The Mask That Filled the Gap – Charlie C.

Hi, my name is Charlie. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank Steve for inviting me to this. It's always an honor to be asked to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous, even under these kind of conditions. It's nice to be here. I want to thank my L.A. posse for keeping me on the straight and narrow. I'm sorry, I overdressed. I'm just comfortable. I don't do this to be arrogant or anything. This is just the way I'm comfortable. I find it an unnatural situation for me to have shorts on. I usually remain fully clothed just as a public service. So it took me a couple of days to kind of get comfortable enough to, you know, wear a short-sleeved shirt. And so this is it. I want to thank my Omaha posse, too. These people mean a lot to me and the other people who are here, Sandy and Sue and Annie, God, I'll get into that later, and Laura from Colorado. There are people here, you know, there are a lot of people here. And I was listening to Earl last night thinking, come on, don't be a goober, Earl. You know, because he's emotional, he's all upset. I'm sitting out on the beach about 5 o'clock tonight having a cigar, which I smoke a cigar about twice a year, and tonight was the night. And listening to a little Curtis Mayfield, which is my idea of heaven. And watching the waves and watching people out there having fun. And just thought this is hard. Because I am the type of person who just has a lot of difficulty being comfortable in the world. and I don't say that, there's no drama there. That's not a dramatic statement it's just, and I know no one else here feels that way too but I fight every bit of spiritual growth I've had over the last 23 and a half years. I have punched it out with that and have come to the conclusion that once I just shut up and sit still and as Al was talking about the other night, try to catch the moment and ride the moment I'm fine, I'm fine and I felt like I was just sitting out there watching the sun and watching the ocean and listening to the people around me and watching people you know, people who were in turmoil before they came here, sitting out there enjoying a book, enjoying nature enjoying the pool and it made me feel like I Was having just like a moment of grace I guess for just a second I gather those moments as much as I can try to hold them in my memory as much as I can. Bless you. I'm an only child. I had a hideous childhood like a lot of people here. Both my parents love me, and I start slow, and I'll build to a shattering climax later. But right now, I'm kind of... I was sitting on the beach and I realized it was 5.30. And I thought, gee, I wonder what time the meeting starts. Six o'clock. And as I've said many times this week for various reasons, sweet mother of God. And I ran to get dressed. But I remember that story about... J.D. Salinger's story about the guy who goes to his brother's wedding and stays with the... He's sitting with the family of the bride and his brother never shows up for the wedding because he was too happy to go. He was so full of joy that he just didn't show up. It would have ruined it to go to the wedding and he just went somewhere else and I understand that. I understand being so fullof joy that I can't be around you. I understand loving someone so much that I cannot stand to be in their presence because that is just me. As I said, I am an only child and I am used to being isolated. I kind of like that. I have always, you know, I hate people pretty much. I'm getting better. I don't hate you one-on-one, but as a group, skip it. I have another problem too in hating humanity. I also demand its approval at the same time, which gives your life a real sense of torque. And that's what I've lived with all my life, is that yearning to just cut the crap and fit in. No way am I going to fit in with those people. Oh, come on. You get that thing going, the barking on either side of your head. And I've always felt that way. I've already been a rebel. I just never told anybody. I'm just like you. I'm rebellious. I am defiant. I just don't bother to alert people about it I've been fraught with potential I know there are many people in here who I have a friend named well, a lot of us have a friends named Don G who lives up in Atascadero who talks about being crucified on the cross of potential I've had many people tell me I have potential I took a sense of twisted pride in being told I have potencial not understanding at the time that they don't tell people who are using their potential that they have it. Just people like us. And I've been hauled into priest's offices and teacher's offices and principal's offices and guidance counselor's offices, always with a folder on the desk in front of them with my parents sitting there. My dad had a fifth-grade education and my mom had a seventh-grade educational. And my mom had had three other pregnancies besides the one with me, and all three babies died at birth. She carried two of the babies around for three or four months dead, knowing they were dead, and being told that she had to wait to have the baby to deliver it. And so my mother, when I cleared my throat in that house, things happened. All I had to do was cough, and that house got scrubbed down like a surgical station. And I was a sickly kid. I was always home from school sick, and I read a lot and thought a lot but was not too inspired to do anything. And we'd get hauled into the office and have somebody say, you know, Charles has potential. It's right here. We just don't understand why he doesn't do anything with it. And my reaction to that was always the same. I know I've got potential. you know I've got potential. The paper says I have potential. It seems like now my parents know I have got potential, thanks a bundle. It seems that all God's children know I got potential so why don't you just back it up? Because I will use my god damn potential when I am good and ready to. And not a moment sooner and certainly not because you're encouraging me to jump through the hoop because I'm not your pet poodle. When I do use my potential, I hope you're wearing your sunglasses, Scooter, because I want to light you up. And until then, you might want to take your asinine concern for my unused potential and go wipe it on some other sap because if you were such hot stuff, you wouldn't be a high school counselor now, would you? Although, it never came out in exactly those words. i usually said something like i'll try harder but i um but inside have always had the cosmic one of these going on through the world and and never understood why because i want to like people i read a lot of books and stuff and i saw how people ought to behave they ought to lay their lives down for their friends they ought to act nobly i always love stories where people were doing noble things and then i'd walk out of the house, and the world's just filled with you. And I always sank because nobody ever lived up to my expectations. And one time when my mom was pregnant with her fourth child, I remember being sent to our neighbor's house for the day and for a couple of days. Now, I didn't want to be at anybody else's house. I didn' t like sleeping at somebody else's house. I didn't like company. I had one friend usually, and then I'd get irritated when they got another friend, and that was the end of that. I mean, loyalty to me is really important. Sick loyalty. I like that. And I remember being at the Klein's house and lying there in bed and thinking. I did not know what was wrong with my mom. I was seven years old, and I knew that she was pregnant, and I remember laying there in that room vividly, staring at the wall with my back to the room, my face to the wall, and putting my finger against the wall and running my finger up and down the wall saying, God, please help my mom. She's going to have a baby, I guess. And I didn't know what that meant. And then about two days later they said, okay, you can go home now. And so I came home, and there were cards on the front door on the screen, in the screen door. And, and no one mentioned anything after that. There was not, there was no baby. And they said, don't talk to your mom because she's tired and she needs to rest. And no one explained anything that happened to me. And at that point, I believe, because it came out in my inventory, I just turned God off. I thought, well, God is for other people. God doesn't answer prayers. Then he answers prayers. It's like the lottery, you know, you throw out a prayer. And maybe if God picks your number, you get your prayer done. And then if he doesn't, then you're just, that's too bad. And I went through life like that. And I got out of high school with absolutely no notoriety at all, except being 6'2 and about 127 pounds of percolating testosterone. And I wound up getting a job in the music industry right away. I was a clerk in this record store in Fullerton. And I couldn't tell you anything about how I felt or anything about my life, but I knew the lineup of every rock and roll band on earth. And I was comfortable that way. And I didn't talk to too many people, and I was just kind of a quiet guy. I had a couple of friends, but I'd never been to a party because there are people at parties, as I understood it. And one time some of the hoodlums from my school came into this record store and they asked if I wanted to go to a party. Now, I did not want to go. This is 1968. I was at this time 18 years old. I never had a drink and I never took a drug in the 60s because I didn't want to do anything that would cause me disfavor in the eyes of my parents and I knew it was illegal so I never drank. I never drunk any narcotics or anything and I hadn't drunk either and they invited me to this party and I went with this buddy of mine, John who, you know, he was a drummer in a band and girls were, like, shinning up his leg. And I thought maybe I could catch some of the runoff, you know. So I go, because I've been on hormone alert since I'm about eight, and I go to this party, and I'm standing at this party and it was exactly what I thought. People having fun. And I'm not into fun. They're laughing and they're, you now, it's party time and everybody's, half the room is drunk and half the rooms on LSD. and they're talking to each other and they are all believing they are having a conversation at the same time. They had the MC5 on the stereo, they had a mirror ball in this house in Santa Ana with a mirrorball going around the ceiling and I stood there at that party and I just felt just like I always did I don't fit into this group I hate these people people are just exactly what I thought they were They're shallow, they're idiotic. It's ya-ya-ya, everybody's having a party, everybody's havin' fun. Yeah, you're whistlin' in the dark, you little rat-faced bastards. Look at you, you know? And I hate you and I know I hated you all along. I hateyou even more now. I will hate you when I go home tonight. I will never in my life come to a party again. And some guy walked by and said, oh, here, have a beer. And he handed me a can of malt liquor and I'm standin' there with this can of malty liquor feelin' completely foolish and I thought, how stupid is this, you kno? and after about 10 minutes and feeling the condensation dripping I thought oh well you know what the hell I took a drink of that and I drank it about halfway down this can, this 16 ounce can of malt liquor and about halfway through that can I realized from somewhere that I've been way too hard on you people I started to feel kind of okay I drank more. I started to feel the Irish come out of me, you know? Just like in my dad's family. He had 15 kids in his family. He was one of 15. And we'd go on those family things. And I grew up... These people were loving, decent people who wanted me to be part of their family. And I always sat in the back of any family picture looking like the guy who would be the assassin in 20 years. I just had that look. And there I was amongst all these people drinking this can of malt liquor, and I thought, this is okay. These people aren't that bad. And I started to feel like a wonderful mixture of John Lennon and David Niven and Errol Flynn all mixed together in this wonderful, strange cocktail, which is really hard to pull off when you look like Sherman from the Mr. Peabody cartoons. But I gave it a run. And I was feeling, you know, I'm standing there feeling just, you know, the poetry is coming out of me, although I wasn't saying a word to anybody. And all I was thinking is, you know, form a single line, ladies, no shoving, you know. There's plenty for everybody. Step right up. I never said that. I just stood there looking at people and just feeling these feelings. I felt comfortable in my own skin at that moment. I felt relieved of all that crap that I had been dragging around for 18 years. I felt like I'd just kind of taken my coat off, loosened my tie, and I was alive on a can of malt liquor. And I felt joy, I believe, for the first time in my life at that party because I remember it vividly as if I were there right now. And I went into a blackout that night. I drank more because I wanted to stay there. and I don't know many alcoholics who don't drink who don' t want to get there we may wind up going past the off ramp seeing there and missing it damn, that was there, I'll just keep going but I'll tell you I was good and there everything was so good and I remember later that evening coming out of that blackout, running alongside of my friend John's car, holding onto the handle, the door handle while he drove and trotting alongside the car, vomiting on myself and just laughing my ass off because I'd been there. You know, once you are there, you are never going back. And I got sick that night and I wound up the next morning I woke up in my family's house and I thought I made a note somewhere in the back of my mind that I'm going to do that again sometime soon because I like the way that made me feel. Because, and I did. And my drunk-a-log, you know, the people who spoke this week, I have the absolute greatest respect for and Peggy, who speaks tomorrow night, I love these people. They have really great stories too. I have a boring drunk-o-log. I am a blackout drinker but I've never come out of a black out. You know, I've heard people talk about coming out of blackouts, you now, taking out parked cars by the dozens, you know, and fighting the police. Come on, Scrooge, you're not going to take me alive. I'm not that type. I've never come out of a blackout saying, you cover me, I'm going in. I've never had one of those, okay, cut the red wire blackouts, you You know, I've never come out of a blackout saying much of anything. Usually I come out in blackouts with people saying stuff to me like, boy, I bet that hurt. It's just the price you pay. I'm the kind of drunk, and I've said this before, I'm the kind of drunk who believes that the fastest way down a long flight of stairs is to just relax. Because it's, you know what? For that moment of being there, it's worth it to me. I'm there. I was a nice drunk. I was an happy drunk. I was the kindof drunk who would... I'd get drunk some afternoon at home and just call my doctor to tell him that he was the best friend a guy ever had. I'm a sentimental drunk. When I'm sober is when I have a problem. I don't want to be... I want to being convivial and alive and in the moment and there. I don' t want to been a brittle dick. I want be... I want have that balance of just being on the cusp of joy, you know? our book says that we're like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when we drink I'm like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Rogers when I drink it's hard to imagine Mr. Roger with a big bag of resentments and a loaded revolver but that's how I felt when I drank. I felt alive. I mean, really, truly, I felt like alcohol made me the person I was supposed to be, the person that everybody else was already, that you already felt that way. Now this is how I get to feel like you. I thought alcohol worked for everybody that way. I didn't realize it works that way for only about 10% of the human race, unless you're Irish or Native American and your percentages are a little higher. But man, I felt great, and Earl talked about it last night. We drink without consequence for a long time. When I'm 18 and I'm drinking, I can knock off a hangover like that. I just need to do a little physical work, you know? And I did. I wanted to be a writer. I've always had that in the back of my mind, and I loved Annie's workshop this afternoon. But I wanted To Be a Writer because I wrote a story about a bear in the third grade, and I got a lot of strokes for it. So I thought, that's what I can be because you can tell that my Heisman Trophy days are ahead of me. But I just wanted to be a writer, and I got a job in publishing. I was working as a clerk at a bookstore on the receiving dock and would unload trucks of books all day, you know, and it was a hands-on kind of thing. And I read somewhere that T.S. Eliot worked in a bank all his life so he could save his creative energy from when he got home to work on his poetry. And I thought, this is it. This is my T. S. Eliot job. you know I'll work on this receiving doc by day and then I'll go home and I'll get in my writing togs and I will write and then someone will read what I've written it will always be a woman and I find her capital H her and it didn't happen and I switched from beer to bourbon in about three weeks because there's nothing I like better than a good phlegm cutter in the morning. You've got to just get one of those down and, oh, yeah, oh yeah, I've got that blood going, shake everything out, and I'm ready, I'm good to go. I'm feeling, I're there already. I'm on the road to there. And that's how I drank. I came out of blackouts never in the service of humanity, But I came out of blackouts at the dry cleaners, you know, rocking on my heels with a guy leaned over the counter going, boxed or hangers? You know, with that tone of voice that just irked the crap out of me. And I don't know what to say. You know? It's like, Earl, what do I say? I just got here myself. Tell me that again. Boxed or what? And I didn't even have a job where I needed dry cleaning done. But I'm in the dry cleaner's. And I did what any self-respecting alcoholic would do, and that is I said, hangers. And I turned around and walked out and thought, what the hell did I even bring in there? I don't know what I brought in. I don' t know what Im doing, but Im going to have another drink and then Im goingto write something. Id go home and get myself anointed. Id get out of my workers clothes and Id get into my tweed jacket from the St. Matthews thrift store on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica or Venice And I'd get my corduroys on, and I'd get my Oxford shirt, and i'd anoint myself with a little good smell and stuff. And I would walk out and I would get a bottle of bourbon. And by this point, you know, my drunken log is, again, spotty. I've done my share of drunk driving, which I'm not proud of because I know we hurt people doing that. I one time remember getting on the freeway going the wrong direction or trying to when other people were getting off the free way, annoyed that someone was trying to get on the Freeway that direction. And the guy in the front kept bumping my bumper to back me up. And that's when I came out of the blackout and I thought, great, you know, great. They don't sign these things right. And now everybody's mad at me for trying to Get On The Freeway and the only way I know how, I reacted with anger to everything. It was the anger, if you're like me and you feel like a polished turd most of the time and you suck down that anger long enough and you don't deal with it up front like most healthy alcoholics do, it leaks out in every other area of my life. It just dribbles out and it comes out in sarcasm. It comes out en bitterness. It comes OUT in just vile resentment, that poisonous kind of resentment against people who are successful who have the things that I wish I had that would make me feel whole if I had that I would feel better if I could do that I would feels better but I can't do that so now I feel less than and I don't want to be around you and my own failings were coming up in my face and I met a woman and I fell in love or what I thought was love I equated sex with love and when the sex was you know when the initial attraction was gone then the love must be gone and it's time to move on. But when I was in a marriage, I thought I can't move on so I stayed in that marriage and I was just not the kind of person... I mean, we just do damage to people. This woman adored me. She was not alcoholic. She tried to drink with me a few times which is amusing if nothing else to see someone try to match you one for one and then go... She would say, I can only have a couple. I just feel like I'm losing control and I thought, that's part of the problem. You're a quitter. I get a couple of drinks in me, and I feel like I'm just getting me some control. I'm starting to feel like now things are starting to shape up. I don't have any control when I'm sober. I feel ready to fly off into the universe by myself sober. When I drink is when I feel like I am a better driver, a better husband, a better man. George Orwell in an essay said that a tyrant wears a mask and his face grows to fit it. And I think that was the same in my, I can feel that in my own story that I would go around with this mask out there trying to make you believe that this is what I was all through my life. And then when I started drinking, it filled the gap between what's going on in here and the back of that mask and I actually, under the influence of alcohol, I believed that what I Was putting out there was actually me. This is really me right here. And by the time the 11th of June of 1981 rolled around, I was holding that mask out there with everything I had and there was nothing between me and the mask. And I was as drunk as I've ever been in my life and I couldn't feel differently. I felt I was completely aware there was something seriously wrong here. And I'd been peeing blood for a while. I'd be in therapy for a little bit. For a while, I was hugely in debt. I was trying to get my wife to allow me to be a house husband so that she could work and I could stay home. Almost had her convinced right before she filed. And I... And I've... And I was lost. I was just a lost soul. I would drink down at the pier in Santa Monica. I would sit there at this place. They had a little place called the Mermaid Cafe down there and I'd drink about a half a bottle of bourbon and I would stagger down to the Mermaid Cafe and sit there and drink beer all afternoon and stagger back home and on Sundays I would sit at Sunday night and sit in my little apartment because I kept getting alcoholics, I think you can tell the progression of the disease by the size of their living quarters they just get smaller I started out with living in a house then an apartment, like a two bedroom apartment then a one bedroom apartment than a single, and if I could have rented a closet I would have I like to have a house or a place when I'm drinking where I can see everything in the place and I can touch all four walls standing in the middle of the room because it's control I feel like I finally got some control over my environment my own theory is that's why alcoholics we don't have any problem doing prison time lock me in a cell I can handle that just get me away from everything around me that's making me feel the way I feel and maybe I won't feel this way anymore and if I don't feel this way any more then I won' t have to drink and I went to the you know I was an emergency room visitor I would frequent the emergency room I was the kind of guy who'd call you up at three in the morning and I'm sick I'm throwing up I can't stop throwing up my stomach feels like someone stuck a knife in it can you take me to the emergencyroom and they take me to the agency room and I lay there they do tests and then by the time morning came somebody would hand me a prescription for Valium and I would get that and go home and take Valium. They'd say, are you stressed? I'd say you have no idea when I see one of those trucks coming down the driveway at that loading dock it's a lot of stress. Just give me the Valium I took the Valrium but I had to take like 10 milligrams every four hours or something or I didn't want to be underdosed so I made sure I was well stocked but I would take that and I would sit there and just have that eternal Valium sigh, you know, that feeling that people say, what's wrong? And I'd say, nothing. That's the problem. I've got to have some torque, you know. And drugs, I had a problem with drugs. I'm not a drug addict because I never bought, But I would take drugs to try to extend the effects of my drinking. And I took speed for about a year that was being supplied to me by a guy I worked with. And I never liked the sensation of that, you know, my eyes trying to beat me into the next room, you Know That Feeling? I remember a couple of times smoking PCP just to be polite and wound up hallucinating like a madman. And the problem I had with drugs is that drugs got me loaded. I'd smoke pot occasionally and wind up sitting in my house listening to, you know, the bass line on a Steely Dan song for about 11 hours and then at 3 in the morning wind up in the kitchen eating ketchup packets. I ate a bouillon a chicken bouillon cube one time because it was crunchy and tasted like chicken that kind of thinking there it's not bad it sucks every ounce of moisture out of your body but it's no good it's just not bad but I tried my little foray into drugs and I realized after a while that it'snot working because it doesn't relieve me like alcohol does Alcohol gives me relief. That's why I go to Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's what's at stake for me. Drugs got me loaded, but I don't want to be loaded. I want to being there. I don' t want to sloppy and staggering, which I was anyway, theoretically. I just want to in that moment where everything is going to be good. By the end, I would feel comfortable just having a bottle of bourbon in the car. You know that feeling when you have it? It's on the seat. Everything's going to be okay. And I'd get home and I'd do that alcoholic foreplay that we do where you set the bottle on the counter and then I would trot in and get out of my work clothes and ready to get into my writer's costume. And then I'd come back out and I walk past the bottle of bourbon and acknowledge it and then walk out into the living room and I roll a piece of paper in the typewriter getting ready for that moment when the muse would come and then i walk back and look at that bottle of Bourbon and just crack the seal on it and then set it back down and go back and do something else for a second and then come back by again and take a glass down, you know, because I'm not a pig like a lot of you. And I put the glass down and put some ice in it, you now. And then finally, after I couldn't stand it anymore, I'd get the bottle and I'd pour that bourbon on the ice and I would stand there and I watch it kick and squeal and fuss in the glass, you kno, and bounce around in its death throes and then finally it would just and then I'd take a big long amber pull, you know, off of that thing. And for about a minute and a half I'd just wait and then three, two, one, there, there. And I couldn't stay there for the life of me. I couldn'T stay there more than a few minutes. And then it was back to just alcoholic drinking where I couldnT stop until I was done. And that's the way it was. AndI went into huge debt. I was sick, physically sick, emotionally and spiritually as we all are. And I wound up, my brother-in-law, Bob, I've got a lot of Bobs in my life and a lot of Toms in my life. Bob was my wife's brother. And Bob, when my wife and I were first going out and we moved in together after a month because she kind of liked my style, which was I got drunk and solve the Kennedy assassination one evening. And she went to her therapist the next day and told her about me, and the woman said, never see this man again. Never go out with this man again. He sounds like trouble. And we moved in a month later. And so we had a little housewarming party, and we invited her brother over, and Bob came over. Now, Bob had been in about six hospitals. He had been in mental institutions for alcoholism. He was a heavy drinker, and I had a bottle of bourbon there because I wanted to drink. And Bob and I sat down and drank, and all the information she had given me about Bob was a terrible exaggeration. And we were having a great time. First time I'd met this guy, and we were talking the language of the heart, you know? and then I look over and Lisa's going at the bedroom door so I excuse myself pardon me Bob and I walk over and we go inside she shuts the bedroom door and she said she had tears in her eyes she said stop giving Bob alcohol Bob is an alcoholic and I looked her in the eye and I said Bob is no more alcoholic than I am you are a nag back it up sister and i walked back out and bob and i had a great time the rest of that night and i couldn't wait to hang out with him again and um two weeks later he was dead he was 25 years old he had a five-year-old daughter he was one of the handsomest men i've ever known in my life and he was a strong swimmer and he drowned in lake castaic in California. He went out one day with a buddy of his drinking and he went out in the lake and they had to drag the lake the next day to find his body. And you know what? Not a word was made, not a mention was made of alcohol, alcoholism, nothing. I had to go up and pick up his car and drive his car back and no one said a word, you know. Flash forward about seven years and I am at the end of my tether. I thought maybe some spiritual, I was going to this therapist, and I have great respect for therapists, and I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is perfectly in sync with therapy. I think if you need therapy, you should go to therapy. But I'll tell you, the therapy does not work on alcoholism because there's a prerequisite to therapy working, and that is truth. And if you're an alcoholic like I am, and you are in the throes of your disease, you haven't got a clue what the truth is. That's not a criticism. We just don't have a clue. because I had constructed such an architecture, such a scaffolding of denial around me. I couldn't tell what the truth was. I was repainting the same condemned house over and over again hoping that maybe this time it won't be condemned anymore. And I went to this therapist and I would lie to her and I wouldn't make up things and she was kind and patient. And she had told me one time if I ever came to her office smelling of alcohol again she wouldn't treat me anymore. So I stopped drinking on the days that I had to go see her and I would drink after I left the therapist session. And therapy might have worked for me if I could have handcuffed that woman to my wrist for the rest of my life so that any time something happened, I could ask, how am I feeling right now? She'd go, oh, you're experiencing fear of rejection. Oh, thank you very much. Okay, but that wasn't practical and it was very expensive. So I had to leave and go down to Santa Monica Boulevard and stand there on Santa Monica boulevard and watch the buses and the cars go by and feel that sense of loneliness that Charlie was talking about earlier, or that sense that I don't know what is wrong with me. I never wanted to be this way. I never want to be detached. I had disconnected all my relationships. I hear people who come into AA going, everybody hated me. They all hated me when I came. Everybody left me and abandoned me when I was drinking. No one abandoned me. People just got too close and I would disconnect them one by one like throwing the ropes off the side of a boat. Just disconnecting those relationships one after another until pretty soon I was all by myself. And then I got to feel like a victim. And on the 11th of June of 1981, I went to a meditation retreat up in Montecito. A bunch of nuns ran this place. I think it's still operating there. And I went there and I was sitting there and I thought, I want to die. And I was going to commit suicide there. I thought not a dramatic suicide like I'd planned before with the music chosen and all that stuff. Just one of those things where I wish that somehow that I could just fling myself out into the world and disappear. Just fling my life in the air and go. Just be gone. I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don'T want to be struggling with this anymore I'm about to lose my job I've lost my marriage I've everything is gone that I hold dear I'm living in my mother's house which is really chick magnet time and and I'm four months behind on a hundred and twenty five dollar mortgage payment My mother didn't want to talk to me. I tapped her out. My family, you know, I didn't have any connection with my family or anybody and I just wanted to die. And I got a feeling while I was sitting at that meditation retreat experiencing the sense of despair like I've never felt before and that sense of loneliness that Charlie was talking about. It occurred to me in a voice that was not my own in a way that was not any of my doing. I could not have conjured this up that said everything that you are afraid of and I still love you. And I felt completely an unqualified, I felt complete and unqualified love to the core of my being for about 30 seconds and then it just kind of disappeared. And then I sat there thinking I'm going crazy. That's simple. I'm gone. I'm doing nuts. But I don't know what's happening to me. And there was a gentleman sitting here, I hope he's here tonight, he was sitting here this afternoon and his name tag said He was from Chincoteague, Virginia. And I remember using a – when I got sober, I started teaching, and I taught high school and college, and I thought writing in college and high school level. And I used an essay on how to write a how-to essay, which is part of the different modes of rhetoric that you use. And it was how to open an oyster. And it Was talking about how to Open a Chincateague Oyster. And an experienced chef or an experienced fisherman, and those oysters hold themselves shut like that. I mean, those little babies will not... You can't pry them open because they're all muscle. But an experienced chef or a fisherman can take the point of a knife and run it around the edge of that thing because they have to breathe. That's their flaw. And they haveto open a little air hole and an experienced person can put the pointof the knife into that air hole which is called the purchase point and slide that thing open and they're powerless to fight it because now they're open wide. And I believe that the power that's greater than I am found that purchase point in me that day and slid me wide open for about 30 seconds, just long enough to let his presence be known before I was able to slam that door shut again. Because I believe now that God resided in me all my life, everywhere I went. And all I did was shove him down and shove him back and deny his presence, deny his influence ignore the goodness of dozens and dozens and dozens of people who came up and tried to help me. I had a teacher in college who got me a literary agent when I was 20 years old. And the literary agent said, well, I can't sell this thing, but if you write something else for me, I'll do it and I'll try to sell it for you. And I went home living off the high of the fact that I had an agent and I drank for the next 12 years. I never bothered to follow up on it. It was good enough. Alcohol gave me the satisfaction of a job well done without having to do a damn thing. It just made me feel, why screw up the buzz by doing it? And I was afraid of everything. I was scared of everything and I was not afraid to fail. I was worried of everything and so after I had that experience at that meditation retreat I went home and I thought I don't know what to do but I can't drink tonight. For some reason, I couldn't drink that night and I shook it out for the next week or so without AA, without any other visitation from that God because I was clamped shut then and I was going to do like what we always do in my family. We just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and we solve our problems by ourselves. I don't need your damn help. I don' t need a therapist's help. I don''t need anybody's help I'm a smart guy. I've got a degree in journalism. It was in a drawer somewhere but I knew I had it, and so I fought it for about a week. And then my mother-in-law called me and said, do me a favor, Debbie's getting out of the hospital, out of rehab on Saturday, and she needs to go to an AA meeting on Sunday. Can you take her? Debbie was Bob's widow, and she was alcoholic also, and she went through a rehab. And I said, sure, I'll give her a ride. Now, by all rights, Debbie should have been giving me a ride because I was hallucinating like a madman. I was all a quiver. I was hearing voices in the car in the back seat, people going, Charlie. And I kept hearing the same song going on and on in my stereo, which had not been hooked up for about three years. And I'm driving this beaten-up old Volkswagen that looked like I did, and it didn't have a reverse, and I had to park it. We make such adjustments for everything. There's another guy who lives... There's a guy in my neighborhood named Bob, coincidentally enough. And he lives in front of Moe's Restaurant on Riverside Drive in Burbank. He's a drunk. People are nice to him because he lives there on the bus stop. He has a guitar case that has all his belongings in it. He's the color of those drapes back there. and you can smell the alcohol on him a block away when you're approaching him. He doesn't panhandle anyone. He's not harmful at all. He just drinks and sits there at the bus stop all day and then sleeps, and he's dying. And if you had gone up to him, I'm sure, 25 years ago and shown him a picture of himself as he is today and said, Bob, look at yourself, look att you, he would look at that picture just like I would have and said no way, I would never allow myself to get that way. Forget it. I'll never allow myself to get that bad, and here he is. I have a guy across the street from me, a neighbor, and I don't mean to diminish his illness at all. He's not an alcoholic. He's a good neighbor. He was a good man. He had two little tiny toddlers like I do, and he went in for some stomach problems, and he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And he went into surgery. and again I'm not trivializing this man's death by comparing it to this but it makes a point I think and he went in to have surgery and I went over to see his wife and I said what's going on did they get the cancer and she said well they can't get the Cancer he's not going to live he's got a few months to live and I asked her why are they having surgery on him and she says they're taking out the parts of him that they can to give the tumor a place to grow so that he can survive through Christmas so they're taking out parts of good organs that he can survive without for a while and letting the tumor have a place to grow to displace that so he won't be in so much agony until he dies and I think alcoholism is probably a lot like that because we cut out all kinds of good things out of our lives to allow the disease to grow we will take everything we have that's good and turn it around and push it away and push het away and the moment we're pushing it away I'm saying inside of myself, why don't you come close to me? Why can't anybody help me? And it's that terrible, terrible sense of despair and sense of I've got to control this. I've Got to hang on to this thing. And I had to give it up, and I went to pick Debbie up that night. And by all rights, she should have driven. And I'm in the car driving her to this AA meeting in Tustin, California on a Sunday night. and she was 22 days sober and in a 25 minute ride it took to get to that meeting she 12 stepped me and I haven't had a drink or anything since then and this woman if you don't feel like you have enough time to work with someone new you must be kidding yourself this woman saved my life and she had 22 days of sobriety and she looked good and she sounded good and she wasn't lying she was alive and she has that look in her face that told me that she was not lying to me that she was not bullshitting, because she was a manipulator and a bullshitter all the way down the line. But that day, not a moment's manipulation, she was just right there in the moment with me. And she said, I think I can find you some help. Because I told her I quit drinking, as if she couldn't tell. I'm swatting away imaginary gnats in my peripheral vision. You know, it's broad daylight and daylight saving time. I got sunglasses on and this deerstalker hat on my head. And it's about 190 outside. and she's telling me I think we can find some help for you I told her, you know what I don't think I'm an alcoholic I think I can handle this by myself some of you may have had those nets they're the ones that kind of go like this and you're talking to somebody and you look at them and then you know they're there and you take a look over and they're gone so then you go back to your conversation back they are And so I'm standing in the back of this AA meeting. Now, I was going to drop her off at the curb and pick her up in an hour and a half. That's what my plan was. And she said, please come inside. You can meet the friends of mine from the rehab. And I thought, well, since you put it that way, what could be better? So I go in to meet all of her twitchy, tweaky friends. they weren't, they're not they're really kind of funny putting these wristbands on the likes of us you know around here every time I look at that I think whoa what happened you know all these people from the rehab had their wristbands on it was like the honor thing hey look you know the big salute and wristband, wristband gotcha babe got your back And I went to that meeting, and I sat there, and I hated it. It was like Loserama in there. It was all these people that were just, it was awful. They talked spirituality. The main speaker, I understood, he was funny. I laughed. I remember him vividly because he talked about having hit a tree in the service in a Jeep and went over the windshield thing and hit his head into a tree and broke his jaw. So they wired his jaw shut. but he had a broken tooth in the front so he could put a straw in it and suck bourbon through the straw. And one day someone said to him, if you keep doing that, you're going to get violently ill and you're gonna vomit and you are going to suffocate on your own vomit because you can't open your jaws. And he said, from that day on, I carried a pair of wire clippers in my back pocket. I laugh not out of identification. I laugh thinking, you see? There's a guy who's got a solution. This is a guy who thinks tangibly about how to deal with alcoholism instead of all this. And God could and would if he were sought. Oh yeah, easy. I've sought God since I was laying in that room tracing my finger on the wall. But I didn't realize at the time that I had a God of my expectations and not a God of my understanding and that's what they told me that I could have there I went back to next week because Debbie was going to get a chip she told me if you come back if you get 30 days you get a Chip 2 and a hug and I thought a Chip and a Hug really I owe the IRS I owe every bank in North America I owe my boss money I'm going through a divorce nobody likes me I got no friends I need a goddamn hug don't touch me don't touch me I didn't that was a little dramatic I just said really and and people would come up with their cards hi are you new and I thought no I'm not new you know at that first meeting I got four days. I'm not new. New is when you come across the threshold of the meeting drunk. That's new. I got 4 days without a drink. So I'd appreciate your cute little chuckle when I say I've got 4 Days and I'm Not New to go away. Because that is the hardest 4 damn days I have ever spent in my life. Give me some credit for something. You know? Actually, I said I'm with Debbie. But I came back the next week, and Debbie got a chip and a hug, and everybody cried. You know, and it was all, here's more cards, you know, more cards. You going to call me? Oh, yeah, I'll call you. Give me your card. And I'd go home and throw the cards away, you Know, and I have a friend named Jack L., who I got sober with. And Jack used to take the cards, and then he'd go to a meeting, and people would say, are you new? And he'd say, yeah. And they'd say you got a number? And he would go, yeah here, call me any time. I mean, he'd hand out the cards, but he was a recycler before his time. So I came back the third week because of 32 days Debbie went out and got drunk again. And it took her nine years to get back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's the woman who saved my life. And I felt cheated, and I felt like she had abandoned me here. I felt, this is my reaction when I heard that she got drunk again. I thought, great, she gets to drink again and I'm stuck in here. She gets to drink again. And I thought that's what it was about. You get okay and then you can go back out and drink again, and now I got to be in here and I know I can't drink because I got problems with that. I got a problem with that, but it's, you know, and I stuck around and somebody recommended I go to another group if I wasn't going to, you know, if I was not going to take any steps and I wasn t going to get a sponsor, maybe I should go to the Pacific group. So I thought, okay, ooh, boogie boogie. And so I went to the Pacific Group. I was appalled. It was one of those if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands things, you know. We clap for everything. You know, somebody who goes on an epileptic seizure or an alcoholic withdrawal on the floor, we just... But I went there and everybody would ask me, do you have a sponsor? And I said, no, I don't have a sponsor. And I got a sponsor finally after about three weeks just to shut them up. I picked the biggest guy in the room. His name is Bill McDonald. He's about six foot six. And he had the warmest handshake of anybody that I'd shaken hands with in that room. I just remember him looking me right in the eye and saying, I'm glad you're here. Call me anytime. We're going out for coffee after the meeting. Why don't you join us? Okay. So I kept looking at this guy and I watched him for about two weeks. And finally, I went up to him and asked him to be my sponsor. And he started giving me some directions on what he wanted me to do. And I had a big book. I wasn't interested in the big book.I had a degree in journalism. I had minor in English literature. I was not terribly impressed with the Jay Walker analogy, if you don't mind. Or the florid, gee ma ain't it grand the wind stop blowing. And I couldn't have cared less who Mr. Brown was, you know, but he told me, you go to a book study, go to the book study and go through the book with the people at the book steady, but don't read it on your own. You're not safe reading it on your own." It's like Earl. You know, I can't read the big book by myself because I immediately start throwing up defense against it and defense and defense and defense that, you know, and so I went to a book study for a year and I got commitments at my meetings and I started stacking chairs and I was mopping floors like the other losers that I was mopping with who were both still sober on a Sunday night Ohio Street meeting. Steve has gone there a million times with me. And I kept asking Bill, you now, when am I going to do the steps? He said, what do you mean? I said, when are we going to work the steps. I mean, work them. You know, like, work the steps. You know? Spot me. I'm going to do three. Ready? That kind of work. Because I heard everybody say, well, I'm working the steps, I're working three, I've got cross-training clothes, you know? And he said, well what are you talking about? Do you call me every day? And I said, yes. Do you go to that book study every week? Yeah. Do you have commitments at all your meetings? Yes. He said, are you calling alcoholics during the day? Yeah. You're doing everything I tell you? Yeah. You're going out for coffee afterward? You're being in the fellowship? Yeah. Which part of the first three steps do you think you're not working? They're not theory. They're action. Just do them. What about the fourth step? I'll tell you when to do the fourth step. I'll give you the nod now. But before you know which, you know, you'll do the four. I wanted to go back and I tried to make amends to my ex-wife before I'd even taken my second step. And Bill said, if you have to do that, you go ahead and do it, but I'm going with you. And he drove with me to this therapist's office and parked his car downstairs. It was about 20 miles away. And I went into the therapist's office with my ex-wife and I sat there and tried to make amends to her. And I broke down in tears. I was a mess in there. And I couldn't get it out. And I came back down the stairs and sat in his car and just sobbed. And He said, you see what I mean? It's okay. Let's just take this slowly. Let's go. And he drove off and we went to dinner and we talked. And that man saved my life. Bill McDonald is probably one of the most spiritual people I know because I know he struggles with his alcoholism and he struggles to take an active part in his recovery. And I appreciate that. I appreciate about Bill and Bob. We hear a lot in meetings in my area where we've got people that throw the chicken bones and feathers down on the big book and woogie, woogie. Let's figure out what Bill meant by although. And not that that's a bad thing, but it doesn't mean anything. And he just, Bill and Bob were great, great human beings. And listening to Sandy talk about the history of AA, I'm sitting there thinking, what a pot boiler. I wonder how this works out. Just to hear the history, it's like the same suspense story every time I hear it. It's a beautiful story about two flawed human beings, but they were not saints. Bill was a failed stockbroker and Bob was a failing proctologist. If you want to give anybody sainthood in AA, let's give it to that guy that Bob did his last operation on before he got sober. I had a colonoscopy a couple of years ago. The last thing I want to hear when I'm going under the knife is a crack of a beer can, if you know what I mean. But it was surprising how that book took on spiritual depth and weight and breadth for me as I stayed sober. And I remember at eight months of sobriety, I kept waiting for the surrender. I want the surrender, I want the one that everybody talks about at the podium I would hear people, women especially because they love this stuff get up to the podium and they would say I haven't been to a meeting in six months and I haven'T done a step but today I had a surrender and God came into my life and I thought, that's what I want I don't want one of these little subtle surrenders because I've been praying to God every day Bill would call me, he was a milkman and he worked up in Northridge and I was living down in Orange County which is about 80 miles away, apart and Bill would call me at five in the morning and he would say, get on your knees next to your bed and say good morning to God and ask him to help you through your day. And I would say okay and I put the phone down and I'd think, I'm 30 years old. I'm kneeling next to my bed like when I was five years old and I would said, God please help me get through this day. Please show me your will and not my own and when you show me you will please be really obvious because I will miss it if you're not. Please show them. And then I would go back and I wanted the surrender but all I was doing was is praying. I was stacking chairs. I'm cleaning coffee pots. I've been in meetings in six months having a surrender and I'm doing all this crap and I haven't had a surrender. And Bill said, you'll have it. I can't tell you when it will happen but you will have it and I thought, you know, it's not going to happen for me. I want a real obvious one. I don't want to I want to knock down, drag me across the floor, who's your daddy? Surrender, you know? god clobber me over the head you know i need one of those john dunn surrenders and and um and it didn't happen and then one night on a sunday night i'm eight months sober and i'm mopping the floor at ohio avenue and and i'M STANDING THERE WITH THESE OTHER TWO BOZOS AND WE'RE MOPPING THE FLOOR AND I'M LOOKING AT THE LINE OF PEOPLE WHO ARE READY TO THANK THE SPEAKER AND IT OCCURRED TO ME IN THE SAME VOICE THAT TOLD ME THAT I WAS LOVED EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE that I knew all of these people by their name, and I liked them. And I would not have gone anywhere else at that moment except right where I was standing with that mop in my hand. I don't want to be anywhere else. I just want tobe here right now. This is goodness. And I thought that was a moment of grace. That was my first real acknowledged moment of Grace. And I went to Bill with it. I called him that night and said, You know what happened? And he listened, and he said, I knew that would happen. Something would happen, and that's a momentofgrace, and it's okay. And you'll have a lot of those if you keep doing what you're doing. And I went through, I did all my steps with him. I read an inventory in a car driving up the coast with a flashlight, reading it to him and I made my amends to my mother who I had cut her out of my life and I started doing what Sharon B talks about and sending her money that I owed her with a card. I'd write a card out and I'd mail my mom a check every Wednesday to pay her back the money. I figured out how much I owed her and sent it to her. She called me and said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm paying back the money I owe you. And she said, What? And I says, I owe your money. And she goes, I know that, but why are you paying it back? What's wrong? And I say, Listen, I didn't want to announce it, but I'm just going to pay it back to you, and that's that. So I'll tell you when I'm finished, Mom. She goes, Okay. So I'd send her a card every week. And then my mom and I started having a better relationship. We'd start talking more. Clancy told me never to come to our Thanksgiving meeting he never wanted I mean Clancy I'm sorry take that back Bill told me never to become to our thanksgiving meeting because Clancy officiates a Thanksgiving meeting it's a big deal and Bill said you're going to go down you're gonna be a son to your mother on Thanksgiving you're stay with her and be at her house and have dinner with her and her husband and enjoy their company and be a sun and I did that every year until she died and for 20 years And I started to gradually get a relationship going with my mom. It was really difficult because my mom had a lot of things that hurt her deeply that she could not connect with another human being, and I was able to be a son to her and enjoy her love. And the last thing my mother told me before she died was, I love you. That was the last things she said. And I feel good about that because of Sharon B.'s example and because of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the way that I was guided toward doing these steps. I made amends to my father, who had died when I was 22, by doing the things that Clint H. talks about. I went to his grave. I was 10 years sober. I was ten years overdue because my sponsor had said do it right away, and I didn't. And so I wentto his grave, andI did exactly what Clint said, and I talked to myfather. My dad was a Marine Corps drill instructor for eight years, and I was certain he was completely disappointed in the issue of his loins. And so I always had a distant relationship with my father, who was very athletic and very sports-oriented. He loved sports and loved this stuff. And I knew he was very disappointed in me. And I made my amends. And about three months later, I was talking to somebody and they asked me about my dad. And I was telling them about my father. And I realized deep down inside that he wasn't disappointed in me at all. I didn't feel guilty about him at all, and I felt free of that. and so I was emboldened by this and I went back to my mom and I sat down at the kitchen table with her and I told her I told Her I was happy in AA and I'll tell you a story and I'm sorry I don't mean to go long and I've got a lot of other issues in my life but I've been going through a divorce the last two years I finally got finished with it last May I met a girl in AA when I was, a woman in AA when I wasn't married. When I was about 15 years sober and I completely fell in love with her. I had been, you know, I'd been in relationships. I've been with wonderful women and yet nothing seemed to work out. My relationship, do not ever come to me with relationship problems. The guys I sponsor do. It's like I am the plague dog. Do not come to be with relationship problem. I don't know what to tell you. I listened to Earl the other day and sitting there thinking I got a lot of work to do. You know, any woman who gets involved with me should get some kind of a tax break or something. Here's an example. This will sum it up for you. My kids have a bunny named Domino. He's a little white bunny with black dots on him. And when they moved out of the house that I'm living in and moved to another place with their mother, I got custody of Domino and Domino has this little pink ball that the children have and Domano really likes this ball. domino really likes this ball domino will mount this ball and show it how much he likes it 800 times a day he got locked in the garage one night for like 12 hours i was looking for him i couldn't find i was going to feed him and i go to the garage i open the door and here he comes hopping out of the garage and he looks over and he sees the ball and he runs to it just you know And so a guy sponsor named Tom comes over to my house one day, and he's going to read a sex inventory. So we're sitting in the backyard. I'm sitting there. We've both got cups of coffee, and it's nice out. It's a beautiful sunny day, and Tom's reading his sex inventory because Tom's going get married, and he wants to be sure everything is cleared, and he knows he wants us to be completely clean with his wife about things and his wife-to-be. So he's reading a sex Inventory, and out of the corner of my eye I see this ball roll out onto the lawn and Tom's reading and then we both look over and then Domino hops over and gets on the ball and then rolls off he always rolls off because the ball is bigger than he is so he gives it his best shot, then it rolls and he falls over and then he hops away and so Tom looks at it and we both looked at each other and Tom just goes back to reading and then the ball rolls back across the yard again because Domino pushes it with his nose and he gets back up and gets on the ball again you know and Tom still Tom glances out of the side of his eye and I look over and we both look at each other and Tom keeps reading Domino falls off the ball on his back and he get's up and runs away so Tom continues to read and about two minutes later the ball starts to move and Domino is pushing it with His nose and He gets up on the Ball and Tom looks at me and says, this time it's going to be different. You don't need to know anything else about my relationship life. So two years into my marriage, my wife was pregnant with our son and she told me that I'm carrying talismans of my children. I got my son's little dinosaur and I got my daughter's hair clip for good luck she told me that she didn't want to be married anymore and I'm not going to say any more about it she needs the help of people in Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't want a muddy the pool for her in case she should ever in some way run into you and need your help it'll be a clear beach for her to talk to you but our marriage fell apart and it was painful and excruciating we had two children together and they're both toddlers. I mean, my daughter's four and my son is five and a half and I can't tell you the level of grief that I never thought I would experience before. I felt that then. I had to move out of my house. I moved into an apartment and I sat there for about a year and a Half and I was going to my meetings and I'm sponsoring guys and I would still sit there some days and just stare at the floor and think what has happened to me? I can not move and I went to the doctor because I was having dizzy spells while I was driving and he said, well, you know, he checked me out completely and he said, I got some good news and some bad news. I said, what's the bad news? And he said there's nothing wrong with you. I said what's a good news? He said there is nothing wrong wth you. What's going on in your life? Have you ever thought about suicide? And I thought, not yet today. I think about it. I don't have the guts to do it. And he says, well, I have some things I can give you to help you get through this depression. if you wish. And I thought, no, I'm not going to do it. I said, let me just keep that, put that on your desk. I'm going to try something else. And I went more into my meetings. I started doing more commitments. I started working with my guys a little harder. And my life, you know, in the last two months has transformed. I mean, I was talking about the last two months. I feel like I've walked out of a dark wood because of the help and the kindness and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous as much as the steps. I've tried to work on forgiving my wife and surrender that to God. I pray for her every day. I pray voor my children every day, and I pray vor people who have helped me, and my life has gotten... I've lifted out of that, you know, and my wife is good. My dad, getting back to him, he used to make a sandwich for me every morning. My parents didn't have much money at all. They were very lower middle class, And my dad would get up every morning at about 4 o'clock in the morning. He'd make lunch for me, and he'd make a sandwich, and he put fruit in the bag, and you put chips in there, and you fold it up, and write my name on the bag and set it by the front door. And then he'd go off to work to McDonnell Douglas in his squishy-soled shoes and his sawdust-covered glasses. And I was embarrassed by that man, just humiliated by the fact that other kids' dads carried briefcases to work, and my old man worked in these crummy work clothes and did that crummy job that he never called in sick for, and he did it for 25 years until he died. and he would make that lunch for me and set it by the door, and I would get up, and I'd take that lunch, and Iíd go to school, and as I crossed the property line, Iíd chuck it in the trash can and just keep walking because cool kids don't carry their lunch to school. Dorks do. And I don't need one more piece of evidence, and I'm a dork. So I would throw that lunch in the trash, and every time I did that, some little thing would twist in my gut, and Iwould look at my father, and I couldnít look him in the eye, you know? And I didthat for years. And so it came out in my inventory, and it took me a long time to talk to my mother but when I made amends to my dad that day I went to my mom's house shortly thereafter and I sat down with her and I said you know what we were talking and I used to throw my lunch away every day all the lunches dad made for me I would throw them in the trash and my mom said yeah I know and I asked how did you know and she said well your dad told me and I ask how did he know and she says well he would quiz you and he'd ask you how your sandwich was that day and you'd give him the wrong answer He'd ask you how the apple was that he put in your bag, and you'd say fine, and it was an orange. And he knew. And then I looked at her, and there was a long, uncomfortable pause, and I said, if he knew, then why did he keep making lunch for me? And my mom half smiled across the table when she didn't say a word, and I got it. He just, he loved me completely. He loved me so much that just the act of making lunch was good enough for him, for his child. He didn't care if I was throwing it out or not. He took the greatest joy in making that lunch. If you're new or you're going through some stuff, that same kind of love is present in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not emotional, sentimental love. It's the love of being willing to have someone reject us in order to help them or to give them nourishment. If you want nourishment, come to AlcoholicsAnonymous. this is where the lunch is. Just because you don't want it at any given time doesn't mean that we're going to stop making it. It's always here for us. A couple of months, about a year ago, I was trying to get my son to go to bed and go to sleep and he's a squirmy little boy. He squirms and squirmes and squirs and squires and I love these children. My son's name is Daniel and my daughter is Rosie and they're just adorable. He was squirming around and I said, Daniel, you've got to calm down and go to sleep because it's time to go to bed. And I have to lie down with him so he'll go to sleep. So I lie down on top of the covers and kind of hold him there. And he's squirming around. He finally gets out of bed and runs across the room and gets something in the dark and runs back and gets into bed. And he hands me a toy airplane. And she says, And he has one. And I said, what's this for? And he said, put it under your pillow. And so I said why? And he says, because we're going to go flying in our dreams. And I thought what an idea you know. And my dreams have been better ever since you know today or yesterday actually I made the mistake of mentioning to Annie that I didn't know how to swim and Annie said all right this is a day before yesterday and she said well why don't we go in the pool tomorrow and I'll try to show you how to swim and I thought that's very sweet but you know last summer my daughter was in thepool with me and she said why don t you put your head under the water daddy because we're in a municipal pool my son can swim he's five he's like an otter in the water he's bobbing around come on out dad come well, let's swim. And I go, I just don't feel like doing it today. I think I'll just hang on to the side here. And my daughter said, don't you want to put your head under the water, daddy? And I said, not today, sweetie. And she goes, go ahead. And i said, daddy doesn't like to put his head under the and she said, i'll hold your hand. And so i took her hand and i stuck my face in the water and just about screamed out loud and got it out. And um, so annie offered to take me to the pool and I said, okay. And she was talking to Laura the other night and Laura, I walked away and Laura had asked her, what are you guys going to do? And Annie said, I'm going to take him and show him how to swim. And Laura said, well, I teach adults how to swimming. So Annie ran over the table where I was eating and said, this is God showing off. That woman knows how to teach adults to swim, we're all meeting in the pool tomorrow. And we went in the school and they've been trying to show me how to swim. This is the goodness of people in Alcoholics Anonymous where if you can get your fear out of the way and let other people's higher powers work with you you can walk through any fear I'm really grateful to be here this weekend I've gone on way too long I apologize I love the people that I've met here this week I love what they're doing I love how much of the experience I've had here there have been great moments of grace here I appreciate Steve inviting me thank you and let's go flying in our dreams thanks a lot