The Freedom of Saying I Don’t Know – Jim B.

For somebody else, and that always makes it easier for me because I really don't have to live up to anything if I'm a substitute. And maybe that's part of the reason that I'm here because I kind of felt like a substitute all my life. yeah well he told me to wear this one okay uh the other thing that i should perhaps get out of the way is that uh that i didn't get this voice from a failed sex change i uh i got this from smoking claire's plane for about 35 years and uh i had cancer i guess it's it's about four years, it started five years ago and I had a surgery four years ago. I lost half my voice box and that was an experience, I'll tell you. It kind of got my attention and since then I thought, well now that that's finished what ought to be all right and then it ended up in my bladder and I have two surgeries there and they told me at Christmas I was all right and then I went a few weeks ago and it's back again so I have to go back and have another surgery so if you really feel sorry for me we'll take up a special collection but I guess what I'm grateful for I mean some of the experiences in life aren't fun but I'm just so grateful that in AA I've been given the tools to learn how to deal with these things and the greatest way I've learned how to do how to handle these things is to accept the fact I don't know and there's a lot of things I don' t know. And that's the problem I had all my life. I didn't know how to say, I don''t know. And there's alot of things like that. I have a really good doctor and I sat down and talked with her and she explained to me that there's alotta things that she does that she doesn't know. She just doesn't because that's what she was taught to do. So knowing or not knowing It really doesn't make much difference. The question is, is how I act and react to it. And that's what I've learned in here. That's the biggest gift I've been given in here, is the freedom not to be driven by these problems, not to act and React the way I used to. And if you ask me how it happened, I really don't know. I just got a sponsor, did what he did, did what the book asked me to do, and things happened, and I really don't know why. I said I'm an alcoholic, and I'll say that I'm a recovered alcoholic. And I say that because as a recovered alcoholic, I no longer think and act the way that I did when I was a suffering alcoholic. And it's important for me to understand that distinction. When I say I'm an alcoholic to mean that means that I react abnormally to alcohol. Other people drink, they don't act the way I drink. My mother, God bless her, she had breast cancer and she was having a hard time sleeping. And she called me one day and we sat down to talk and she said, I've been drinking. I thought, oh, here we go. And I said, well, what do you drink? Well, she brought out a bottle of wine. AndI said, Well, how much do you drink oh she says i take about an ounce and then i fall asleep i said don't worry about it and i mean that's the difference that that the non-alcoholic has two three four drinks they feel slightly tipsy out of control and they say that's enough for me i have two three four drinks i'm in control and i'm just getting started and i have no idea where i'm going or what's going to happen or when I'm coming home. And that's my experience. And the problem is, is that the more I try to control it, that the harder it got to control. And that's the real problem with the problem that I had. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. And of course everybody has a perception of what an alcoholic is. I mean there's people here, I'm sure it's a drunken father, a dranken mother, a drunk sister, brother, and her uncle, I didn't have any of those. I think back and I have never seen my parents drunk and I've never seen grandparents drunk and I never seen anybody in my family drunk. So I don't know. And there was no drinking in our home. So I have to suspect that some of this has something to do with alcohol. I know it sounds sometimes like it doesn't but I believe that it has to have something to do with alcohol. I'm the only son. I had three sisters. Perhaps that's a reason. My father worked in the same job for 45 years, and I couldn't understand why anybody would want to do that. I really couldn't understand why everybody would have that kind of loyalty. We weren't wealthy, but we weren't poor. I didn't get everything I wanted, but I was just a, I guess what do you call it? Tall, skinny, goofy kid and I felt insecure and I'm sure that if I sat down with any tall, skinny goofy 14-15 year old kid that we all feel that way and that's part of adolescence, but what I found was the very first time I drank, I think I was my late 13 or 14 and i got really wrecked and i went home and threw up and my parents were really mad and uh i think i slept in the bathtub that night because i was just spraying everywhere you know as soon as you get that bad in the room start spinning watch out and uh I swore I would never drink again and when I was about 15 I ended up on a roof on a hot July and between us we drank a Cal and a St. George's wine. And I'll tell you, I nearly flew off the roof. And I came to, and I was in a police cell when I was 15. And the cop told me I'd thrown a piece of wood off the rooftop on a car, and i paid the damage without my parents finding out. And i swore I would never drink again. And I started going to the dances, and like I said, I was a shy, skinny, goofy kid. And hung around on the walls with all the other goofy guys and all the women would be out there dancing by themselves and we'd all be flexing our muscles you know talking about our conquests and all that stuff and yet we couldn't get out there and ask them to dance so i soon found uh if we stopped in the old snowden tavern for two or three or four draft i could uh get off the wall and get out there and i could do what i wanted to do so that's if i look back at you know if you have a a tool that allows me to overcome these feelings of shyness and inadequacy and all this stuff i mean i don't want to get psychiatric about this because there's not anything psychiatric about it and it's just that i have an abnormal reaction and and it became a tool for me to change how I see things. I mean, if alcoholism is a disease, it's a disease of perception. It changes how I perceive the world. It changes how I receive people. I can walk in a bar and be frightened and have four or five, six drinks and all of a sudden I'm not afraid of anybody. And that's what it did for me. And it did it for a long, long time. And that is what makes alcoholism so hard to deal with is that it's not a you know a sudden fall it's a very slippery slope and it takes a long time and the average alcoholic male i think they said something like 12 14 years in the women it's about seven years they don't have the capacity that men have to drink so i started drinking i enjoyed it i couldn't afford drinking so i joined the reserve army and i go down there monday night wednesday night have a couple of quarts and that kind of stuff and it you know i looked at it in that period of time as not really being a problem but when I look back I mean it certainly did cause problems and I carried on like that for a long time. I got through school, I started work and I lasted in my first job for about three and a half years and I stayed in my parents house because I think back they were charging me ten dollars a week rent and I think my pay I used to take home 120 a week or something like that and I get paid on Friday and was gone by Monday and I always owed my parents rent and like I said it was only $10 a week and uh I just thought I was having a real good time and um I started to get in problems and and and because my perception of what an alcoholic was was the old kind of branch with a brown paper bag I had never seen an AA member. I didn't know anybody in AA, and nobody in my family drank, so my perception was the guy on a park bench. So my standard became when I'm that bad then I'll quit because if you're that bad, then you should quit. So until it gets that bad I really don't have to work. And so to me all the problems I encountered on my slow skid were just little bumps, and I would just kind of, you know, I'd think about them and then I'd push them away. As I said in the first job I worked in, I worked three and a half years and I had to quit because at the end of three and half years all my relatives had died. I started missing Mondays and it was my grandmother and my grandfather and a couple of uncles and thenI just ran out of relatives and I knew that they knew that I was having this problem. and so around that stage I started to develop that keen alcoholic skill of reading minds I got to know what people were going to say long before they opened their mouth and so I always had the answers ready and as an alcoholic to me that's a good description I was just a guy running around with a lot of answers waiting for the situation to unload them and that's the way I lived and I had the answer I never heard the line I don't know and that was my life and in that period when I started drinking in the early 60's there were lots of jobs I could give them the old screw you in the morning and have another job in the afternoon there was no problem and when I did my inventory I did mine when I was 45 and I'd been through 26 jobs and every one of them I could have given you a sound reason why they were not up to my standard and that's the way I saw it I mean, I was never fired for being dumb or not being able to do the job I always walked out because I did what I do don't show up Friday sometimes don't shows up Thursday sometimes don' t show up Monday sometimes don''t show up for a week and I mean what are you telling when you've been gone for a weak i mean you can't use a funeral you know so i just i just leave that's what i do i just leave i left flight rules and calculators all across canada i mean i just leave i don't even have to do the desk and and that's the way i was and it was fear and i couldn't couldn't put my finger on if they really knew how i felt you know and and that's the sad part of it i mean you know uh maybe it's me but i hear people in a saying today that you have to learn to express how you feel i don't think people act that way i mean if i'm sitting there in the morning and my boss comes and he says how do you feel jim well i'm really insecure with a deep-seated feeling of not being put enough I mean, who the hell says that? So you say, fine. And he says, fine, you know, and that's the way people react. And that's how I always react. Why would I want to bend somebody's ear with my crap? I mean that's what I couldn't understand in AA when I first came here. So I just carried on. And it's funny, in a doctor's opinion, it tells me exactly what happened to me. it talks about that i formed the habit of drinking and once i couldn't break it then my self-confidence went i mean that's what happened i'd say i'm going for two drinks and then i'm coming home and i get home two days later or 12 hours later i tell a woman i'm just stopping off to see a friend and i'll be there at seven and i'm calling her at 10 30 to tell her i'll be there in an hour or i don't call at all now that happens to me when i don t want it to happen how the hell can i have any self-confidence and so my self-confidence starts to disappear and then i become the great examiner i'm sure every alcoholic knows what that's like you sit on the side of your bed and you gaze into your navel and you ask yourself why And that's what I did, because I can't talk to people. How do you tell people you feel weird? What are you going to do, go to a doctor and say, Hey, I feel weird. Weird about what? Well, I don't know, just weird. I mean he's going to go here, take these, you know. So of course I don' t do that. And I stop talking to people and I become an island unto myself and I just gaze deeper into my navel. And the one thing I know about looking into my into my navel, it always comes up negative. It never comes up positive. I was talking to my friend Ray there. I could bet any person here, I could give you a piece of paper, make two columns, bad, good, and I'd say write down all the bad stuff about yourself. Man, you'd all be running like crazy. And I'd see right down the good stuff and you'd always stuck. And that's the nature of being human. That's the way a human being is. But when I examine myself, I mean, everything just gets twisted. And so my perceptions get more and more warped. And I live in my own head. And, I means, if you're an alcoholic that's a dangerous place to be because there's just war in there. And that's where I lived. I lived in my head. I became a mind reader, and I knew everything. You know, I remember drinking in one tavern for 14 years, and we had our own table. I mean, that's status when you have your own table in the tavern. And we were seven guys. There were six of them from Kraft Foods and myself. And today, two of us are in AA. One guy should be in AA, and the other four were all dead before 60. And they all died of alcoholism. And we sat there for 14 years and took the world's inventory. And which we knew everything sitting there. And I was like five nights a week, same guy, same time, same place, same bullshit, same stories, month after month, year after year. And yet to me, it was like all new. But if I ever listened to those conversations today. I mean, like 15 minutes of that and it's like, get me out of here. I mean, it's just odd. But I sat there and I was in that world and we were all in it. And so I just carried on like that. And at around age 30, I met this girl in a bar. She was 18 and she was going through nursing and she went back to college at Tallahassee, so I used to fly down every month. I'd pack a suitcase full of bottles and get on the plane and go to Halifax. And she lived in a high-rise, and I'd sit there and party all weekend. She thought this was great. I mean, they were like starving students. And Jim from Montreal came down with his suitcase of booze, and half the floor would get whacked that weekend. And so I did that for about a year, and then she came back and we got engaged and I don't even remember getting engaged I remember going to a party and I was going to give her the ring and she told me that I gave her the wing in the chalet barbecue at four in the morning and then I fell asleep on my chicken so thank God that the wives have some memory at least just as soon as I got married I started having problems because then the rules changed it was no longer Jim the boyfriend now it was Jim half of the deal and she really didn't care for my half of the deal and she had a pair of parents well Well, I still have some resentment there. And her parents just about camped in our house. And they would come and visit and her mother would move the plants around and she didn't like where I put the picture so she'd move it. And I'd sit there and I'd just say, boy, I'm really grateful I don't have an axe. You know? And I mean, it would just drive me crazy. And I didn't know enough that all I had to do was let her do her thing and then when she went home, I could put it all back. But for me, no. It was like she's not going to do that to me, you know. And we had some pretty good explosions. So I wanted out of that situation. So I took a job in the Maritimes. They had started drilling offshore. So I went down there in 1974. And up until that time, I hadn't driven a car because I knew if you drink and drive, you don't drive. So I didn't bother driving. And I got down there, and I had to drive. And the company gave me a car, and I took lessons, and I got my license, and I swore on six inches of Bible, I would never drink and drive, and my wife was always trying to make concessions. So I said to her, well, I like sailing, so I'll buy a boat, and I'll just go out on the boat, and I won't drink. So I bought a Mirage 24, and she didn't know that if you look in the dictionary, boat is just before booze, if you take a look inthe dictionary. And I think that the two kind of go together. And so I had this boat, and I had the booze. And what happened is that my boat very seldom ever left the mooring. And that's what I did. and of course I had to drive home after and down in Nova Scotia they did not take very kindly to drinking and driving and I got caught I think it was one of the first times that I ever drank and drove and down there they took my license for six months and I think a $500 fine and my insurance went from $160 up to $1400 so I mean that was an expensive deal and of course I swore I would never do it again and I got my license back six months later and about three weeks later I got caught again and it was just in my head I would put myself in these situations and I would end up driving it's really crazy and I caught in a few problems one of the things I know about being an alcoholic is that I have a short temper and a long, long memory. And I'll give you an example. One night I'd been out on my boat sailing at the mooring. And, uh, I went back in and I went to this bar in downtown Halifax and I threw some money on the bar and asked the guy if he would get some cigarettes out of the machine. And he put the change there and he shoved the change towards me and I asked him if he'd get him and he'd say no no you get them and I pushed the change back and I said no no you get him and you push the changeback and I just flipped and you know I just really went after the guy and I mean over over something like that so 30 seconds later the cops were there and the police station is about a hundred yards from here so they took me back to the police station and put me in the drunk tank, and I got out in the morning at about 7.30. Now for most people, that would be a pretty good lesson, but for me, it was just an unfinished score. And four more times, I would start drinking, and I'd remember that son of a bitch in that bar, and I would end up going there, and I would end up throwing the money at him, and asking for cigarettes, and he would call the police, and they would come and they would put me in jail four more times and the cop said to me one time he said why do you keep doing this and I explained to the guy about the cigarettes and he said to me man if he treated me like that I wouldn't go near his bar and I went oh but to me but to me it's about pride and ego and he's not going to treat me that way doesn't he know who I am you know, and I'll fix him and I was the one that was getting fixed so I got in a few more jackpots down there with things like I had to travel a lot and I started going overseas and I would go to London and spend three, four days, come home. And sometimes I would just go over and I'd say, I'm not drinking and I'll be all right. And I'd get on the plane to come back and then I'd have a few and I would be okay. And it's odd how my mind works. I remember one time I was in downtown London and I had done my business and I was walking around and I'm an old Sherlock Holmes fan so I wanted to walk over and see the fictitious address where Holmes was supposed to have lived. So I walked over there and there was an old English pub nearby and I kind of looked in and I had never been in one and they had a salon on one side and a lounge and I went in and I said all the soda water so I went ahead and had a soda water and the next thing there's a bunch of guys there and I started talking to them and it turned out they were all dead detectives from the Scotland Yard. So I got talking to them, and one guy looked at my drink and he said, what's that? And I said, soda water. Oh, he says, does everybody in Canada drink soda water? Well, I mean, I had to defend Canada. So I started off with a beer and a couple more beers, and these guys had a deal. They went in restaurants and they got served free drinks. And I traveled with them. And the last thing I remember was falling on my head on the sidewalk and hitting my head. And I woke up, and I was in this really nice hotel room. It was my room. And I was face down on the carpet. And all I remember is his voice saying, Is he dead? And then somebody else said, No, no, he's just drunk. And then they left the room. It was the maid who had called the doctor. So I get up, and of course I'm embarrassed and all the rest of it. And I sneak out and I got on a train and went up north to Scotland and got drunk for the next ten days. Now if you ask me why I did that, I don't know. I just did that because that's the way I respond. I always thought if you can't do things, you take on more responsibility and then you'll do things. And my experience was when I took on more responsibilities I fold like an accordion. I just, I don't know what it is. I mean, I've always been the kind of person, if I try something here and I fail, instead of trying at a lower level, I raise my goal. And then I try again and fail, and I say, screw that, next. And that's the way I've also been. It's kind of an attitude, if you can't do it perfect, screw it. And that always manifested itself in my life. I remember my wife and I bought this house and it was half finished and I bought it that way because I was working on the oil rigs and we used to spend 30 days out and 30 days back now if you don't drink and if you're an alcoholic and you're dry and you've got to spend 30 days with a wife and kid whoa I tell you that's tough so I said we'd buy this house and I would work on it and that's what I would do so we bought this house and my background is engineering so I bought all these books about how to build a deck and how to built a basement fences and landscape and all that and I want to tell you at the end of three years I had a half finished basement half finished sun deck half finished fence half finished garden half finished everything and it drove my wife crazy because I would look at it and it didn't look the way it looked in the books and if it ain't perfect that's that next project and that's the way I lived all my life you know and I used to think I'm not a perfectionist ah you know it's it's just strange but I couldn't see those things you know I couldn' t see that's they way I was I really didn't understand it and of course to me today I know it's a manifestation of selfishness and self-centeredness. If everything looks perfect, I must be wonderful. And if it's less than perfect, then it's got to be my fault. And that was my battle. I spent a lot of time in that. I got to my first AA meeting in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia April 1979. I had gone overseas for three days. I came back after ten days and my boss called me in and he says it appears you're having problems and I said yep and he said can you tell me what's wrong so I told him about my wife and my mother-in-law and my father-in law and about all that stuff and that was my perception I had gone to family counseling with her and she was going to tell him about me so I said well I guess I have to tell him about you and she said oh no don't do that so I thought okay don't tell him about me. So the two of us went to a counselor and paid 35 bucks an hour, and we didn't tell him anything. And that's what we did. And he told me my problem was stress, that I was working too hard at this job, and I was putting too much in. I had to learn to relax. And that's why I was drinking, to relax, and the funny thing is that we never talked about drinking. Not really. Anyway, I told my boss all this stuff and he called a guy in who'd been in the company for 30 years and he was in AA 20 years and He asked me if I'd like to go to a meeting and like I said, I became a mind reader so I knew that when he asked me, if I wanted to call, I knew it meant you call or your job is at stake here or something like that. I did my own interpretation so i went to the meeting i told my wife and uh she this is hard to say my wife had a master's degree in nursing and she didn't know the first thing about about alcoholism i could convince her that my problem was stress she thought my problem was my family upbringing i mean that's what we're dealing with people just don't really know and uh you know and as long as somebody will tell me it's not me hey i buy into that i mean i live with that any day you knowand i won't argue with that and uh so i went to this meeting with my wife and uh we got all dressed up and went to the meeting and it was in a church basement and I looked at the slogans, but for the grace of God. And they read the steps and oh. And somebody gave me a book and I look at the first pages and oh yeah. And I thought this is, I thought it was juvenile to be honest. I really thought that a smart guy like me didn't belong there. That's the way I looked on it. I thought if I can figure out why I do what I do then I just won't do it and I think every alcoholic that comes here comes here with that game in mind that if we know why we just won' t do it and I have a friend that says trying to find out why is like peeing in the wind it feels warm for about 10 seconds and then it feels cold again and I guess he's right because that's really what it feels like you know so I went and I didn't like it and I told him next day I didn' t like it and he said fine if you ever want help just call me up and we'll be here so I went on my way and I tell you this story basically of how I got to AA my boss approached me one day and he knew I had lost my license and he asked me when I was getting my driver's license back and it was supposed to be I think in September and I told him June because I thought if you tell him something too far away he might think differently I mean I was reading his mind so I gave him this date and he said oh that's good so the date came around and he called me in his office and I was working hard and he says there's a brand new car out in the parking lot and it's yours and here's the keys so here i am with a car and i don't have a driver's license and i have a boss who is under the illusion that i have it right and you see i put myself in the box again i call that putting myself in a box and i can't go to him and say look i made a mistake it's not june it's september because i have an ego and if i go and admit i'm lying then what's he going to think of me So I'm an alcoholic, and this is the plan. What I do is I stay at work until the last person leaves. That's about 7.30, 8 o'clock at night. And then I move the car to the other side of the parking lot. And then i take the bus home. Now I lived out in Eastern Passage, and I worked in downtown Dartmouth. and if anybody knows that area it took me about an hour and a half to get home so I'm getting home 9.30, 10 o'clock and my wife is in Florida I get up in the morning at 6 take the bus to work and I sit in the car in the parking lot and I read the paper so the people will see me in the cart so then they know that I'm driving the car now I mean I couldn't dream that up in a thousand years but that's what I did and I did it for about 7 or 8 days and I mean that's a drag I mean, that's like 14 hours a day and what made me mad is that I didn't get paid overtime I was a manager I was manager at a company so I had really screwed myself because I had to be there so one night I thought, I better think about this went down to the hotel to consult my spiritual advisor the bartender and I sat there and talked to him until 1.30 in the morning and I got I went back up and I said I'll just drive the car home and park it in the driveway and tell him there's a problem with it I gotta remember I've been sitting in the bar from 7 to 1. 30 and I get halfway home and I don't know what happened but the car ended up upside down and I crawled out through the windshield and I went home and paced the floor and you know I imagined dying a thousand invest because of this and I mean everybody going crazy so I had to make a plan so what I did is I went to work first thing in the morning told them I had a call from Europe and I had go overseas and I needed some money so I got a nice big fat check in an airline ticket and disappeared but the problem is when you get there where do you go from there and that was the problem so I ended up back in Montreal and I took a room in an old three-bag hotel used to be on Dorchester and and I spent 10 days in there and I was just terrified I mean, I didn't know what was going on nobody knew where I was man, it was awful and finally I called this guy and he laughed and I said, man, I want to kill him and he told me to get on a plane and he got me down there and he taught me he was taking me to a treatment center it turned out it was the oldest wing of the Nova Scotia Mental Institution and they had a room with 29 carts in it and it was the 27th of July I remember that and it had no air conditioning nothing and all the guys they had in there were guys they dragged in off the street and I mean I was not in good shape but I mean I had matching luggage and I had a sport jacket on and I instantly knew that I had made the wrong decision that I did not belong there but again And, you see, I figured, well, my boss knows. Everybody knows. So I have to do this in order to get out of this. So I stayed there five days. Then they kept me another 10. Then they keep me another 21. And then they kept another 28. And I'll tell you what I did. And this is how I thought. I was running at that time. We were doing modifications to some oil rigs. and I was conducting business out of the nuthouse I had salesmen coming with drawings and I would say I was reviewing plans meeting with four of my supervisors in my room in the nathouse and I really didn't see anything wrong with this to me it was just I made another mistake and I wasn't in the right place and it was another bad break and this would be all paid straight and that was it and i mean i think if it today i wouldn't dare call anybody to come and do business with me but that's the way i thought and i got out of there and i joined a because i knew i had to and i went to one meeting per week for 18 months and at first it was great i mean I wasn't drinking the bank account was getting fat my wife was patting me on the back the dog was happy the cat was happy, the people at work were happy, everybody was happy. And I started patting myself on the back too because I had done such a wonderful job here. But at about 18 months my wife started to say, why don't you go drink? You were never this bad when you were drinking. I started punching holes in walls. I mean I just, I was just so angry and I didn't know why I had a sponsor in AA I think I talked to him once in 18 months I mean why why would I tell somebody my problems I never told anybody about my problems why would i tell some drunk about my problem that's the way I thought you know and and I just got crazier and crazier and it got to a point that I I knew I was going to hurt somebody and and I had to get out of this and I ran away that's what I did I got a job out in Fort McMurray on the Tar Sands I told my wife I was going to Singapore I mean that's a lot of difference between Fort McMurry and Singapore and she thought I was in Singapore and I was up in Fort McMurray and I had a bank account in the Caribbean and I used to send her money through the chain so she couldn't track me down I mean, that's the kind of noodle that I had on his shoulders And she had the RCMP looking for me, everybody. And it wasn't that I didn't love them. It was afraid I was going to hurt them. I just had no control over myself. I'd just fly into a rage over everything. You know, there's a joke about that. This poor woman comes down in the morning and her husband's at the table with his usual, you know, like scowl on him. She said, what do you want for breakfast? He says, two eggs. She says, how do you like them? She says I want one fried, one boiled. She says, fine. Fries them, boils one, puts them on the table. Is that all right? Says, no, you boiled the wrong one. I mean, that's the way I was. I mean she couldn't do anything right because I was restless, irritable and discontented. And I mean it didn't work going out there. It was terrible out there and it just got worse. I ended up, I had an apartment in Edmonton. I was on the 29th floor and I couldn't walk across the room I just felt like I was going to go out the window and I spent many nights in the closet I'd hear noises so I put a sheet and a quilt in the toilet and I'd sit in there with a bucket of ice and a bottle and drink by myself in a closed closet I mean that's strange and finally I couldn'T take it anymore and I called back here and I came back to Montreal where my parents were and my mother said to me you can come and stay with us but you have to go to AA sure, no problem but first I'll get a job so I went down to East End got a job in the refinery and I think I kept that for about 3 months and the guy that ran the job he was in AA and we would have a business meeting every Friday afternoon and he would sit at the head of the table there were 12 of us and he would look right at me and he'd say if anybody is here having a problem come and talk to me anytime this company never fires people if you're willing to discuss your problem and I'd sit there saying who's he talking about you know I mean that was my perception and even if he had to talk to the person to me I would have denied everything because that's the way I am so I I lost that job in May of 81 and the next couple of years was tough and I went back to AA and I spent from 81 to 87 going in and out of AA. Now, I could never swear what I heard then but I used to hear things like don't drink and go to meetings just pray, don't drank and pray pray and don't drunk go to meeting, pray and dont drink dont drink, pray and I used to hang around with the guys in the back of the room I would never be in the front of the room we used to be in the back of the room and the guys in the back of the room we were of the consensus that these steps were not required and of course we didn't talk to people in the front of the room so that was my philosophy from the back of the room and we took everybody's inventory we knew who was getting it on with who and who wasn't a phony and who was real and who is unreal and if we didn't like the speaker we had our own meeting and most of the time we had one thing in common we couldn't stay sober so it was kind of like the blind leading the blind and truly that's what it was and I found myself in that situation like I said for about 6 years 6 or 7 years and I'd stay sober three months, two months six months but I just could not ask for help I just had so many rationalizations if only, but, if, and or maybe and I had all these rationalizations and you know I was afraid I mean to stand here 6 foot 6 270 pounds and tell you I was afraid I remember I was a member at Friday Central and we had an anniversary one year and we at a dance and I mean at that time all I heard was don't go out with anybody in AA if you go out you're going to get drunk don't have a relationship for two years don't call for five years don't this don't that and that's all I ever heard and I always remember at this dance I was there and they wanted somebody to do coffee and I said I'll do the coffee I'll drink coffee and then they asked if there was anybody else, no, no I'll do it alone and you know like downtown we had a table I went out and I bought a couple of chucks and I brought a couple nice sugar bowls and I put spoons in them and I got a table cloth and I lined up all the cups and rolls now if you know anything about AA members they don't take the first cup on the left they take them out of the middle off the end and I mean it just drove me crazy i mean i wanted to shake them and slap them and drive them across the room and people you know they fill a cup half full of coffee and then they pour milk in the other half and then you get a hundred mile an hour stir stick you know and then that's flying all over and i just want to kill it you know yeah and and that's the way i was you know and then they had to dance and there's all these women you know and I'm like 45 and I guess at that time I was drinking so I guess my genitals were wired directly to my brain I shouldn't say things like that but that's the way I was I mean I had more sex just sitting in meetings I don't know if you understand I don't know if you understand what I'm talking about but that's the way I was and I would look at the women and I'd hear, if you go with them you're going to get drunk and I'm standard and I'll stay so what do I do off to the bar for drinks and I can do what I want and that's the way it was, I was always like that so finally one day if you ask me why it happened, I couldn't tell you I just decided, I walked across the room and I asked this man if he would help me. That was the first time in my life that I had ever asked anybody for help. And I walked across theroom and asked thisman if he could help me and I tell you I didn't particularly care for the guy. I just needed some help and I knew he lived near me and he told me I could come to his house anytime I wanted to. He told me where he'd be every day after work and i don't know if he knew what he was in for but i spent the next year and a half on his couch i don'T think i missed three nights because it just felt so secure to go there and the first night i went to his house i remember sitting at his kitchen table and he looked at me and he said you're going to be okay i know you're gonna be okay I used to be just like you and it was just like he put his hand in and turned on a switch. I don't know what happened, but it was just I felt safe and I felt comfortable. Now many times I had come back to AA, I had surrendered to the problem 500 times. But if I sit in the problem and I don t have a solution, eventually the problem overwhelms me again. And that s what I didn t understand. And in the first four days that i sat and talked to this guy i read the book alcohol synonymous cover to cover twice and for the first time in my life i really understood what was wrong with me i mean how do i expect to fix a problem if i don't understand what the problem is everybody in my Life had said if only you stop drinking you'll be all right everybody told me that and it turns out that's not my problem that's a symptom of my problem stopping drinking for an alcoholic of the type described in our book does nothing more than expose raw emotions I found that out very quickly I was five days sober and I got a terrible resentment and I knew I was going to get drunk because I knew what the process was of getting drunk and I know and I didn't know why I was gone I knew why I couldn't stop it and I did something I swore I would never do I went home, I got on my knees and I asked God for help now if I try to explain to you what happened, that becomes an opinion but in my experience what happened is I got up I had a sense of well-being I went to bed, I slept like a baby I got out and I knew I need never touch another drop of alcohol, I knew it I had that sense I could write a book about that but it really doesn't matter that's what happened so I went back to AA told my sponsor he didn't understand it and I sat in AA for the next eight or nine months and I Sat in the front row and you know when you're it was just like I had a new toy I was just a kid with a new time everybody I was in love with everybody and everything was love everything was beautiful and man it was magic and after about eight or nine months the chair started getting hard again the people started to get goofy again and AA got to be not what it was cracked up to be and I really didn't know if I belonged anymore and I went back and I talked to my sponsor and he explained to me that I had had some type of a spiritual experience but I needed to get some kind of a design or plan in my life where I could solve my problems. Drinking is only a symptom, so I'd solved a symptom. So I had some long talks with him and I went off to a monastery. I decided I would take an inventory and I really didn't want to tell him some of the things I'd done because I still had a perception of being the worst person on earth and if i tell him some of these things he's going to get really upset so my plan was i would do an inventory and i would talk to a monk i mean who's he gonna tell you know so i uh i sat down i did an inventory and by the time i was halfway through the inventory i knew exactly what my problems were and I knew how to deal with these problems and I came back and I went to my sponsor and I did a fifth step and my life changed and I had a lot of a lot of things that I did that I didn't want to do and I mean everybody makes their own choices there's no one way to do anything people have to make their own choices I owed a pile of money and I talked to some people funds, they will say go bankrupt. Some people said pay it. And in my own conscience I had to do what was good for me and I paid it. It took me, it took me over five years and I had to make amends to a lot of people. I had three sisters I could not talk to and it was because of fear, because of how I had treated them or how they perceived that psychiatry to them. And I went to them and talked to them and explained my situation, and they were all wide open about it. I just had a real good time in AA. My first five years was just like a party to me. And, uh, I used to do some things people might think are weird. I remember after having had this spiritual thing in my bedroom, I used to say to myself, did I just have a hot flash here or what happened? And I'll tell you, as a kid I used to be afraid to get on things like the roller coaster and all those big rides. So one day I went over to La Ronde and I bought a pass. And I said, okay God, if you're really with me, I'm going to get onto this roller coaster and we'll find out if you do your thing or not. And so I spent the whole day and I rode to hell out of all these scary rides and I don't know what happened I just overcame those fears and I had a lot of fears like that I used to not shop if I needed shoes or socks or pants, I'd give somebody the money say go to the store, get me whatever, I wouldn't shop I had some weird fear about that today it doesn't bother me but I had all those things and I went through all the usual things When I was two years sober, I thought I knew all about God and we were on a one-on-one relationship. And now I'm almost 12 years sober and I'll admit I know nothing. I really don't know anything about it. I find that the longer I'm sober, the less that I really know. When I Was Three and a Half Years Sober, I thought it was time that I show people what a real AA group was about. So I went out and found 14 people that thought like I did. And that's dangerous. and we started a group and we did everything different than what people do in the Montreal area and we got a lot of heat for that and at the end of about a year these people turned on me like a pack of wolves and man, I couldn't understand it I know why they did it I mean, we were all insecure you know and so I tried to manipulate and they tried to dominate and our forces had a showdown and, you know, hey, we have some of those good battles there. And I went home and I was madder than hell and I called this little timer I knew on the stage and he said, just step back. Don't engage in the battle. There's nothing to fight about. And that was the greatest lesson. I mean, I had to think about that. What do I have to defend? Have I got a reputation or something? What doI have to defend? And I learned that. And I don't fight with anybody now. I mean, what's there to fight about? Nothing. You know, it's all perceptions. I see it one way, you see it another way. Fighting about it changes nothing. So I got out of there and went and joined another group and took a seat in the back of the room. And when I was about six years sober, I was finishing up a job and I bent over and caught up and I couldn't see out of my eye. I'd gone blind. I had a totally detached retina and I went and had surgery for that and then about nine months later my voice went hoarse and I had my vocal cords scraped twice and then I had biopsy and they told me that I had cancer and it was funny because I have an old friend in the States and his wife was dying of cancer and I used to call her up and talk to her and she used to say to me I'd say, how do you deal with it, Jean? And she'd say Oh, you just surrender at a different level and I'd said I don't understand that She said That's right You know and when I found out I had cancer I went and I read all the medical stuff so I could make an informed decision and I made my own decisions and took radiation and it took away half of it so I lost half my voice box and I had a couple of small operations after that and a couple cataracts and got through that and I thought wow it's all over and then I went to the states with my sponsor and I came back and I was passing blood so I had cancer of the bladder and I did two operations for that and then they told me last Christmas I was clean and then i went back last month and it's back again so this time I have to have a surgery and chemotherapy and you know it's not what I find is as long as they tell me okay we're going to do this, this and this and these are the dates I have no trouble but while I'm waiting to find out what they're goingto do and what the dates are that's when my mind tends to act up a bit and when he told me that I was back I was, I don't know if you call it feeling sorry for myself or depressed or what. I was kind of down for three or four days and I've learned over the years what works. I have a box with cards in it with names and I look in the box and I ask myself who's really screwed up and I looked through the box and called them up and listened to their shit and when I listen to their problems for a while my problems get put back into their proper perspective because that's what it always is with me everything gets put out of perspective and I just have to deal with life as it comes I have a good chance I'm not worried about that it's just that it's interfered with my plans you see, I have all these plans about money, work and sex which are 99.99% percent of my problems and this interferes with my plans and so that's what causes my problems because i have all these ideas about what i want need and should have and oughta coulda shoulda woulda and it doesn't always work out that way and sometimes when it doesn t i tend to get a a little pissed off. But like I said, it's all perception. Honestly, I find now at almost 12 years old, I have a harder time going to AA now than I did in the first six or seven years. I don't know what it is. I really don't know. I find for me what I love to do is to work with people. So I have people in my house a couple of nights a week and I find it's great for me and that's what I need to do is work with people it's always been a solution for me I remember the first Christmas when I was sober I was over five, six months and it was Christmas Eve and I had the old Christmas Eve blues you know where's my family blah blah blah I'm down and out yakety yak and there was a guy who was being held for his own safety in the psych ward at the Queenie. And so I talked to my sponsor, and, you know, I knew that's what it said in the book. Intensive work without other alcoholics always saves the day. So I went and bought a couple of packs of cigarettes and went down and sat with this guy, and there was one other person there, and I sat with him all night. And I went home, and I didn't think about myself for the next two weeks. So I've always known that that works for me. just before I close I'd like to tell you I was sitting at home this morning or this afternoon I had a busy day Jacques came this morning picked me up went and bought a color TV with the money I was going to spend to go to Founders Day in Akron but I can't go because I'm going to be in the hospital and I'm the kind of guy I'm gonna have a good time with the Money No Matter What so I went and brought a color tv a new one and came home and went downtown and went to a meeting and was sitting at home when the phone rang. And it was a fellow who lives in Colorado now and he used to live here. He lived out in El Perro, Lloyd. I know there's a couple of people here remember him. And I met him ten years ago on this weekend. I was at the Saturday noon meeting. He used to be downstairs. And I was supposed to be at a convention down in Vermont and I had had a problem with some material and I couldn't go to the convention in Vermont so I had to work out here and the guy was supposed to bring my windows and doors and he didn't show up and I was ready to kill myself. I mean, I was supposed to be in Vermont. They told me this stuff will be here Saturday and like it's like at that point of my sobriety, I mean everything is drastic. I don't know about you but I spent a lot of my life pole vaulting over mouse turds. I mean, that's the way I react, you know. I mean it's like everything is exaggerated and so I decided instead of killing myself, I go to the noon meeting. So I went to the meeting downstairs and it was a typical psychiatric West Island session. I shouldn't say that I guess. And after the meeting ended, I saw this guy standing there and he looked new I mean, you can tell who's new. They have that kind of cornered look, you know. And then I knew he looked new. So I went over and talked to this guy, and it was his first meeting. And we went outside, and we talked for three hours out on the lawn. And for the first time in his life, he knew what the problem was, and he knew What he had to do to overcome the problem. And it turned out he lived four blocks from me, and I live in NDG. And I went to his house, and then I explained to his wife what the problem was because it says in the book we doesn't say I and they live together and the two of them have to know what's wrong if they're going to stay together so I spent two hours explaining to her what the program was and what she needed to do because of how she acted and reacted to the way that he acted and reacted and that was his problem and that wasn't her problem so she joined Al-Anon He joined AA. And he went to a meeting every night with me for 45 days. And on the 45th day, he said, I'm going to get drunk. And I said, make a decision. And he made a decision and he took an inventory. And he did a fifth step with me and he made amends. And this is a guy, on the day I met him, he was going to quit his job, leave his wife, go live in a one-room apartment in Vancouver. Him and his wife had tried for seven years to have a child. and they couldn't and they spent thousands of dollars on whatever you call it gene therapy or playing with eggs or whatever it is they do i don't understand that part of science and they stayed together and he stayed in his job and 10 years later they have three children one through an egg implant and the other two natural and he has a tremendous job today just because he didn't jump and he called me today to thank me for what he did for me and I don't remember that I only remember what he did for my because for me, my day was just crapped out and that's what I've always learned is the greatest thing I've learned in AA is to take a newcomer and just help him and guide him and encourage him and watch him grow and then I know what works because I see it in them. I'm a terrible judge of how it works in me but when I see it in other people I see It living, breathing and I'm the worst judge of my own progress if you want to call it that but when i see it other people and to me that's the magic is to watch people come here and to give in and give up and then they just evolve and they come out the other side totally changed and they really don't do anything I mean first thing I learned here if you show up you don't throw up I mean that was pretty simple I mean I thought that was pretty basic and I kept showing up and I read the book to find out what i had to do i had a sponsor to reduce my resistance to doing those things and then i did them and then i showed somebody else how to do them and you know i explained that to my doctor and she said that's how they teach medicine is that you see it being done then you do it then you teach somebody how to deal with it and that's what we do here i mean it's really that simple. I mean, I thought I was mentally superior to this and I believe I was mentally inferior to it because it's just so simple. But I had to learn the simplicity. And so if you ask me what it's about today for me, it's about freedom. Sobriety, to me, is a product of freedom. And when I say freedom. For me, it means I have my own set of values. I have my own moral standard. I had my own beliefs, my ideas, my convictions. They're not carved in stone. I'd change them any day. But I don't have to fall for years. That's freedom. I mean, I used to be like this all my life. You know, is it A, B or C? And I don''t have to do that anymore. I can stand where I am and i can be me and and if you ask me that to me is the essence of a.a i really didn't have to change i just have to be i just had to stop being what i'm not and be what i am and really that's the process to me is to get rid of the things that i'm not and it's only pretensions that's what i had to get rid of i'm better than i'm worse than i'm smarter than i'm this than i have to act and react this way or i have to act and now we act that way i'll tell you something for me if i can say i'm wrong i'm sorry i made a mistake i don't know i never get in trouble i mean four simple things and all my life i couldn't say them and i come here and i look at it today and i said to myself man it's crazy not to be able to say that and yet i couldn'T DO THAT and yet here that's what the process is about it frees me to be able to do that so if you're new in alcoholics anonymous or you're having trouble in alcoholic synonymous there's a guy everybody knows about here morris and morris always used to say the one thing that impressed me we're going on a trip when you go on a trip you need three things you need a map and we have a basic text you need that guide that's a sponsor and you need fellow travelers and that's you people and that is what I have to remember it is not a me deal, it is a we deal and so I I don't know long enough I would just like to thank the committee for thinking of me as a second choice it is always a lot less pressure and I really didn't think about this at all I said half the people know me half the People don't and ninety percent of them would be saying i wish that son of a bitch had shut up so we could dance you know so i mean i i have no pretensions but i was talking to my friend in the back and i said why did they say it's a live band have you ever seen a dead band you know that's what i learned today is to ask those heavy questions But anyway, I've been coming here every year and I guess God has a hand in the synchronicity of this weekend because I don't think we've ever had rain. And I think I've come here 12 or 14 years. So there's always something at play in here and I know we'll all have a good weekend. And again, I'd like to thank you all for helping me. Thank you. Thank you.