The Quiz He Gave His Sponsor to See if He Was Qualified – Jack K.

Patty, my name is Jack Kissel. Hi, Jack. It's a great pleasure to be here. I'm a member of the Great Fact Group in West Hollywood. The name comes from, as you may recognize, the vision for you where it says, see to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us. And that group now has four different meetings, and we've been together about 14 years. It started in my living room, and a fellow that is from Montana who was born and raised here died nine years sober, and it was he that named my home group and his mother sitting here. And so the connections that I have to Montana are wide and deep and go a long way. I agreed to sponsor somebody, and she sponsors most of Helena, Montana, and they're mostly here. So I have a whole bunch of connections to Montana, and I'm grateful for it. so anyway the practicing alcoholic died and his wife called the newspaper and said how much does an obituary notice cost and they said well it's five dollars a word and she said okay I want to put one in Joe died and he said well I mean it's $5 a word but there is a five-word minimum. And she said, oh, okay. Joe died. Volvo for sale. And that about sums up my relationship to people around me when I got here. I have worn out my welcoming in every direction. And I want to share a bit of that with you, you know, what it used to be like. Let's talk about my last arrest. It is the only one that I have ever actually objected to. I am not sure that that night in Hollywood that they actually had probable cause. Because, see, all that happened is that my extreme caution while driving and there was reason for caution in my case. I had totaled 12 cars by then. My extreme caution while driving drew the attention of the heat to me that night. I sat through three green lights waiting for the right one. Well, I just couldn't get the right shade of green, you know what I mean? They thought that was a little strange, so they pulled me over and discovered to nobody's surprise that I was drunk. I measured 2.7 that night, thank you. Spent the night in a sheriff's station there on San Vicente in L.A., And they gave me a kick out at 5.30 a.m., and I called my wife of 17 years, and we had a typical conversation of ours. You know, I said, where the hell were you when I needed you? And she said, I was there. I tried to bail you out, but they wouldn't let me. Stay where you are, and I'll come get you. And I said don't bother. I'll walk, and i hung up on her. Well, to this day, I'm not sure why I called her. you know, I guess just to make her feel bad. So I walked home, stumbled and staggered and stopped on the way to get well. And when I got home, Jean was standing at the door. She had fallen into the habit of doing that. It wasn't to welcome me home, you understand, but she liked to meet me at the store. And she would do strange things. I mean, she'd ask these odd questions, you know. I'd walk in sometimes and she'd say, do you know what time it is? I'm having trouble with my middle name, you know. She wants to know what time it isn't. I'd say no, no, I don't know what the time is and I'm sure you're going to tell me, you know. And she'd say things like, it's 4 a.m. I don' t know why you even bother to come home at all. I used to like my answer to that, you know. I'd say because it's the only place left that's open, okay. anyway she was standing there this day and uh and she said the kids were right i never should have let you back that she was referring to a little incident that had occurred the night before that and the night bevor i got arrested and that is the four children youngest was seven the oldest was 20 had gotten together in our front room and told me that they didn't love me want me or need me and they told me to get the hell out of their lives and they taught me to leave their mother alone, that I was killing her. And they had packed a suitcase for me. They handed it to me and told me to get up. And I had a little foresight in that situation. I had managed to steal the keys to our only car in case a situation like this might arise. So at least I had someplace to sleep that night. But I marched out of that house with that suitcase feeling lonely, separate, different, angry and afraid, which is the way I felt all the time. I always felt like that. I've been, I felt like this since I was four years old. And I did the only thing I've ever known how to do under those circumstances. I got drunk. I don't know what else you do. And then I slept in the car and then I called her the next morning and begged her like a child to take me back again. And she didn't know any better, so she did. and then this is the morning after that I got arrested. See, in the course of the 17 years that Gina had been with me we had a, this weekend, well last weekend we went, we were in New York and we went to the place where we had met 38 years ago we met in Greenwich Village in Newark and we met her we went into the little rooming house where we met and when I met her She was a fun-loving, easygoing, friendly kind of a woman. You know, she liked to go to parties. And over the 17 years that we had been together, her attitude had deteriorated considerably. Let me tell you. She began to say cruel things. And I'm very sensitive, you know. She used to say things like, I have five children, he's the oldest. You know? Man, it used to hurt my feelings. And she started doing these little mean-spirited practical jokes. Like, one thing she did, I used to go to this little beer bar once in a while, and she began to forward my mail there. Oh, man. I mean, that's embarrassing, you know. You walk in and the bartender says, There's mail for you. So, anyway, she let me back in that morning. I called her and I begged her like a child. And so she did, and then that night, after supper on No Fool, I picked a fight with her after supper, and stole the keys again and ten dollars out of her purse. And I went over to Jay Sloan's to see if there was any mail, and while I was there I met a little girl about the age of my oldest daughter, and she was a good deal more sympathetic to me than my wife had ever been, you know? And so, she and I closed the bar together, and by the route we were driving, apparently we were going back to my house I guess I was going to introduce my wife to her replacement but fortunately I got arrested that night so then I spent the drunk day now I'm standing in front of her it's about 8 o'clock in the morning and Jean was headed for work I used to describe myself as a functioning alcoholic now I had not worked in three years but my definition of a functioning alcoholic is somebody that's married to somebody that does work and she was standing there ready to go to work and she said the kids were right I never should have let you back and I never will again and I'm going through with the divorce and if you're not out of here by noon I will have you ejected now I had developed a number of survival skills necessary to an alcoholic of my type and one of them is the ability to tell when they mean it If you've got my mouth and my size, you better know when to duck and run. And I had learned, and this time I knew she meant it. Now, I had been in and out of that house about a hundred times at least. I mean, you know, I had marched out, stormed out, snuck out, escaped, you Know. But in this time, this particular time, I really knew it was over. I knew it really was over and she went to work And I felt lonely, separate, different, angry and afraid. So I went out and reached around the kitchen sink. Way around the back, I had a bottle of white wine stashed there for emergencies. And I opened the wine. I had little tiny bit of grass left and I rolled the skinniest little J you ever saw and licked the baggie. You know, waste not, want not. My mother taught me that. And smoked the dope and drank the wine and passed out on the bed. Nothing new. and Jean went to work and on the way there for the first time in 17 years she got a different idea about us and she got to work and grabbed the phone book and looked up alcoholism that had never occurred to her before and she made a phone call and then she came back to our house and found me lying there on the bed not bothering anybody, you know and she tried to get me conscious it wasn't always that easy in those days and by the time she did she was crying now I had seen her cry many times in pain, fear, rage, humiliation, hatred. I'm sure she hated me that night in front of those four kids when she tried to put a knife in my belly. I did not object. I said, go ahead and do it. Go ahead and do it! You would be doing us both a favor. Just do it!" But she couldn't. She just stood there and cried. And when I woke up, she was crying, but I didn't recognize the nature of her tears. I was sober a few weeks before it dawned on me that those were tears of compassion that as she got me awake it had dawned on her that I was dying of a disease that I never chose to have and so when she finally got me away, she blurted out what they had told her to say she said, Jack, you're sick I knew that man, you've been through the three days I've been threw, you'd be sick too I've been doing weeds, feeding boos for three days. Of course I'm sick. She said, let me get you help. I didn't ask her what kind. Who cares? I needed help to sit up. So she went to the telephone and I followed her. And by the time I got there, she had got somebody on the phone. She handed the phone to me. She said he wants to talk to you. It surprised us both. Nobody was talking to me in those days. I grabbed the phone and this guy said, Hi, my name is Bud. I'm an alcoholic. Can I help you? don't talk to me like that. I don't want your patronizing, self-righteous, religious nonsense. Just leave me alone. And instead of saying anything like that, I heard myself say, maybe you could. I don' t know where that came from. He said, all right, here's what I want you to do. Man, don't tell me what to do I don''t follow rules well, you know. I mean, I used to run red lights for drill, you know, don'''t tell me what to do. I just, I can't do it. Man, my defiance and rebellion were an integral part of my alcoholism. I once had a job that I really loved. I needed it because I'd been fired from the previous one to support the family, but I loved the job too because it had a little prestige attached to it. I was a professor at a university and head of the department. And I needed to have some prestige because I had been filled with self-loathing my entire life. And the only relief I ever got from that is if I could impress you. And it only lasted as long as you were impressed. And so for that reason, I really loved that job. But the second year I was there, my arrogance and defiance and rebellion had continued to increase. And And so I organized 26 kids on campus. I was the co-founder and only white member of the Black Student Union and we were planning to blow up the administration building, you know. So they fired my ass. And I mean, I just can't follow rules, you know, and this guy says, here's what I want you to do. Don't drink, don't use, and come see me. And for some reason I said, okay. I said alright, I'll do that. Now where exactly are you? And he said, I'm in Oxnard. I said wait a minute, that's 77 miles from where I live. How do you want me to get there? And he says drive. Smart ass. He didn't understand my problem. I had just agreed not to use or drink until I came to see him. And if I do not use or drank for the length of time it gets me for me to get to Oxnard neurological events occur you know sudden involuntary movements I believe medically they're called myoclonic jerks people wave back at you I wasn't going to be able to drive so what happened actually is I asked Jean if she would drive and she agreed so that's what happened she drove and I twitched And we got there, and this guy had a year and a half of sobriety at the time. And he sat us down and told us what it used to be like, what happened, what it was like then for him. I wasn't all that impressed. You know, I didn't even know what a year-and-a-half meant, sobrieting. But as he got talking to me, it dawned on me that this guy knew what it felt like to be me at 3 a.m. And I thought nobody knew that. My job was to keep you from finding that out. I was perfectly willing to share my opinions with you, but I did not want you to know what I was feeling. And I tried to keep him from finding it out. He knew already, talked about himself and it was clear. And so he did get a bit of my attention. He managed to get me to make a promise for him. I had given up promises. I don't keep them, so why make them? And he got me to promise to read the big book before I took another drink and he got me to stay in the detox center that night and I did that. And the next day we had no money so we couldn't stay in The Treatment Center and the next day he sent me out to a 12-step house. So on a Tuesday morning, I was standing underneath a palm tree in Oxnard, California, and I had just successfully completed the AA program. well no yeah he explained how it worked he said you do it one day at a time and I had just done that I had gone 24 hours without anything no booze no dope no acid mescaline psilocybin heroin cocaine second all two and all nothing at all for 24 hours and I did not like it I decided to resign from your organization you know and then I remember I promised that fool I'd read the book so I went in there and in that thrall step house and I found a copy of the book and I began to read it now I've given you some of the symptoms of my disease but another one of my symptoms is that I had become an intellectual it is a real symptom in my case it's a it's a desperate effort on my part to to gain some control if I could understand the nature of the human psyche or the universe. Maybe I could gain some control and I've been out of control since I was 16 years old. Also, it was an effort on my part to impress you because I need to do that. So, you know, for those reasons I was an intellectual. I now define an intellectual as someone who has been educated beyond his capacity. But in those days it was very important to me and so I grabbed the book and I immediately saw that that book did not live up to my literary standards. You know, a book that plain-spoken and I thought simple-minded could hardly be of use to somebody of my complexity, don't you see? I mean, I could find stuff in that thing to ridicule. There's a line in that book that suggests that I should substitute for my drinking. Now, I've given you a little hint of my drinking I mean my first arrest was at 17, it was for manslaughter. my drinking, you know. And I'm supposed to substitute for my drinking the fellowship. Come on. I mean, hanging out with you is not going to keep me sober. Let me clue you. Let's start with the fact that I don't like people, okay? I mean I didn't even like the word fellowship. It sounded to me like a Baptist softball team. I don' t want to be part of your fellowship. Thanks very much. And I could see through that book's feeble efforts to hide its real intent behind euphemisms like higher power. That book was trying to cram God down my throat, and I did not believe in God. And I didn't think you should either. One of my little entertainments in those days was to go to bars named Molly Malone's or Barney's Beanery and find some big Irish Catholic and get him into a discussion. I'd say, do you believe in God? He'd say oh yeah. I'd says a loving, just and merciful God, right? He'd says right. I'd said yeah. But what about malformed children and disease and war and poverty and bigotry and death? Where is your loving God? And usually about then they would beat me up to show me there was a power greater than myself. And that was the attitude with which I read that book. And in spite of my attitude, when I got to page 21 of that book for the first time ever, it got clear to me what was the matter with me. And I actually had been trying to find out. I really had. I had been willing to be diagnosed a variety of things. Paranoid schizophrenic, manic depressive, bipolar, psychopath, sociopath, artist. You know. any of those diagnoses I got to page 21 it described what it called the real alcoholic it said they are seldom mildly intoxicated usually more or less insanely drunk it said they do absurd tragic incredible things it says they are disgustingly even dangerous they antisocial it talks about the Jekyll and Hyde personality and our lousy timing all in one paragraph by the time I finished that paragraph, it was clear to me, I actually am an alcoholic. I mean, I really am. That's the way I've been living my life since I was 16. I am an alcoholic. And so then I did read the book with a little more care. I got to page 24 and it promised me that I would drink again. It's very clear. It says the real alcoholic has lost the power to choose whether they will drink or not. It says they have no mental defense against the first drink. Well, you know, I had been hallucinating for about a year and a half. My wife was leaving me. Kids weren't talking to me. had work, but I was never stupid. I can figure that out. It means I'm going to drink again. And when I do, I'm gonna have to relive page 21 over and over again. God, it was a very hopeless moment for me. What the hell am I supposed to do? See, I can't do that stuff you do. I don't believe in it. What am I gonna do? And about the only thing I could come up with is, I'll go to their meetings. I mean, I'm not gonna like them, but I'll go. And I did. Wednesday night, I went to my first meeting. And to my surprise, I liked the meetings. I had no expectation of that. I enjoyed the meetings because I loved them then and still do. You know, I love to go to the speaker meetings. I like to hear the adventure stories. This one guy got up and said, I stole a battleship. Now you've got to like a guy like that. And I've been thinking lately, how would you like to have an oil spill on your amends list. Let's see, there's mom and dad and Alaska. Holy shit! So I liked the meetings. And I listened for hints about how do you stay sober? How do you actually do that? And I got some. One of them was get a sponsor. So I got a sponsor. And I immediately realized that he didn't have enough education to deal with somebody of my complexity, you know? This is pretty embarrassing, but I will admit to you that I gave Fred Ellis a quiz to see if he was qualified to be my sponsor. I didn't actually tell him it was a test, you know? I asked the kind of a complicated question about the psychological interrelatedness of the steps. Let's see how he deals with that. And Fred looked at me with these huge gentle eyes And he said, Jack, the steps are numbered for the intellectuals. If you will do them in order, they will work. Well, I thought that was a pretty good answer, so I didn't fire him, you know. About two days later, I got enough courage to really tell him the truth. And I said, the truth is, I can't actually work the steps. I can even work the second step. I cannot come to believe that there is a power that will restore me. And he gave me one of those answers of his. He said, well, God comes to me through other people. Go to the meetings and search for God. Oh, great. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Jeez. But I was trying to follow his direction. I didn't want a drink, so I said, okay, I'll be there. I went to the meeting and I searched for God I mean, I didn' t find him, but I looked. I listened to the speakers with great intensity in the hopes that one of them would unlock that mystery for me. I mean, none of them did. I mean it seemed to me and I know this is a misperception but it did seem to me like every speaker I heard during that period each of them had about a third grade education they all got sober in Tyler, Texas and they were dispensing folk wisdom. This one guy got up I swear to you and he said if you do not believe in a power which is greater than yourself then jump up and stay there. What the hell is that? I didn't think that was funny. I'm sitting out there trying to find God, and this guy's telling me gravity will restore me to sanity. I don't see how that's going to work. About the only thing I really could hold on to is something else Fred said, and that is no matter what. He said, no matterwhat, don't use or drink no matterwhat. So I made a list of no matter whats. If those four children never do speak to me again, I will not use a drink no matter what. If I never am able to work again I will NOT use a drink no mater what. If my wife of 17 years goes through with her plan to divorce me, I will Not use I will NAT drink. If she stays, I WILL NOT use I WILL NAT drink, NO MATTER WHAT! If my mind is never restored to me, I WILL not use drink. It took me 90 days to memorize the serenity prayer. I could not hold it in my head. and my hallucinations did not disappear the day I got sober. I remember sitting next to Fred on a hot August night, a Thursday meeting at Brentwood, and a huge black bug came flying right at me and then darted between me and my sponsor and we ended up looking at each other. I didn't say anything. First thing that was said, Fred said it. He looked at me and he said, It was really there, Jack. I didn' t ask him. I would be damned if I had asked him. I was pleased to hear it, but I would not ask it. And when I was 30 days clean and sober, I had a spiritual experience. And it consisted of being 30 days clean and silver. See, I really can't do that. I cannot do that, never could, never did, never tried. 30 days in a row. Couldn't get over it. And that is a spiritual experience precisely as it is described in that most profound of books, Alcoholics Anonymous. In another obscure section of our book called Appendix 2 where it says we tapped an unsuspected inner resource which we presently came to identify with our own conception of a power greater than ourselves. Some of our religious-minded members call that God-conscious. And I had tapped an unsuspected inner resource that had kept me sober for an incredible length of time, 30 days in a row. And I went to Fred. I said, you know, I believe I'm beginning to work the second step. He wasn't all that impressed. He said, go on, work the third step. And I did, and I've been trying to do that ever since, working the steps and practicing the principles to the best of my ability. And Fred began then to take on the responsibility that Alcoholics Anonymous has. And there is a misconception, it seems to me, among a lot of people, not just the newest people in our society, and the misconception is that Alcoholic Anonymous is about not drinking. And it isn't about not drinkin'. Alcoholics Anonymous is about living sober. Different deal. It's not the same thing. You may have noticed we don't work the steps in order to stop drinking. We stop drinking, and then it becomes necessary to work the stairs. And he began to do that. He began to teach me how to live sober. He had a very irritating way of doing it. This guy was a high school dropout, and one of the things he liked to do was define words for me. God, I hated that. He said, now you're going to have to give up resentment. I said, okay, I'll do that. He said now it is very important to give up resentment because resentment is one of the primary causes of slips. It's one of the major reasons that alcoholics slip again and you will have to giveup resentment. I said okay. He said no, let me tell you what the word means. I know actually I know what the word mean Fred. And as if I hadn't said anything he said alright now resentment is man this guy dropped out of high school I graduated from Notre Dame did graduate work at Fordham graduate work in Columbia I've been trained in the Army in psychology he's going to tell me what the word means he said resentment is re-feeling old injury well I'd never quite thought of it like that I mean that was one of the best things I did I never forgot anything you ever did that hurt my feelings I mean, you could forget my name, be late for an appointment. It went into your file, you know? I always remembered everything that anybody did to hurt my feelings. I could always bring it out, you now. Sometimes I'd have a fight with her and I'd run off to the car and I would stop before I left and go over the whole incident and all those unforgivable things she said to me so that I could remember and not lose that resentment. So he said, you're going to have to give it up. He said, alcoholics are all good at re-feeling old injury. And he said, and actually I think Irish alcoholics are even better at it than most, you know? And since then I've heard about Irish Alzheimer's. I don't know if you've heard of them. They forget everything but the grudges. Yeah. So he said I had to do that and he explained that one of my big resentments was my father. And my father had been dead two years and he saidI had to forgive him. And I said, no, you don't understand. He doesn't deserve it. And he said, it isn't about what he deserves. It's about what you need. And unless you are able to forgive him, the likelihood of you staying sober is smaller and the chances of your being comfortable sober is impossible. So you're going to have to do it. I said thread, I don't think I can. I mean, I can vividly recall prying his fingers from my mother's throat. I remember forcing, kicking him out of my bed. No, I can't forgive him. He said, you got to... I said, well, how am I supposed to do that? He gave me one of those answers of his. One day I was driving along and it suddenly occurred to me that my father had not chosen to be an alcoholic either. I knew I had not chosen to be one. And I also knew that my behavior had been the result of my drinking and of my alcoholism. You know? And it occurred tome also that actually his disease had done less damage than mine And to the best of my knowledge, my father's disease never killed anybody. Mine did. So I began to see him differently. And that's the definition of forgiveness. And I went to my sponsor. I said, you know, I'm beginning to... I think I'm forgiving my dad. He said, good. Now make amends. I said. Oh, you've forgotten he's dead. You know, I can't do that. And he said, no, I didn't forget that. And I said well how am I supposed to make amens? And he says, I don't know. pray about it so I did and when I was nine months sober our youngest daughter came running in the house said daddy, daddy somebody dead in the front lawn and I ran out there and there was somebody dead drunk on the front line and I stood him up and 12 stepped him you know I walked him in the house and Gene gave him soup and I fed him AA and he got sober and we took him out to a 12 step house and my sponsor gave him a job and Harold stayed sober for six weeks and he just loved it and then he loved me and so he was one of those guys once he got sober you just couldn't stop talking you know what's going on he used to come out bring him over to the house and Jean would be cleaning or vacuuming the house and Harold would just follow her all around the house telling her his story you know I used to be a muxer I was alone and she'd just go on and vacuum how do you love being sober and then six weeks sober he got drunk and he got sobre again and then he got drunken again. And I got him out of jail one time. And then two weeks later, they found him out in Buena Park with a bottle of wine clutched in his hand and he was dead. And he had my phone number in his head and my sponsor's phone number was in his pocket. And Harold was exactly the same age as my father was when he died. And i knew there was a connection somehow. And you know, I got another idea. I thought maybe I'll start trying to be friends with some of the old-timers that remind me of my dad. And I began to do that and I made friends with a bunch of them. One of them was Chuck Chamberlain, you know. Another one was a guy named Matt Campion. And Matt, last nine years of his life asked me to come speak at his birthday. And clearly I had been given gifts that I didn't even know were there, you now. We went to New Orleans to the International and there was Indiana was sponsoring a meeting and my father had gone to AA in Indiana for 10 years he never got a year of sobriety but he used to go and so I got this idea maybe it'll be an amends if I were to go to that meeting I mean, it won't be as witty sophisticated a speaker as somebody from California but I'll go and I went to the Indiana meeting and I sat in the back and the guy that spoke he had 17 years of sobrietics his name was Lew and he was an air conditioning repairman and he had a nice simple straightforward AA story and afterwards I went out and thanked him as I had been taught to do and I said I don't know if you happen to know my dad my dad was Herb Kissel and he said he looked at me and he had these huge gentle eyes and it began to fill with tears and he says you know your father was not given in Alcoholics Anonymous what you and I have been given but don't you be ashamed of him he helped a lot of people and I was one of them he said in the first five years of my sobriety we used to go to meetings and then go over to your dad's house and play cards and talk AA and I loved him and he walked away I mean it was a gift I never expected so Fred went on teaching me stuff he said you also have to be rigorously honest I said okay I'll do that he said let me tell you what the word means alright what does it mean he said it's when your mind your mouth and your behavior coincide well I never quite thought of it like that my mind, my mouth and my body had rarely been in the same room you know he said I'll give you an example you're married now I hadn't thought of it like this not like that either she was married and I had been unfaithful in that relationship for the entire 17 years to the best of my ability, you understand? He said, no, that's not how it works. If you're married and you're going to be honest you have to be faithful. I said, why? He said well, you're not being faithful to the woman, you are being faithful to the promise you made. And I said Fred, I don't even think I love her. He said no, no you don't. We teach that here. You do loving things where you are and you will learn how to love. And I said, okay. He said, in your case we're going to start with politeness. Can you handle that? If she cooks, you say thank you and be faithful. And he said, I'll try. And three years later I called him to complain. And I said I'm doing what you tell me and I must admit it's working. I'm still sober but she still does not trust me. And then he said well let's figure out how long it took you Teach her not to trust you when we figured it was 17 years, you know. So he said, fine, when you get 17 years clean and sober and faithful, then the score will be even. I said, thanks a lot. Oh, geez. And I started doing it, you now. I just kept doing it. And I bring it up partly because there are these gifts that I don't even know to wish for, you kno. One of them occurred in relation to that whole thing Because somewhere along the line, it dawned on me that in those first 17 years, I had essentially one experience with a variety of women. And in the last 21 years and three months going forward, I've had a variety OF experiences with one woman. And I know which is better. I've been on both sides of that fence. I know what is better Fred died. it'll be six years ago and so he wasn't here to see it but when I got 17 years clean and sober and faithful my wife gave me a little medallion I wear around my neck it says 17 even we've been together now 38 years and she's here and she'll be speaking tomorrow at the Al-Anon function that's an incredible gift you know and all four of my children do speak to me they each have told me they love me my youngest has a little trouble saying it very often but she says it and we now have six grandchildren and the oldest is 19 and the youngest is two so none of my grandchildren have ever seen me drink my grandchildren think that an alcoholic is somebody that goes to meetings when we were speaking in North Dakota April and Paloma was five and I called her on her birthday and she said where are you Pa Jack and I told her and she says are you at one of those meetings and I said yeah and she say tell them keep coming back it works. She doesn't know how well she speaks, you know. Her father was 12 that night when I was trying to sort out the green lights and he was hiding in the front room of our house in the dark with a ball bat in his hand waiting for me to come home in case he needed to defend his mother. He couldn't stay in the same room with me for the first year and half of my sobriety. But we sent him to Alateen and he began to change and I began to change and life began to changed. When he got, when I got sober and when he first went to Alteen, he used to lock himself in his bedroom and then lock himself into a closet and climb up on a shelf and cover himself with a blanket when he was 12. But he went to Aleteen and I went to AA and she went to Al-Anon and things began to changes. So When I was about eight years sober, John had had a lot of trouble in school. He had trouble in high school and then he graduated and then tried to go to college and he flunked out and went to work and then went back to college and finished a two-year program at Los Angeles City College and he came to me and he said, I know my grades are not worth it and possible but if it were possible I just want you to know and it was a way he was making amends to me I just wanted him I just wants you to go I would go to Notre Dame like you did because you did. I mean, I couldn't believe that. And when you're walking this path, odd synchronistic things sometimes happen. One of them happened then. My mother, who was still living then and living in South Bend, and she was sending me clippings from the local newspaper. I mean I hadn't been there in 21 years but you know how mothers are. And she's sending me these clippINGS and one of them was about my best friend who had been in the seminary with me. See, I had run away from home once when I was 14 and if you're Irish Catholic in South Bend, Indiana there is no more socially acceptable way to leave home than to go study to be a priest at Notre Dame and that's what I did I was out there for two and a half years 20 hours of silence a day from the ages of 14 through 16 trying not to think about girls finally I said what an order I can't go through and I left and came home and got drunk the next day but this clipping was about this friend of mine who had stayed in the seminary and had become a priest, and he was made assistant provincial of the Holy Cross Order. That's number two man in the organization that owns and runs Notre Dame. So after 33 years, I called him. He was delighted to hear from me. His name is Jack, too. And he said, where have you been? What have you done up to all these years, Jack? I didn't go into a lot of detail, you know. I said, I guess the most significant thing is I've been sober and alcoholic synonymous for eight and a half years. And he said, gee, that's great. I've been sober for ten years. And as a direct result of his intervention, my son was allowed to go to Notre Dame. And two years later, his mother and I flew out to South Bend to watch him graduate. You know, he's an editor at a newspaper now. He has two children. And whenever AA doesn't have something for me to do on a Sunday night, He likes me to come down there and babysit his children because he works and his wife likes to go to an Al-Anon meeting and I'm the one he trusts. So it's just gone from that distance, that enormous difference. The gifts that Ahaz brought to me, I couldn't have expected. I couldn'T have figured them out. Incredible gifts. And the responsibility has been placed on us, you and I must pass it on that's what we're supposed to do nobody else can do it there are no treatment centers no psychiatrists, no ministers or saints of any kind that can help us to live sober the only way that is done is in Alcoholics Anonymous it's the onlyway it really works that's the truth and it is you and i that are responsible for helping each other to live sober it has finally dawned on me that it is not the love I get that gives me any degree of healing it is the love that I give and anybody who's sober two days can do that can start to do it can start giving can start doing it and it doesn't always have to be somebody that's got fewer days than you you know it can be anybody in the fellowship who's having a bad day anybody and we can give it to one another the healing comes from us and God comes to us through other people exactly the way Fred said you know there's an old timer out our way that found some it's described for me better than any I've ever seen the fellowship it says through the hands of such as these God speaks and from behind their eyes he smiles upon the earth I came to you feeling lonely, separate, different angry and afraid every day of my life and if I work the steps practice the principles live in the fellowship of the spirit I don't have to feel that way at all instead I feel at one at peace and full of joy and then I live in the infinite now thank you