The Power of a Program That Works for Atheists – Howard P.

My name is Howard, and I am an alcoholic. I want to thank Neil for having influenced Michael to get me here. It's been very honored to be here. And Mike, up until now you've done a terrific job with the speakers and as for the rest of you, eight out of nine ain't bad. The other eight I thought were dynamite And I want to thank Danny and Cindy for their talks. For the newcomers, I hope you feel welcome here because you are welcome. And I wanna level with you a little bit to start with. Speakers and Alcoholics Anonymous are not authorities on alcoholism nor are they authorities on our program of recovery. Our primary authority is the big book, the book AlcoholicsAnonymous. That's our primary authority for what Alcoholics Anonymous believes about alcoholism and what we believe about our program of recovery. And knowing that speakers are not authorities, whenever I'm asked to speak, I make up stuff and say that it's in the big book. I get page numbers. Nobody ever checks. I don't say him much of a speaker, but God damn, he sure knows the book, doesn't he? I, uh... I, um... I, I... There's a young lady over here who's going to be your speaker tomorrow morning. June G. June and I held up our hands together 16 1⁄2 years ago in the class of 1972, and I'm here to tell you that anyone that was in a meeting with June and me in August of 1972 would have bet you a lot of money that she and I wouldn't have been here speaking at the... They would have got your money, but she would have never learned to shut down that long. Anyway, it's an honor to be here, and I thank you very much for inviting me, Mike. And I thank your guys for being here to listen to me because when I get through, I'm going to feel good. I didn't expect any of you to feel bad but I'm gonna feel good and I'll tell you while I'm talking, the time is just gonna fly by for me. I appreciate that it's not going to be that for you but I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm about to feel so damn good when we get through that you'll be grateful that you were there to listen for me talk. And feeling good is an important thing to me, and I feel good. And I have a good life now. I truly, honestly have a great life. I have the good job, the good home, the great family. And they feel good about me, and I still feel good with them. And I will also tell you that some time back I was meditating, and after I had finished meditating, I had a good feeling about myself. And I had that good feeling with so much clarity that I remembered, when I was a very, very, very little kid feeling good about myself. I identified that good feeling with when I as a little kid. Now, that good thing I had when I had a little child left when I were very young. My dad was an alcoholic and my dad was from the German, he was a, both of my, all my grandparents came from Germany. Germans are disciplinarians and dad was in alcoholics and what he wanted you to do was what he wanted you do. Now, he may not have told you not to do that but if you did it and he didn't want you to, god damn it, you should have known better. And I was a beggar and a pleader and that pissed him off. Don't whip me, I won't do it again and then he'd start whipping me and I'd start crying and he'd tell me to stop crying. I never got the hang of being whipped and not crying. I never got where I liked being whipped. I understand in West Hollywood there are some people that...I'm not one of them. You whip me today and I'm going to cry. I don't think that made me an alcoholic, but I didn't have a good feeling about myself and my family. I didn't feel like a good son. I didn't feel like a good brother or sister. And when I was, I'm a native of Los Angeles, but I lived in a little farm community near Wichita, Kansas. And I'm telling you back there, the wheat harvest means everything. So you pray a lot for the wheat harvest. You pray for it to rain so that the wheat will grow and ripen and then you pray for it not to rain so that they can harvest it so you can pray for a two-way so that the birds can plow. Nothing wrong with that. Those are all good things to do. Unfortunately, it don't work. And we would have droughts. You know, we'd pray for rain and it wouldn't rain for goddamn weeks and you had big dust storms and then we'd we'd pay for it not to raining and we'd have floods. Now that didn't happen all the time but it happened often enough that while nobody pointed their finger at me I always knew I was largely responsible you know Jesus, I'm four and five years old and I've ruined the whole god damn revival just by not doing what you had to do no, to get God God, I was taught I don't know what I was thought but I learned that God was a punishing God And I never got a hell of a lot of spiritual strength out of that, you know. And God was separate from me. I learned that God was a man, an anthropomorphic being, separate from me up in heaven with nothing but a series of tattletale angels sitting down, you now, monitoring my behavior, taking the bad news back upstairs where I was going to get zapped forever. I did not feel good about that. In school, you know, you had to be smart to do good. A's were good, F's were bad. C's were about where I was at, you now. Some of you guys were super achievers, I'm not. I'm just about a straight across the board C person and C people don't feel good, you know. I don't feel too good about C's. When I was 13 years old and I'd gone to Kansas, I drank my first two drinks of whiskey, and I felt good. I'm telling you, the world was all right. I had that marvelous feeling of euphoria, the marvelous feeling of feeling good. And in the back of the big book, on page 569, where they describe a spiritual awakening, what they describe is exactly what happened to me. A feeling that by God's will it was all right. the world had changed and I had strength. And another thing they suggest there was that accompanying this feeling is sometimes some kind of a sudden spectacular upheaval. I had that that morning too. Right on the Methodist minister's yard. I had it. I had to do it. I had a lot of that feeling and I have that sudden spectacular upheavals a lot of times with my grandson and it didn't even slow me down. You've got to stay right in there. You can't let a little throwing up throw you down if you're ever going to make it into Alcoholics Anonymous. You've just got to, by God, work harder than that. Also in the book, in the front of the book Roman numeral, page 26 It describes, it says as several of the speakers have said so far that we drink essentially because we like the effect produced by alcohol. Many women drink essentially because they like the effects produced by alcoholic. And it says, We are restless, irritable and discontented until we can once again experience that sense of ease and comfort that comes from just taking a few drinks. Drinks which we see other people taking with impunity. So when we system as we are there a phenomenon of craving develops and we go through the well-known stages of the spree. We emerge full of remorse and a firm resolve never to do that again. Then he says, we'll do that agin. And agin and agin, over and over and ove,r and over any considerable period of time, page 30, it gets worse. never better and that certainly was my experience it got worse and worse and worse I could tell countless long stories of how it got worse one night I also discovered and I don't mind mentioning drugs other than alcohol because I use drugs other than alcoholic I'm an alcoholic alcohol was my primary drug but I don' t mind mentioning it Because Bill Wilson didn't mind mentioning it until page 7. He waited until page 8. Page 7. Then it was on page 22. He once again mentioned taking alcohol in combination with high-powered sedatives and going to the hospital, to the doctor's and getting nothing and says that's not a perfect description of the real alcoholic, but it will serve. and it sure as hell serves me. But anyway, things just kept getting worse and I discovered that I could drink a lot more whiskey if I took a lot less than centimedes. Nobody had to tell me that. I just discovered better living through chemistry. i will tell you also that particular combination does not help you control your body functions we had our little experience with that i tell you i uh i just i just lost control of my bowels one time as an adult after having uh had a lot of that particular combination of alcohol and amphetamine my wife who is here today she released me that night I will tell you that she had not released me up until that night it was not with love but she released my traumatic experience for her while I just did that once in our married life she treated me thereafter like I was doing it every night she went out and got twin beds we still have twin beds been for over 16 and a half years still have Twin Beds been always have Twin Bed I was out playing poker one night and I wasn't playing poker well I'll tell you but I was drinking with him and it was very late in the morning or close to sun up and I left and I didn't say I wasn' t out of it drunk you know like someone was talking about going in looking at yourself in the mirror and trying to you know say straighten up boy you know I wasn''t that bad but I came to the first stop sign and my right leg wouldn't let up on the accelerator and hit the brake. Hell, I was telling it to and by the time I got stopped I was out in the middle of the intersection. I had also worked on some political campaigns and in Culver City, California I was a commissioner. And I had a badge but I was not in Culber City so I was concerned. I was in a state of delay about the police. I don't know if any of you guys know anything about that. And so I started babying up to the stop signs. Never dawned on me at that time that if a cop sees a baby up to a stop sign, he's going to suspect something. But I babied up to this stop sign and I made it all the way back when I got into the Culver City limits. I thought, whew! And then I got home and there's a stop signal right next to our house. And I stopped there right at the right place and I bog-bag pulled out, turned around, drove up into the driveway and forgot the baby up to the garage. I hit that goddamn garage right there. Hitted a hell of a lip. Then I tried to sneak in. I say it's also, also, I have told one of our family doctors, I had many. Otherwise, you can't get all those prescriptions and I wasn't buying them off the streets yet. I still did, but then and I had gone to a family doctor, one of them, and I told him I didn't drink. Well, I tell you, that next day I tried to walk down the hall and I could walk sometimes, but once in a while my right leg would give out and I'd be a neat little circle under the wall, you know. and you couldn't trust your own words what can you trust for Christ's sake and I went to the doctor and he checked me out and he said Bill if you drink I don't know what is wrong with you I said well that's not it once I knew what it was I had the answer I'm not going to drink so much that's it just not going to drink so much I never got the hang of that either anyway my life went right down the toilet my life's been down the toilet more times than tidy boy man has been down the toilet and I became a liar and a cheat I was as angry as a scalded rattlesnake I was immobilized with anxiety to say I was roughly charitable and discontented if I didn't have a drink Jesus Christ those were my very best days I was immobilize I was terrorize if I didn't have something to drink. And I simply couldn't afford to live the way I was living, and I got myself consciously into debt. And I had an opportunity to sell some equipment that I didn' t own. Equipment that I found right before the owner lost it. And I gave it to a guy who knew where to sell this stuff, and he did know how to sell it but he somehow couldn't find me to give me my part of the money. Anyway, I was in this bar called the Tattletail where they can't even keep the goddamn television focus so that you can see it and I was trying to sell some more equipment in there. I don't know what the hell they would have done with the equipment but essentially what I was doing was admitting that I was, Dale Woodridge, there's an emergency call. So, D'Alessa, would you please call home? And I had, in essence, by trying to sell other equipment, acknowledged that I was a thief. And I knew that I would get caught. I knew that I only did those crazy things if I was drinking. And so I called the guy that I believed was the president of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had drank. He had drunk in the pot of tail, and he had disappeared. And we only had our information straight in the powder tail. We made very, very few mistakes. And we knew that he had become president of alcoholics anonymous. and so I chopped him down and I called him and I had met him and I asked him if he would take me to an AA meeting and this was on a Monday morning at about 11 o'clock he said yes I'd be glad to are you drinking now I said no I'm not drinking now and that was the truth I had just finished a half a pint when I was in the parking lot and I was on the roof for Christ's sake and I wasn't drinking now I was taking bimmies, but I wasn't drinking like them. He said, well, I fooled him. I fooled Him because he said, Well, try not to drink any more. And he said I'll be down in Ditch at 7 o'clock. So by 7 o´clock I had drank two and a half more pints and I had my drinking problem in a lot better perspective and I knew I wasn´t an alcoholic and I know I was just picking myself up. What did you call this guy for? you know Jesus Christ now you've been embarrassed yourself again why do you do these things I hope they don't show up well he showed up driving a pickup truck which was just what we'd expect the president of Alcoholics Anonymous to be driving I did not expect the Mercedes and first thing I told him is I'm not an alcoholic and he smiled that son of a you had a nice smile He smiled and he said, I don't know if you're an alcoholic or not, but I suspect they're going to the right place. I said, well, don't tell anybody that knows me that I've gone to an AA meeting. And he said when you called, I didn't know for sure who you are, who you were, but he said I remember you, I know you. And he says everybody that I know that knows you knows that your whole life is screwed up because of your drinking. and I'm going to do everything I can to keep it from them that you may try to get your act together. I want them to think that you want to stay screwed up. So I'm not going to tell them. I said, I understand but don't tell them and he took me to my home group in Culver City the Culver city studio group and I was warmly welcomed really warmly welcome for the first time in my life And I was telling each person that I wasn't an alcoholic and they were each smiling and saying, oh, you're probably in the right place. And one of the guys said, you know, you don't have to be an alcoholic to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. All you have to do is have a desire to stop drinking. And if you have that desire, then that's the only qualification needed for membership. And if your say you're a member, you are a member. and whether you say that or not how your place is here your place will always be here and nobody can ever take any of our places in Alcoholics Anonymous we each always have our place there whether we're here or not God bless them for saying that another thing I liked about AA was their cuffs now I will tell you this they would throw you out of the tattletale, and this is a pond someplace for talking the way some of us talk. But I liked it. That was a big help to me. You know, it's one of the key places where you can say well, God bless you Mark, God damn it, you know, and surprising how many times you hear sponsors say that to guys like me. God bless your heart, God damn it. I was warmly welcomed, and they described alcoholism at that meeting. They described it as a disease. And they said alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. And that alcoholism is characterized by an obsession of the mind that somehow, someway, this time it's going to be different. Somehow, someway, this time I'm just going to drink a quarter of the pint today. I'm going to start the quarter of a pint at 6.30 and I'm not going to get that rosy glow and I'll be able to eat it alone for the rest of the day. Just going to have this. At some time in my life I could do that. And I don't know for how long that lasted but up till then that had been the best time of my life. And I was obsessed with the idea that this goddamn time it was going to be that way. Now, the half a pint didn't last till lunch. But I felt a little better after a half a punt. And I'm thinking better. My mind was clearer than it had been at 6.30 in the morning. And I thought, well, tomorrow I'm just going to drink a half of pint. Why don't I at lunch, tomorrow's half a point, just have a drink out of it? I mean, how long will there be enough left in there for tomorrow? Okay, the second half a pint is done by 2.30. And then I'll tell you, by God, I'll drink, you know. I'll think, by G-d, if I want to, I'm not hurting anybody. I was obsessed with that idea, you now. Every morning, in spite of the past 90 days, I got drunk every time I tried not to. By God, I could not, you know. And the other part that characterizes us as a class of people is once we start to drink, we experience the phenomenon of craving. The obsession of the mind. Now, some of us will over a period of time, particularly newcomers, because I thought, well, shit, I didn't always think that this time it was going to be different. I wasn't always obsessed with that. But the only time I wasn't was when I knew I was going to get shit-faced. You know, I'd start out, you know, by God, this time I'm going to be drunk. I'm not obsessed with the idea I'm about to get drunk. I'm gonna get drunk! And the ultimate thought is, this I'm I'm NOT going to. But I'll tell you this, there is no alternate to the thought that I'm gong to have a drink. Now, because the possibility of me not having a drink would enter my mind, not with any intensity, but enter my minds, I thought I was making a choice. I thought that I had decided to just take a drink. I didn't realize that I was not capable of making any other decision. And Father Terry said years ago, He never looked on it as losing control once he started to drink it. It was clearly a matter of changing his mind and deciding to have some more. Well, that's all that happened to me. You know, I hadn't lost control. I did not know about, I told my sponsor, I said, I don't remember experiencing the phenomenon of craving and he said, you probably didn't experience that. But that never happens to alcoholics who, when they once start to drink, just keep shrugging them down. If you make no effort to not drink, once you start to drunk, you never get the experience of craving. It only happens to those people who are able to say no. Or who, like me one time, I got trapped. I'd been drinking right along. I was in trouble at home. I was always in troubleat home. but I was going to smooth it over and I took part in the kids to Bob's Big Boy. And let's face it, they were not going to be impressed with me anyway so I don't see any sense in spending a hell of a lot of money. I take my friends from McDonald's out to Charlie Brown's you know, in the unit. But I take part and I find out they don't serve drinks at Bob's big boy. Jesus Christ, that was an exciting... Then I said What in the hell do I do with these hamburgers? And I'm telling you, we left with me saying, just get those goddamn French fries and a napkin and let's get out of here. And I would sit smarts into sobriety before I could push myself back into Bob's Big Boys. I knew I didn't, but that was a traumatic experience for me. I tell you, I could have ruined my life. So I didn' t let myself get trapped that way often. No, I just, and I hadn' t planned to not do that. I just avoided it. And anyway, I found out that I was an alcoholic. Unfortunately or fortunately, at my first meeting, they read chapter 5 and they said the things that they said about God. Now you find him now. And I thought, holy, you know, I'm certainly in the wrong place. Not in the right place at all. When you behave, if you were, if you had attended the Methodist, the Baptist and the Fringe churches in Argonia, Kansas and I had done all of those and you had learned about God and what was required of you and what the consequences were going to be from not living up to that. And that was what you believed and you behaved the way I behaved. Then you had to either give up the behavior or give up the belief. Well, I gave up the belief I sure as hell wasn't going to give up the behavior the belief never made me feel good and the behavior did I had a sense of ease and comfort when I drank and I never had that from any spiritual experience I had with the Methodist, Baptist or French churches but anyway I was going to college at Wichita University and I took a course in anthropology and in that course we studied the South Sea Islanders. And they believed that their island sat on the back of a huge turtle, okay? And they did homage to the huge turtle for the weather and for their well-being and they had a wonderful culture. They had wonderful family relationships, wonderful civilization. that was before we moved in on them everything worked good for them you know and they did homage to the big total and I thought how dumb can you get then of course it dawned on me that if I would have been born there I would believe that because that was all out there to talk then of cause it dawns on me that hell if so it's the same thing true in Virginia, Kansas that's what they taught me and that was what I believed And they don't have any more claim to authority than the people here in the Saatchi Island, and I'm going to be an atheist. There's a story about in India when they round up the wild elephants and they sort the baby elephants out, and they start the baby elephant's training by chaining them to a tree. Big chain, big tree, little elephant, he cannot get loose. he fights and fights and fights until he comes to believe until he come to know that it's futile to fight the chain and we don't know that he comes to believe that because he has no way of examining his belief system but the trainer knows that he's learned that and once the trainer sees he's learn that then he goes on with the rest of the training but for the rest of the elephant's life when he's big enough to pull a box fire they put a relatively short stake deep enough in the ground that when they put the chain over it the chain a bit tight on the elephant's leg and he because he learned a limiting belief when he was a baby cannot pull against the chain and when I heard that story I thought god damn I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with 785,933 baby elephant beliefs just like that stuff that I have been told which may not ever have been true or stuff that's true for a 3 year old that isn't true when you're 33 but I never learned any difference I had no way of examining my belief system. And I just locked into that stuff. I mentioned to my sister when I was going, I was studying to be an engineer. I wasn't studying. Was I packed? I was just going to school. And I mentioned it to my sisters who is a member of the Church of Christ. Now, the Church Of Christ is a fine religion. I will tell you though, they are hard over for Jesus. And she certainly was. And when she said, the trouble with you guys that study science is that you become atheists. She said, that's what happened to Dr. Einstein. Well, I thought, well, if that guy's an atheist, you know, that'd be a good company. Now I've got an authority to support me in what I believe. And I read some stuff by Dr. Eisenstein, and I'm telling you, If you're an atheist here today, and you're looking for scientific authority to support you, stay the hell out of Dr. Weinstein. This guy, he describes himself as a deeply religious man. And he describes why, and it was very impressive to me. And I decided, well, I'm not going to be an atheist. But I also came away believing that God was unchanging, immutable laws in the universe. But you could pray forever and God's not going to change anything in order to help you. So when I hear the steps read, and there's prayer involved here, and you're asking God to do this or that, and you turn your will and your life over to the faith of God, it's all right to turn your law of gravity over to God. I mean, you know, but your will in your life? Somebody's got to run her. You know, if I didn't manage my wife, who in hell was going to? I knew that my life was difficult to manage but unmanageable I was not into the steps at the end of the meeting I admitted that I told the guy that brought me to the meeting that I was an alcoholic but I said, hey, can't help me and he said, why not? and I said because God don't change things to accommodate people in their problems and I'm sure of that And if you can con yourself into believing that God's doing things for you, then living in that fantasy, it will work. But how's that to live in the real world? Which that day was about three huts of pints and fifty dinners. How's that for the real word, huh? Kenny smiled and said that that sounded great to him. He said, boy, your concept of God sounds good to me. And it'll work for you. But don't worry about that. he said the thing is when you got in my truck to come to the meeting you said that you were not an alcoholic now the first thing you say when you get in to come home is that you are an alcoholic and I don't expect you to know it but I can see that it's already working for you the first step or part of the first step is admit you're an alcoholic and he said if you've done that it's all ready working for ya can you not drink tomorrow I said yes I can not drink tomorrow and he says well don't take any business either I hadn't even told him I was taken to me I didn't know unless he noticed I said the same things over and over again real fast you know I got drunk one more time that was probably the worst drunk I saw then when I came back I called Tony and he started taking me to meetings and and I stopped drinking and I stopped using them and I haven't drank and used since then. And I will tell you that I was warmly welcomed at every AA meeting that I have ever been to and that I, over a period of time, had heard some stuff. It's like Susan was saying, you know, I came in here and they were describing solutions that made sense to me with problems that I had that I didn't even know I had until they described the solution. and I had never laughed uncontrollably in my life until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I tell you I have gotten a jillion laughs in AA Flo D there was a lady named Flo D in Whittier when Jim and I first came in and she was a delightful funny person and she would be colorful in her language never offensive but colorful and she said that her love affair with alcohol was like the love affair a tomcat has with a female skunk. She never got all she wanted. She just got all so she could stand. And I liked Flo. Flo told about a series of misadventures that had overtaken her and how she had gotten singles when she was in great pain and she sat on the foot of the bed and lost patience with God and shook her fist in his face and said, Why me? She said this booming voice came to her and said Because Flo, there's something about you that pisses me off. I knew she hadn't heard that. But I like Flo and I like her God. You see that made a you better be sick for that to help you. But I was sick. And I got a lot of laughs. And I've got wisdom. Steve was here to speak at a banquet last weekend. Steve has 25 years, so he's nine years sober when I say 30 and a half. I born new. And I heard Steve say he was 36 years and learning that all the people that he hated didn't see it. I thought that had not occurred to me. And that was a great thing for me to hear. And I had met this guy, Frank Giroux, at my first AA meeting. And Frank had 20 years in the program. And occasionally you'll hear people say, and I'm just telling you my story and what works for me. And what works with each other is what works. And I'm not into trying to change anybody else's point of view. But Frank, from time to time I hear people saying, fake it till you make it. You know, Frank would never fake it and he would never encourage me to fake it. He never said act as if. He said act of is because Howard, it is. And believe it is and he treated me like goodness was part of me. A hell of a long time before I was ever showing any goodness, he saw and treated the goodness in me. That was very, very nurturing and reassuring And God bless him, I could call him. I tell you, I had world record, absolutely world record in mobilizing anxiety attacks at work. Just, you know, and I'd call Frank and he'd have me explain the problem to him in such detail that even I could see that I'd made another mountain out of another molehill. And I would say, well, goddamn, Frank, I did it again. and I was sure I had a problem this time, and I'm not as sure of it. What the hell can I do? And he said, if you work the steps, that will surrender you. Well, I don't want to surrender. When I'm a baby elephant, I learned that quitters never win and winners never quit. You put your shoulder to the field, your nose to the brimstone, the devil, no less, is going to take the hindmost. You know, I'm not into surrender, and he says surrender to when. And that's all right if you can con yourself into that fantasy. But I've got to live in the real world. Frank and I had... In my real world was anxiety ridden. And Frank andI had lunch one time, and I said, what's the matter, Howard? And I said nothing. He said, that's funny. He said something's the mater with one of us, and now no, I feel good. I said I'll tell you what was wrong Frank I said I saw a juggler the other night on television and he's got some sticks lined up and he've got a plate with a special rim and he spins this plate on the first stick and then he spins a second plate on the second stick and a third plate on the third stick and he just gets the fourth plate going and the first one is wobbling going to fall he has to go back and get that going and get the second and the third and the fourth and then the fifth and then back I said Frank that's the way my whole god damn life is Frank waited about that long and said well Howard why don't you let the plates fall never God damn right then Frank waited about that long and said well Howard why don't you let the plates fall never a thing to me and I said that's all right here you're retired I've got to make a living and he said I'm not sure what that is but what you just described doesn't sound like living to me and he went on to say that all the anxiety and all the stress and all of the body anguish and all the tension that I can generate to keep the pace spinning in my life don't help him spin at all. That is God's laws of centrifugal force and gravity and my anxiety don't have a goddamn thing to do with it and he said, the guy has to keep keep the momentum going he's got to participate but he don't has to be anxious that the anxiety is counterproductive to the things you want to do to live your life. that helped me, and it still helps me. That really was a good baby elephant belief. That I can do the footwork, but I don't have to be anxious about it. I can have faith that as long as I do the foothold, that God's love is going to keep the events and the goodness for me. But anyway, Frank was a big help to me. I told Frank that I didn't believe in prayer. I said, God, don't change things in order to help people. I said, I'll pray with you. I'll hold your hand and I'll say the Lord's Prayer with you at the end of the meeting. I said I say it right. It's in earth as it is in heaven. It's not on earth. Frank did not give a shit. He went to his grave saying on earth I showed him in the Bible where it says in earth he still didn't care. He said, when are you going to stop trying to do it your way? I said, this isn't my way. This is the right way. And then I'd go to work and have an anxiety attack. My sponsor tracked down the equipment that I'd stolen. I told my sponsor about stealing equipment because I was going to... The fact that the equipment was stolen had not been discovered yet, but it could not fail to be discovered because the equipment calibrated to a national group of standards and it had been bought by federal government funds and it was worth $800 and they get the goddamn FBI for Christ's sake involved in this kind of stuff. And I was having a little mild concern about that. You might say I was in a state of low-grade alert all the time and my sponsor tracked that equipment down and called me and told me where it was and told what I'd have to do to get it back, told me what I would have to pay for it and Pat and I went to the bank and borrowed the money and went and bought the equipment back. I'm not going to be getting money for it But I paid to get it back. And then I took it back to the people I'd stolen it from. And it was a very awkward, and it didn't work well that day, Jesus. So there's nothing with that. But the next morning, I woke up, and the weight of the world was off of my back. I did not know how heavy the world weighed on me until it didnít weigh on me anymore. And I felt good. And I remember feeling good and knowing that I had this good feeling, and I hadnít drank, and I havenít used to do it. And this feeling probably eroded away within the hour. and I was anxious again but and I will tell you this I continued to make amends I continued to make Amends and every time I was making amends I was doing it so that I'd have that big feeling the next day and every kind of I was sure that it ain't going to work this time so I've done that here you're going to get yourself in no trouble to no good end but the next morning I always felt better it always worked and it didn't wasn't one time that I thought it was going to and my deal was I'm going to work the 10th, 11th and 12th step the 1st, 16th, 11th and 12th I never do that other stuff and my meditation I did not pray but my meditation was one of comparing the last three weeks of my drinking to the last two weeks of my sobriety and I could never do that with any clarity that I didn't feel grateful and that I couldn't see that my life had turned around that before it was going right straight down with no hope absolutely no hope that it would ever get any better and it had stopped and it was getting better and I can start today feeling grateful and go to work and lose it you know go to Work and Lose It but there's a better way of starting the day and one morning I was pushing do you guys ever hear Murphys y'all nothing is as easy as it looks if something can go wrong it will go wrong and at absolutely the worst possible time well I heard that in Matata Taylor and we always had it right in Matato Taylor and I knew that was the truth that's a fundamental axiom of life something bad is always going to happen and when it does it's going to be at the worst possible time I'm telling you if you believe that and you live your life that way you can go through a Thursday and nothing bad happened and you'll never experience goodness how I wouldn't experience goodness I'd experience something bad is going to happen it's called feelings of impending doom feelings of impending calamity and I went through Thursday that way then I would go through Friday that way nothing bad had happened nothing bad had happened Saturday morning something bad had happened I'd say see there I'm right Well, a little bit right. Well, this Saturday morning I was pushing the lawnmower. There's another law. It's called the Law of Probable Disposal. It says that whatever hits the fan will never be distributed evenly. That's also known as the Why Does It All Land on Me Law. Well, it's morning. I pushed in the lawn mower and there hit a tree root. And I walked into the lawn Mower handle with my best bone. and it was excruciatingly painful and I was immediately completely and totally enraged at my wife who wasn't home and then I was mad at AA you know first I was not mad at her then I made sense to me I said god damn her anyway and god damn AA too AA don't work I've got all these bad things happening to me my chest hurts like hell I'm not going to go to those meetings and grin and shake hands and say isn't it wonderful it's not wonderful and it is never going to be wonderful for me I'm never I'm going to drink but I'm not going to go to those god damn meetings anymore well that night Clarence Thomas came and got me and took me to the Malibu meeting and by then I didn't hurt so it was you know halfway to Malibus I was grinning and saying how wonderful AA was and Jack Bailey was there Jack always went to the Malibu meeting and Jack was a very loving kind person he expressed his kindness on his love particularly the newcomers regularly if you got a little time he would slap you in the land but he was very very nice to the new people and I felt good and Don Gates did I know Don Gates who they had some tapes of you can't go wrong with Don Gates Don Gates was the speaker that night he's brilliant and he was funny and he said hey if you're new in AA and you haven't worked all the steps AA will stop being fun for you and you'll decide AA doesn't work I mean that had my attention he said you'll decided to stop going to the meetings you're not going to drink but you're going to but you don't want the meetings and he says the day will come when you'll then go into the bar and order a drink and if you do that and the bartender says what's the matter I thought she was going to AA No, don't they? It will. He said, if you haven't worked all those steps, be honest with the bartender and tell him you don't know if it would have worked or not but you didn't try. And I was thrilled to hear that. And I came to believe that night, that moment, I came zu believe that some power within the program of Alcoholics Anonymous somehow in these steps which didn't have for me then anything to do with God that it was just the power of the program. The collective power here and in the book was going to restore me to sanity. I knew that I had just invalidated that and had never given it another. When I committed myself, I made a decision to turn my world and my life over to the care of that power as I understood it. And I understood God wasn't going to change anything to help me. And I did an inventory. And the written inventory was one of the very best things as so many best things have happened. One of the things I discovered was, see, I'm 39 years old, 40 years old. My dad has been dead for 20 years and I discovered my dad is not my problem. You know? I'm my problem and if it's my dad, I'm really screwed because he's been dead for 28. He is not going to fix it for me. I have to have some way of getting it fixed and I'm responsible for that. And I saw that. There's no other way that I could have seen that. And I took a fifth step. And that put a lot of the past that was in the past, put it in the path. And I did a sixth and seventh step, essentially the way it says to you on page 75 and 76. And I reviewed the steps as I'd taken them and I was sure I hadn't done them good. I just knew that I hadn'T done them or cut any corners. And I went to a meeting Sunday night and I went for a meeting Monday night and I went to a meeting Tuesday night, Wednesday night. I come home from work. My wife said, are you going to a meet-up again tonight? I know that she knows that I'm going to the meet-ups again tonight. So I'm watching out. I know something bad is going to happen here. And she then starts talking for the whole family. She said, the kids and I are glad that you're sober. You see, I know she hasn't asked the kids' permission to speak for them. And I know this is a prepared talk. I mean we've been married 22, 23 years then and I'm on to her too smart for her she says we're glad that you're sober we want you to stay sober we hope you always go to AA but we need you to help around the house and you don't help around the House anymore now than you ever did I said what the hell are you talking about why I and I listed two or four things I'd done around the House and I presented them as if I'd done them recently as if these are just samples of things from a much longer list that I can tell you about. She got mad and she lit into me and she said the things which over the years she had learned to say that she knew would hurt the most. Such as, now I'll take the colorful language out but it was there. She said, you have not really changed. You're not any different than you ever were. you're just like you were when you asked me if you could quit work and if I go to work and put you through school and you didn't even go to class you went to the silver dollar bar and you drank beer and drank beer until they gave you a mug with your name on it which was your only achievement that year as soon as she laid into me spontaneously that went through my mind you know she sat down to talk to you and talk sense to you and you didn't listen you know damn good and well you're not doing anything around the house you're mad at me help around here she's absolutely right and she tried to talk to you about it and instead of your responding you know and acknowledging the problem you invalidated her you invalidate the problem you didn'y give her any basis for hope and she's pissed off and she ought to be I felt that and then I felt compassion and love and as soon as I could get a word in otherwise I told her that I was sorry wasn't easy getting a word in but I got it in and I told her that I was sorry I'll never be able to make up for the things that I've done to you but someday maybe you can forgive it and forgive it but I'm going to go to the meeting and we'll talk when I get home from the meeting I bet him she don't want to talk well she's happy as happy as an hour and a half to me they can be very happy they're very happy she was very happy she really was you see she really saw that she saw that I had changed and I hadn't seen it I didn't see that I'd changed I went to work and at work there was a crisis situation and and I will tell you the first thing was it threatened my career really and then the next thing was that it struck me funny and the reason it struck me funny is because I'd heard Chuck Chamberlain say that you'll never find the solution to a problem in the problem the answer's not in the question the answer is in the answer and I thought that was singularly one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard a grown man say and he said he said the solution you know the problem was simply an opportunity to grow and I felt very clever of him he validated something that if the program really worked we wouldn't have to experience. If the program really worked we wouldn' t have all these problems. So I'd go to work and have these anxiety attacks but by God I got to be right. That day when I saw this problem and it struck me funny I saw the truth in what he said. That the answer to this problem was not in the problem it was in the laughter that he overtook in me. And it was in somehow having a sense of humor about it that I could have never had before. And that I saw the problem was simply an opportunity for me to experience it. And then I experienced knowing that I have changed. I have change, and I have changes because of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have found something that works. I have never found anything that worked before, and I knew that I'd never have to drink again by God if I didn't want to. and nothing has happened to me since then to diminish that faith every experience that I've had in Alcoholics Anonymous has built on that and so as I said when I started out I have a good life I truly honestly have a very very good life I have good job I have wonderful friends I have the wonderful family and it's with the relationship with all of those people most of the time and when problems come you see I have come to see that every problem I've ever had in my life, God takes care of. And I have perilously little to do with that. That's just the way the nature of God as I understand Him is. And God doesn't have to change anything for my problems to be solved. They've always been solved. It's just that I can never see the solution because I focused on the problem. And I'll tell you this. You work Murphy's Law, by God it'll work. Murphy's Law works as long as you work it and so do the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and God didn't have to change anything for that to be true he didn't had to change anything for the white brothers to fly their airplane and he didn' t have to change anything for me to have a stronger and happier and joyous life the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous have always probably existed I could have never ever had them in my life except through the program I meditate every morning and for 30 minutes and pray not to get God to change anything but for me to have the strength to accept things the way they are because they're really very good and I need to see the goodness and believe in the goodness that's in my life and then I have it and I was reading a book on meditation and it said whatever way you find God God is the right way if you think God out that's right for you or if you simply experience God through working the steps that's right for you or any combination but wherever you see God pass mark that spot and go sit in that window again the minute I read that I knew the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that's my window this is where I found God this is what I see God do and this is my path and this was my spot I marked it and I come here and we all we all see God path and that's what's happening all the time I just don't always see it but I see it now and I see it because you guys let me talk to you about it. Now, I'm very, very grateful to you for doing that and I love you very much. Thank you.