The Responsibility of Leaving the Program Exactly as He Found It – Jay P.

Thanks for choosing Dykobe Tapes. If you enjoy this tape, you can order other titles from us by calling 1-800-999-3381 or visit our website at www.dykobe.com. My name's Jay Plumback. I'm an alcoholic. And by God, now that I've got that mic down there, I'm going to be here tonight just to watch Ed stoop over. From seven foot a bunch to five foot nothing, that'll be a leap. When I said I'm Jay and I'm alcoholic, I said it all. That's all there is. And I didn't know that for a long, long time. My sobriety date is March the 8th, 1974, and for that I will. For the fact that I haven't had to take a drink a day at a time from then till now, I will never, never be able to truly express the gratitude I feel. I can say thanks, but expressing the gratitude is being committed to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I just sometimes feel like I come up short in trying to have this commitment, to have his gratitude. I see it in people. You know, you talked about the twins, 11 years old today. Think about your own kids. I think about mine. How tough was it to leave their birthday? That's a big day in a kid's life, man. And you leave their birth. You get them a bike. They like racing. But you still follow through with a commitment. and you know that's Alcoholics Anonymous I don't just look at old timers to find that, I look at the eyes of Alcoholics Anonymous, the eyes OF the people in AA and I see who's committed and those are the people that I want to be like because all I got is AlcoholicsAnonymous that's all I've got and I didn't plan on that,I didn't plan on being an alcoholic don't know the hell a lot of people that did I've done some surveys in AA and I don' t know anyone that said what I really want to do is grow up and be a wino. In fact, if I do real good at that, someday I'll be in Topeka, Kansas talking about it. It wasn't my plan. Toto didn't mean nothing to me. But I had other aspirations growing up. There were other things I wanted to be. One time I wanted to be a lawyer. You know, then it was an honorable profession. But I... I'd read a book about a guy named Clarence Darrow and as I read that book I was impressed. This was a guy that was good at what he did. He made a lot of money. He was flamboyant. People liked him and he was successful. And I said, I want to be like that. That's who... That was a model for me. You know there were many other models in my life and every one of these models had attained things. Just material things and not just material things with other things, I'd pick them out and say, I want to be like that. But you know, as I look at it, to be any one of those things, I'd have had to pay a price. I'd had to study or I'd add to learn a certain discipline or learn certain things, and I was never willing to pay those prices. I wasn't willing to go through that. And yet if one of you would have pointed out to me the price that I was going to pay to get to Topeka, Kansas today, I'd has said, You're crazy. If you'd have told me, you'd say, Jay, you're going to sacrifice every principle in your life. You're going give up everything that means anything. just to get to, hey, I'd have said you're crazy. I'll never give that up. And I gave all those things up and more to get here. And I didn't know I was giving them up. I was born like everybody else. I thought I was normal. Hell, I felt normal. I didn'T know anything else but what I felt. I didn' t know I Was mad until I was sober a year and a half. Because I was mad as far back as I can remember, but I thought that was normal, but I was over a year-and-a-half. I was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in my home group in West Palm Beach, Florida at that time. It was the Nuestra Esperanza Big Book Group, and in that group we studied the book. And we would talk about the principles in the book as we saw them, and we'd share our experience with them. Since I had very little experience with those principles, what I'd do is go to a meeting across town the day before, pick up some information, bring it back as though it were mine. And I was sharing it at that meeting that night when it came my turn, because at discussion meetings, I don't know about you, but discussion meetings were places for me to share information that didn't mean a hell of a lot. I sort of like speaker meetings. I don't have to say anything in a speaker meeting when I'm not talking. All I have to do is listen. I have the ability to speak. I have a voice that I can listen to something that I can identify with and something that can help me stay sober for another day. And when I am in a deep spot, I don' t have to throw my problem out on a table. Rather, I can hear what I want to hear from you. Rather, I can see what I can do to help you. I can listen to a solution in your life as you tell your story. And I can get hope. But anyhow, I was at this meeting and I shared this information that wasn't original. And a guy grabbed me after the meeting and he told me that he loved me. And He put his arm around my shoulder, and he said that I was a phony and that I Was about to get drunk. And God, I hated him. If I was any bigger than I was right then, I'd have hit him. Well, I always had been a hitter, never had been a winner. But common sense prevailed, and I didn't. And he carried me home with him that night, and he set me down on the stoop of his trailer out in Loxahatchee, Florida. It's just a swamp out there. Or it was then. They've got it sort of built up now. But he set be down on that stupid-ass trailer. Well, wait a minute. It wasn't a trailer. It was a manufactured home. Since that time, I've had a 3,500-square-foot home on the 16th fairway of a country club. Since that 3, 500-squared-foot house, I now live in a manufactured house. Perspective changes when you got them. But anyhow, he set me down on the stupid ad deal and he began to talk to me about Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, from the day that I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I knew that my drinking was different. In a very short time after I got here, I accepted what you gave to me as a definition of alcoholism. I knewthat my drinkingwas different. I knewthat, like it says on page 21, where it says, What about the real alcoholic? What aboutthe real alcoholic says, You know, at some stage of our drinking career, we may or may not be a heavy drinker, may ormay not bea daily drinker. But at some state ofour drinking career we begin to lose controlof our consumption once we start to drink. I had that allergy as far back as age 13, and I could see it and see how it progressed. That allergy is what defines alcoholism from everything else. If you ain't got the allergy, you're just screwed up. So as a kid, I was just screwed-up. I wasn't an alcoholic. You know, but I had this stuff going on. But anyhow, John talked to me about that, and then I accepted the first half of the first step. I had had accepted it for that year and a half, but I'd never gone beyond that. And when you use the first part of the first step as a foundation to work the rest of of steps, you're screwed. You don't have all the information. John talked to me about unmanageability. Here's my life a year and a half sober. My wife and I were still together, although she was in another bedroom. Hell, things were so bad at home, I was going to sex without partners. That minor not got up here to the breadbasket of the United States, but it's a self-help group from Florida. My marital life was not real good. My kids and I didn't get along at all. They hated me. I was unemployed again. I couldn't go back to work on a ship. I'd been successful. I couldn't come back because I was going bankrupt. I had gone into business. I was in the import-export business. What happened was, I was in a country called Sri Lanka for about a month, going to AA meetings every night, and I found guys over there that practiced the same lack of principles that I practiced. So we formed a business, and we called it an import- export business. We were going to export from that country and import into the United States. And it wasn't drugs, it was semi-precious gemstones. But my conception of business and the government's conception of businesses was somewhat a little different. They called it smuggling. Now... So I had some legal problems. I was getting ready to go bankrupt because all the money that I'd managed to put aside and had behind me was gone. And these guys had got it. So financially I was in trouble. In my family life I was in trouble spiritually. I was dead. All I had going for me is that I was active, active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was sort of a poster child of AA down in South Florida. If you can picture that. I mean, I was everything in that group. I was chairman when they let me be chairman. I was a reader when they left me be a reader. I cleaned ashtrays. I did everything. Never was treasurer. Never have been treasuer. Maybe my group will get a copy of this tape, and they might elect me treasurer. I don't know. But I was everything in AA except active in the program of recovery. So activity didn't keep me sober. It just kept me from a drink for a period of time. I call it a state of grace that maybe God gave me where desperation forced me to do something else. When I was forced to look at the unmanageability of my life, and for the very first time I accepted step one, that I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanable. John said, let's boil that down to two words. I can't. And we looked at step two then. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Sanity, John said for me, didn't mean I'd stop doing bizarre things. And he was right. I never have. I continue to do bizarre things from then till now. But the sanity he talked about was the sanity our book talks about. That strange insanity that precedes the first drink. It manifests itself in that thought that says, this time I can take a drink and I won't get drunk. This time I can take a drink and I won't do those things that I did. This time, I won' t hurt her. This time. I won''t do that. And yet every time I did that, I do that and that's the insanity John talked about. The book talks further on about it after the promises where it says, you know, if tempted by alcohol, we react as if from a hot flame for sanity has returned. So for me, sanity was going to be real simple. That drinking would not be an acceptable alternative. And then I believed step two, I had come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to that state where drinking would not be an acceptable alternative. And John said, why don't we boil that down to two words? He can. And I accepted that premise. And armed with that information, we got on our knees and we prayed the step three prayer. And we used the one in the book. And I know the wording is optional. I have no argument with that. But for me, those words work good. They just work good, and I've got a good mind, and I know it, and I can memorize a lot of things, but I never memorized that prayer. we prayed that prayer that night on our knees and from that day to this day I pray that prayer on just about a daily basis and I'm not retaking step three when I pray what I'm doing is recommitting myself to the decision that I made then just reaffirming it but anyhow when I made that decision with John getting off our knees it says then next and I don't know what next means to you but he said it meant right away he handed me a legal tablet and at the very he had it in columns He had one little old skinny column on the left, and then a big wide column, and a skinny column to the right. And then he had column four written on the back side, and that was an empty page. He said at the very top left-hand corner, I want you to write the word down, I resent. I said, John, I don't resent anybody. And I didn't. I didn' t resent a soul. He said, why don' t you put down I hate? Oh, hell, I could do that. I hated everybody. I hate. Hell, yeah. I know what hate is. Hate's that deal that goes inside of you and makes you feel warm all over. You ain' t got a drink to feel it. It makes your mouth get wet when you think of what you're going to do to them for what they did to you. I put down, hey, he told me who to put down first. He said, put down Siraj. It means nothing to you, tell you who it was to me. It was one of them guys from Salon that I brought over to my house. He was on a visa and I had signed for the visa. And the reason he was there is to watch out for them. He was going to be their protector so I wouldn't get the money. Hell, I got my money. I hated him for getting my money put down. I hated Him for that. I put Down, I hated HIM because he was eating raw meat and we're eating beans. I hated him because he was sleeping in a bed and my little boy was sleeping on the floor. God, I hate it. He wore a dress. I hated them for that. They didn't call it a dress, they called it a sari or something. It is a dress! I hated it! And once I put down that I hated Him, I knew that I had to do it again. I hated It. And the deal was that that's what I've been doing all my life. I agree. Inventories, you know, they aren't hard. If you stop and think about it, it's the most natural thing that an alcoholic does. You get around and sit outside there. how many of you or how many of me are talking about me? I'm usually talking about you. And that's what the inventory is. Put down who you hate and why you hate them. Hell, I'd sit in a bar and do that. So now I was going to do it on paper. I put down who I hated and why I hated them. And I went all the way back to my childhood and I found that I hated my parents. I hated him because he had never given me what I wanted as a child. He'd never taken me to ball games or been a daddy to me. I hated his mother because she always favored the others over me. I had hate running through me as far back as I could remember, and I didn't know it. As a kid, I thought I was normal. As a child, I was a liar. I was lying as far as I can remember. And I always thought of lying as sort of a gift. You know, God gave it to me special. By words, I could make me into whatever you wanted me to be. If you wanted to be smart, I'd tell you I was smart. You want to be a criminal, want to become an athlete, whatever you wanted, I tell you, and believed it. And if you didn't believe it, I got mad. When a person has the ability to lie like that, I set myself up for the biggest lie I ever told, the lie I alluded to earlier. The lie that this time I can take a drink and something will be different. This time I can take a drank and it'll be all right. I didn't know I was setting myself up for that. I just knew I was doing what I did. And nobody taught me that it came natural and I think that's a part of alcoholism. Yet it didn't make me alcoholic. It just made me a kid that was mad and was a liar. I was a thief as far back as I can remember. I didn' t picture myself as a thief. I guess I thought I was short fat Robin Hood. I don' t know. I might take something from Ed, I'd turn around and give it to Tom. And I didn't take it from Ed because, you know, think about the fact that he earned money to get that and that it was his. I never gave that a thought. I merely thought about if I gave it to Tommy, he'd say I was a nice guy and he'd want me around. You know, if I was talking to a counselor or a social worker, they'd say, Jay, you're trying to buy somebody's affection. You're tryingto buy their attention. And I guess I was, but I didn' t know I was. And I think that's a part of alcoholism. Yet it did not make me an alcoholic. It made me a thief. So when you're a thief and a liar and you don't get along and you didn't even start at school yet, you're in trouble. And I was in trouble because I went off to the first grade. That was an experience. I went to a parochial school. We lived in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. My daddy was a news announcer and he had a coast-to-coast radio show. He was a big shot. His picture was on the back of buses and he traveled to the high company. And I thought because he did that that I was somebody and I was nobody. But then I went after the first grader to this parochia school Now, I had a nun there, a sister. Her name was Sister Lucy. She was my first experience with S&M. Well, you have to picture Sister Lucy She's old. She's as old as dirt. She had a black robe on that she wore and a white thing up here and she had leather and chains that hung down in a clank when she walked and she scared the hell out of me. I later found out she was a very loving person. But anyhow, halfway through the first grade she called my parents in for a parent-teacher conference And being an nosy individual then and now, I stood outside and listened to what they had to say. And she told my parents I thought I'd done something wrong, and it wasn't that at all. She told my friends that it appeared as though I was a gifted child and that I'd gone well on whatever tests they used to check that stuff with and thatI could go anywhere and do anything that I wanted to do if I applied myself. And as soon as I heard that, my education stopped. When I heard I was smart, nobody was smart enough to teach me anything, so I started getting in trouble. And like it's been said by all the other speakers, you know, by the time I got to AA, nobody was here but dummies. Hell, I couldn't learn a damn thing the first year and a half because I knew it all. When you know the answers and ain't heard the questions, you're in trouble. So I started getting in trouble in the first grade. By the second grade, I'm in front of the class as a class clown, and I'm writing on the board, and I didn't want it to be that way. I wanted to be like other people. I wanted To have that thing inside of me that they showed on their face. If I could just have that, I'd be all right. And yet I couldn'T be thatway. You know, my life was to be that way that I always wanted to be like somebody else. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was to me that way. I'd look around and I'd spot somebody and say, I want to be likes him or I want be like him or I wanna be like her. And as soon as I'd see their warts, I wouldn't want to like them. And one of the deals you gave me with the steps of AlcoholicsAnonymous is that what I can do is that I can look at you and I see things in you that I aspire towards that I wanna to be liked and I can take those things from you and say how did you do that? How did you get there? What did you apply that? And I can put that in my life. No longer do I have to put people way up here where all of a sudden when their wards appear, I don't want nothing to do with them. But I can treat them just as a person, just a drunk. Because if you ain't heard it yet, I'll tell you now, the highest you're ever going to get in this deal is sober. We ain't got no presidents, believe me. Sober is as high as you get. But I could spot people in AA and I have heroes in AA that I want what they have. And then I find out what they did to get it. Anyhow, there I was as a kid and I had all this stuff running around inside of me getting in trouble and stealing and not getting along and started to run away from home and they took me in front of a juvenile referee and they labeled me incorrigible that was a big long word I didn't know what it meant I found out later it was a multi-syllable word that meant punk and I was just a little old punk they sent off to an orphanage funny thing about this orphanage there wasn't no orphans in there they were just punks like me and they wanted me to become something and to get better and I didn t know that I thought they were hurting me and they were punishing me and they weren t interfering in my life but I stayed there for a short period of time and I got out and I did the same thing I did and I was locked up again and I had to stay locked up off and on from then until I was 17 1⁄2 years old. I was never on the streets from 8 1⁰ to 17 1₄ for more than a few months at a time. Whenever I'd be out on the street, I'd do what I did and go back again and I didn't want it to be that way and I hadn't even taken a drink to my knowledge and that wasn't alcoholism but those things are a part of alcoholism. To be an alcoholic, I was going to have to have that allergy inside of me and if I don't have that allergy, All I am is screwed up. At 13 years old, a miracle came into my life. I decided to drink. In Ohio you had to be 21 and I didn't look 13 for God's sakes. So I knew I had to improve my age, so I did. I stole an eyebrow pencil. I sort of gave myself a beard and a mustache. I can just imagine what it looked like now as I was heading down to the lower end of 25th Street, which is a skid row in Cleveland, with 10,000 blackheads dotted on like an after five shadow. Just a little old punk with a dirty face Anyhow We went down there And we went to enough of them places With the money I stole out of my mother's purse And we ordered what we wanted to drink We got two bottles of mixed screwdrivers And two bottles Of Thunderbird wine I remember clearly ordering it And I don't remember why I ordered that I can only guess Screwdrivers could have sort of promised something I'm not sure But Thunderbird because of the signs There used to be a billboard on 25th and Scranton I remember I could close my eyes and picture it It showed a bird soaring and it showed that bottle of wine. And it was the stuff I learned about that, you know, what's the word? Thunderbird! By God, that'll fire your cannon, I'll tell you that. You guys talk about MD-2020 and junk, Mogan, that don't do nothing, man. Thunderbird had a promise to it. And it Was Cheap. It Was Affordable. And if you ever observe, you Know, the very cheapest wines, the ones the guys like me were going to be able to afford were always put so low on the shelf they didn't care if you stole it. See, the good stuff was up where they could watch it. But we got that stuff and we left that bar and went behind some bushes and we started to drink. And I don't know what it tasted like. Don't remember anything about it. I remember starting to drink whatever it was we started with. And something happened. For the very first time in my life, I no longer was afraid. No longer was I afraid of getting out of jail, going to jail, not being able to love, being loved, not be able to get... All that went away and I became enough. and I didn't even realize I didn' t sit down to write that down but in looking back at my life I see that that feeling had to be the most fantastic thing that could ever have happened to a guy like me because I pursued the recapturing of it at every opportunity from that day until the day I came to you and I never got it back quite that way and some things happened that night and I woke up the next morning in a way that I was going to wake up in over and over again until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I wokeup in a mess and it was mine I woke up with a new fear about me. I told you I'd been afraid a lot, but now I had a new fear. And I didn't know I had that fear then. I didn' t know it until I was doing that inventory. You know where I started out on that paper writing down who I hated and why I hated? Went back and found in that column everybody I hated and why i hated them. My sponsor had me do something else then. Now I'm able to take it before I get the fear. He had me... Well, I put down about that guy Siraj and what he had done to me. Got my money and I was going bankrupt. All that stuff I hated him for. He had put down how it affected me. I told you how it affected my sex life It affected my self-esteem Because I knew I wasn't a husband and a father like I should be It affected me It affected by security because I was going broke There was fear underneath it all He had me write that down He had to go down those lists I had And put it next to every resentment I had Put down the ways it affected me And then John said we're going to do something a little different now, Jay Yeah, some of those people wronged you And yeah, you weren't always wrong But he said we are going to try and look at each and every one of those little differences He said, I want you to look and see where you were wrong. And I said, John, how can I? I wasn't wrong with this guy. I brought him over here to the land of the big PX for God's sakes. How could I have done it? He said Jay, stop and think and pray about it. Maybe you said something or did something. And I prayed about that and I'll tell you what I found. I'd uprooted a man from his home country and because of what we had done he would never go home again. If he ever did, he'd never get out of jail. I had no regard for him. I did it because I thought I could make a lot of money. Yeah, my money had gone. They hadn't gotten it. It had just gone. My intent was to get their money because I thought they had a lot of money in Germany with a factor and I thought I could get my hands on it. Once I looked at my greed and my avarice and my selfishness I put down what I had done the anger went away. Not only did the anger go away but I also had something written down on paper that I was going to have to do to repair that situation. Saying I'm sorry would never get him back home but I was going to have to do something to amend that situation and I can tell you this only my experience in going through that resentment list there was not a single individual on there no matter what they had done to me where I was not able to find my part in the wrong and once I found my part in the anger was dissipated when I got through with that part of the list John had me look at fears and I put them all down and that's where I uncovered this fear that I told you about that I had that night You know, I put down my fears. And when I had them all down, John said, let's pray about them. Because that's what the book says to do. We prayed about them and the book says though you'll feel they were lifted and they weren't lifted. I still felt afraid. And I told John that. And he said, what are you afraid of? I said, I don't know. I'm just afraid. And he showed me where Bill writes about that fear of impending calamity. And God, when he said that, I knew what he meant. He said the fear that something bad is going to happen and you can't stop it. I knew that fear. That fear at 13 years old. That fear of 30 and a half when I got here. The fear that when an envelope came and I didn't have a return address, I wouldn't open it up. Knock on the door and I wouldn' t answer the door. You don' t think that fear is around in an alcoholic? Hell, I make a number of 12-step calls and I deal with a lot of newcomers. They can' t pay the light bill. They had the car repossessed. Every damn one of them has got a cell phone with caller ID. Bill calls it an evil and corroding threat. Our lives are shot through with it. And that was my life. And I can tell you this, that fear grew from 13 to 30 until it completely consumed me. I could escape from it at times when I'd be in a blackout or when I pass out, when I just be out. But when I come back, it'll be bigger than ever. And once I had talked to John about it, we got on our knees and we prayed that prayer. I asked God would he please take it and he took it. And he took het from then till now, but not completely. Whenever I'm doing things I shouldn't do or not doing things they should do, I get a twinge of that again and it's time for me to re-examine right then what exactly I'm doing or not doing once I deal with that and I ask God to remove it, it's gone again so God uses that as a wake up call for guys like me what does it say in the book we continue to watch out for fear and resentment and it doesn't say if it happens to crop up once in a lifetime it doesn' t say when these crop up which sort of tells me they're going to come back periodically and I'm going to have to be watchful for it and do something about it but anyhow I found that fear in that inventory. There's a third part of that inventory, one that I'll touch on briefly before I go on, and that's sex. And the reason I'll talk about it is because the book spends more time on sex than it does on fear or resentment. And the way it starts off is sort of neat. It says now about sex. We all have problems there. There's something about that word all that cuts off the loopholes. I couldn't get out of it. It's either all or what. I don't know. So I was one of them. He said, we all have problems there. What are we going to do about it? And he said, we avoid people who are going to tell us too much pepper or not enough flavor. He said we avoid it. What we do is talk to other people. It's fine. But we let God be the ultimate judge. Put down what our behavior has been. Pray about it. And then ask God to help us come up with a code of living, a sexual code of life that's good with us and our God. I came up with the code that day, a year and a half sober. If I told you I lived by the same code today that I lived then, it would be a lie. Because as I try to grow in the sunlight of the Spirit, that standard has to change. It has to change. And my standard has changed. But I came up with a standard and I lived by it. And when that standard was not enough, the standard changed. And when I try and work with guys or talk with guys about this, I don't tell them what they have to do because it's none of my business. I tell them how I had to do and how I asked my God for help in doing what I have to do. What happens if I fall short? Am I going to get drunk? The book says not necessarily. What was our motive? Do we try again harder. And then it says something else. It says, when nothing else fails, it says work with another alcoholic. That quiets that imperious, imperious? What a word that is. Imperious urge when all else fails. Bill seemed to figure out real quick that working with another drunk will help me when nothing works. And I guess what I'm trying to say is if you haven't looked at that, don't ignore it or the book wouldn't spend so much time on it. But there I was 13 years old coming off my first drunk. And I didn't want it to be that way. I got locked up again, and I went off to a reformatory on an indefinite sentence. I stayed there almost four years. And when I got out of there, I went into the Navy. I didnít get out because I had done well, and they said I was rehabilitated. I Got out because ran away. And then I went in to the Navy, and lasted in the Navy for six months. I wanted to save our country. I want to fight for our country Vietnam was starting that was back in 1959 or 69. I really wanted to be something I wanted to be what I saw on the recruiting poster. I wrote my parents and I told them that I changed and things were going to be different, and they were going to be proud of me. And my mom and dad told me they were, and I came up to Chicago to where we were, outside of Chicago at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to watch a little graduation ceremony. And they watched me graduate, and they'd fallen on hard times financially. They had all money and everything before, and now they had nothing. They rode a bus up there. And they took me into Chicago on a 12-hour pass. And God, I felt good to be with them, and I knew now that I'd be the loving son I always wanted to be, and they would be my loving parents. I went into a restaurant, and I asked them, and my dad looked at me and he said, drink. What would you like? I said, I'll have a beer. I'll have a bear. My dad said he ordered me one and he said he'd have a cup of coffee and order my mother a Coca-Cola. And I remember looking at my dad and saying, what's the matter? Don't you drink? See, my daddy always drank as far back as I can remember. He was never without a drink in his hand. When we went to church, there was a drink In the car when he came out, he drank it. When he got up in the morning to go to work, he drank. When it came home, he drank. He always drank. And now he wasn't drinking. And I knew the only reason he wasn�t drinking was because he didn�t love me. And, I got that feeling inside of me that I�m not enough and that he don�t love me and don�d want to be my friend. And then I looked at my watch and I wondered how soon can I get away from my friends, get away form my folks, meet my friends and do some drinking? If one of you told me that self-denial or self-centeredness was the root of my problem, I would have said you were crazy. And yet all I have to do is look at my life and see it. My mother looked at me at that time and she had a funny look in her eyes. And she said, no, she said your daddy doesn't drink anymore. He's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and he's been sober for three months. I'll tell you a little bit about my daddy. He got sober in 1959 in Rosary Hall. And when he got sober and Rosary hall, Rosary haul at that time was strictly a drying out joint for men. And it was only a three to five day detox run by sister Ignatia. You've got one shot in there. And that was all you were checked in by an AA sponsor. The only person that saw you was your AA sponsor and the men that he put on the list to see you No family, no phone. The only stuff in there to read was a big book of 12 and 12 and I think a grapevine. That was it. And after you got through shaking it out, they discharged you. They discharged you into your carrier sponsor. He took you to AA. I heard about my dad later that he had spent five days in straps in a hallway because they thought he'd die, convulsed out of his last drunk. And when he left there, Sister Ignatia gave him a little sacred hard badge. She gave him the little bronze thing with it. She suggested to my dad that he go over to this sponsor, to Alcoholics Anonymous and said that if you do what those men tell you to do, you'll never have to come off another drunk. My daddy went with his sponsor to Alcoholic Anonymous and he stayed sober by doing what you told him to do from that day until the day he died on March 21st in 1981. I didn't know what my dad had done when he offered to buy me a drink. I did not see that as a sign of unconditional love and non-judgmental behavior. I didn't see it. I saw it as an act of selfishness on his part, that he didn't love me. And I got away from him. I met my friends and I drank. And i woke up the next morning the same way i woke up the last time i drank. But now i had more problems because i was in the navy and they didn't like my behavior. My career in the Navy doesn't take a long time to talk about. Five months and 29 days after i was there, i was out. Andi didn't get out because i went in. Went in as an E1, got out as an E1. And the way I got out is I woke up in a room. It was a big room. It was the Nut War of the Naval Hospital in Pensacola, Florida. I didn't know where I was. The last thing I knew was I'd got off the ship and gone ashore. I woke up in that hospital, and they called me before board officers, and they gave me a paper to sign. And they said that if I would sign it, they would give me an honorable discharge, but that if I didn't sign it they were going to court marshal me and dishonorably discharge me. That's easy alternatives. I signed the paper. Then I asked them what it was. They said it was a guarantee that I'd never attempt to reenlist in any of the armed forces as long as I lived that I was a lousy sailor and I forfeited all rights and benefits I didn't think that I thought to myself if they'd have left me alone and gave me a break I'd have been alright you see it was never drinking that gave me the problem it was always you that gave my the problem or them that gave me the problem or that that gave me the trouble it wasn't drinking they told me that I had what they would term to be acute alcoholism they said that means when you drink you get in trouble and they said if you stop now you can have a good life ahead of you but if you continue you won't be long and you'll be chronic. I didn't believe it. How could they tell me that? I wasn't quite 18 yet. I hadn't had my first date, for God's sakes. If I had, I wouldn't tell you about it. Remember where I'd been. But anyhow, so my career in the Navy was less than glorious. So I was out of there and I went back to my mother's house from what was to be the last time there. And I went up to my mom and dad's house and I bought me, I got me a driver's license on my 18th birthday. I got up there on my 17th birthday and I got a driver'S license that day. and I got an old Studebaker. It was a real old car and rusted up real bad. I got that and I went out to celebrate my 18th birthday. I went to a bar and I began to drink and I woke up the next morning the way I woke in every time that I drank. But the environment was slightly different once again. This time it was a jail and they had arrested me for eight traffic violations. It started with drunk driving and went downhill from there. They always throw in assaulting an officer with little guys. I don't know why. Probably because they can get away with beating us up. I don' t know. But I had eight traffic violations, and they let me out of jail. And the reason they letme out of jail is because my mother was clerk at courts in that suburb of Cleveland. And I went back to her house. And when I walked in, my sister was there, and my motherwas there. My sister was a year younger than I, and she'd just joined the Ursuline Convent. She was going to become a nun. She's still in the Ursula Convent, and now she was there with my mother, and she was trying to console my mother. My mother was crying, and I asked my mother what was wrong. The thought inside of me is, why are you crying, lady? I'm the one that was in jail. I'm not the one who got accused falsely of behaving that way. You shouldn't be crying. And she looked at me, and she said, I'm pregnant. And right now I'm praying that I will naturally abort this child or that it will be a girl because I don't want another boy like you. When we talk about that we only hurt ourselves, see, my whole plea was when you say something to me, I am only hurting myself. And I really believe that. All I've got to do is look at my life and what I have done, and I see who I've hurt and why I've heard. Everybody that came in contact with me was hurt. I had destroyed that lady. I wasn't to be close with my mother for a very long, long time. So I left her house and I joined the Merchant Marine shortly after that. They told me I was a lousy sailor so I got on my first ship. You know, my seagoing career was sort of speckled to begin with. I went over to Japan on that first ship, I went ashore, I took a drink and I got in trouble. The captain got me three days later, brought me back to the ship and he logged me. That's a disciplinary action on a merchant ship. He logged me and fired you. So they had me in the logbook, and I was fired. And I was concerned about that. I was 18 years old, and I didn't want to have problems like this. And I talked to the other guys in this old tramp freighter, and they laughed. They said, hell, we all quit when we get off the ship, so don't worry about it. We got 300 ships under union agreement. Each one of them is a separate entity. So one company can't refuse you for your actions on another ship. So I did the math. Each voyage three or four months long. 300 ships, that's 1,200 working months. Hell, I ain't going to live long enough to run out of companies to work for. So I had a secure career. And I made a lot of money. When you got off the ship, you didn't get paid a lot an hour, but you got a lot hours' work and they didn't give it to you until you got on board. And they paid you in $100 bills and that makes you feel like a big shot if you're like me. And I'd have a pocket full of $100 deals. I'd go buy a nice suit and I'd drink on Skid Row. And I feel better than the people that I was around. And as long as I felt better than you, I didn't think I had a problem. I didn'T think I HAD a problem and things kept getting worse. I had rules in my drinking and those rules worked for a while. I wouldn't drink while I was on a ship then. And as long as I didn't take the first drink, I knew I didn' t get drunk. That wasn' t something I learned in AA. I knew if I didn''t start, it never got bad. But those periods of not starting got closer and closer together. And as I couldn' t live by those rules, those rules changed. By the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I couldn''t live by any rules. The last two years of my drinking were a blackout. You know, things were getting worse. I got a license in the Merchant Marine, became an officer, and things got worse. I said, well, I' ll get married. Marriage is the solution. I've studied married people. They never had problems. I'll just get married, have kids, and no problems. So I was sitting in a room with a woman who sat right down next to me. First woman I'd met smaller than me. A little bitty old redhead, and God, she was mad. She was mad, I was always mad, she made me look happy. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me. She said, I really don't care much for you, don't cares much for anyone else. And I found out why. She had a husband that had abused her badly for a number of years. She had another one just born. And this man had beat her badly. And she wanted nothing to do with men or nothing to do with life. That was a challenge. I hauled the money out of my pocket, spread them $100 bills out. I began to lie and she began to listen. And after a lengthy courtship, I proposed to her. Now, were she here for you to ask? And how long it was, she'd tell you, it was about 10 minutes. I personally think it was 20 minutes. You who are alcoholic understand we don't rush into it. We don't have to make hasty moves into big decisions. We take our time. 20 minutes is a long time. Well, stop and think about it. I do a three-minute slow dance with somebody. We're married, divorced. She cheated on me, and I beat her. I don't know what happened. The alcoholic mind is a tool. Anyhow, it was a challenge. And she disappeared from there because she was afraid of me because I acted sort of nuts. And I found her in Florida a few months later. And she was living with her family. And I told her that I needed her and I wanted her. And she told me if I quit drinking the way I drank and if I stopped using the language that I used, she'd consent to seeing me again. To make a long story short, on October 14th, 1966, she was divorced. And October 15th, 1966, we got married. And I'll tell you about the wedding. As we're getting married, I got a little boy holding onto my leg, Ricky. And he's looking up at me and he's crying. And he said, please be my daddy. I'm a guy who never had a daddy growing up or never felt like it. And I made a commitment to him. I'll be your daddy. I'll be all the things to you that a daddy's going to be. A little girl, holding her in my arms. I said, I'll do all the thing that a little girl is going to do. And I said I'll become her daddy. And I'll doing all the thins that daddies do with little girls. And the woman I was marrying, I was going to committed to her. I mentioned that word earlier. I was gonna be committed to here. I was gong to be faithful to her, I was goign to give her security, I was gonig to do everything that a loving husband is supposed to do and if one of you would have told me, alcoholism will keep you from it, I would have said, you're crazy. I thought because I wanted to do it and I really, really wanted to do it that I could do it. I didn't know I had no power to do what I was doing. All I had was the desire. And it takes more than that. It takes power. And I had not power. But I didn' t know that. We got married. We got marry at the Candlelight Flower Shop on Congress Avenue right across from the Farmer's Market in West Palm Beach, Florida. It wasn' t a fancy wedding. Hell, I'd run short of money. I got her down to about 25 bucks. They hummed Here Comes the Bride. Vaughn got one rose with very little petals on it. We had two witnesses. Left there, I went over to her aunt's house. They had a little reception for us. I remember walking in that house with my new wife, this woman I'm going to be committed to. And they gave me a glass of punch. And I took a drink. And I got mad. Hell, it was just punch. There wasn't no liquor in it. None of them people drank. When you go to weddings, you're supposed to drink and celebrate. I knew that. So I grabbed my new life. I was mad and I grabbed my new ex-wife and I left that wedding. And I stopped at a liquor store and I got a bottle and I began to drink and she wouldn't drink with me so I picked up a drinking buddy it was just a bum on the side of the road he sat next to her I sat on the other side I drove we drank and she just sat there and I woke up the next morning the same way I woke every time I drank same fear same not remembering what happened the night before and the environment again had once again changed I had a woman laying next to me and she was crying and I don't mean tears just running down to mess up her face I'm talking about that deep down sobbing and everybody in here has either heard it or done it and you know how bad it feels when you're hearing someone cry that way. And you want to do anything to stop it. And I asked her, I said, I just told her, I'm sorry. And she said, I won't live this way anymore. I've lived this way before and I'll not live this way again. And I took a bow. I told her that I was sorry and that I wouldn't do it anymore. Please give me just one more chance. Please give me just one More chance. And She did. And She gave me another chance and another chance and another chance all the way up until March the 8th of 1974. And never once did I tell her a lie. I meant it just as sincerely as I meant anything. I don't know how we stayed married. I can only guess. I kept going to see her in an emergency room working on ships and I'd be gone for three months or six months or nine months, one time 14 months and when I was gone I'd write a letter every day and I would write a love letter and I wrote a letter telling her of my love for her and what she meant to me and how sorry I was for what had happened and I promised her things in that letter and I thought that because I wrote it and because I meant I could do it I didn't know that I was powerless. I didn' t know. And she'd believe them. And when the ship would come in, wherever it came to, whether it was Halifax, Nova Scotia or Fort Lauderdale, wherever it was, she'd meet me. Or she'd met me at an airport when I flew in. And when she'd see me, I could see that hope in her eyes all the way where she is. And I'd see that hop until I got up close to her and she'd smell liquor on my breath and go out of her as though I threw cold water on her. I don' t know why. And I didn''t want it to be that way. In 1973, I was blackballed out of the Merchant Marine for chronic alcoholism. They labeled me a performer. That's a word they used in that industry. And they said they wouldn't have guys like me running their ships. And they threw me out and they said they wouldn'T let me back in and let me back on a ship until I proved I could stay sober for a while. In 1974, I found myself knocking on a man's back door 1,200 miles away from where we lived. When I knocked on his door the first time, he answered it and the first words out of his mouth, the first word out of my mouth to him were I think I have a problem drinking. I had never said that to anyone. People would talk to me about, you're going to go to hell, you're gonna die, I'm gonna leave you, you're gunna get fired. They'd talk to my about my drinking, but I never admitted it. I never said it. I don't know where it came from that night. It just came out. I think i have a probem drinking. And that man laughed. He gave me real laughter when he laughed. And it didn't make me feel bad. And he escorted me back into his house to his study. Set me down on a sofa and he reached into his desk and he pulled out a copy of this book right here and he handed it to me. He said, open it up son and I opened it up and there were some words written inside that said if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it God will help and it was signed Love Dad and my dad had had that book for a number of years waiting for me in that desk. My dad had been active in Alcoholics Anonymous from the day he got here and see my dad listened to you people he'd come to you and he'd say my son's killing himself my son is losing the career that he's earned my son has lost his family and you people said leave him alone you didn't talk to him about intervention you didn' t talk to him about raising his body you said leave him alone and I'm so glad you did because you said if you leave him alone maybe he'll have somewhere to go when he has nowhere else to go and that's how it was for me when I had nowhere else to go I had somewhere to go had he said something to me before that I wouldn't have paid any attention because I never paid any attention to anything he said as soon as he said it I did the opposite but by saying nothing I had somewhere to go that doesn't mean he hadn't given little hints around there hell when I was thrown out of the Navy he took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I thought he was taking me there like you show off the Lions Club or something you know and there would be pamphlets around the house when I'd go over there you know I used to have the John Hopkins Institute pamphlet the questions I'd try and score on the test you know I'd lie a little bit but you know I never let them know But he never said anything. So he just let me go where I had to go and do what I had to do when I had nowhere else to go, I had somewhere to go. And then he said, this is on March the 7th, he said come with me to a meeting and I wouldn't go because I was drunk. And he tried to talk me into it but I wouldn'T go. He said well tomorrow morning, he said when you wake up, if you wake up, he said here's three phone numbers, call one of them before you take a drink and meet me tomorrow night and we'll go to a meetIng. And I went out that night, put those phone numbers in my pocket and my billfold and I went out that nighT and I drank because that's all I did then. At that stage of my drinking, my life was only drinking. I'd wake up and I'd drink. I'd pass out and I'll wake up. And that's all I had to do was drink. And there was always a drink next to me. And I woke up the next morning and there was a drink next to it and I needed it. And I wanted it. But there was something different. And the thing that was different was that inside of me there was this feeling that I didn't want to drink that was stronger than that wanting to drink. You know in our meeting rooms many times where our slogans, as we see them up there, there's one that's got real special meaning to me. And it's that one that says, but for the grace of God. Grace today I know comes from a Latin word that means mercy and gift. And I believe God's merciful gift to me was that morning, that desire not to drink that was stronger than the desire to drink. I had not said God help me. And yet He had given it to me Why? Because I had a moment of silence for the suffering alcoholic? Because my mom prayed for me? My wife? My kids? My dad? I don't know. I don't have to know. I just know it was there. And I know it Was there with a responsibility, a responsibility given to me just like it was given to you, a responsibility that I'd do everything I can to keep it or I'd lose it. Now what can you do the first day? What's everything you can do? Everything I could do was just not drink that morning. I had those numbers and I didn't call them. She took me to the hospital and they gave me a shot. Back then they didn't use the stuff they use now. They used vitamin B12. To my knowledge, the needles were about that long and they were square. And they used the same spot in the left cheek. Unerringly, they hit the same... It still hurts when I think about it. And I don't know if it helped or not, but I didn't have to drink. They said it helped my nerves and it must have because I didn' t drink. And then they told her, they said, give them honey and orange juice. That'll help. The sugar in it is the same stuff that's in alcohol and that can help with the craving. So she got it, but she didn' d get honey. We didn' nd get along real well. She got K-Rose syrup. Now, Kansas has some climates sort of like Cleveland High. You know, when it gets cold in March, it's cold. You mix you up some K-Rose syrup and orange juice, you'll see what it looks like. Chunks of road tar floating around. It'll eat you up when you drink it. I don't know if it helped or not, but I didn't have to drink. And then they told her, they said, give him candy. Every time he asked Grouchy, give a piece of hard candy. She got sour balls. Be a little more loving than that. Get something sweet. But anyhow, so I had, and I don' t know what, but they told me to do it and I did it. I didn' t question it. And then I met my daddy that night, and he carried me to a meeting. It was a meeting just like any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. We came in the back door, and there was a guy standing there. And my dad said, this guy's shaking my hand. And my Dad said, that's Jimmy, and He's your sponsor. My Dad takes off, and I've got this idiot hanging onto my hand! God, I pray that I never forget it. He gave me the handshake of Alcoholic Anonymous As he shook my hand, I can remember it right now. His hand was firm and it was warm and it was dry. And I know what my hand was. It was scared and it Was cold and it Was wet. And as he shook my Hand, he said, My name is Jimmy and I'm glad to meet you. And I just accepted That. I didn't think about it. I just Accepted it. And then he did something No one else had ever done. He began to talk to me about him. He told me what happened When he drank. He told Me where it took him. He Told me when he tried to stop, how he couldn't Stop. When he tried To moderate, he couldn'T moderating. Things would get worse, and he'd try. And I tried all them things, and I'd done all them things. And then he said, it ain't that way anymore. And he left me sort of hanging, and the meeting started. And the guy told his story much like I'm telling mine. When it got all finished, Jimmy talked to me some more. He introduced me to the winners of that meeting. He called them the winners. I remember them guys. Every one of them telling me, keep coming back, kid. You'll be all right. Keep coming back. Keep hanging in there. They all said that. Every one of them shook my hand. Made me feel welcome. Jimmy talked to me some more. He talked to me about that he hadn't had to have a drink in like four years and that was so long I could hardly believe it. And I said, how'd you do it? He said, I'll tell you what, I'll guarantee you that if you do three things on a daily basis, you will never have to come off another drunk. Will you do them? I said yeah, I'd do anything. What is it? Number one, when you get up in the morning, you say God help me not take a drink today. And then number two, if you can, you go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Jimmy knew I was a merchant seaman and he knew I'd probably go back to sea. He said there'll be days you'll be on a ship and you can't go. But if you kan, you'll go. There'll be days at home maybe you kan't go, but if you kann, go. He says, and then number three, when you go to bed at night, you say, thank you God for a sober day. Will you do it? And I looked at that man, the same guy who said he'd do anything. I looked at him and said, Jimmy, I can go to meetings, but I cannot pray. I've been raised in a religion. I explained to I'd been raised in a religion with a God of love. I knew about a God love, but I also knew about a God that I bargained with, a God I had damned, a God who I had lost any conception of inside of me. I might have conceded there was one, but I didn't believe in one. I had nothing. And he looked at me and laughed again. You know, laughter is a great healing tool in Alcoholics Anonymous. As he laughed, I felt acceptance. And he said, Hell, Jay, you don't have to believe. Just say the words. And that's what our book says, you see. our book doesn't say you have to believe it says if you believe or are even willing to believe you're on your way. And all he was doing was establishing willingness and I was willing to say those words without believing them or having any meaning to them. The very next day he carried me don't worry I'm not going to take you through 26 years, 5 months of sobriety a day at the time but I need to tell you a few things. The very last day the very next Day he picked me up for a meeting. Now he didn't say Jay do you want to go to a meeting? There wasn't any question. He just said, I'll be there at 7 or we'll go into a meeting. So I just accepted that. By the time I thought I had a choice, we were already in the rhythm. You know, so he picked me up the next night. We're on our way to a meeting and he asked me one of the dumbest questions anybody's ever asked me. He said, have you had a drink since I dropped you off last night? How the hell could I have had a dream? He dropped me off at 1 o'clock in the morning. 6 o' clock he called so I'd get to the hospital. 8 o'lock he called to make sure I got back from the hospital noon. Called again to make certain I was doing all right. 4 o' lock checked again and 7 o' block picked me out. I couldn't drink didn't have no time didn't tell him that told him no of course not he said by God that's great he said do you know if you drink now it's because you want to drink not because you have to drink I said what are you talking about are you crazy he said no man he said you just stayed sober the longest period of time you ever got to stay sober one day that's all we got to do is one day and you did it you did what I told you to do and you didn't you ain't drinking a day He said, you got it now, man, because that's all we do. I'm glad he made it simple. If he'd have said 90 and 90, I'd have been screwed on 91. Attainable goals is what this deal is all about. A day at a time. Simple. And he took away every excuse I'd ever have. Every excuse. Two weeks into this program, we're coming back from a meeting. I looked over at him, and I said, Jimmy, I still don't believe in this God business. And he laughed again. And he said, today was the very first time you did anything in AA other than be there. What was it? I said, well, I read the traditions. He said, before you read them, what did you say? I said、I'm Jay and I'm an alcoholic. And he asked me what an alcoholic was and I explained to him because by then I accepted what you said on page 21. I knew I had what the doctor called the obsession of the mind and that allergy of the body. I had that phenomenon of craving that is unique to our class of drinkers. We're the only ones that got it. And I had it and I accepted it. And he left. He said, I know you have it. I want to make sure you knew you had it. He said. Have you been doing what I told you to do every morning and every night? And I said. Yes, I have. I don't believe it. I don' t believe in what I'm saying. But I do it. And I feel like a hypocrite. And I feeI phony. But I'm doing it. He said,. That's all right. He said., How long has it been since you had a drink? Now today I don''t remember exactly. Then you can bet I did remember. Whether it was 13 or 14. Or I knew how long. And I told him. And then he asked me that question that changed the course of my life. He said, when was the last time that you've been this long without taking a drink a day at a time? And a feeling came over me that I can only describe to you is the awareness of a power that became personal to me. God became personal because God had done something personal to Me. He had done Something for Me that I hadn't even asked Him to do in reality. I was just repeating words. And He became personal. He allowed me not... Because I wanted to drink. See, a lot of people come today, hey, they don't want to drink from the moment they get here. That won't mean... I wanted to drink every day. I'd think about it. I'd say thank you, God, for a sober day and I didn't mean it. I wished I'd have been drunk, I'd thank. I wish I'd, I think, well, I should have been drank today. I didn' t feel any thankfulness and I din' t mean it when I'd say help me and yet he helped me because I went through the motions and at that point I became aware of a power. My relationship from that, with that power from that day to this would literally take a lifetime to explain but it's been absolutely fantastic. It's grown into something that I never would have dreamed possible because it's with a personal power, a personal God. You know there's a guy named T.P.R. Chardin that wrote a book about things, about guys like me. He wrote, he had some statements in there. He said man needs physical manifestation of intangible beings. And that's why many of us have to have something physical to be able to say it represents God. I know that. A lot of us use AA. A lotof us use certain deities. Whatever it is, you've got to have something that's personal to you, something you can grab onto. I'd have something I could grab onto that was personal to me. and I've found other ways to work with that over the years. As a result of those steps working in my life that I told you about, just for your information, the inventory was taken the day after I took step three. It started that night and was finished the next day and the reason it was finished that next day is because we took step five the next date. Six and seven were that night. We talked about eight the next morning and I was making amends that night I don't know how long it takes to work the steps for anyone. For me it was a year and a half and three days. Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? You can drag it out for a lifetime. You know, it's simple, but it takes desperation to do it. I was desperate and had nowhere to go. And as I read the stories in the book of the first hundred, that's what happened. Desperation forced immediate action. But anyhow, as a result of taking those actions, things began to happen. The mother, the mother that I told you about, that would rather have naturally aborted that child or had a girl rather than have a boy because of what I had done in their lives. In 1975, I called my mother for the first time in many years. Called her on a Sunday. I was off the ship and I called her because I began to make amends to her right after starting with Johnny. He told me what to do. He said, do what a loving son does and I did it. I called him. I didn't like my mother. I didn' t love my mother and I didn''t want anything to do with her but he told me I had to amend that relationship so I called up and I said, Hi, Mom. And she said, Hi, son. It's been a long time and I say, Yeah, I've been busy. I got to go. I hung up. And I called her the next Sunday, and I said, hi, Mom. She said, Hi, son. And I said mom was good to hear your voice last Sunday, and that was a lie because it wasn't, but I said it. And she said something to that, and added to that. And over the course of the next 25 years, 24 years, I built a relationship with my mother. We had long, long conversations. We became very close. My mom died in February of 1999. my mom had diabetes and she had like 22 operations in 18 months there was nothing left of her it was all cut off it was pieces and I'd been up to see her a week before she died and I went back home I'd flown up to sea her and she was living in Cleveland and I was living in Myrtle Beach and I flew back home and I got a call and it was my mom or my sister calling from my mom she said mom's going to die probably tomorrow the next day and she wants to see you one more time and I blew up there to Cleveland and I remember going into Parma Hospital where she was and there was doctors in there and there were some nurses in there and there's my mom in there. My mom had that funny look in her eye and the nurse took one look at me and said this must be your son that you're telling us about and my mom said that's my son and he's the best son a mother could have and do you know he's an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and has almost 25 years? Don't tell me this deal doesn't work. Don't say it. Don't call me that making amends means saying I'm sorry. It means taking actions that you don't want to take in ways that you don't know how to repair a situation, to repair a relationship. My dad and I, different deal. My dad was a cold man. I never got very close to him. I knew that he loved me but I never felt that he liked me. I just, you know, I knew as I stayed sober. My dad had cancer. He died in 1981 and it was a terrible, terrible death. He kept himself away from me and my sisters and brother. Wouldn't let anyone near him. Moved to Florida. And I didn't know if things were okay between me and dad or not. I didn't know if I'd really done all that was necessary in step nine. And my sponsor told me, do what a loving son does. And I did. I left him alone. I allowed him to die with dignity. I did not force something on him that he didn't want. I thought there were things he should stop doing or start doing. My sponsor said, leave it be. Do what a Loving Son does. When I said, what's that? He said, if you're a loving Son, you'll know. And I Did What a Lovin' Son Does. I allowed my daddy to die without dignity. But just before his death, on my seventh day, eighth birthday, I got a card from him. And I couldn't read the card. It was just scribbles at the bottom of it. but it said love dad and a letter fell out and it was from my mom and my mom said you need to know what dad was trying to tell you before he sent this he'd taken himself all his pain medication and he wanted to know how he felt and he said his words were this dear son congratulations on your AA birthday what a glorious and wonderful day he said how can we ever be grateful enough to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and for all that it's given us. For it's giving us a loving God who's returned a lost son and rediscovered a lost father. Don't tell me it doesn't work. Don't telling me it doesn't do it. How can I be grateful enough? I'll tell you in a minute. Let me tell you about my wife and kids. Kids are all grown up now. One's 40, one's 36, one's 32. I've got an 18-year-old granddaughter going to have a baby two weeks from now. Don't repeat it though, I'm not that old. I got a good relationship with all of them, with all of them. My wife and I, we had a normal marriage. That meant we fought some days, we got along some days. It was a normal marriage. I was married to her. I had always wanted to be committed to her in 1994. She had a heart attack. They found some trouble with their circulatory system. She has rapid aging as atherosclerosis very advanced. She was 50 couple years old and they said she could have 20 minutes. She could have twenty years. They didn't know two months later. They were trying to clean out her carotid arteries, and they collapsed on her because the veins and arteries were just shot in her. She had a stroke, had a massive stroke. And the woman that I'd been married to since 1996 changed that day and became a different woman entirely. And we stayed married. And I found what it was to be committed. And I tried to do the right thing. I would keep trying to do the next right thing, and I didn't want to, and at times I wanted to run, and at times, I wanted out, but I kept trying to do it. And I kept working with people. And I love my wife. My wife died July 12th of this year, 1 20 a.m. My wife had cancer in 96. That didn't get her, but that other thing got her. July 12th at 1 20 a. m., we were going to Mexico the next day for our son's wedding. There was going to be a big gala wedding down in Mexico and she wanted to go to it. It was the day before she died that I told her she couldn't make it. I could do it if she demanded it. That had arranged with the airlines, but I thought she'd die in the flight. And she agreed that She couldn't go, and I brought our son up for a day, and he went back home. And I remember that night that she died, though. Last words she said to me were, I love you. And the last words I said to her were, I love your. My wife had been confined pretty much to the house the last three weeks of her life. She didn't have strength to get out of the chair, get out bed. She couldn' t control herself, and I didn' t have to call in a nurse or a nurse's aide. I was able to take care of my wife. It doesn' t make me special. It doesn't make me anything. It just meant that I was able to do things I never thought I was capable of doing. And I knew that everything was okay with me and my wife when she died. I think I know something about God and the relationship with God. I'll share something about her. She was scared to death. They told her it was coming in April. They said she had eight months. Turned out she didn't have but a couple. But they told her eight months and she got so scared she had to go in the bathroom to clean up and when I'm talking to the doctor and we went home and we talked about this deal, this fear. And I told her what I do when I have this fear and I said, I've never faced death like that but what I'm going to do is what I'll do when fear is killing me when I can't get away. My prayer to God is God you take it, I can handle it. God you takes it, I can hand it. God you can take it I can take over and over and over and God takes it and it's okay. And she began trying to do that and she was doing other things and about a month before she died the fear was gone. She didn't want to die but the fear were gone. She didn' t tell me why or how it was just gone. And that night, a few hours or an hour before she died, we'd call in hospice on Tuesday of that day because we knew it was just a matter of time. We called in hospICE, and I was cleaning the bedroom out, all the jewelry and stuff that might walk away. I was starting to put it in the office and lock it up. And as I cleared it, there was a little box laying on the dresser, and it was a box with a little old cheap hinge on it and a cheap padlock, some keys wired to it. Now, my wife and I, we treated each other's privacy great. I would never go in her purse. She'd never go on my wallet. If she wanted something, I'd hand her her purse, let her get it. But anyways, I'm clearing this stuff off. I saw this box and I shook it and it sounded like money in it and paper in it and I figured there were bills in it. I said, hell, I better get this stuff put away. So I went to open the box up and as I opened it, I sat on the side of the bed and I looked at her over there sort of fitfully resting and as the third opened the box I felt almost as though I were violating her. That I was opening something that I shouldn't. But I opened and there was a piece of paper inside and then I knew what that box was. It was what they call a God box or whatever in Al-Anon. See, my wife was an active member of Al-Al-Anan until the day she died. I took that piece of paper out and I read it. And I realized the depth of her relationship with her God, and I knew that everything was all right. Because it just said this. It said, Dear God, please take away this awful fear and please help me to accept your plan for me. And that wasn't even the strong part of the prayer, my friends. It was how she signed it. She signed it with all my love, Vaughn. I've never talked to my God and ended the prayer by saying with all my love, Jay, I've always just left the prayer at the end. And I realized that with her relationship with her God that she was alright. She'd never found Al-Anon had it not been for Alcoholics Anonymous because you directed her there. So how can I be grateful enough to this deal we got called Alcoholics Aanonymous? I'll tell you how. God gave these principles to a couple of guys who gave them to other guys who gave to me. Each and every one of us in that line charged with the same responsibility, that we do nothing to weaken it, nothing to water it down, nothing make it better or improve it, but leave it exactly the way it was when we got it. So there's a place for a drunk to go like me who's got nowhere else to go. Thank you so much for my God. May I call it a night? Thanks for watching!