The Identity of a Recovering Alcoholic – Mike B.

Thanks, Jim. Thank you, David, for asking me to share. I was hoping you would. You would have had my feelings hurt if you hadn't. So I already prayed at the Eldorado. Anyway, I'm amazed I'm sober. You know, I really identify with Jim a lot because I had periods of complacency too, you know, in my sobriety. And I just think it's grace that pulled me through and it's also an excellent sponsorship that I happened to stumble into when I was a newcomer. You know, I got real lucky. Georgie is my original sponsor. And in my opinion, you know, I just got the best there is. And I feel real happy to be here because I love David and Georgie a lot, you know. They saw me come in when I was new. I walked up to Georgie on June 1st, 1976 six because somebody turned me in her direction and pushed me at her and said, this guy said, if I was a woman, that's who I'd ask to be my sponsor. I was ready. I Was ready, man. I was beat. And I walked up to her and I said, you know, this program isn't working for me too well. Would you be my sponsored? And she said, well, we're all going to Sambos tonight. You know, you come along with us. So I did. The reason the program wasn't working too well is I used to sit in meetings loaded, you know? Better living through, you know, chemistry. What I did was I went to mental health and I got a lot of pills, you know, because I knew when I drank it was bad. That's all I knew. Somebody had given me the big book to read, you know, before I got... I mean somebody gave me the big book six months before I got sober and I loved the big book, man. I knew I was an alcoholic when I read it. I read chapter two. She said your assignment tonight is to read chapter two. This is a woman that had slipped off the program. We were drinking together, you know. So I read chapter two and I went, my God. This is it. I didn't know I was going to be a drunkard. I didn' t know I wasn't an alcoholic. I knew that when I drank, bad things happened. You know. That's the way I drank. I was talking to Michael earlier. I never knew what was goingto happen. I was a Jekyll and Hyde drinker. You know, I started out drinking with the kids, you know, in high school. And I was always the fun person because I was crazy. You know? I do daring things. And, you now, it progressed. It progressed real fast. Like the lady... You know. The big book talks about the women alcoholics. How sometimes they progress very quickly. That in a few short years we are gone beyond recall. And that was me. Once I started drinking seriously when I was 25. I made it to the program at 28 years old. you know, it didn't take much. I didn't consume a lot of alcohol. I didn't have to. You know, I just had, I just was, I just had three drinks and woke up with rug burns on my face in very strange places. In very strange places. I had a lot of fun. You know, I used a lot of drugs prior to seriously drinking, which ended up being my drug of choice. You know, I did speed, I did heroin, I did acid, I did a lot of weed, I did all that stuff i didn't do coke very much because i just was a kind of a garbage head drink you know user so i didn'T run with a you know the heavy crowd man you know the elite coke snorters you know fuck them i always look down on them you know just kidding if i was given enough coke i still probably would be out there chasing it you know doing whatever i had to do to get it anyway This program has given me my life, period. I didn't go around the world, but had I, I still wouldn't have had anything because I identify with Jim in that I didn' t have anything to lose. I never felt that I had anything to lose. I never made, I never had a career. I never was a professional. I never ever had any self-esteem since little tiny kid. I never heard anything that I felt that was worth losing until I had a child. Until I had a child and that put a bug of guilt you know in my consciousness. Maybe it got me to the program quicker, you know. So anyway, my recovery has been absolutely miraculous. You know, it's been crazy. My sponsor told me early on that no matter what happens, Nugent, you don't drink and you don t use. She gave me some real simple direction but very solid, very real and she was honest with me. She said, And no matter what happens, you don't drink or use. You go to a lot of meetings and she took me through the steps. And she cut me a lot off slack because I was really a lunatic, you know? And she had to. I just was me. I was me! My drinking took me to a whole lot of places. I went to a bunch of bad places, you know? It wasn't all fun. It got worse, you know? It all happened to me. I drank in bars. I was out there. I was visible. I was vulnerable when I drank. I didn't know what would happen and a lot of really bad things happened. And I went to jail. I got in car wrecks. I got raped. All that stuff happened to me, you know. And that's where my disease took me. And it's really a miracle that God saved my life over and over again. I've been in coma and a coma is a result of using drugs. You know, it's a miracle that I'm sober. It's a miracle that I am alive. This program has given me who I am. It's not just given me my life, which it has. It's made it possible for me to live. But it's given me a life beyond anything that I ever could have imagined because something I never had before in my life was any sense of well-being or inner peace, you know. And nobody could have ever told me that out there. You couldn't have told me dat until I was ready. I didn't believe that I could feel good without something in me. I had to have something in m. I had t have something, man, because my problem was sobriety. I couldn't be straight. It was torment. I had to be loaded. I guess I've always had a feeling that there was a God. I turned my back on God when I was 17 years old, you know, because he didn't do things my way. There was something that I wanted very badly. I wanted it very badly and I thought that God told me no, but that wasn't the way it was. That's the way I saw it. I turned My back on My God. And so, you Know, and I got back here. You gave Me that back, you Now. you gave me god back and the way i do it is that i cannot get alone with god too long i can't go by myself away from this program as david said you know the religions and all the stuff all that's good stuff you know but for us for people like us it's got to be the fellowship of the spirit this is it this is you know and it's taken me some time to really accept that When I came here, I surrendered my disease to Alcoholics Anonymous and to a sponsor. And I took enough direction in my insanity to still be here and to fall back on that direction when I was off being alone with God. So God works through you people. God works Through You People to me. And I hope that I've said something that might have helped someone, even if it's one person in the room, because that's what it's all about. You know, that I love you and you love me, and that's all that matters. God bless you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Michael Butler. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Michael. user and abuser of whiskey, wine, and women marijuana, hashish, cocaine codeine, valium librium stelazine LSD and then we told suppositories to the easier, softer way This is a hell of a meeting. This is really great. God, what a great room, what a great crowd. I'm saying that, of course, in the hopes that you'll like me. Really essential to my emotional well-being at any given moment that all of you like me, my duty, my obligation, my responsibility to make sure that every single one of you likes me. What an order, man. I can't go through with it. How are we doing? Are we doing okay? You like me? All right. It'll get worse. I'd like to thank my sponsor, David, for inviting us up here to share with you our experience, strength and hope, frustration, anxiety and despair like to welcome the out-of-towners like to welcome the out-to-spacers God bless you brothers, sisters I know just how you feel it's a pleasure and a privilege to participate in any way at any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous this is a hell of a deal man it's one of the great what a program I mean, you know, name another outfit in which I could have bought a couple of round-trip plane tickets to Burbank, gotten up at 6.30, driven from Santa Barbara to Burrank, gotten on the plane, rented a room at the El Dorado, done a little controlled gambling, you now, come here and tell you that I'm terrified. Sure as hell hope the reward is worth the price, you know. It'll keep me sober, you know, if I don't drink before midnight. And what's left of my ego has a lot at stake there. I date my sobriety from January 12, 1975. and I've worked the world's worst program and I am here by dint of the 12 steps. God as he expresses himself in my brother and sister alcoholics and I move to suspect from time to time that it's only ego that keeps me sober. You know, I don't want to have to stand and raise my hand again. God damn! My name is Michael Levin! I might get Frank as a sponsor. You know? Those were the toughest. Those were the toughest words I have ever been required to articulate in my entire life. My name is Michael, and I'm an alcoholic. I've said things which on the surface might sound as though they were more difficult. You know, it's been my sad and solemn duty to inform, you know, at least one set of parents that their unwed daughter was pregnant by me, I presuppose. That ain't easy, as some of you know. At least one person knows. it has been my sad and solemn duty to ask three wives for my walking papers or to give them theirs and that isn't easy either as some of you know But the most difficult, the most painful, the most anguishing... We do take ourselves seriously, don't we? The most difficult thing that I have ever had to say is my name is Michael and I'm an alcoholic. And those are the words that set me free. Those are the word that set my mind free. Those are words that sets me free how difficult it is evidently for us to free ourselves from the coils of that savage, brutal, devastating, mindless, soulless, ruthless goddamn disease. How tough it is to set ourselves free. We're really up against something. We're real. We're literally up against some. For those of you who are very new, please understand that everything I say here this evening is my opinion as its basis in my experience. I am not an authority on alcoholism. I'm not an Authority on Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm here to tell you my story, allow you to make a couple of benign judgments that you can take home with you to keep myself sober. Alcoholism is a three-fold disease. It is an allergy of the body. That means that we're allergic to this stuff, whatever it happens to be. We don't metabolize it the way non-alcoholic, non-addictive people metabolize it? Secondly, it's an obsession of the mind. Obsession, as I heard it recently described, is when we do something against our will. The obsession of the mind characterized itself in my drinking experience by informing me that I had to have a drink right now. Not that I wanted one, not that I kind of felt like thinking about one. The obsession of the mind informed me that I had to have a drink, right now, whether it was six o'clock in the morning or six o clock in the evening is relevant. Alcoholism for those who haven't heard this yet is also described as a spiritual malady, a malady of course is, I suppose, another word for illness, disease, spiritual malady. I was baffled when I heard that word spiritual. I really knew nothing about it. It was explained to me by my first sponsor early in my sobriety. He said, spiritual simply refers to how you feel, to how you feel, how you feel. Where you feel whatever it is that you're feeling, that is my sponsor described, my first sponsor described it to me, is your spirit. And we are here, he said, to help you work on your spirit. If you are new and you are sitting back there and you are in the grips of terror, if you feel, if you know that in the next three or four seconds your body is simply going to split, half of it is going to fall to the right, half of its going to ball to the left, right and there's going to be a pool on the carpet man I know exactly how you feel because that's the way I felt when I was kneeled if you are confused if you're in a situation if you have a problem if you think you are angry if you are broken hearted you're in the right place and all of that whatever you are feeling if you aren't new whatever you are feeling is normal for where you're coming from normal for where you're coming from okay it's really important that you keep coming back because you may not hear anything I say this evening you may now identify with anything that I'm feeling or that I have felt you may not care for the way I don't part my hair anymore but it is vital it is vital if you want to set yourself free from this monstrous disease that has its coils around your neck. For God's sake, for your sake, keep coming back. Because sooner or later something will penetrate. Somebody will get up to this podium or to another podium or be sitting at a table in a discussion meeting and will say exactly what you need to hear in order to allow you to save your ass. and that's what this program is about. It's a save-your-own-ass program. I've got it made. I've Got It Made because I can feel an experience on the natch. Everything that alcohol and drugs used to allow me to feel and experience before they started to kick my ass. And that, as Clancy Eye from Out of the Sky informs us, is what this thing is about. Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to allow you to feel all of the things that booze and drugs allowed you to feel before they started to lay you out, chew you up yeah, and spit on the pieces okay? That's what this is about this isn't just about learning how to crawl it's not just about learning how to walk This thing is about learning how to fly, okay? That's what it's about. My most profound fear, and by the way, at almost any given moment, I can be counted upon to be deathly afraid of at least 35 things. I can inventory them right now and let you know what they are after the meeting. that's the kind of mechanism I have up here it is really busy all of them are busy simultaneously all of right I'm going to tell you what them are them are the committee them are the voices if you don't think you have voices and you're new stick around maybe you can only hear one or two them are what told me when I was new when I stood up to say my name is Michael and I'm an alcoholic them are what told me they're all looking at you they don't like you they know all about you My most profound fear as I stand here, one of my two most profound fears as I standing here right now is that you guys are going to pull my permit. Okay? Is that you're going to... Somebody's going to be... I don't think he's a real alcoholic. That, quite literally, is one of the things that is one of my deepest fears, man, because if I ain't an alcoholic, I'm nobody. Okay? If I'm not a recovering alcoholic, I have no identity at all. Because this fear is so intense, I opened the big book yesterday. It fell open, as it always does, to the page that I needed to see. They quit in time. All right? So I know that I didn't shoot as much smack as some of you. As a matter of fact, I never did shoot smack. You know? I never wrecked a car. I was never... I'm not sure if I was ever a cop. I was always never raped, frankly. I don't think I was raped that I'm willing to cop to. Let's put it that way, okay? But more will be revealed. Besides, two beers and a shove, and who knows, you know? Anything is possible. You know. I didn't do nearly as much of that white nose candy as some of you did, And alcohol is not the enemy, by the way. I do not despise or hate or loathe alcohol. I don't despise or loath or hate marijuana, hashy, stelazine, valium, librium, or LSD. But I hate cocaine. I hate cocaine. It turns people into monsters. They do that stuff and they become a power greater than themselves. I don't like it. I feel really hostile towards it. Maybe I should pray for it. Huh? My second most intense fear as I stand here before you and generally as I walk about the business of daily life is that I am not going to be me. is that I am not going to be in touch with who I am and what I am feeling at any given moment. My greatest fear these days, or one of my two greatest fears, is that i am going to continue to be as phony, as unreal, as false, as deceitful and self-perceptive, as inauthentic as I have been for most of my 46 years on this planet. That is one of my two greatest fears, that I'm not going to get real. I drank and used because I was invisible. I drank and used because I got at a very early age that who I was and what I was and what i felt and what i needed and what i desired and what i wanted and what i said were wrong insufficient inadequate offensive and bad and bad. And I got it at a very early age that if I continue to come on with all of this stuff of my own reality, the things that I felt, the things I wanted, the things That I needed, I got It at a real early age that Mommy was going to reject me and Daddy was going to withdraw and withhold His praise and his support, his power and his glory and without those things from mommy and daddy as a child I knew because it is the nature of children to know these things I knew that I would perish, I knewthat I would die having understood that if I was the way I truly was and felt the way i truly felt and desired and needed the things that I truly did, having understood that if I did those things, she would withdraw her love. She would reject me. She would withdraw Her love. He would withdraw His praise, His support, His sharing of power and glory. I got it that I simply could not afford to be me. I couldn't afford to being me. I could only afford to become what I thought Mommy wanted me to be, to express what I thought she wanted me to express, to think and feel what I thought she want me to think and feel. And as far as Daddy was concerned, I knew that it was incumbent and obligatory upon me to perform perfectly in everything I attempted. Okay. All right. But the real me ceased to exist at a very early age, and I spent the next, you know, I spent the next 40 years running from it, denying it denying it denial denial it's a disease denial we deny that we have the disease i deny that i'm feeling anger i didn't deny that I'm feeling lost I deny that I'm felling conflict I have spent my life in denial which is a form of dishonesty and I am tired of it and there is no payoff and I just want to get real with me so I can get but real with you, so that you'll like me. There's no profound sociological reason that I should have become an alcoholic. You know, I was born into a perfectly respectable upper-middle class communist atheist family. You know? Thrown in at an early age, you know, into a school where everybody in my first and second grade classes, every single one of them We're tall and strong and quick and tough. I wasn't like that. I was small and slow and weak and chicken shit. These are the facts. These are facts that haven't changed much. You know, they haven't change much. And that added to my sense of invisibility, my sense non-existence. It added to all of the pressures and stresses I felt internally to be something other than what I was, to feel or at least to express things that were other than what I really felt. You know, that contributed to my being dishonest, deceitful, and denial, a fugitive, a fugative from my own God-given nature. And what I want to do as much as, you know, as much of anything, and it's only sobriety that will ever allow me to do this, what I want to do is I want to get as close to my God-given nature as I can. Because that's where he and I come together. I don't know how else to describe it. When I was ten, we packed up and left Southern California very quickly for Mexico for reasons which were at first obscure to me, but I quickly understood that they were political. This was 1951. The FBI was after my father. They wanted to take him to Washington. They wanted him to rat off on the rest of his Marxist-Atheist friends, and he didn't want to do that. And so we took the easier, softer way and bailed. And I was, you know, thrown into a different school down there where everybody in my sixth grade class was tall and strong and quick and tough, and I was still small and slow and weak and chitty-chitty. And then... And I felt different and I felt inadequate and I felt isolated and terribly, terribly frightened and awfully confused. When I was 16, I visited my grandfather in a upper-class Republican enclave in Southern California and I found myself one afternoon thrown into a beach party full of beautiful rich young Republicans and you can imagine how I felt. And somebody put a glass in my hand and they said, here, try this. And it was gin and tonic and it tasted awful. You know, people don't become addicted to quinine water. But because all of these exquisite-looking young people were drinking this stuff, If I drank, I just wanted them to like me. And halfway down the glass, I discovered the magic of alcohol. I found that sense of clarity, that sense of serenity that I doubt that I'd experienced since I was a child of three or four, you know, before the fall from grace. You know, the lights got mellow and suddenly I wasn't scared anymore. Suddenly I wasn'T different anymore. Suddenly I WASN'T a panic-stricken 16-year-old Marxist atheist anymore. suddenly I too was a beautiful, rich young Republican. It was heaven. It was Heaven. God, no wonder they did it. You know. Now only a fool having discovered the keys to the magical kingdom is going to give up on them or give them away. I had discovered the keys to their kingdom. It may have been that night that my bed set itself on fire. I'm not sure. You know, I know a couple of things about my early experiences, my earliest experiences with alcohol. I was an alcoholic from the gate. Absolutely from thegate. I never had anything to say about how much I was going to drink once I started to drink. I never heard anything to do about what I was gonna do once I decided to drink, you know. I was never a social drinker. Never social anything except a bore. You know, I was a social bore. I drank as often as I could, as much as I Could for the next 17 years. You know I blew away two chances at a first-rate education. You know so I enrolled in a marriage to a woman whom I feared and craved and loathed. I gave her my pink slip you know since she had an owner's manual and I didn't, you know. You know. Then all of my conscious efforts to feeling what I thought she wanted me to feel, thinking what I felt, thinking what she wanted to think and behaving the way I thought she wanted her to behave. So she would love me. So I would feel alive. So I'd feel okay. It didn't work. Didn't work so I told her to pack up and split instantly enrolled in another relationship with a woman whom I feared and craved and loved gave her my pink slip set out to feel what I thought she wanted me to feel and think the way I thought she wanted me to think and behave the way I thought she wanted me to behave so she would love me so I'd feel okay by this time I was a daily drinker I have not been in jail furthermore, either okay, I was institutionalized once as a result of some LSD which I'd taken only socially this was in this was in New York, this was January 23rd 1965 okay, the stuff was still fairly new they were still working out the kinks at Harvard you know I went to this guy's apartment I kind of knew him you know he said you have to try some LSD I said what's that he said I can't explain and he was right we smoked a little grass then we dropped a little methadrine then we drop a little librium and then each of us took 400 mics of Sandoz LSD 25 you know the psychedelic guy came over with his Ravi Shankar record in his Tibetan Book of the Dead and they read us through the bardos you know and I vaporized man gone out you know felt through his face forever into a blazing white star, you know. Reintegrated in human form and I was reborn. You laugh, you now. Fell out of the cosmic womb into the arms of four New York City policemen. They're only wondering why I destroyed this apartment, you know? I didn't have a stitch of clothes on. I have been naked in public, You know, I want somebody to identify. And I had this brass thing in my hand and I wanted some space and these cops weren't honoring my simple desire for space. You know in L.A. they would have shot me but New York they just hit me alongside the head with a stick knocked me down, threw me in, put me handcuffs on put me in a straight jacket You know, through the icy cold streets of New York City in the dead of winter at 2 o'clock in the morning. You know? And I woke up on the... in the launching pad at Bellevue Hospital in midtown Manhattan. You know. Lockdown ward. Seventh floor. Paper slippers. Where are my glasses? Where are mine skivvies? Because I was a nice kid like me doing it in a place like this. You know how? boy god damn fortunately I knew what day it was I knew who the president was you know, I knew I was out in front of the national conference or whatever they decided I was sane they let me go but I discovered that the kid who had been with me that had given me this stuff while I was fighting off the cops he had somehow gone out the fourth story window and I was blocked you get it? I was locked on the moment alright and this story made the papers in LA you know and his parents were very upset we had parents you know it was not uncool to have parents in those days and they let it be known that if he died they were going to prosecute me for his murder and there were no witnesses okay this kid broke every bone in his body he had massive internal injuries He's on the critical list for six months getting peace back together. And so for six month, I live waiting for the knock on the door, waiting to be arrested for murder. I don't know how your head works with guilt. I'll tell you how my head works will guilt. In the six months that I was waiting for that kid to die, there were two ways that I stayed sane. One was I drank. I mean, I drank a lot. I mean I drank lot to keep the terror away. And the other was that I put myself on trial. I found myself guilty. I sentenced myself to death. This is all in my mind, okay? This is All In My Mind. And I strapped myself into the chair and I pulled the switch on the electric chair again and again and against and again for six months, okay. That was the way I survived those six months. I had another nine years of drinking to do. I didn't get the message. my denial took the form of there wasn't a problem, okay? There just wasn't a problem. I suppose I hit bottom at about 1972 and just left skid marks into late 1974. By that time I was not only a blackout drinker, I had rolling blackouts driving cars behind a mixture of gin and ice pack, if anybody remembers that. That was fashionable grass at the time. Rolling blackouts, you'd come to at the wheel of a car and say, where am I? Oh yeah, Chicago, it's Kenwood. Oh yeah. Then you'd go out again. Then you come back. Oh, where are my, oh yeah. You remember it, right? I would see insects, you know, termites and spiders. I was hearing noises that weren't, you know. I mean, I was a morning drinker. I always had the flu. I had a lot of things poorly. I'd been a private secretary, okay? I'd been a set builder and a carpenter. I've been a documentary filmmaker. You know, I was trying to get my foot in the door of the movie business. And, you know, I cheated on my second wife whom I continued to fear and crave and loathe as often as I could, I was choiceless. Alcoholism had stripped me of my self-esteem. It had stripped me of my hopes. It had stripped me of any and all capacity to be honest and truthful. I used, you know, I found myself using out-of-the-way places as latrines. And I found myself staring at a world which had become gray and flat and stale. I found myself saying, is this all there is? I found my self saying, who the hell cares? Who cares? Who cares?" I think it was only the occasional smiles that I used to see on my three sons' faces I had three sons by that time. It's only the occasional smiles I used to see on their faces kept me from taking my own life, so it seems. My bottom rose to hit me, you know, and I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on December 11th, 1974. And I was escorted by the woman who took me into a room three times this size, filled with three times as many people, and every single one of them was tall and strong and gorgeous. And I was short and fat and bearded and I had a headband and a haircut by Black & Decker and my socks were mismatched and I lost the ability to remember my phone number and I'd lost the opportunity to put together a complete thought or to articulate a complete sentence. and I knew that I was dying and I know I knew a couple of other things I knew that I couldn't blame anybody for that predicament I knew that everybody had done the best they could all of my life parents shrinks instructors wives girlfriends you know I couldn' lay off the blame on them I didn't even have Richard Nixon to kick around and I encourage if there is anybody in this room who is laying off the blame someplace else I pray that that will not be necessary for you because I believe it is a loser's game here. It doesn't matter alcoholism is a no fault disease okay, it just doesn't matters I'm one of the extremely fortunate and blessed members of this program because at that very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I went to no listening to the first speaker I had ever heard I had a moment of clarity and it came to me that the world was the way it was and I was the way I was for one very, very simple reason I was an alcoholic and I embraced that fact and that recognition instantly with all of my heart because I had spent 34 years wondering who I was, what I was. And I was home. Okay? I was at home. I put together two weeks of sobriety and then I got so happy with myself that I went out and celebrated. The disease had owned me for 17 years and I suspect had owned my personality for the 17 years prior to my drinking in the union. but I came right back and I put together two more weeks of sobriety and then I got so happy with myself that I went out and I put it to the test and celebrated and you know it just didn't work and I came back I came back and I stuck because even though I couldn't hear chapter 5 even though I it just wasn't coming in you know there weren't nothing was happening up here except them alright I stuck because I could hear the music alright all right i could feel the vines i got that you understood me i got that you accepted me for exactly what i was sick suffering hopeless helpless falling down drunk i kept coming back because i understood that all of the cliches were true for me one drink was too many and a thousand weren't enough it was the first drink that got me drunk and not the 17th and not the 24th okay the first and I kept coming back because very early in my sobriety I saw her you know who she is instantly fell in lust with her yeah she was a parole officer and I basically hung out at meetings because I wanted to meet her and I finally met her The first night I no longer had to put up my hand. God, I was proud of myself. Somebody introduced me to her, you know, and she looked at me, she looked through me, she looked into a different zip code and she said, oh, are you a newcomer? You know, I only wanted her to like me, you now. You know. But in that moment, I learned something and there is a lesson for me in every moment of adversity and every moment of humiliation and every momento calamity there is a lesson for me there is something to be learned that God as I understand him is trying to tell me and what I learned in that moment when that woman absolutely ignored me was the meaning of the word ego as we use it in AA I had been thinking about me I had ben thinking about me and her how much she loved me how much I meant to her how important I was to be loved by her thinking that she loved me for loving her. Ego, ego. Okay? Ego. Me. All right. Mine. Egot. Gotta go. And it does. Stick around 12 years, you'll find out. Yeah. We can go quietly or we can go kicking and screaming, boy. And I've gone kicking and screaming every step of the way. Isn't that true, David. Every step of the way. Claims spiritual progress rather than spiritual affection then only on real good days. The rest of the time it's, well, you know, how fast backward can I run here? You know. So I stayed and life turned around. This is true. I gave myself completely to this simple program. I really did. I really didn't. I really was. Because you had let me know who I was. You accepted me for what I was You told me to keep coming back I told you my boring god damn story and you liked me anyway Or you kept your judgments to yourself Thank you! Okay? Right? And I kept coming back and I gave myself completely to this Simple Program for two years The first two years of my sobriety I gave myself completely to this simple program. My life absolutely turned around. My spirits soared. My spirits Soared. That's what it's about. Flying. Okay? Then I found it necessary to divorce the woman I was married to and get involved with another woman whom I didn't realize I feared and craved and loathed who had coincidentally been my high school sweetheart in Mexico City who'd never seen me take a drink and I no longer gave myself completely to this simple program I gave myself 40% to this very complex dense unfathomable program and I gave the rest to her and I did my best to feel as I thought she wanted me to feel and think as I thought she wanted to think and behave as I thought she wanted because I wanted her to love me because I was still dragging with me all of that useless rotten baggage from my youth my infancy and my life stopped changing my spirits no longer soared I became depressed Deeply depressed. Yeah. Very deeply depressed. I do depression real good. I do melancholy real good, I do hypochondria real good We're mind readers. See, my parents had lost their first infant, so when I came along no doubt they were afraid they were going to lose me too and so they bent lots of efforts to over protect me take care of me and to whip me off to the doctor man they thought I was going to die and I picked that up and carried it with me I was always dying man I always had something that was about to take me out alright and not a word had been exchanged we're mind readers right and I brought that stuff with me you know so there I am now I have moved with my new her my new hurt to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles and I withdraw from a a because I am married to this woman who herself is an atheist god-lover who will not go to Al Anan okay and I would draw I don't know anybody in town and besides their meetings are different. And there's this Turk in this black leather coat, man, I don't want to get near him, you know. But thank God I brought some of my defects of character with me that far in sobriety. It was, I still needed his praise, whoever he happened to be. My father had died in the latter years of my drinking. Last time I saw him, he was dead. I was drunk. End of relationship, okay? But I brought with me all of my ancient baggage, you know, and I still needed his praise. And him in this case happened to be him, David, you know. So he had one of his babies put me together, right, to ask him to be my, so that he could close the deal. By this time, I was really unhappy, you know, and I was starting to say, I'll bet I could get away with a little non-habit forming opium. I'd never tried opium in my life. I'd ever identified as an addict up until then. And I said, wait a minute. Wait. Does somebody who isn't an addict tell himself that he can probably get away with a little non-habit forming opium? I don't think so, do you? And so that was another moment of clarity and ever since then, technically, I'm an addict alcoholic but what does it matter? It's all the same stuff. You know this guy named Doug says it doesn't matter if you hit yourself on the head with the red rock or green rock. Damage is the same, you know. Thank God I had had good enough training in my earliest years in Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank God I had been to a meeting every day my first year and every, no doubt, almost every day my second year. Thank God I had mopped the floors and cleaned the cups and greeted people, stuck out my hand, thanked the speaker, folded chairs. Done my fourth step and my fifth step. Thank God I had made enough deposits in my sobriety account so that I was still susceptible to someone in the program. And when I asked David to be my sponsor, he picked me up from six feet under the water and just shot me back into the mainstream of Alcoholics Anonymous. and that wasn't even the last time he saved my life that was the first time so God works through people God works through people, you know, through Nugent through Frank Philip the other familiar faces here works through everybody the answer, once we are sober and clean and once we're sober and once they are working the program the answer has to be love has to has to be. And the threshold to love, as far as I'm concerned, is my acknowledgement of my need for faith in God. God used to be higher power. Now it is God. Okay? I remember a moment when I was three or four years old, before the first rejection came down, before he withdrew his praise the first time. I remember a moment as a child of three or five years old. Three or four, barefoot, standing on the grass outside of my parents' home in Reseda or Tarzan or Northridge or wherever the hell they were. I remember a moment of stillness and serenity and tranquility I could not yet speak English but I remember the sense of that moment the warmth of the afternoon sun on my cheek and the image of fleecy white clouds in an exquisite blue sky and the scent of blackberries on the back fence and I remember an awareness of being part of all of that of being non-separated from the grass and the sky and the sun and the berries I remember knowing as only a child knows that it was all magic and I was part of it That came back to me in my first six months of sobriety. And I ran to my first sponsor with it, and I said, Norman, Norman, this is the way I'm feeling. And I went down, right? And I told him the whole thing. He said, yes, yes. He said. I understand. He said I have felt that way too. He said I call that experience the experience of the atmosphere of life. He said, why don't you try calling it God? And that worked for me for a couple of years. And then I could no longer get in conscious contact with that sense, that awareness. And for two or three years, the only faith I had, the only strength of faith I was in, the only thing I had was the energy that it was required to put together the mental image of a grain of mustard seed. That was all I had. And it was more than enough. as it always will be, if you try. And then there were times when I was obliged simply to concede that I was entirely godless. Simply to conceded that I was godless, but my understanding that I needed to believe remained. It is enough to know that we need to have faith. That is enough. And if we do that, in my belief, if we do that, if we practice that enough, then we will have real faith and real belief, and then we can get in touch, and then we will know God, and than we will have trust. And then we all be pieces of the same magic, and we will all know it, and it will all be love, and it will be real, and will all now. Just keep coming back. God bless you. Thank you.