The Magic Sentences of a Sponsor – Tom F.

My name is Tom Whalen. I'm an alcoholic, and of course I want to thank Bob for the kind invitation again to come out here to Las Vegas, my wife and I, to tell my Drury story one more time and enjoy coming to Las vegas. It's just always an exciting trip and fun. meeting in particular, it's just full of old-timers and newcomers and all kinds of people. And it's really a great group. And I think you deserve all the success you've had. I've been sober a long time. I've been doing this for a long time. And I think one of the dangers of being a long-term member of Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have a tendency to forget what it really used to be like. I mean, you feel it's been so long since I've been loaded I kind of, it'd be hard to remember what it's even like. I was watching an old movie the other night Lionel Barrymore was drunk stumbling around and they were trying to get him into his room in his hotel and he just kept falling down and all he wanted to do was get another drink but it was actually a comedy scene but I thought, you know, how foolish we are and I almost slapped myself in the face and I said, you were just like him I don't know of any time that I ever drank that I wasn't always thinking about the next drink I don' t think that's terribly normal but it's the way it was I don''t think I've ever had a drink that I was drinking, whether it was high school or whatever it was. And I'm always plotting and planning and thinking about the next drink. And I don't think that's the way most normal people act. I love to drink like our first speaker. I just love to be a bit of it. And I know that's a terrible thing to say in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I just loved it. And I have no reason to feel that way. My parents didn't even drink, and my father had little or no use for people to even drink. And I had to go steal it from a neighbor's houses because we didn't have any booze in the house. My mother's biggest problem when I was growing up in West Los Angeles is that what kind of a cake she was going to bake for the bridge and the old neighbors to come over and stuff like that. That was the big deal with her tea and her coffee. And I don't know why, it just fascinated me and I loved everything about it. And I do not remember my early drinking because it was all too many years ago. But I just know that I was obsessed with it. I became a daily drinker when I was a junior in high school. And I just, I do NOT really understand it sometimes. Maybe I have been sober too long now. But I look back on my life that way, and I have no excuse for being an alcoholic. I had every advantage anybody would have wanted, and yet I just – my favorite thing to do was to drink. And I was telling this dreary story a couple of years ago now at the Canyon Club in Laguna Beach. and I got to the point when I was 19 years old and I just got out of Loyola High School and I was screwing around Santa Monica City College and I don't know if you've heard of it, but I was either drunk or hungover or both and all I really wanted to do was just hang around with my friends and get loaded and drink and listen to jazz music and pass out and come to and discuss philosophy and all that sort of stuff and it's just all so silly now and I was kind of saddened that I didn't have anything inside of me that would have given me kind of an ambition to go to college or what kind of a work I was going to do or whatever. I was dating this girl that I did not want to be around much and I don't know I just did kind of a dumb thing I guess now. In 1953, I volunteered to be drafted and they took me up on it and I got my notice and I went in the Army in April of 1953 and I went overseas immediately. I went to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. And if you're in native California, that's overseas as far as I'm concerned. And I got into some trouble for my drinking down there. I drank at every opportunity I had, fortunately or unfortunately. I had a desk job. And so most of us, at least I thought everybody else was doing it. You know, a lot of us and alcoholics, we just think everybody does what we do. But maybe I'm just looking at myself. But we had, I always carried a, there was a bottle in the drawer and we drank in the morning and the afternoon and we'd get all cleaned up and go into town and get drunk and I remember one particular night I was at a place called the Jamboree Club and it was kind of a place in those days in Arkansas where they didn't have bars as we know them and it would be by a set up and you'd have to bring your own bottle in and uh of course you have to drink it all you know my mother taught me to waste not want not and so I uh this particular night not unlike other nights but this particular night I was really too drunk to walk and so but I got to my car I'm not too drunk to drive of course but uh and I drove back to uh the camp with this guy in the back seat, and I passed out at the wheel. I ran my car over a bridge and turned it over three and a half times and broke myself all up and ended up in the hospital. The only good thing that came out of that whole experience is that I understand I had at that time the highest blood alcohol of anybody in the state of Arkansas, which is kind of something to shoot for. You know, it's not like I'm a total failure. and one particular night I was one particular morning in the mess hall I was sitting at this mess hall and hungover and whatever and some guys, a bunch of guys came up to me and they said, my God Tom what a great time we had last night and of course I have no idea what they're talking about and he said, well I don't know you knew that much about jazz and whatever And I'm just at a loss of what they're talking about. The whole evening, I'd never even been in this place before. And I went back that same night, and the black piano player lady, she got up and stopped playing with him, gave me a big hug, and said, what a wonderful time we had last night. I guess it was a great time. I don't remember it. But anyway, this gal that I ran away from decided she was going to come down and visit me ostensibly for the weekend. So she's getting off the plane in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and she says, well, now that I'm here, why don't we get married? And I thought, well okay, big strong Tom, you know. So we went off and got married and signed a suicide pact for the next 20 years. And I don't know what she saw in me, except maybe she just loved to suffer. I'm not too clear on that. And when I got out of the Army in 1956, not only am I married, but I have these two children. One of them talked here a few weeks ago, I understand, Chris. But I got in the Army and I had no skills or anything like that, except what my father did. and he was an electrical contractor in West Los Angeles, in the L.A. area. And so I went back to work for him. I had enough sense of responsibility in those days instilled in me that I knew I had to raise this family and do all this sort of stuff, and so I did this. And I had another thought that came to me because I'd been drinking all through the day for the last several years. I figured that drinking during the day somehow didn't fit into the stereotypical idea of how I should behave, and so I decided to cut it off. And I did. I don't remember whether it was a problem or not. It's all too many years ago. And I don'T understand I'm an alcoholic. I have no way of knowing because I have No Role Models. And what happens is I'm finding out that 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning I'm getting very nervous and uptight and kind of shaky And maybe I'm just anxious. Maybe I'm high-strung, as I was diagnosed as being in grammar school and high school when I would see the psychologists and psychiatrists, because I've always never been too well-wrapped in my life and always had certain problems and a little weird. And I found out if I had a couple of beers for lunch, I would be having a much better afternoon. In fact, you knew people can take that information with you tonight. I mean, you know, relief is literally a swallow away. And so I started having a couple of beers once in a while for lunch. I'm not going to make a big thing out of it. And then it became an everyday occurrence, and I found out that drinking beer in the middle of the day made me sleepy. And then I started Having a Couple of Vodka Tonics for Lunch. Make them a double, if you will, and I'd be doing that. And I couldn't tell anybody about it. I can't tell my dad because he, as I said earlier, had little or no use for people that even drank. I can tell my wife because she couldn't understand why I'd be drinking in the middle of the day. It's going to be my little secret. And she had kind of a strange idea of drinking anyway. I mean, she drank, but certainly not to the extent that I enjoy drinking. But I bought a quart of bourbon or scotch or vodka, whatever I'm drinking that season, and I put it on the kitchen sink on Friday night when I came home from work, and that was going to be the bottle for the week. And usually Sunday she would say to me things like, what happened to that bottle you bought the other night? There's nothing left in it. And I said, well, I don't know what happened. Maybe he had a drink out of it. I don'T know, you know. I don' t want to get involved in these controversies, you know, and so I may be alcoholic, but I'm not stupid. You buy two quarts on a Friday night. You put one in the kitchen sink, you put the other one in the garage. You work bottle A into bottle B and watch the line go up and down. It's a lot of goddamn work, but it keeps your mouth shut about my drinking. And that's all I care about. And so I was doing this. And I had bottles hidden all over strategic locations, and it was, you know, whatever. I've been an Alcoholics Anonymous many years, and I've heard so many wonderful stories of the guys that just drink with great bravado, and they drink in your face, and you don't care how much you drink. I'm this little chicken shit drinker afraid someone's going to see me drinking, you know, and I'm hiding the booze and the whole thing, and I'm not proud of it. I just want you to know that. I am not proud. Anyway, anyway, I went on this way for a number of years. I don't know how many years. It was just a long time. And I don't know how it affected you, the alcohol, but I started to get these mood swings. I would get just terribly, terribly depressed, right? I would sit in my car at three o'clock in the afternoon or maybe three o'.clock in the morning beating my fists on the steering wheel wondering what's wrong with me. Where did my life all go to hell? What is so awful about this? It was just awful. I would just sit there and cry and carry on and talk about getting in all this kind of drama, and yet maybe the next night or just a few hours earlier or later, I'd have 27 Scotch and Waters at some club and drive half of you home. I mean, you couldn't predict how the hell I was going to be, and it was just, you know, dance wildly all night long. You couldn't predict how I was gonna be, but it worried me so much, and I was coming in and out of blackouts. I don't mean the kind of black outs that most of us relate to where you wake up in the morning wondering what you did last night because half the stuff that you forget isn't even worth remembering but I'm talking about driving down Wilshire Boulevard at three o'clock in the afternoon all of a sudden you come to and you wonder where am I going what job am I doing on what did I do this morning have I had lunch you know and I just it was just very upsetting and so I sought the help of psychiatrists something we all used to do in the late 50s and early 60s, and I found a doctor I had a pretty good rapport with. And I told him about my highs and my lows and about the strange relationship of my growing up and the problems with the wife and the kids in the hall, that sort of stuff, except one small thing. He kept asking me, how much do you drink, Tom? And I tell him six or eight ounces of alcohol a day, Doctor. It seemed like a normal amount for a heavy drinker to drink. I'm more than happy to be a heavy drink it because it is after all a sign of manhood or adulthood for me to control and enjoy my drinking is my great obsession i don't quite understand when i was controlling it i wasn't enjoying it and when i Was enjoying it i certainly wasn't controlling it but i couldn't see any of that in those days and all i really wanted was to have people get off my goddamn back and leave me alone and i mean i go to work every day consistently i take the kids to indian guides and the beach and uh the movies they want to see and bowling and all the other bs that they want to do, you know? And I mean, just Indian guides and whatever else it was. As long as I had fresh alcohol in my system that I could maintain and sustain what I was supposed to do. And I went on this way and did all this sort of stuff. And so I think if I drink a little bit too much, what's the big deal? You know, and I look back on it now after all these years and I still think what's a big deal. You know? It just makes such a big case out of my drinking. I mean why is this such a big focal point of everybody's life, it seems like. Anyway, I hate to sound paranoid, but anyway, I saw this doctor about three or four years in a private therapy and group therapies and all the therapies you can dream up. And what happened to me because I couldn't be honest about my number one problem, which is my alcoholism, my drinking, is that I got sicker and sicker and sicker in this guy's care, and it wasn't his fault. He just didn't have very good tools, I guess, to work with or a subject, and it was just terrible, and it was just awful, but you know when you're in therapy or when you are in some sort of modality of recovery or whatever they are calling it this week, it's just a different, people treat you differently. They think, well he is trying to get help and he is trying to do this and whatever, and they get off your case. And it was very much that way with me. And I, you know, was doing okay. And I don't know how it all sort of worked out, but I was sitting in the little club around the corner of my psychiatrist's office in Beverly Hills, and I'd had a drink since noon. and I'm getting a little shaky, and I go up to the bar, and I have three or four double scotches or whatever it was that I'm drinking. And you always look better when you leave a bar. I mean, all of us do. You can look at the back bar and see that. But you feel better, and you can relate better to the psychiatrist and talk more honestly. And I'm sitting in this doctor's office, and about 10 minutes into the session, he looked at me, and he said, you know, you're drunk. I said, what do you mean I'm drunk? He said, you look drunk, you act drunk, and you smell drunk. I assume you're drunk. I said, well, a couple of beers for lunch, which I think is our stock answer. And he says, I think it's a little bit more than that, a little but more recent, and it's going to help me with my drinking problem, albeit my non-existent drinking problem. But I'll go along with the gag, whatever. And he put me in heavy dose of Librium and heavy dose to Stelazine. and if I took the you know he told me to take the pills as prescribed and of course you know I took them more than prescribed because in fact he even told me not to drink with these things but what do they know and so I'm trying to work you know and doing my electrical work, I'm doing remodels and kitchen remodeles and all kinds of stuff in that area that I'm that I was working in and I mean I'm not aware of any major problems or any any major fires or anything like that hey but shit happens and so anyway I'm I'm trying to keep body and soul together this whole thing I found out sort of resentfully just a few years ago when the film A Beautiful Mind came out And I found out those are the same drugs they gave him, which I must have been in the hands of an incompetent or something. I just don't really know how that happened. Anyway, I drive down Wilshire Boulevard, get into a silly corner like Wilshire and Westwood about 10 o'clock in the morning, wait for the signal to change, take about an hour and a half, and I'd come to. And the lady in front of me said I ran into her car, which, I suppose, I did. I don't know. I'm not the best witness. Come home some nights, rip that house apart, terrorize that wife and family. Some nights, come home just as peaceful as I am this evening, even more peaceful. Come home at 6, 7 o'clock at night, lay down in the living room rug, take a little nap before dinner time. Sometimes I'd miss dinner, but there's other meals. I'd get up at 11, 12 o' clock at night and go take a leak in the linen closet and go to bed. My wife is losing her sense of humor over this kind of stuff, which they'll do. So she files for divorce. And I'm out in the street, the miserable bitch. And here I am. Hey, I'm the victim here. I'm looking for a place to live. And I got myself a one-room place right behind my favorite drinking bar called the Cork and Fork on Westwood Boulevard. and I I had sort of hey you know you're going to give a bad impression to the new people here tonight this is Alcoholics Anonymous and we're not supposed to be having such a good time anyway I it was horrible this was about 1965 I guess and I was living alone in this one room place and I would even hide the booze for myself on this place, go figure old habits die hard I guess something I thought of it must be about 10 years ago it reminded me that when I would in those days it was the days before cell phones and the days Before Answering Services and all that sort of stuff. And we'd make our phone calls at night, you know, after work. And I would sit there kind of like in the dark planning my next couple of days, and I would be talking on the phone. I'd have my glass of booze here. And when I would take a drink, I'd put the phone over here so they could not hear that I was drinking. I mean, you Know, I don't understand that, never did, never will. I don' t really think so. Anyway, my wife came to visit me in October of 65. She said she wanted to see me until I wasn't drinking. It was kind of like home on my vodka break, and I was sitting there, and she told me what kind of a husband I was, what kind of a father I was. What kind of son I was to my own mother and dad, and what was I going to do about Christmas was coming up and the kids needed toys and shoes or whatever it was they needed. The attorney wants to be paid, and they've turned the electricity off again. They can turn the phone off when you go about this. I don't know what she's telling me about these mundane problems of hers. I've got my own problems. Anyway, mercifully, she left in about 20 minutes, and I just sort of flipped out. I went temporarily insane. I just went crazy. Fortunately for me, the night before, I had just purchased a bottle of second-all sleeping pills, which I took all of those, about 100 of them, and a bunch of scotch, and I'd lay down that little cot to go to sleep. Because, I mean, you know, you get to a point with your alcoholism and your drug addiction where you really can't do it anymore. I know we joke in here about this time it'll be different and I can handle it now or whatever it may be. But I realized it wasn't going to be any different. And please don't suggest that I not drink because drinking is the only thing that allows me to work. I can't work on hot wires and stuff like that. I'll blow everything up if I'm shaking. I can't talk without stuttering so I have to have fresh alcohol so I can talk talk about don't drink and drive how the hell do you drive if you don't drink I don't understand all that and I just wanted out I just didn't want to have to deal one more day with what was going on I know there's a lot of people in this room that felt the same way and a kid that was working for me part time thought I was acting a little bizarrely and he came to my apartment to check on me. I guess he could see I was getting very strange, and they found me in this coma, and I guess they get the door open some way, and uh, they called the ambulance, and then shipped me up to UCLA Medical Center where they pumped me full of holes, and I was to stay in there for about 13 hours in this comma, and i guess they pumped my stomach. I don't know why I wasn't there, and i came to in this funny looking green room and i thought christ i've even screwed this up i can't even get out of here talk about bad breaks and when my vital signs came around they put me another ambulance and they shipped me off to a mental institution where i should stay for a while but not for alcoholism something respectable suicide and uh i was in this uh hospital it wasn't all that bad they were very kind to me there it was clean it was very pleasant as mental institutions can be. I had a 24-hour-a-day guard on me. I guess they were afraid I was going to do something rash. And I was in there. I made my little ashtray well enough. They let me out eventually, and the first place I stopped was Jerry's Liquor Store in Olympic at about a quarter of vodka and a quarter scotch, and of all the things that I talk about in this phase of my talk, that's the most bizarre to me because wouldn't you think I'd stay sober a couple of months? A couple of weeks, a couple of days, a couple of hours. But I know I can't go back in my room naked with nothing to drink because I drank it all up so I had to stop and get a quarter of each. And I still drunk that weekend but I'm drunk every day, it didn't make any difference. And I went to work on Monday morning and I got on the fourth rung of a ladder to change some light bulbs which is not overly technical and I couldn't do it. I was too shaky and too upset, I didn't have enough to drink that morning and the people on Sunset Boulevard going to work, we're pointing up at that crazy electrician on that ladder and I just, I told him I said Mrs. Pauly I'll come back another day. I gave her the same lame excuse like I had the flu or something like that and what happened is that I checked in with another psychiatrist, this was five days a week. If you're wondering how I'm affording a psychiatrist five days per week, I'm not. My daddy's taking care of me. I'm only 32 years old. I can't take care of myself or raise my family or do anything that any other self-respecting, responsible 32-year-old man would do. And I felt like such a little boy, like such an adult, such a failure, and, of course, I felt what I was. And I went to Mass on Christmas of 1965, and I asked God to grant me some peace. I didn't want to quit drinking, but I wanted to sleep for more than two hours at a time. If you drink the way I drink and it affects you like it does me, getting to sleep, if you drink all through the day after 8 or 9 o'clock at night and you've had over two quarts of booze, you pass out, which is fine with me. I have no quarrel with that. But unfortunately, it affects me in such a way I wake up in two hours. This is as wide awake as I am this evening, and I can't get back to sleep unless I pace that room back and forth and back and forth and drink some more and drink some more, and walk some more and wear myself out so I can pass out again and wake up in two or three hours. That's what my life had been reduced to in 1965. And I just didn't know what the hell else I was going to do. I don't know, you know, I can't commit suicide. I tried that and failed that. And I didn't just know what the hell I was gonna do. So I asked God to grant me some peace. And two days later, my prayer was answered, although I didn t see it as such. But when I woke up one morning, nothing new had happened in my life. There was no new trauma. And I went to my linen closet where I was still hiding the booze for myself and got my morning drink out, my morning vodka, and had another one, another one. Another one. Eight o'clock in the morning came, and I had a half a pint or a pint of my stomach where I could get myself together so I could go off and go to work. And I wouldn't put the bottle of vodka back on the top shelf, and I noticed a bottle of Valentine's scotch had about that much left. And I thought, Christ, that's a lot of scotch since eight o' clock the night before. It was remarkable how much I was drinking, And it was no more or no less that I was drinking all the way along, but it was kind of like shown to me. And I went to the phone a few hours later and I called Alcoholics Anonymous of all places. And I going to a meeting that night at Ohio Street in West Los Angeles. And I sat in the back of the room where you're supposed to sit when you're new. Don't get up too close and don't pick up any coffee cups they'll think you're a member. And I set back there in my hands because I was afraid someone was going to see me shaking because I didn't have enough to drink before I went into the meeting. And I was sort of purple in color. I had green slime coming out of my mouth and the breath purifier that I was chewing so nobody knew what I was drinking I was sweating profusely on this cold January night and some jerk who I was sitting next to raised my hand as a newcomer which I think was very nice I don't know how the hell he knew I was a newcomor I sure as hell didn't tell him but that was the night I walked up to a man who used to be my sponsor not knowing any of this he was the secretary of that particular group that night And I said, excuse me, sir, you seem to be some sort of a big deal around here. How do you join Alcoholics Anonymous? How do I become a member? He says, you don't drink, kid. I said yes, I'm planning on cutting down. He said, no, you have a grass weapon. You don't drinking your day at a time. I said it's very easy for you to say apparently you're sober sometimes. But I can't go a whole day without a drink. I tried that one day in July and it damn near killed me. Well, he thought that was the goddamn funny and he got some of the guys he sponsored and dragged him up to me, you know, and made me repeat what I had just said to him so they could get a laugh out of it. Sounds kind of cruel and cold today, but it's kind of true. It gets if you can't exploit and make fun of the new people, what good are they? And so I went back to my psychiatrist talking about these insane aid meetings and these crazy people and these bizarre stories. and uh it was just uh the doctor reached out in his desk he pulled a whole big bag of liberium and said here take these get you the rust spots have that great no problem i made the mistake though of sharing this with my soon-to-be sponsor and he informed me if i was going to be a sober member of alcoholics anonymous as opposed to one that just didn't drink but if you're going to be sober and be in a position to work this program we don't drink here in alcoholics anonymous. We don't smoke marijuana. We don't take pills that affect the neck up. We don' shoot non-habit forming heroin. I guess if you came in today, they'd tell you to cut back a little bit at least on your cocaine and crack. But to be sober is to be sober. It's hard to get that concept. You don't drink with anything? I mean, you can't even have beer with Mexican food? I I mean, that's un-American. And so you just don't drink with anything, and it's hard to get that concept. But somehow, I don't know how, but this man was able to convince me that I could get out of my apartment one particular day and go down to Santa Monica Beach on a cold January day, and I walked up and down that beach shaking and sweating and every nerve in my body calling out to give me some booze, going to be something I didn't drink all that morning or that afternoon. I drank Carol syrup and a lot of coffee, several Hershey bars. I've heard you died of a diabetic coma but somehow I didn' I didn''t drink all the morning or that afternoon and I went to a meeting that night and when I was sitting in that meeting I realized the longest time I might be without a drink since I was a junior in high school and I thought how amazing, miraculous and it's hard to believe that this coming January has been 40 years since it's been going like that cuts into my time and I I mean it's just awesome to me and I mean it's really little else than just coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and getting his man as a sponsor and doing this deal and getting on this journey and that's what I've done. I've really done little else than that I got very active on the program my wife and I reconciled at some naive idea that she was going to go to Al-Anon and get the kids to go to Al-Ateen and Al-Atat and get the dog to go to Alapet it was not going to happen she couldn't see the need for Al- Anon in her life, it was after all my problem so she continued with her psychologist and I went to AA I guess there was a certain amount of honeymoon those first seven or eight nine months but you know it doesn't last forever as those of us that know and they want to know why you're still going to all those meetings and my mother used to tell me you deprive your family of your presence and all on and on and I maybe so I don't know I don'T WANT TO GET INTO THAT CONTROVERSY BUT IT SEEMED LIKE I NEEDED TO NOT ONLY IMMERSE MYSELF IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS AND NOT SO MUCH WITH THE PROGRAM AND NOT So MUCH With The Steps But I I needed to immerse myself with the fellowship, with the people who were doing the impossible thing. And that was to stay sober. For us in that year that we were all together, we just didn't drink a day at a time. We had relationships and families and businesses and work and all that sort of stuff. And we used to sit in those coffee shops as John and I were talking about before the meeting. John and I were – John's a lot older than me, but he's got more sobriety than I do. Not a lot, but so – he calls me a newcomer. Anyway, it was amazing, and we all stuck together and stayed away from the first drink. And to the best of my knowledge, those of us who are still alive are still sober. It's really remarkable. I flipped out when I was sober about eight or nine months. I don't know, I went to a very up meeting, a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, speaker meeting on a Friday night, and I left that meeting just as crazy and as goofy as I've ever been or been since. And I left the meeting crying and laughing maniacally and I went down to Santa Monica Beach, this full moon night, but that was wrong with me. I walked around trying to sort it all out and I couldn't and I ended up at my sponsor's house quite late that night It got him out of bed, as a matter of fact. And he came to the front door and wanted to know why I was parked on his front lawn. I said, I haven't got time to park the car. I've got to talk to you now. Anyway, so anyway, he made me park the card in the street with the rest of the cars, which I did. And we came in and talked around his coffee table. And the reason we have sponsors is because we sponsors, and I sponsor really too many people, but we sponsors our job is that we have magic sentences. that's our job and uh you come to us with the problem we're married of problems and we lay one of these magic sentences on you or if it's a very serious problem maybe two magic sentences and this particular night he was out of them and he told me to go home and it was time for me to do a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself and i didn't say how it applied to me i spent so much of my life in the catholic system examination of conscience and confession if that's not a fourth and fifth step, what is. Years I spent in psychiatrist offices talking about what I used to be like, what happened when I'm like now, and he cursed me and embarrassed me, and it gets my better judgment I had to go home and start this fourth step, and as they were putting that fourth step, things I was never able to tell a Catholic priest in confession because they were too tacky, too embarrassing, too sinful of you, the things that I couldn't tell a psychiatrist. You can't tell them that kind of stuff. They'll think you're crazy, so you got to be very guarded what you tell people in that venue but in Alcoholics Anonymous we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start and put all that crap down and put your goals down find your stuff you're never going to go to the grave with type thing as it says in our book and put that stuff down get it all out and then share it with your sponsor or whoever you're going to share it with and I did all that and I think he was going to like me when it was over with and he seemed rather board through it all. And after I've heard, I don't know how many, so many, and they're all about the same. There's just so much you can do, and there's just så much you could think about, and there really are no big deals. We're just men and women who try to fit in and try to do what we think is correct or whatever and screw up constantly and keep doing things over and over again. And it wasn't until after I did this fifth step and then he made me go to a service station, I got on my knees and took a sixth and a seventh step, that I started to get a handle on what this thing was all about. And I made a list of people I'd harmed. I thought I'd done a pretty good eight step until I was having lunch one day with an old friend of mine who's long passed on now, Eddie Regan. He had a printing outfit up in Hollywood and he wanted me to go home and open up that drawer and get out all those bills and I wonder how the hell I knew about that drawer. I just still don't know how I knew About that. And I did that and I was able to take a stack of bills, overdue bills. I didn't read them of course, I just stuck them in the drawer, and I got them down to a manageable amount of bills. It was over $16,000, which today's money would be manageable. In those days, it was just overwhelming. There was no way I could do it. But I contacted all these people and made arrangements to pay them back, and it took me 11 1⁄2 years to get out of debt. And I've been in and out ever since, and it's kind of like the American way. But I did it. It would have taken me a lot less if I had been a little bit more thorough and fearless from the very start, but you do what you can do. But that's what I did. I got on this journey of uncovering, discovering, and discarding, trusting God, cleaning house, and helping others. And that's where our program basically is. And that's what I've been doing ever since. And I'm not trying to complicate it at all. I just sort of simple doing these things. I sponsor a lot of guys. Always after me, they want to do something special or something, get into this whole whatever. And I just say, you know, just stay sober and work the steps and do this stuff. And it's really a very simple program. Anyway, I did all this whole stuff. I started to pray for things which I was told not to but what do they know one time I prayed for a brand new Chevy van which I needed in my business and I got it within three days just the one I wanted and sometime after that my higher power didn't see it clear enough to give me enough work that season that came and repossessed the goddamn thing but it taught me to go back to praying only for the knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry it out And for years I gave him suggestions, and he's never paid any attention to me. So trust me, it doesn't do any good. And you just suit up and show up and just keep doing the next indicated thing and see if you can help people and do it. I looked around when I was sober almost eight years at these two little towhead, darling little handsome boys, and they were getting out of high school, both of them stoned out of their minds, selling drugs out the back door. He couldn't walk in the living room without getting contact high. And it was just playing that music and all that. It made me crazy to be in that household. My wife at the time was going along with what the kids were doing. And it Was just my youngest son said our family gave a whole new meaning to the word dysfunctional. And anyway, that's when my wife filed for divorce. and that was in January of 74. And that's when I moved down to Dana Point where I live near now. And I was driving down the freeway, I was thinking, am I doing my will or his will? You know, when you're around here, well, you don't want to screw this thing up, you want to do it correctly. And so I said a prayer that my sponsor gave me and I'm going to share it with you. It goes like this, God, I have no idea where I'm Going. I do not see the road ahead of me and I cannot know for certain where it'll end nor do I really know myself And the fact that I think I'm following your will does not mean that I'm actually doing so. But I believe this. I believe the desire to please you doesn't in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in everything I do, and I hope I never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time, and may seem to be lost in the very shadow of death. I'll not be afraid because I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone. With this I continued on the freeway, and of course I immediately told him got an apartment I wanted with a business to be run, of course, none of which happened. I was about 20 seconds too late for the Yellow Pages, so I had to spend a whole year without any advertising, try to run a business in a new community with no advertising. That was fun. Back and forth to Los Angeles, and that first year was just not very good. It was a horrible year, and missing the kids and being single again. It was just a lot a fun year. I started to date again, which was a little awkward, but I wasn't too good at it in high school, much less when I'm in my early 40s. And I dated a girl for a while and then it got too crazy, so I broke it off and then we got back together again in August around our birthdays. Her birthday was the 20th and mine's the 19th of August. And we We went out to dinner, and she was going to pick the dinner up. And so I figured, you know, what can I lose? I'm very romantic. And so we start up again. And when she was having a radical mastectomy in South Coast Hospital in 1977, January, I went to visit her. I said, where are you going to move to? And she said, well, I don't feel like going here. I come home with me, and I'll take care of you until you start to feel better. which she did, and the relationship intensified, and we were ultimately married. We had a good marriage. I think we got along very well and did fine. The only problem in the marriage was, other than her cancer, with my two drug addict alcoholic children and her three daughters and a son who are not much better conditioned than my kids are in. Of course, they love to come to visit us in their various stages of stoneness. It was just a joy to watch. And we got through all that. all sober today, those that are still alive. And it was fun. When my youngest son fell out of a second-story window stoned on angel dust and some cheap wine, I went to visit him up in General Hospital in East L.A., and I said, Jim, this is much to shoot for. Why don't you get out of this scuzzy city and come on down to Dana Point, and I'll put you to work, and you can get yourself an apartment and come to work for me? And he said, oh no dad, I'm having too good a time. So he did come down eventually and stayed sober in front of me because he knew I wouldn't have anybody in my business who was loaded. And he got picked up one Saturday night for drunk walking. And when he got out of jail, he realized he had to quit drinking. And he did it all on quaaludes of marijuana, which is another way to get sober, I guess. And I didn't know that he was doing this. He's not going to tell me. And our first speaker talked about Norm Alpey. Well, he was the speaker this particular Wednesday night. And I said to Jim, I said, why don't you come to the meeting tonight? And his speaker is our best speaker in AA, and you may enjoy him. And he came strictly for the entertainment value and stayed, and that was hard to believe. He just celebrated last May 26 years on the program. And my oldest boy, who just talked here a couple of weeks ago, I guess, three weeks ago. Chris, he's got about 23 years in December. So I'm very blessed to have these sober kids in my house, and Alcoholics Anonymous obviously has made such a great impact on our lives. Anyway, my wife passed away the day after Christmas of 1985, and it was just a devastating thing to go through. I mean, I just couldn't adjust to it. I naively, maybe, I had done a third step on her cancer and she died anyway. And there's something wrong with this picture. And 1986 was a terrible year. I had no joy. I just somehow put one foot in front of the other. I did all the AA shit that you do, and I went to work and did all that stuff. But I had not joy at all. It was just trudging through this awful year. And after it was over with and I got through it, which we all get through stuff, I realized I had done a third step and the third step did work because it says my God I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, thy way of life may I do thy well always and that's what my job is now that's my job, is to see if I can help people And I'm in a position because of my experience. So all we have here in Alcoholics Anonymous is our experience. And my experience is such that I know you can get through anything if you just don't pick up that first drink. And things will pass. I got into a terrible depression in 19, well, I guess it was the early 90s, about 93. I was just, I think it was a clinical depression. And they suggested very strongly that I get on this antidepressant stuff. And I said, well, thank you for sharing. But I've been sober. I don't know what it was in those days. But, you know, I just – it's just not my style. And I went through it all and ended up having to do a 10-step on this particular thing that I was going through, this particular loss that I had. And I got through it, which we do. Came out the other end. and I'm very grateful that I didn't go that other route, which was highly suggested to me, but it just wasn't my style. I took 1986 off, obviously, and I guess about a year later I was watching this beautiful blonde lady get her fifth cake. I thought, now there is a classy-looking lady. and I was happy to be sitting next to her sponsor that particular night and I said do you think she'd like to go out with me he said I think you two would be fun together so I got her sponsor's permission and I asked Gloria to go out on a date for that weekend and we've been together ever since, we have a lovely marriage, a happy loving marriage and we have an amazing we have the lovely home in Laguna Niguel and we just AA is the top thing in our life and we just love it and it's quite a remarkable thing I don't know I've just had a good life I have a lot of fears and a lot of stuff I'm getting old I told a guy at the gym last August on my birthday I said well wish me a happy birthday today's my birthday how old are you today Tom And I said, 42? And the guy looked at me and says, well, you don't look it. But anyway, you know, I worry how much longer can I work. I work, you Know, every day. And I crawl around in attics and up and down ladders and up undown and upundown and uppendown. And I'm riddled with arthritis and all that whole stuff. Basically, I live in the wreckage of my future. And what I try to do actively is just stay in the now. As long as I continue to do what I'm doing, right now I'm doing fine. And how long that's going to last, I don't know. Anyway, I've enjoyed this evening very much and I wish you all well and you can find what I found, that you can live happily and soberly the rest of your life if you want to. Thank you very much. Thank you.