The Hole in His Belly and the Ego That Fed It – Don M.

Thank you, Clara. And with nothing else to do, I'm going to introduce this Kentuckian. And would you all please help me welcome Don M. Thank you, Jim, and thank all of you. My name is Don Major and I'm an alcoholic, and I am just real grateful to be here today. I was thinking while we were having trouble with the PA system incidentally—can everybody hear me everywhere? Okay, maybe I stand a little closer. Can you hear me now? Can you here me now. Well, I'm going to have to turn the volume up a little bit here, I guess. And incidentally, if at any time you all can't hear in the back, would somebody please raise their hand? Not that I figure anybody is going to get drunk if they don't hear it, but we all hear. But I was thinking, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, this is the second year in a row that I've been up to this conference, and I have been in this area an awful lot. And nowhere in this world that I have ever been are there far no more hospitable people than the program people in this Area of Indiana. And I just really love you all an awful lot, and coming here is special. I made some very good friends and met a lot of wonderful folks here, so thank you for letting me come here. I don't know that I ever made an A.A. talk in my life that my brain didn't try to take it over. And, of course, my brain has been my problem all my life. And there is always something a little special about every talk. You are talking in an institution or you are talking at a conference or you're talking at meeting where somebody is that you just know ought to hear of this and so on. And my brain works on every talk, and by the grace of God I think so far I've been able to get that little flash of sanity always before I get up behind the podium and realize that I don't have but one story, and that I can only offer you folks what I've got. And if I let myself get in the way and use the only valuable things that I've really got to lose, the only valueable things I've got to share, and that's my honesty and my humility, then I'd kind of mess the talk up. But it's important to me that I would only kind of mess it up, because you know, I used to get really nervous before these talks, and I still get some butterflies. But somebody shared with me one time that I wasn't nearly important enough for God to trust the welfare of a room full of folks to me, and that what was supposed to happen was going to happen, and people were going to hear what they were supposed to hear regardless of what I did or didn't do. So I'm going to try to get out of the way and let my higher power take it over. I'm kind of a big book fundamentalist. I believe that in that book, if I'll read it literally and refrain from letting my brilliant mind interpret things, that it tells me what I need to do in every area of my life or certainly points me in the right direction. And how it works is that we read before most meetings that our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. And this brilliance that I've referred to, and I was just very nearly terminally brilliant. Another couple of IQ points and I'd have been a goner. That brilliance when I got here kept me from needing to examine any words specifically. I could hear something and my brain would take it over and I knew what it meant, or I'd glance at the page and I know what it means. So consequently, for the first couple of years that I gave AA talks, I'd get up and say the big book says, I need to tell you folks what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. That's not what the book says. It says what we were like, or what happened and what we are like now." And after I realized that, I got to thinking about it, and there isn't even any relationship between what it's like and what I'm like, whatever it is, I've sort of come to the conclusion that it just is. It's just there. What's variable is me. You people led me to another conclusion. What varies about me is what I do. Y'all led me to a conclusion that was 180 degrees from the way that I had run my life. All of my my life, the ultimate reality was what little Donny thought and what little Donny felt. If lightning would strike me and make me feel right and think right, or if you could give me something to make me feel right, and think right, then I could act right. It never occurred to me that I had to start acting first. So I believe now that how I am depends on how I act, because I believe now that I have always been the sum total of what I did, and I will always be the sum-total of what I do. So I am going to try to tell you folks not what it was like but what I was like, and not what its like but I am like, because some days it is fine. No bill collectors are calling. The people in my life are pretty well doing God's will according to Don. I've got everything I need, and if I'm not actively working these twelve steps in my life I can be a basket case. And then on other days it can be going to hell in a hand cart. The bill collectors cannot be quiet at all, and the people in my life cannot be doing God's will according to Don at all. And I can physically ill, but if I am actively working these 12 steps in my life, I'm okay. So what I'm like is a whole lot different from what it's like. My body grew up on a farm down in southwest Kentucky. The rest of me is still struggling along. Some friends of mine and I talk about the fact that it's really kind of rough to be growing up and growing old at the same time. But I guess it's a whole not better than not ever growing up at all. And I used to think there were all sorts of remarkable things about my childhood, and I was sincere. I got sober when I was 37 years old, by the way, on April 9th of 1981, 46 now. And for that first 37 years of my life, I sincerely believed that by my intellect and my iron will, I had picked myself up by the bootstraps from poverty to to the staggering heights that I had reached. And I hadn't been sober thirty days before I realized that that was all a bunch of crap. In the first place, we weren't poor. We were middle-class farming people who had as much or more than most folks around. In second place, my heights were a whole lot more staggering than they were high. I hadn't been sober very long when a Clint Eastwood movie came out that had a line in it about a fellow being a legend and his own man. And you know, that still embarrasses me when I hear that said because it's something And that's so true of what I was all my life, a legend in my own mind. I believe now the remarkable thing about my childhood was the way I felt, what was wrong with me as far back as I can remember. I always knew something was wrong, something was missing. In fact, at an Indiana State convention back in 1983, I heard Gary B. sitting up there describe it as having a hole in his belly and that the wind blew through. And I had never known to put those words on it before. But when I heard Gary describe that, I said, Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. I've had a hole in my belly all my life, and I felt like sometimes that not only was the wind blowing through it and it was cold and it hurt, but I felt somehow that hole could swallow me up, that it could just swallow me down in it like a black hole. I knew it was different from other people. I know now that that hole in the belly was largely fear. My sponsor, my original sponsor told me that my ego gives birth to fear and fear in turn gives birth every character defect that I can ever have. And I believe that with all my heart. Part of that hole in my belly, and my sponsor also told me, that my alcoholism is not alcohol, it's not dope, it's money, it' s not sex, it is not food, it is not lies, it isn't any of the dozens of things that I have used and abused to try to fill up that hole in my belly and make me feel okay, make me feel good enough that I can stand it. He told me that all those things were my attempts at a solution. He told me that my disease is that hole-in-my-belly, that inability to be comfortable inside myself without something from outside myself to make me feeling good enough so that I could stand it, and he told me further and pointed out that the Big Book tells me that what causes that hole on my belly is my ego, that there's There's just something wrong with my ego, the thing is out of kilter, it's not right. And unless I do something about it, it will make me so uncomfortable I can't stand it. Never was a time when I was a child when I could stop and be still and say to myself down inside, Hey Don, how are we doing down there? if I tried that, what I got was, hey, don't be doing that. Don't be doing that because you can't stand knowing how it is down here and for God's sake don't let anybody else see or know. Keep running. Keep doing your cute and smart act. And if that doesn't work, cause a negative commotion. But for God sakes, don t let anybody draw a bead on you. Because if you run hard enough, maybe nobody else will see what's in there and maybe you won't have to stop and face and then maybe you can just barely stand the way you feel. I never once felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right stuff. I felt like a fraud. School was easy for me, and I abused that. I knew everything that I accomplished was a fluke. I knew that any day I was going to be unmasked for the fraud that I was. And all those things haven't gone away, by the way. I practice law again now today. And when I say again, we'll get in a little bit to the fact that the Commonwealth of Kentucky requested that I refrain from that activity for a while. But on any given day, there are generally some times during that day when I feel like that had it not been for that little problem with alcohol and a wee tendency to procrastinate, that Clarence Darrow wouldn't have been anything compared to me. And there is rarely a day when I don't know for an absolute certainty, somewhere in my being sometime during the day, that today is the day that after twenty-one years everybody is going to discover that I have never had any idea of what I was doing. And that I've always been totally and absolutely incompetent, and they're going to come in and rip the licenses off the wall and drum my butt out of Louisville, Kentucky, and this time I'm not going to be able to have dope and booze to blame it on. So you see, I've always been an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I've always been perfectly capable of feeling too good for something and not nearly good enough for the same thing at the same time. I've got a specific memory of about the time I started grade school. I guess I was five or six years old, and I remember thinking that it was obvious that I had been born into the wrong family, because a fellow as magnificent as I was ought to have been born into great wealth and power. And I can remember knowing at another level at the same instant, yeah boy you were born in the wrong Family all right, because there is no way in this world that a completely worthless stack of dung like you belongs in this Family of warm loving people the way your Family is. with that disease of ego, it was never acceptable to me at all that there was a power greater than myself that had anything to do with the daily operation of my life. I don't ever remember calling myself or thinking of myself as actually an atheist. I had all sorts of intellectual theories about the creation and a supreme intelligence and that sort of thing, but it It had to be a detached supreme intelligence, a detached creative force. I believe I just couldn't stand the idea that there was anything that held daily sway over my little old brain, that I had to put my brain in the driver's seat. And I realize now that connected with that, I was completely and totally unteachable and completely and total without humility. And as a result of that, with the incurable progressive and fatal disease that I've got, I was going to die unless I was given some teachability and some humility. Now, if somebody had suggested to me that I was unteachable, I would have told them very quickly that I could learn anything and learn it damn quickly, thank you. And if someone had suggested that I didn't have any humility, I would've given them probably as close to a blank stare as I allowed myself to give anyone in those days. Because, you see, until I got sober in this program, To the extent that I thought about things like humility and gratitude, I believed that I felt they were character defects. I can remember my father, who I know now, died at 95 years old a year and a half ago, a profoundly spiritual man all of his life, never a religious man but a profoundly spiritual man. And I can Remember when I was a little child, my father talking about how grateful he was for the dew on the grass and the tobacco plants that morning, and what a wonderful morning it was, and how much we had and how we ought to be grateful for all that. And I can remember him on other occasions talking about how a man ought to keep himself down to size. He ought to put himself in perspective. He oughta realize that he's just a little speck of dust on another speck of dust. And I remember thinking, you old son-of-a-bitch, if you didn't have this defeatist attitude we wouldn't have to be out here digging in this dirt. We'd have an indoor bathroom to go to. And I meant that. I meant it. That's the way I thought. See, another thing about the way I was is that I always wanted to be an alcoholic. Now, I didn't know I always wanted to become an alcoholic until I had been sober about a year. But around that farm where I grew up there were a lot of good hard-working Christian men that either worked somebody else's land or had a few acres of their own land, and these men would have an old pickup truck ten or fifteen years old that they didn't owe a quarter on. And they were married to these old gals that would wear flour-sack dresses and weren't very glamorous looking to me at all. They looked real drab. And maybe they'd have three or four little old kids that I didn't like the looks of that deal either. And those guys would get up in the morning with the chickens, and they'd get in that old pickup truck, and they'd go out to that land, and they'd dig in that dirt, and come back home at the middle of the day. And they'd have dinner, and then they'd go back, and work all afternoon. Then they'd come home, and have dinner with that woman and those children, and go to bed. They'd get up the next morning and start the same damn thing over again. And then maybe on Sunday they'd get up and put that same drab-looking woman in that old pickup car, and get up to Julian Baptist Church or down the road to Locust Grove Baptist Church, do do something with family all that day, sit around and visit. It made me itch just to think about it. And then on Sunday they'd get up, or on Monday morning they'd get up and start that same routine over again. And as far back as I can remember, and I can remember these physical feelings, to even think that I might grow up to be like any of those good decent men caused a physical reaction of fear. It caused my crotch to feel like it was crawling all the way up in my abdomen, caused my knees to get weak and my innards to feel like they were turning into jelly. I grew up in a dry county, but about six or seven miles from the farm there was a county line, and across that county line it was wet. And they had some beer joints over there in a little town named Gracie. And I've got a brother who is twelve or thirteen years older than I am, and by the time I was five or six he started taking me in the beer joints occasionally. And they had those jukeboxes over there, and any of y'all old enough to remember, they had Hank Williams and Kitty Wells on those jukeyboxes. And they those old boys in there that were driving those big fancy cars that they couldn't pay for, and they were running around with these women that looked a hell of a lot better than those old gals in those flower sack dresses. And they didn't care whether those women were married to somebody else or not, and they were talking about the fact that by God everything was going to go to suit them, or they d just make it that way, and they were going to do this, and they were gonna do that, and weren t going to put up with this shit, and people were going do that and the other, and they were gong to have it that way. And that s the way it was by God. It s my life, and I ll do what I want to with it. And I took one look at those fellows and I fell in love. I wanted to be just exactly like them, and I made it. I just didn t know what it was I wanted to be. I got drunk the first time when I was twelve or thirteen years old, And the first night that I got drunk, I puked. I got in a hell of a lot of trouble. I blacked out. I passed out. And I woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover. And I remember pacing the floor in my family's old farmhouse and gnawing on my hand for some reason. And parts of the night would come back to me, and I'd remember something else, and I would get more terrified, and think, Oh, my God, those Baptists are right. This drinking is terrible. I'll never do it again. And then I'd go puke or dry heave off the porch again, and I'd come back and I paced the floor with some more gnaw on my hand until I remembered something else. And I think it was either four or five days before I got drunk again. And I never did learn to like all those things, all that puking, blacking out, passing out, trouble, and hangovers. I didn't like them when they called them hangovers, and I didn' t like them when a nurse in the asylum told me they were withdrawal. And I decided that's when hangovers become withdrawal. It's when a nurse in an asylum tells you, no, it's not a hangover, it is withdrawal. But at any rate, by any name I never learned to like them. But before any of that happened the most important thing that had ever happened to me happened. When I got enough of that booze in me that it radiated all the way out through my abdomen to the ends of my fingers and the tips of my toes, and my face got all hot and flushed and started tingling up around my mouth, that hole in my belly quit hurting. For the very first time in my life, I was in the right place at the right time with the right stuff. I didn't have to run. I could be comfortable without running for the first time in my whole life. I wasn't too good and I wasn' t too bad. I wasn''t too smart and I was'nt too dumb. I was just okay. If I said something to one of the little old girls, she probably wouldn't even think it was foolish. And if she did think it was foolish, to hell with her! It didn't matter. something to one of the other little old girls. And you see, I had never been able to be still and be comfortable in my life. And I know now that our first step in this program says admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. And that first drunk for me completely defined my powerlessness. With all my attempts not to do it again, beginning with that next morning when I said I would never do that again, the fact was that once I found the only thing in this universe I had ever found that let me be comfortable inside myself without running until something else came along to fill up that same hole in my belly. It was the only game in town, and I was eventually going to go back to it, and there wasn't any question about it. And that was my powerlessness. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on a drunk-a-log this morning, so I'm going to try to really kind of put my drinking career in a small package this morning. I never really looked back after I stopped drinking, or after I started drinking, rather. It spanned about a quarter of a century until I was 37 years old. A lot of things happened in my life. Some days I think that nothing worthwhile in my life happened until I got sober in this program, and then I looked at it a different way, and it did. They didn't happen for any right reasons, but they happened. For instance, getting an education and getting through law school. That wasn't caused by ambition. That was caused by terror. That was cause by terror that if I didn't get out of that bed and go stick a toothbrush in my mouth and puke, which is what I did a good half the days of my life after 12 or 13, and walk through the terror and put on the appropriate clothes and go show up where I was supposed to show up, then you would find out what I was, and I'd have to face what I was. And I couldn't stand that. I was more afraid of that than I was afraid of the pain of doing it. I didn't have any emotional wellness. What passed for emotional wellness in me, I'm convinced today, was a highly refined ability to mimic people that I knew felt differently inside than I did. As far back as I can remember, as I've said, I knew that something was bad wrong and that other people weren't like me. I became an expert at observing people that I knew were better, and I mimicked the way they acted, the way that they talked, the very vibrations that they put off. And I think that at times I could give a very, very good imitation of having not only emotional wellness but ambition and a lot of other things, but I knew I didn't have them. All that cold was raging down there, that unrest. There never was a day that I didn t know at some level that I lived in a house of cards that was about ready to collapse. I got through undergraduate law school, and I went from the farm to Louisville, Kentucky when I was sixteen. As I said, school was easy for me, and as an early admissions student at the University of Louisville. I went to one-year-a-day school and found out that I didn't have the money to drink the way that I literally had to drink without working full time. So I quit school and went to work full time, and went to night school for seven years and finished undergraduate in law school. I had three jobs during those years, school, my work, and being an alcoholic. And if they conflicted, believe me, being an alcoholic won. It was the center of my existence. Every decision of any importance in my life was made by alcohol and my alcoholism. When I left the farm was decided by my alcohol Where I went was decided by my alcoholism. What I studied in school was decided by my alcoholicism. The women that I dated was decided about my alcohol is and the women that are married was decided about my alcoholic. The cars that I drove was decided by my alcohollis and where I lived was decided them alcoholism the type of the fact that I became a lawyer was decided that my alcohol isn't the type of law that I began to practice was decided down alcoholism started practicing law in the spring of 1968, and my daughter, who was my only child, was born in that same spring of 1978. From 1968 to 1978 I practiced law successfully in Louisville, Kentucky, primarily as a criminal defense lawyer. By the mid-70s, a law firm of seven or eight lawyers had built up around me, and we had built a three-story office building a block from the Hall of Justice in downtown Louisville. I'd made a lot of I'd gotten a lot of publicity, I'd won a lot cases, and I was very nearly dead with the disease of alcoholism. And I knew a lot about alcoholism as far as knowledge went. The first psychiatrist suggested to me that I might be an alcoholic when I was seventeen years old, which was the first time that I found it expedient to get a little crazy to get out of a jam that I was in. And I can remember that fellow listening to what I was telling him, and his name was Dr. Cox. I remember Dr. Cox suggesting that I might be an alcoholic, and me looking at him and thinking, you dumbass, I've known that for two or three years, and saying to him, oh no, my problem is far deeper than that. You see, what's wrong with me is connected with the fact that I see things so much more clearly than other people. And I've got this great reservoir of compassion inside me, and I play on the stage so much broader than other people. And really and truly, this thing that you see wrong with me is an adjunct to my greatness and my creativity. And there was a part of me that believed that. You know, I knew about Hank Williams and Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great and all those folks. And sometimes I'd get right teary-eyed about the fact that I knew it. It's kind of like hemophilia to the czars of Russia. You Know, it was just a price that I paid for my greatness. But at any rate, Dr. Comps was the first of a long line of psychiatrists who suffered at my hands. I sincerely believe that taking an alcoholic to a psychiatrist is like taking a jellyfish to an orthopedic surgeon. There is simply nothing inside us for them to work on, as well-intentioned as they are and as much good as they may do otherwise. But for us, I don't believe that it works. Um, and I intellectually knew that my drinking was wrong from the very beginning. Um, but you see, I guess I thought that if one were falling into the real pit of alcoholism, that all areas of their life had to deteriorate sort of along together. And I realize now it doesn't happen. My recovery doesn't go that way. There are parts of me in recovery that are doing great, that out there just in front of the pack and, you know, doing real good. The other parts of me in recovery that are real sick and hanging around the start line don't want to go anywhere. And that's the way my disease progressed, because during the 10 years from 68 to 78, I could run that law firm and do all those things, and I couldn't take care of my teeth. All I could do was let them rot out and then go give a dentist several thousand dollars to prop them up, and then two or three years later go give another dentist several thousand dollars because I was embarrassed to go back to the other one to prop them back up. I couldn't go see my mother when she was dying of cancer. And I had all sorts of rationalizations when I replied I didn't go see my mom. But I didn' t go see me mother because I was too sick to go see my mother. I couldn' t have anything that even resembled a normal family life, and I had also rationalizations for that, too. I would tell you that a fellow had to be a candy ass to need a home and the security like that, that I didn''t need that security. Put me out on the street and I'd find a home in 20 minutes, thank you. But I knew what was wrong with me. I knew what was wrong with me was that in order to have a family life, that you had to have the ability inside you to meet some responsibilities at times. That you had be able to give. That you have to be able make yourself do things that considered other people other than what you were compelled to do. And I knew that I couldn't do that. I knew it was absolutely impossible for me to do that I couldn' t get an automobile washed. I can't remember whether it was three or four new Corvettes in 1976 and didn't wreck any of them. But not one of them ever got washed once either. And what would happen, they'd get so filthy and the inside would get so piled up with cigarette butts and cans and bottles and glasses and filth that I'd get så sick of it and so sick of me that Iíd just go turn it in on another one and try to play that off as being cool too. But I knew it wasn't cool. I knew I was real, real sick. Started using a lot of drugs other than alcohol in the early 70s, but I don't believe they made any difference in my story until 1978 because my alcohol usage was so overwhelming. In February of 1978, I had spent the afternoon drinking snut scotch and snorting cocaine with federal judge. I decided it was a Friday afternoon, And I decided that I needed to get out of town for the weekend because I had been working so hard. I was remarried to my daughter's mother at that time, and I called some ladies to go with me on my R&R trip. I've always kind of thought that one of them was my daughter'S mother, but I don't remember. If it was, she passed. And I got hold of a lady that I had seen, and she said yes, that she would go. So I went to her house, and there were some Quaaludes, and I took the Quaalude's, and then I got two bottles of vodka. I think I thought it was against the law to take a trip in 1978 without two bottles of vodka, and I got on the road. I had reservations in French Lick, Indiana, so I headed for West Kentucky to see my father, and I get on the CB radio and got hold of a truck driver, and the truck driver had some speed, and he wanted some vodka, so I pulled over and I gave him a jug of vodka, and he gave me a handful of speed. And I made it about 50 or 60 miles further down the road and went off the road at 130 miles an hour. Did an awful lot of things to my body. I broke both legs, crushed both knees, lost the main artery in my lower right leg. They had to do a bypass in the upper leg and take out a vein and graft it in to replace the artery. It separated my pelvis and severed my urethra so that I did not have a urinary function. I had a half dozen major surgeries the year following the wreck. I was in the hospital more than six months of that year. They made the bed up with me in it for between four and five months. The doctors told me that it was highly unlikely that I would ever walk again without at least braces and a cane, and they told me there wasn't a real good chance that they'd be able to find a doctor who was willing to try to fix my plumbing so that I could have a urinary function. Just for the record, and through no fault of my own, I can walk and run today if I choose to run, which is damn seldom, without braces or a cane. And we did find a doctor. A doctor was found that fixed my front end. I didn't know that. And what I'd do, I'd lay in the hospital after I got them to take me back to Louisville. And you get a lot of dope, you know, when you're a pretty well-known lawyer that's hurt that badly. The doctors give you a whole lot of dough. And the hospital I was in would serve you some booze from the kitchen. But I wasn't getting nearly enough of either. So I would have my friends bring involved. And I would lay up in that bed with those tubes running in and out of my body, that suprapubic catheter rammed through that hole drilled into my abdomen, and needles and tubes taking fluid in and outer my body from all different directions, and cast it all the way up to here, totally immobile. And I would hold that drink in my hand and say something like this, Boys, this is the only mistress I have ever been faithful to, and the only one that has ever been faithful to me. And just by God, because the price gets a little high, we can't abandon earth and I drank it down. And you see, that's genuine insanity and that's genuine powerlessness. But I was in the same spot I was then after that first drunk. There wasn't any other game in town. I hadn't found anything else that made me feel good enough inside without running that I could stand it. So I had to go back to it. Didn't go broke that first year after the wreck because I was senior and founding partner in the law firm and the money kept rolling in. wound up eventually married to the lady who had been with me when I had the wreck. During the first year after that wreck, something real significant happened. The big book talks about the phenomenon of craving. It says that it will only develop in alcoholics and it will develop in every alcoholic who drinks long enough. And quite simply what the phenomenonof craving is, as I understand it, is that at some point in the alcoholic's drinking career, once we get some ethyl alcohol in our system, then our bodies crave more. Now, my body craved more the first drink I ever had. I sincerely do not believe I ever in my life intentionally set out to have only a drink or two because all that ever did was made me feel worse, a lot worse. I never started drinking in my wife unless I had a reasonable expectation of getting enough in me to get over the hump and get some relief from that hole in my belly. But for all those years, even though my body needed another drink after the first one I took, And, of course, that progressed along with other parts of alcoholism. But for all those twenty-odd years, the fear that if I drank the way I needed to, then you would find out what I was and I'd have to face what I was, was greater than my physical need to keep on drinking. And that first year after the wreck, the scales tipped a little bit. And the physical need, that phenomenon of craving became a little greater than the fear of you finding out what I was, and me having to face what I was. And once that happened, then once I started drinking alcohol, something pretty well had to happen. I had to have physical help in stopping, because the physical drive to keep on drinking was so strong. As a result of that, about a year after the wreck, sometime around the first year of 1979, I wound up in my first asylum. Now, I don't use the word asylum to be funny or cute. The Big Book uses that word. A lot of places I was in were called psychiatric hospitals, and a lot of them were called treatment centers. But asylum is just a real handy word for me. And by the time I got to that place, it took three or four days for me to get through the withdrawal from ethyl alcohol so that I was able to sit up in a chair and go to an AA meeting. Before I get to that, I do want to tell you something that I started on a minute ago and wandered about knowing that I was an alcoholic. In the very early 70s, I got so sanctimonious about my greatness, that I got to feeling sorry for those alcoholics who weren't strong-willed and intelligent enough to handle their alcoholism. So I started donating money to a treatment center there in Louisville. I think it was the only one that was around in those years, a place called Pleasant Grove. And I donated enough to it that they redid the recreation hall and named it Major Hall after me. And it was still named Major Hall when I got kicked out of there a couple of times for getting drunk while they were trying to drive me out years later. You see, and for anybody who's new, if I could pick one thing to pass on to you and nothing else, I think it might be this. I made a lot of mistakes about the disease of alcoholism, but none was more nearly fatal to me than the assumption that somehow I could live with alcoholism. That somehow I could outsmart it, I could outrun it, or I could bribe it, but somehow I could live without alcoholism and it wasn't until I accepted that for me just as every alcoholic that ever lived this thing is incurable progressive and fatal And if I have alcoholism, I will either recover from it or I will die from it, period. There is no gray area. Nobody who ever had this bitch called alcoholism ever fell through the cracks. We either recover form it or we die from it. And it wasn't until I accepted that that was the case with me that I could begin to get well. All of the knowledge of alcoholism on earth was of absolutely no avail to me. But anyway, they got me to that first asylum somewhere around the first year of 79. And by that time my withdrawal took three or four days before I was able to sit up in a chair and go to an AA meeting there in the place. And those of you who have progressed far enough that you know about that three or Four Days, there's no need in me describing it. And thoseof you who are not yet progressed that far, there's still no needin' me describin' it because you won't believe it. The most horrible thing I've ever gone through. The last couple of hundred times that I came off ethyl alcohol, each one of them was so much worse than any major surgery I ever had that there's no comparison on this earth. I told somebody this morning that the day that I die, if by the grace of God I never drink again a day at a time, the daythat I die I ain't going to be nearly as sick as I've been. In fact, I ain' gong to be as sickas I'vebeen and gone to work the day that I die, because I've never had any sickness like coming off that alcohol. But at any rate, they got me able to sit up in a chair and go to the meeting, and somebody read how it works. They got to step three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And I climbed up on my crutches and straightened out my braces and straightening up my catheter bag and said, Do you mean to tell me there are people in this world who believe such crap? And I made some phone calls and got somebody to come get me, to get me away from those religious fanatics and let me go tend to my business. You see, I've got the only disease in the world that not only talks to me, it lies to me. And it's an absolute psychopath, my disease is. It will tell me something that'll kill me, that'll kill you, that will destroy anything in this world, just on the off chance that it can get itself a drink. It cares nothing about the consequences whatsoever. And I can remember while I was waiting for somebody to come get me being sincerely convinced that it would be a tragedy for someone of my great responsibilities to spend that 30 days out there instead of being out taking care of business. The absolute insanity of that was that on account of the wreck, I had physically been unable to work for one year and things were going along just fine without me. But my disease told me that and convinced me. Now, it was about two and a half years later in April of 1981 that I got sober and I really do want to put that in a thimble. A lot of things happened in that two and half years. One thing is, the best that I've been able to remember, I went back to the asylum 17 more times. I've bee able to remeber 18 trips to the asylums. When I applied for readmission to the bar, they had some real embarrassing questions on that thing, like, have you ever been in a mental institution? And the only thing I could put was, see attached. And then at the bottom of the page that I attached, I put a caveat. And now what a caveat is for you non-lawyers out there, it says what I said may be true, but don't bet on it. And my caveat was I really think there's some more asylums, but I can't remember. And if in checking my background you find out there were, please don't hold it against me because I didn't mean to mislead you. I just didn't know. Another thing that happened in that two and a half years was that I became addicted to hard narcotics. I became a needle street junkie, and I'm so grateful for that. Because had that not happened, I don't think the fellas would have kicked me out of the law firm that I had founded. And I proved that I wasn't going to get sober as long as I had a wristwatch. I damn sure wasn't gonna get sober. As long as i had a law firm, the Commonwealth of Kentucky accommodated me a little further by removing my law license. I laid eyes on my daughter in January of 1980. And it turned out I was not to lay eyes on My only child again until February of 1983, The internal revenue took my part of the office building and things of that nature. The mortgage companies took the big homes, the banks hauled off expensive automobiles, the money, the expensive jewelry got lost, stolen, frittered away, traded for dope. I began to leave the clothes in one flophouse after another as they would turn off the electricity. I assumed that I was under indictment. I don't know what month or even what season of the year I left Louisville. I was living on an expired Blue Cross Blue Shield card. The lady that I had married who had been in the wreck with me had had to leave me because of my insanity, and while I was making the rounds at the asylum she was staying with some girlfriends and died in an accident, and that added to the horror of it. I assumed by the middle of 1979 that I would die of alcoholism and drug addiction, and I believe that everybody who knew me assumed the same thing. all the money was gone, I went down and stole my father's Social Security money from him. He had nothing but that, and he was in his mid to late 80s. I used and abused everybody in my life. My daughter did not want to see me again. She told me later that during the period of time that I was gone that she would have a reoccurring dream, that I had sprouted vampire fangs and wings and was hovering outside her bedroom window with blood running out of the corner of my mouth and a cock pistol pointed at my own head. She tells me later that she never loved me, that I had been obnoxious, egotistical, that I always smelled like booze, and that she really and truly had always hated me. By the time I hit Asylum No. 17, it was the fall of 1980 and everything was gone. I had a change in a half of clothes, I was still crippled from the wreck, no law license, no job, unemployed, unemployable, no money, teeth rotting out of my head. The business manager of that place told me later that he only let me in because he didn't think I'd live another week if he left me on the street. Got in there and stayed 30 days. Some people in there had some dope, and I took it. I was never clean 30 days in my life until the 30 days following April 9th of 1981. Got out, and they had no place to go. Had had a roommate in there who was a very young fellow, and his mom was in AA there in Nashville, and his dad was in Al-Anon. And they asked me if I wanted to stay with them a few days, and I went and lived with those people on absolute charity for 11 months. I didn't stay straight for the first five or six months of it, but I got better. I went to a whole bunch of meetings. I got to where I could go two or three weeks without getting messed up on some kind of chemical, and they didn't put me back in the asylum but one time in that whole five or six months. And at the rate I'd been going, that was tremendous progress. I had gone dead broke about the first of the year in 1980, and I had known since about that time that if I would mail a letter back into Louisville with a return address on it, that I would be mailed an insurance check for $2,500. But for over a year, I was so terrified of Louisville and my past that I wouldn't send the letter with the return address back in there despite the fact that I was truly destitute. Finally, in March of 1981, I got up the nerve to send the letter. I sent the letter, they sent the money, I get drunk. And I had long since gotten to what I called the pop-off vodka slash Listerine stage of drinking, and I've drunk a ton of both of them, believe me. And if anybody out there is not through drinking, let me give you a practical hint. The Listerine costs a little more than the pop-off, but it's available seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It tastes better, it'll get you just as drunk, and never made me as sick. In 1500, I could have afforded perfectly good Listerin. I was sucking on old tater chews. And by April 8, 1981, I had been drunk for 10 days or so. And I was sitting on the edge of the bed in Nashville, Tennessee, in what I call a brownout, which is a condition in which, even if you factor in the last nine years, I've spent probably 10% of my adult life. And that's where I'm basically in a blackout, but there are flashes of light where I remember things. There might be blue lights flashing, glass breaking, women screaming or something. But in this particular flash of light in the brownout, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and there's a blonde-headed woman in my room, and I'm explaining to her that there are two kinds of men. There are men who are psychologically pimps and men who ARE psychologically tricks. and she's messing with Don H. Major, who is 100% pimp, and she is not the forget-it. And the next flash of light I'm sitting on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, and she has stolen every quarter I had and left with it. Now, I had been on the streets long enough to know that pimps aren't supposed to get rolled. But I don't tell that for whatever sick humor may be in it. The next instant is the closest I can come to identifying an incident at which I bought them. Because for the first time in my life, I thought, Major, this is not working. Now, you would think that I would have figured out that it wasn't working before then. And I thought I had figured out it wasn'T working. Because tens of thousands of times, I had thought, Hey, you know, if you don't quit, you're going to lose this. If you don'T quit, this person is going to leave you. If you DON'T quit they're going put you back in the asylum. If you Don't quit they are going put in the penitentiary. If you DO NOT quit, you are going to die. Tens of thousands of times, all these, if you don't quit, it's going to. But never one time had I thought, hey boy, you're as full of this stuff as you can get and you can't stand the way you feel inside yourself so it's not working anymore. Made some phone calls and those people that I was staying with on charity reluctantly but lovingly let me come out there and pass out. And for you folks, I had no earthly idea that I Was Getting Sober. The things that I'm going to talk about for a few minutes now are things that became clear to me over the months and sometimes the years. I didn't feel like any dove of peace had descended on me. I felt like my rear end was falling off, and I was just as convinced at sixty or ninety days sober that I would die of alcoholism and drug addiction as I was the last day that I drank and used. But I'll get to something in a minute that's very important there, because I was beginning to get to the greatest truth I've ever found in this universe, and that is that what I think, feel, and believe ain't got nothing to do with nothing. When I shook it out, this loving God had given me some gifts. As I say, I didn't know what those gifts were. The first gift was a will to live that I hadn't had for a long time. The last two years that I drank, I had taken step one. I didn' t pick up the first drug or drink thinking that I might get away with it. I picked it up because the pain was so great and the will to live was so weak that I just didn't have any choice, and I picked it up. God gave me a will to live, and the vehicle that he used to give it to me was humor and curiosity. Because I can remember thinking as I was shaking out that last drunk, what would people do with me if I lived? If I didn't have the common decency to die after the message that I've made throughout everything that I have touched, if I did live, when people ran into me, it'd be like seeing somebody that you bid a tearful goodbye, and then you run into them at the service station you know, you don't know what the hell to say to them. And I found that humorous. And that was how God began to give me a will to live. And God had given me something else that I didn't know he'd given me. He'd given мне the first teachability or humility I'd ever had in my life, and I don't have but one definition of teachability and humility today. And for me, that is the willingness to follow suggestions that are made about how to run my life even though my brain does not understand them, does not agree with them and does not think they would work. Because, you see, that's why I had no humility and no teachability. The first 37 years of my life, I never once followed a suggestion about how to run my life unless my brain understood it, agreed with it, and thought it would work, and I didn't even realize that by giving the ultimate veto power in the universe to this sick damn organ up here that I had doomed myself to death, I thought it was the way it was supposed to be. I thought I was doing the right thing. But God had just cracked the door a little bit, And I went back into the clubhouse there in Nashville, Tennessee, where they have AA meetings, and they knew me real well. I had shot dope in the men's room. I had passed out at meetings. They had warned the people they sponsored to stay away from me that I was a loser, that I wasn't going to die. And about 60 days before I got sober, an old boy named Joe W., about 6'8", he walked up to me and said, Major, I'm beginning to think you really are too intelligent for this program. And I swelled up inside like a little banty rooster and thought, well, by God, it's about time these people figured out who they're dealing with. And then he went on to say, and that's a real shame because we've never had anybody too dumb for this program and we bury you assholes all the time. And that grabbed me like an icy hand right there. It was still stuck in my brain when I went back in that clubhouse. Now, of course, this didn't happen in one conversation but in a series of conversations. I went Back End and I asked, hey, will you all tell me again what I need to do if I want to live? And they said, yeah, Don, we'll tell you. Don't drink, don't take dope, and go to meetings. And by the grace of God, for that first 60 days, I went to over 150 meetings. And my brain was yelling, you don't need to be going to that many meetings. You better get your shit together and go make some money and do something. And bythe grace of god, I was able to turn around through my brain for the first time in my life and say, yeah. I know that's what you think. But you and I have damn near killed one another. We got to try something else. and then they told me that i needed to get a sponsor and my brain yelled you don't need a sponsor there's nobody in aa in nashville nearly as intelligent with the breadth of experience that you have had and i was able to tell my brain the same thing i got an old guy didn't even like to be my sponsor hadn't been sober i hadn't i wasn't wasn't a week away from my last drink when i asked cherry carpenter who died last year to be mijn sponsor and cherry would sit around meetings and what i thought kind of pontificate tell people who laid the rail but i knew he knew the program and I asked him, and I sure did come to love Jerry. And I don't think I'd be sober today had I not gotten somebody very much like him real soon after my last journey. And then they told me to read the big book. And I said, but I've read the Big Book two or three times. And they said, yeah, Don, we know. You've read it to memorize it, to impress us, to argue with us, to criticize the literary style, and to distinguish yourself from those low-bottom drunks in the 1930s. And above all, you have read it as a philosophy book. They say, if you want to live, you're going to pick that book up again, and this time you're not going to read it as a philosophy book, because if you Want to Live, you will understand that there's nothing in this universe that you can learn that'll keep you sober for a heartbeat, because this process of recovery is not a learning process, it's a doing process. And if you Wanna Live, You'll Pick That Book Up This Time is purely an instruction manual for your actions, and you'll start going down it one line at a time, reading only the black part and not interpreting one damn thing. And if you come across something that you believe doesn't apply to you because of your special circumstances and all you've been through and your background and your education, do that first because you'll probably need it worse than anything. And by the grace of God, I was able to start doing that. I did not believe it would work. You see, my brain was saying, hey, this is not going to work. This is simplistic. This won't work. Your problem is far too complicated for this, Don. This will not work. But by the grace of God, I went ahead and took those actions. And then they told me to get down on my knees and ask a power greater than myself to get through the day without drinking and drugging in the mornings and get down On My Knees and thank that power for getting through at night. And I really squalled then. I said, You know I can't do that. You know that second step is what's been killing me. I can' t do that because I don' t believe. And they said, Shut up, dummy. And by the Grace of God I was finally able to hear them when they said No. No, he said, sir, and it doesn't make a bit of difference in this world what you think, feel, or believe because, you see, for the first thing, you are way too sick to have any valid thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. He said, in the second place, your thoughts, feeling, and beliefs are your disease and your disease is your thoughts. Your thoughts, feelings, and believes, and there isn't even any overlap. They are one and the same thing. And in the third place, whether you live or die is going to be determined solely by what you do. And what you think, feel or believe won't have one damn thing to do with it. So you get down on your knees and you start saying the words, It's totally irrelevant what you Think, Feel or Believe about it. And by the grace of God I was able to start doing it. And the miracle of the second step happened to me. And they told me in Nashville, said, You know how it works? And the big book says, Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. And they said, Nothing else in this big book is called a program of recovery other than these 12 steps. So what that means is that you can be going to 10 meetings a week, sponsoring 30 people, talking at conventions all over the country, and working part-time in a treatment center. And if you're not actively working steps 1 through 12, you are not in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you're just in the fellowship. And you are NOT taking the only medicine in this universe that's ever proved even remotely effective against the incurable, progressive, and fatal disease that you've got. I'm so grateful that they told me that. They walked me through that third step. You know, after I began to come to believe, I started getting these great rushes of spiritual erudition. And I remember going to my sponsor, Cherry, and I felt kind of like I was going to be like Jesus about 12, you know, going in the temple and astounding the wise men. So I went into Cherry to talk to him about the third step and let him know the depths of my understanding and the strength of my grasp on it. And he let me rave for a while. He said, Don, what does the third steps say? I said, don't quote it. I know you can do that. You was doing that when you were drunk. What does it say? Paraphrase it for me. And I said well the third step is turning my will and life over to care of God. And he said no. I said Well it is too. He said No it isn't. It's making a decision to do that and I said because I knew you were splitting hairs. But now I said Don let me get up on your intellectual level on this thing. If there are three frogs sitting on a log and one decides to jump in the pond how many are left on the log? And I said, two. He said, no, you dumbass, three. He just decided he hadn't gone anywhere. And then he said, look, if you decide to go to New York tomorrow, you're not going to move one inch until you do a whole bunch of actions. He said that's what the third step is. And he said let me tell you something. When folks are sitting around a discussion meeting wondering if they've done the third step, if you're wondering, you haven't done the third step because pages 62 and 63 of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous describe the third step with probably more specificity than any of the twelve steps are described. And Cherry explained to me that that prayer on page 63 came from the very beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous and that the word sponsor is connected with that. If you think about it, you know the word sponsor doesn't make much sense. We are more like counselors or step-guiders or something. We're not really sponsoring in any other sense of the word. And Sherry explained to me that where that word came from was that in the beginning, when there was a prospect, when it was a drunk that was dying, somebody that was already in the fellowship would go and talk with them. And then if this person wanted what we have, and if thisperson was willing to get down on their knees with the person that wasalready in the program and say something very similar to that prayer on page 63, then and only then would they take them to the first meeting and say, here he is, I think he or she is ready. And the reason they did that was they didn't think they had an ice-fuge chance in hell of making this program if they weren't willing to get down on their knees and make a decision to turn their will and life over to the care of God as they understood it. And then I knew where the complication was. I said, okay, I'll accept that. So it's this simple decision that can be made in five minutes. But if I decide to turn my life and will over the care of God, just how do I do that? Because I knew that had to be where the complexity was. He said, That's just as simple. He said all you're deciding to do when you decide to return your will and life over the care of god is two things. Number one, work the rest of the steps. Number two, as you walk through life, when what you want to do, which will always be your will, is different from the right thing as you know it in your heart, which will always be God's will. You're going to do the next right thing instead of what you want to do. So if you do that, you won't have to sit around and worry about what God's Will is for you because God will make your life and will what he would have it be. And I've spent nine years trying to prove Cherry wrong, and I haven't been able to make the third step any more complicated than that. I don't turn things over to God by thought processes and by changing feelings. I turn things over God by taking action. You ever try to turn a toothache over to God without going to a dentist? Try praying a toothache away. If you get hungry, lock yourself in the closet and pray for a hot dog. And if one comes squirting through the keyhole, call me. I want to know. No, Cherry explained to me, and he was so right, that I turn things over to God by taking the appropriate action. And then he explained tome that the big book says that the third step's all well and good, but that if it's not followed at once by a fourth step, that it won't have much permanent effect. Now, he said if that meant when you are ready or when your group thinks you're ready or so on, it would say in this book, when you think you are already or whatever, that you will know when you're already to do a fourth step. He says no. He said the book says that unless the third step is followed at once by a fourth step, it will have a little permanent effect, so if you want to live and be healthy and you don't want your third step, you don' t want things bouncing back in your lap as soon as you give them to God, do a forth step. So he took me by the hand and led me through that. He taught me some things about sponsorship. He taught that maybe sometimes we say too much about talking to our sponsor. He taught us to think in terms of listening to my sponsor, of calling him up and stating my problems, shutting the hell up and listening, and then being willing to do what he suggested doing. By the time I celebrated my token birthday in Nashville, I still had no job. I was still basically unemployable. I was living on charity, and I was happier than I ever dreamt it was possible to be in this life. I didn't think there was a chance in the world on my token birthday that I would ever get a law license back. I had had to become comfortable with my relationship with my only child while accepting that I might never in this life lay eyes on her again. I had to learn to write her letters and let my sponsor and other people in Alcoholics Anonymous read them to make sure that they didn't have any of those alcoholic defenses or barbs or any of that horse shit in it, that they were absolute expressions of unconditional love. And I had to mail them, and I had to let go of whether they were read or thrown in the trash can. I had the believe the people when they told me that if I put anything in front of this program, that I would lose it. They told me that I could die if I made getting my law license back my goal, and that I might die if I made getting my daughter back my gold. But they told me that if I would make these 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and My God the most important thing in my life, that miracles would happen for me and wonderful things would happen. And they told me that if I wanted to do this program right, that the rest of my life I only had two jobs. First one is don't drink and take dope. They explained to me that God wasn't going to knock a drink out of my hand and nobody in this program was not going to knocked a drink outta my hand. They explained me that I'm powerless over alcohol but I ain't powerless over my elbow. And then what was wrong with me all of my live was that I kept wanting lightning to strike me to make me feel right so I could do right. They taught me if I wanted to live, I had to start doing right. And the first do-righting I had to do was not drinking just because I wanted to drink. Now, by the grace of God, I haven't wanted to drink for about eight years and nine months now, one day at a time. But in the beginning, the first thing I had to act right about when I didn't feel right was not drinking when I wanted to drink." They led me through the steps, and about 18 months sober, still didn't have a job, still living on charity, but as a pure side effect of working steps 8 and 9 my law license was put back in order. And I went back to Louisville terrified, working the 11th step to death because I was so afraid to face everything that I had left behind up there. Got back in January of 1983 and started practicing law. My finances, incidentally, were such that after I had been sober three and a half years—got sober in April of 81 and October of 1984—my sponsor and my lawyer and I, got together and decided that my financial condition had improved to the point that I could file bankruptcy without getting indicted. So it literally took me three-and-a-half years sober to work up to bankruptcy. The nature of that bankruptcy is such that if my health holds, I stay sober and the economy holds about fifteen years after my last drink, the financial wreckage of my past will be cleared away, but that's okay. That doesn't bother me at all on a daily basis. And in February of 1983, I laid eyes on my daughter for the first time in over three years. And in April of 1983 she moved in with you people and with these Twelve Steps and with my higher power, then move in with me. I had as completely destroyed that relationship as I had completely destroyed my profession. They were given back to me on a completely different plane when I let go of them and accepted that I did not have to have them and that the universe only plays one tune on any given day and the only choice I ever have is to dance to that tune or sit in the corner and hold my breath and act a fool and be miserable. And if the tune was going to be no daughter in my life, if I was goingto dance, I was gonna dance tothat tune. Andif the tunewas going to be no law license inmy life, if Iwas goingtodance, itwas goingto be to that tune. But in April of 83 she moved in with meand we've had some ups and we've I've had some downs, but all in all, I haven't had a better friend in my life. And she's here today. She came down with some friends from Chicago. I don't think she minds saying that she celebrated four years in Al-Anon. The first three years she lived with me, she wasn't sick, by the way. Since I had stopped drinking and taking dope, there was no longer a problem. But she celebrated 4 years in al-Anan, and we talk more days than not back and forth from Chicago where she's a senior in college, and we talk about turning grades and work and that sort of thing over to God, and it's a beautiful relationship. I go to five or six meetings a week now. I try to do what I'm asked to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Eighty percent of the human contact I have is with other alcoholics and drug addicts, usually recovering, and I didn't plan it that way. I think God knew that I needed that. I think he gives us exactly what we need. um god will do for me what i can't do for myself but he won't do what i can do for my self and that's where i have a world of trouble and the day is when i get to looking at at my life and i think my god i'm not any better i'm just not drinking and taking dope i getと looking at my desk and i thank you know i still don't know how to do all that stuff and i'm gonna get sued for malpractice and they're gonna find out today what a fraud i really am today's the day. And then I get to looking at what relationships have been in my life since I've been sober, and by God, that gets my attention. And then I get to thinking about the wonderful relationship with my daughter, and I turn the telescope around and I think, My God, I ought to be in the asylum. She ought to be in the asylum. This is awful. And then I remember what Cherry told me about that. He told me several things. One thing that he and some other folks told me is that they don't put you in the asylum for being crazy. They put you in the asylum for acting crazy. And they don't let you out of the asylum to be insane, they let you out out of their asylum to act insane. And it was explained to me that being crazy is harmless. Uncomfortable as hell, but harmless. Acting crazy will kill me quick as a bullet. But I can be crazy and it doesn't hurt a thing If I'll pray and call one of you folks and say, hey, what would a person with some sanity do? And then if I'll do that, the first thing, you know, I'll be feeling sane again. And it'll be funny that I was crazy. But it doesn't get funny nearly as quick if I act crazy. The other thing he told me was that the only valid comparison I can ever make again, as long as I live, is to compare today to the last day that I drank. If I compare myself to the way I think I was ten years ago or fifteen years ago, or the way I'd like to be five years from now, or how I think you may be today, I'm going to wind up miserable. I'm gonna wind up resentful. I'm gunna wind up uncomfortable. I'm gona wind up with what he called—Mass Ponce, incidentally, did not believe in the term dry drunk. He thought it was a contradiction in terms. He believed in the term a case of the red ass, and I'm I'm going to wind up with a case of the red ass. And he explained to me that the only cure for a case of the Red Ass is to soak in a tub of gratitude. And when I do that and make that comparison to the last day that I drank, this is what I come up with. I haven't wet my britches today. I haven' t had a drink of alcohol or even wanted a drink of alcohol today. I haven''t had any dope or even want any dope today. Nobody's even trying to put me back in the asylum today. With the possible exception of one sore-tailed federal prosecutor, there's not even anybody trying to put me in the penitentiary today. I haven't stolen anything today. I haven'T told any lies today. I've got a place to go to work, and the last day I was supposed to go to work. I went to work and I'm up here on Saturday morning sharing with you wonderful people in the middle of Indiana at an AA conference. Hey, I'm a hell of a lot better. All those things from physical health through relationships, through money, through finances, through raising children all those things that are so far from perfect in my life. Now, I've got to try to apply these 12 steps to each and every one of them every day of my life because if I don't try to do that, I'll fall back in that pit and I'll die. But I need not expect perfection because people out here that never had a problem with alcohol are never going to get a single one of those things perfect in their life. I need to be content with the progress today, and I am content with The Progress this morning. And I just really thank all of you. You are beautiful, and it's such an honor and privilege for me to be standing up here sober and to be able to share with you this morning, and I sure feel a whole lot better. I love you. Thank you. West Central Indiana Mini Conference 1990, with the Serenity Prayer on the other side and Don M. on the bottom. Thank you. Thank all of you. Well, this is a starter. This right here is just things to come I'm very excited about today. I've also found out through his lead that them damn lawyers get drunk just like construction people and coal miners. The next meeting starts at 1 o'clock. And if you would, help me close with the Lord's Prayer.