The Primary Purpose Group and the Way He Found Home – Tom I.

Good morning. I think I pretty much identify with Carrie with this getting up business. The problem with being old, though, is that you do tend to wake up early and often, particularly if you drink regular coffee. I'm Tom Ivester, an alcoholic. I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group in Southern Pines, North Carolina. And really, I'm delighted to be here. I say this is early. I don't know why it occurred to me, but there's a term in behavior. I'm not a student of it, particularly a practitioner anyway. There's this term in behavioral modification called successive approximation. You take little steps toward whatever you're trying to do. and in case y'all hadn't figured out the purpose of this this is a behavior modification thing getting you ready for Easter sunrise services tomorrow morning so we're nudging in that direction and God I may not even be conscious yet but it's neat As he told you, my sobriety date is kind of far back I was kind of nudged into Alcoholics Anonymous February 2nd, 1957 And by the amazing grace of God, I've been here since And a lot of what I want to talk about today, of course Goes with explaining all that, I guess, is what it is The guys asked me to talk a bit about Home Group as well Now, I'm not a themed speech maker. I'm going to share my experience, strength, and hope, but I will try to lay a little emphasis on the home group. As Cliff, I think, said it so well last night, that it's the basic unit of service. And I really am delighted to be here. I would like for you to know that I guess every alcoholic would like to be unique, and I surely am. I'm the only speaker of this bunch who has never lived in California. I'm a token East Coast dude. I've been to California so darn much that I feel like I live there and these are all great, great friends of mine Happy birthday, love Happy birthday 21 You're a full-grown girl Full grown And I didn't quite catch her name Sarah, is it? Say it again Claire Okay I can't hear That's the product of being old. Congratulations on that one year. My second sponsor always had a way of referring to the first year of sobriety. He said, and I have now garnered the same experience, he said he knew people personally who would literally give a million dollars to be able to honestly say they'd earned that. How true, eh? How true. So congratulations. I was thinking of the setting. This is dominantly a young crowd. Most of the real young ones are upstairs sleeping in there somewhere, but it's a young crowd and this is an old lineup of speakers. I wasn't sure what the message was at first I tell you it's high risk they invited me two years ago and you invite a guy as old as me to something two years hence man that's an act of faith we'll be lucky if we all make it through this weekend look like recruited us out of the Sunnybrook rest home or something I thought it might have been reverence to age or something or longevity, but what it is, Cliff. Well, Cliff is the patriarch of the group. We have to explain things to Cliff. What it is is this bunch of young folks like to bring in some old warts like us so they can kind of thank God that they caught it in time and didn't so gee thanks guys I did get up early this morning I was kind of beat Cliff and Barney just rung me out last night that was the funniest trip through the traditions and the horrors of alcoholism I've ever had that was enjoyable and so I turned in early and so therefore woke up early And it was really a great view. I don't know how many of you saw the sun come up this morning, but I watched it come up. I was just sort of sitting in the room looking out and admiring the marvel of the sunrise. And I just thought a little bit about who we are and where we are. Now, this is not a travelogue, but I'd like to share with you what I was sort of sensing and feeling and experiencing as I watched that sun come over the horizon. I was thinking of where we are. Here we are right in the heart of our country, not geographically, but where our capital is. And I was, I was thinkin' of that and what a marvelous place it is. My buddy Cliff's gonna stay over a couple days and go down and visit in Washington, D.C. And I'll tell you, Washington has a mixed press, but there is something thrilling about this city. When I go through Washington and I visit the institutions that are American, I have an enormous sense of pride, deep gratitude really, about being a citizen of this country. I feel good about that. Now, we do some goofy stuff in Washington, but boy, if you can walk into archives and look at the original Constitution, not get goose bumps. You better check your pulse, something wrong, something bad wrong. So I thought about that, and then I thought who we are sitting here on the fringes of our capital, really visiting something about as fundamentally sound as what I've just referred to. Here we are a group of people with the bodacious name of Singleness of Purpose. Never heard that is the name of a conference. Singleness Of Purpose and then the theme of the conference spirituality our foundation about his bedrock about his principled about his real as it'll ever get in Alcoholics Anonymous and this is being done by essentially a group of young members of Alcoholics an Homeless I would simply say I'm really proud of you guys good stuff so I'm delighted to be here delighted to a part of this now let me get on with this tale of woe I've got a I in deference to the clock and in deference the request that I do some home group visiting. I'm going to move on as quickly as I can. It's 16 minutes after 9, according to that clock. Just got it out of the pawn shop. And I'll try to stay within some reasonable limits of the time. Yeah, I'm not sure why I'm an alcoholic. It doesn't really matter that much. Our stories disclose in a general way what we were like, what happened, what we're like now my story that I want to tell you is what I was like what happened and and and what I'm like now is this program of recovery unfolds in my life that's essentially what I want do and then lay a little emphasis on home group into in the course of that what I don't like is a lot like you I think one reason I lack alcoholics anonymous is that that this is where I belong these are my people these are the folks that I hang around with these are the folks said I drank with the only difference is we're just doing business a different way. And so I'm a lot like you. I'm somebody who, like most every speaker I've ever heard in the program, AA and most Al-Anons, is somebody who found life very difficult. I was somebody who felt life uncomfortable. I wasn't somebody who fit in, meshed well and integrated into this thing called life. I, I was uncomfortable with it. I as uncomfortable with who I was, where I was. Didn't like anything about my life, much about it. And so I was a guy that was a self-centered, isolated guy as our book describes before I ever drank. I'm not a causation freak and I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail but let me just allude to the fact that I don't think those things are just freaks of nature. I think they're very logical explanations for where I came from. Very logical explanations for how I got this foothold in recovery, very logical explanations for why it works. But now I'm not a total pragmatist, but I lean that way, I'll guarantee you. And so I'm somebody who wasn't just struck by alcoholism. My alcoholism was a product of a number of things. When I look at that business of why I was such a self-centered isolated guy and naturally think back to the point of origin, You know, I'm clearly a product of my environment. I'm clearly a product of how I interacted and reacted to my environment and what happened with that was that I developed those peculiar traits those sort of gaps in my personality that developed into what we call character defects. Now I was somebody who for a whole variety of reasons just didn't respond well. Yeah, I was nobody who came from a broken home I was somebody who had a very disturbing experience with organized religion. I was Somebody Who Got Profoundly Impacted by Those and Many Other Things. And so what happened early on was that I developed this kind of withdrawn, self-centered focus so that I was miserably uncomfortable with myself and those about me and never was able to comfortably blink in. We call that self-centered isolation. We call those defects of character. And when I think about the shape of my life, that's fundamental to the kind of guy I became. You know, my defects of character were not my rowdy behavior. My defects of characters were not the terrible things that I did. My defects in character were the flaws in my makeup that drove me as I went, that propelled me. They were the way that I coped with this thing called life. Well, enough of causation. That's where it came from. and that's pretty fundamental of what this whole recovery process is about is trying to deal with that so that I can live at peace with the guy that I am. So when I was about, not about, when I Was exactly 16 years old I had my first meaningful drink and I had the profound experience that I've heard thousands of alcoholics describe. I fell in love with booze because it did something magical for me it did something tremendously important for me. It lit up my life. And what, do y'all mind if I take my coat off? I swear to God, it's hot. Been hot all night, got hot flashes or something. Thank you, Jennifer. Well, damn, I started undoing my belt. Girl, take mycoat and I start taking off my trousers. You see what I'm talking about? Defects of character, they just surface. So when I was 16, I had that experience. And what happened to me was significant and very, very important, remains so to this day. Because what I found in alcohol was not an instant problem. What I found was an instant solution. And what I find in alcohol is the most reliable, trustworthy solution I have ever found to the problems of my life. It took this miserable, confused, mixed-up, withdrawn, self-centered, isolated youngster and made a marvelous transformation so that I became a party animal. I became the leader of the pack. I didn't associate with bad crowds. I was a bad crowd. All I had to do was find compatriots, and the bad crowd was there. And that's the way it was. That stuff lit up my life, and it was an absolute solution. And I'll tell you this, probably nothing that I say today, nothing is more fundamentally important to me in my whole orientation toward alcohol. What I just said I think poses the greatest potential threat to my recovery of anything I could imagine because deep at the core of my being I know without any question what a drink will do for this guy And I will never forget that. Will never forget that. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll let up on the spiritual practice and the allure of that solution will once again make sense. Great potential for danger. So that's what happened. I found a solution. I fell in love with that stuff and I just went hog wild. I took off like a runaway train, drank everything I could get my hands on. I drank like an alcoholic long before I was one. I had the problems of alcoholism long before I was an alcoholic. Not too long, but a couple of years. And I was just one of those people. It looks to me like we come in two basic varieties, us alcoholics. One is the kind of guy or gal who starts drinking, drinks for a long period of time with, in the book, one place says, drinking with relative impunity. What a word. I think it just means you get away with it You just drink and enjoy it I went hog wild with it Drank with not relative impunity With a lot of trouble There are some who drink with relative impurity For a long period of time And then one day they just go off the end of the pier Never to be seen again They become alcoholic over a long periods of time Almost looks like alcohol causes The other type Of whom I'm one are the type who are basket cases from day one. I mean, it is born a disaster and gets worse. It's just chaos and confusion and turmoil and it looks to me like there are more and more of my type and fewer and fewer of the other type as time goes by. So I was one of those. I was just a basket case. I drank a lot. I got into a lot of trouble and I'll tell you, it was great fun. It had a lot of trouble associating with it, but it was great fun. And if I could have done that, that's what I would be doing today. Yeah, I'm not here because I got tired of drinking and dissipation. I'm Not Here Because I Heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, Thought It Was a Worthy Cause. I'm NOT Here Because i'm Against Booze. I'm all for it, as a matter of fact. I encourage drinking every chance I get. After all, that is where our members come from. so I ain't gonna get it I want a bunch of it so they'll all get here that's what I'd be doing but it just wasn't in the cards for me for a whole number of reasons I'm sure I developed alcoholism I wasn't born that way I wasn' an instant alcoholic I was somebody who became alcoholic fairly early in life I think the best I can tell I developed alcoholicism when I was 18 years old somewhere in that area. And certainly I had no awareness at the time, but when I got into program, started looking back and reviewing my life, it was pretty clear to me that that's where those subtle but important changes came that were to define and characterize alcoholism in my life. We've referred to that a lot of different ways. We refer to it as crossing a line. You never find that in the book, but we refer to that as crossing the line from whatever kind of drinking to uncontrolled drinking or alcoholism. And that's what happened to me. I crossed the line with absolutely no awareness, but my life changed in my 18th year and it will never be the same. The day that I crossed that line, I parted company with every other drinker in the world except other alcoholics. There's a place in a lot of places in our book that beat that up pretty good. There's one in there that I like very much that describes the state of mind that sort of followed that. The illusion that I will be able to drink like other people is persistent, and it has to be smashed. The illusion that I'm like other people. And that's the only place that that exists was in the illusion that occurred in my mind, you know, that I parted company. And very, very important for me to understand, very important, not for anybody else, but very important für mich zu verstehen, is that I'm not just a guy who got into a bunch of rowdy trouble. I'm not somebody who drank with unfortunate circumstances. I am NOT somebody who drank too much. I'M somebody for whom alcohol is simply not an option. I AM somebody who can't drink. That's important for me to know. I need to understand at a cellular level that drinking is not an option for this guy, that when I lost control, that was irreversible, and my options at that point became, although I didn't know it, that I could either drink or I could go the rest of my life, but if I decided to drink, I better be sure of the decision because boy, that's what I would do. Too much, too often, too drastically. Never with control. That was never to be an option again for me and the other option was to go the rest of your life and never have a drink of anything with alcohol in it. Now certainly I didn't know that. So I crossed that line. I developed alcoholism, the illness, not a run of bad luck. Very important for me to know that. And my life from that point forward became almost a pitiful, predictable Xerox copy of behaviors. My basic thing was I was always the kind of guy that would hang around a certain place. I always had a sort of pattern of drinking. And I was the kind of guy that would go, typically, would go by to have a couple of drinks with the guys and then almost invariably wind up closing the joint, drunk, wake up in some god-awful circumstance. Jail, wrong state, burning car, sleeping in the middle of a U.S. highway, literally. married, God only knows. Unbelievable kind of circumstance and that became the typical pattern of my life. I developed a response because I woke up in so many goofy places often the wrong ones that I developed a capacity to wake up and not open my eyes. Because sometimes when you open your eyes, there will be some yo-yo standing there who will ask you stupid questions like, Who are you? And how do I know? Man, I just woke up. Or what are you doing here? And I hate to say where. I woke up, I'll just give you one example. I wokeup one morning in a nice bed, and I knew it wasn't mine. And I heard two female voices out in the kitchen, very angry people. And the one woman was saying, who is that drunken SOB in my daughter's bed? Well, I figured she was talking about me. I just, that keen alcoholic mind figured that out. and I never laid so still in my life. Man, I was afraid to blink my eyes. And then finally the fog started to clear, and what it was, I had gone in, there was a house next door. I had missed mine by one. Well, look, I'm in the jail business. I know people who are doing life sentences for that. Good God. So I was brilliant about waking up and not letting anybody know it so I could put it together and figure out where I'm supposed to be and be ready if they pounce on me. So that was my typical pattern. I'd just start drinking and wind up in some bizarre circumstance, and my reaction would almost always be the same. Well, you've done it again. You saw a devil. That was always my response. And then my next behavior would be to put my head in my hands some way or other, and my words would be something like, for God's sakes, what's wrong with me? What's wrong mit me? This is not what I intended to do. and that humiliation and shame and regret and frustration and despair and bewilderment there was my life would overwhelm me what's wrong with me never once did I respond by saying well son you drink too much I don't recall ever saying that in my life I knew that my drinking had some relationship to that I knew I must drink in the wrong places with the wrong people, the wrong stuff, or something. But never once did I say to myself, you drink too much. It was always some moralistic kind of self-loathing. You're no good. You're undisciplined. You have no character. You have not a sense of responsibility. That was always what I thought. I never understood. Here it is. I never understood until well after I was in recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous that the issue for me was one drink. That never crossed my mind. The first time I ever heard it in a day, I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever heard, that, my God, one drink foreign. And even more important to me is that never one time did I ever clearly see and understand that behavior until I was sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a word that gets bandied around an awful lot called denial. And it's a much-used word. It's on practically every talk show that you hear in the country. It covers every human ill and so it's almost a national familiar term of reference you know one place you won't see that word the big book of alcoholics anonymous you won'T see it the only place it's in there out as I got pointed out to me one time there's a reference it's about Bill's grandfather denied something about his drink but you wonT see the word denial now certainly the word was in existence when the book was written. It was not a strange term. I think the reason you don't see it in the book is because it's the wrong word. It's the right word. It's a wrong term. Denied is a basic contradiction with facts. That's an argument with facts that isn't what we're talking about. That isn't why we're doing this. That isn' t what we' re talking about But what I was doing when I woke up in that endless catastrophe was not denial. It was an inability to see my behavior and I never saw that until long after I was in recovery. Delusion, the book describes it as an inability to separate the true from the false. The reason I think we don't use denial is that it's too lightweight. weight. It's too lightweight. You know, there's a place in there that sounds like a big book workshop, but why not? That's what we're about. There's a place in there that I think says something about why that sort of semantical battle is important. There's a place in there in that little italics that says something like this. Frothy emotional appeal will not suffice. that's anybody's frothy emotional appeal including mine and just thinking that recovery is nice and this is a good way to live and everybody ought to live this way ain't enough we you know what it goes on to say is that we have to have a solution that has depth and weight depth and weight not superficial kind of things but understanding at depth what the dilemma is with this guy so delusion is the thing that explains the behavior to me and that's exactly what was going on there and so that all that behavior was was repeated over and over and over almost endlessly but always the same and with exactly the same kind of response. The other thing that, and I've got to hurry because we're going to cook a hog here sometime today. The other thing that was so characteristic and was so fatally present in my alcoholism was the thing that we refer a lot and again, I don't particularly quarrel with this, but we refer to a phenomenon called geographic cures. And every person in this room has done it without any question, I'm sure, of going to something new, a new town, a new job, a near place, and often it's just the same old junkie. And certainly that was characteristic of my life. Certainly that was characteristic. But geographic cures isn't quite probing enough to understand what the dilemma of my alcoholism was about. My life, once alcoholism set in, my life became characterized by what seemed like an endless series of failures and new starts. Now we could call that geographics, but I think it's a little more than that because it's the deterioration of a life. Failures and new stars. And what I failed to recognize with any significance was that every time I failed and started over, I settled for a little less and a little less and until rather quickly I wound up living a way of life that I would not have imagined I could not have imagined living like I did the last year that I drank there was geography involved I moved up to the state of Michigan went to work in General Motors plants up there made more money than I had sense enough to spend and that's where I crashed and burned I went I went just totally wild in that place wound up in a city of a half million during a period of high employment possibility I wound up in the city of 1,500,000 unable to get get it to get a job of any merit at all I mean I had a few little old ragtag things and and and wound up unemployed unemployable almost in in that city it was it was not a real nice place said Peter I don't mean anything by the way Peter and Dawn are married I want them to know that they don't seem to relate very well one end of the hall and one in the other one y'all got to explain that I think Peter was an old drinking buddy I can't believe that both of us survived we used to drink at a place I believe it was on John R. Hastings in Detroit. Ain't nobody got no business on John R. Hastings and us two suave debonair gentlemen used to drink there and I'm sure together and I think he stole my money too if I'm not mistaken. If I had any. That's where I wound up. I was living just north of there in Flint. I used to run a club up there and go down to John R.'s Hastings Book Talent. That was the part I was supposed to be doing. I mostly got out to get drunk or in a billy goat and somebody drive me home. Anyway, that's where it ran out for me, and I wound up, I hope to God I never forget the last year that I drank. I never want to forget that totally despairing feeling of walking the face of this earth with no place that I could comfortably call home. Pray God I don't ever forget. I never won't forget that omnipresent sense of fear, that peculiar loneliness of alcoholism, that total despair and hopelessness and frustration and guilt and shame that was my life. I never want to forget, never want to forget the existence of hustling and conniving and knocking folks in the head and stuff like that. I mean, I don't go there with any ninth step stuff because that's a jungle. I mean that's the behavior of the jungle. And when you live in a jungle, you live like you live a jungle or you don't live i mean that's just the way it is and so that was just part of the experience but i'm deeply ashamed of that i wasn't reared to do that kind of thing but that's what i that's what that's where i lived and it's what I did never want to forget that never want to forget, that demeaning feeling of accepting handouts from people playing a fool in a bar so somebody buy me a drink selling my blood five bucks a throw never want forget that. 24-year-old piece of human wreckage is what I became, and I pray to my God that I never forget that for one second. I never want to forget the thinking that my alcoholism was petty nuisance behavior, anything but. And many of you know that I stayed out there too long, and I wound up doing, as most of you are well aware, the kind of thing that most alcoholics live in fear of doing thank god most don't for for most alcoholics the the the horrible consequences that can come never do and i was one of those who who was constantly waking up in panic wondering what i'd done and and uh and and nearly and always dodged a bullet but one morning i woke up in jail in flint no novelty i was there more than most anywhere else and uh assumed i was there for the same as always, either drunk or hustling or fighting or whatever. And was greeted with the fact that the night before I'd been driving somebody's car down to Main Street of the city and had run down and killed two people. And my reaction, I guess, was very understandable. Shock and disbelief. I just could not deal with it. And then couldn't accept it. And then gradually accepted truth. And the only time I'd ever been in jail, I didn't try to get out. And then somebody contacted my mother down in North Carolina, and she came to Michigan and arranged for me to get out on bond in July of 56. And I knew I would never drink again. I didn't think I could physically pick up a drink. Guilt was too great. But, of course, I drank. My God, I stayed sober the day and a half, and then naturally I drank from July to November of 56 literally. I drank like nobody I've ever seen. And I mean that. That's not a braggadocio, weird braggadoscio statement. I mean, it's just a fact. I've worked with thousands of alcoholics. I've never worked with one like me. I've ever worked with someone that had just totally caved in to the illness and a wino could have diagnosed me. Man, I was absolutely trying to drink myself dead. That was clear. That was obvious. And obviously it didn't happen. The 19th of November, 1956, was the date of what I hope and pray was my last drink. I didn't know it was going to be, but I knew it was gonna be the last one for a long time. That day I was to be tried on charge of manslaughter, and I had no defense. I mean, I couldn't even tell them what I'd done. They had to tell me what I've done. I had absolutely no recollection then, now, or ever. Some people say blackouts are sort of a flimsy cover-up for behavior you don't want to face. Don't believe that. I have absolutely no collection whatsoever of that or many other behaviors that occurred in my life. So I really thought my plea that day in the court said it all. I stood mute, stood mute. What do you say when you don't even know? What can you say? As I was found guilty, sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in Michigan State Penitentiary. And I had no illusions about what that would be. I'd hustled around on the street with a lot of guys that were in and out of there. I'd never been in that category of confinement. God only knows how many times I'd been to jail. If I knew how many towns I was in, I could come close. I've never been to town for much as a week that I didn't go to jail I was arrested three times in one night in Denver, Colorado and all I was trying to do was get through town and they guys turned me loose, I'm going I mean, I was just that kind of guy. I wasn't particularly a predatory criminal. I was like a cockroach. No reflection clip. We don't get mad at cockroaches because of what they eat or what they carry off. We get mad At them because of what they fall in and mess up. And that was, you ever eat oatmeal and it crunch? Oh, God. It ain't all that bad. I went to jail a lot. And I like to think I went the exact right number of times, whatever it was. it's been enough so far and uh but this time i knew i was not going to an overnight drunk take i knew I was I was going away for good and I honestly believed when that sentence was passed that that was the end of life for this guy and I honest to God didn't care I truly did not care and that wasn't callous disregard I just simply didn't carry I was a dead man anyway it was just a matter of where you're going to store the body and the next day i walked into that institution jackson prison in jackson michigan and absolutely resigned to my fate i didn't think i would ever come out of there alive and and i didn'y care little did i know that that would be the place of a brand new beginning for this guy had no earthly idea i was interviewed one day by a social worker got a little guy that just had graduated from michigan State knew nothing about alcoholism, I'm sure. But he told me that they had an AA group there and that he thought I better go. That was exactly the way he put it. And you know, it's really interesting to me, significant to me not just interested is significant to me that as bad a case as I was, I responded to the first invitation I ever heard. And have never had a drink since and that was a little rookie social worker that knew nothing about alcoholism sometimes we forget about how important our friends are who surround us i walked into my first meeting groundhog day february the 2nd of 57 and sat down in the middle of alcoholics anonymous i've never heard of alcoholic in my life. It wasn't a deep, dark secret back then. I'm sure that it was decently known anyway. We had about 125 or 150,000 members, something like that. I'd never heard of it. They didn't talk about it where I drank for sure. I never even heard of anybody helping a drunk. That was a foreign concept. It was an absolutely foreign concept to me. And I walked into that meeting. I didn't particularly want to join. I think the only reason I walked Into that meeting was that I simply had no fight left. I had no fighting. It was just, I was just a hunk of protoplasm being pushed around by the forces of life, and I had absolutely no investment in that. I just walked in. And I had 300 members in that group, and when I walked in, one guy spoke to me, an officer on the door, Ivester, yes sir, sit down. And I sat down and listened to my first meeting, and it ran very much like this one. We read the same stuff. read a little bit more, and then they introduced the speaker. And he was a man by, it wasn't his name, but he called himself Shy Walker. Shy, C-H-I. He just loved Chicago. He thought it was a garden spot of the world. And I listened to that man tell his story. I later, he later became my first sponsor, and I loved him better than Peter loved the Lord. But the day that I heard him tell that story, that was as foreign to me as anything I'd ever heard. And that was a god awful story. It had to be the truth because nobody's going to make up a lie like that. That had to be true. And it had no impact that I recognized. But I never missed a meeting from that day until the day I walked out of that place whether it was once a week or once a day I never miss a single meeting. Certainly not because I caught the magic not because of anything magnificent happening or anything like that I think the most significant thing that happened to me that day that profoundly influenced my life was not the story of Shy Walker it was the magical gift of enthusiasm that man had I'll always be grateful because he communicated the spirit of our colleagues anonymous and that's what I know without any question brought me back to my second meeting and to many meetings for a good while my first eight months in the program were a tremendously miserable period of my life. I was not a natural for Alcoholics Anonymous. I was nicht somebody who found myself readily fitting in. I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. I thought I was too young. Guys my age back then were really not common in Alcoholics Aanonymous, in fact, almost unheard of. And I was the youngest guy in every meeting that I attended for several years. and that's an awkward clumsy place to be when looking back it's a great place to be but in the course of it it was not a great place to being so I felt very very much out of place and when I look back I want to share with you and then I'm going to head into home group here and all that kind of stuff and didn't let the next speaker take over we'll when I think Think about what happened, what happened. All of what I've been talking about is what I was like and also what happened because what happened is a common... I think there are two things that are critical in what happened in terms of getting well. One, I think two things have to occur, now this is just my own opinion but it's mine. I think the two things has to occur with a critical element of timing. One is that I have to hit bottom in whatever that means to me so that I get as low as I think I can go or as low I'm willing to go and I realize that the fight's over, that I am beat. I think it has to happen. But that's not enough because God knows I did that hundreds of times. That's obviously not enough. I think the other thing in the critical element of time is that somewhere in proximity to that, a solution has to become known and real to me. Not just words, not just books, but a solution that has to be real and known to me, and so when I think about what happened in relation to that, I think back to what really shaped my life, you know, that I will always be deeply grateful for the group in which I found Alcoholics Anonymous, the recovery group in Jackson Prison, was truly one of the finest groups I've ever belonged to. It was an excellent group of AA. And what I mean by that is that it understood the Fifth Tradition and it carried out the Fifth tradition in terms of effectively carrying the message to alcoholics. I'll always be grateful for a well-ordered, purposeful group that did the business of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it wasn't run by rocket scientists. It was run by other guys in the joint just like me, the only difference being that they'd found a program you know just two or three weeks sometime just very recently i was back up in michigan and i had a reunion with some of the guys that i aid with in that penitentiary and and you could believe that's like a meeting of the legion of the damned you know the closest folk i guess closest folk in the world to me are those that went through that critical juncture well thank god for that group for a very real and strong group i'll always be grateful that I'll always be grateful for the guys. It was all men. There were women around, but there weren't any in that world. And I'll also be grateful to the men and women of the church. I'll be grateful. I'll almost be grateful for the boys who walked into that institution and stuck out the unquestioning hand of fellowship to this guy. Always will be grateful for that because that was the lifeline back to a new way of living. Always be grateful that. I will always be grateful for the action. I believe that action truly is the magic word. It's what lights it up, it's what makes it happen and I will always be thankful that I was in a group that fostered a program of action. They didn't just foster it, they insisted on a program of action I got sucked into action I don't recall anybody ever asking me if I wanted to get active nobody ever asked me they just said come on this is what we do and so I started doing that And I'll tell you what was tremendously important to me about that. I was an awfully withdrawn, self-centered, isolated, guilt-ridden guy. I felt enormously guilty about breathing, much less being any kind of a vibrant part of Alcoholics Anonymous or anything else. Action was so vitally important in making a difference. I want you to hear and understand what I'm about to say, if you will. I've been an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous now for a little over 41 years. I have never once said no to a sincere request for service. Now, of course, I say no to all kinds of things. A lot of stuff that's just kind of off-the-wall stuff. But I've never said no to a sincere request for service in Alcoholics Anonymous. No matter what it is, I have never said yes with complete comfort, including this this morning. Not one time. How tremendously important is the yes? because every time I've said yes I've had to step through a little curtain of fear and every time I've stepped through the little curtain of fear the curtain became a little less formidable and recovery happens and freedom happens well let me just kind of bring her in this way that's we're on time now no matter what your watch says we're all on time you know sometimes when I think about the movement from there to a brand new way of life I remember how in those early days I sat in Alcoholics Anonymous and I listened to people who had their lives together and they might as well have been from another planet they were so far away from me that it seemed an impossible connection and sometimes you know i think it it there may be others like me who have trouble connecting the process to the to the uh to the outcome you're like you you hear some things that they're almost trite kinds of uh kinds of phrases that i sometimes wonder if we really stop and think about what to do. Like there's a thing you hear a lot that sobriety is not a destination it's a journey. You hear that all the time but what does it really mean? Let me tell you how I like to think about that. There's a place I don't see a 12 and 12 here and I'll try to recite this and I will do it wrong. I don' t know how to recite much out of the book most of it I truly just make up It's a I know what it means, but I can't remember the words. But there's a place in there that says something like, in the preface of the 12 and 12, there's an article in there There's a paragraph in there that says AA's 12 steps, the heart of our program, AA's twelve steps are a set of principles, spiritual in their nature. that tells us what it is they're a set of principles spiritual in their nature now listen to what it says sobriety is not a destination, it's a journey hear what the 12 and 12 says in that preface set of principle, spiritual in our nature which if practiced practiced as a way of life not worked or done or written or seminared or workshopped if what? If practiced as a way of life. How do you become a good golfer? Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. How do you become a solidly recovered member of Alcoholics Anonymous? Practice, practice, practice. If practiced as a way of life. We'll do two major important things. Here it says something like this. We'll expel the obsession to drink. Expel. Interesting word. I looked that up. Expel means to force out, to push out. Expel the obsession to drinking. When you look at our book, it's a little bit confusing because the first place you come to dealing with obsession, it makes it almost sound like a lobotomy where it says the obsession is removed. Cast away. Well, it doesn't pay to take that too literally. It pays to read just a little bit further because it puts definition of what that removal is about. What does it say? That what we have in reality is a daily reprieve based on our spiritual condition. My obsession was expelled. I haven't had an obsession to drink in 36 years. I had them up till five years sobriety, not every day but i had obsession in my fifth year of sobriety i haven't had one for 36 years my obsession has been expelled but it ain't too far away sucker's sitting right over there by jennifer no no connection but that's where it is it's sitting there and all i have to do All I have to do is let up on that spiritual practice, and guess what? That sucker will come back. Oh yeah, it will. I've had friends of mine in Alcoholics Anonymous demonstrate that for me. It'll expel the obsession to drink. And then it makes a statement that is so meaningful to me. and so many words it says will enable the sufferer to find a life that's usefully whole god what a promise not only will i be free of the obsession to drink but i'll be free to find the way of life that is useful and whole god what a promise. And that's exactly what happened to me. It happened to me in a maximum custody penitentiary. This program worked as powerfully for me there, maybe more powerfully than it ever has anywhere in my life. That's the toughest living I've ever done in my life. And this program was equal to that. I found freedom in that cage and got restored to a life. Well, I got out. It doesn't take a genius to get out of jail just takes a lot of time, and so I finally got out. And after 42 months, they told me I could go if I would agree to go to North Carolina and not stay in Michigan any longer than it took to catch the bus. So then I reluctantly agreed, and they threw me out, and I hit the street. And all I did was continue. You know, if you're solidly in the program, any change is always a little bit uneasy but if you're solidly in the program it's just a matter of transferring that to a new place and that's what i did i settled into to alcoholics anonymous in north carolina stayed phenomenally active and to this day and uh and i want to share with you just very very very quickly uh because it didn't and then wrap up on home group but I know people really chew me out if I don't describe some of the things that have happened. And I understand, I understand why it's so important to talk about what recovery has wrought in life, about what being restored to a life that's usefully whole means. I understand that because I remember when I sat in Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to imagine my future and it looked like a long gray tunnel. I could not have imagined any kind of life beyond a meager existence, and that's literally true. So I know how important hope is when I would hear somebody talk about how their life got restored and all that. So in the interest of hope, let me share with you what happened to the young fellow who walked out of that institution and I had dreams, of course, but very simple dreams. I just wanted to be physically free. I wanted to have an honest way to make a living. I wanted it to be part of a community. Those were simple things that would have surely been enough for me, and I got immediately active in a group the day I got home, critically important. Two weeks after I was out, the guys in my group sponsored a little small prison, an AA group over near my home, and they asked me if I could go over with them. I didn't think they'd ever let me go back in to visit one of those places. And I had just been out two weeks, and I said, sure, I'd love to. And I went over, and God, what a great feeling to walk in and especially to walk out. Jeez, that felt great. And so I just jumped right into that with both feet. And two months after I was out, I was asked to be outside sponsor of that. What a tremendous affirmation to, you know, just two months earlier I'd been in one of these things and now I'm a trusted servant going in to carry the message. About the same, what I'm describing to you, just some absolute miracles in my life. And two months after I was out at the same period, my parole supervisor came to me one day and he said, Tom, are you real active in this thing? And I said, yes, sir. And I thought he was going to tell me to slow down, that I was going too strong. And I knew I wouldn't do that. And he said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? Well, for obvious reasons. When I'd left the state of Michigan on my parole papers, he said in letters that big, this man's never drive a motor vehicle, this man never drink alcoholic beverage. And I accepted those as literal facts of life. I just didn't know what the future held for this guy. And he says, okay. When I told him that I couldn't, he said well let me take a look at that. A couple weeks later he called me and asked me to meet him at the Sears store uptown in my town and uh and i went up there and when i this story is absolutely true i could see all the way to the back of the store when i went in they had a driver's license counter back in the back of sears store and i saw my guy standing back there with a fellow didn't know and went back he introduced me it was the license examiner we talked a few minutes and the guy handed me a driver'S license didn't even ask me if i could drive my sister driven me up there You've got no test, written, verbal, or otherwise. I didn't even pay for it. You know that's illegal. There ain't no way you can do that. But I've been driving ever since. I'll tell you what I truly believe is that when we practice these principles as a way of life, the God as we understand him will remove the walls to usefulness. And I don't care what those walls are. I know that because of my own experience and God only knows how many other people with stories that are just unbelievable. I was elected DCM five months after I was out same guy who had wondered if he would ever have one friend who trusted him I don't know what it means for you to get elected to serve his office but I know what he meant to me here were the people closest people in the world to me in twelve cities asking me to be their trusted servant i still feel pretty much that way well two years after i was out sitting in my house one day and uh i got a phone call from the state capitol and normally that was trouble when when i got called but it wasn't irs at that time it was a man that i had met one time who worked with department of correction he visited the group i sponsored in that little prison and he asked for mr ivester i got home deported he told me who he was and what his interest was he said it said said mr iris we're expanding rehabilitation program in our prison and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position in that and i swear to god now it's the truth i've never been offered a job in my life i mean a job not a position and and and I first thing I said to him was uh do you are you sure you know who you're talking to and he said yeah we've checked you out we probably know you better than you know yourself and they and they had and uh and I told him intellectually of course I'd man I'd rather I'd never had occurred to me nor anybody else at that time about anybody but I told him, you know, there had never been an ex-con hired in history at anything like that. I knew they weren't going to start with me. And I said, God, yeah, I'd love to do something like that inside. You know what I said. There ain't no way. Ain't no ways. But sure enough, I was employed as a supervisor in the rehabilitation program in the state of North Carolina. I still work there. Way past retirement age and all that, but I'm still there. People ask me why I don't retire, and I say, why would I? God, I couldn't do anything that I would love more. And I'm still young and frisky. Shoot. They pay me an obscene amount of money. But, you know, it's obviously very important to me. I tell you this. You know, sometimes things like that are difficult to comprehend. I've said that to guys in prisons. And I've had some say, man, I ain't believing that. There ain't no way a guy can leave one of these joints and run with them. There ain's no way. But who knows what's going to happen? Who knows? I'll tell you this that sort of sums it up. I kind of like to get things down to understandable levels. You know, I'm not a mystical guy. I believe in miracles. I believe very much in miracles, but I have a very practical kind of way of understanding miracles. You know I'm, not a mythical kind of guy. I am a pretty pragmatic guy. I'm a guy who believes what it says in our book, that it's okay to have your head in the clouds, but keep those big feet on the ground. And that's the way I like to do it. I'm an incredibly spiritual person. I like to practice my spiritual life in every element of my life. Every element. And when I think about miracles, I think of them that way. Miracles, and I don't mean to take the mystery out of them, but I like to put them down to terms that make sense to me miracles are what happens in my life when preparation and opportunity meet if there's no preparation I won't even see the miracle when it comes if the opportunity comes and I'm not prepared all I do is screw it up it's when preparation and opportunities meet you know some of us we'll do gardens this year and we'll dig the dirt and we will plant the seed and God will cause something to grow. That's the miracle of birth. That is the miracle of growth. And that is the way I like to look at miracles here. You know, I didn't just fall out of a maximum custody penitentiary cell and into employment in the Department of Correction obviously. You know I bothered to get some college while I was still in the penitentiary. I tell you that it was amazing enough to get in there but about seven or eight years after I went to work for corrections in North Carolina the head of our system called me in one day and he asked me to take an assignment as warden of a correctional institution now i'll tell you what if you want to get your your underwear well that uh i guarantee you that ain't in the cards of things you think will happen there's preparation opportunity now i didn't just they did they don't recruit wardens out maximum custody sales you know they don't do that i believe that the fundamental thing that caused that to happen my life was the life-changing process called alcoholics anonymous but in the course of it i did bother to finish my education and correctional administration and i did bothered out work anybody i ever met and so preparation and opportunity produces miraculous things amazing stuff the uh now who i who i am and i got about three minutes to go on this and we'll be right where we started what i am i am now i'm a i'm an active member of alcoholic synonymous i didn't used to be i still am i'm very very active not because i'm bored and looking for something to do i'm the busiest man i know. And I'm also one of the happiest men I know. I'm somebody who believes that, yeah, I believe that you have to be current in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can't get by on yesterday's efforts. AlcoholicsAnonymous is effective and vital as long as I practice it and not one more second. So I'm Somebody Who Believes That I Have To Be Current, That I Can't Get By On Yesterday's War Stories, It's A Matter Of What I'm Doing Now. So I'M Still Very, Very Much Involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a member, I'd say two things about that. One is about the activity. I like to talk about this a little bit because I have been active for, I've been as active as anybody I know for as long as anybody I knows. Now that ain't no big deal, but I'll tell you what is a big deal. Those of you who are active in service probably spend some time and anguish about it much as I have. I have always wondered for much of my life in AA whether I was being just as selfish in recovery as I had been in my alcoholism, that if I'm so caught up in my pursuits that I'm not mindful and sensitive to those around me who are connected emotionally to me. I've always worried about that. You probably do too. Whether I'm really being responsible and practicing the principle of all my affairs. Well, I'll tell you this. In 41 years, as busy as I've been, when I look at my life in every aspect that matters, personal, financial, social, family, professional, spiritual, on and on. When I look at that, as busy as I've been, there is not one element of any aspect of my life that has been damaged one iota. Everything in my life and in the lives of my family have been richly blessed by this action. Now, I'm not talking about foolish, mindless activity. I'm talking about purposeful service, trying to do God's will. And when I'm doing that, my higher power is not going to let me get damaged in the process. So if that's what I'm doin', I don't have to worry about the fallout from what I do if I'm doin' it purposefully and meaningfully. Let me wrap up on home group, because I'm a member of the primary purpose group in Southern Pines. I'm member, in good standing, founder of it. golly I better be in good standing I'm a guy who has great great belief in the value clip called it the fundamental unit of services is the group let me get you to think about it with this experience I just had recently and then tell you what I thinks important about home groups I was in a meeting a professional meeting a while back and there was a psychiatrist in the I had made a presentation and then there was the psychiatrist in the final panel that was talking and he just sort of sort of caught my attention with what he was saying he was one of the most defeated acting guys I had ever seen I mean he just was a twerpy looking guy and I'm sure he was a good man I mean he's a good-hearted man and he was making his presentation he was talking about trying to deal with dual diagnosis cases and the difficulty he had in using Alcoholics Anonymous as a resource. And he was saying that when these folks get stabilized enough, if they have alcoholism, I try to send them to AA. He said, but I don't know what to do because it seems like every time I send them, they get worse. and i listened to the anguish of that guy because he was in good conscious trying to use the resource of alcoholics anonymous and he was enormously frustrated and was trying to figure out what to do as an alternative day well i heard what he said now i normally don't do this i'm normally a gent reasonably courteous guy and i don't usually horn in on somebody else's stuff But I sensed what was going on. So I just spoke up, and I said, if I may, I'd just like to share one thing with you. And I said that I'm a recovered alcoholic. I'm member of AA. I said one thing that is very important to understand is that Alcoholics Anonymous, AA group, is not a universal term. Everything that calls itself an AA group isn't. There are some things that bear little resemblance to what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is. And when you start trying to refer people to just the generic term of AA groups, you may be having a high level of risk. Now I wish that weren't so. But I told him, there are meetings I wouldn't send a fragile case to. My God, there are meeting I don't go to because they're so far removed from what the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous are about. I wish that weren't so. And what I told him, and what I would encourage you to tell any professional that you're trying to influence, is don't try to just figure out what's a good solid AA group. Learn two or three individuals in your community and call them. You don't need to understand AA. Just trust that some of us do. And learn to call us. And the reason for that, I mean, that is unfortunate. But I think what it points up is the value of home groups, the valueof strong, purposeful groups as contrasted to lightweight, casually thrown-together meetings. Now, it really isn't. Cliff, I think, said it awfully well talking about this dichotomous thing between us and them. I'm somebody who's not a specialty group person. I don't care what the specialty group is. I don' t care whether it's young people, gay people, black people, righteous people. I don''t care what it is. I don ''t want any specialty group. I want to be right in the heart and soul of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don'T like specialty groups. And there ain't no right way. Ours isn't a rule-laden program. There is no criteria that says this one's a group and this one ain't. I think the definition says something like two or more joined for the purposes of sobriety may call themselves an AA group. I don't care what they are. They can meet for the purpose of reviling the 12 steps if they want to. They're talking about what a jackass Tom I is. They can beat for any purpose they want them to meet. And they can call themselves an AA group, but that don't make it a viable healing force in Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I'm talking about is just to think a little bit about this. There are things that I would most generously call meetings that are not groups at all. They're just sort of casual gatherings of people who come together around the commonality of a drinking problem. and you will generally find these things to operate dominantly at the comfort and convenience of the participants. You'll find them to be scheduled at times when it's handy, so I can stop by on the way home from work, or I can grab a cheeseburger and grab it at lunch, where there's little investment in the disciplines of Alcoholics Anonymous. You'll usually find these thing to be lightly organized. They'll have one or two officers at best. They will function in only one legacy of our program. The words are a little different, but we have three legacies. Unity, service, and recovery. In meetings you'll hear only one legacy even mentioned. They tend to have little service life, if any. They tendto contribute little. the majority of meetings it appears to me rarely have a GSR and I would submit to you that without the vital link of a GSAR we have no connection to the fellowship and so we wind up being an isolated group of people with little affiliation with the movement we say we're part of those tend to be thematic things very often problem oriented They tend to be dominantly focused toward me and my problem. And very little about the dynamic movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. So if you think I'm not a great fan of meetings, you would be somewhere close to right. I think they often are more part of the problem than part of the solution. When I think about what's vital and what's important in Alcoholics and Anonymous, I think about the importance of strong, well-ordered groups. because groups are places where you will normally find the legacies in place, where you Will typically talk about traditions. You'll typically talk About service. You'll Typically find self-support. You'll, you'll typically find programs that embody alcoholics in action, alcoholics In action, not in contemplation or reflection, but you'll find alcoholics And purposeful action. Very, very important things. You know, home group is a vitally important thing as a basic unit of service. It's also very important to me. It's the place where I quit wandering the face of this earth and I bury my stake and take a stand. It's where I belong. I belong to the primary purpose group in Southern Fife, North Carolina. I'm a legion to every group of ours. I'm an allegiance to this conference. I want to see this conference go. I want to see this thing heal and be effective. Of course I do, but there's one place where I take my dominant responsibility, and that's in my home group. That's where I belong, and they know I belong. If I ain't there, they're going to say, Where is he? It's very important for me to settle down and take a place in this world. I'm a member of that group standing here today. That group interacts with me. That's as much a part of my identity as my fingerprints. That's who I am. That karma of the group travels with me wherever I go. Powerfully important thing. Well, to me it is a basic unit of service. It's the basic place that probably most important to me. I think Kerry said it well. Remember what he said in the beginning when he was talking about the new guy that he's working with? Do you hear what he said? He said, when I went home, I left him with people that I trusted. I didn't have to come back and undo what was done. That's the finest definition of a group I've ever heard. Because, see, my group is where I do my work. That's where I practice my program at its most important level. and if my group isn't an effective tool in carrying out that work I'd hate like the devil to have to take my new member someplace else to hear the message so I'm very, very selfish about a home group I want it to be a dynamic thing not only for me but I want It to be A place that will help me carry out I guess the deepest commitment I have when I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous I was treated just like I was a worthy human being. I was given a welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous second to none, treated with love and consideration and compassion by almost everybody that I met. And the only thing I've ever been asked to do is to see that the next person I welcome into AlcoholicsAnonymous gets just as good. That's why a home group's vital. Thanks, guys. Thank you.