The Restoration to Sanity Business – Mickey M.

Thank you, my name is Mickey and I'm an alcoholic. It's a pleasure to be here believe me and it's a privilege and I want to thank Sherry and Jim and Charlie and all the committee and all of folks who have put this together because the more we do this the more I have come to appreciate the hard work that and the energy that goes into putting together such a nice conference for us and I think they deserve a nice hand. You know, I was thinking, Rob is an airline pilot, and so he's an old hand at being up there in the blue skies and all that, but I was thinking as we were bumping in behind a rain squall line into Kansas City on Friday, I am terrified of flying, and I'm coming in like this, you know, and It's me and God again, you know. And I've always been real scared of people and now I've just gotten myself involved with about 400 of them. And, you Know, to get up and then talk and stand when there's nobody in the room making noise but you. And I have to wonder about this restoration to sanity business. i have come here for two reasons one so that i can maintain the sobriety that i found in alcoholics anonymous and the second reason is that i love you and that is truly why i decided to come out and talk in aa there's no way that you can pay people back for having spent years saving your life. And that's what happened with me and I guess with all of us. And they came not because of certainly my last name, which is not terribly significant or where I live or what I do. They came because I was a drunk who was dying and in trouble. And they also wanted to save their own lives, but they came to me at no cost. Now, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous for two weeks of sobriety. i thought if i could get two weeks without drinking two weeks without hurting like that um i'd really be ahead of the game you know i just if i Could just stop hurting that bad and uh you know damn normally it takes me a while to start crying but i just don't do this thing But I thought, you know, if I could just have two weeks without that pain, I couldn't imagine a life without alcohol. So give me two weeks and I'll go. And I never knew it was possible to be alive without alcohol, I guess I don't know what it means to you but I am a real alcoholic and I started drinking I'm going to do what it says in the big book I'm gonna tell you what it was like what happened and what it's like now I started drinking when I was five years old and and I drank from the time I was five years old until I was 27 when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous too young to be an alcoholic too pretty to be an alcoholic too rich to be an alcoholic too anything to be an alcoholic but the point of that is is that I never knew life without alcohol I did not know what it meant to be alive and just grow up and do things I had a relationship with a chemical and I did not know a thing about the disease of alcoholism I had no clues as to the fact that at a very early age I had found the missing piece of my puzzle and so when people talk about making a great discovery and then finding that it put them at ease and doing all that, I didn't have that experience I just grew up with my friend alcohol there are so many things that I want to tell you Ted starts to race him, so we'll just sort of do it by the numbers i was kicked out of every school i ever went to until i got to high school and the reason i was kicked out because we're here to talk about alcoholism not just drinking um i was picked out of all of those schools because well what they put on my report card was this was a discipline problem and they'd write discipline problem on my report card and kick me out of their schools and the discipline problem sort of worked out this way if you were a teacher and I was in your classroom. If you said something I didn't like, I would stand up in the middle of your classroom and tell you what I thought of that and of you. Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we believe is the root of our problems. And I was angry and I wasn't scared. I didn' t realize until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous that I was scared, but I was really angry. I was angry that you didn't do what I wanted you to do. I was angered that you did not appreciate what a genius you had in your classroom. I was angrier at the other kids because they did not do what you wanted them to do, and the light was always on me. Always on me, me, and me. And I got kicked out of all of those schools, and the trouble started early. Now, I don't know exactly what problem drinker means, but I had problems all my life and I was always in trouble. And, you know, when you start getting kicked out of all those schools and you've got to go home and tell your folks again and again and again that it's happened again and you have got to come up with a reason why and I couldn't. But I had to stay alive. So what I did with that equation was that I turned it around and I said there is something wrong with you. there's nothing wrong with me there's something wrong with you and so I just turned it out that way and I can tell you by the time I was in the 8th grade I was reading Emil Ludwig's Napoleon and identifying and I I read this book about Napoleon and here was a man who was misunderstood and he was a genius And God, I mean, all of France, you know, he was a Corsican. And, you Know, they hated the Corsicans. But this little guy came on up there and he just about conquered all of Europe. And I sat and I read that thing and I said, God, that's it. I can identify with that man. It's a genius. I'm just having this nasty streak. And when it's all over, man, I'm going to bloom and blossom. And it's going to be, you Now, then they'll know what they had in their room, see? because the weird part of it was is that I was an altar boy and I was a vandal. I was the devil and I wasn't a devil. I was making A's when I showed up. I was being impeached by the teachers. So it's sort of a mixed bag. but isn't that the truth in your life i mean haven't you seen that you know god when i first came into alcoholics anonymous they'd say mickey you know would you like to say something i'd have to sort of do a review in here as to which one which mickey was going to answer the question was it going to be the altar boy was it gonna be the vandal and was it going to win or the loser and i carried all these people with me down the road and we got wetter and we got in more trouble now I'm not here seriously to tell you about trouble because we wouldn't be here if we didn't know about that and this is not going to be a lengthy drunk-a-log but I just want to qualify myself so that you understand that I am an alcoholic um and so what happened with all of this, we had a dance last night and I'm reminded every time that happens that this is the private world of Mickey and you had your private world and I had mine. What happened was is I was afraid of girls and real interested but afraid. And so I was too shy to go up and ask a girl when it was that time to teach me how to dance because girls always seem to know how to danc and they got together and they did all that well, most of them. And And so I didn't ever go up to any of the girls and ask them if they'd teach me how to dance. And as a result, I never did learn how to danse. I mean, I can get out there and sort of swing and sway. But I never asked them to dance, but what I did is I drank. And in my mind, I became the world's greatest dancer. and uh and the shyness from the girls you see and i'd stand back over here and i wouldn't ask you anything we wouldn't get together for a date but i'd have a drink and in my mind i was the world's greatest lover and i was too skinny for football but a couple of drinks you see when i was a captain of the football team and it went on like that you know and uh and so i built this private world and i lived in that private world and I became very special. And I became magic. See, in my little world I was magic. And I never had to... Drunk's luck is what I'm starting to describe here. I never hade to face the consequences of my acts. They'd kick me out but somehow or other I'd land on my feet and I'd go on to someplace else and become the class president and I've maintained that for a while and then I'd fall off the edge and it all would go to pot again. now the people that i like to be around were um losers god i like being around losers they could shoot themselves in the knee i mean whatever it was that's the best joke i ever heard but you see if you went to church and you did your homework and uh you paid attention to your parents, and you did those kinds of things. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with you. I wanted to be with people who were sneaking out in the middle of the night, you know, in grade school like I was, and hanging out on the skids like I was. Now, mind you, I don't come from a poor family, or I was raised close to luxury, but I spent my time on the Skids. I got out of that house, and I spent every time where there was a railroad train going through, that's where I was. And in the middle of the night, and I was always in a jam. And I was stealing. And that's a hell of a way to live. And it's a lousy way to life. And I stayed away from people who knew how to behave and knew how take care of business because they made me feel bad about myself. In comparison, you know, I felt like what I was. And so I just stayed away form all that stuff. And by the time I was 14 years old, if you wanted to come to a party with us, You see, you had to drink Manhattans and, you know, we were all very slick. And a friend of ours' father owned a liquor store and we'd go over there and he'd steal liquor out of his father's liquor store. And a man smoked and a man fought and a men was sort of a jerk. And I tried my damnedest to be a jerk and I think I succeeded. now i use that alcohol i needed that alcohol and i never would have thought of myself as an addict behind alcohol i just wouldn't have ever thought that you know you think about five years old what's he doing drinking at five years ago well it's the i mean in my family we drank if somebody got a promotion then they'd break out the champagne and they'd pour a little bit into me and i'd stagger around and you know miss the wastebasket with a kleenex and isn't he cute and we all went that way. So it wasn't exactly like I was sneaking off and mainlining anything or... And I never thought of myself as an addict or any of that stuff. I just, everybody drank, you know, I drank right with them, but none of us knew that I was alcoholic and that it was going to have different consequences for me. I don't know that anybody in my family is an alcoholic. I have two brothers and mother and father and I just don't think I just know that any of them are alcoholic. like I guess the fickle finger of fate just sort of picked me out, and I got to be the lucky one in my family. So I went along like that, and I get kicked out of those schools, and I went long until I got into high school, and in high school there was a nun who saw me coming for three years. She was a senior English teacher, and she watched the perils of Pauline as I came up through the ranks. and she decided to head me off at the pass right before senior year and she grabbed hold of me and she, I don't know, first of all I know that she did love me because otherwise that's the only thing that carries weight with an alcoholic I guess or anybody else. And she got me aside before school started and she asked me a question and she put the Indian sign on me right away. I couldn't answer the question. She asked me, she said, Mickey, what do other people think of you? She said, not what do you think of other people but what do other people think of you? And I could not answer the question. She had asked me to be objective, I guess for the first time in my life. And there was something about this woman. I don't know what happened in there, but there was a little bit of magic and I was real attracted to her and she let me be who I was. And I came up with all these nutty ideas and she never turned me out of her classroom and she'd say, just come and do a paper on it. And I'd stand up and did papers on the damnedest things you've ever heard in your life. But she always welcomed me back in her classroom, and if it hadn't been for that lady, I don't think I'd have gotten out of high school. And I did papers on such subjects as, it is possible to love other people without loving yourself. I had all these great philosophies, you see, that damn near killed me. And I got through her class, and I got though high school, and I go through college. I almost didn't, but I had a dean of students take an interest in me and the dean of men, and they got me through even despite my alcoholism. I graduated from college and I got married three, I guess about a year after I graduated From College. And I'm still married to the same lady I came into Alcoholics Anonymous with and I'm very proud of that. Now, I guess a lot of people wouldn't share those sentiments in their own lives, but this was one of my goals. I wanted to be married to that lady and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I asked them, I said, how can I stop drinking and how can i stop running around on my wife? See, because they told me that alcoholism makes you sick all over. It's not just the way you drink. It's the way your life is. It's what you think. And so those are my two questions and they had an answer, thank God, for both of those questions in AA. We were married three years before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, the big book says that every alcoholic is like an actor. They present to you the face they want you to see. And what that meant in our home was that in three years, my wife told me that she saw me drunk three times in the first three years of our marriage, and I was drunk every day. And what I did was I needed alcohol. you know it's so fabulous i get the reinforcement for that in this room just like i did the first day i came in here to talk to you when i tell you i needed alcohol i know i'm in a room full of people who understand what it means to need something desperately and i needed it so what i was acting about was please don't get between me and this bottle because if i screw up and i walk over a certain line, you're going to come after that bottle and I can't live. So we've got a very, I knew about intimacy. I had an intimate relationship with alcohol. And so I acted and I tried to act normal, whatever that is. And, um, and so what happened is I put the mask on and the mask started to slip by the grace of God. I went up to put something in the bathroom and I had a hammer in my hand and I put the hammer right through the bathroom wall. You know, I wasn't very good with my hands. And I got frustrated one day and Marie and I were having an argument and I got fascinated because she was right and I didn't have a good comeback and I got nailed and I could not stand being cornered and I stood there and started rocking and I was holding this banister to the stairs, upstairs and I tore the banister off the stairs. And I'm not Mighty Joe Young, folks. And so here's a banister in my hands and look on Marie's face and it's like, what's wrong with this guy? The mask had slipped and we started asking that question, the one I'd always feared and it is, what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?" And I'm glad it slipped. I'd have died behind that sucker. I'd just died behind it. I just didn't have a clue as to what was going on. I had been the three shrinks before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And we never talked about drinking. We talked about my personality. Excuse me. We talked about why don't you take some Valium. Somebody I heard just recently, you probably heard it, but many doctors they say are considering alcoholism to be a Valium deficiency. And I just heard that. That's why I don't know. But, you know, and when you try to fix your hangover with Valium and alcohol, it really gets interesting. But this personality business, I had one of the psychologists that worked with me, and I'm very grateful for these people because I was coming unwrapped. And at least I had a place to go and talk for an hour to somebody about how I felt. So, I mean, I'm not being critical of them. They didn't know I was alcoholic, and I didn't knew I was an alcoholic, so we were even on that one. But this psychologist looked at me one day, and she said, Mickey, she said I've just got to tell you, you are the most negative person I have ever met in my life. she says, I don't understand how you're still walking around those streets. And that was just a description of my personality. We never got to the drinking. To say I was suicidal is an understatement. And we're here to tell the truth to each other. You know, it's important. It says in our big book, if you're going to work with another alcoholic, your message has got to have weight. and properly armed with the facts about yourself so you can go help somebody else. So we're going to tell as much truth as I can conjure up here anyway today. It took me three and a half years in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous to stop being suicidal. This is not a story about let's put the bottle down and start tap dancing our way to glory. I really wanted out. I wanted out of this sucker because it had gotten so painful and I was so confused and frustrated and I didn't know where to go to get out other than let's have a drink or let's die you know there is so much love in this room you just have no idea God, it's just you can just feel it And I was telling Maria before this meeting, it's such a nice swap for a hangover, you know. So what happened was that I just feel like I'm moving in slow motion. Especially after Rod, I don't know, maybe we could do one of these in tandem sometime. I just do all those weird things, and maybe they happen to you. Do you ever sit down to try to get drunk, and you can't? And you drink all night, and this is the meat of it, folks, and you're not going to get there. And all night long, and nothing would happen. A glass of wine, and 24-40, and I'd be so sick inside. And man, I'm, you know, talking living. You know, my new neighbors, I had a six-pack at the end of each arm. I couldn't, this was life on me. And now I can't depend on what's going to happen to me and I'm getting what happened to me and I am getting more like what that psychologist described it as. I was negative. And so it got to a point to make a very long life short. It got to the point where I just said, you know, I just, every morning I'd wake up and I'd say, today I'm not going to have a drink. Now, I went through this, my, I say it was for two weeks. This happened every day for two weeks. Marie says it happened for a month, and that's fine. She remembers she was sober. And I'd awake up every morning, and I said, today, I am not going to have another drink. And that afternoon or that evening, I'd be drunk again. Now, after 22 years of drinking alcohol, after this process happened to me, it finally occurred to me I can't stop drinking. God, I didn't know that. I cannot stop drinking alcohol. And you know, they talk about alcohol is a great solvent. It'll dissolve any damn thing. Marriages, bank accounts, families, you know it's a great solvent and it was dissolving all of those things and me and I just never had really never stopped drinking And all of a sudden I realized that no matter how bad it hurt me, no matter what misery was in my life, I could not put that bottle down. And I said, you know, I better go get help. And I was sitting and Alcoholics Anonymous came to me through Al-Anon. And I love Al-A-Non. I'm so grateful for Al-Al-Anons. there was a lady who came to talk to Marie and she was not talking about us, she was talking about her own family I have got to tell you before this escapes my mind, all of my closest and most desperate drinking buddies are sober and alcoholics none of us, allof them and i'd love to tell you i had a big hand in that i didn't just just got it work you know but this one drinking buddy's wife was sitting in our home and and i'm sitting on the couch uh devastated and not drunk but just uh sick and uh and i hadn't had a drink and this lady was telling my wife about dry drunks and she's talking about dry drugs and what's this And it's been like you having all these experiences, but you haven't had a drink and everything. And I asked her, I said, where did you learn about that? And she was talking about her husband and so on. And she said, Alan on an Alcoholics Anonymous in 1965, maybe or something, whenever the movie The Days of Wine and Roses came out somewhere around in that time, I had seen that movie and I did not remember that AlcoholicsAnonymous was part of it. All I remembered was the drinking. If you don't believe this is a terminal disease, think about that. All I saw was what I wanted to see, and the rest of it went out the window. So Alcoholics Anonymous to me was something out of a 1930s movie. I just didn't know what AlcoholicsAnonymous was, and I had no picture of it or anything, but the one thing that I had in my head was these are people who are drinking, who couldn't stop drinking apparently and they found a way out. Okay? So I called Alcoholics Anonymous. I had gone a week without a drink and then we went to some friend's house and I watched this man pour out a tall, cool Coors beer into a glass. And still to this day I think there's nothing prettier than that. and he poured that beer out there real slow and had a nice head on it and I looked at that and I told Marie I turned to her and I said I'm just going to have one I did man, I mean they were miracles we'll talk about miracles I had one beer that was my last drunk drink I went one more week without a drink and I called Alcoholics Anonymous now I had been driving by York Street Club in Denver And New York Street Club is a famous place. It's just an old house, and a lot of us got sober there. Some people call it the mother house. And I had driven by alcoholics this York Street, and somebody told me that they were alcoholics, that those people were alcoholcs. And I'd drive by and look at them like they were monkeys in the zoo. But I knew where to go when it happened in my life. And I called Alcoholics Anonymous at 10 o'clock one night. And I call because I couldn't stop drinking. And I knew it. I had gone a week without that alcohol, but I knew that I could not stay stopped. It was just a matter of time before I was going to pick up that bottle and I was going to go for it again. Incidentally, if you are new and you're harboring any shadow of a doubt in your life and in your mind and you say to yourself, but I just drank beer and you can't be an alcoholic behind beer. I just drink beer. So please, you know, if your drinking aquavelva, it just doesn't matter whatever you're drinking. If it's got alcohol in it, that'll do. Anyway, I called him at 10 o'clock at night and I just said to him, I said, can you tell me when you're going to have a meeting that I can come to? And this man said on the phone, he said, well, what's your problem? And I said, I'm an alcoholic. And he said congratulations. I thought, oh God, you know, now I've just told this man the worst thing about myself. I've Just told him I'm a moral leper. And he's saying congratulations. This is going to be an interesting ride. And he Said, can you come over to talk to us? And I said, no, my wife was out at a pottery class or something. And anyway, I was babysitting our daughter and I couldn't leave. And I says, I can't leave And he said, would you like somebody to come over and talk to you? And I say, yes. and they came over and I was scared man I was like God what are the neighbors going to think like they had red sweatshirts with A's on them And, you know, what are they going to think? Because I'm going to have these alcoholics on my front porch. And they came over and they carried the message to me that alcoholism is a disease. It's a disease like cancer, thank you, or tuberculosis. And if you got it, you can get better. You can recover from the disease of alcoholism. You see, that's good news for me because I've been to Three Shrinks and they keep laying the 75 cent words on me and these labels about what's wrong with me. And they give me that information and then I got to go home with it. You know, if I forget to say it, you know, this is the difference between Alcoholics Anonymous and psychotherapy is we've got step six and seven. You know? You don't just get bad news and go home With It. You know, so anyway, they came over and I was home. And I tell her, I said, Marie, I just called Alcoholics Anonymous and they're coming over to see me tonight. And she says, should I stay? And I said I don't know because Marie is not alcoholic. And I say, I don' t know. I said well ask them. So they came through the door and I said is it alright if Marie stays and the man turned to her and he said, can you be honest? And she said yes and I vouched for her. And so the... And so the man turned to her and he said the first thing I want you to know is you are just as sick as he is. We're going to tell the truth. And the 12th step proceeded from there. This is fun. I really did come here because I wanted to be here, I promise you that. So he started to share with me about this disease. Now we identify with each other not through what comes out of our mouths, but from what comes out of their hearts. And this man sat there and told me a story. He told me about drinking that I didn't do. He talked to me about coming out of a blackout in a jail in Tennessee accused of the murder of his wife, and he was not sure whether he had done it or not. And they had apparently had a bad fight, and the house was torn up, and there was blood, and all this nonsense going on. And apparently that's all they had had is a fight, and then she left town, and this guy's in jail for murder. And I didn't do that. And he told me about all these other kinds of things, and I didn'T do those things either. But there was something about this guy. I could feel it. And He told me that I might have this disease, and I hoped to God I had it. You know, my drinking incidentally got worse the longer I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you're new, please hear that. Because, you know, you hear people tell these horrific stories about how they did all this stuff, man, and two-fisted and round the clock and all of that kind of stuff. And I thought, God, I'm afraid to tell you about my drinking because you might kick me out of here and I can't afford to be kicked out of there. See, because I will not make it without you. I heard that loud and clear, Dorothy. I will NOT make it with out you. And so I never wanted to be parted from you. And I risked telling you about my drinking anyway. And you didn't kick me out. And anyway, we went through this thing. He stayed at the house and talked to me for a while. And if in your prayers you could remember him, this man did not make an Alcoholics Anonymous. He decided he was so angry he had to keep his guns in hock. He pawned them for fear of hurting someone else. But he was a guardian angel for me that night because he came to carry to me the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I wish him well, and I hope somewhere, wherever he is, that he finds us again. And I made up my mind that the next day I was going to go to my first meeting. Now I want to tell you about the love and protection and care of God. Here we go. I am just about to be fired from another job because of my drinking. And I get ready the next morning. I have a breakfast meeting out at the airport in Denver with my boss. And we're just going to talk about business, just business as usual. And so I get on my best tie and my best suit, and I sit down at the table with him, and I tell him, I said, Bill, I just found out that I am an alcoholic, and I'm going to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous today. and he looked at me and without a word he just got up and left the table. Now, see I'm on the path of righteousness and the first thing out of the chute I just screwed up and lost my job I said and instead what happened was this guy is a telephone freak and when it occurs to him that he's going to make a telephone call he just does it and I didn't know that And he went out and made his telephone call, and he came back and he sat down at the table with me, and without saying a word, he just looked at me in both eyes and he reached into his coat pocket here and he pulled out the 24-hour day book. I have always been treated like that in business with my alcoholism, always, the care and protection of God. Don't be afraid. Don't being afraid. So I started out, and I will tell you that I have never found it necessary to go back and have another drink since the day I came into this fellowship. There's no way I want another drink of alcohol. And, you know, for me at the end, the drinking wasn't a desirable element. It was, to me, I might as well have had a bottle of carbolic acid there. I just didn't want to put it in my system anymore. And, as I say in February, that'll be 13 years ago. And what's happened in those 13 years? The changes. I do not even look like I looked when I came into this fellowship. I have had people, old friends that have known me for years, walk right by me on the street. And I'm real happy about that. Not because I'm afraid of seeing them, but because it's a way that I can tell you that it works. You can change. Now think about that for a second. You and I can change God, if that's not the best news that you'll ever hear in your life I don't know what is. I don' t care how long or short you've been sober I don''t care what kind of problem you're dealing with now because we're all dealing with one you can change and I ca n change and we can do it in God like Rod was saying these will always materialize if we work for them. I have had such an adventure in Alcoholics Anonymous. Where to begin, huh? When I was one year sober, I had been in a group and bless their hearts, they did carry the message to me and they worked real hard and we worked steps and it was very technically oriented to the steps just by the numbers just exactly what the book said we did that but they put a little extra top spin on this program and i don't know if you've had this in your groups or if you're seeing it and god bless them but they've got something else anonymous in there too and uh after a while i got antsy with that thing and i mean they became so exclusive and thought that they were the only group in the universe and when people left that group i've seen them leave alcoholics anonymous because they were just absolutely convinced that this was the only place. And that's real sad, because Alcoholics Anonymous is all over the damn place. It's any two of us with a big book and our purpose being sobriety. And so it's not exclusive. It''s all inclusive. Anyway, I got about a year of that and I was getting real nervous and I wanted out of that. And I wanted to make contact, but I didn't know how to make contract outside of that group. So what kind of a God do we have? What kind of higher power do we have? The International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous came to Denver right then. That was in 1975. And I told you I was scared of people, and I was really scared of people. I'll tell you what happened. All this huggy-kissy and all that stuff that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous, which I dearly love now. At my first birthday meeting, I was I spoke at an insane asylum in Denver. And I really belonged there, and I loved it. And there was this lady, and she was 17, 18 years sober and wonderful. What a wonderful lady this was. And she came up after I talked for my birthday meeting, and she threw her arms around me. And she just no sooner got them around me when she peeled them back off and she looked at me and she says, I'm sorry. And I hadn't said a word. She says, I'm Sorry. I will never do that again without warning you first. I know what it means to be a loner. So Marie and I, when the morning would come and the alcoholics and there was 20,000 of us showed up for this international convention and we'd get on the bus and we would ride downtown on the buses and I would stand at the doors of that convention center and I would ask God where was I supposed to be because there was no way I could deal with having to make any kind of choices. So I asked God where wasI supposed to b in the first day what his answer was is you go into this meeting mark loners and internationalists. I didn't know what that meant so I sit myself down and I'm waiting for God to fix me. Now I want to tell you something when they told me in Alcoholics Anonymous that there was really a God really a God. I believed it. And I got angry and rattled in my office one day in the first year of my sobriety and I just got to the point where I didn't know which way to turn inside of me and I ran out of that office and I went to the office and I sat down on a bench and I said, God, you and I have got to have a talk you first. I want to tell you something the piece that hit me right after I said that I cannot describe to you there really is a God so I asked him and I said where should I be and I went to the loners and internationals meeting and I sat down and loners if you don't know and you're new to the fellowship loners are people who are staying sober somewhere in the world without the benefit of other sober alcoholics and Alcoholics Anonymous to be with. And they stay sober by correspondence. Isn't that beautiful? God. And they write to people in New York or people elsewhere in the world, and they write letters to each other, and they stay sobre this way. And so this man gets up, and he said, My name is John, and I'm an alcoholic. And he's got a very thick brogue, And he says, and I attend a lighthouse on the coast of Ireland. Do you know Lighthouse John? And so he's telling me eight months a year, he says I am in this lighthouse and I stay sober by correspondence. Now I'm wondering, is there Alcoholics Anonymous outside of this group? And my horizons are being expanded like this, geometrically as I'm listening to John. And so John tells his story. now there's a lady there who is dressed beautifully God I mean she just is a fashion plate and and a socialite she is from New York and she talked about how there had been some problems in her group in New York and she wanted to get out of that politics you know AA politics can get kind of fierce sometimes and she said she wanted to get away from that get a little breathing room so she went to the you know general service office in New York. And she asked him, she says, do you have anything that I can do? Because I want to stay sober, but I want get away from this. And they said, well, and she said she loved writing and everything. And so they said would you like the, how about getting involved in the loaner's assignment? And she said that she had always loved Ireland and she had alway loved lighthouses and so she started to write to this man in Ireland and right in front of me Lighthouse John and this lady met and he had been keeping her sober And she had been keeping him sober. What a family we belong to. My first meeting, a man walked up to me after that meeting and he just looked at me and he shook my hand and he said, Welcome home. God. So I'm sitting in this room and now these people are talking and we're talking about what will God do for you if you decide you want to be sober and you want a turnaround? That's the whole point of what we're taking about. What will God doing for you? There was a merchant seaman there. And he, let's see now. He had said, it was when he was in the Navy. He was inthe U.S. Navy and he had sailed. Now, he had found this man and gotten some contact with sobriety and so on and just brand new and he got a big book and he sailed from California and he was headed for the Far East and he went to Hawaii and he'd gotten involved as we are. We're always willing to be teachers first and students second. Have you noticed that? So what this guy does is he gives his big book to Hong Kong and he's got no big book and he wants to make an AA meeting and there was no AA in Hong Kong at that time. But listen to what happened. The International Press Corps found out that this was a sober alcoholic who wanted to find a meeting and the press corps put him under their wing and they took him all over Hong Kong looking for an AA meet. i mean really that's not even a that's just god you know and and i'm watching this and they're talking about people who are internationalists and internationalists are folks who have something in common with two or more countries and so a lot of merchant seamen involved in this group and what they have is we have our world directory and so on they have ships registries and they have their ships registry and they're out on the high seas and as they pass ships in mid-Atlantic or mid-Pacific, they read the ship's registry, see those numbers and they may not be able to talk to them but they know there's another alcoholic trying to stay sober on that one more day. God, I just... What a celebration, right? What a celebrating of sobriety. You see, this talk is really not about me. It's about you because this is the family we belong to. This is what's happening. It's not just in Springfield, Missouri. It's all over this world. People are fighting for their sobriety one day at a time, and they're staying sober in all of these wonderful ways. You know, it just fires my imagination. I don't know what turns you on, but I hear these stories, and God, you know, I get all excited about them. So I sat in that meeting, and I had heard this thing now, and their stories just went on and on and those were their stories. and there was a guy there. I can't remember, honestly, my memory's not that good as to whether Captain Jack was there or whether there was somebody talking about Captain Jack. I think it might have been the second. But his story is one of these epic things where he sails for the Far East with, you know, a case of scotch under his bed and he's a captain of some little boat and ship, I don't know. And he gets out in the middle of the high seas and a typhoon breaks out and a mutiny breaks out at the same time between the Filipinos and the Arabs in his crew. And he's got this scotch, he knows it's not for him and he's gotta copy the big book and he gets down on his knees and he offers himself and the lives of his crew to God and takes his third step in the middle of those circumstances and I'm sitting there rocking and rolling, man. And this is it, you know, man, we're here now. I go to an American Indian, Native American meeting and, God, they're beating the drums and they're going around in circles and I don't know what we're doing, man, but I'm hooked up and I'm plugged in, man and I've got to get out of here. And I'm there, you know. And is sobriety about just not drinking? And no, please, it's not just about not drinking. I'll tell you what it meant. There was a guy there from Canada and he was 25, no. He had been sober for 25 years without Alcoholics Anonymous. And he talked about just not drinking. And he said that one day he went to play a golf match and at the golf match they went to the 19th hole and it was time and for some reason he picked up another drink and he drank it. And he says his life fell apart and he's miserable and so on and so on and that's 25 years without a drink he had been sober for two years he was with the canadian contingent there and he talked about what alcoholics anonymous means what his two years of sobriety meant and it un started to untie the knots and let him breathe again and start to find happiness and joyousness and freedom so this is the kind of thing i find myself in the middle of and if you've ever heard this story you have to be five years sober before you recover i don't know if that's going around your groups but that's been a theme on and off in denver for as long as i've been sober when you get to five years you've recovered you're you know you've got it you've all this stuff and i was a year sober folks and i couldn't wait see and i sat there and there was a girl came from canada and she was two and a half years sober and she had everything i wanted everything in her program was so fantastic god she just stood up on this stage and she told it, and it just started to heal me. I've just gotten a little lost if you wonder what this pause is. I have been lost before. We'll make it, I guess. I'm just trying to think if I've left anybody out of that cast of characters because the excitement I get in sharing that with you is that it just absolutely proved to me that we're belonging to this thing, we can be okay, everything's going to be fine. Just like your mom used to hold you and pat you and say everything's gonna be okay. I've never grown up much past that. I still need to hear that. Now, I have been sober as I said for 13 years and what's happened in this time is I've gotten a chance to have everything I've wanted. Everything I've wondered I've got. I'll tell you what that meant. I heard people talking about making, one night I heard them talking about making 12-step calls on motorcycles. Man. That was going to be great, right? And sure as heck, Marie's in the hospital having one of our children, and I'm over here, and I am going to go to a motorcycle auction and just watch. And I went over to that motorcycle auction, and the next thing I am over here like this. I took off my brand new motorcycle, and I got to go make 12-step cars. You know, this is going to beat it, man. Because I heard all about this 12-stepping thing. We were talking with Julie about 12-Stepping and the excitement of all of that. And I got to be involved in that, and I'll tell you what now. What can happen with us, you see? And again, I don't mean to leave the steps out of this talk, and I will get to those steps, and we're going to talk about them as we did with Ron, based on the steps. All of this is based on God. This isn't just a matter of going over and hanging out at a group and then popping out the door one day with a shiny new message for everybody and here we go because I'll tell you what, I remember going over to make a... You know they say when all else fails go work with another alcoholic. I remember showing up at a detox unit one time and I sat down to talk to this guy and he's brand new and he was just sitting there shaking and everything and I don't know how long, I guess I'd had about a year in the program or something and I started talking with him about what it is and he looks over at me and he says, I don' t know. Another time, You know, I started to. Well, we'll get there anyway. I think I lost a good one now. Oh, no, we're back to most like, OK. You know how lives are become unmanageable and mine stayed that way. I had heard that in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, what they would do is that they would have radio. they would put an AA meeting on the radio and so they would carry the message that way and I God there's that imagination get fired up again I said man the radio can you imagine and and one day I got in this about I get everything I want I get everything I won one day this guy came and he said would you like to speak on a talk show on the and I said oh yeah do that and he said okay now you and this lady named mary l and uh she's just a wonderful person she and i they asked us to go on the radio and we were going to go in at midnight and we're going to talk until five o'clock in the morning and people were going gonna call in and so i thought boy this is going to be some deal man we're gonna get out there and we are going to be all over colorado and people we're going to carry the message right 48 states and canada for five hours that phone rang and rang and rang people in canada i remember this guy calling he says he says i got my big book on my lap and i'm listening to you and you guys are telling it just like it is he says keep it up god bless you and he hang up somebody else would call in from iowa and then they'd call in from kentucky and god we sat there on that phone and after five hours of sitting there when we left at 5 o'clock in the morning all six lines were lit up and they were blinking and people just wanted to reach out and touch somebody and they wanted to talk about this disease and they wanted to be okay what a celebration so you see from the isolation from being a loner from having the personality that that lady described which is very accurate. I've gotten a chance to come back to life. They told me that I got to have a clean slate when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got a brand new life all over again, and I did come here for retraining, I promise you. We were talking about Don, Don P., in Denver, and Don used to just put me under his arm and take me all over the place. I mean, we'd go to a meeting, he'd say, let's go to meeting. I'd say great, Don, and we'd end up 60, 70 miles away at a meeting. To him, he plays a very universal kind of global alcoholic sonata. But I remember I got rattled in my office one day and I called Don and I said, you know, I'm really shook up and I'm scared and I don't know what's going on and can I talk to you? And he said, listen, I tell you what, why don't you come over and be with us? And his wife at the time came over and picked me up in a car and took me over to their house. And I sat there while Don was in the bathroom shaving and blowing dry his hair and he's given me Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm also learning how to take care of my hair. So now I know how to blow dry my hair and I know a little bit more about the steps. I had to learn to live all over again and I got to talk in here. I don't know if you all have sex meetings or not in your groups, but I got a chance to talk about when I stopped drinking, I just became involved in sex and the mind and I became poisoned with all this stuff. And you see, I didn't know that I had to shut up about anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. They told me if I was alcoholic, I was an alcoholic from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. So I didn' t know there were any exclusive subjects. So by God, I talked about whatever was bothering me. And I'll tell you, if you'll do it, you'll stay sober and you'll get well because you can't imagine how people will come up after the meetings and they'd share with me and they tell me how they were doing. At that same international, I'll show you what this means, is that there was a man who came in from Ireland. He was six months sober and the bell captain came up to us during the International and he says, one of your club is having some problems in one of these rooms. He's drunk. And we went into that room and this guy was sure enough drunk and he said, you know, that Alcoholics Anonymous, he says that's fine for you guys, he says but I just want a blonde, he said I just wanted some sex and you don't understand that and I said, oh God, please, let's talk. and i prayed about that for you see a lot of i used to hear this in aa in the you know tough love everything had to be real tough and all that stuff and this guy said i didn't come here to be a damn boy scout well i did i came here to become what my dad used to call a solid citizen you know i just wanted to be clean and happy and well and uh and so i i just considered all this thing under one umbrella and i took it all back to god and i talked about all of it and i've gotten well in so many areas i can't even tell you marie and i will be married for 16 years on new year's eve and uh thank you very much and you know when i was growing up I told you that I did that I'm the only one in my family's an alcoholic but I'm not the only of my family who drinks and when I was a little boy it was like growing up in World War three there was so much war going on in our home drunkenness and fighting I can remember going into my parents bedroom when I I was about 10 years old and seeing my father strangling my mother on the floor on her knees and she's yelling to me to call the police. And I can remember that my father tore down the door on my mother's bedroom door and broke her jaw. And, uh, I had seen what it meant to have real bad trouble behind this stuff. And i determined with God's help once I got in here and got a little clearer that I'd like to try to break the cycle of alcoholism in my family. I'd love to see if it was possible for my children, our children, to grow up safe, to feel safe. And I think they do. We have three children. We have a daughter who's 15 and our sons are 11 and 9. And they, to their knowledge, have never seen their father take a drink. And, of course, just absence of alcohol isn't going to guarantee anything. but they also know that there's love in our home. I'm not talking about perfection, and I'm not talking abut utopia. I'm just talking about is this a place that nurtures human life? Because the one I grew up in didn't. And yes it does. Because of Al-Anon and because of Alcoholics Anonymous and these principles and I could just about end there and I almost did. Really, there's not a whole hell of a... I mean, a heck of a lot more to say. But I will tell you that that I can show up for work. I have my own advertising agency and I actually show up for my clients and I do a good job. And this is a brag on Alcoholics Anonymous and not on me but I have a reputation of being one of the best advertising people in Denver. And that's because of you. I want to tell you what it means, especially if you're early in sobriety. I hated advertising. I just hated it. And I thought God had it in for me that I had to stay in advertising. God! And I used to complain bitterly to my sponsor, when will he let me out of this? I even jumped ship on him one time and almost starved to death. but i just wanted out he couldn't possibly have meant for someone of this genius to be doing advertising and he kept me in these in these advertising agency three national advertising agencies i worked for toxic drunks around me all the time and i felt like i was working in a three-ring circus and i wanted out of it so bad and all the times putting together my business for me if i hadn't worked in those national everybody yes i really can do this job I have proved myself. But he had to keep me hanging in there. He gave it to me, and I didn't see the gift. I thought it was a curse. My wife, this being married business is not easy. You see, and it calls for more generosity of spirit than I've ever been able to muster. And one day I'd want her to be a blonde, and the next day I would say she had to be that in my imagination, in my fantasies. and all the time i well hell i gotta get rid of her see and i gotta go on over here and i gotta have a few more wives and i got to do all this stuff and all of the time the gift now marie and i have been married as i said for almost 16 years and i tell people that with about six weeks off for bad behavior because we were separated for six weeks and i moved on out into this house and it was just well anyway you got to run away sometimes i guess i played hooky there for a little bit but i realized when i got out there that i was just about to go and get in my car and go look for her all over again i wouldn't trade her for anything she's exactly perfect for me she is the woman i want to be married to but i didn't know that so you know there's a there's a story I got out of a book called Papillon. It's about this crazy Frenchman who was locked up on Devil's Island. He's the only one to ever escape from it. And in this escape scene from Devil's Island, Papillon and this other guy are on these coconut rafts and they're going to these things. And Papillon told this man, he said, listen, he said when we get, when the tide takes us to this island or this shore it's a false shore. It's a quicksand area. so wait for the second tide because that's the one that's going to carry you over and so they got there and it was a very arduous trip and they were beat up pretty bad and they got their and Papillon could see this man but couldn't get to him and he saw him hit that quicksand bar and he got off of his raft and Papillion just struggled like crazy to get to them and by the time he got to them he had sunk and died and he was exhausted and the second tied came and it washed him up into a tree and he sat in that tree and by the time he could recover the next morning, he thought a thought and he said, A man like you, why couldn't you wait one more hour? Just one more hours. So if it gets tough, please just wait. I love you so much. Thank you for having me today.