The Holy Trinity of Me and the Prison of Ego – Paul M.

Thank you, Justin. I'll hear the accent later. I just, I'm very excited, very nervous to be up here. It's a really great turnout. I'm very excited. We have 21 years. A lot of I saw a lot of people here tonight that I hadn't seen in a while and it's very exciting. You know, when we started this group There was, I would say, about 15 or 20 of us. And we had a great foundation in the Mamaronek group, and then we wanted to sort of, you know, fine-tune our group. So we started the Harbor Island group. We were all very nervous about it, but it's worked out great. You know, God watches over alcoholics. And I did want to say a special hello to Carolyn here tonight. She's always been a big help for all our group anniversaries, and she didn't get mentioned tonight. So there you are, honey. And I just was thinking of one thing, how AA works. You know, I was 12-step by Billy O., and we were fortunate enough to be sober with his father in the marionette group for years and how much he helped me, and this is how AA works. You know, I'm not a perfect person in any way, but I've stayed sober and I try to help other alcoholics. And I think that's all I can really hope for at the end of the day. I'm nicht going to be struck perfect, but I can be useful. And Ray was very useful, and the people that are active in the meetings are very useful. And I think when it's all said and done for me, if I can live my life trying to be useful and sober, that's a very good life. And thinking of that, I just wanted to say, is there anyone in the room that would just raise your hand if you have under a year sobriety so we can see who you are? See, that's beautiful. You're going to hear a great speaker tonight. I've been pumping him up ever since I heard him in November. I hope I didn't overdo it, but I think I did. He's got a great message and he's from sobriety and beyond. And it's Paul M. Thank you. Good evening everyone, my name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic. And it's truly only by the grace of God and Alcoholics Anonymous that I didn't find it necessary to drink any booze today and found me eternally grateful. It's good to be here and good to Be Sober. I want to thank Peter for that wonderful introduction. That's one of the nice things about being sober. You're introduced rather than explained, you know? Like back in the day, it's like, don't look now, there's a guy over there and whatever you do, don't loan him any money and don't buy him any drink. You know you've taken a dip in the social ranking when you start to be referred to as it. It's here, when's it leaving? It's a privilege to be asked to speak at any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous but it's indeed an honour to be asked to talk to you today. I'm going to ask to speak here tonight albeit at the Ethical Centre. When I first heard that name I'm saying I hope they don't do a background check on me I had to get somebody else to speak you know it's almost an oxymoron having an AA meeting at an ethical centre you know now yous look like an honest bunch you know hope I remember to lock my car you know no I can tell you a classy bunch because you stayed around after the food was over you know I mean that's evidenced but it's good to be here and it's great to be sober And to the newcomers here tonight, I'd like to welcome you. You know, I want to welcome to the greatest fellowship in the face of this earth. And there's probably a positive progression that we have to ask who the newcomer is. I have a sponsor and he's been sober for a long, long, Long time. I think he's like sober forever, you know. And I think you come into the fellowship a couple of years before Bill Wilson. And he says to me, I remember you didn't have to ask who the newcomers were. You knew who they were. They were sitting in the back row with their clothes in a bag, maybe a black eye from being in a bar fight. And that was just the women. The men looked even worse, you know? I'd be like, all right, yeah, yeah. But I said, if you're a newcomer here tonight, I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. and you probably haven't been made welcome too many places lately but you're welcome here because I believe Alcoholics Anonymous it's almost like a backwater pond and if it doesn't get fresh water nothing will grow in it and it'll become stagnant and you're the fresh water that we need in AlcoholicsAnonymous to remind us it's not getting any better right there you know one day and if you are new to AlcoholicsAnalymous I said this is the greatest fellowship in the face of this earth bar none and not only is it a fellowship It's designed for living. Our program works under all conditions. We won't have to drink again no matter what, albeit it's a day at a time. It's a cinch by the inch and it's hard by the yard, and we do it one day at a time, and I'm not here to sell Alcoholics Anonymous. This thing sells itself. It's an attraction, not promotion, but I'll tell you something. As far down as you go with drink, you can come back up and end some on Alcoholics Enormous. That's been my experience. You know, drinking's progressive, but sobriety's progressive too. And you may be sitting out there saying, Paul, that's okay for you. You've been sober for a while. You don't know the pain I'm in. You don'T know the chaos I've created. Well, maybe our stories are not identical. Maybe they're not even similar. But I'll tell you something from my experience. And in this, I would only talk from my experiences. You hear, we're up here in the woods here tonight. You've heard that analogy, you walk 20 miles into the forest, you have to walk 20 Miles out. Well, I like to look at it from a different angle. I don't care how dark and how deep and how painful that forest is that you're in right now. Let me tell you, I believe you're just 12 steps away from the path to a new life. That's all. Just 12 steps way from the pathway to a New Life. You know, on the flip side of that is if you're an old timer, I want to thank you for keeping that door open. Because guys like me usually die drunk on the street somewhere far from friends and family and loved ones. And it's never pretty and it's not good, you know, one day. And as importantly, if you're sitting out here tonight, and maybe you're like I was at one time, and you're off drinking for a while, and your saying to yourself, is this it? And you're being nudged out that door by the twin killers of the alcoholic, resentment and self-pity. And you don't even know you're getting pushed out the door. And you do it in one judgment, one resentment minute at a time. Well, I hope I can say something here tonight that will make you do what I had to do. Exchange dry time for sober time and get all the blessings and benefits that our sober life has to offer in Alcoholics Anonymous. So if we can do that and I can tell you a little bit about how it was and what happened and how it is today. Got a lot of ground to cover but I think by about 10.30, quarter to 11 we should wrap it up. Sean, now might be a good time to put any knives away, any carving knives, you know. I don't want to see anybody hurt themselves or even worse hurt me. But okay, how it was. Well, as you can probably figure out, I'm not from the neighbourhood. It's been well over 20 years now since I left my native Cuba and you know, all joking aside, you know, I am from Ireland, the north of Ireland and the sort of neighbourhood I came from If you didn't drink, you moved. Everybody drank. I didn't know anybody that didn't drink. In fact, I got a little annoyed when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm like the whole neighborhood was a bunch of fall down drunks. Why do I have to carry the cross for everybody? You know, but and I used to get a lot of mental gymnastics when I first came here. Why did I become an alcoholic? When did I become an alcoholic? What came first, the allergy, the obsession? And what about the neurosis? Was I culturally challenged? You know because I'm Irish. that I've got a genetic predisposition. All a bunch of nonsense. The only thing I have to do is accept the fact that I am an alcoholic. Now, if my mother was here now, she would tell you that I had all the traits of this disease long before I ever took a drink. If I was to speculate, I would say that in my case, and I don't think there's one rubric that fits all alcoholics. We're not cookie cutter. There's not one profile. Our stories wash over each other. That's just the way we are. But if I was TO speculate, I would say in my case, it was a case of alcohol in a bottle and alcoholism in a person. As I said, even before I took drink, I was irritable, discontent. I had that stone-in-the-shoe feeling. When I was over there, I wanted to be over here. When I Was Upstairs, I Wanted To Be Downstairs. If you asked me what was wrong, I couldn't have told you. But something wasn't just right. I could never put my finger on it. Real alky stuff, all below the radar, other side of the horizon. and just, you know, I'm not sure what's going on, but it's just not right. See, long before I took drink, the search was on. I mean, it's been said that alcoholism is a form of spiritual thirst. It's not a very elevated form, but its a form nonetheless. I mean Carl Jung said that to Bill Wilson. It's amazing, and I'm paraphrasing the word spirit for the highest human experience and the lowest form of depravity. So the search went on, there was a yearning, there were a need, there was want, there where desire. for whatever reason I don't know and God's not telling me I ended up with a hole in my soul and I tried to fill it with booze and people and places and things and every victory that I had before I came here was purely symbolic this is the real deal you know so the search was on I mean I didn't realise that I suffered as Bill Wilson says from anxious apartness I didn'T realize I had that but I took that drink that night And with these older guys, that's almost spiritual in itself. We're sitting down there, we're drinking. And I took that drink, that booze filled all the holes. It took all the rough edges off. I could be everything I thought you wanted me to be. And for a chronic people-pleasing alcoholic, there was nothing better. It was a magic elixir, it was a potion. And that night I made a deal, a Faustian bargain. I made the deal with the devil. Because at that moment in time I said to myself, This is the way to go. I'll not be without this stuff. And at a visceral level that I can't even discern or describe to this day, I said to myself, This is The Way To Go. And either consciously or subconsciously, I hitched my wagon to a store called Alcohol and it was giddying up all the way up to the precipice. I mean you've heard, I'm not the first person to say this, it was like my life went from black and white to color. Just like that. I didn't know that I was apart from, but I felt a part of, It felt unified. It felt together. I said to myself, this is the way to go. If you had told me that night where I would end up 15 years later, I said it can't happen. No way. But the progression of this disease in my life was astonishing. See, I didn't realize that I drank for a reason. I drank because alcohol was a suitable treatment for the disease called alcoholism. It worked. You know? It worked like a charm. But the catch-22 for us alcoholics is the solution we find in alcohol becomes worse than the original problem, alcoholism. And then we end up between a rock and a hard place. Our book called it the jumping off place. I couldn't live with drink and I couldn'T live without drink. But you couldn'T tell me that at 15 or 16. I was getting away with it and things were good. You know, but within six months I'm getting my stomach pumped out of hospitals. before I'm out of my teens I'm a daily drinker before I am out of teens I'm taking morning drink and there's people love me there's peole reached out to me I didn't want to hear it I'm thinking booze is the solution you're the problem, he's the problem this is the way to go and the more raw and the moral untreated my alcoholism will become the more this will become the solution and that would lead me to defend and justify and rationalize pretty much every drink I took close to the end. You know, and people reached out to me, my mother, my father, and I'd be thinking to myself, I'm not the problem. Alcohol's not the problems. Me and alcohol together is certainly not the program. You know? But my life was unraveling around me. And I'm sitting there, and we look back on it. Like Bill Wilson talked about at Winchester Cathedral. There was moments. I'm sure there was caution signs along the way, a whisper in the ear from the power above. I just blew right through it. You know? I got both hands on the wheel in a death grip, and I don't even know it. You know, and I'm from Northern Ireland, you know, and this is the height of the troubles. You know. I'm thinking to myself, you know I'm a working class Catholic on the wrong side of the tracks. I've got a big chip on my shoulder. Even better than that, a guy said to me one time, you know Paul, you're a well balanced guy. And I'm think to myself finally somebody that knows what they're talking about, you know? He says, yeah, you've got a chip on both shoulders, you know? I hated everything. I hated everybody. But I was coming to despise the man. The man in the glass. And I'm sitting there, but I'm a finger pointer. I'm into the blame game. It's never me. It's you. It'S him. It' s that. It'' s this. I'm sitting in a bar with only the arrogance that an alcoholic can summon up. And I'M thinking to myself, you you know, this country Northern Ireland really sucks. You know? There's a place like America and there's a piece of guy like me could really make us move, you know? And I come home and I said to my father, I burst in the door half drunk and I say, I'm going to America and don't try and talk me out of it. He says, talk to everyone, help you pack when you're leaving. On you go Columbus. Let me give you some fatherly advice. Turn left at Greenland, you know? I'm like, I'll show them, you know? And like driftwood I washed up in Rockaway Beach, New York. Nobody drinks in Rockway, right? You tell people from Rockaway they go, oh, Rockaway, the Irish Riviera, you now. I should have been called cirrhosis by the sea you know but it's so true of the alcoholic I've got that built in GPS system you could have blindfolded me and put me in a sack I'm going to find a neighbourhood that drinks as much if not more than the one I just left and here I am going to make my big move here and much to my chagrin I realise that fortune 500 companies for some obscure reason don't do a lot of recruiting under the boardwalk in Rockaway. And I don't know why, they've got some, maybe the sand gets on their resumes or something, I don' t know, you know. But they usually start off in Ivy League colleges and work their way out, you kno. So I had to go to plan B and plan B was I became a bartender. Now you may say to yourself, who in their right mind would hire somebody that's never been a bartendor before that's literally just off the boat? Well, I'll tell you the type of bar that did that. You know in every neighbourhood there's that one bar and you sit here when you're sober you say I would never be seen dead in that place. And at 3 o'clock in the morning you're sitting in there it's not so bad in here, right? Well that's the sort of bar I got a job in. This was a real the craziest bar you want. Let me just sum it up this way. It was the sortof bar you got thrown into rather than out of. This bar had it all. alcoholics, drug addicts degenerate gamblers and that was just the staff that wasn't even the customers I mean it was one of those tough bars you know those neighbourhood bars sort of bar where the men are all men and unfortunately most of the women were too but I'll just end it in this if you wanted to see a full set of teeth you needed 32 customers in the bar let me just leave it at that You know, now that I've ruined any spiritual credibility that I had, I shall move on. But let me tell you something. Water found its own level and so do alcoholics, and I fit it in there like a glove. You know one, this disease is cunning, it's baffling, and it's powerful, but above all it's patient. If you be alcoholic, it'll get you, and they've got me but good. You know, and I've experienced every form of drinking. I'm not going to bore you with that. It was a weekend drinker, a daily drinker morning drinking, binge drinking. The drinking had done me in. I became a periodic alcoholic. And the drunks, you know the alcoholic equation the drucks got longer in duration and the peer between them got shorter. And that's when things were really the wheels were starting to come off the wagon. See for a long period of my life I defended my drinking. You know I drink the way that I drink and you drink the same way that you drink and who's got a I reached a point in my life where I was trying to curb my drinking. I was tried to get a hand on it and I realized I couldn't. You know, I realized that my drinking was out of control. I'm starting to have convulsions from coming off drink. I'm having seizures. I'm going on these round the clock drunks. Coming off them is worse than staying on them. It just becomes horrendous and I just get worse and then I reached that point in my live where I really wanted to stop drinking and like this would have been a perfect opportunity. I'll stop for Lent. I'll start for this. I'm taking oaths, I'm making proclamations I'm swearing on your life I'm swearin' on my life and I drink again and our book says the alcoholic is a bewildered one nobody was any more confused than me I remember reading one time that Dr. Bob said he felt weak as a person because he feels so miserably at something he wanted to do so well which was not drink and boy can I identify with that I was so glad to find out that the alcoholic can have willpower in other areas but when it comes to alcohol I just go blank. There's a blind spot comes over and I forget all the pain and the misery and the trouble of the previous drinking and I go in the epitaph of the alcoholic this time it's going to be different it was her it was this it was them I'll get it right this time and it was worse it was always worse I'm not going to bore you with the details but I'll just sum it up with one vignette I remember one time I was on a bad drunk I was drinking for two or three weeks I collapsed in a bar and alcoholic convulsions. I woke up in Peninsula Hospital strapped in a restraining sheet and they filled me up full of something, Libri, whatever, to get me off the ceiling and I'm lying there and I was beaten as I have ever been from drink. There were other times I drank more but this time it had cleaned my clock and the woman who's my wife today was standing at the side of the gurney and Dr. Bob also said we're blessed with great women and that's been my experience I took this good girl from a nice family never exposed to alcoholism and I dragged her down this dark corridor of the last years of my drinking and thankfully we're a happy couple together and it's just thankfully you throw alcoholics in on us but she was standing at the bedside and I wasn't trying to be cinematic but I reached out through the girl and I took her hand and I said, this time it's over I don't know why I can't drink but I can't drink and I will never ever drink again and I meant that with every ounce, every enzyme of conviction that I could muster at that moment and I came out of the hospital a few days later and she was nervous and I was nervous and I had thoughts of drink but I said to myself surely to God if I just hang in there they're bound to dissipate and a week went by and I'm starting to eat again I'm beginning to feel a bit better and two weeks go by and we're starting to do things It's like a couple again, and three weeks go by, and we're going into the city, and we'RE going to movies, and we'Re going to shows. I remember her saying to me, Remember you told me you used to like to read? And I started reading books again for the first time in years. Five weeks go back, and I started going to the gym and swimming and going to The Steam Room, and I'm feeling good about myself, and then I'm drunk again. How do you explain that to somebody who's a non-alcoholic? I can't explain it. And you see that look, and we all know that look of perpetual disappointment. How could you, Paul? You promised. You lay in that hospital, you put your hand on your heart. You said this time, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I've got to get away from you because I'm going to end up in an asylum. And where do I go? Well, I'll tell you where I go. I go to ballroom mentality. I don'T need you. I DON'T need nobody. And the complete opposite is true. I thought I'm finished. You know, where doI go from that? And I would like to tell you that I got my lips burnt a few more times and came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I drank for another three or four years after that. You know? Booze just... I mean, booze will give you something, man. I mean the Merchant of Venice, Shylock just wanted a pound of flesh. Not this disease. When it comes back, it gives me stuff at the start. But as our book says, it's a rabacious creditor. As Bill Wilson says, booze boomeranged on him. And when it came back for payday, when it come back to how to pay the freight, it'll take your job, your car, your wife, the shirt off your back but what it really wants is me six foot under because of all terminal diseases this is the most terminal if I don't stop drinking drinking's going to stop me that's not some theory I have I'm not around here a lifetime but I'm around here long enough to know what happens if you take your eye off the ball this disease will kill you stone dead and here I am I'm getting into the ring me against alcohol every time I'm being knocked out before the first round's over I'm putting the gloves on telling myself how can I do it different this time? And the result's always the same. I'm lying flat on my back looking up at the lights going, what happened this time ? And this happened over and over again. Joe Martin said, I heard him one night, he said a five year old could say, don't get in the ring. But don't getting in the ring means don't take a drink. And I don't know how not to take a drinking. Oh, I can stop drinking but my life doesn't get better when I stop drinking. My life gets worse. An alcohol problem is solved by not drinking alcohol. Our book talks about that. It gives a couple of examples. You have a health issue or a romance issue, you just stop and they stay stopped. Not me. I stop. A week goes by, the stone's back in the shoe, the knot's in the stomach. It feels like everybody's on my case even if they're not. And we hear all the time this disease, it's just like I'm like the mythical King Canute. I'm sitting there telling the tide not to come in And this alcoholism just keeps coming day after day after day. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Because I'm going toe to toe with alcohol. And up until this moment in time, I have never beaten an obsession to drink. It's only what we do together that I can't do alone. And I'm getting beat down time after time after time. You hear me at all the meetings all the time. You know? I never walked into a bar yet and said, you know what? Let me get a shot in a beer. I want to drink myself into a straining shake, you know? I never did that. I just want to get a half a dozen drinks just to get the edge off. Everybody's on my case. Let me take a drink. Finally take that drink. Oh, open my top button. Okay, yes, yes. You see, I'm an alcoholic. I can't have one drink. One drink creates a thirst I can quench. My life's unmanageable, drunk or sober. And I got it. I said both hands on the wheel and a death grip. you know one drink creates a thirst i can't quench you know ones too many in the thousands done enough and this happens over and over again and here the time at meetings here you're still here to this day people trying to go toe-to-toe and then they wake up we called the broken shoelace you just say ah what's the use you take the first drink again this happened over and over again my last drunk was my worst i've been drinking for about three weeks around the clock And this is where I ended up. I ended UP in the loneliest place on earth for an alcoholic. I'm sitting in my apartment, drinking around the clock, against my own will. Knowing loneliness an only alcoholic can know. The thoughts of life with drink terrified me and the thoughts of light without drink terrified me and everything's gone and everybody's gone. I remember looking out the window because I lived at Rockaway Beach and I'm thinking my family's 3,000 miles away I'll never see them again. If you asked me why I couldn't have told you. I could have told you why going in but I can't tell you why coming out. The dots don't connect. Whatever good time I was drinking to make better or whatever bad time I was drink to get away from it peels and comparses into the absolute chaos that I've created now. And I reached that point and we've all reached that point when you realise and you're sitting there and you realise deep down in your innermost self that you have backed the wrong horse. I invested everything in booze I pushed family, friends loved ones away for a drink and here I am high and dry I don't know what day John Barleycorn actually left town but I tell you when he left town that's a lonely day Bill Wilson says loneliness just settled in like a vapour Bill Wilson sums up the end of his disease it's better if I ever heard it in half a dozen words he says quicksand stretched all around him Jesus Christ there's not a better statement for alcoholism. And that's just the way I went. And we've all been in that position. No matter which way I turn, there's nowhere to go. Nobody wants to hear it. They've all heard it before. Yeah, yeah. Tell you your story walking. We've heard it already. You know what? Keep going. You know? We all have our miracle stories and here's mine. That woman who's my wife today was at work. Here's how God works in your life. See, that's my problem. I could never see the hand, the loving hand of God in the thorns of my day. even when I was drinking. But you know, Grace, there has to be some extension on my part. I'm sitting in that house and she's at work and she just burst out crying. And this woman who had just started with the company says, why is that woman crying? And this other girl says, ah, she's got this on again, off again boyfriend. He's a bad drinker and they're talking about breaking the door down in the apartment. They don't know if he's alive or dead and it's just a whole bad scene. And she says, you know, my father's got this friend who's in this thing called Oncoholics Anonymous. You want me to get his number? The woman says, can't do no harm. So she got this number off a guy, Jerry C. from the Bronx, from the old Sobriety Unlimited group. And she put that number, she came down and wrote on a piece of paper what I've been hearing since I was 15. Paul, you're a nice guy but you drink too much. and I had a guy's telephone number on. And I was just amazed. I seen the thing coming to the door and I picked it up, tears rolling down my face. And I picked up the phone and I called a complete stranger. And he had been primed that I might call. And he says, Paul, I said, I can't stop drinking. I can' t stop drinking He says, you can' st stop drinking because you're an alcoholic. And immediately I'm thinking to myself, maybe my brogue is throwing you off. I didn' t say I was an alcoholic, I just said I can't stop drinking, you know. We're getting like lost in translation here, you know. You know, the pride and ego of the alcoholic knows no limits, let's face it. I'm literally landing the gutter looking down on people, you now. Do you know who I am? No, we don't know who you are, you kno. Well, I know who you are. But He said a very strange thing. It's not strange, it's almost spiritual. It is spiritual. He says, Paul, do you believe in God? Now I grew up in Northern Ireland. I grewup in a time and a place where people literally shot each other outside their front door over religion. I remember when I was eight or nine years of age and I heard this rat-a-tat-tat. Like, what's that noise? I look out, there's two guys lying dead outside the front door. And I realised that the war wasn't on the TV, it was actually outside the door. I'm not saying that that was a seminal moment in my life you know, I like to say when I, I think that when I part away from God, it wasn't that sort of chart and Heston moment I wasn't standing on top of the mountain with the thunder and the lightning, it was all very subtle, that's how the lower power works in my wife, it's like a plane flying it doesn't have to go way off course just one degree, that is all and long enough it is completely off course and that is the way it was with me It was like, you know, Sunday morning was that way and Saturday night's over here and the lower power's like, never mind all that. Let's go over here. And there's lots of people who go down that Saturday night road as a youthful excursion, but they don't make it away alive like I did. But I had to realize me running this show, I'm sitting in my apartment 30 years of age, drinking around the clock against my own will and I'm finished and I know it. And all my scorecards read zero. So I thought to myself, what have I got to lose? And he says, Paul, get down on your knees and say a prayer and I'm coming over to your house. And I got down on my knees for the first time in probably 20 years with any degree of authenticity. I used to come out with this sort of stuff. Oh, you want to see God? He never came down our street very often, you know. I thought that was real slick and cool, you Know. but I tell you something thank God he didn't keep me waiting as long as I kept him because I got down on my knees that morning a hopeless drunkard who couldn't stop drinking of his own volition and I haven't taken a drink since and the longest ever I was off drink by myself was six weeks and it wasn't even off drink I was either thinking about a drink drinking a drink or coming off a drunk booze consumed me and I got done on my needs that morning a thought came into my head what have you got to lose and I get on my knee and I cried it was a hot August morning but it might as well have been a cry in the dark and I cried out if there was anything out there please help me and I felt like someone walked up behind me and took a great weight off my shoulders and a sense of peace came over me that I've never experienced before or since and I started to worry and fret and this other feeling kept suppressing it then sitting on the floor totally at peace and this thought came into my head you don't have to drink again if you don'T want to and right after that Jerry came to the door and I told him what I just told you He says, Paul, you're a spiritual experience. It'll get you sober, but it won't keep you sober. We've got to get you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was too sick to go then, but four days later, I was able to go to my first meeting and walking through the doors of AlcoholicsAnonymous is the greatest singular thing that I've ever done in my life. Because unbeknownst to myself, I was moving from the problem to the solution. You know? We do together what I can't do alone. But I made my next big mistake. See, looking back on it, I have this misconception that I thought that, you know, looking back upon it, that me and the disease, you know the first night outside of my first meeting, we would have like a treaty of Versailles moment. Okay, I'm going to go in here and go to these meetings and you're going to goes away and leave me alone. No, no, that didn't happen. That disease walked right in. It's been sitting here at every meeting I've been at. It's heard everything I've heard. You don't need to listen to her or you don't listen to him. You don' t need to do this. You don''t need to that. And I'm sitting in rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and here's my big problem. Because of pride and ego, and intellectual pride, I'm telling myself, my problem is alcohol. See, I am thinking to myself, I had tried to put the plug in the jug myself before I came to AA. Now I'm siting in AA and I'm thinking to my self, now we all have plugs in the juge, and if nobody moves we'll be alright. but people are moving they're moving down the road of recovery I'm like where are you going we're going this way and I'm sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous dying from untreated alcoholism I'm doing this thing tonight I'm a starving man at a spiritual banquet there's all this food here come on ahead Paul take as much as you want it is an abundance and I am over here in bread and water trying to stay sober on the first half of the first step. See, alcohol is only mentioned in the first part of the book. The other 11 and a half steps are designed for me to do something I couldn't do drunk or sober and that's live out there in the real world. A world that I perceive as rude, crude, indifferent, spiritually unjust and they're all out to get me. I don't know who they are. I can never fully quantify or qualify who they were but they're out there and they'll get me that's all I know and that makes for tough living even in AA finally a guy says to me Paul you know something you've been tiptoeing around here real slick trying to when you think about it you can get so far on osmosis in AA people places and things will bring you so far but it's unjust and unspiritual almost to ask them to bring you all the way and I've tried to do that myself being naive, put guys on my back and try to carry them up and down the steps I almost got drunk guys said to me, Paul, you know what this program is not for people that need it it's not even for people who want it it's for people that do it see I was a wanter, oh I want what he has well you better find out what he's doing and then Verdi was the program of Alcoholics Anonymous There's no free lunches in here. I've got through the door and a gift, everything else I've gotta work for. And I thought I was doing what I needed to be doing. It's like the three legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous. Unity, service and recovery. And if somebody had approached me, I'd be like, I got unity. I understand the we part of the first step. I understand that many meetings make it easy, few make it hard and none make it impossible. I've been to a thousand meetings in two and a half years and somebody's going to say well that's probably one of the reasons you're still sober today, congratulations how about service whoa, I got service I'm making more coffee than Juan Valdez you want to see service I'm in service and they're going to say well that is one of the reasons maybe you're still sober but how about door number three recovery Zippo. Nothing. He says, Paul, we don't do this stuff because they're nice. We do them because they are necessary for recovery. If you want to get physically, mentally and spiritually and emotionally rehabilitated, you've got to work the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You've got accept the fact that you suffer from alcoholism. And booze is not just your problem. And if booze isn't just your problems, it's going to take more than not drinking booze to fix you. you've got to take care of everything. That's just why this disease is so cunning, baffling and powerful. We hear all the time Roland Hazard talk about a man he spent a year with a psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. He didn't even make it out of Europe. He got drunk in Paris, went back and Carl Jung wouldn't even take him. I know one guy in particular spent months in a monastery in Ireland. He was drunk within a week of getting back to New York. Doctors. That's what it does to alcoholics. You see, the doctor looks for the physical manifestation. The therapist looks for the causes. The psychiatrist looks for the effects. The clergyman looks for the lack of religious conviction. And the alcoholic dies drunk because nobody can get him sober other than another alcoholic. And that's been my experience. And I had to swallow some hard chunks of truth about myself that if I wanted to get sober and stay sober. And I was dumb, but I wasn't stupid. I knew to go forward is to go to something. Not to go forwards, to backslide to nothing, which is drinking. Half measures do avail you of nothing. You don't put 50% in and get 50% out. You put 50%, like me, you get drunk. It's got to be all in poker. Everything in. And that's what I did. I got a guy and I got into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. because really what I wanted, I'll tell you what I want, I want it to be free. I hear people talking about freedom and I want that free because see, I couldn't get me off of me. I'm sitting in here wearing alcoholism like a cloak that's just sucking the life out of me and sitting in rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous with two hefty bags full of garbage. I'm carrying stuff around from the schoolyard and I'm trying to justify it and rationalize it and defend it and say, Paul, you can't live that way. You've got to get free. Let go absolutely of all your old ideas. Get free of the only person you've got to get from you. Learn to live in the one place you could never live, right here, right now. See I was a fearful person and a fearful personal will always find something to be afraid of. In the forest of life there was a bogeyman behind every tree. I was full of guilt and shame and remorse of the past. I was filled with fear of the future which makes for difficult living in the present. I was everywhere where I was meant to be, right here, right now. Is God in tomorrow? Absolutely. Is he in yesterday? No doubt. But where do I realize his presence the most? Right here, right now and I couldn't live right here, right now because I got so much stuff. It's like sobriety is like a house and over the years I boarded the house up one resentment at a time to the very end. I'm sitting here and there's no sunlight of the Spirit getting in. It talks about in our book that come round from the icy side of the mountain into the sunlight of The Spirit. And I was sitting here and I go, I want God. People say to me, do you want God in your life? Oh yes, I want Gott. I want Got on all time basis. I certainly do. I really do. And they say, well you've got to get rid of the stuff that's blocking God from getting into your life. God wants to have a relationship. We talk about that. If you draw yourself closer, more will be revealed. Paul, you can't draw yourself any closer and he can't drawing himself any closer to you because you've got all this stuff. And you've gotta get rid of that stuff so that he can get in. Like how do you know me? If you hang around with me and get close to me you'll get to know me. And it's the same with the spiritual part of this program. And I couldn't fully get that because I got all these stuff. So I realized I gotta do this program you know all the 12 steps and my sponsor said to me, okay Paul you're going to do the fourth step and I fought this fourth step for so long and then I finally said okay I'm going to the fourth step and I'm thinking to myself they want me to do a fourth step? I'm gonna do the best fourth step that anybody's ever done in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous typical alcoholic Like, I'm going to do a fourth step that people are going to be standing around the coffee pot talking about it. Did you see that fourth step? I didn't see it, but I heard about it, was it really that good? Oh, it was unbelievable. It was unbelievable, it had everything. Old resentments, new resentments. Residual resentments Harms, fears Things you're afraid of Things I'm afraid of Things that we're all afraid of It was a work of art, you know I wanted newcomers to come up to me at meetings and go Are you the guy who wrote that fourth steps that everybody's talking about? and I'd be like why, yes I am and yes I did and it didn't really take that long either you know so I could complicate with a brown paper bag and my sponsor knew this about me he says Paul I want you to do me a favour the big book of it's like driving to Florida the big books the big group of alcoholics will tell you exactly how to get there they'll give you explicit directions you can't go wrong the 12 by 12 Think of it as a spiritual guidebook. It'll tell you what you might see along the way. And do me a favour, Paul. Stick to the black parts on the page. Because I have a habit of reading between the lines. You know, seeing things. Typical alcoholic. Seeing things that aren't there, you know? And I'm thinking to myself, he's been sober a long time. I've got modern defects of character. He's like sober since caveman times, you Know? So I think to myself I'll get the 12 and 12 and the big book especially, and I get a few four-step guides. Oh my God. I mean we have no opinion outside issues, but I had every four-stepped guide that has ever been printed. I had four-steps guides for men, four-streps guides for Irishmen who live just outside Belfast. I had very four-steps guides. There was. I had it. And I just got completely confused. And then I'm at a meeting one night, and I hear this guy saying, and my sponsor's going to me, how is that four-stop coming? Oh, it's coming. Oh, it's coming. You better take a day off work. It's going to blow you away. I'm telling you. I've got everything. Everything's in the hopper. We're moving along. You know, things are happening. I can't really talk about it right now. I've Got to go. My sponsor said to me in the car park, you know, I said at the meeting, you have no idea where you're going but you're in a hurry to get there. You know what I mean? But, so I'm going to... I just got totally confused. I'd meet him one night and I'd hear this old timer get up there. And he says, the fourth step takes as long as it takes in one night. I said to myself, oh my God. I like a darn, I put stuff down on paper. I like what Joe Martin says. It's not really logical. It's pure pragmatism, the program, as long it's being spiritual. I wrote the stuff down in four and I talked about it in five. I wrote stuff down at six and I talk about it at seven. I wrote something down in eight and I've talked about in nine. I got free. I dropped those two hefty bags full of garbage. And I tried to find a spiritual basis for living in those last three steps. And thank God they say we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Because perfection for me is a hope and a dream and illusion that get me drunk. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying underachievement is a virtue of what you're striving for. But that program taught me to do things I couldn't do. As I said, live out there in the real world. Face, tolerate, endure. bear discomfort in order to gain comfort. Take on long-term goals and chip away at them albeit a day at a time. Whether it be physical sobriety, good mental health, emotional balance or a spiritual basis for living. I was just told by a guy you can't do it in 20 minutes and you can' t do it perfect. What's the point in doing it? I strive for averages today and those three steps and I got free as I said and the only person I could never get free from, which is me. And this program gave me so much more. As I said, alcohol is only mentioned in the first half of the first step. I have a rhythm in my life today. I have meaning. I have purpose. I'm not sitting in some bar half-drunk saying to myself, how did this ever happen again? It was never meant to get this bad. I've got used people with me on a journey. We do together what I can't do alone, and that's not drink one day at a time. I'm so glad that we read those traditions tonight because those traditions tell me what I have to do. They pretty much sum up this whole program for me. As Dr. Bob did in 1950, when it's been said that he gave that three-minute talk, almost like a Gettysburg Address has been referred to. In three minutes he summed up everything an alcoholic synonymous is about, just as Abraham Lincoln did in 280 words about the Civil War. And he sumed it all up. He says, you know what? Love and service. And if we could put this whole thing in some sort of a refiner's fire or be excused upon, distill it all down, we would have those two words, love and service, unconditional love, not only for the people in AA but the people outside AA and service can I help you. So I'm just sort of like, yeah, I'll help you, I'll hope you get well if you show me you already are, you know. I'm reading one time the conversion of St. Francis that's what I love they said the old South Bronx group used to say we don't give up on anybody I remember hearing that and I said what a spiritual what a simplistic spiritual statement we don' t give up on anybody and that's what I live about Alcoholics Anonymous you know in the conversion of St. Francis he walked out of the town and he seen a leopard at the side of the road and he kept walking and he stopped thought better and turned around, went back and gave the guy a hug at a time when leprosy was like. And he walked on, he looked over his shoulder again and the leper was gone. And he stayed until his dying day that he believed it was God himself. And that's how you have to remember. And that is where I found God. I found god in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was where... I wanted to see some big neon light. Here Paul, I am over here. You know, some burning bush. You know, some universal message. I found God in the trembling hand of a newcomer. I found god in the bottom of a coffee pot. I found god in a fellowship of alcoholics and they told me if you can't believe what you don't see Paul, believe what you can see. And I could see people sober and they were happy and they were effective and they Were getting on with their lives. And I said I want what they have. Would you better do what they did? you know and that's what I'm saying if I live three lifetimes I can't pay back what Alcoholics Anonymous done for me you know how it is today I mean life's not easy I had this misconception when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous now that I'm not drinking I'll just walk between the raindrops and every day I'll be 75 and sunny there's been things that have happened to me far more traumatic in the rooms of alcoholics and almas that never happened out there drinking. And how do I do it? The old timers told me how to do it. You'll do it one day at a time, Paul. It's like when I'm back to school, I say to my sponsor, I can't go back to School. The gifts that this program has given me, I was 32 years of age. I didn't even have a high school diploma. And all the shame and disgrace and the self-loathing that goes with that. I signed up for college and I said to my spouse, I can do it, He says, you can do it. I said, how am I going to do it? He says you're going to do it how we do it How do we do things around here Paul? We do them one day at a time What if I fail a class? So what? You'll take it again Nothing beats a failure but a try and that's what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous We keep trying and that is what I did I said what if they throw me out? The day they throw you out you call me That day never came They were standing next to me when I threw my hat in the air Typical alcoholic I said this is great I went and got another degree and then I got a master's degree and then a second master's degree. But my sponsor always keeps me humble. He says, you know, every time I think I'm an above the herd intellectual he says, Paul, you known, a thermometer's got 100 degrees and you know what nurses do with those don't you? I told me, it's okay to have your head in the clouds as long as your feet's on the ground, Paul you know and as I said before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous like Oscar Wilde I knew the price of everything and the value of nothing I got things of real value here at AlcoholicsAnonymous you know and I could use people here together the service you know the service of alcoholics and so someone Bill Wilson said on his death not his death bed on the day he got sober he had this vision yeah it could have been his deathbed of a chain of drunks around the world and that's what I am that's why that's my that's how I do in my program I ask that's My Maintenance Program God make my link strong make it strong to the people coming behind me make it stronger to the People walking ahead of me So if someone can say to me, Paul, take me on that journey. I can say, yes please. As we walk side by side. Take me on the journey. Take me to that place where you speak about peace and happiness and serenity. Take me in a place where I no longer regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. I can tell you, take this journey with me. This fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's why those traditions are so important. I want them to be here for my children, my grandchildren. as far as I'm concerned this is a miracle not only the 20th century but all 20 centuries because you think about it what have we just hit here we've all just hit a lucky streak we've just got sober no because right now there's somebody spending their Friday night a lot different than the way we're spending ours and they're sitting as we were drinking around the clock against their own will I used to get into that that we are the chosen ones like spiritual elitism I don't believe that today. Not the God that I have come to know and love in Alcoholics Anonymous. If sobriety is a gift from God, then everybody's entitled to it. The grace of God is like the rain that falls on everyone. I just don't know when that drop of rain fell on my face. I had that moan of clarity and had that small extension of grace that asked God to come into my life and the guy down the bar just wiped it away and drank himself to death. I don' t know. But I know what I'm meant to do here. The highest pay grade in Alcoholics Anonymous is servant. I've got to give and give and give. See, I'm the sort of guy, I like to give until I feel warm and fuzzy. I've Got to give until it hurts over and over and over again. Why? Because I'm the problem. I have always been the problem. I am a taker all my life. Always have been. I'll think about me four times before you will even enter the equation. My wife catches me all the time, even to this day. She will be telling me some problem as it relates to her and I'll glaze over. And she'll go, you're thinking how this is going to affect you, right? I'm like, no I'm not, but I am, you know? I used to try to cop out in that stuff. Oh, it's DNA. It's not DNA. It's non-avoidable or uncontrollable. But it's so ingrained in me as an alcoholic. My holy trinity was me, me, me. It's all about me. I've got to break the Shackle, the bondage of self. The handcuffs of alcohol have been taken off the bondages of self and how do I do that? Helping others over and over because when I'm helping you I'm not thinking about me and those old timers that I met from the South Bronx they set that bar really high of helping others and today in Alcoholics Anonymous I've got a good life. As I said, things happen in AA. A friend of mine says the same things that happen to people out there happen to the people in here. I remember we were a little more fortunate that we've got a program that helps us get through life one day at a time. I had a year there recently, couldn't believe it, 15 years sober, lying in bed, heart attack. Now I would like to tell you that the first person who showed up was spiritual Paul, but unfortunately alcoholic Paul got there just a little bit ahead of him. I'm like, I can't believe you're doing this to me. You've been stroking me all these years. So you're just waiting for it. Now you're really going to give it to me. I knew it was serious. They rushed me to the hospital. They brought me to a local hospital in Rocco, and they said, no, take them right to Long Island Jewish. They've got a 24-hour team on standby. So I knew It was serious I get into the hospital And they said Is that your wife? I said, yeah, okay We see you've got A cross around your neck Are you a Catholic? I'm like, well, is it better if I'm Jewish? You know Typical alcoholic Like, let me keep all my options open. You never know. The doctor walks in. I'm like, shalom. Oy vey, can you believe this is happening to me? Never heard an Irish, a Jewish-Irish guy, you know? And I'm lying there and I'm worrying and fretting. It was like God finally stepped in and said, enough already. I'm taking over. And a sense of peace came over me. and they got me out of hospital a short time later and I'm back in hospital again they realised I've got some problem that I've had since I was a baby and they brought me back into the room again and they were going to put a pacemaker in I ended up flatlining I'm dead for a couple of minutes and I knew I was dead I knew it was dead as well as I'm standing here right now next thing you know I'm floating I'm like this is not good next thing I'm backing Ireland I said, God, I'm walking down the street of my hometown. It's a beautiful summer's day and azure sky. Thinking later, I said maybe that's my idea of heaven. A cloudless day in Ireland, you know. Who knows? Very rare, you Know. It has to be heaven, right? But I got a three-year-old at home that I love more than life itself. I says, God please, I got work to do. Please let me go back. I want to see that little girl grow up. I want the next thing I'm floating, I'm back in my body again. All these nurses around me. He's back online. Give us a bit of a scare there Paul. Once again, once again, me feeling sorry for myself but the hand of God was there the whole time. If that had happened anywhere else except six feet from an OR door there would be somebody else standing here tonight. It wouldn't be me. and they put the stuff in and got me sorted out and the reason I'm telling you this is because everything in alcoholics is a day at a time because these nurses came to visit me and they went we're veteran nurses and we've been around this hospital a long time working in the OR we heard you had a near death did you cross over did you go to the other side I said well I went to Ireland we used to call it the other site but I don't know if that's the other sign you're referring to, you know. And they said, you know, the reason I'm telling this is because we know people as it's happened to and they've come back and told us that it was a defining moment in their life. You know, one of those seminal moments. I'm saying to my wife, you know... My wife's the brains of the outfit. I'm sitting to mywife, you know what? That's going to be me. I'm going to make this change me. I'm not going to sweat the small stuff anymore. I'm never going to get annoyed in the supermarket. I'm ever going to get annoyed in traffic. I'm gonna see things differently. My wife is like, yeah, okay, we'll see, We'll see, we'll see. And sure enough, for the first few weeks that I came out of hospital, I was like the Dalai Lama of New York. I mean, seriously. Somebody had cut me off. I was, like, peace be with you. God made a big world. There's room for the both of us. You know? I'm in no hurry. I'm an eternity. You know. Then you miss a few meetings. You don't talk to your sponsor and somebody cuts you off in Queens and next thing you know you're in Riverhead, you know. And they're like, what happened to spiritual Paul? That's what I'm saying. This thing is so tenuous. And that's the way it has to be one day at a time. The time that I think I've got this in my back pocket good to go is the day I'm getting ready to get drunk again. I say that we do together what I can't do alone. And I'd like to sum up the power of Alcoholics Anonymous in a little story that's very close to my heart because it involves two things that are very near and dear to me and that's Ireland and AlcoholicsAnonymous. And maybe you've heard me tell this before. But in 1946, there was no Alcoholics Anonymous in Ireland. And is there ever a country that needed AA? It was Ireland, right? And there's a guy, a policeman from Philadelphia, his name was Connor Flynn. Now he'd been born in Ireland but he spent most of his life working as a policeman in Philadelphia and he retired and he went back to Ireland on a vacation and he realized he had two years of sobriety and he recognized there was no meetings of AA in Ireland and he sent a letter to New York and they said well we'll send you a start up package and they sent him a package and much like Bill Wilson 10 or 11 years earlier he walked the streets of Dublin trying to find someone to get a meeting started he put ads in newspaper it was getting nowhere he was ready to give up finally went into a hospital he met a doctor and this doctor had been like Dr. Silkworth 11 years ago They're treating alcoholics and never seeing anybody get sober. And the guy told him, he said about AA. And the doctor says, you know, I'd never heard of AA. But we got a guy down in one of those rooms. He's been detoxed 30 or 40 times. But sometimes he's drunk on the way home from the hospital. If you can make an impression on him, I'll give you the full support of this hospital. So Connor Flynn went down. The guy lying in the bed was called Richard Percival from Dungenne. And he did what I try to do here tonight. Sure experience, strength and hope. How he got drunk, how he got sober and how the man in the bed might get sober. Now Richard Percival had heard it all before from many people but he knew something was different this time. This man was talking his language. And Richard Perrival got out of his bed and never took another drink to the day he died in 1971. And those two men started AA in Ireland. That's the power of alcoholics and armists. That's a power of one alcoholic working with another. I need you and you need me and that's okay by me you know and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me stay sober here tonight you know and if you're just coming new to Alcoholics Anonymous please stay here because there's nothing out there for you only pain trouble and misery because I've been there before a drift on a sea of booze no moral compass no spiritual moorings if there was any coordinates it was pain and misery and it wasn't a glacial drift I was moving at a fast clip to nothingness and nowhere went all the way to the precipice and God put his hand on my shoulder and says no, you're not going over the edge I'm probably an alcoholic synonymous after the ability to live two lives in one lifetime because of AA people say oh I got my life back in AA I don't want my life it sucked, you can keep it I got a whole brand new life in there here you go Paul here's a brand new page a brand New Pencil are the people in my life today that were there with drunk and I was drinking absolutely but it's a different relationship today everything before was built on sand and one drink came along and washed it all away today because of you people and the fellowship and the program my house is on concrete today and I thank you for that and that's all I'll say thank you very much Thank you.