The Penicillin of the Steps and the Infection of Alcoholism – Don M.

Let's get some divine intervention in here. Thank you, Nicole, and hi everybody. My name's Don Major, and I'm an alcoholic. I am from Louisville, and I'm actually from Louisville, Kentucky, but my name tag, in case my ego was getting out of line, which is very easy to happen, says I'm from Connecticut, but I suspect you all have figured out that's not the case by now. I have pretty well been asked to speak in every state over the years except six. There's six New England states, not a single one of them. They figure a guy that sounds like I can can't possibly have anything worthwhile to say. But at any rate, I'm so grateful to be here, and I appreciate you guys having me and bearing with me. I was supposed to be here last year and had a little health problem and saving spot for me this year, and it's just so great to see so many of my old friends and meet new friends, and the spirit of this conference is I've been blessed to be here a few times before, and the spirit of it is just wonderful. These things have a spirit or a personality, and this one is just absolutely extraordinary. Now, I'm to speak on steps six and seven, and all the speakers that we've had so far, most of whom are friends of mine, have been just perfect for the steps or the assignments that they had. And I think about the fact that I so often get asked to speak on six and seven. You would think they'd want somebody with character defects to talk on that. I expect they've got the right fellow for six and seven. I'm just going to tell you a couple of things about my early childhood to let you judge whether I have some character defects stretched back and forth. When I was in first day of second grade, I was six years old. And I grew up on a tobacco farm in southwestern Kentucky, and I went to school in a little town of 1,200 people. And everybody knew everybody, and the principal was a woman named Ms. Fannie Wallis. And the first day of the second grade, I went into Ms. Fannie's office. She was veryscheided. And the principal was a woman named Ms. Fannie Wallace. And the first day of the second grade, I went into Ms. Fannie's office. And the principal said, do you know what? We're going to see some people that we haven't met in a while. And he said, well, we haven't met in a while. And I said, well, maybe you need to see them, or they have a few questions. And so I read them. And I said, You got to see them. and said, Miss Fannie, over the summer I have had a car wreck, and I have brain damage, so you don't expect me to do as well as I did in the first grade. Another one is that I remember sitting in the Baptist church a half mile down the road from the farm when I was about that age, or a little younger maybe, still believing in Santa Claus, and not buying a word that preacher was saying, just absolutely not a word. I also remember that I looked around that farm at decent, hard-working men, grown men, and those guys were doing what they were supposed to do. They'd get up in the morning and have breakfast with the wife and usually several little old snotty-nosed kids, and they'd say, and the wife was really drab-looking to me usually, wearing old flower sack-type dresses, and those guys would go get in a paid-for pickup truck and go exactly where they were supposed to go, do what they were supposed to do all day, and then what blew me away is they would come back to the same people they had left that morning, and then they'd get up the next day and do, and do the same thing again. And maybe on Sundays they would load that whole crew in the pickup, and they'd go up the road to Julian Methodist Church or down the road to Locust Grove Baptist Church, and then on Sunday afternoons they would do something like spend it with family or visit. And there I am, a little boy, and I look and I think, well, these are grown men, so when I grow up, my life might be so much better. I might be something like that. It like just scared me to death. It absolutely terrified me to think that I might grow up to be like those decent, responsible, mature men. By the time I was about seven, my older brother started taking me over into the wet county to the beer joints with him, and I met the Honky Tonky Rose. And the first time I walked in that beer joint, those guys were doing things like sitting at the bar and turning a beer bottle around, tapping on it with a ring and gazing down into the depths of it. And I knew they were intelligent and interesting and romantic, and I would listen. And every one of them had a great big deal going. It was usually a positive big deal, and, you know, their ship was going to come in, and they were flat going to be somebody. But if it was a bad one, it was the biggest, baddest deal anybody ever had. And I would listen and find out that a lot of them had nearly had to whip some people on the way to the beer joint. And then after several beers, they decided, by God, they need to go back and whip them anyway. And I sat there and looked at that alcoholic insanity, and I wanted to grow up to be just exactly like them. I wanted to act like they acted. I wanted to treat people the way they treated people. So I always wanted to be an alcoholic. I just didn't know what the right name for it was. And as I said, I grew up on that tobacco farm, and my childhood wasn't a thing like I thought it was. My capacity for self-delusion is absolutely astounding. And my sobriety date, by the grace of God, is April the 9th of 1981. And I was 37 when I got sober, which, Lord, that makes me old. I'm old now. But up to that time, I would have passed the lie detector test when I told you one of the most interesting and romantic sagas you have ever heard. It was way past a mere story. And of course, it was all about how by my iron will and my sterling intellect, I had pulled myself up by the bootstraps from the depths of poverty to those staggering heights I had reached in life. And I believed that crap so sincerely that I would have you and me both crying before I was done telling it. And I honestly wasn't sober, really sober, a week until I realized, what a bunch of crap, we weren't even poor! We weren't anywhere close to poor. We were middle-class farming people that had everything we needed and most of the things we wanted. And those staggering heights were a good deal more staggering than they were high. My alcoholism is a many-splendored thing. I stumble across a new facet of it every day or so. And one thing it probably is is something that my high school English teacher would have called a disease of superlatives. And what that means is that without divine intervention, I won't think in terms of things like good or bad. And ordinary people, I don't think, will think in terms of things like good or bad. And ordinary will never cross my mind. I'll go directly to the extremes of everything, best, worst. Truth is, drunk and sober, I've been a whole lot more ordinary than my ego has ever been comfortable with. But what was really going on the first 12 or 13 years of my life wasn't any of that interest in romantic crap. It was the selfishness and self-centeredness that the big book tells us is the root of our troubles. And what that's meant to me, if ever really, is that the first thing wrong with me is I've got an ego disorder. It's been wrong with me all my life. And on account of that ego disorder, without divine intervention, and by the way, if you're new and are intellectually offended by some old fool up here going on about divine intervention, I not only understand you in my old seat, and I have a suggestion for you. When I say divine intervention, just substitute the magic from the steps. It'll get you to the same place and won't offend your sensitive intellect so terribly. But by any name, I need the help. And if I don't do what I do to get that divine intervention, I wind up being the way that I have always been about everything. Everything in this world. And that ego disorder makes me so obsessed with myself. So obsessed with how I believe I stack up against other people. And so obsessed with how I feel that for many years I boiled my alcoholism down to one sentence. And that one sentence is this. Without that divine intervention, I will always wind up letting how I feel be the most important thing in the universe. Now without divine intervention, I can give some lip service to something being more important. And I might be able to act for a little while like something's more important. But if I haven't done the work I need to do today, and if I've learned anything in a few years around here, I've learned that I don't get much divine intervention on self. I've learned that I don't get much divine intervention on Saturday based on what I did on Friday. It's truly a day at a time thing. And if I haven't done what I need to do to get that help, I'm going to allow the way I feel to be the most important thing in the universe. And that ego disorder has had the same effect on me always that I think it has on everybody who has it. It's always created so much pain and emptiness and apartness and differentness down inside me that I've never been able to stand the way I feel inside without either running as hard as I could and or stuffing something in there to try to make me feel good enough that I could stand it. It also has created some really conflicting but somewhat amusing situations in my life. I've always been an egomaniac. I've always been a person with an inferiority complex. And what I mean by that is I've always been perfectly capable of feeling too good for something or somebody and at the same instant knowing I'm not nearly good enough for that same person or that same thing. I've always known that I could do anything. And at the same time I've always known I couldn't really do anything. Another thing it's done, it's allowed me to be or caused me to be a really uncomfortable combination of just fiercely ambitious and abysmally lazy. And that will cause you some conflict. But at any rate, and without divine intervention I can't be okay with you. I can't be okay with myself. To this day without divine intervention I don't have any peers. If I haven't done what I need to do to get there, I'm not going to be able to do anything. I'm going to get myself fixed inside with that divine intervention. I cannot be on your level. I can be above you. I can be below you. And insanely I can be both at the same time. But I can't just be okay with you. So what was really going on that first 12 or 13 years was a totally self-obsessed kid trying to stay half a step ahead of a screaming fit by keeping all the balls juggling, the mirrors working, the smoke shooting out so that you couldn't see and I didn't have to look at what it was. And I got drunk the first time at 12 or 13. Story that many of us have. I got in a lot of trouble that night. I puked. I blacked out. I passed out. And I woke up the next morning and had a terrible hangover. And I swore all those Baptists around the farm were right. And that I would never ever touch that stuff again. And not only was I sincere, it was fairly effective because it was nearly a week until I got drunk a second time. And with all the trouble I got into that first time, I got drunk the second time for the exact same reason I got drunk the other several thousand times. The magic had happened. I didn't know the magic had happened. I didn't figure that out. But a quarter of a century later when I got sober, at the time all I knew was that on my way to puking and so on, I had passed through a right pleasant neighborhood. But looking back on it, of course it was magic. Because when I got enough of that booze in me for the first time, for the first time in my life, I was okay inside. I felt good enough inside that I could stand it without running or trying to stuff anything else in there. Ahem. It's already been said from up here that it made me not better than you, not less than you. It made me for the first time in my life a fellow with you and together with you. And remember that the way I feel without divine intervention is the most important thing in the world. And let me assure you I was not looking for any divine intervention in that period. I don't think there's any question or mystery about my powerlessness over alcohol and in the later years the things like it. I think it's a no-brainer. Couldn't have been any other way. Because for the next 25 years I didn't know that there was anything other than the booze and the things like it that could do that trick for me and make me feel the way I needed to feel. So the bottom line was sadly it really didn't matter what it cost and it didn't matter what I did. It didn't matter who it cost. And I'm supposed to talk about six and seven, not tell my story. But I'll tell you today that I was off and running. Not only did alcoholism dominate my life for the next 25 years, alcohol did in my case. We all have different drinking stories. And a peculiarity among us is it seems to be a lot easier for us to brag about how bad we were than it is to brag about how great we are. But the truth is that I went to bed drunk at least 80% of the nights if I went to bed during that 25 years. I had no idea I was going to bed drunk that often because the only definition or standard I ever had for being drunk was whether or not I passed out. Or not passed out, whether or not I blacked out. If I remembered everything, that discussion was over. I was not drunk. Now that can tell. Now that Kentucky, not Connecticut, I don't know about Connecticut, but now that Kentucky's got that legal limit down to .08, I probably woke up drunk 80% of the mornings. I somehow managed to stumble through and I was an early admission student, college, blew that scholarship. I went to work and worked my way through undergraduate and law school, drunk as a skunk all the time, practically no memories of that whole period, with any clarity to it at all. Practiced law in downtown Louisville. I went to school in Louisville and practiced law in Louisville for about 10 years. Had a good deal of material success, not nearly as much as I used to think I had had. That's another one of our peculiarities is as we stay sober longer, we get a different focus on the past. You know, they say outside these rooms that you can't change the past. Don't believe that, Chris. We do it every day. But from the standpoint of where I am today, I was fairly materially successful. I've always been a criminal defense lawyer and I've always had a knack for getting in some cases that had some money from time to time and some publicity. And that's what I'd stick in your face when you suggested something was wrong, and there was a lot wrong. I wound up having a terrible wreck. In February of 1978, did an awful lot of horrible things to my body. I was out of law practice and hitting bottom. I wound up losing my law license, losing every human being in my life, losing everything. I lived without an address for nearly a year. And I wound up in Nashville, Tennessee. And in April of 1981, I was in the police department. A loving God that I didn't know was there and I hadn't asked for a thing. Because remember, I believed in Santa Claus and still wasn't buying any of that crap. A loving God gave me the most beautiful gift I've ever had. And what that gift was, was the first little bit of teachability or humility I've ever had in my life. And what that boils down to, it was the first time in my life that I became willing, able, and capable. And I was able to do that. I was able to do that. I was willing, able, and actually would do. Following directions about how to run my life. Even though I did not understand them. I did not agree with them. I didn't think they would work. And I certainly did not want to do them. And folks, that gift that I didn't know I had at the time. There wasn't any epiphany like with Bill. It didn't seem like to me anything had changed. That was a very subtle shift. But that is the only reason on earth that I'm standing out here in front of this sea of beautiful, beautiful recovered alcoholics. Instead of having been rotting in a pauperous grave for over 36 years. So that was a very important thing. They told me in Nashville when I came back from the Lord's Prayer. Because I stayed drunk six months after I got to Nashville. And they all knew me very well. At the 202 Club. A clubhouse there in Nashville that I practically lived at for a while. And they all knew me well. When I came back the most recent time after a two week drunk. That was another one of my pop off vodka slash Listerine drunks. I asked them what they thought of my drink. And they said, well, I don't drink vodka. I asked them what I need to do if I want to live. They said, don't drink, don't take, don't go to meetings. First 60 days I went to over 150 meetings. To the best of my recollection I did not want to go to a one of them. It was still very clear to me that you guys were religious fanatics. And that I needed to get out of there and get my head out of the sand. And get back to Louisville. Get a law license, some money, a big car, a good looking woman. For God's sake, be somebody. But I'd been given that gift I didn't know I had. Of being able to turn around to my brain and say, yeah, I know. But you and I have nearly killed one another. And we don't have anywhere else to go from here. So we're just going to go to these dumb old meetings. And thank God I had the same thing backwards about that. That I have backwards every day of my life without my divine intervention. I make it all about what I think, feel, and believe. That's my ultimate reality. In nature it does not occur to me. If I don't feel like doing the right thing to go ahead and do it anyway. I won't call Bob or somebody, Clancy or Bob and whine about, I don't feel like this. Something's wrong with me. I don't feel right about this. What can we do to get me fixed? I've done a couple of inventories on it. I've been praying. And they ask me not to bring it up at discussion meetings anymore. And I just can't get fixed. And... See all my life I was absolutely convinced that the difference between good people and me was they felt like doing right. And if we could just get me fixed so I felt like doing right, I could be good people. Of course I know now those folks may not have felt a bit more like doing right than I did. They just did right. And that made them good people. And I didn't. And that made me bad people. The real truth is those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that I built a shrine to all my life are just a will of the wisps. They don't have any real substance or permanency or form. And they shift and they change. And they have absolutely, they leave no footprint on reality whatsoever. Not one little tiny footprint on reality. My actions are what impacts reality. My actions were what destroyed things and hurt people during my drinking. And thank God my recovery is not dependent on the old crazy picture showing the back of my head. It's not dependent on how I am. You know I have trouble reading the big book because I've already read it. Know what it says. And the first couple years I was sober I would have sworn that it said that my daily reprieve was contingent on my spiritual condition. Thank God that's not what the ink on the paper says. Because my spiritual condition is the way I am at any given time. And I don't have a wand to wave and change the way I am. So if my daily reprieve is contingent on that, on those days when I wake up and I feel cut off from you and I feel cut off from God and I don't want to get on my knees and God knows I don't want to listen to those sponsors talk about the girl. I don't want to listen to those sponsors talk about the girl. I don't want to listen to those sponsors talk about the girl anymore. Or any of that. I don't want to go to these old meetings. Can't hear anyway. And even if I could I know what they're going to say. On those days I would be exposed and just subject to being struck drunk. But when I realized, and the word realized is a great word. I always thought before I got sober that to know something and realize it were essentially the same thing. But realize is a form of the word real. When I have realized something that literally means it's been brought into reality inside me. And the things I have known for 40, 50 years that I have not realized. And when I realized what the book actually said, the maintenance of my spiritual condition is not how I am. The maintenance of my spiritual condition is what I do on any particular day. And I have got a blueprint in that book on the actions that I need to take. I don't need to want to take those actions. They don't need to feel right. I don't need to want to. I just need to do them. And if I do those actions that are to maintain my spiritual condition. I believe that I am guaranteed a day of sobriety that day. So just that realization changed my daily reprieve. From something totally beyond my control. To something totally within my control. And it turned out all I needed to do was get to the meetings. And let my old sick brain and soul get dragged in there kicking and screaming. Behind my feet. And I thought the aid worked. I had to feel like it was working. I thought I had to believe it would work. I thought I had to be able to see the cause. The causal relationship of A causing B. Didn't have anything to do with it. I just needed to start taking action. Then they told me that if I wanted to live. I was going to have to read the big book. I explained to them I had done that. And they explained to me that they knew that I had done that. That I had been quoting it to them while I had been dying. And they explained to me that the big book is not a philosophy book. That there is nothing in there that I can learn. Or somehow mastered. That is going to keep me sober for a heartbeat. It is a simple instruction manual for my actions. So they explained to me that if I wanted to live. I would go back to that book and start at the front cover. Coming to it like a little child. Trying to act like I had never seen it before. Start at the front cover and go through it line for line. Reading only the black part. Not arguing with, memorizing a thing. And not distinguishing anything. Or even looking for anything to learn. But looking for what it says to do. And that was when they explained to me. That the steps are truly the prescription for alcoholism. They work on alcoholism exactly like penicillin works on an infection. If I have got an infection that is going to kill me if it is not treated. But will respond to penicillin. I don't need to understand the origin and the nature of my infection. And I don't need to aggravate the folks around me in the medical profession whining about that. The fact is I can learn everything there is to know about that infection. If I don't take the penicillin I am a dead man. All that knowledge won't help me an instant. I don't need to understand how penicillin works in the human body. I don't need to believe that that little bottle of pills can take care of all these terrible things wrong with wonderful me. And for me the most important thing. I don't need to want to take the pills. That is irrelevant. If I take the pills as directed I will get this fine. And they promised me that those steps. The action that is the first nine steps in order to reach a state of recovery from alcoholism. And then the action that is ten, eleven and twelve. In order to maintain my spiritual condition a day at a time. And maintain my recovery. That it would work on alcoholism just like penicillin on the infection. I am here to report ten tests. Well those guys led me through steps one, two and three. And they have been covered beautifully. And Larry just did a great job with four and five. I did my fourth and fifth step. And I formed a picture of what a spiritual dawn ought to look like. And by that time I was living in an attic. Of course with no phone, no car or anything. And I didn't have a shelf. So I couldn't get the book off the shelf. But I laid it up on my bed and took it off the bed. And I spent one hour going back through the first five steps. And it looked like I had done well enough on it. And I was ready. And we have what Nicole, the greatest hostess in the world, read at the beginning of the meeting. Is the entirety of what the first hundred and sixty-four pages of the big book have said. And what I say about steps six and seven. Not another word in there about it. Less than half a page on page seventy-six. And it looked like to me that, you know, I was in pretty good shape. So I got down on my knees. I said the seventh step prayer. And was convinced that that was fair with God's help. I did have that. I had gotten that far with God's help. I went to work on me. To make me into what I had decided a spiritual dawn ought to be like. And until I was nine years sober. I was probably eight months sober when that happened. And until I was nine years sober. That was the way I approached it. And I not only thought it was okay. I thought it was the only responsible way to do it. They led me through eight and nine. And there's a byproduct that my law license got put back in order. So when I was twenty-one months sober I wound up back in Louisville. Practicing law. Loads of wonderful things happened that I'm not going to go into. It's just enchanted. And the first nine years of my sobriety, as has already been said from the podium here. You cannot humanly get from where I was in April of 1981. To where I was the entire first nine years of my sobriety. They're wonderful. My law practice had started doing a little good. The daughter I hadn't seen in over three years had moved in with me. Lived with me all through high school. People had started asking me to speak all over the country. And I was sponsoring an embarrassing number of men. And so active in Alcoholics Anonymous. But relationships with the women folks and financial chaos like to have killed me that first nine years. They like to beat me to death. And what I would do. Whatever character defect was making me uncomfortable and embarrassing my self-centered butt. I would figuratively grab it by the collar. And I would use steps. Prayer. Sponsors. Meetings. Even a little outside counseling. And I would slam that character defect up against the wall and say, Come here God, give me a little help. And we'll get rid of this thing. And God never came. And I had no idea what was wrong. None at all. And it was terribly embarrassing. And the more. My financial chaos from my hitting bottom and losing everything was such that when I got back to law practice. When I was three and a half years sober. My sponsor, Cherry Carpenter in Nashville at that time. And my lawyer got on a conference call. And we decided that after three and a half years sober. And my finances had improved to the point. That I could file bankruptcy without getting indicted. So I filed chapter 11 bankruptcy with a plan to pay back 100 cents on the dollar. And the month I was 15 years sober I got that paid off. But at any rate during that time. And you know once you confront that. Once you're dealing with it. Once you are writing those embarrassingly small checks every week or month. And sending them to those people instead of hiding from them. You don't have to wait until it's all paid off to be free. You're already free. So I was free from those things. And it was great. But the more money I made. The more financial chaos I seemed to have. And as far as the poor ladies that had the misfortune to encounter me. I'm not big on psychological theories. But I've heard the theory that once an hour. The theory that once an alcoholic starts drinking alcoholically. That they stop maturing emotionally. That sounds about right for me. Because I was about 12 or 13 emotionally when I got sober. And if some lady that would have had the least problem getting a job haunting a house. Expressed any interest in me. I would have passed any lie detector test when I tearfully proclaimed undying love. And I meant it from the bottom of my heart. Ten days, two weeks later I'd wake up and think. My God if it don't get away from me now I'm going to die. I don't mean ten minutes from now. I've got to go right now. I'm going to die. Now you do that over and over. And it really undermines your spiritual giant hood. It's kind of rough to carry it all. But Cherry had died. My Nashville sponsor. In the winter of 89, 90. And I was in the hospital. And I was in the hospital. And Tom B. From Avon Lake, Ohio. Right out of Cleveland. Who is still a sponsor. Along with Bob B. Out here as a sponsor. So I'm on a short chain this morning. With my sponsor here. But I asked Tom to be my sponsor. To replace Cherry. And I went to Cleveland to spend the weekend in May of 1990. And I'm not going to go into all the things that happened there. But one of the important things. That happened was that there was a lot of discussion about 6 and 7. And the result was I began to approach 6 and 7 with an entirely different angle of approach. You know that's the definition of attitude that Cherry gave me. By sending me to an old 1930's dictionary. The first definition of attitude didn't have anything to do with my mindset. Or what I thought and felt about something. The first definition of attitude was from aviation and geometry. It was angle of approach. And just like my daily reprieve changing instantly from something totally beyond my control. To something totally within my control. That was like turning the lights on and off. Because my attitude went instantly from something totally beyond my control. To something totally within my control. Because my angle of approach. I didn't have any kind of angle of approach toward you or anything else. Hey it's not this crazy picture showing. This will of the wisp that leaves no footprint. It's the way I act. That's my attitude. And I have, God has given me control over one thing in this universe. And that's all. My next action. That next stitch. But at any rate. There's all this talk about 6 and 7. And that's all. talk about 67, and I didn't see a burning bush in Cleveland. In fact, I've never seen a bush in full conflagration. Now, I've seen about a thousand that were smoking some, and roughly 998 times out of that thousand, I thought, oh my God, this is it. This is life changing. This is the epiphany. This is going to just solve it all. I see it now. I don't do anything about it. Two or three weeks later, I don't even remember what it was. But just a couple of times, including this one on six and seven, I did what I believe Bill did with that experience in the hospital in December of 1934. I got out my bellow. I got out my bellows, and I started giving that smoking bush some air. And I started acting like that smoking bush might be a burning bush. And I started treating it as if it were a burning bush, and it burst into flames. So you see, I'm part and parcel of my own burning bushes. And the total change in my attitude or angle of approach about six and seven, I've seen a lot of people who have been in the hospital for a long time, and I've seen people change. And they're glad they've gone on what that four or five year long period has meant. Mayor Ross. Mayor Ross. Mayor Ross, so you right back. Now I've got to at least sprinkle some or two dots. Just stop at seven. effects of character. It certainly does not ask God to remove the ones that are making my self-centered but uncomfortable or the ones that I have decided need to be removed to make me into what I have decided a spiritual Don Major is supposed to be. No, it asks me, God, only to remove those that stand in the way of my usefulness to God and my fellows. And I don't know which ones they are. I'll tell you right now that probably 75% of the times my phone has rung in the last 25 years, people asking me to talk or be their sponsor or do something for Alcoholics Anonymous, it is because character defects persisted so long, painfully, and obviously in my sobriety. And somehow I managed to keep putting one foot in front of another and I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to do it again. And I'm not going to do it again. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again. And not drink until I was able to find a path for it to be better. That's one of the huge things I have to share. And when I was going through that, I couldn't see any redemption in it. I mean, it was a total spiritual negative. You see, the patterns of my life and on my own, my idea is the way I want to approach life is I need to approach life is here, let me figure out these patterns of my life. So I'll know where to start stitching. I'll be 74 in three weeks and I hadn't figured out a single pattern yet. Now why I still want to spend 40% of my waking hours worrying about it, that's another story. But the truth is, I've got less capacity to comprehend and understand the patterns of my life than a chimpanzee does to master quantum physics. They're just none of my business. The patterns belong to God. My job is stitching. And I'm so grateful that God put in me, and I believe in every human being, although we cover it up sometimes until we can't even, aren't even aware of it. But I believe we all have a spark of the divine inside us. And I believe that spark of the divine knows only the next right stitch. You know, when I'm conflicted about God's will for me, it's almost invariably that I'm trying to take too big a bite that's none of my business. I've spent so much, wasted so much time praying on Monday for God to tell me how God's going to take care of Tuesday. And it just flat doesn't happen. And as far as the instant, I do mean the instant. I believe the only glimpse of God's will I ever get is in the absolute right now. You know, we all assume that five seconds from now, it will be God's will for me to be up here going on and you're all just beginning to fidget a bit. But the fact is that in the next five seconds, any one of us could fall out with a seizure or a heart attack. The lights could go out. The sprinkler system could come on. A wet drunk could come flying through the locked doors out there raising all kinds of sand and disrupt everything. Actually, the police could come in here looking for one of us that hadn't completed our amends. All sorts of things could happen. Or as it did one time from the podium, exactly at this point my cell phone could ring. But all sorts of things that could happen that would completely change God's will for me five seconds from now. And yet I want to worry about God's will for next Tuesday and ten years from now. My job is stitching. And the limit of my vision is that stitch. And my job is when I know in my heart where that right stitch is, but my brain, you know, I thought the enemy of that would usually be things like greed and lust. Maybe 1% of the time. 99% of the time it's fear. It's fear that I won't get something I want or I'll lose something I don't want to lose. Or worst of all, it's fear of looking bad. I think most alcoholics are more afraid of looking bad than they are dying. But it's fear. And when my brain's telling me, oh, Don, you must take a little more than is your real fair share here. You must take it. My God, they won't miss it. And really, there's a way of looking at this that you deserve it. And your sweet wife Sharon's depending on the money. And so you must. What I need to do is listen to the heart. Rather than the fear and the selfishness of my mind and my ego. And try to take that one stitch. And I can never see where God's leading that pattern. Or what pattern God's weaving. And by the way, it's not just step six and seven. As far as I'm concerned, that idea that the point is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the folks around us. That's the heart of the process. And that's the heart of the program. We hear her, Billy did such a great job on the myths and misconceptions in AA. And while he was talking, I thought about the one, AA is a selfish program. Don't hear it as much as you used to. But in my early sobriety, you heard it a lot. By God, this is a selfish program. I got to take care of me. And I understand where they're coming from. And it actually makes me feel better. And it actually makes a valid point. The valid point that if we don't take care of ourselves, don't do what we need to do to maintain our spiritual condition and get our daily reprieve, we're not going to be any good to ourselves or anybody else. But the fact is, I've got a selfish illness. I can't effectively treat it by obsessing on self. And it doesn't make any difference how I dress that up. And I've got an entire wardrobe for self obsession. I've got responsibility clothing. I've got security clothing. I've got psychological clothing. And I have spiritual clothing to dress up obsession on self and try to get it to work on my alcoholism. But it's still like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. And third step prayer, take away my difficulties. Not so I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. I can be sober and spiritual. And happy. Take away my difficulties. That victory over them will bear witness to those I would help of God's love, power, and way of life. The terribly practical eighth and ninth step, all about putting our lives in order. Yes, it is. But if you look there on page 77, it says, yeah, we're doing that. But that's not our real purpose. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service. To God and those around us. And it's my great misfortune that Chuck C. passed away before I ever got to meet him or talk to him. And I know he's Clancy's sponsor. And he is an absolute hero of mine. Chuck said things like, it wasn't his job to take care of him. That was God's job. His job was to help God's kids do what they needed to have done for fun and for free because he wanted to. And that if he approached it from that angle of approach and he did that, that God never failed to take care of him. And it works just exactly, just exactly that way with me. And you know, praying for those character defects to be gone, it took me nine years to easily see. Because the big book, when it says praying for our selfish ends won't work, you can easily see that. It took me nine years to see that. It took me nine years to see that. Praying for a character defect to be gone because I, for any reason, wanted it gone is exactly the same spiritual mistake as praying for a red Ferrari. It's praying for my own selfish ends. I don't know which character defects need to stay and which need to go and what timetable it needs to be. That's all up to God. I don't know what God's making out of me. You see, my problem with perfection is not what I thought it was. I thought all my life my problem with perfection is my inability to attain it. And make no mistake, I am very unable to attain it. But that never matters. I don't get that far. My problem with perfection is I can't recognize it. I wouldn't know perfection if it came riding through here on a motor scooter. If God said, Don, I've been fooling with you all these years and you're nearly 74 now and you've been sober 36 years, why don't you just tell me exactly who and what you want and should be and I will make you that. I'd be like a blind dog in a butcher shop. I'd have no idea who and what to tell God about that thing. And I began stumbling in the direction in May of 1990, stumbling in the direction of the Bible. I began thinking of acting like a person would act if they were not afraid of where God would take them. Acting like a person would act if they had absolute intellectual confidence that God had them in the palm of his or her hands. And started trying to act like a person would act who knew their job was just that next stitch. And that the next step was to be a Christian. The pattern was none of their business. And I've stumbled that way for 27 and a half years. And I won't tell you how badly I've stumbled. I honestly don't think there's been one single day in that 27 and a half years that if you had asked me, Don, did you do this step six and seven thing well enough today that it will do any good, that I would have said, yeah, I think I made it over the bar today. Not a single day. Every day, oh no. I failed so many times. I got knocked over by a self-wheel 50 or sometimes 100 times a day. And I just stumbled a couple of steps in the right direction. And I get a self-wheel regroups and knocks me over from a blind side over here. And I just get up and say, oops, Mom, Dad, I'm sorry. And I stumble a couple more steps. And the same thing happens. Well, let me say this about that process that I just described, that stumbling and getting up so many times every day. I thought that every time that happened, it was an interruption of my spiritual growth. But I have learned that that process is the only spiritual growth of which I'm capable. And I have learned that my God is just all right with me. I'm not afraid of that. My God doesn't require perfection from me. My God doesn't even require consistency. My God requires persistence. Just keeping on stumbling in that right direction. And I will tell you, despite my judgment, and by the way, taking my spiritual temperature, it's very easy for me to get way off base on that. You know, I've got some sponsees that I accuse them of wanting to call me a jerk. They call me and say, how am I? You know, so concerned with how they are. And I've found for me, how I am is pretty well unimportant compared to what I do. There's some friends of mine and I in Louisville that for nearly 30 years now, you know, when you see somebody, you say, hey, how you doing? And 90% of the time, they immediately start telling you how they're feeling. Well, we correct one and say, no, wait, if I want to know how you're feeling, I will ask you that. I'm asking you how you are doing. And it makes such a huge, huge difference. But at any rate, doing it as poorly as it seemed by my lights, I was doing it. I will tell you that if in May of 1990, God had said, okay, Don, you make a list of the best you think you can have in every area of your life, and I mean every area, your life in AA, your relationship life, your house you live in, the cars you drive, your reputation in law, your law practices, everything. And I had listed what I honestly thought was the best that I could possibly have. And I said, well, I'm going to do it. I would have shortchanged myself in every single area of my life. Every single area. What my God has got in mind for me when I'm willing to come as a little child, and I'm willing to act like that person that does have the full intellectual faith, and I'm willing to concentrate only on that next action, and not let the fears and worries about tomorrow and yesterday overtake me and obscure that divine spark that will tell me where to stitch. And I just keep persisting and stumbling and stitching. My God has got things in mind for me more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. In that relationship life, there was such a god awful mess, and to this day, I've never started to sponsor anybody. And without very early telling them that for me to give advice on relationships really ought to be a felony. But in May of 1990, I got back from my weekend in Cleveland with Tom and those guys up there, and I'd known Sharon for seven years. And if you had taken one look at her, you can imagine that I'd had this thing for her for a long, long time. And I called her, and she, we hadn't had any contact in a year. And she, that afternoon, was driving home and was sitting at a stoplight, and all of a sudden she got a really clear picture of me and my daughter Dana. And my daughter Dana and Sharon's oldest daughter Angela were classmates and friends, so that's how we got together. So when she got home and found my message on the answer sheet, she was afraid not to return the call, afraid God would strike her dead or something after that had happened. So she returned the call, and the only trick I used on Sharon is the trick that, and trick's really the wrong word for it. I used on her the thing that I try to use in all my human relationships, and that's the part of the prayer of St. Francis of Lord, let me seek to love, comfort, and love you. I love, comfort, and understand her rather than to be loved, comforted, and understood by her. And that changes everything. In any encounter, whether it's somebody that I'm making amends to, that's got a reason to do something bad to me, whether it's a jury in a murder case, whether it's an appellate court, whether it's a client, whether it's a sponsor in AAE, whatever it is, if I will pray that part of the Francis prayer, and it's the prayer of St. Francis, Lord, please let me seek to love, comfort, and understand, and keep running that through my mind until finally for just a little while miracles happen. Number one, I become a listener, which by nature I'm not, and I begin to really, really hear what you say. And for just an instant, you become more important than I am. Now I have learned that if any part of me is trying to, to get you to love, comfort, and understand me, and that covers a lot of ground, that includes making sure that you respect me, and that includes making sure you don't step on my rights by God. If any part of me is coming from there, I've found that it is an absolute spiritual law that I will not be loved, comforted, and understood to my satisfaction. It just can't happen. If you do exactly what I thought I wanted you to do, before you're done, I'll change it. Because I'm trying to fill up a hole with you and your behavior that only God can fill up. But when I do get it turned around, and I'm at least acting like, and I'm running the prayer through my head, a person who's not interested in whether they are understood, or loved, or comforted, but really and truly interested in loving, comforting, and understanding the other person, all sorts of wonderful things happen. First, I've never had, of all the thousands upon thousands, of millions I suspect, of human encounters I've had since I've been sober, when I have remembered to pray that prayer, and keep running it through my head, I have never had an encounter go terribly. Not one. Not one. Not one of any kind. Not all of them have been complete sweetness and light. But a whole bunch of them have been sweetness and light, and have never gone off the rails. It's the most useful tool in human relations that I have ever found in my life. And one side effect of it is, I wind up loved, comforted, and understood beyond my wildest dreams. Of course, the problem with that is I like it, and try to grab hold of it, and poof, it's gone, and I got to start all over again. But I can start all over. I was giving a talk somewhere several years ago, and it just came out of my mouth. I've been in the fourth dimension of existence 5,000 times. And I stopped and said, oh my God, that means I've fallen out of it 4,999. And that's all right. That's part of my stumbling. That's part of the persistence. That's part of just keeping going. And with me, I've become convinced that there isn't really any destination in this deal we've got here. It's just a journey. And of course, with my sobriety itself, and there's been talk of this tonight, but trying to help everyone is what I need to do. When I try to go to my law office and try to win cases, make money, cover my butt, look good, I wind up in the snake pit every single time. But when I go down there and try to love, comfort, and understand, and help God's kids, it all works beautifully. God's so much better lawyer than I am. So, steps six and seven have been the most important steps in my life for 27 and a half years on a daily basis. And I'm so grateful that they end my life, and I'm so grateful they work as poorly as I think I do it. And thank you all for your love and patience and for having me with you. God bless.