The Obsession That Becomes a Power Greater Than Yourself – Bart R.

Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-sunrise.com. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Good morning, my name is Bart and I'm a recovered alcoholic. And my home group is the Jaywalkers group, as Dick said, in Sedona. And we meet on Wednesday nights at 6 o'clock. We are also a big book study group. a very small group, about 20 members and we can spend an entire hour on one paragraph. That's the way we like to go through it. Crosstalk is encouraged at our meeting and we do a lot of it. But we do it in a loving spirit. This is a very difficult thing for me to do. It doesn't come naturally, and it blows my mind that I get the opportunity to do this on an occasional basis and do service for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm very clear on why it happens, and it is because around June 12th of 1995, I started a journey that started with asking God to remove me of the bondage of self so that I could do his will and to take away my difficulties so that victory over that can bear witness to those I could help of his power, his love, and his way of life. And soon following after that, I asked him if he would give me the strength to go out and do his bidding. And I meant that from the bottom of my heart, and I believe that's why I get to do this and I'm able to do this. So I want to thank all of you for participating in God's plan for us this morning in doing this. And I really want to think the people that put this together and asked me to come here and took me out for an amazing dinner last night and some laughs and met new friends. You know, we're all family and friends. And I have to say this is the third time that I've gotten to speak in this area and it's my favorite place to come to speak, when they talk about, I just heard it for the first time this weekend, Minnesota friendliness or something like that. Well, I'm an advocate for that you guys hold true to that because I've always felt very comfortable and welcomed when I come to this area. And Dick has been an amazing host, and not only an amazing post, but he's got a new job as a travel agent because I had no idea that my flight was canceled to leave at 7 o'clock tonight and that they changed it to 2 o' clock this afternoon. So I was going to hang around and hang out with you guys, and I got a rush right to the airport as soon as I'm done with the talk, so I apologize for that. You can thank the airlines for that, though. But Dick was the one that realized that, or I would have just been hanging around. I forgot to set my timer here so I was I was in case you didn't I live in Sedona Arizona but I was born in New York City and I've only been in Arizona for about six years now and my parents were an alcoholic I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home. I was the only alcoholic there. I had a father who was as cold as the coldest day here in Minnesota and a mother that was the complete opposite. She was a very loving, fragile, neurotic woman. So it was an interesting mix and I picked up my first drink in about fifth grade. I I was very early in getting started in my drinking career, if you want to call it a career. And I would go to school in fifth grade and there was a big schoolyard that we would go out for lunch and the teacher would say, you know, stay on this side of the schooLYard. Do not go on the other side of schooLYard where those people are. And as soon as she would turn her head, I would beeline it for hanging out with the older guys that were drinking over there. and my hero was a guy who lived in a building around the corner from me, Roger and he died of a heroin overdose and even after he died he was one of my heroes so there was something wrong with my thinking alcohol did something for me my personality is to be extremely shy a liar, a cheater, a thief and alcohol helped me do those things and help me socialize a little bit. Fifth grade, I was already getting left back because I wasn't going to school anymore. And my parents were moving to another neighborhood and they decided to have a meeting about me before they moved and they promoted me. And I went to the new... I was supposed to go into the new school but that summer I spent every single day riding my bicycle from... Thank you. from the new neighborhood to the old neighborhood because I didn't really want to go out in the street and meet kids. I didn' t know how to do that. So I would go back to the Old Neighborhood and learn how to drink some more, and that was it. And the first day of school came, and I was scared to death. I didn''t want to be a kid. I didn ''t want o go to school where I knew nobody. My parents had a little closet at the front door, and there was liquor kept in that closet. And I went to that closet, and I guzzled down some booze, and I felt okay to go to school, and it worked. So I continued to do that every day. And then I met the kids that were drinking and smoking pot. And I did it very different than they did. And so I started getting in a lot of trouble. I started Getting Caught. I was keeping alcohol in my locker. I was getting caught doing things in the bathroom or behind the handball courts. And there was a woman who came from a program called Project 25, and she came every single week, one day a week. And I had to start going to see her instead of going to one particular class. And she started giving me the next threat, which was that if I continued to get in trouble with alcohol in school, that I was going to be taken out of regular school and put into Project 25. And that really scared me because that meant that I would have to meet new friends. And I didn't want to do that. But I didn' t want to quit drinking either, and I became a full-time student of Project 25 At Project 25... I'm really warm, if you don't mind. At Project25... they educated my family very well about I continued to get into trouble and they educated my family really well about not putting up with me when I came home drunk and my family would try to recommend me for that things would start flying, furniture would fall down or I would go and leave and live on the street and live in friends garages or apartment buildings, staircases so that I could drink because that's really all I wanted to do. I found alcohol and I felt it worked for me and I didn't want to give it up. So my parents provided a beautiful home but I preferred to live elsewhere so that I can continue to drink and then in New York there's something called a PINS petition person in need of supervision and they send you to the courts as a person in need a supervision, and judges started telling me where I had to live. And so I spent a lot of my youth in and out of juvenile detention centers, juvenile prisons, under the supervision of New York State. And I would get in a lot of trouble in those places. A lot of the waiting time, they would have me sleeping in shelters in New York, and in the shelters I would sneak out and I would start drinking night train with the bums on the street, like, and then sneak back in and then they would put me on clothes restriction so I would just go live on the street until I had to show up for court and then I would go to court and they'd put me into detention. And I thought that was a normal life. In 1977, 1978 I was away in a place upstate New York for 18 months. At that place, the counselors there were telling me the same thing that every place that I went to that actually had counselors would tell me that you seem like a good kid and if you just didn't drink, you would be okay. And I wouldn't hear another word they said after that because the only time that I felt okay was when I drank. So therefore what they had to say to me had absolutely no depth and weight whatsoever. But I started thinking being away for 18 months and realizing that a lot of my friends are graduating, a lot of my friends you know have regular girlfriends a lot of my friends are working they're living normal lives they're home with their family for Christmas they're celebrating their birthdays with their friends and family you know they're having this normal life and I'm not and so I made a decision that when I got out of this place I wasn't gonna drink the way I was drinking and I came home and I went to the high school for the first day and I was called out of the homeroom class and I was called into the Dean's office. And the Dean sat me down and he opened up my records and he started looking at my records and then he said, we don't want your trouble here and we're gonna be watching you and if you get into any trouble here you're out. Well I knew that I didn't want to drink the way I was drinking and I but I didn' feel that I was going to be a saint and you know I really hadn't had any real education since fifth grade because things started to go downhill from there with education from my drinking, so I got up and I walked out and I went home, and my parents had divorced by this time I went home and my dad was a fairly successful businessman and I asked my mother if she would call my father and if they would agree on signing me out of school and if I can go work for my father at one of his stores and so they had that discussion and they agreed that would probably be what's best for me and sothey signed me outof school and I was going to go to work for my dad. And the first day of work came and it was a cold morning in October, the week of my birthday, and I woke up feeling like I had arrived. I'm going to be a working man. I'll finally get to make my family proud because my whole family really had no, I don't know if the word respect, but no hope for me. And I was going to change that. And i was standing at the bus stop waiting to go to work for the first day and really feeling alive and a friend of mine came over and he gave me a little bottle of Jack Daniels as a birthday present and I said this week I'm going to celebrate, this weekend I'm gonna celebrate that I'm a working man and my birthday. And it started getting kind of cold at the Bus Stop I guess so I took a little sip to warm up and then I was on the bus on the way to work and I started getting really scared about going to work. So I polished off that little bottle of Jack Daniels and I walked into work for the first day and I made a complete fool of myself and of my father who worked very hard in talking to his business partners about getting me to work there and made a completely fool of all of them. And that wasn't my intention that morning. I woke up with the clear intention of making my family proud and I didn't understand why that happened. I understand today why it happened because I'm an alcoholic and I can't control how much I drink and I had that insane idea of warming up and calming my nerves and instead I got loaded. That continued for years and you know the war stories of the things that I did aren't really that important but the things got worse. What do I want to move on to? Many years later another attempt of trying to get sober. I met a woman who was a detox nurse and she was 10 years older than me. I met her out in California and I decided to come back with her here and marry her, and I figured married to a detox nurse this will work, that'll keep me sober. And needless to say my sober date isn't you know 1982 when I met her so it didn't work. And she had a son that was 10 She was 10 years older than me. She had a son that was like 9 or 10 years younger than me, and that was an interesting relationship. If she was sitting in this room in the front row, I wouldn't recognize her today. I have no idea who that woman was. When I get into about the amends, it was an Interesting Amends there. So things still got a lot worse with Dad. I started hanging out with her friends. she wasn't allowed in the bar that we drank in, if she opened the door I would throw her out immediately and eventually we had gotten divorced and then I was hanging out at a house that really nobody in the neighborhood would go anywhere near they would cross the street before they walked near us, we all owned motorcycles none of them ever left the garage because we were too busy drinking so we owned bikes but none of us rode them and the house was owned by four brothers and one of the brothers, Warren he wasn't coming out into the yard anymore and drinking with us so a bunch of guys would pull up every afternoon and he'd go into the garage and get his bike and he would take off with them and one day I said, Warren, where have you been going? and he said, I just couldn't live the way I was living and I decide that I want to get sober and I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous and I went, that's nice now I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous really, like all those treatments everywhere I had ever been they really never talked to me about being an alcoholic, they never talked to me About Alcoholics Anonymous but I guess I had some kind of idea but not enough to ask more questions and I just said that's nice but eventually sometime in 1987 I gave Warren a call and I said you know I think I really want to go to one of those meetings you're going to and he told me he was going to work and that he wasn't going to a meeting that night and he told me where there was a meeting and he said if you go there, you know, you'll see what it's all about and see if that's what you want to do and people will be real friendly to you go ahead, it'll be okay, just go so I was a mess, I mean obviously if I finally decided I wanted to go alcoholics anonymous I must be a real mess so so I went there And I went there really early, and it was at a big school. And I got there real early, and I was just walking around the block. You know, I parked my car, and I Was walking around the school and around and around and around and really thinking about, do I want to do this? And then it was getting close to the time. I have no idea where the entrance is to get in for the meeting. And I'm just like, oh, maybe I won't find it. And you know, that'll be all right. And a guy comes over to me at that timing, and he says, are you looking for the AA meeting? And I said, yes. And he said, follow me. I'm setting it up so I followed him into the room and I watched him setting up the chairs a little different and putting little signs up and pamphlets up and he hands me this little blue card and he says do you want to read this and I went yeah sure so now lots of people are starting to walk into the room so I was so glad I had this little Blue Card because I'm just sitting there reading it and reading it and I couldn't look anybody in the eye and they opened up the meeting and he opened up the meeting and he said to read the closed statement we have Bart and I went what and my heart jumped out of my toes I had no idea he gave me something to read out loud I thought he was just being nice and saying do you want to read this and I spent what I swear to God was no more than five minutes but felt like five hours planning my escape and I left the meeting because if that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is about is reading shit out loud it ain't for me and I left and I got lost in the school I couldn't find my way out I had no idea how we got in there and things were running through my head that I'm going to get arrested for trespassing and this is going to be a really bad night and I just need to get the hell out of here and get drunk and I found my way back to you guys where the meeting was and I leaned on the wall outside and I figured when you guys leave I'll just follow you out and I'll go drink myself to death And the meeting ended, and a bunch of guys came over to me and said, oh, where'd you go? Come with us, we're going to the diner. And I was like, oh I got so much shit to do, I can't go with you to the dinner. I had a million excuses, and they wouldn't take one of them. And I ended up going to the diners with them, and I met a whole lot of really good friends in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't participate in it. I became a hang-around of Alcoholics Anonymous. I smoked cigarettes outside. People would say, why don't you raise your hand and just say your name? And I wouldn't do it. I had friends. My friend Ralph used to say, boy, I'll give you $20. Just raise your hands and say your nome. I'll gave you $ 20. And I was like, nope. today there's a lot of people that'll give me 500 bucks to shut up but i also couldn't get any better you know i learned that sobriety is not my solution sobriery is my problem i get worse not better when you take alcohol away from me I ended up in that dry time I ended marrying a wonderful woman and having a beautiful daughter and getting good jobs that I could actually keep because the bosses didn't suck anymore and those things happen when you just don't drink but inside I was dying and I would have given anything to get drunk and I was sneak little things and still say I'm sober she would smoke pot every once in a while and I would say let me give you a shotgun so I get a little buzz and still stay sober or I go into the supermarkets and empty all the nitrous cans all the whipped cream cans what's the harm in that as long as I'm not drinking and eventually at the end of 1994 it was all over and I went on a mad tear And that was actually after my wife and daughter had come home from a vacation That they went on alone, put their suitcases down And I said, I'm leaving And I ended that marriage I didn't know how to keep anything that was good sober Because I was not drinking Because I Was So Miserable With Me When He Took The Alcohol Away And Replaced It With Nothing So I Went Out On That Mad Tear And I Don't Know I Guess Emotionally I Hit A Bottom Of All Bottoms but I didn't get into the troubles that I had gotten into when I was younger some troubles, but not nearly what had happened in the past so it wasn't that that drove me back I think I got a taste of what AA probably could be and so it kind of ruined my drinking and stuff but I couldn't live with it or without it was the bottom line the book talks about that and a vision for you and that was my deal I didn' t know how to live with or without it and i was at the jumping off place and you know and i would try and come back and people would say if you just didn't drink you'd be okay and i'm like man i'm not drinking and i're not okay so there's no truth to that you know. And a whole lot of these real catchy phrases in Alcoholics Anonymous that has absolutely nothing to do with our program and if you're an alcoholic like me what it actually does is drives you very close to suicide because i saw people that were getting better by just not drinking and going to meetings and putting the plug in the jug and calling their sponsor and saying I'm having a rough day. I want a drink and their sponsor talks to them and they just don't pick up a drink and I'm like, I'm trying all this and it ain't working. I'm just getting worse. There's something else wrong with me. More than alcoholism. I might as well just blow my brains out because I'm never going to be able to live this life. This thing they call life. And in the midst of all of that, I got involved back in some outside issue that I go to another fellowship for as well. And I was at what's called a bodega. It's like a Spanish deli in New York. And there's nothing on the shelves that is not expired, but there's some stuff behind the counter that you can buy. And they didn't want to sell it to me. And I went absolutely ballistic. and I was lucky that these people didn't cut me up and throw me in the dumpster because I needed something, you won't give it to me and I got really irate that night somehow, and I know today, thank you God I don't remember going from that bodega back to you guys but I was at a meeting that night and I really had no idea driving there And I was in a meeting that I had never been to before, and I was at every meeting in Queens, New York, I thought. This was called the Utopia Young People's Group. And there were some young people there that were absolutely enjoying life and talking about things that I have no idea what the hell they were talking about that was in this book. And I didn't know what they were doing. And one of them was celebrating a one-year anniversary. I mean, these guys would go, young guys and girls, and they were going out to clubs after a Friday night beginner's meeting in Manhattan and dancing and having fun and getting in the mosh pit and just like really digging life and not seeing that they were in a bar. And I didn't get it. And of course my mind was saying, yeah, they're just not alcoholic like I am. You know, that's why they can do this. But that wasn't the truth because one night Artie was celebrating his one-year anniversary and his sponsor, Eric, was speaking for him. And Eric was hysterical when he was describing what it was like. Very animated, rolling around on the floor, pretending to stretch for the phone like when he were dialing 911 for himself. Then he started talking about being recovered and going anywhere where any other person can go without danger and being happy, joyous, and free and absolutely loving life and the problem of alcoholism being removed and the more he talked about that the more my blood started boiling and I turned around to Artie and I said, that's your sponsor up there speaking, right? and he said, yeah and I say, think tonight you should find a new one and he says, why? and I says, because I am going to kill him and Artie looked at me with a big grin on his face And he said, I'm sure he would love to talk to you, Bart. And so after that meeting, I guess him and Artie had a little visit. And they discussed me going to talk to Eric. And Eric owned a little recovery store that sold coins and books and clocks and all kinds of recovery stuff. So he had a pretty free life to talk about recovery. So Artie said, go see Eric tomorrow at his store. I said, you got it. I'm going to kill him. And so I woke up real early that morning to go kill this man because I was still boiling. Like, you know, the nerve of him to lie to a bunch of people who are suffering and tell them that you can live this great life. Like, he has no right doing this and he needs to be, like, disposed of. So I pulled up across the street from his store and he was standing outside waiting for me and he saw me coming so he went back in the store and went behind the counter because he knew I was coming to kill him, he was warned but he wanted to see me and Eric spent no less than two hours talking about the war stories talking about his alcoholism talking about how bad he didn't want to drink and he would drink and I was going shit that's me and after over two hours of him talking and me listening and identifying I said if you were really like that how the hell can you be talking about life being so good today and he said I'm glad you finally asked he said if you follow the directions that are in the first 164 pages of our big book and live it as a way of life, and be willing to give it back to others, you could have the same freedom I talk about. And I said, you know what? I have pretty much a fifth grade education. I've never read a book in my life. I heard that's really shitty reading and I guess I'm doomed thanks anyway, and I started to leave. And he came really quickly around that counter and he grabbed me at the shoulder and he said, I'll tell you what. I'll read that book to you. The only stupid question you can have is the one you don't ask. Let's go through it together. I said deal. And I started to learn about what you meant when you said don't pick up the first drink you won't get drunk I thought you were just being a bunch of wise guys I had no idea about the physical allergy and it made a lot of sense you know from that first time going to work for the first day to hundreds of other times that I wanted to control my drinking and couldn't because I really did want to not be a drunk I I really liked drinking, but I didn't want to be a drunk. So I would try to control it and I didn' t understand why I couldn' t and that doctor's opinion really explained it well. More about alcoholism was the first time reading that chapter was the fist time I cried in front of another man. Talking about the alcoholic mind. Talking about not being able to play back the old tapes. Talking about, you know, not having the force. I came in here, we agnostics was also a great chapter for me because I came here not believing in God and I would have fought you tooth and nail that there is no God I would even have went to fist with you over it because I just didn't believe it and I thought you were a fool if you believed it and that really opened me up to it but what really opened up to believing in we agnostic was this thing about the alcoholic mind that if I can't fix myself, there better be something. Because I understand today what it's like to bang my head against the wall, to crawl into a corner and cry and say, I can'T live like this anymore, to want to not drink with every single fiber of my existence and yet find myself drinking. I understand what that's like. You know, there's two words that are used very lightly in Alcoholics Anonymous today that I hold very close to me because they help me with my continuous first step experience. And one is where we say the only requirement for membership is a desire not to drink. And if you look up in the dictionary, desire has many ways of being used. And there's a way that's described in the dictionary that says, A strong urge or feeling to do something that you cannot do. That was me. I didn't just want to stop. I had a strong urge and desire to stop and couldn't. And the other thing that keeps me seeking God more and more and More is the definition of obsession, which we don't use anymore. but I looked it up in the 1930s Webster's Dictionary and it said to be vexed or besieged by an evil power outside of yourself. That makes a lot of sense to me because everything in my body, everything in mine mind didn't want to drink so why did I do it? Because there was something outside of me that was making me do it and if there's something outsideof me that's making me do it, then I need a power greater than that to not. And that was hard for somebody that doesn't believe in God or religion, but I needed to try and figure this out. So I became willing. That second step for me is I'm willing to be willing because otherwise look at the life I'm living. So when we got to the third step with Eric we talked about that and he asked me if there was a God what would I want that God to look like and I wanted to impress him so I said God is love and he started laughing I was like what's so funny about that I've heard other people say that, and that sounds like a good idea. He goes, well, I've gotten to know you, Bart. And you're married and separated from your wife. You're living with this little girl that's ten years younger than you. And you'RE sleeping with a girl who's twelve-stepping you, and you'RE in love with all of them. If your definition of love is that, you better find some other God. So I said, well then I don't know. She said, perfect. God as you understand them and you don't know what that is And that's where I started God as I understand them And I don't understand them And I got to tell you Next month will be 20 years sober And I still don't understanding God But God is everything to me I love God I know God loves me I believe he is in everything And how could I understand that ever But that's Where I started God as i understand them and I don't, and we said that third step prayer and I said it meaning it with everything if God removes if there is a God and God removes these problems from me, you bet I will bear witness of his love, his power and his way of life if it works, and I do not believe it is going to work but if it worked, I will absolutely spend my life bearing witness and we got down and we said that prayer. And we stayed quiet for a little while and he handed me a pen and paper and he said, write everybody that pisses you off. He says, as a matter of fact, just write everybody you know and then we'll figure out why they piss you off My world was pretty small so it wasn't like a huge list but it was long enough and then he said I'm sure you hate all rules and regulations so write them all down and so I just started writing all this stuff down and why and I did that pretty quickly I wanted to get free so I wrote all this down and I wrote the fear inventory it was amazing how I thought I had absolutely no fears like I thought I was this tough guy who had no fear even my little thing here on my clock says seek truth without fear because it's the hardest thing for me to do is to seek truth without fear, but I devote my life today to seeking truth and try and do it without fear. But finding the truth is not easy. And that's what I believe that fourth step was for. It showed me a lot of truth. It showed мне that I wasn't God, even though I didn't think I was. I acted as if I did. But it showed me what God was. It shows me that there really is a God. As I boiled down, as I said, I'm afraid of this. And he said, why are you afraid of that? What are you afraid it will happen. And I came up with another fear. And he said, well why are you afraid of that? And I boiled down these fears and I had millions of fears. And today when I write inventory, because I am a step worker and I do a lot of inventories. I can't stay sober on the one that I did 20 years ago because I want to keep getting freer. This program is not about relief. It's about freedom. And it takes a lot of spiritual work. So what? What's wrong with that? It took a hell of a lot more work to stay drunk and then doing the sex inventory but I really you know I really started to have this experience of that there probably is a God you know and after this really long talk of the fifth step with him and and a lot of him seeing the truth that I couldn't see and I think that's so important even for me today when I write inventory it's so important to share it with other people because my perception of things is so off when I'm writing it down if I'm in a resentment chances are my perception is pretty off so I need somebody else to sit with me and say is it possible that we can look at it this way like our book says we're prepared to look at it from a different angle well sometimes I can't just look at it from the different angle on my own so I need somebody to help me and so I love the fifth step not why I'm doing it but When I return home, I do. And then returning home and thanking God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. You read that in words. You go, I just wrote a whole thing about myself. How the hell am I going to know God better? But when you go home and you experience it, I know for me and for tons of people that I've worked with, it's the experience that we have, that we don't get to know ourselves better. Shit, I knew myself. Liar, cheater, thief, drunk junkie. I didn't need to write an inventory to know that. I got to know god better. And that was important. The first time I went through the steps, the sixth step was really easy. My life is a mess. There's nothing good about me, God. You can have all of me, whatever good there is and bad. And it was interesting because I didn't leave him much to work with. I really destroyed my life and it's amazing the life that God has given me even though I didn' t leave him much left to work wth. and I've got a very rich life today so it says a lot for Alcoholics Anonymous because I was a very low bottom and if I have this rich life anybody in here could have it but the sixth step all of it and then I had some tangible stuff to offer him in that seventh step it's amazing how the third through seventh step works you know, a decision to get rid of the garbage in our life, but I don't know what it is. So I'll write some inventory and share it with somebody else to discover what it Is. And then I have some tangible stuff to say, here it is, God, this is what's not working for me, you know, take it away. And I was willing to go out and make all those amends. And, and I didn't know how, and when I asked God for help, and I started hearing some really strange sounds. Me knocking on people's doors, saying, I'm here to set wrong some rights. I mean, some rights, some wrongs. Old habits are hard to die. I'm here to set them right. Some amazing experiences happened in the ninth step. A lot of them didn't work out the way I wanted. But you know, an amazing thing happened through the ninth step. We have those promises that definitely come true for us, but I had an interesting experience and I know lots of people that have the same experience that those promises don't only come true für us but they come true für the people we're going to. I got here and you couldn't get much more selfish and self-centered and I had a good teacher, my father, who you couldn' t get much more selfish or self-centred than that man. and less than halfway through the ninth step, I realized that I got free in the eighth step. Those promises came true for me. It doesn't say they're the ninth-step promises. If we read the book, it says, now let's look at steps eight and nine, and then the promises are there. That tells me that they might be able to come true in the eight, not necessarily the ninth, and my experience is they did. When I was willing to set right the wrongs, I got free. I didn't have to hide in the streets. I didn' t have to dodge my creditors. And I didn''t have that many creditors because I suited my life to suit me. So if I had no money but I needed to do what I needed to do, I just lived in the street so I didn ''t have to owe anybody any money. If I had a little bit of money and I was working and I could afford to live somewhere, then I would get a little shitty apartment and still have enough money to do it. So I didn'T have like those kind of financial amends And I never really worked, honestly, so I didn't have any taxes that I needed to pay. They didn't want that money. So, but I had a lot of people that I really hurt. And to go to them, it just started feeling wrong to me to go to them after I had hurt them horribly so that I could feel better. this shift happened that I realized I need to go to them so they can feel better. And I watched that start happening. There was a girl when we were young that I was horrible to, and she had that, I guess now I know today she had like that bad boy thing where she was a good girl but loved me. And I'd get locked up and she'd come visit me and I'd go out and abuse her again. And I saw her in the street one day. She had gotten married, changed her name. There was no way that I was going to be able to find her, I didn't think. And so she was on that, I'm willing if God ever puts her in my life. I was actually working in a store and she came walking into the store one day and I recognized her immediately. My heart dropped. She was walking with her little son and I was like, oh shit, what do I do now? I didnít know how to approach this one because I really, I developed a conscience which I never had had and Alcoholics Anonymous gave me this conscience and I ran out of the store and stopped in my tracks and said God help me what do I do here you're giving me an opportunity here and I'm running what do i do and he said go back in there set it right and I did and I started to talk to her and she started laughing and she goes you may have been the first dirtbag but you weren't the last don't worry about it but then she also said But I do have to tell you that not all the time, but pretty often, you pop into my mind, whatever happened to Bart? Is he alive? Is he locked up somewhere for the rest of his life? Whatever happened to him? I don't ever have to wonder that anymore. That's setting people free. My father was a really interesting amends. I had taken my wife to the Bahamas, my second wife, and we left my daughter who was a young child with my mother in Florida so that we can go have a trip in the Bahamas. And this was like I was, I think about a year, just over a year sober. And when we were in the Bahamas, my plan was that both of my parents, who were divorced, both lived in Florida, that when we got back to Florida, we were going to be staying there a while, that it's time to make the amends to them. Because I had to do it in person. You know, I couldn't do it over the phone. This was the first opportunity I was going to being in the same state as them. And while we were in the Bahamas, I got a phone call that my mom had died of a massive heart attack. And she was like in her early 50s, and my daughter was with her. And so I blew that amends. And my father was a man who I couldn't stand. I mean, my father wasn't a man to me. My father was the man who left me and my mother, who the day he walked out for good, all he said was son grab my suitcase and bring it to the car like that you're leaving and that's what you're asking me to do you know um he had some money and i would go to his house to visit and he would show the slideshows of the places that he traveled the world with his girlfriend to see why me and my mom had a bookmaker working at the house so we could pay bills you know Like, that's who he was. But many years later, when I was getting, now I'm divorced from that wife and I met an amazing woman who's in our fellowship. She's got 28 years sober and has the same passion for this program as I do. And, you know, we're thinking about getting married. We're living together. And she's got an amazing daughter. And we got a call from my father that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. And let me back up, you know. I get lost in this story sometimes. When my mom died and I had to go back to Florida early, I went to my father, who also lived there. and he was as comforting as he could be I'll drive you to your mother's house see what you can do there and she had married a man who was also another horrible man, my mother didn't have good picker I guess and when my mom when my wife got pregnant and my mother I had a sister who died real young and my Mother couldn't wait for my wife to get pregnant and when it was a girl she was like this is it you know like she gets to spoil what she didn't get to spoil because she had lost her daughter and this guy said we're moving to Florida like just took her right out of New York so she couldn't see this daughter grow up so when I went to make this amends to my father while I was there for my mom's funeral and stuff this is after going to I guess my stepfather, for lack of a better word to his house and trying to be a sober man and say I'm sorry for your loss we'll get through this. He kind of stood at the door, he gave me a little bag he said this is what your mother had that was your sister's, that's what's yours, get out of here I may be sober but I wasn't like 100% better, well my foot went through that door and I pretty much smashed up his house. My father ran across the parking lot of the building complex screaming, Bart, please don't kill him. And I got down on my hands and knees and prayed to God to not let me kill this man. And I didn't. So my prayers were answered. I hurt him a little, but I didn' t kill him, so my prayers weren' t answered. And I needed to make amends to that man for what I had done because he just lost his wife, and I did. I offered to pay for everything I broke, and had a sit-down talk with him. He just kind of listened and said, don't worry about it, and then married his eighth wife. That's who he was. Lots of things that were promised to my daughter that were my mother's we never saw, but that's okay. I did what I was supposed to do. But while I was there, I got to speak to my father about all the horrible things that I had done. And this is a man who I couldn't stand. And I needed to, you know, I still put him through hell, you know, and cost him a lot of money in court fees and stuff when I was younger. And, you Know, whatever it was, he buried a daughter and was getting ready to, You know, his whole life to bury a son. So I needed To clean that stuff up. And even though I hated him. So while I'm explaining it, I started to talk about, you Know, how bad I felt for my mother. And I don't know why this came out to my father, but how bad I felt for my mother having to live the life that she did with this guy. And he looked at me and he said, you know, Danny probably loved your mother with all of his heart. And he put his fingers really close together and said, but maybe his heart is only this big. I looked at my father and I said to myself, I've got it. you've loved me your whole life but your heart's only this big I knew he was never capable of being the father I wanted to have and from that day on I called him on a regular basis and I said hey dad I'm doing good so he didn't get the call he didn'T think it was a call like dad can you bail me out or it was hey dad I'm doin' good how are you and then listened to him talk about himself for an hour or two and never ask how I'm doing, how's his granddaughter, nothing, ever. But that was okay. I was the son that God intended me to be, whether he could be a good father or not. So when we got the call that he was dying of pancreatic... I really hope that you're clapping for God because that's who did that, honestly. when I got the call that he was dying of pancreatic cancer my first intention my first reaction was so what but then I knew I needed to be a sober son and my wife was very supportive or my wife-to-be who's also like I said in this film she was very supportive and then her daughter said why doesn't he come live with us so we were still living in New York and and I went there and we discussed that and he agreed to come live at us so he did he came to live with us in New york and he was doing really good and I was kind of happy I was getting to spend time with him. He was getting to know a sober son. He had the opportunity to get to know, what I hoped he had the opportunity to know his granddaughter and the woman that I was going to spend the rest of my life with. And he came down the stairs one day and he said, you know, I'm feeling really good. I don't feel sick at all. So I'm going to go back to Florida and I'll give you a call when I feel sick. I say typical of you dad. but I couldn't help it, you know I got quiet and I asked God what to do because I really wanted to just wring his neck and I said God what do I do with this situation and it was as clear as day the man's dying and he's got no God in his life it's your job to try right, it says we bear witness to everybody not just alcoholics so I said dad is it possible good words I was taught is it impossible right is it possible that God has given you some healthy time so you can get to know your sober son, your granddaughter who loves you to death and doesn't even know you and the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. And he said, I got to go pack. So he was. So he went home and we went upstairs and packed. Went back to Florida. Now we had bought a house in Arizona. I'm going on with my life. This is the way the man wants to live. I'm there for you, but I'm going on in my life and when he got sick we were moving to Arizona so we got him to New York and packed him and brought him to Arizona with us. He got really deathly ill on the plane and went directly off the plane into hospice for a week in the hospital week at our house and he was gone. I did what I could because you people taught me how to depend on God and be a sober son, you know um and i understand today that there's no resentment for who he was he just had a heart that big you know and and i try to you know i know that i got here to you people with a heart this big but with god it can grow you knowand mine keeps stretching more and more and i learn how to do this love thing. I'm not great at it. What's the word? I'm not intimate. That's my wife's biggest complaint. I just don't know how to do it, but I ask God to help me with it and I know someday maybe he will. I do the best I can with what I've got and I let God use what I left him. I have so many more amazing amends stories and of course there's ones that you know like my first wife was just like pshh just stay the hell away from me. Actually you know her son I got to make an amazing amends to we were Facebook friends and like you know I was abusive to that kid and it's not like that but his mom was very clear just stay the hell out of my life and there was quite a few of those just stay the hell out of my life and if that's what it takes to make it better then that's what I do. I even have family members that never said it but when my grandma died, I didn't get a call your grandmother died, you want to come to the funeral, that's okay, I understand I understand they caused a lot of harm I started practicing that 10 step while I was out cleaning up the past and talk about an amazing anger management program there's nothing better than a 10 step when you're about to wring somebody's neck and just pause say God what would you have me be in this situation to be awake all through the day because I was asleep my whole life that's why I made so many mistakes so to learn to slow down to do that decision that we made to bring God into all our thoughts and all our actions 10 step is where we get to do that decision don't just be lying through life ask God what would you have me be in this situation make an amends on point when you screw up because we do it's not if we screw up, it's when we screw off and I do that regularly but something happens to me when I step back and just say God I'm not angry anymore You know, I don't have to be right in this situation. A lot of people laugh at me in Arizona. They're not used to that. Like at a big book study or business meetings. I'm a New Yorker. I talk like it is. And it sounds like I'm mad or it sounds like I have to do something. I have no right to be white, but I don t. And I just keep explaining to them, I know it's coming out passionate. It's just passion. I don' t have to b right. and the 11th step is an amazing journey to think about the mistakes that I made through the day and ask God to take me to a better place tomorrow do I owe an apology somewhere in almost 20 years I haven't gotten like 100 on the test yet I mess up every day but I don't fall into pity I've recovered from alcoholism I haven't recovered from being a human being because we're not perfect so actually I have recovered from being a human beings, I'm just as imperfect as the rest of you that's just the human experience but the alcoholism problem has been taken away I don' see alcohol, I don''t fight alcohol or anything else that was bad for me I can go anywhere anybody else can as long as I keep reviewing those things and ask God to help me with them. And then in the morning, planning my day and asking God to direct my thinking because if I direct my thinking, you would have had a different speaker tonight or a different story if I made it here. So to ask God to direct your thinking, to direct my thinking. Last night I saw I messed up in these areas. Help me today as I go out to do a 10-step on them and watch that I don't do it again today, to help me to be awake, that I won't make the same mistake today that I made yesterday. It's such a great entwining step. And the 12th step. I was a little less than three months sober. And Eric had never come back to the Utopia Young People's group again after he spoke at that meeting. it wasn't his home group. And I was sitting down with him reading the instructions for the 12th step, and he said, you know what, boy, it's Friday night. I'm going to go with you over to Utopia tonight. I said, cool. So we went, and it was a meeting where you had a 20-minute share of experience, strength, and hope, and then you had anybody new, anybody just coming back, 30, 60, 90. So the first guy to raise his hand after the speaker was a guy who was well over six feet tall, completely tattooed, shaved head, no teeth, young kid. And he only had one thing to share. I hate all you MFs. You're all full of shit. I want to kill all of yous. The judge told me to go to the Creedmoor Treatment Center or the jail and I'm not an idiot. I took the treatment center but you're all full of it. And Eric turned around to me and he said, Bart, after this meeting I'd like for you to go over to that guy. And I said, what the hell do I got to offer that guy? I wasn't scared of the way he looked or what he had to say. What I was scared of is, what can I possibly do for him? What can I possible do for them? And Eric opened up to a vision for you. And he opened up where it talks about you're one man with this book in your hand and you've just tapped into a power greater than yourself. It's been three months and I loved being sober, almost three months and I love being sober. All these promises had come true. Maybe that one's true too. So I said, God, what do we do here? And the thought came that when everybody closes up to do the closing prayer, go outside to the van and wait for him. Guess what? He didn't want to pray either. So it was just me and him. And I said, God, what do I say? And I said, you know, you're over at the Creedmoor Rehab. They've got Visitor's Day on Sunday, right? And he said, yeah. I said how would you like a visitor? He said, for what? And he started to talk about me and how I had been in places like that. And I said, and I found a solution to it. My life is pretty good. He said, you can come visit me if you bring me a sandwich every Sunday. And I says, you got it. And I showed up every Sunday with a sandwich and my big book. He got out of that place and he had a girlfriend and I can't remember and I always try to remember real hard but it's not really important. He had a girlfriend that was living either in Pennsylvania or Ohio on the street, still in active addiction. And a kid there in foster care. And I watched this young man who wanted to kill everybody go back and forth for supervised visits for this little boy who was in foster care and eventually get him out and bring him home and be a sober dad. And then I got to watch him show other people our beautiful way of life. And there are so many people today in Queens, New York who that man has sponsored. We've lost him since. He didn't stay sober. He struggled on and off, but he eventually ended up dying of cancer. This didn't take him, but cancer did. But there's a lot of people that he sponsored that are still sober today. That's the miracle of this program. Just don't drink and go to meetings? Selling yourself short, man. There's so much more beautiful stuff that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous than not drinking and going to meetings. Not drinking is just the beginning of an amazing journey. If you're bored in AA, then you ain't doing AA. Because I've got to tell you, I have never been bored since I made that third step decision, ever. When my sponsor, Eric, was dying, he was going for kidney dialysis three times a week. He was getting parts of his feet amputated. He was living in the living room of a woman's house on a cot and people were still going to his house and he was reading this book to them. there was a his anniversary was coming up and Eric had a huge ego but sometimes he was a little strange about himself and his anniversary was coming up and we wanted to have a big party for his AA anniversary or birthday I'm not sure which you call it here you're in the middle what do you say anniversary or birthday yes oh okay I like that New York it's anniversary in Arizona. It's birthday. Anyway, so it was his and he didn't he was too sick to go but we said Eric the group is having an anniversary and we want you to be the speaker for the group's one year anniversary and he said I can do that. So he said can you carry me down in my wheelchair downstairs? And we said yeah. And we got him there and our friend Luis started the meeting by saying, the room was packed could everybody that's been sponsored by Eric please stand up? A bunch of us stood up. He said, remain standing. Can everybody who's been sponsored by the people who just stood up please stand up. And a bunch of people stood up and he continued to do that until almost everybody in the room was standing. Where did it all start? From one person, Eric. every one of us in this room can be Bill Wilson or Dr. Bob build the fellowship you crave by carrying this message it just starts with one drunk and a message my heroes are different today it's not Roger and all the kids that were on the other side of the schoolyard today, my heroes are Eric who was carrying the message when he was dying And my grand sponsor, Don Pritz, who carried the message to the day he died. He spoke and he knew he was going home that night to die, but had a speaking commitment in Colorado and went and spoke and carried that message. And you people who come out on a morning and are willing to listen to a message so that you can carry one. Those are my heroes today. So God bless you and thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.