The Priest Who Heard My Fifth Step Was One of Us — Blood Pressure Dropped 60 Points in an Hour – Ron M.

And I'm absolutely delighted to introduce tonight's speaker. Our paths have crossed in service work, and one of my favorite things about the rooms is learning about all the different connections we all have. And any time he talks about anything, he just speaks with so much joy, and if you ever get a chance to ask him about the 12 concepts, you should. And with that, we have Ron M. tonight. Ron, Ron. Thanks, Alex. I didn't know anything, there was a concept, until I became a GSR, and then I had to learn about concepts because they called me up to read about concepts. I mean, I just finished the steps. Give me a break. I thank all of you for being here tonight. I need to let you know that if you want to rent an outfit like this, I got it for two hours tonight. And I have depends on, so if I go over my 40 minutes, I'm going to be okay. But be patient. I want to start by telling you I'm overwhelmed with joy over the life I now have. I'm just filled with love and adoration for this program of Alcoholics Anonymous and all of what you folks have done to keep it available to us. I thank Rebecca for asking me to come here tonight to share. This morning, I took a moment to ask God to direct my words tonight and accompany me to a meeting. So I know he's here, and if you have a problem with anything I share, contact him. I'm not giving out my email address. Anyway, I'm here with you, and I'll start in the beginning. So you understand part of what I'm going to tell you about tonight. It's on the set of basics. You can go back to your family and say, I heard a Polack talk tonight, and he had complete sentences. I'll do that tonight. Then number two, I'm Catholic, and so that's going to come up in the talk. And as Alec finally shared, you know, you can have a higher power of your choice. That's the beauty of this program. I went through two of them before I found my God of my own. I wasn't always suffering from this disease. Chicago, Illinois, and I lived in a household where Dad was involved in the church. Mom had a choir and two churches, and she played the organ. And I should not have really had a problem with my higher power. We even lived in the same building that the Catholic priests lived in. And I had a challenge with that once I started practicing. And Dad was a traveling salesman, and he would be gone all week, and I would be with my mom. Just by telling you, I had an older brother who had meningitis, and he was the love of my parents' life. He was a brilliant young man, this kid at 10 years old. He could take lots of money and a bank for the church. And so my mother never dealt with that grief. I would make mistakes doing homework at night, and today they call it child labor. And the words that she left me with, or I wasn't meeting her ex-me then in my life, is that I tried to prove her wrong at the expense of my family. And you'll hear that as I share. It's amazing to me in this. I can be. And I'm in a room with 100 people, and they're all happy, joyous, and free. And one of them said something I think is negative, and I'll focus on that one person and forget all about the 99. And I did that with Mom. I tried to gain her acceptance. And on a farm, and we did that so we could save money. I worked nights on the farm, accumulated enough money to buy a little house in a town called Libertyville, Illinois. And at that time, I was employed by Honeywell, Inc., asked if I could move into sales, and they said, well, sure, we would love to have you in sales, and they gave me the keys to the company car, none, so I go out there on these sales calls, and I assure you, I learned the meaning of rejection. I really did either, so I knew nothing about what I was selling, and they would let me know that, and I just hated getting up every morning, and then finally, I found a solution. It was alcohol. I got courage if I drank. It became a daily drink thing with you, is that I took this job to earn more money, and I found out again that alcohol gave me courage, and what that involved was in the morning, most people drive, and I have a cup, and there's coffee in it. In mine, I had red wine in the morning, and then I worked for a company. Many of you in the room would have loved working for them, because they mandated that you take prospects out to lunch at lunchtime, and that you tried to have them become customers, and I worked my heart off. I went to a restaurant regularly that had pictures of martinis, and so I had a lot of prospects that by two o'clock in the afternoon didn't even know their names, let alone become a customer, and so I did that, and the rest of the day, I drove down those busy, busy expressways in Chicago, and it would have been really awkward for me to lift up a bottle to drink to give me courage to make the next call, so what I did is I would pull over to the side of the road, and I popped the hood of my car, and I'd get out a straw, and I'd drink the vodka I had in my window washer, and that got me to the next appointment, and in addition to that, at night on the way home, so I could unwind, and I will tell you, I had the cleanest car in Honeywell, because I went through a car wash every night. The blankets fell in the back. Nobody was there. Came to the other end, and threw that, and get all the way home, and then when I would get home, I'd do a little more unwinding, and on weekends, there was always a big case. You don't know. I know is that the only time I stopped drinking was when I ran out or I blacked out. That was one of the two, so that knowing that I had a plan for that, I had a bottle. In the Midwest, we had water softeners. I had a bottle in a water softener. I had a bottle in the workshop, and I had a bottle underneath the seat of my car in a fire extinguisher holder, just for fear that I would never run out, okay? Now, as you can tell, I moved very quickly into the use of a chemical, very quickly. The big book, as it relates to family disease, it engulfs all those... Those whose lives touched us suffer. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgust of friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children and wives and parents. Anyone can... My wife left me with the children, all three, to babysit on a Saturday so she could visit her who was ill, and I drank myself to the point I passed out. My 10-year-old daughter supervised him all day, and she put him to sleep. And my wife came in the front door, and I said, where in the... My sister, as you know, and she died, she said, I had no empathy for my children. As I read earlier, I had my son, Paul, on the bicycle, and he asked me to give him a ride on the bike, and I put him in the back seat, and he was affecting my drinking time, and so I took him out for a ride, and as we were driving, the bicycle abruptly stopped. I drove back home, and when I got home, my little son, Paul, limped into the house and told his mother that his foot hurt, and she took him to the hospital, and I had... He had broken his foot in between the spikes because my son, my children, did this every time they saw dad. And my other son, James, he... I gave him the impression I didn't love him because I was so indifferent towards him, and I hated my daughter. And the reason why I hated my daughter is that she was... always smiling and happy, beautiful little girl. And then, the effect at work, I was on a volunteer flight apartment for 10 years, and I responded to a call in the middle of the evening, and I was an engineer. I drove the rig, and I got in behind the wheel, and all the other firemen got off. It was the first example that it snuck out of my house. When I was working with Honeywell, one time, I was at a conference, and I... the rooms we were in, I was drunk, I missed the pathway going up, fell in the water, banged my head on the pathway going up. The very next morning after the emergency room, I put my sunglasses on in the bandage and no one said a single word to me. If your success, profit and revenue, and profit for a corporation, you can do a whole lot of stuff before they'll let you go. And there I was in that room. And we were out in Boston one time, we were at Anaheim. And we were in San Francisco with some of the guys who were there. And I was standing in front of the door, and they would be there a minute, a second, a second. They were there for a whole night. And it was, you know, and I regardless of where they were sitting, they were sitting right there, as long as they were there, they were going to The Anthony's Pier 4 means nothing to anybody, but they have two chairs to either side as you ascend these steps. And I would pass out, and they'd put me in the chair and go up and eat with the customer and come down and pick me up and take me back to my room. No harm done. They were the world's greatest enablers. So I was on the skid row of success. I really was. And they promoted me to New Jersey from Illinois. And if you know anything about New Jersey, it's a culture of conflict. And I was drinking all the time I was there, daily, when I was in Jersey. And I did such a good job there with my alcoholism and the way I reacted that I got another promotion. And they promoted me to corporate headquarters. But just prior to that, I have to tell you what happened to me is the alcohol quit working on me. And I started using dry goods. And as you all know about dry goods, it's very expensive. You don't take them, get them, and take them legally. And so what I did is I was in this profession that we designed fire alarms and burglar alarms. And I found a guy who would pay me a percent of a take. And since I would survey every location, I knew where all of the good stuff was. And I would tell him. He would arrange to break in, and I would get a percent of that. And that's how I supported my use of drugs. Because I didn't want to take it away from my family. I moved to Minneapolis. And I have to tell you at this time, I really have lost the right to life. I lost the ability to love, and I lost the ability to care. I couldn't break in and enter anymore in Minneapolis. I couldn't get high. I couldn't get sober. So my solution at that time was to commit suicide. Because I knew no other way. I'm driving my car down the road, and there's a bridge embankment. And I'm aiming right for it. And I get a blowout on the right tire. And it pulls me away onto the shoulder. Now, if you don't believe there's a God, let me tell you. He was with me that night. And I figured how cool it would be to be killed at a fire scene. And no one would say, Ron's the alcoholic who died. But they would drape an engine in darkness and put my coffin on top of it. And everybody would be so pleased, you know, that the firemen. The question was, I planned to go underneath this whole three-door car. Three stories of wooden porches. I was wanting them to collapse on me. And then I'd be dead. Except God had another plan. As I proceeded to go under the porches, I slipped and fell backwards. And the porches came down. I couldn't even kill myself. And please understand, at that point, I had no idea there was another solution to my disease. I had an invention that lasted three days. And if you've never, ever seen 50 men, and I was completely blacked out. I can tell you what happened during that whole three days. But I managed to be able to complete my function. I went to Illinois, excuse me. And I had no idea where I'd been. So I was looking for receipts or matchbooks. Couldn't find a single one of them. Any human being that could fix this. Because it was internal. Go back. I asked Carol. Conference. It was really great. And I listened. Never got. She didn't know where I was. Her headquarters on Monday. And the photographer said. What kind of pictures would you like to use? Good times and good work you guys did in your conference. And he was the one that I found out where I had been. He said. You sales guys. You get to go out in these three-masted schooners in California. And we have to sit here and freeze in February. I'm going to tell you what happened. I asked God. What happened to me was that there was a secretary at the end of the hall. And I'll never forget this. Her boss presented us at a meeting. Ten questions. Thought provoking questions. And somebody said. Where did you get those from? I got them from my secretary. And she's an alcoholic phenomenon. So that's how I found out she was an AA. And I brought her into my office. And I explained to her the situation. And she left my office. Picked up the phone. And called my very first sponsor. Harvey. He met me that night. And he didn't ask me anything about what I did. And he said. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. You know. So. He shared his experience. Strength and hope with me. And then he took me to his house at 11.30 at night. And introduced me to his wife. Who was in the program. And again. She did not question anything that I had been doing. And then Harvey was kind enough to take me to my first AA meeting. Let me tell you. I was. Because that pictured AA. Everybody wore trench coats and had rusty zippers. And I wasn't that kind of guy. And so what had happened was we met a guy who was walking through the parking lot, and he had two bags. And my sponsor asked him, he said, Jim, what's in the bags? He says, it's Thursday, and it's the first Thursday of the month, and we get to drink wine. They're all laughing, and I am just so uptight, so really not wanting to be there. But when we went into the rooms, there was such unconditional love. They were showing me that there is another side of this life that I had been living, and I didn't have to do it anymore. They were the living example. And what was really, really of interest to me was that they said to me, you're the most important person in the room. And they cared about me, but I couldn't care about them. I didn't love myself. How could I love somebody else, right? And so. So they just wanted me to keep coming back and stay sober to do that. I didn't know what I wanted from AA, but I did know what I wanted. I wanted a fix. I surely did. Thirty days dry, my gums stopped bleeding, I had good bowel movements, and I decided I'm going to try this again. And I went and I drank, rented a motel room, canceled all my business appointments in Florida, and almost killed myself. I drank for the whole weekend. And I want to tell you folks, when somebody tells you that this disease progresses when you don't use, believe them. Because I had to have proof. And I came back to my group, and I didn't have the courage to pick up a white chip. And so what ended up really occurring was that I'm going to read something out of the book. Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, and powerful. Without help, it is too much for us. But there is one who has all power, that one is God, may you find him now. Half measures availed us, and nothing. We stood at the turning point. My sponsor recognized that in me, that I did not have a God, and that I was at a turning point. And what he did, I came home from work, and Carol would meet me at the door, my lovely wife, and she would kiss me, and I thought that was out of love. Find out whether I did. Find out whether I drank or not. I stopped off on the way home from work, and I bought a pint of whiskey, and I was drinking it on the way home. And she said, are you going to call your sponsor? I said, yes, I am. And so what I did was I went to my sponsor's house. And prior to this, I did a lot of lying. And I lied to them that if Honeywell ever found out that I drank, I'd get fired. I went to his house and guests, in addition to Harvey and two men from my group, there was the social problems counselor from Honeywell. And he explained to all of them that Honeywell recognized alcoholism as an illness, not a disease. And so they got Carol and I into an outpatient treatment program. I went to one side, and she went to the other. And I liked it so much, I wore my three-piece suit, and I wore my Honeywell badge, so nobody could not see just how wonderful I had become. And we went to it, and we were there on Tuesdays. And that's where you put your knees next to your wife's knees, and you share the experience. And all I did was blame Carol and the kids for my alcoholism. My name was never mentioned. I just attacked her. And the next day, I went to the nighttime session, and I was kicked out of the program after three weeks. What had occurred to me was that prior to that, all I had to do was scan this. Remember I mentioned God? I hope you find Him. God decided, nah, that's your game, buddy. You're getting kicked out of here. So I got home, and I told Carol, because she couldn't make it to her. She sprained her ankle that night and couldn't make it to the Elanon session. And I came in, and I said, Carol, Jean, the counselor, she called me a name. And since this is AAAL, I can only describe it this way. It was a rectum with a hole in it. She called me that name, and that she told me I wasn't ready, and she kicked me out of the program. Carol was my enabler. I expected her to say, oh, that. I said, she accused me of being an alcohol. She said to me, Ron, I believe you are. I was left alone for the first time with my disease. And the next morning, I went to work, and they had two guys, one reproduction, and the other was that I got kicked out already, that I should go to inpatient. Grand actors and actresses went to the place where we were doing outpatient treatment. This was not. He had taken care of Twin Cities. And I want to tell you that's where my life was saved. It wasn't the fourth or the sixth drink that got me in trouble. It was the very first drink. I did not know that. I learned that I had a terminal disease, that my disease was not reversible, and it was fatal. There was no counselors there. I learned that my thought of being unique was not true. You see, I didn't want to approach anybody with what I had done when I was practicing being Catholic. The God of my understanding would not even want to talk to me if I applied. All of the men sharing what they had done, and I realized, my God, you're not unique, Ron. You're alcoholic. But I determined I would conclude that I was not harmful. The God of Alcoholics Anonymous was a forgiving God. I also learned there I had an 18-year-old roommate. My 18-year-old roommate brought me back to God. And what he said to me, your life over to the care of God, which is your third step. But you're lacking in faith. And it isn't as though you are not having non-faith. It's the fact that where do you put your faith? Do you put your faith in possessions, power, alcohol? He was the one that gave me an understanding of my faith. I was there. I packed up my bags, and I was at the sixth week, and I was getting ready to leave. And they said, where are you going? And I said, I'm leaving. I've completed everything. They said, no, at this treatment center, you have to do a fourth and a fifth step before you can go. Up until that point, I thought, why is everybody being so much against me? I'm not hurting anybody with my alcoholism. It's my problem. But that treatment center made Carol write a letter. And she wrote the letter, and in her letter she explained how many times I was dead drunk and she had to put Christmas together. All the kids' toys. And also how I had embarrassed her when people come to visit and I got drunk and went to bed and left her alone. I have a four-page letter from Carol. What had happened when I read that letter, I realized the impact I had on other people's lives. And then it came time to finish that, and I thought I'd be done. They let me rest on that for a week, that fourth step. And I saw for the first time how unmanageable my life had become. Going to that treatment center, inpatient and outpatient, I couldn't see my... I knew I was powerless. I saw the unmanageability in my life with that. And I also saw the second step being so when they say they're in... So when I picked my... the person to give my fifth step to, there was a priest there. And he was the chaplain. And the reason why I liked him so much, it was Easter time, and he stood up in front of his parishioners, and he said to them, I wish you all a very... He was one of us. That's why he was in the treatment center, okay? And I loved the guy, and I did my fifth step, and I did my fifth step with him. And early on, what I learned in the program, I told the guys all the medicines I had to take for high blood pressure, cholesterol, all that issue. When I finished my fifth step, it went down to 140 over 70. When I entered the treatment center, it was 200 over 90. I want to share that with you because that's how powerful it is for you. And I slept for a day and a half, and I hadn't been sleeping. I left that treatment center, and even today, my past has been a beautiful journey to qualify me to carry this message, keep our spiritual love meetings because God speaks to me through you people, clergy or otherwise. The program brought me back to me in that I became open-minded, willing, and honest, and I needed that. But then you would think, ah, that's great. Well, I found another addiction. I became a workaholic. What I was doing was pursuing another false god, money and greed, and I put my faith in money, which means if you ever put your faith in money, it is your relationship with God. And so I was doing business turnarounds, and I spent a year away from my family in Arkansas, a year in Oregon, and four and a half years in Tennessee. And then, you know, as I said, I was at the turning point again. And two of the guys in the program pulled me into a parking lot and said to me, Ron, about working this program. You're falling asleep during the meetings. And so I had to go to the last agreement that I had and tell them I couldn't fulfill the requirement, handle the financial penalty because I put my program in front of. And then, Beyonce was in California, or I'm sorry, Colorado, and he was earning money to go back to school. And Lisa had spent a week with him talking about where they'd lived, kids they were with, and six drunken kids in a car ran over him and killed him the week after that. It hurt me so bad. I said I couldn't stand my daughter because she was always so happy. We finished that phone call and then Lisa hit the floor. There was no way I could lay down next to her and try and console her. I had never, ever experienced before. And the people in the program said, we can't take that away from you. We can help you, but we can't fix you. And so they did. They stood next to me for months while I was in business. It was just a couple of years ago. I sold my business, put the lake house up for fishing. And that happened on June 22. I was in tumor board meeting at Emory Hospital. My wife was there going to have 30% of her tongue removed. And what ultimately happened was because God be free, June 22, 30 days later, they had to remove all of her tongue. Number two, she sat there with three kids with flu and everything else while I find dinners and flying around the country. And my friends would say to me, why don't you get a caretaker for her? And I said, with everything that Carol did with those kids and putting up while I was gone, she never asked for a caretaker because I feed my wife through her feeding tube. She can't eat anything through her mouth. And in addition to that, her meds are also. So I know what I'm doing for my retirement seven days a week and I could never find a caretaker. And the reason I can is I've been with Carol in January. It'll be 60 years. And for me to be with her, she can't speak. You replace your tongue. If you talk, you will see how your tongue moves and you need it. So she can't do that. So I pick words out of context. And so stuff like that happens. If I were still practicing, God forbid, I know how I would handle this. The other folks that I have dealt with, and helped with, and make amends to, they have good and bad experiences. And because I have faith now, I just have experience. I shared with you that I wasn't showing any love for my son, James. And I started sponsoring young people. And guys at 81-11 would tell me, what the hell are you doing with these kids? I'm sick and tired of hearing them leaving their lunches in the school bus. And I said, how many times have you left your attache case in a cap? So they changed standards. They had to be 35 years old. They had to be 35 years of age or older to the meeting I was bringing them to. God bless alcoholics. And I didn't know why I was with these kids. Well, my son got picked up for dealing with drugs in Athens, Tennessee. And the judge said to him, I'll give you two choices. One, you can go to Crowbar Hotel, or you can go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And he went to Alcoholics Anonymous. And now I knew why I was sponsoring those young people. They surrounded him. And kept him sober. My other son, Paul, his wife is bipolar. And I met a doctor here in the rooms who took care of my daughter-in-law and her bipolar disease and also helped my son. God working. And at men's workshop, how to treat my wife. You treat her as a friend, not a hostage. They would teach me how to say where's my dinner. I didn't want to hear where she had been. Well, they taught me that you can wash dishes, you can vacuum, and you can make beds, and you can do things like that. And again, it's Alcoholics Anonymous that has done that. And the amends, I had to make amends to my father and mother is that I was traveling back and forth when I was doing turnarounds and not stopping off to see them. And in Chicago, so I took care of my dad the last eight weeks of his life. I couldn't see putting a strain with my mother. She passed away in my house. And I didn't tell you this, but trying to meet my mother's expectations, I moved my family six times. My amends to them was I stopped moving them. And then for Carol, I shared my story today. And then I'm going to close on I received was a way to freedom and new health as moderately successful. My stock of material things, friendship, able to measure my skills, which I didn't have before. Above all, my greatest blessing, the Alcoholics scrap heap, and that's a gracious God. Pursuit of riches and lifted and have this trust through service work and keeping the program going as a GSR division leader, discussion leader, hotline speaker, workshop participant. Most important, through sponsorship, who better qualified to help save men's lives. And we're giving hope to the new sobriety. I've come to understand things a different way. Today, life for me is no longer a race for riches. It is about having people in my life who love me. For me, there is hatred let me show love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope, darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy. And where there is fear, hope, darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy. Oh, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, and to be loved as to love. It is in giving that we receive and it is in dying that we are born to each other. Thank you, folks, for being here tonight. I'll share my time with you and hopefully it can help one person. Thank you. Thank you, Rob.