The Mantra of I Am an Alcoholic – Kenny D.

Hello everybody, my name is Kenny and I am an alcoholic. I'm very pleased to be here at the Fellowship of the Spirit Conference. This is a conference that's been a big part of my sobriety through the years. I was here at first conference in 1993 and I can honestly say that at that conference and a few of the conferences that I've had a chance to attend. Since then, I've met some of AA's great sponsors, and I mean that truly. Some of AA'S greatest sponsors have been closely connected to this particular conference. So I was doing workshops in Seattle. I'd been exposed to the big book for a few years. I had met one of these great AA sponsors, our closing speaker at the International Convention in 1990 in Seattle. And I got a chance to meet him there. I'd done a retreat with Jim and a couple other people and Joe prior to coming here. But I really didn't know the degree of the family that I really was about to get involved with. I was in early sobriety. I wasn't very confident in my work and I can tell you when I came to that conference in 1993 and heard the speakers and the people and everybody doing the work out of the book and sponsoring and talking about the spiritual awakening it was one of the most validating experiences of my entire sobriety so to be here as a speaker 20 some years later on a Sunday morning is is really a humbling, it's incredibly humbling and I'm incredibly honored to be here. So I wanted to say that right off the bat. So my wife and I were walking up here. My wife likes to, and you know, that's another thing that you've asked my, it's been a part of this conference, I think, since the beginning that the speakers' wives and spouses attend conferences with them and we appreciate that support it's just been a fantastic thing shannon's a little particular about which conferences she comes to we we uh we did a a tri-cities uh round up and not the big tri-city but small tri-cities a little tiny deal way off the beaten path and shannon was well i got the dogs it's quite quite busy right now for me as my work is is busy and then a little while, I was asked to go to Honolulu, Hawaii. Well, she said, yeah, she can make that. That's going to work out all right. And then I went to the OMAC Winter Roundup, which is just quite a beautiful event in the middle of almost nowhere. And Shannon, again, was just a little busy and had a few things. And when I went down to Destin, Florida last year, Shannon was available, and she would make it. So the fact that you have Shannon here at Fellowship of the Spirit tells you something about how people view this conference. It's one not to be missed. So we said a little prayer, which is something we do before we speak, and I just want to say the talk I'm going to give this morning, I try to do something a little different each time for Shannon because she's heard my talk so many times. And it just, you know, my wife is so gracious and has heard my talks so many things. And she always laughs when she's supposed to laugh And she always cries when she's supposed to cry. And I have never, honestly, we've been married 17 years. We've raised a couple kids together, which I'll tell you a little bit about. But I've never been loved by a woman so. And it is an amazing adventure and a huge part of my sobriety. So when I say thank you for bringing Shannon and myself up here, I really mean that. We have a little deal when she is with me that we do a prayer. And she's actually the prayer in our family before meals and in meditation. When we end our meditation in the morning, Shannon says our prayer for us. And so she said we were walking over here. We were coming into a little corridor. She said, would you like to say a prayer? So I said, well, yes, I'd love for you to say your prayer for me. So she grabs my hand. We're in between a couple of little automatic sliding doors and a little corridor. and we the sliding doors come open this young man walks out with his mountain bike kind of got his mountainbike gear on and uh just kind of looking a little baked and and uh and he we walk in and the the door shut and the smell of marijuana was just palpable in this uh in this little corridor we walked into so we said our prayer and shannon was enjoying it a little too much i think because she prayed a lot longer than she usually does and so I'm here to say as near as I can tell my sobriety date is June the 8th of 1989 I can't speak for my wife I am from Seattle so don't hold that against me I, there was a small game that happened between Denver and Seattle. And I thought they might uninvite me after. I just want to make it clear. I really am several steps removed from what happened there. And I just wanted to be clear that that serious beating that happened in New York was, I didn't have anything to do with that at all. So I just wanting to get that out of the way as well. Also, it was so great to have Nicole here as the 10-minute speaker. Nicole and I have known each other for a long, long time, and it's just great. When I had a home group in Seattle and I would show up early to the home group because I had an office job, I had service position. I was the key church unlock guy for many years there, and I Would show up, and Nicole would always be there reading the book to one of her girls, and she's always been one of these people that you just mention the word Alcoholics Anonymous and Nicole's going to start crying I mean that and Kate and Jeff Jeff has been just such an incredible host I did write out actually a nice 18 minute introduction for him but had some nice notes about he left out the handsome and articulate and spiritual so I bring my big book up with me when I speak and it's not because I'm going to open the book and start reading out of the book to you unless I really run out of stuff to say which I don't think will happen this morning. I bring it up because it reminds me what it is I'm supposed to talk about when I'm in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We're going to have some fun here. And in case I get too carried away having fun, I want you to know that the reason that I'm here this morning is that I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that I fell into the loving arms of a group of gentlemen that found me floundering in early sobriety. And they said, if you come to this church and you come on Thursday night we will read the big book to you one of his name was frank and frank used to tell you we used to call this he used to called it uh special education aa he said kenny this isn't gonna just rub off on you you got to come down and we'll read every word if there's a word you don't understand we're going to get the dictionary out uh i'm singing to the choir here a little bit But as a result of that, somewhere in that process, I had a big experience in step three. I had an amazing shift in the way that I viewed the world and my thought about other people. And I had this realization in five that we really are connected. And it's so clear when we come to a conference like Fox that, strange as it may seem, we are all one. And that I can only be what I am going to be if you will be what you're going to me. I am we my wife Shannon says uh you know we're only as we go we go together and we can only go as far as the slowest guy in the group that's the guy we're back there come on we're gonna we're moving we're not leaving anybody behind here and we go forward through these steps and I was taken through the steps like that you know i i know this morning i'm among family and friends and that makes a uh a big difference to me somebody told me that well kenny you should have been at a long time ago we've had you on the radar and i know that so-and-so wanted you here and and uh boy it just it just seems like you should Have been here before now and And I told them, well, I wasn't ready to be here before now. If I was supposed to be her before now, I'd have been here. But I'm ready today because if I would have come several years ago, I would give him the talk that Bobby wanted to hear. I would've given the talk Tom wanted to here, Jerry wanted to hear, these mentors that I have in AA. And somehow this morning I'm free of all that. I'm going to give the talk God wants me to give this morning. and I mean that you know I found freedom in that and so I'm ready to speak at FOTS this morning I know I'm with family and friends and that I'm among people that love me and that want me to give a good talk and that I love them and I want to share some of my life and some of the things and where I've been and what I've been doing in the steps and some of the miracles have happened in my life um i'll tell you that i came from an alcoholic home uh i came from i was raised by a single mother that had two boys i'm the younger of two boys my mother was 19 years old when i was born i have a brother that's a year and a half 18 months older than i am by a single mom in the 1960s and when we were eight years old we met my stepdad, and he was the man in my life. And he was around in my life until shortly before I got sober. He died on the streets of Seattle, homeless, a helpless alcoholic. To this day, I have never met, and I've worked with a lot of alcoholics, and I have never yet met or worked with an alcoholic that was hopeless to the degree that my stepfather was I watched him go through delirium tremens I watched him scream in terror I watched him madly search for the bottle I watched him the shame on his face when he when I would catch him drinking down in the basement when he knew he wasn't supposed to be drinking so I knew about alcoholism from an early age there was nobody really teaching us in my house about hygiene and so I would And I was still, we'd moved to another new house in another new neighborhood. It was going to be my first year going to the middle school and junior high school. I was a little bit of a kid. I was just still wetting the bed. I would wake up to go to this brand-new school. I would kind of towel dry myself off the best I could. I would search through all of the dirty clothes that were piled in my bedroom to try to find the cleanest of the Dirty Clothes. and put those on, and then I would go to school. And I had another little trip that I was on before I found alcohol which was called lack of oxygen to the brain which is kind of a heightened effect of being at 9,700 feet. This is probably like being at 25,000 feet or something where I would choke myself and cut the oxygen off to my brain just to get this few minutes of euphoria and I would let go just before I was going to pass out. So when I went to that school and I was covered with, I stunk like urine. My long hair was popular, but I didn't shower, so I had long, greasy hair. I was a really skinny kid. I smelled of urine. I didn' t brush my teeth. And then I would choke myself and kind of, you know, stag around. So it was a real freak show. And my popularity began to wane just a little bit in school. and uh and i found my first drink you know in that uh a few months after we moved in that house i there was this hippie that lived next door this was the early 1970s there was an early this wonderful hippie had you know a good moral compass and so he was more than happy to uh buy liquor for 12 year olds and and so he was the supplier and and uh and you know I I was a guy that went from you know that first drink where you know some some tragic things happened and it just didn't slow me down and I always drank this guy showed up that first day with five fifths of MD 2020 and gave it to my brother and I for doing some work for him, and I like to tell that story just for the reaction, just kind of the air gets sucked out of the room when you, oh man, because I don't even need me to tell the rest of the story, do you? But we were off to the races, my brother, and within a few years, I was committing crimes. I'd been arrested. I was incarcerated. I was doing hard drugs. I dropped out of school. I was in and out of foster homes and group homes and was locked up several times. The only thing that really brought me out of that was when I was 17 years old, my grandfather worked in the fishing business and had some friends and worked for a family for many years. They had boats that would go up to Alaska. And it was really a saving grace for me. Somehow during those years. There was about eight years in there that I worked and I was able to find some type of control, not much but some type and this was back in the days and I started going up to Alaska and working on boats and it was the wild wild west and we would you know and I'm still in that business today and the it's a totally different thing you know before the boats go out the coast guard comes down and they got to see paperwork that everybody on the boat has passed a drug test which is great but it doesn't do much for the alcoholism but um but it's just a different it's a it's much more highly regulated it really was the wild wild west in those days and i like to say that we we didn't work hard and play hard we played hard while we were working and it was just it was totally fine you could drink as much as you wanted you could do as many drugs as you wanted. You could just be out of control, and as long as you were working hard, everybody was fine with it, and I did that for several years, and these guys who I drank with, and they drank like I did, and they did drugs like I Did, and They were off the hook, you know, guys when it came to drinking, and we drank around the clock, and those guys, my drinking scared them. There was something about the intensity of my drinking that bothered him. It wasn't comfortable to be around. I always drank as much as I could, as fast as I could, and I drank with an urgency. There was an emergency to try to get as much in as quickly as possible, and those same guys paid for me to go to treatment twice and then let me go. And you know, it was beautiful years. I loved it. I loved my job. It was, it was when those guys told me that I couldn't come back on the boats and that they didn't want to have anything to do with me, that they were done. You know, it Was heartbreaking because I loved that they Were the only men I'd ever been around in my whole life that would, that would show me what it meant to work hard and showed me what It meant to, you know, be a man and to, and to—you know, they were like—I was like, you know, They took care of me in a lot of ways. You know, after that, I—there's some lines in the book where they talk about that, you know, not so with us in those final days of drinking. You know, gone was the camaraderie that deal I had this joyousness, this camaraderia with friends, this happiness. That was all gone for me in the end. And for the last three years of my drinking, I drank only to try to overcome the obsession for more. That was all I was left with. It was this merciless obsession and the obsession for me was that if I drank a bottle of wine fast enough that I would get kind of a oh man just this relaxing deal when that wine hit my belly and if I got the right combination of alcohol and drugs And I got, and I could just for a minute get to a place where I could take a deep breath. If I could juste find the time to take one deep breath, I was convinced from that place I would be able to stop. That I would go into treatment, that I would figure things out, that I could make a phone call, and the day never came. And I ended up behind a McDonald's restaurant in Seattle. There was a McDonald'S restaurant, and there was a little restaurant and a little gift hobby shop next door and this bar called Baranoff, which was a bar that I knew was a Viking bar, which meant that's where all the Norwegian fishermen drank. But in the front it looked like one building, but in between the two buildings was a space. It was a facade on the front. If you went around the back, there was a space about six feet wide, and you could get in from behind there, go through a few bushes, get in From behind there. I drug a piece of cardboard back there to block off in case somebody came back, they couldn't see that I was there. The cardboard box that I had was no bigger than this podium. and uh and that's where i spent my final days and i could hear people coming through the drive through i was i wasn't living there because i didn't sleep i i'd i'd completely stopped sleeping at all and it would seem impossible to some people but that's the truth i didn'T sleep for days and days and days and days on end unless I ended up in a hospital or something and then I would sleep for a few days straight. But I could hear things going on outside. I wasn't a well person mentally. I could hear the drive-through going on from my little box there and I could hear them drive up I'll have another number three supersized with a Diet Coke and what I would hear is hey there's a freak out here shooting coke somebody call the FBI you know I was sure that's what they'd said it was kind of a nervous kind of way to to live you know just kind of hearing that every few minutes every few seconds somebody pulling up ordering telling these people there's freak out there and you got to call the fbi and and then not being able to get out of there because I had nowhere else to go. There was an AA hall in Seattle called Fremont Hall, and today people call it the emergency room of AA. Even if you go there today, half the people in the room aren't going to be sober. A number of them are drug dealers and prostitutes and homeless people that are just trying to get off the streets, but I knew that that place was there and I knew that this friend of mine was going to AA there. And so somehow I managed to get out and walk across this parking lot that was connected. It was a strip mall. So I went out behind the parking lot and I walked into my first AA meeting and I was looking for my friend. He was going be there. This was a guy, his family, because of how bad things were in my family, his family had taken me in as a kid. And I lived with his family for a year even though my family was just down the street. So he was like a brother to me and I knew if I could find him that he would nurse me back to health. That he would you know I could go through the being sick part at his house because by this time when I stopped I got extremely sick and I knew that he would do that for me because he'd done it for me many times I had no intention of getting sober I didn't want to get sober I thought even if I do want to get sober, it's always the same thing it's one more attempt and one more failure and for me I just didn't have it in me anymore because one more intent meant going through being sick it was a horrific deal to try to get sober at this point, and I walked into this meeting. It was the name of the meeting was the B1 meeting. I took a chair, and my friend wasn't there, and I don't know if I just thought he lived there at that hall or what the deal was, but he wasn't there, and you know, something happened to me that I didn't expect, and we're sitting in the meeting. The meeting ended. I didn'T know what the hell I was going to do. I knew I was going to start getting sick really quickly. I didn't want to just go back to my spot at the McDonald's. And I started crying in this AA meeting. And it was just big alligator tears. The tears just started flowing down my face in this meeting. And I couldn't say anything. And I'm so happy. You know, I learned about giving from experts in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm so happy there was people there that understand that we are people who make the approach. Because I knew my life depended. I knew it. I have to say something. I got to tell these people that I can't stop. I need to tell these people I need help I am going to die if I can't get this out and I couldn't say it not one word came out and it was like hollow, I just you know nobody's home, I knew I was crying but it didn't mean anything there was no emotion attached to it the tears were coming And it was just this hollow, you know, I knew that hollow shell of a man, you know, in that moment, what that meant. And after the meeting ended, a couple of guys came up and they said, listen, my friends and I have been talking. And if you'd be willing, we'd like to drive you down to Detons. And as a matter of fact, we've already made a few calls. and they got a bed and they're waiting for you and I had come into that meeting with everything I owned in a little shopping bag including my shoes I was barefoot and the reason I was bearfoot is because my feet had abscessed and it was painful to get my shoes on anymore I had sores on my feet that weren't healing because of the amount of drugs and alcohol that I was taking. And so I was filthy dirty, living on the dirt out behind the McDonald's. And he says, my friends and I would like to take you to detox. I hadn't said anything. So, of course, I thought, how in the hell does this guy know I need to go to detox? And then I thought... Well, it may not look like it, but I got some stuff going on. You know, I got some things happening and how long is this detox deal going to take? You know it was so much gratitude I didn't have anywhere else to go so I got in the car and this guy Al B who is still in my life he's 13 years sober longer than i am so he's 38 years sober now uh he drove me to detox there was another guy in the car his name was craze craze and albie drove me down there told me here's what you got to say because they took they took me to a different county the next county over which for me they might as well took me to the mojave desert because if they'd have taken me to downtown in Seattle, it's that intuitive thought, that inspiration. They knew, hey, we've got to get this guy. We can't just drop him off down the street at the Detox in Seattle. We're going to take him up to Snohomish County and check him in there. And once I was there, I'd been through it before. I knew, okay, once you're in, it is hard to get out. You got to argue with somebody about getting, hey I want my clothes back and I want things back. And then they are going to bring in well hold on you can get your clothes back but you got to talk to so-and-so first they bring in you know all these different people and start working on you to stay and I just didn't have it in me I was so sick and I laid there and and I got my had my first five days of sobriety at Evergreen Manor Detox in Snohomish Washington and uh Albie was there to pick me up when I came out and um when i say i was taught about giving from an expert al gave me my first sober place to stay he owned a little car lot there was a little apartment behind the car lot that he'd fixed up he let me stay there um he gave my first job he was paying me five dollars an hour to kind of fix cars and of course i was thinking you know i've been a chief engineer on fishing boats you know and you're going to pay me five dollar an hour i know what this guy's game is this guy game is he preys on these people, these desperate people in Alcoholics Anonymous to get $5 an hour labor down at his car lot. And the truth was he was paying me $5 and hour and he'd never let me work more than three hours because he knew if I got on the wrong side of a $20 bill, I wouldn't be sober anymore. So I'd work for a few hours, he'd send me up to the noon meeting and I'd come back and every morning for six months that guy knocked on the window and woke me up every morning for six months without missing once he drove me up to the jack in the box and he'd buy me a breakfast jack and a cup of coffee and he talked to me about Alcoholics Anonymous he was a fallen down this is his words he was falling down pissing his pants wino when he got sober and he was 13 years sober when I met him and then came one day he wasn't going to come to the car lot and he said listen Kenny and this car lot was right in the thick of where I knew every hotel room. I knew everything. Every person on the street in this area. And I was sober several months, you know. And Al said, listen, Kenny, I can't come. I got to go over to my mother's house and she's going over to Idaho. So I won't be here. And I just thought, well, the gig is up, man. There's no way I can stay sober without Al. I can'T do it. And I woke up that morning and he told me not going to come by the car lot. I wokeup that morning and I went up and his brother Joe who was not in the program and was quite perplexed as to why Al was spending so much time with me. They were partners in this business. So I went up to see Joe, and he's just, yeah, well, you know, I don't have anything for you today kind of thing. And I saw Al pull up outside. And it was that intuitive thought, that inspiration. And Al walked. I thought, what's Al doing here? Man, I looked out the window. He said, Al's not supposed to be here today. Al comes in, and he says, Hey, Kenny, you know, I could really use some help. How would you like to go to Idaho with me? And I said, Well, I'd like nothing more, man. That would be fantastic. And, well, why don't we grab this van? We headed over to Idaho. It was just such a beautiful trip, one of those magical kind of AA trips. And we had this green van that they'd taken in on trade at the car lot. And it was a green van with all green shag interior. It had a bubble window on the back, big couch. it made into a bed and I kid you not on the side of the van was painted a Ben Franklin $100 bill painted on the site of the band so it was quite quite the ride and we hop in that to go to Idaho because he needed to haul stuff back with him and we just had a fantastic time and I kept I knew he said well we'll hit this noon meeting in Spokane on the way and I knew well if I go to the noon meeting they're going to ask me to talk at the noon meeting because I'll be able to if I get there on time, they'll have this time when they say, is there any visitors from out of town? I'll raise my hand and then they'll Have to call me and I'll get to talk. And I was so excited. I was going to my first out of Town AA meeting in Spokane. And so I kept, you know, I was watching the clock pretty careful and thinking, well, geez, Al, are we going to make it to Spokan on time? And, and, and he said, oh yeah, well you know we might get there a few minutes late. Well, we should try to get there on Time, you Know, and I wasn't telling him what was going on in my head. And I kept saying, hey, Al, what time is it? What time is that? What time was it? And we stopped for some gas. And he came out. And at the cash register where you buy your gas, they had some of these little chintzy watches for $4 or something, a little push-button digital deal plastic watch for kids. So he gets in the van, and he throws me that watch and says, hey stop asking me what time it is. We did make it to the meeting in Spokane. and I don't think I probably could get more than a few words out at the meeting, but it was just one of those fabulous trips. And I had a really important business meeting this last week where I was with some really high-level people and I wore my suit and tie and I was thinking, well, shoot, these guys are pretty big time and maybe I ought to wear a watch. I don' t generally wear a wash. And I opened my drawer and I have four really nice watches in my drawer. and I you know I would trade those watches and all the money in my pocket and if somebody wanted to drive a hard bargain they probably could get a lot more out of me if I could have that watch at Algame I don't know whatever happened to it but you know just those little moments in early sobriety at the time they don't mean much and how sweet they are when we look back on them and you know those final days at the McDonald's And we were so fortunate, I think, with the rich literature we have in AA. You know, we have this founder that wrote so much of our literature. And the first several times I went through the book, it was very academic. And then I was getting ready to go back through the steps and was kind of having one of those experiences Nicole talked about today where I just knew, okay, man, I'm at a place. I've got to go Back Through the Steps again. And a really wise man told me, Kenny, I want you to read the book again, but this time I want to read it like you're reading poetry. and I got to look at we've been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we'd not even dreamed this guy was a master with words and knew exactly and not anything was wasted the great fact is just this and nothing less that we've had deep and effective spiritual experiences revolutionized our entire attitude and outlook on life And he writes this beautiful piece, you know, that's the horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. Those four hideous horsemen, terror, bewilderment, frustration, despair, unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand. and then I got to blow through the black and white in the book and get down to the essence of what this guy was saying as I went through the steps like that and when I looked at Bill's last drink this master of words and I look at what happened to me behind the McDonald's And this master of words writes, simply, no words can tell. And one of our speakers this weekend articulated that so beautifully that we live in a poverty of words in Alcoholics Anonymous and we live into this poverty of worlds when it comes to describing the spiritual life. You know, several months into my sobriety, these guys started trolling. They called it trolling the bottom. and they would come by the hall at the 10 o'clock meeting and the midnight meeting, and they Would do what I've been trained to do, which is to look for the face of hopelessness. And after I'd gone through the steps, they told me there's only one thing now, Kenny, if you want to keep this, which I did. You know, I had those experiences, I had a few just real early, just minor ones when I was first working the steps. I just had this little, you know, just coming from that hopelessness and then getting sober and sitting through those meetings, and then I'd just get a little shiver just for no reason, and just, wow, it's good to be alive. So I knew somehow just what a gift it was when they told me, you've got to give this thing away in order to keep it, and I believed them for some reason. I knew it was the truth. I fell into these guys were doing a big book workshop. This was just ahead of the 1990 convention and dawn coming to Seattle. But we'd had a workshop going, and these guys would troll the bottom, and they found me down there at Fremont Hall. And they said, listen, if you come down to the Fremant Baptist Church on Tuesday nights, we'll read the book to you. And I had a friend with me, this guy Patrick, who was also – I had one day sobriety more than Patrick. And Al was his sponsor too. Al had picked me up that day, drove me to drive, got to Patrick the next day. So I had one day more sobriety than Patrick had. And Patrick said he was going to start going down to this workshop. And I thought, well, you know, I've got more sobrietty than Patrick does. And so I'm kind of trying to show him the ropes here a little bit. And he lives down the street from the car lot. I actually live at the car plot with Al. and uh and i can't let this guy just go down to the workshop and not have anybody down there to kind of straighten him out so we'd go to the workshops and we'd sit through the whole workshop and then after the workshop i'd deprogram patrick and tell him this is a cult these guys are involved with and patrick actually had this spiritual experience along the way where he called me at the car lot and said listen i'm back home after the worship and i just had this experience i was laying on my bed and all this wind just started coming out of my body and i I just felt purged of all this stuff. And I was homeless on and off. Even as a teenager, I was homelessness on and off. But the truth was, I was just homeless at the end for a few minutes. And Patrick, you know, I had game. I always had a couch or hotel room or normally but Patrick was right off the skids. This guy. And he had this big experience and so I was one day sober, longer than him, trying to kind of think, okay, what is it that's going on here? And I thought, well, obviously Patrick what's happened we've fallen within a cult that exists within Alcoholics Anonymous and these guys aren't this big book workshopper after our worldly possessions you know I'm living at the car lot Patrick's living in the basement of this deal and I think what happened is they must did you drink the coffee at the workshop tonight he said yeah and I said well I didn't drink the copy at the coffee shop and I had no such experience so clearly what's happen is that is that they've drugged your coffee and you've had this experience And they were talking about this retreat up in the mountains that was going to be coming up. And I'm just, okay, I'm a little nervous about this whole thing. But what I'm here to tell you is that the reality in my mind that this was a real possibility. I didn't believe it wholly, but it was the best kind of explanation. It was one explanation. I knew he had to be on guard for this. was that even if it would have been a cult, and these guys would have been after our worldly possessions. Even though knowing that that was a possibility, I continued to go to that workshop because it was better than where I came from. And we had this retreat coming up in the mountains and we started piling in cars and I got a car off the car lot. It was a $100 out-the-door car. And I mean that. It was $100. Al sold it to me for $100, tax and license included. Everything out the door. He took me down to this other AA guy who was an insurance guy. Nobody should have sold me insurance, I assure you. And he said, listen, we're going to help you out just later on when you are sober for a while. You remember that I helped you out. And he was my insurance agent for many, many, Many years. and I think he's passed away now but he was my insurance agent for many many years and I ended up doing some things and I think I probably overall was a pretty good customer for him so my $100 car had this transmission fluid leak where if you were on a grade the transmission fluid or if you parked there would just be this red lake of transmission fluid out the back and the tires were bald and so but Patrick and I knew we needed a getaway car if we were going to the mountains everybody said oh you just ride with us no no thanks that's all right we we knew you know about the getaway vehicle in case things turned on us you know we could kind of let's go let's get out of here and uh so Patrick says well I've got a car I was living in just before I got and he said but my sister had it towed from behind the bar and I think it's out behind your house so we said well, let's go. So we, he said, I think the only thing wrong with it is needs a water pump. And so we drove out there and the grass is all growing around this old, uh, this old Japanese car. And it's just, you know, an ancient thing. It hasn't been driven in years. We, we said, yeah, no, this is going to work good. This is, this was a better option than the car that we drove there in. So we got air in the tires and got water going, went and bought a water pipe, got a battery, got her started sure as heck. And we headed up for the retreat and on the way up the retreat, It wasn't the water pump, we find out. That wasn't a problem. The car was overheating. We'd pull over. We'd wait. Car would cool down. We'd pulled out. We'd waited. People that were headed up to the retreat, there was probably 120 people or something going to this deal. And everybody was going up the same highway, up Snoqualmie Pass. and they stopped and a couple people stopped and, hey, you guys doing all right? Oh yeah, no, we're just fine. They'd say, what's with all the water in the back seat? We'd filled up these massive jugs of water. Oh, we had a little overheating problem. Nothing serious. We'll see you guys on up the hill there. Good luck. Okay, see you later. Then we'd go a couple more miles watching the gauges And then we said, Patrick, I don't know if there's anything to this God thing. One of the things we were going to do up there, our workshop was in the third step. It was my first real third step that I ever did. Jim was there at that retreat. First real third steps I'd ever done that we were gonna do or we decided at the workshop as a group that let's go up to the retreat. When the retreat does the third steps, the people that were in that workshop will do the third stuff. And I thought, you know, Patrick, maybe there's something to this God thing. And we obviously need some help, you know, getting up the mountain. So let's say a little prayer. Patrick agreed, yeah, prayer might not hurt. So we said a little prayer, God, please help us get up the mountain. We're just a couple of drunks and just would really like to get up there and do this third step. And off we went. And then we saw a bus broke down on the side of the road. And the hood of the bus was up and there was steam coming out. all the people are poured outside the bus and we're looking at them we're driving right by just keep going and on the side of the bus I see the word that says The Church of God on the sid of the Bus and I just turn to Patrick I said Patrick if he ain't gonna get those guys up the mountain I mean I don't know about I don' t know about the I don''t know about kind of the rank and file here but I would tend to think the church of God is pretty high up the ladder they got to be near the top and but we made it up to the retreat and and we did our third step and um you know one of the things that that I like to talk about in the in the steps these days is you know this transformational effect that the 12 steps has on people of all types but particularly on these hopeless alcoholics how perfectly these steps are written it's why after reading it as poetry and looking at it and having read it many many times to many many people and seeing you know Shannon and I have worked with a lot of people and our house is an AA home we've got AA people in our home all the time we take a lot of visitors in the house and we've seen a lot of men and women make their bed and walk again I assure you and we're seeing a lot of transformations and I think there was over 700 people at Northwest Fonce two hour drive out of Denver 9700 feet why is 700 some people come into thoughts because people are hungry for a real message in Alcoholics Anonymous you know we confuse the meetings with the solution and just because you're in the meetings doesn't mean you're In The Solution and sometimes that's a little bit of a harsh message but that's just the way it is I sat in the meeting and I would have died of alcoholism had these guys not come along and told me, listen, you're dying of alcoholism sitting in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And there's a difference between the dances and the fun and the events and the celebration of sobriety that is, you know, if you want to be a member of AA, the only requirement is to have a desire to stop drinking. They even took the word honest out of it, you know, where they printed the word earnest desire to start drinking because they figured, none of us were really honest and as near as I can tell even today just you have to have a desire to stop drinking with rare occasion I don't think there's really too many people checking you're an AA member when you say you are that's it but if you want recovery from alcoholism and you want to have a transformation of your character and you know you want the spiritual awakening there's some things you're going to have to do that's the message that people are so hungry to hear in AA is that there is a transformational experience, a spiritual experience that will revolutionize our whole attitude and outlook on life. This personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism and sometimes I sorry sometimes I wonder if we give enough credence you know I've really taken a habit of rather than looking only at the people that have more sobriety than I do or people that seem to be these AA giants or these great AA sponsors as my mentors, I've tried to look the other way towards the new people and see in the new person that that person has what i want and aa is really designed like that it's one of the things that works so perfectly most organizations including the oxford group which we you know have a lot of gratitude towards for for help and develop this what became our 12 steps but they were upwardly mobile meant that we thought geez if we can get the presidents these institutions and the ceos and the people with the money and the mayors and the congressmen to come to us then we'll build this deal, we'll be able to help so many people. It was an upwardly mobile movement and AA is downwardly mobile. We go for the person that is in their cots, the unlovely creature, the people that walk through the door and I guarantee you when I walked into Fremont Hall on June the 8th of 1989 there wasn't anybody there that said, geez, I think we ought to get this guy up to fellowship of the spirit to be our sunday spiritual speaker but the but the transformation the spiritual potential was there wasn't it was that was one of the things it was so hard these guys had put these little beans in my head they say you got to have it but you can't get it and they just let it bounce around you know i gotta have it because i already had it it was already there it was just a matter of removing all these things that blocked me from the sunlight of the spirit so that I could have an experience with something that was already there and um so you know I was really moved there was a gal that said she'd been coming to Northwest Fox I don't know I doubt she's here I don'T think there's anybody uh in their right mind less than 25 that's here on a Sunday morning but uh you know the the this gal came I said she's been coming for a long time I think her name was Nicole and and she spoke at one of the deals and said that she is amazed at the transformation, amazed at all these things that have happened in her life in the last four months. And I thought, she's got what I want. I want that gratitude right now of what transformation has happened for me in the past four months in the next four months and I thought of this story of when I was looking at that young girl and I though of this storie You know, we don't – I'm going to stop saying we because I don't think it's right. I don' t think we really have any disservice. You know? We open people with open arms here. But it's just interesting to me that the older AA gets, there's more and more people with 50 years and 40 years and 30 years, 25 years like myself and on down. and some of the greatest things in AA are still happening by people and some of the best talks are still given by people with just a few days or a few months of sobriety and it's this downwardly mobile piece and so I thought of the story when I was looking at her I thought of the story of Joan of Arc you know this amazing young woman and these saints came to her in visions and said you need to go to the front line and you are going to free France from tyranny. And she fashioned a set of armor using scrap that other people would give her for her and her horse and she dressed in a way that allowed her to get through and she talked to people and told them about her visions and managed to get to the front line and Joan of Arc won not one but two wars, not battles, wars. She was wounded climbing up a ladder and she was hit by it and had a bad head injury. She walked with a limp because she'd had a bad injury in her leg in battle. And then she was arrested and she was locked up and during the time when she was locked up, it was a crime to dress as a man. But it was even a worse crime to do it twice. If you did it once and you were told then you would be in prison, you'd be held, you'll be ridiculed but they wouldn't kill you and in prison and a lot of people think to avoid sexual attraction, sexual abuse by the guards she dressed as a man again. She took off the clothes that they gave her and somehow got some clothes from a guard and dressed in those again trying to let people know that you know this is who I am. And so she sat in that prison cell facing certain death, and this is the thing that I love so much about that story, is then Joan turned 19. And I like to remember that when I see these young people. I like to look at young Nicole and think, Joan of Arc, are you there? I've got just a couple more things I want to get out. And one of them is that, you know, I've had, I think this love that exists one alcoholic for another is part of our poverty of words that you know when you're working with somebody and you're just one on one with somebody and it's working and you can see this person awaken up in front of you you know life makes perfect sense to me And in the, you know, in that we find this love. And it's really not a strong enough word. It's almost like there ought to be another word for what we feel. This love for one alcoholic for another. I can't describe to you the love that I have for my sponsor, Al. There's no way I could articulate how I feel about this man and what he did and how I feel about these guys that took me through the steps in that workshop and introduced me to this way of life and introduced me to his family. I ran into a girl at a retreat that we have up in Seattle. She showed up. She hadn't paid. She was completely out of her mind. She was being completely inappropriate. She'd lost her teeth somewhere. and you know i was able to i was kind of the the the finance holder and uh business end of the retreat and it brought somebody in to uh to speak at that retreat somebody from denver here actually and and uh was leading the retreat and in comes darlene and she knew me a little bit from aa we'd had a couple little interactions and she was having, you know, a psychological breakdown and she had a little tape recorder. She was trying to get real close to where the person was sitting that was leading the retreat. So people said, hey, Kenny, can you, you know you're the business end of this, can you talk to her? You know, she's being, so I talked to her outside. We had a break and I was standing outside and I said, listen, Darlene, you can stay. We want you here, but you got to quit recording. So you got turn the tape recorder off. This isn't a recorded event. And you've got to try to maintain and not have the outbursts and ask questions. Just let this person that's facilitating facilitate this retreat. And Shannon was there, my wife. I call her the beautiful and wonderful Shannon. This is like one of the beautiful parts of her. Darlene grabbed me by the collar. Horse collar. I need some help. I need som help. You know, I need, I needsom help. will you sponsor me, will you sponsor me? She knew I was a step guy and I need some help and I was selfishly, I was looking this way. Well certainly there must be somebody out here that can help her. Maybe Marie would help her, maybe and Shannon was standing next to me seeing this selfishness in her husband and she said to me Kenny, like that kind of when she says my name that way, Kenny, it's a wake-up call. You have to help this woman. And so I told her I'd be happy to work with you. And we, I gave her my phone number and she was placed in the hospital right after the retreat because of this psychological breakdown she was having. And she would call me from the payphone. It was before cell phones that she'd call me from the pay phones and or before cell phones were popular and um she would call me from the pay phone and i just did what you showed me how to do i just started reading the book to her and she started waking up and i did a third step prayer with her when we got the third step prayer over that phone and she came out and she was one of these people including nicole including my wife uh it's impossible now to look at anybody in seattle that wasn't touched by this woman A lot of them don't know, but I can say, well, she sponsored her. She sponsored Shannon and Shannon sponsored her and she sponsored her. And that woman was sponsored by Darlene. And I want to keep this short, but it's such a you know, it's just this was a 12 step call that I didn't want to take. And several years into this, I mean, she is just a sponsoring machine just sponsoring women all over town and um and i knew but very few other people did because she said she had aids and this was when aids was a serious serious problem at that time um as far as it's life-threatening uh um she had the hiv virus which became full-blown AIDS in her case. And she always said, hey, alcoholism is a disease that I really care about. I'm not interested in talking about this other disease. My deal is helping these women. And she opened her door. She had a little detox set up. She wanted to open her own detox. But in the meantime, she had a Little Detox set up in her little two-bedroom apartment. Her and her son were there. He was eight years old when I met him. I started going to ball games with him, spending more and more time with him eventually she came to my wife and i and she said listen you know guys know that i'm sick and if anything ever happens to me would you be willing to take my son jake and so we said well yeah i mean she was healthy as a horse and and we loved jake and we said we'd be happy to take jake we mean i mean we were just completely humbled and we went through all the legal stuff and filled out all the legal paperwork and it wasn't more than just a few months after that I noticed when I would go see her that her balance was off a little bit. And I want to make I'll take this little I used to call Gary Brown's sponsor in Chicago Paul M when he was alive and first thing Paul M had always told me he was just one of these guys that just love to kind of, you know, set the record straight right off the bat. He'd say, I'd say hey Paul it's Kenny from Seattle. You still sponsoring women out there on the west coast he'd say? I'd see so I'd lie to him and I'd say well Paul all the women I sponsor are lesbians. But you know I'm not currently sponsoring any women and we've got so many women that are fantastic in the steps in my area. But this was, you know, just this amazing opportunity I had and it goes to this love one alcoholic for another and I noticed that she had a problem with her balance one day and then a couple people called me and said, God, I was over at Darlene's and she fell down, you know kind of tripped but it wasn't anything and so I went to her and said Darlena let's get you to the doctor. We got her to the Doctor and they came shortly with this brain infection that age patients would get in those days and the doctor told me, this isn't 95%, this isn'T 99%. I'd like to tell you it was 99.9% but 100% of patients with full-blown AIDS that develop this brain injection have died and it's not going to be too long. and we took Jake home. I had to sit there with Jake down, and because of what I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was able to articulate to him that his mother was dying and he didn't want to believe it. And, you know, there was a love between us, and we went to the hospital twice every day he was living with us, and twice every Day we'd go see his mother, and we went in one day and I was with Jake and I walked in with Darlene's son and we held her hand and Darllene took her last breath and I loved her as much as anybody I've ever loved in my life and there was nothing but one alcoholic to another and I went in and I talked in with her son and when I walked out, I had my son with me. He's called me dad since that day. He's told me he's my son. He's also called me his father. I sat him down because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a talk with him and I said, listen, Jake, I wouldn't blame you if you threw your whole life away right now. I wouldn'T blame you a bit if you just threw it away and I want to tell you if you choose to do that, I'm not going to love you but one bit less. But I also want to let you know that I'm not going to let that happen. So why don't we just get rid of that idea? What is it that we need to do here? His father had died of a heroin overdose, so I was able to, you know, and I said, Jake, your father died of an heroin overdose. Now your mother's gone. And I've never had a son, So somehow God's brought the two of us together. And so we're going to have to get some things straight. He went on to play football. He went On to graduate from high school. He went onto, he's just an unbelievably great guy. He's on this kick right now where he's become a vegan and he's not eating meat and he is volunteering at this goat ranch. He's taken right after his mom. I mean his mom has been on this, she was a heavy, heavy spiritual header And he's, you know, developing that himself. And I don't have anything particularly about eating meat one way or the other. But I've not been eating meat for weeks. I had one little piece of some kind of a little turkey over at Bobby's house and snuck one on my plate there. But I'm doing that to support Jake because he's one of these kids, for whatever reason, you know what I have to say means a lot to him. So I've been calling him, telling him, listen, I haven't been eating meet either, man. This is really good, Jake. This is good. I feel better, and I actually lost some weight, and I'm feeling good. I'm just checking my time here. I suppose that, you know, I've got several things, you Know, but I just would like to end with, I've Got Time to End With One. And I think, you know, the thing that I'd like to say is to talk for a minute just about the I am and end with that. You know, it's a we program. All the steps, we, we. But when you get called on a meeting, you say, my name is Tom and I am an alcoholic. And nobody can say the I Am for you. That's the meaning of the IAm. It's the meaning of the I am, the I am. Well, what is God? God is the whatever you say it is. I am the I Am. Who do you say I am? Well, who do you say I am. Who are you? They asked. Well who do YOU say that I am? It's this whole thing. I mean our culture is just filled with it that nobody can say the I AM for you. I can say Belinda is a beautiful loving, caring child of God and it doesn't have the same meaning as when Belinda says my name is Belinda and I am a loving caring child of God two different things it's a powerful deal and that's the transformation that I've been given that I have been shown that you know I used to think the best that could ever happen to me was that I could get if somebody would let me live in their garage. I had a friend that had a really cool garage, and I thought, geez, if somebody, it wasn't ever in my garage, if somebody else would let me live in their garage, life would be wonderful. That was my I am, you know, that I am a person that would be in heaven if somebody else would let me live in their garage. And, you know, I came to the conclusion, you're sober, you know, I used to walk around and see these clearly underutilized garages and I thought and I got to thinking that you know, I never saw the house. It was right there in front of me but I never saw it. And Shannon and I have this conversation all the time. We just keep asking ourselves maybe this is all great. This is great. Maybe this is the garage. and I have a beautiful house today my friend Jim is here he was the first one to come over to this house we've lived there about six years now but the last house we lived in was the nicest house we ever lived in in our lives Shannon or myself both came from kind of similar backgrounds and this place is you know by an order of magnitude nicer just because you know you never know what the potential is and one of the things that happened for me was minus this desire to destroy myself with booze and drugs, once that merciless obsession was removed, who knew? It turned out I was good at business. And I could sit down with people. And people would, you know, I could convince them that there were deals that we should put together. And, you know, I've had some success. We live in a very beautiful house. We have a big sweeping view of the water. And you know it's just great. And Jim's heard my story many times. And he was the first one because he lived close by. He came over to the house when we first moved in. He walked in, he saw this grand kitchen, big room, big sweeping view of the water and the locks and the mountains. And he just looked at me and said, hey Kenny, nice garage. So I used to think in order to have one of these kind of transformations, I knew I needed something. I mean I was bad enough I knew I needed a real answer and I thought that the real answer I used to see these guys on tv sometimes late at night they'd they do this uh demon of alcohol be gone and they hit somebody on the head and over they'd go and they'd flop and then they'd come out and they'D be running around back and forth on the stage just you know I'm free I'm three and I though I gotta find one of these guys I'm totally serious I got to find one of these because that I was so obsessed with with more, I thought the only thing that's going to clear that is one of these guys. I've got to find one of These people that can lay the hands on me. And then I thought my mom is a devotee of the Ram Dass, for those of you that know what that means. She and I were just at her house. You walk into her house like walking into India or something. And so I knew some stuff about the mantra and that during the hardest times in your life, that the guru will give you a mantra and it's only yours. It's the I am. It is only for you. And you can say the mantra when times are troubled and you're in a bad way. You can say your mantra and you don't tell anybody else what it is. The meaning is for you. And I thought, I need the mantra. I got to go find one of these gurus that's going to whisper the mantra in my ear and then this obsession is going to go away and I'll be able to take a deep breath and I will have this you know I will be able to stop and I was just convinced of that and then years later I remembered when I walked into that meeting at Fremont Hall my friend Matt who was at my 25 year A birthday at my home group and showed up with balloons for me on my 25 year birthday I walked in not sober a minute I walked into that meeting on June the 8th of 1989 and Matt was there and he walked over and he touched me and laid the hands on me and shook my hands and said welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous you know have a seat meetings are going to start here in a few minutes how you doing and then I thought well that was the laying of the hands and then I thought, well I was given the mantra. And you know the amazing thing about that was on June the 8th of 1989 I couldn't stop drinking and on June 9th and every day since for 25 years I've been sober. That's amazing. And And the power in that that we have here in Alcoholics Anonymous and they gave me the mantra and I'm going to end with this and the mantra means to me what it means to me. My mom, I asked her well what does that mean to be a devotee when she told me she was going to go this direction and she's always gone these directions and this I'm sure won't be the last one but she told Me I said well mom what does it mean to be an alcoholic to be devotee and she said Well, it means that I practice a certain thing that the Ram Dass has laid out and that I call him when we talk and I'm in these groups and that it means that I do certain things. I thought, oh, I'm an AA devotee. Upon awakening, when I retire at night as I go through the day, when agitated, there's a practice. It's a way of life. So that's what it means to me when I say my mantra. It means that I'm an AA devotee. I'm a disciple of the AA way of Life. I practice these things. I practice self-sacrifice and service to others. When dealing with resentments, I put them on paper. It's A Way of Life So that is what it mean to me. And I will end you with my mantra And I want to thank everybody here because my mantra is, My name is Kenny and I am an alcoholic.