The Sane and Sober Life of Continuity – Don P.

Mr. Don P. from Aurora, Colorado. My name is Don. I'm an alcoholic. I'm here today because some of you took time to come down to my penitentiary. This note got me. David says remember one thing I love you and that's why I'm here I always have a difficult time with these specialty meetings the implication that my mind says since this is an H&I meeting I gotta talk about H&i things and I don't know how to do that but since I came out of an institution where maybe we can take a walk through my life in my recovery and we'll be talking about H and I think. As I say, some of you took time to come to my penitentiary. It was my third one, and I have to talk about that because that's where I came from, but please don't think I was a big-time gangster. Big-time gangsters don't end up in the penitentiary three times. I was in the PenitentiARY because I'm an alcoholic, and because by choice I was a criminal. And as a result of my alcoholism, I also spent 14 years putting a lot of other chemicals in my body. But we had tried to take care of my criminal problem, and I got pretty good at it. And we at one time tried to deal with my dope problem, but I got pretty good at because I didn't know what's wrong with me. Alcoholics Anonymous, the people of Alcoholics Anonymous and the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous told me what's wrong with me. I am an alcoholic. I am powerless over alcohol and all the other circumstances in my life. My life had become totally unmanageable. I suffer from a disease, they say. And that wasn't enough for me. Thank God the people that came to me shared with me the nature of my disease. One of the things that I want to get off my chest right away are some things that, out of my experience, I believe very strongly about institution work. To be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and the group that I originally went into, they had one other requirement besides the desire to stop drinking. You had to attend a 12-step study school for five weeks the main group met on friday night and that's where they let real people in from the outside and as i stay involved in h and i work i hear a lot of people say to me i don't want to go to the penitentiary i've never been in the penitenciary i won't know how to relate to anybody now i needed to hear from the people with the numbers on their chests and I needed to hear from the ex-cons who'd come out and come back. But who I really needed to hear from were those of you who'd never been there, because you knew how to live on the outside, and I didn't. And the guys in that penitentiary with me, they didn't know how to live out there either. That's where they'd have been. So we needed somebody who didn't understand my kinky criminal mind to tell me how to life straight. Simple stuff like if you want money, what you do is get a job and you show up every day. God, that was a novel idea. Don't want to get arrested? Don't go where there's cops. Stop doing things they're interested in and they'll leave you alone. I didn't know that. I thought they just hassled everybody. I found out straight people rarely ever see them except when they're buying tickets to the policeman's ball. and continuity was important. You see, I was a phony. I'd been a phoney since I was a little kid and I can spot one and I knew who was on the ego trip. We saw him once. He came to the meeting gave a ten minute pitch and left and we never saw him again. The ones that I began to listen to were the ones that showed up once a month every month month after month they didn't miss. I knew they were not there for ego-building reasons. I began to get a sense that somehow it mattered to these people what happened to me personally, because they had to drive 150 miles each direction to keep that commitment. And I know what they went through at the front gate, and they came anyway. And most of them gave a five-minute pitch and sat out there among us and talked with us instead of to us. So continuity became important. It gave me the first picture that the sane and sober life is one where there is continuity, where there are some... See, I love change. God, I like to get out on the edge and then run fast and just about the time the race is over, change directions. That's how you keep from getting hit. And he began to show me continuity, singleness of purpose. The people that I listened to that came into that penitentiary didn't bring us cigarettes, didn't carry messages in or out, didn't do anything but one thing. They came there to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to us personally so we wouldn't die. I don't even remember who it was, but I picked up a real important thing that I share in the penitentiary. Any convict in any penitentiary, with very few exceptions, wants only one thing. How do I get out of here? Well, somebody from the outside pointed out another simple thing. The guaranteed, absolute guaranteed way of getting out of any penitenciary is to stay there until your time's up and then they'll let you go. but if you want to stay out you've got to change what you did that put you there to start with and since what put me there was alcoholism let's deal with alcoholism so they erased a whole sidetrack for me we have never, since I came to AA treated my drug problem since we came to AAA we've not treated my criminal problem We took care of my alcoholism, and my criminal problem went away. My drug problem went way. And a number of other things went away Now we've heard my opinions, let's get down to my experience. I want to share with you the last week of my life. Because it will wrap up the first 34 years. i was on federal parole over a little old beef where we brought marijuana in and the government said we were supposed to pay tax on it and we didn't they got madder than hell and put us in penitentiary for it and i was en paroled for that actively engaged in my my sickness and reaching that point of desperation that i hope everybody in this room has reached or as I looked around my life during that last week this was Christmas week of 1967 I could find nothing in my life worth continuing to live for my dreams were dead God, I started out with some magnificent dreams I was going to be an attorney once that was out of my madness I thought I could save the world and bend the law and use it. You know how we manipulate. But I was going to be somebody, and I was nobody now. And my parents' dreams were dead. They had all kinds of dreams for me. And as I looked around my life, I could see they were dead, and we weren't going where my mom and dad wanted me to go. My kids' dreams are dead. I didn't even know what they were. But my kids were living in a dingy little old basement apartment with me. We paid $40 a month for and we lived underneath a lady who had cats. Now, I'm not talking about stray tabbies. This lady had a madness for cats. And if you've been around lots and lots of cats, you know the conditions that they leave. And as I looked around my life, I could see that her place was cleaner than mine was that week. And it gave me a clue as to what I'd become because I'm a neat freak. But I wasn't anymore. If any of you have been out on the road, you know that the streets of America are paved with money. There's money out there on the street. All you have to do is walk around with your head down all the time and you'll find it. Not big amounts, but there's money there. And that day on Christmas Day on the way down to my folks' place, so they could see the kids, we found a dollar in the snow. And with that dollar, we bought our Christmas tree. For anybody here who may not be through drinking, and I'm going to share a few survival techniques with you. On Christmas Day from 4.30 on, any Christmas tree lot in the country will sell you the biggest tree they got for a dollar. We bought one, and I milked all of it. It didn't fit the room. It was the biggest one, and it tilted at the top. Got to have a little pathos. But it somehow occurred to me that that's kind of a lousy way to do it. To have to find a dollar in the snow and buy your tree after 4.30 so you can get the big one for a buck. That isn't quite right. And another piece cracked. We got to my folks' place and my dad met us at the door, the kids and I, and he said, I'm sorry, but your mother says you can't come in. She can't stand watching you die anymore. Now, in sobriety I've come to understand that wasn't the first time that happened, but that's the first it happened for me. That I saw what I'd done to my mother and another piece broke. And then Dad snuck us in anyway because he loved us and another peace broke because I had to look at what I had done to him. For the first of my life I was beginning to look how my life affected other people very poorly. And I saw what I'd done to my kids. What a really crummy way to live to put your kids through that on Christmas Day. And another piece broke. And I felt powerless. I didn't understand any of this, but somehow I experienced the fact that my way of living was an absolute total failure. And I didn' t know why. thank God for the people who take time to seek us out and tell us why because I didn't know why so the upshot of that whole deal was that I did what anybody would do who's finally reached the place where you can't stand living one more day I laid down took a massive overdose of drugs and died and what a hell of a deal it was in the morning when I woke up and the police were knocking at the door and what a marvelous thing for the alcoholic like me I was a total failure at living and a total failure of dying there was nowhere else to go and they took me away and I must talk to you about the power of God as I understand him because God had entered into my life long before I had any comprehension as to who that was or that I even needed that. And I say that because the state of Colorado and the federal government got together and made me a little deal. Now, if you know anything about power, you know that when the feds and the state get together and say we're going to take him from here to there, that's what happens. They have all kinds of power. And they offered me this little old deal. They had nine charges because I'd set myself up to get a little rest. But the one that they were talking about carried three years to life in the penitentiary, and that is not what I had in mind. I had in mind six months in a county jail. And they offered me a deal. If I'd plead guilty to a lower charge, they'd send me to Fort Worth to cure my drug addiction. We all thought I was a drug addict. Two things happened. First of all, I was willing to go anywhere anybody said and do whatever anybody said because I was somewhat baffled. I couldn't live and I couldn't die, and I was stuck in this body and needed to go somewhere. And I was willing to do that. That's all I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. But I'd also been laying in jail for five years, and this alcoholic, or five months, and the alcoholic ego only takes three days to heal. And mine had healed, and that little fellow inside says, oh, they're going to put us in a place where they have books and doctors. And I've been living out of that for years. They would tell me what was wrong with me, how long it was going to take for me to get well, and all the stages I would have to go through to be well. And I could present those right on time to the minute. I'd be out of there in six months and dead today. Because we'd have cured my drug addiction and that wasn't my problem. I'd have come home and had a cold glass of Coors beer on a hot day someday and died. well I took their deal the feds agreed and the state agreed and I agreed I should have ended up in Fort Worth five days later I'm in the Colorado State Penitentiary saying hold on here I didn't sign up for this summer camp and I believe that it's by the grace of God that happened to me because I was put in the one place that I needed to be put to hear what I needed to hear in my sickness I had surrendered and didn't even know it. I quit. I didn't know that quitting was a way of surrendering, but it is. Quit. I have to, I'm sorry, I get emotional sometimes. They sent these three guys over to talk to us. They all had numbers on their chests. And in the fish tank they sent them over to talk with us. thank God my mind was where it was because I can still hear that guard saying you will come down and you will listen as they sprung us out of our cells and since I was doing what anybody said to do I listened and I heard this guy get up and he said my name's Doc and I'm an alcoholic and that means that I'm powerless over alcohol and all the other circumstances in my life and my life's become unmanageable and if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your life look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing god bless doc see he put the mirror of truth up in front of me how are you going to duck it and i don't remember much else of that day except an invitation they invited us to come to the 12-step study school on saturday if we want to learn how to stay out of a penitentiary and not drink anymore and live. They invited us to come. We didn't know what the hell that was. What we did know is that you had to give up your movie and your yard privileges. Now, that may not sound like much out here, but that's all we had. That was it. You worked all week and you stayed locked up all night and on Saturday you got to see a movie or go to the yard. To be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you gave that up and went to school. and because of the continuity in their understanding of things that was two weeks before we got out of the fish tank the Saturday we got up I got my new cell and there was a slip of paper on my bunk reminding me that right after noon chow if I wished I could come to Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step study school up at the school so I went I had gentle, loving, kind sponsors we sat down and this guy said now for the next five weeks you have nothing to say he said if you guys knew anything at all you wouldn't be here your very best thinking puts you in a penitentiary you're not doing too good are you so why don't you listen while we share with you a new way and we did. Excuse me. They helped me to experience and to understand what being powerless is. They explained to me something that had baffled me all my life. Why was I in my first penitentiary when I was 19 years old? I'd never understood that. My favorite word in the big book is the word baffling. Baffled is where you've done everything right and it went wrong anyway. Baffled is not understanding why you kept doing things that you don't want to do and never seem to get around to do the things you do want to do. That's baffled. I didn't want go to that penitentiary. I had joined the Navy when I was 17 to save America from the communist menace and to be a hero. I've never done anything for a shabby reason. It's always noble. I'd been run out of Denver is what happened, and the Navy was the easiest, fastest way out. But I loved the Navy. I loved everything about it. I felt like I belonged there. There were other guys that looked just like me. They all had white uniforms on. They taught me how to drink. Oh boy, did we learn how to drink. You start at the very first place at the end of the dock, and you go until you run out of money, and then they carry you home, if you're lucky. But I loved the Navy. I was a radioman and a radarman, and the work was a challenge. And I love the sea. To this day, I love to see. I can feel my spirit in that bigness out there. Nothing to me beats standing on the bridge of a ship at night when there's just enough wind to turn the waves over and you see the phosphorescence as it shines. And a great peace used to come over me. And here I'm in the penitentiary because I couldn't get back to my ship on time. They kept giving me these silly little 24-hour liberties, really expecting me to get back on time, and I expected me to give up. I wanted to get out of bed and get back on time and I couldnít. I'd start out, and we'd have a drink. Thirteen days later, we'd come home. Twenty-three days later we'd come home, and they got tired of that and put me in the penitentiary, and I was baffled. You people of Alcoholics Anonymous took time to tell me why that happened. I'm allergic to alcohol. I have a body that if I put alcohol in it breaks out with a symptom. Now, if I were allergic to tomatoes and I ate tomatoes, I'd break out with rash. I break out with a craving for more alcohol it's that simple if I take a drink I must have another drink and it isn't because I really want one but that's the symptom of my disease and I don't have any choice in the matter and it doesn't it isn' t that I don' t love my job and I do' n't love my family and I d'n't love my dreams they're just in second place now and there's nothing I can do about it they helped me understand that they took time for me to understand that Somehow that made sense as these guys began to share that feeling. I said, yeah, that's how I feel. Up until then, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. And as soon as I got comfortable and thought, well, now I'm okay, now I know what's wrong with me, they said, that is completely academic. If I never take another drink, that will never ever happen again. It can't. It only happens to alcoholics and it only happens after they take a drink. so what is it that having that happen over and over and over and over why do I keep taking another drink it's because I've got a mind that can't remember that there are certain times when my mind just doesn't give me any information at all it says why not ask me why did you take that drink why not it was there wasn't it and I'm convinced that that could happen to me today my big book tells me that the time will come when my mind won't present me with enough information to keep me from taking a drink I am powerless over my mind there's a piece missing but I can't learn enough about me or alcoholism or life so that when that day does come I have any mental defense against that first drink I didn't turn my life and will over the care of God because it was neat I ran out of choices I understand total powerlessness real simple I've got a body that will drink itself to death if I give it one I've gotta mind that can't remember that and I'm spiritually separated from the rest of the world I'm the only one on the planet that feels and thinks like I do that's what's wrong you come and say oh bullshit I had a sponsor, God bless him who talked one morning around that first step about the morning that he woke up with the feeling that nobody on this planet cared whether he lived or died and that hurts there is no greater pain than that I don't think to know that nobody on this earth on this plant cares whether you live or die and I hear him so badly that he took his medicine to kill the pain. And this time it didn't kill the pain, it got him involved in it. And he got so upset with that that he went downtown to get his and in the process he shot two innocent people on the street and hold them. I hadn't done that. But I have waken knowing nobody cared. And I have taken my medicine to fix me and it didn' t fix me. It got me involved init. And I did my own bizarre things. So I identified with somebody and that's the beginnings of recovery then they started doing some really funny stuff with us they kept insisting that we work these things called the steps now we started talking about insanity and being restored to sanity and oh boy i'm sharing some things with you by the way that came from a man the stuff that I learned came from a man who's 92 days sober now he's been 18 years getting 92 days sober but he knew what I needed to hear that day I had a great fear of this sanity business see I was classified by the state as a sociopath type 2 whatever that is and a psychopath path. Now, all I know about both of those is that they're untreatable. They don't even mess with them. That's why I didn't go to Fort Worth. The federal man said we can't do anything to help him anyway. Just lock him up. One of them has no conscience and the other one has a conscience but just doesn't care. And I was both. I had a horror of having to spend the rest of my life trying to sort out what I had just failed to sort out in 34 years. And my AA people said, no, no we don't do that. Don't worry about that. God restores you to sanity. Bruce said, you weren't always a psychopath and raven maniac. There was a time when you were saying, we're not going to worry about when it was. We're not gonna track it down. We'll just assume it happened about three seconds after you were born and we'll go from there. That's easy. He said forget everything you think you know about anything, particularly about God, because if you knew anything it would have worked and you wouldn't be here. He said, Don, even the truth doesn't work for you. And he was right. I take the truth in and my ego says, I wonder how I can use that to catch an edge. And I warp it. By the time I use it, it isn't the truth anymore. He said, anything that you know that is the truth will still be there when we're through, but why don't you for a while forget everything. You don't know nothing. And by God's grace, I was able to do that because I watched him and he had some things I wanted. First and foremost of which he got in and out of his cell anytime he wanted to. And I didn't. I've been in three penitentiaries and I learned right off the bat that the best job in any penitentiary for me is tear clerk. Tear clerk has his cell door open all the time because he's running errands for everybody else. I've known him since there was that little service is the answer. He told me that the most important thing for me to remember in the second step was the word restore. God would return me to a place of sanity and I'd get to start all over again. Boy, I was like that because I didn't have the energy to track the rest of it down. I was tired. But I still had some concerns about sanity. He said, you're not a psychopath and you're not a sociopath. You can behave like one. You know, if you backed me up against the wall, I could show you a psychopath in a second. And if you had something that I wanted and turned your back, it was mine. I could behave like that. In fact, I learned about madness early. You know one of the best ways in the world to get people to leave you alone? Be a little bit loony. They stay away from you. Of course, you draw all the rest of the loonies in the room. God would restore me to sanity. And what was sanity? If I'm not a psychopath and a sociopath, what is sanity? In my big book, they have a story of a young car salesman that was now working for the company that he used to own and he went into a bar to have lunch and a thought crossed his mind I've just had lunch and I've been sober a while and I'll be safe if I put an ounce of whiskey in my milk and ended up in another sanitarium and it says whatever the precise definition of the word is we call that plain insanity lack of proportion and the ability to think straight and that's what's wrong with me here If one works, take ten. I didn't have a car in high school. I had a 49 Mercury convertible maroon with leopard skin seat covers and two blondes. Not one. Two jobs, three jobs, whatever it takes. Two wives. That'll make you tired. i'm incapable of understanding proportion and i've been told since i was little i can't think straight i get from a to b by way of q it's just the way i am so i'm powerless over my own mind i find no area of my life where i have any power I must find some power. I've been a power seeker all my life anyway. That's why the car, that was power. Money is power. Sex is power, All kinds of things were power, and they didn't work after a while. God would restore me to sanity if I'd let him. Now, I know there's some fairly new people here in the room, and I need to share something with you, because one of the things that I worried about at the beginning was, My God, am I going to do this one right? I've done everything else wrong. Can I work these steps right? If you're new, let me put your mind at ease. No, you can't. It takes rigorous honesty and nobody new here has that. You just can't work them wrong either. What a marvelous thing. All we have to do is make the attempt and make the mistakes and trust in God to iron them out. And I did most everything here for the wrong reason from the very beginning. I wanted to get in and out of my cell whenever I wanted too because Bruce could. and if he said that means you've got to take the second step I was willing to do that I became willing I wanted to belong here so much that I became unwilling to turn my will and my life over to the care of God but not without reservation I have to laugh today because I tell people the good news that God's got real important work for you to do and I get the same look that tells me they're feeling what I had it ain't good news I knew what he had in mind for me if I turn my well and my wife over to care of God, I was going to end up at Colfax and Broadway in Denver passing out Watchtower magazines and asking perfect strangers if they'd been saved. And I just couldn't see me doing that. So we talked about that. Somebody took time with me. We talked about that. The guy at ColFax and Broadway handing out WatchTower magazines, he said, goes home at night. Do you? No. Eats what he wants. Do you? He may dress funny, but he picked them. Do you know? We came to the conclusion that afternoon that anything that God had in mind for me was better than anything that I had in mind for me as witnessed by the fact that I had just given it my very best and I was back in the penitentiary. And it would be better to do that than to be where I was and feeling like I was. And then he pointed out the most obvious thing at all. He says, by the way, he doesn't need you down there. He's got a guy doing that. So that isn't going to be my job. And I want to know what is going to be my Job. He said, we don't know yet. We don't know yet you'll find out as you go through this. He He said, you ever hear that? Why do I have to do that? Just do it. You'll find out later. You see, I've always had the cart before the horse. I had to find out how it worked. Then I could drive it. Now I haveと get in and turn the motor on and go like hell and just trust that somebody knows how this thing works. So I turned my will and my life over to the care of God as I did everything else with total abandon. Sat back quietly and waited for my flash of light. I can handle anything that happens as long as it goes boom. From federal agents breaking down the door to God talking to me out of a cloud, I can deal with that. I can't handle that. I had the worst experience of my life. I said that prayer, waited for the flash of light, and absolutely nothing happened. Nothing. For me, that's terrible. I'd been around you long enough to know that if you do something your sponsor suggests you do and you don't get the results you think you ought to get, go bitch at them. And I did. He said, why don't you be grateful you didn't have a flashlight? They've nearly killed you all your life. I've had some beauties. I've Had Visions. Ate peyote with the Indians one time and had me a vision. Real one. Saw a great bird flying high in the sky with no head and knew that that was me and the direction of my life. Kept me sober for four months. Had to live in the Northwoods up here by Fort Bragg not see anybody but I stayed sober four months got back to San Francisco and drank again. Then he did for me what I think the people of Alcoholics Anonymous do better than anybody on this planet See, we each get a certain amount of time this trip through. And he took some of his very precious lifetime and gave it to me as he spent a couple hours sharing with me his experience at this same place. He loves boom, too. He said, God probably knows, Don, you can't stand one more big shock in the shape you're in anyway. I began to share how God had come gently to him over a period of time as he discarded his old ideas and suggested when I asked him in all seriousness how do I make this real sent me off to write an inventory. And two hours later when I finished it I took it back to him. I hadn't kept pace with the school. I thought you write down some bizarre stuff that everybody can get a good kick out of and that's it, see? And this same guy who had just spent all this time lovingly guiding me to where I could believe in God and trust him, said, that's garbage. Get away from me. He wrote that to impress me. And boy, that upset me something awful. So I ran off and found a guy that would listen to me. And he spent two hours justifying that kind of behavior to me and telling me it wasn't all that bad. And I had a spiritual awakening. Please understand when I talk about a spiritual awakening, I truly believe that any time any alcoholic anywhere understands any part of truth that's a spiritual awakening and what I understood was that once again I had picked somebody who would replay back to me what I wanted to hear so I could keep doing what I wanted to do and if I didn't stop doing that I was dead and in that short period of time I'd found something I came to you willing to die, eager to die. And suddenly I didn't want to die anymore. So I asked God for help. Because I can't be honest enough to do this right. But I'm going to try with your help to do it. And I began to experience honesty. I learned about resentment. Oh, God, what a marvelous thing that was. In 1966, federal agents broke down my door. They don't generally say hi. They came in the front door and the back door and the side door and put me to the floor and mistreated me. I had a hammer in my hand and I'd have knocked me down too. 133 pounds of amphetamine and booze. my young son let out a yell and this big cop turned and put a gun to his head i went from resentment to hate like that i spent months in the federal penitentiary plotting and scheming what i was going to do to him when i got out wasted a lot of time boy i haven't i won't tell you the scheme somewhere i want to use it and it's warped it won't work and I put his name on my resentment list he said all I had to do was write down a list of people I was mad at hell that's easy if I thought about you I was made at you and I found 22 reasons that I was bad at this one federal agent which is a little egotistical it was only one arrest 22 reasons and I could see every way in which that affected my life in every way and I tried so hard to do what the big book said take the new attitude that he like myself was perhaps spiritually sick and I could agree with that it takes sick people to do that and I still hated him and this blessed process got me I read the next thing and it said that I should set aside the wrongs he may have done and resolutely look for where I was at fault and it burst upon me that I'd invited him into my home sent him an engraved invitation come and get me and I felt some freedom from that and I got excited I began to see every area of my life yes these creeps had really been on me I'd been hurt by some really bad people but guess who said come and get me me and I'm convinced to this day that if it hadn't been for a sense that God loved me where I was as I was because we took time to get me spiritually fit first I couldn't live with the guilt but in a way that I don't understand I wasn't guilty I just knew I was responsible and if that's the way I handle life I really better quit every step along the way in this program for me has been a reaffirmation that better let God run your life son you don't do too well by the way I'm free of him he's a big shot in the federal narcotics department now and I'm glad for him because he's sure home long on the street and I understood that if my son had been killed it would have been my fault and whatever trauma comes from putting a gun to a four year old's head I was responsible for that and that somehow, someday I'd have to find a way to help that kid get past that but I wasn't to worry about it now I learned about fear I used to think fear lived here and frankly I liked it I didn't like to feel terror but I used pay a quarter to get on the roller coaster and get scared feels good God you know you're alive when you're scared according to devastates me I found out fear lives here that I created. I hear a Pekingese dog bark six blocks away, and in three steps it has become a bull mastiff. It's in the next bush and it's going to eat me. And I've gone six blocks around to miss it. The kind of fear that comes when I wake up in the morning late because the alarm didn't go off. And I start thinking, oh God, I'm going to be late. I'm going to be caught in all the traffic. I'm gonna be 20 minutes late and the boss is going to say, where the hell you been? And I'm not going to like that too much. I'm just going to go, I'm only going to see, what do you care? He's going to said, well, I care because I pay your salary. I'm a say, no, you don't. I quit. And with that in mind, I don't get out of bed. I go drink and be mad at that son of a bitch all day. Out of fear. I, I found out that I was far more afraid of succeeding than I ever was of failing. I've been a failure all my life, I know how to deal with that. You cry for a while, you promise not to do it again, you start over. But I can still remember one time playing football as a kid. I made a quarterback sneak and the next thing I know, it's just nothing but air between me and the goal post and it shook me so bad I stopped and looked around to see what had happened. you see i knew my feeling for me was that if i succeeded and did anything right it was pure dumb luck and i also knew that you were going to ask me to do it again the next day but i didn't know how i'd done it the first time it's much easier to live with failure when you're an alcoholic because you can always kill the pain of that blame somebody else and I learned about God's mercy in that fear inventory I look around this world with pain in my heart at all the people that are hurting sometimes and boy do we have a way out so many of them have to go through years and years of therapy and learn how to cope with fear and live with fear and deal with fear my sponsors and my book of common experience, said to me that when I reach that point, what I'm supposed to do is to ask God to remove it from me and direct my attention to what He wants me to be. And it's gone. That's mercy. And somewhere in that process, I discovered that my life is none of my business. People ask me, Don, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's none of my business! I said, God can have me and do with me as He wants. I was two and a half years before I could get to a written sex inventory. I shot a lot of speed with my alcohol and eating Wyoming inhalers, and boy, when it came out it fit on a cart about that size because I lived it here. But I learned some more things about mercy. Between my saying to God, there's nothing here, I can't remember this, I can't do this protect me until I can and the time when I could do it I had been healed just healed still had to do it but the sickness was gone well I took the inventory that I had and it was a shabby little effort and I did what you told me to do that's why we have to be careful when we go on where people are serious. I did what you told me to do. You said, find somebody who won't be overly affected by this. So I found a kid that had been in the program the same length of time I had because I knew he was salooning, that anything I said to him wouldn't affect him at all. And I had another one of those spiritual things happen to me. Jim and I went up to the school and we sat and he listened as I began to share all this stuff that I'd found. The only time Jim talked was when I'd run dry and he'd say a little something, and we'd go on. Somewhere that day, I stopped being alone. You see, up until that point, it was me on this planet alone, and whoever I needed you to be. I'd never given anybody the dignity of their own existence. And somewhere that day it was may and a fellow named Jim. And he loved me. And I didn't know what that meant, but Jim cared enough about me that he took some of his precious time to listen to this garbage when he could have been watching the movie. But he knew that my life depended on my being able to do that, so he took his time and he did that. Jim, I had great compassion for. He was in the penitentiary for three to five years over vehicular homicide. He killed somebody with his car while he was in a blackout. He wasn't a criminal. This guy will never have the memory of what put him in there. He had to live in a penitentiary and never know why, never experience why. And I learned to have a little compassion for Jim. He had more pain than I did. And we became friends. They let me out before they let Jim out. And I'd always wondered what happened to Jim. But God's very merciful to me. I was given a job once driving a truck, And the only part of that job I didn't like was that when everybody else got to go home, I had to take the packages to the bus station and wait in line and deliver them. So I never knew what time I was going to get off. And I didn' t like that. But one afternoon, I'm sitting in the busstation, and a prison guard walked in with Jim. He lived in Florida. They were letting him out and sending him back home. And for five minutes, our paths crossed. And Jim knows that I'm okay. And I know he's okay. I don't have to worry about my friend. I believe that's an act of mercy by God alone. Well, we went on. I got back to my cell and reviewed that thing. And I walked away with an interesting experience. Up until that time in my life, I had been a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. That's one of the great damages that I did to my family. We'd all get together at the starting line and plan a long distance run for Don. And I'm a sprinter off the line. I'm tremendous. Give me any new challenge, any new job, I'm easy. I learn quick. I want you to care for me so I learn. And then everybody relaxes at the end of the line and I'm off we go. I came away from the fifth step a long-distance runner. For the first time in my life, I had finished something to the very best of my ability. And in my review, I knew that. And I also knew I had a lifetime of work to do. So when I took that seven-step prayer, I asked God in His mercy to please don't let the things that I haven't found yet kill me before I find them. And I found some more last week. Shabby stuff. God, it's hard to stay sober a long time and keep doing this thing. The big stuff, you can think I'm a burglar and a rapist and all that. Hell, that's status. But these are the kind of days where I have to ask myself in all honesty, Why did you yell at that 10-year-old kid? What kind of a trip is that? What can get me so uptight that I have to yell at a kid? Well, 10- year-old kids can do that to me. Particularly when she's got a 12-year old sister. Because my wife's here, I got to share with you one afternoon. I'm generally in pretty fair spiritual condition, but this day I was at the peak. calm and cool and the world as it should be and my purpose was plain and the kids started yelling and I sent them to their rooms and they slammed the door on the way in and I ran up the stairs took the doors off the hinges and ran them to the basement by God if we're going to slam doors we won't have doors in this house and of course they were quiet And I hit the basement stairs with those two heavy doors, and it burst upon me. As soon as they go to school, you've got to carry these heavy things back up them stairs and put them back on the hinges. So I learned that spiritual life is not one of sainthood and great serenity 24 hours a day, but it is one in which when I'm at the peak of my madness, running down the stairs with the doors, somebody says, hey, as soon as you carry them back upstairs and put them back on, we'll go sit down in a chair and find out what went wrong with you. The making of amends was an incredible experience for me. I think it's the heart of this program. All of the rest of it is preliminary. The making of amends is where I go out into the world and in setting my affairs in order become of true service to God and my fellow man. And I've had that experience that that's what it's all about because I listened to what the people who came into that penitentiary told me about how to do that. Now, I got free at the eighth step. the key to the eighth step is my willingness and my sponsor said what we're going to do here is you go back to your cell and you make a list of all the people you've harmed you start the list with all the people that hurt you that you got in that inventory and all the other people and all of the people you're afraid of and anybody else you can think of because if you met him you screwed over him and that was his approach and I said Don what I want you to do is to look at each name separately then close your eyes visualize that person and see if you can feel willing to look them right in the eye and say, I've caused you harm. This is what I did to you, but I don't know what that did to me. I just know I've harmed you. Will you please tell me what I have to do so that we can get the books to balance and start over? Bill Wilson tells us in one of his little things when someone said, But Bill, I didn't have your experience. He says, Yes, you've all had it. Some of it took a little longer in the process to come. But I've read the description of Bill's experience, and I had it that night. There was no weight lifted from me, but I sat in my cell in that penitentiary that night, and I was lifted. A great clean feeling was over me. Once and for all, I was through with it because I was willing to meet anybody on those terms. What do I have to do so that you and I are straight? you can't be alone with that feeling. You can't. And it answered the grave problem for me that I had early on, wondering when I get to the ninth step, how do I make amends to my mother for what I did to her? There is no tangible way to do that. Well, that question answered that for me. When you ask the question, what do I have to do? Will you please tell me? The next thing is to shut up. Well, they tell you. And my mother, God bless her, it was a while after I got out before she even let me come by. And I found a way to ask her that question, not in those words. And she told me what I had to do to make amends. She said, Don, all I've ever wanted for you was that you'd be happy. So on a regular basis, I go by my mother's house happy. So happy she can see it, and I don't have to fake it. Because in Alcoholics Anonymous, I find joy, and it's real easy to tone joy down to happiness. My mom can't handle too much joy in me, she gets nervous. My father taught me a very important lesson about amends. I went to him with the list of things I'd done to him. And I got started with, I've robbed you and I've cheated you and I'd lied to you. And he said, please stop. I know all that. If you go into the details, all you can do is open those wounds up again and hurt me all over again. But you and i can start from here. So I learned that I can live with that. Now if it weren't for God's grace, the guilt would kill me. But because I'm only responsible and not guilty, I can live with what I did with him and I make amends to him on a regular basis by showing up and not stealing from him and not cheating and not lying to him and not putting him down and not blaming him. My dad did some terrible things to me when I was young and I got free of that by freeing him of that. It hit me one afternoon that terrible things must have been done to him or he wouldn't have done that And so he'd have done the very best he could with what he knew. And it was lousy, but that's the best he Could Have Done. And if that's The Best He Could Have Doned, perhaps that's The Best I Could Have Done. But I don't get to be that anymore. And he isn't that anymore, he's a kick. My father's an unmeasured genius, really. They've tried to measure it in a can. He lives in a 48-room house full of stuff and his head's the same way. he's 73 years old his body is and his mind is never going to get past 12 I hope he is a joy he's a character they write him up in the newspapers because he does bizarre stuff he sends a bottle back and forth across this country and has for 60 years to a friend of his every Christmas they exchange a little bottle back and forth my dad has a capacity for love that I would have never known without you. You taught me to recognize love. I used to scream out, nobody loves me. Nobody will let me love them. Well, you did. You taught us how to love. You taught we how to recognize it. Not on my terms, but however you want to give it, that's cool with me. I can accept that. Not on my terms, not your terms. My dad's actively concerned with what happens to me. And I return that by being actively concerned with what happened to him. I used to go by his house when I was broken for two bucks, shovel the walk. Now I go by and shovel the lock and don't ask for the two bucks. That's one way to make amends. He can't climb ladders too good anymore. We discovered last week neither can I. I'm a rougher. But I'm too old and fat for that anymore. But I'd do his roof, and my dad and I have fun. I did grave damage to my children, my two little boys. I ran them around this country hitchhiking and walking and in and out of crash pads. I'm one of those maniacs that came out of Berkeley in the 60s screaming, where there's dope, there's hope. Burned down City Hall, and I had my kids with me during all that. there's nothing I can do to change what I did to my children but they've helped me to learn what I can do so that they can get well God did give me an important lesson one time we lived at Buena Vista which is two and a half hours out of Denver and once a week I had to go in I had the opportunity I had it go to my home group because I don't miss that if I can help it and I had to go on for work and it hit me one afternoon from my past life maybe these kids are nervous when I leave There were many times I didn't get back for weeks. So I asked them if it bothered them that I went into town. They said, no, no. We don't mind if you go as long as you'll tell us when you're coming back and be here. And I understood that. My children don't need any more great big surprises. And we talked about the way it was. And isn't it nice we don't have to live like that anymore? and we talked very straight about my involvement with Alcoholics Anonymous and the fact that I'm going to be gone a lot, guys. I've been given a precious gift of life back and I can't sit at home with it. I can. I didn't get involved with the Institutions Committee because it was neat to go back to the penitentiary and hear the door slam. I ran out of choices years ago. when the people of Alcoholics Anonymous ask me to do something I consider that the voice of God saying I've got a million of you that could do this but I'd kind of like you to go do it today will you and so I go I have fun doing this but I don't like this this is hard this is heart but he says do that so I say alright but you better be with me and I've learned that I grow by saying yes to the things that I know right out front I can't do. It's at that point when I know I can handle the job that I turn to him and say I'm willing to try if you'll be with me but I can do this and boy did some things happen to me then. They asked me to be area delegate one time I'd gone through the institution committee and area chairman and I'd been saying yes and all of a sudden they said we'd like you to be delegate and I said no, no, no, no, I'm not delegate material. And I'm not. If you've got guidelines. And a fellow said, well, you always said you say yes to anything A says. And that wiped that one out. And then he got my ego. He said, you know, they've only asked you to stand. It doesn't mean you're going to get elected. Well, I was. And I wish everyone in this room could have that experience because I've been given a picture during those two years of what Alcoholics Anonymous really is. Oh boy. I think about our big book sometimes. What a thing. Now, I pick up that book and I look at it and it occurs to me that this sentence would read a little bit better if it was written this way. But I think we've all had that. I can't imagine any alcoholic reading the book and not wanting to change something. And it has survived since 1939 without changes. and it's been in the hands of millions of us and doesn't get changed. There must be something in that book pretty powerful if we can't change it. We've been given some real gifts and I have no choice, I must share them. So I go where the bodies are. I came away wanting 12-step work, needing 12-step work. So they made me the reader for the group, the next group of convicts that came out after the five weeks. I'm six weeks sober now. I've got to share all this? I had had some experiences and I took my big book and we did that. My home group, by the way, we do it the same way it's always been done for me. Every Tuesday night at 8 o'clock if you're in Denver, our group meets from 9 to 9.15. Or from 8 to 8 to 9-15, yeah. From 8 to 9, we read the big book word for word. One word right after another. And when we come to something that it says to do, we do it as a group. It says pray, we pray. If it talks about an attitude, we share that and we share our experience right there where we're at. And whenwe're all through doing that, we spend four or five weeks doing the same thing with the traditions. And every Tuesday night from 9 to 9.15, we have a group conscience. Every week. Our group's constantly redefining itself and our gurus don't have a chance. Most of the time they don't even pay attention to me. I have experienced the fact that I'm a steward of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I do believe there's a difference between our fellowship and our recovery program. I've seen some very sad things happen. I've seeing people read the big book and go drink. So apparently just reading the big book won't keep me sober. I've seen people come to AA meetings 90 meetings in 90 days on the 91st day they went out and drank. So apparently, just going to meetings won't keep alcoholics sober. I've seen people get sponsors and go out and drink. So apparently just getting a sponsor won't do it. And that worried me, and I thought about that for a bit. And it occurs to me at this point in my life, without meetings, I'm dead. Unless I read that book, I don't have a chance. Without a sponsor, I go loony. Perhaps all of those things together, worked with harmonious action among us, leads us to God, and God does keep me sober. So I have a sponsor. And I sponsor other people. and I read a book and I work the steps and I go to a lot of meetings. Boy, do I need meetings. Have you ever tried to do three days on the street with the normal world? There's some really weird folks out there. Some nice ones. Here is my family. And I didn't know that until you came from the outside and told me you belong here. In my six years of sobriety I got off on a tangent. I didn't leave AA, but I graduated to Bigger and Better Things for about three months, just going crazier than hell. And an AA friend of mine trapped me in a corner and said, Look, dummy, all you need is between the covers of this book and set me free again. So I go to the prisons, and I don't like it. But there's something about going to a prison meeting that excites me beyond belief. There is a sense every time I'm in prison, because I've been there and I know this, there's somebody in that room there for the first time, and that's the only shot we get at that one. If what we say doesn't register, they will never, ever be back. Now, that's an ominous responsibility. Boy, does it make me dig within myself to find out if I were in this guy's shoes, what would I need to hear? Well, that'S easy. You have a disease. you're allergic to alcohol, you're not a moral leper, you've got a warped mind, you're crazy, and we have a solution for you. You come with us and you don't ever have to come back here again. You come to us and you can live here for the ten years you've gotta do with some kind of peace and tranquility. You come without and find out how not to drink and how to live at peace with yourself. And that's easy for me because that's what you did for me. I just repeat it. I'm not smart. And if I run out of something to say, I just get my book out and say, let's see what the book has to say about that. I sponsor a lot of people that hate that. They come to me with all these problems. What are we going to do about this? Well, let's hear what the books say. I don't know. And it always comes up the same thing. When we're all through, why don't you go home and pray? There's two of them right there. they're giggling because they've heard that before. I don't go into the penitentiary to cure criminal problems. It's none of my business. I'm there to carry the message of sobriety, and if a guy still wants to be a burglar, he might as well at least be a sober burglar for crying out loud. He's got a better chance of getting away with it. But I also know that somehow when we start walking the spiritual path, I discovered that God wants me to have everything that there is for me, But it's going to be mine, not yours. I want our fellowship to be here 50 years from now when I'm dead and gone. And I want it to be hier intact because I don't know anything else that works. If there were a better way to do this, I'd be there today instead of here. and i am personally responsible in my stewardship to see to it that i don't change anything that makes this thing work so the guy coming in that door 50 years from now gets the same message i got because it works and i'm responsible for that i have to be real careful the longer i'm sober the more i know and the more deadly i am our principle of rotation makes very clear sense to me. It takes me about two years to figure out what I'm doing. And once I know what I am doing, I am a menace because I start doing it. I think that is typical of us. So we give them two years to find out what they are doing and we say, That's it, babe. Somebody else come and we are protected from me. The bodies are in the institutions. I think the last statistics show that over 30% of the people coming to Alcoholics Anonymous today are coming through some kind of an institution. And so I hear problems, and I've been involved in problems, and I don't like the way that treatment center does things. I'm not going there. And if I pray about that, that's the one that really needs... The people in that one need our message real good. That's the One I better go to. Not to tell them how to operate. That's none of my business. That's an outside issue. Those traditions apply to me personally. I have no opinion on Raleigh Hills. I haveno opinion on Parkside. They've got the people that I do need They have the alcoholics sobered up, well-fed, clean and quiet, and ready to listen. My big book says that's the condition I need to talk to them in. So I go. And I go for me. I have no idea if I do any good in those places for anybody else, but I know that I get to go home at night and sleep good and get up the next day. See, God left me on this planet for one purpose. each day I am to carry his message to some alcoholic that doesn't know that if you're an alcoholic you don't have to drink anymore I'm supposed to go find somebody and you know where the best place to find them is in AA meetings there's thousands of people coming to AA meetings that don't know they don't need to drink they don' t have to drink anymore and that's where I will hear what I need to hear to stay alive one more day I'm going to close a little earlier than David gave me the time for because I've run out of steam see, I hit a frustration point I spent just about an hour here talking about things and now I'm ready to really talk about the stuff that's important and that frustrates me and always has so what we're going to have to do when we're all done I hope we can sit down somewhere either at a meeting or over a cup of coffee or something and talk about some really important things. I don't know how to tell you in any other way that I love you. I'm actively concerned with your welfare. It matters to me whether you live or die. It really does. Every time an alcoholic dies, a piece of me breaks because I know they don't have to. I also know I can't save anybody. But I want this fellowship to go on. I want my family intact. I'm going to give you two little gifts as I leave. That one's important. I've got two stepdaughters and a marvelous wife. About seven years ago coming up, I met a sane lady I'd never met one in my life. I'd ever met her. I'd have never looked for one either. and we're putting together probably the most precious thing of my life I don't know but I suppose that there are people that are called upon by God to do really big things most of us are asked to do something really big live at peace with another human being in a home we're building a home I've been in the same house seven years I didn't even do that much time it's incredible and because of you showing me how you become a member of a family we never try to fix each other she helped me understand that I like her just the way she is I'm a neat freak and she's messy and I don't care she's trained her two daughters the same way At the time when I was through being a father, because I'd already raised seven kids through all this, this same lady brought two little girls into my life. And I didn't want to be a father anymore. But they're teaching me some very precious things about that. They drive me absolutely loony some days. So I love them so dearly. And there's a big thing happens in my house because I live Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm gone a lot. And their real daddy's a Denver juvenile detective. And for reasons that I don't understand, he tells them what he does on note for 11. And they're frightened. And when I go out of that house at night, they're frightening. And the little 10-year-old will come up to me and say, where are you going? And I can hear it in her voice. and if I say to her I'm going to an AA meeting honey I watch her relax you see I've told her and she believes because I believe that if I'm with you I'll be home and while I'm gone my house is safe God's watching over my family while I am with you nothing is going to happen what a gift that is but you should have been there the day we came home and found our house had been burglarized my 12 year old says my God, what am I going to tell them at school? I told them God watches over our house. Well, he did. We weren't there. That's all we lost was some stuff. A few weeks ago, there was a brutal murder committed in our neighborhood. And I was out of town. A family of four were just... They were murdered. About, what, eight blocks from my house. I called home and my kids were scared. All I had to do was remind my 10-year-old that, honey, God's watching over you while I'm gone. She says, oh yeah, that's right. And then I told her to get a baseball bat and keep it by her bed. The spiritual life is a very practical life. Let me give you the final gift. You have been so kind today. I can feel your love. I spent most of my life trying to find out who I was, but I became like old legions in the Bible. I was everybody I'd ever met, and they were all talking at once. And I came to you fearful that I was going to have to spend the rest of my time sorting them out, and you said no, no. What we do is like this. A fellow saw the statue of David one time for the first time Michelangelo's Statue of David at Breeze, and he was just awestruck. And he went to Michelangeli and he said, how in the world did you do that? Michelangela said, well, I took a block of stone and I chipped away everything that didn't look like David and that's what I came up with. That's how I see Alcoholics Anonymous. With God as the sculptor, and you and these steps and all the things we do is the chisel and with me is a very willing block of stone one day at a time we're chipping away the things that don't look like Don and so far this is what we've got God bless you Thank you very much, Don. Beautiful.