at all why i didn't steal her purse i don't know because that's the kind of dude i had become that's a character that i was and here i didn' t do this and i really believe looking back that the miracle of alcoholics anonymous began for me that moment the moment that I extended myself in a kind way without expectation of anything in return that's what keeps us together that's what our sobriety is that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is and Al-Anon and welcome all to Al-Anon I want you to feel like I don't love Al- Anon because I do okay when Al-Anon was great. I woke up in my house, that's what we had, and I'm grateful for the Al-ANON fellowship, and there's a chance, a small chance, okay, that I'll share a little bit about Al- ANON history kind of weaved in with my AA history talk tomorrow. So I'm just letting you Al-Ans know you're welcome to come. Big John used to love to tell the story. I hope, don't, please don't be offended at this, okay? But he told the story of Lance and Chris. And Lance was the alcoholic. Chris was the Al-Anon. Lance was one of these guys who was chronic relapsers. He'd keep going out and getting back. And Chris was just frail, and she's getting sick and tired of dealing with it. And the ladies at her Al-Anon meeting said, you know, you got to learn tough love, Chris. You got to learned tough love. So that following Saturday afternoon, Lance gets drunker he's ever been and they're having a fight and finally she's had enough and he's had enough. He goes in, he locks himself in the bathroom and she's like, good. Well, a little while later she gets curious and she knocks on the door and she says, Lance, what are you doing in there? I'm killing myself. I got the gas on and I'm in the tub. She said, good, put some towels on the bottom of the door. It's making the cat sick. That's my only Al-Anon thing, okay, please? I heard my sponsor speak a few years ago. He was talking to a group about this size and he said if everybody here loved me I wouldn't feel any of that love. But if I loved all of you, that love would have to pass through me to come to you. And tonight I hope that I'm sharing some of that with you. Trying to share it in a way that we can laugh and we don't have to be so serious that alcoholism, as tragic as it is, when we are given this design for living and we begin to take the actions required we lose that and what we i mean think about what it says i mean the guts that bill w had to write the book and put in it what he did at three years sober okay think about this if we're amazed before we're halfway through now we will be amazed that not we willbe mildly satisfied okay We will be amazed before we're halfway through. We will come to know a new freedom and a new happiness. I believe that's different for each one of us. My first new freedom was when I wasn't waking up, throwing up in the morning. We'll know a New Freedom and a New Happiness. We'll comprehend things like serenity. I couldn't even say the word. yet alone comprehended we'll see how our experience can benefit others no matter how far down we've gone no matter what we've gone through we're going to see how our experience can benefit others your feelings of uselessness and self-pity they'll leave man he was three years sober writing these words and here we are tonight experiencing this so my old man and this guy do this 12 step call and they don't know what to do with me. I can't get in the hospital. I'm broken. People are looking for me and they got to get me out of town. My dad calls a friend of his down in Texas, Big John. John C. in Brownwood, Texas. And John says, send the kid down here for a couple of weeks. We'll see if he wants the deal. He always called AA the deal." I got down to Texas, and Big John meets me at the airport. They take me to a meeting. On the way to the meeting, he says, kid, if they come around, if it comes to you tonight, just give them your name and your sobriety date if you've got one, and why don't you just be quiet? He might not have said it that nice. And that was perfectly okay with me because I really had nothing to say. I could get about a seven-word sentence out, and three of them started with F. So they came to me that night. I gave them my name and I made up a sobriety date, you know. I probably gave them 10 years or something, you know. I mean, just to screw with them. We get back to his little apartment. He had a one-bedroom apartment. You know, I go down there for two weeks. He gives me the bedroom. He takes the couch or he stood in the closet or whatever he did. I don't know. He was 80 years old almost, you know. His sobrieta date was October 28, 1951. His sponsor got sober in September 1941, and his sponsor was Bill W. So my relationship with John really connected me with the early pioneers of Alcoholics Anonymous. That first night in his apartment he was pacing, at least that's the way I remember it, and he was a big dude. He was like, how long you been around the deal, kid? With as much ego as you can have when you weigh 90 pounds, Everything you own is in a cardboard box. You're wearing someone else's pants. I said, well, about 10 years. And he said, I don't know if you've got the guts it takes to make it. But if you want to get sober, I'll go to hell and back with you. And if you don't, you can go to heaven. I'm not going to hell alone. I'm like waiting for welcome to Texas. He said, you're a thief. Maybe not the kind of thief that'd kick in a joint or steal from his mother's purse. He knew my story. He said you're the worst kind of thief because you stole from those you love the most their right to happiness. It was as though he entered the cave of darkness where I was alone where I was dying and grabbed me by the hand and began to lead me out to the sunlight of the Spirit. And he was able to do that because of the power of one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic. He came down and he met me where I am where I once was. He did not make me come up and meet him anywhere. He met me right there where I was. He gave me the truth about myself, and that truth began to set me free. That truth began to be revealed to me. And he wasn't a guy, you know, if shut up and listen worked, I'd have gotten sober when I was seven, okay? That's not Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is love and service Alcoholics Anonymous Is inconveniencing ourselves So that someone else can have What's been freely given to us And by doing that we get to keep What we have That's Alcoholics Anonymous That's what I saw I went down there for two weeks He gave me his bedroom I stayed for two years That's inconveniencings Yourself he'd say kid can you make me breakfast he always called me kid okay never called me my name i don't even know if he knew my name yeah kid well he had another name for me but my howard my sponsor now has asked me not to share that okay so i don'T do that from the podium but john says kid can you make me breakfast? Could you make me some eggs and put a little yolk on them, okay? And I'm like trying to be willing so I'm sure I can do that. So I make him some eggs, and you know there's grease flying all over, and some sausage, and he eats this stuff, and he brags about it all day. I mean everybody he saw, oh this kid's a cook. He's the best cook I ever had. One time he's like, could you make me spaghetti and meatballs? And could you make the meatballs round? I grew up in Buffalo, man. Now everybody in here knows what Buffalo is famous for, right? Snow. It's also famous for snowballs. I could make a snowball better than anybody in this room. I'm convinced of that. So I took the challenge and I went and got a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs and probably a quarter of a pound of hamburger and I mixed it together and I made these glue-like snowball meatballs. They were white and I fried them in a bacon greaser, the sausage grease that was still on the stove from the morning. So I was not... The health department would have closed us down. So I fry him this up. I take a bottle of sauce that I got at the local store. I throw it on there. I throw the meatballs in there. I give him his pasta. I get two weeks of compliments. I mean, without exaggeration, he would stop people and say, come here. I want you to meet the kid. This kid's amazing. He made me the best spaghetti and meatballs I've ever had. His mother taught him how to cook. Are you kind of getting what was going on? Okay. Are you seeing sponsorship here? Okay. He didn't give me a series of assignments where I need to write things down. He gave me things to do that I could do, then he paid attention to it and he gave me some praise for having been able to do it. Do you think I wanted to be around him? Man, I wanted him to be with me. I wanted Him to be there for me. I wanted To be around anyone that he knew. And he dragged me around, introduced me to everybody. His best friend was a guy named Bill and Arbutus. Some of you know the name Arbutas. Arbutos was one of the early pioneers of Al-Anon. And they also lived in Brownwood, and I went down to Bill's house my first day in Texas. John brings me over there, and we pull into the driveway, and he says, kid, this is the Midwest Tape Library. It's the largest AA tape library in the world. And I'm like, so? You know, like, who cares? so we go up to the door and Bill greets us now Bill was wearing a jacket John was wearing a jacket I'm wearing someone else's pants okay Bill's got one eye and one arm okay he lost him in automobile accidents okay not in one accident in several accidents okay and I look at him and and I'm still keeping secrets, okay? Got it? All right? So why not be the judge, jury, and executioner? You know, I mean, I'm three days sober. I might as well be. So I named him Grumpy. He didn't even say a word. Just looking at him, I nicknamed him Grumpy. We go in, okay. So now we're in this library. We're sitting at the kitchen table. Magic of Alcoholics Anonymous is the kitchen table, okay, and we're sitting at the kitchen table and we're drinking this drink it's not familiar to anyone young in here okay but it was what they called instant coffee okay it was like warm water and dirt okay John smoking a cigar Bill smoking a pipe Arbutus is smoking cigarettes I'm chain smoking we're in a little library it is completely full of smoke they're talking about the old days the old-timers, AA history, Sister Ignatius, Sam Shoemaker, Bill D., Bill W., Dr. Bob, on and on, and I think it's my turn. So I volunteer one of my sentences, okay? Got it? Bill pounds his finger down and he's glaring at me with one of his eyes and he says, the first thing we clean up in here is our mouth. I'm thinking, grumpy? When we get out, and I said to John, what is up with that guy? You guys are going to now try to tell me how to talk. He said, well, listen, this program saved our lives, and it might save yours. And Bill knows you might be the only big book that some new guy or new girl gets to see. He wants you to be accurate. He wants to be a good example. And not only that, we knew these folks that paved the way for us and did the things that they needed to do so that we could be sober and maybe you'll be able to be sober. Gosh. Gosh, you know what? I didn't know that until I asked. And when I asked and he shared that with me, I made a conscious decision. And that conscious decision was, I'm going to do what these guys do. I'm gonna do what they're doing. From that day to this, I have not found it necessary to use that kind of language in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. us. But it's not about the language. It's about the example. It is about giving that kindness and consideration and seeing that someone else needs to be lifted up and not criticized. I wish I could tell you that I have done it perfectly, but I haven't. None of us do. Our challenge is to grow along spiritual lines. It' s a process where we continue. where we bring the God of love into our consciousness and try to share that and have that be what we share with others. And as good as we get in Alcoholics Anonymous is just a child of God. And life comes at us. We still experience all the things that life has to have us experience. And today we get to do it and we getto respond and not react. Most of us, okay? All right, some of us. Okay, a few of us. But what I mean, if you go to the doctor and you've got a little rash and the doctor gives you a little ointment, you go back the next day and you got a real big rash, the doctor says, oh, you're having a reaction. He gives you an ointement, you go out, you go home, you get back the last day and it's gone. He says, Oh, you are responding well. Throughout the day I have to ask myself, am I going to respond or am I gonna react? Because when I react, it's usually not good. And when I respond, it's usually good. See, Alcoholics Anonymous and the principles that are outlined in our big book give us the ability to be able to be right-sized and to beable to think clearly. And because of our fellowship, we have the opportunity to share these things with other people that can give us their experience, their strength, and their hope. That's AlcoholicsAnonymous. So I said to Big John, after about two years, I've got to share this with you first. Because at dinner, someone mentioned Dr. Bob's son, Smitty. And Smitty was actually sponsored by Arbutus. And Smity would be around, and one day he said to me, Dr. Rob, I'm going to tell you a story. Dr. Job was his dad, and he said, has Bill and John told you about the first guy that my dad and Bill W. worked with? Now, I knew enough about AA history to be dangerous by then, And I'm like, oh yeah, Bill D, AA number three, Akron City Hospital. He was an attorney, blah, blah. Smitty says, well, there was actually somebody before Bill D. His name was Eddie, Eddie R. And he said Eddie was a crazy drunk. And they would bring Eddie to the house and Eddie would climb down the downspout at night when everybody had gone to sleep and then he would go get drunk. And then he'd call Dr. Bob and Bill up and he would tell them that he was going to commit suicide but he would give them enough time to come if they wanted to watch. And they would go and they'd round Eddie up and they would bring him back and they tried to carry the message to Eddie. Well, one day Eddie was chasing Dr. Bob's wife Ann around the house with a butcher knife and he had to be committed. And I heard this story and I thought wow How did Dr. Bob and Bill not quit? How did they not just give up? My God, Bill had worked six months in New York trying to sober people up and here's the first guy him and his partner, Dr. Bob, try to help. And the guy has to be committed to an institution, to a sanitarium. Smitty said the story didn't end there, Mike. He said, 15 years later at my dad's funeral, a man came up to me and extended his hand and said, do you know who I am? And Smitty looked at him and said why you're Eddie. And Eddie had been sober for two years and Eddie lived out the rest of his life and never relapsed after that. And what I learned that morning in that library when Smitty shared that with me was this. That Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't build on success. Alcoholics Anonymous was an outgrowth of failure and all those times and all those meetings that I came to, that I sat in and I thought I'm going to kill myself because I can't get what you have. Every one of those times flashed through my mind and I saw the times where I would come into the meeting I would stink and somebody would say he's okay but don't let him around the girls and watch it he's probably going to put the bite on you for a couple of bucks and I would see this and I thought for the first time Alcoholics Anonymous is my home because it was people like Eddie and people like you men and women like you and me that made Alcoholics Anonymous work. It wasn't Moses handing it down from the mountain. It was out of the pain and suffering and out of the disappointment and the tragedy. That's what made AlcoholicsAnonymous work, it was men and women sharing a common bond of survival and saying we need to do this together because if we don't we will die alone. That is Alcoholics Anonymous and that message was so clear, so clear to me that from that day to this, I have been home in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm thankful for that. Sorry. Get a little passionate. So I'm leaving Texas. I'm sober a couple years. I want to move to Arizona. I got a friend there that's got a construction business. John gives me his blessing. I'm working construction. It's August. Some of you are getting it, right? Wow. Sanity takes a while to return. I am out by the pool one day and this girl comes out and she dives in the water and I dove in after her. She said her name was Joy and I thought I need more joy in my life I told her I'm Mike and I'm an alcoholic she was visiting her parents she was from Michigan we talked for a little bit a couple days later we went out on a date she agreed to go on a day with me and she got her fortune in there out of her fortune cookie and her cookie or fortune cookie said, this man's love is true. You can count on that. Four months later we were married. This December will be 29 years. I could see a golden thread being pulled through my life as I went back and looked at these events and these circumstances as they had unfolded. I was down in South Carolina speaking a number of years ago and one of the guys that was hosting me had written a movie he was a long time AA guy and he said maybe we ought to write a book together sometime I'm the guy that graduated high school with drugs and I said yeah that would be fine and he called me about a year later and he asked are you still interested in writing a book I didn't even remember. I said, sure, we talked about what that might be. And he said, would it be all right if I talked to the publisher to see if they would be interested? And I said that's good. He called the publisher. They were interested. He called me back. He said, publisher's interested. Would it be alright if I had my attorney negotiate the terms of the contract? You're doing pretty good already, man. Keep going. A couple weeks later, I get a contract in the mail. I send it in. they send me a check. Tell me AA doesn't work. I hadn't written a word. I don't know what to do. I did what we do. You know what we do? Here's what we do when we're going to do something we never did. We get full of fear because I had never done that and I spent the money. so i did what we do and i took some action and i began to do that and as i began to do that i began to share that with you because you have always encouraged me you have always given me that kindness that encouragement and that support just like big john did just like howard does so the book got done it came out that was cool about 11 months later i get a call from the publisher would you write another book this time solo i'm like all right it's kind of fun so in two years i got to write four books okay how does that i could see the golden thread then i'm down in alabama i'm doing some business down there now we joy and i have a family and you know, all that and all the things you deal with with family. My kids are getting grown up. I get back from Alabama. I'm out in the garage. I am cleaning up one day and all of a sudden my house gets raided by the narcotics division of the Chandler Police Department and I find myself in handcuffs at 27 years sober on the floor of my own house. I am laying there on the floor next to my wife thinking your life is in divine order. unfolding into goodness. I swear to you, okay? The second thought after the thought of your life is in divine order unfolding into good. The first thought that came into goodness was, so is your sons. He's more than four years sober today. he's 21 he's 21 years old he's a step working sponsor and maniac okay I mean it just to watch him operate is just our house is filled with young alcoholics and addicts looking for sobriety today looking for encouragement looking for support, looking for kindness and consideration. I'm so grateful that that's the message that was given to me. I'M SO GRATEFUL THAT THAT'S THE LIFE THAT I'VE GOTTEN TO LIVE IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS THAT YOU PEOPLE TAUGHT ME HOW TO GET UP STAND UP AND STAY UP AND IT'S ONLY BY GOD'S GRACE THAT I'M HERE AND I KNOW THAT AND YES JOHN INCONVENIENCE HIMSELF AND MY WIFE and I inconvenience ourselves today so that we can somehow make a contribution to some of the folks out there that have been chronic relapsers and who have been down so low they don't think they can ever get back up again. So about three, a little over three years ago, my brother Jim was diagnosed with lung cancer. He had just lost his wife, who was 54 years old, to lung cancer a couple months before that and he called me and he told me that and Jim and I weren't very close but you know we got closer his wife's illness and we started spending a little bit of time together as his disease progressed and it was getting toward the end and and I decided I was going to go back to Buffalo and I was gonna visit him and I'm gonna visit my mother and my other family members and I told Jim I was coming back and I could tell he was happy that I was going to come back and see him. And I called right before I came back there and he said to me, where are you staying? And I said, well I'm going to stay at mom's house. And the reason that I Was doing that was I felt like it would be a great opportunity for me to have some time with her without really being a burden or anything on him. I hung up the phone and And I knew that wasn't what he wanted. Called him back, and I said, Jim, did you want me to stay with you? And he said, I've really been looking forward to it. And I thought, wow. Alcoholics Anonymous, what have you done? This loving God, what Have You Done? I didn't know what to do. I went to my sponsor, for I went. And I sat down with Howard and I said, Howard, my brother's dying. This is the last time I'm going to see him. I'm gonna stay with him and I don't know what to say to him. I don' t know what else to do." Howard said, his life is in divine order, unfolding into goodness. I went back there. We had a wonderful visit. Most of the time we spent, we went back through his life And we looked at all the circumstances and events that had occurred That led him to that moment in time And the things that we saw were amazing And we could clearly see that God had pulled a golden thread through his life And what we also saw was the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous In so much as every time he personally sacrificed his desire to have what he wanted His life grew spiritually and other people benefited that's the unity of our tradition number one it's our common welfare comes first when we sacrifice our need to have what we want for the unity OF THE GROUP we're able to be effective in carrying the message and as a result we get to stay sober and I could see what happened by going through Jim's life I got to go back two weeks later and give the eulogy at his funeral and after that I spent a day or two with my mother and she was worn out you know she was getting ready they were actually starting to plan her 50th anniversary in Al-Anon and she up to that point in time was really in pretty good health. Well she fell ill a few days later she went to the hospital they decided to keep her and over the next couple of weeks her condition just deteriorated. And I didn't want to go back there because I didn'T want her to think that I didn' t think she was going to make it and I also didn' T have any unfinished business with her, thank God, that we were right. So the morning before she died, she woke up and she asked for me and I got on an airplane, I flew there but in my head I'm thinking I'm not sure why she wants me there. We're good, you know I mean, there's really no unfinished business. And I went to see Howard that morning. I said, Howard, I'm going to see my mom. This is not good. She's not going to make it. What do I say? And he said, her life is in divine order unfolding into goodness. And he actually gave me a few other words that I could share with her. I was grateful to have those words. I got into the room that night. It was full of children and grandchildren. We all stood there. We said a prayer. Everyone left. I was alone with my mother, and I said, Ma, I don't know what to say. I said you look great. She did. It was the truth. She was just beaming. She looked great. I said so Howard told me to say this. So I shared with her what Howard told Me to say, and we laughed a little bit, And I called my son, who was sober at the time, okay? Who's sober today. And I let him talk to his grandmother. And my nephew was soberat the time. Who they flew out to stay with us. And he's now sober three years. And we had a conversation. Some hours later, about 12 hours later she passed away. And it bothered me a little bit on why I was called to be there. And my sister-in-law said to me, she didn't want you there for her. She wanted you there for us. Alcoholics Anonymous gives us an opportunity to be able to have a life where we can bring something good to every occasion, I believe that's what we're called to do. Dr. Bob in his last talk at the AA conference in Cleveland, Ohio in 1950. He was dying at the time he got up to the podium. He only had a few words to share but some of those words were if you simmered Alcoholics Anonymous us down to but two things. You'd have love and you'd have service. And I believe the service is what Ebi carried the bill, and that is us giving of ourselves without expectation to another. And I belief that love, the love is service in action. That's the only way we can see love, is when it's action being taken. big john's sponsor closed the talk by saying a bell is not a bell until we ring it and a song is not until we sing it and love wasn't putting our hearts to stay love is only love when we give it away. Alcoholics Anonymous is only AA, and Al-Anon is only Al-A-Non when we give it away, I love you guys.