The Self-Righteous Book Thumper Who Didn’t Do the Steps – Adam C.

I'd like to introduce Adam. Hi everybody, my name is Adam Coleman and I'm an alcoholic. I would like to begin by thanking Pete for giving me two days advance notice to let me know that I was going to do this. Actually, it's a blessing in disguise. A lot of times when I do this, my brain runs and I decide, well you guys need to know this story and you need to Know This and you need to know that. Fortunately, I've only had two days to do that rather than a month or a week, so I really do appreciate it. Thank you, Pete. The next thing I'd like to point out is Nancy went back and grabbed one of your schedules and there's a schedule here from Vancouver. You say you're from Vancouver, I've never seen you. I'm wondering if he's a real alcoholic or not. I'd just like to pointed out that this says February of 2001, so you guys might want to get a little bit updated I think the fourth edition is newer than the schedule is. It's always an honor and a privilege to be able to come up here, and I accidentally ran across the grotto. I'll tell you my grotto story. When I first got sober, I got sober here in Vancouver, or rather I went to a treatment center here in Portland, and I tried to get in in Vancouver and they told me that I had a bad attitude and they didn't want me. And so I called the place over here, Laurelhurst, And they said, yes, we'll take you. And I went in. And after I got done, obviously the people that I'd gone to treatment with were from Portland. And so they said let's go to a meeting. And so a few of us went to the grotto and we walked in and we sat down. And this guy who was chairing the meeting, I'd been sober three or four months at the time. Anyway, this guy whose chairing in the meeting said, anybody who has more than five years, please raise your hand. And a bunch of people raised their hand. And this guy said, well, you know, for all of you new people, he said, I want you to know I'm not going to call on you. You guys don't have anything to say. We don't give a damn about what you have to say and we're going to, I'm going to call on all these people with five years. And of course at four or five months, I knew everything. I caught a major attitude and I didn't go back to the grotto for five years after that five year period, I went back and I kind of bounced in and out for a little while as far as going to that meeting. but I actually quit going there for so long I forgot how to get there. And about a year and a half or so ago I started going back again. I finally found out how to go back and I started to go into the grotto and I got to meet Pete and Steve and Jim and Patty and a number of other people and for like the first month or two that I was there I started beginning to see this pattern one of the main patterns was you don't call on Adam no matter what I don't resent this I'm just mentioning this and then the other thing was I swear to God your name had to start with a J in order to get called on have you ever noticed that it's Jim and it's Joanna and it' s Jill and it is Julie but it's never Adam I noticed right off the top it's just it's not it's always never Adam and one day a girl was chairing the meeting her name was Carly and she was chairING the meeting and she looked over at me and she's halfway through the meeting and she said over me and she said, I'd like you to share. And I looked her straight in the eye with all the earnestness of my command and looked her strait in the eyes and I said, I want you to know that you have ruined a perfectly good 14-year resentment. I have been coming to this meeting for about 14 years. I hated you people. I don't know why I continue to come back. But she called on me and I shared. And from that day, a couple of people came up and said, hey, we're glad you're here. Patty came up to me and tried to recite my name. That was comical. She sat there for five minutes, and she mentioned every name known to man except Adam. He's going, Mike, Steve, Joe, Bruce, Irving, Harold. I'm not lying, am I? I'm really not. Oh, and I have to admit to you guys that yes, I am from Vancouver. And I've been coming over here frequently, so I don't consider myself out of town. I consider myself part of this group. My home group is at 6.45 in the morning. It may or may not be in this schedule, but I love morning meetings. I absolutely love morning meeting. We meet Monday through Friday from 6. 45 to 7. 45 in the morning and Saturdays and Sundays from 7. 30 to 8. 30 and it's a fantastic meeting. It always has been my home group and I trust it always will be my home group. But about a month ago, I was at the Grotto and they went and they got, have you ever seen the cups they have at the grotto? They're these nice big white coffee cups, kind of a swirly little handle, good looking cups. And they give them to members of the gr motto. And so I'm not a member and they wouldn't give me a coffee cup. So I thought, well, if I call the grotto my Portland home group, maybe I'll get a cup. We'll see what happens with that. My story is very boring. I have never blacked out, I've never been thrown in jail, I have never got in a car wreck, I did not lose my wife, my house, my family my job, my car if I have blacked out I don't remember it and I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous one of the first meetings that I ever went to true story, one ofthe first meetings I walked into was one over in Vancouver and I got there and this guy was sharing how him and two buddies got drunk and they decided to break into a mortuary and they got into the place and this guy was so drunk he literally physically passed out and his friends decided to play a joke on him and so they picked him up and they stuck him inside a coffin and they closed his little hands and they took a flower and left him there and the next morning when he came to he woke up and he looked around and he realized where he was and he thought to himself if I'm dead how come I have to go to the bathroom so bad and that was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous and I thought you guys are some sick bastards Sick, sick, sick people. And everything that I've ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when I first got sober, I took incredibly personal. I heard the things that I wanted to hear rather than the things you people were saying. For instance, when they read the preamble, I swear to God, they said, there are no Jews or Hebes for AA membership. And I took great offense to that. And I thought, well, screw you guys. I'm going to show up anyway. And I hung around AlcoholicsAnonymous. I had no place, virtually no place to go. I hung around for AA for about five years before I finally heard my story. And I've heard a lot of different stories. And my story is real simple and the Reader's Digest version of it is I'm the kind of person who would drink a little bit of wine and come up with an idea. And then I would smoke a littlebit of dope so I could relax when I did that idea. And thenI would do some LSD so Icould expand on that idea and then Iwould do some cocaine so I can look cool when Idid that idea and then I'd drink a bunch of whiskey and forget every fucking thing that I was thinking about. And that's it. You know? That's the Reader's Digest version of it. I noticed that this is on tape so we can delete the word fuck. And so when I got here and I listened to everybody's stories, I kept thinking, I am incredibly unique. You know, you read that, that nobody likes to think of himself. I do. I am so different than all of you people and I'm nothing like you people. And I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous and here were a bunch of bikers with their misspelled tattoos and a bunchof old folks, you know, and I mean, I walked in to the grotto and I was looking at these people and I thought, you know these guys are in their 30s and their 40s and their 50s. I mean there's old people in AlcoholicsAnonymous. You know, I got sober 26 years old for goodness sakes and I listened to the stories and one of my favorite stories was Seaman Chuck he just passed away with 45 years or so and his story was he worked on the ships and a guy had shown up just drunker than drunk could be and the guy couldn't get on the boat and so they dropped this net down and picked him up on the net and they picked him back up and put him back on theboat and Chuck went over and was holding this guy in his arms and the guys was so drunk and he got in a bar fight and his eyeball was physically hanging out of the socket and Chuck looked down at this guy and he said my god Steve when are you ever going to quit drinking And Steve looked Chuck right in the eye and he said, Chuck, as soon as I get as bad as you, I'm going to quit. And that's the way I was. When I walked in, I heard your guys' stories and I kept thinking, when I get a lot of people and I get it as bad as you guys, I'm gonna quit. And when I called that treatment center, I was absolutely beat. I had no place to go. I went over to a friend's house one day and I'm just a nice guy, let's go party. So I show up in Keith and Michelle's house and I said, hey, you know, let's party. And it's about 10 o'clock at night and they just had a newborn. And so we go in and we start partying and what have you and it got to be about 9 o' clock or so and pretty soon Michelle said, well, it's time to put the newborn to bed. And so they went in the back room and they said their prayers and what Have You and she came walking back out and Keith said, well, we're going to have one or two more, honey and I'll be right to bed and she said, okay and she went to bed and about 11, 12 o' lock that night we were getting a little bit loud and she was like, and she became walking out and she says, you know, honey, are you going to come to bed? And he said, yeah, I'm just going to have one more and I'll be right in. And she said, okay. And then about two or three o'clock in the morning, we were getting a little bit louder and she came walking back out and she looked over at Keith and she said honey, are you gonna come to bad? And he says, just one more and I will be right there. And about seven o' clock that morning she came out and this time she didn't walk up to Keith she walked up to me and I was literally on the floor and she walked over and she straddled over me and she look down at me and she says, you no good rotten worthless piece of human flesh I hate your blood and your guts. I never want to see you again. I want nothing to do with you and I want you to get the hell out of my house. And she started yelling and screaming at me and I looked over at Keith like, you saved me. And Keith, because he was a smart man and didn't argue with his wife, he just looked at me with a blank stare. And I started walking out of the door and as I was walking out the door, Michelle was standing there screaming at the top of her lungs. And the neighbors came walking out and the doors were opening and people were peeking through their windows and I'm walking out and I'm thinking, my God, that woman has a problem and she needs to do something about it. And she's screaming and yelling and I went and I got in my car and I drove away and I, I'm a nice guy. You know, and all of a sudden even my friends don't want anything to do with me. They're throwing me out of their house. You know? So I ended up in treatment. I jumped through the hoops. I did the 21-day inpatient. I walked in and they said, when was the last time you used? and I said, I don't know but there's a bottle out on your front porch so it was probably about 20 minutes ago. This guy by the name of Chet we were sitting at this round table and we were talking and he gave me this contract and the contract said you have to wake up at 6 o'clock we have meditation at 7 o' clock you will eat breakfast at 8 o'lock at 8.30 you're allowed to have a smoke break between 8. 30 and 8. 15 at 9 o' lock we have a step study and everything was literally just step everything that we did that entire day and he was going through this whole thing and I reached across the table and I grabbed his contract and I signed it and I gave it back to him and I said, here's your contract. I said all I care about is I want you to fix me. My exact words. I want YOU to fix ME. And Chet grabbed the contract and he put it in a little folder next to him and he said, listen smartass, we can't fix you. He says the only thing that we can do is we can give you the tools and it will be your responsibility to take care of yourself. Now about that time self-righteous indignation jumped in because I have an attitude Let's think about this. If my car is broken down and I take my car to JD's shop, then I take my car in, I say, I want you to fix my car. I don't expect JD to say, well, Mr. Coleman, I can't fix your car. But I can teach you how to use the tools. You know? I give you the car, I pay you the money, you fix my car. That makes sense to me. And that's what I thought treatment was. I give Adam, Adam, you use your tools and you fix me. And if that means putting me in a rubber room, I mean, if that mean aversion therapy, if that meant whatever, I want you to fix me." And Chet just looked at me and he said, Listen, smartass, this is the way it goes. He says, What happens is that when you're sick, you go to a doctor. A doctor takes your pulse, he takes a look at you, he looks at your symptoms, he figures out what's going on and then once he has a diagnosis, he gives you a prescription. and Adam, it is your responsibility to go to the pharmacy. Adam, it is you responsibility to get the prescription. Adam, it is YOUR responsibility to take the medication as prescribed. I will give you the tools and it is YOUR responsibility to care for yourself. I mentioned to take medication as prescribed because I'm one of those guys that used to walk into your house and invariably go into your medicine cabinet and I'd go over and open it up and I would take whatever was in there And if you'd walked into that bathroom 10 or 15 minutes later, depending on what you had in your medicine cabinet, you would either find me passed out on your floor or just crawling across the ceiling. I had a date one time with a girl named Debbie and we had a nice candlelit dinner at her house and eventually, invariably, I got up and went into a restroom and I walked over and I opened up her medicine cabinet and I was going through it and there was this thing and it was round and it said blue and it says Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday day. And I thought, well, you know, I mean if a week's is good, a couple weeks would be better so I popped as many of those things as I could. And, and I feel very confident standing here in front of you guys to let you know that I will probably never get pregnant for the rest of my life because of that stuff. So I go through treatment, I jump through the hoops, I played their little games, I did everything that they told me to do, and I got out of treatment,I went back to work, I walked in, they made me sign a contract that said you are not allowed to do methamphetamines. You're not allowed to do cocaine. You are not aloud to smoke dope. No place on that contract did it ever say, you are not allowed to drink at them because drinking is legal. So I did what any self-respecting alcoholic, a self- respecting alcoholic, there's an oxymoron for you. I did what any self- respecting person would do. I got finished signing the contract. I went back home and I had some dope stashed and I smoked it and I got loaded. Four hours after I got out of treatment I got loaded again and uh for the new people there's a lot of hope for you um and what happened was where it was for the next two weeks i literally just did what i call this little dance of death you know i just i just kind of hung around and and i didn't my friends didn't want anything to do with me my job was falling apart my cars were broken down i hadn't lost anything and i was dead up to my nose but you know I had this attitude that I guess that my life was not unmanageable. And to make a real long story short, what happened was one of the girls in the treatment center got thrown out and I went over and I picked her up and we scored on a bunch of drugs and she had more than I did. And so I was sitting in my living room and looking at her drugs. And I had this attitude that keep in mind, I'm not a violent person. I've never been. That's a lie. I'd been in one fight in my entire life and she beat the crap out of me. So I'm sitting there and I'm looking at Elaine across the table and she's got all this stuff sitting on the table and the only thing that I could think of was because nobody knew that I had picked her up from the treatment center. Nobody knew where that girl was. Nobody had any idea what was going on with her. And my attitude was I could kill her, I could throw her in the back of my car and there's a place up north of Vancouver called Heysen Bridge and I figured I could kill her. I could go in the bag of the car, I'll drive up to Heyssen Bridge, drop off the body and nobody will ever know the difference. And at that time I turned around i looked her straight in the eye and i said i want you out of my house now and i must have had some sort of look in my eye because all i saw was complete terror in her eyes and she got up and she left and i sat there and i thought my god what have i become you know i'm not a violent person and what kind of human being would think of taking another human being's life because of drugs and alcohol you know I can't live like this and I won't live like this. And I did the only thing that I knew to do and that was to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and I walked into AA in one of the first meetings that I ever walked into. Actually, I guess it would be the second one because the first one they were talking about mortuaries but the second one I walked into, I walked in and the guy was sitting down and he walked up to me and he handed me a map to a party and he said I'm celebrating two years of sobriety and he says you're invited to my house. Now keep in mind the last time that I went to a friend's house I was not invited back and he handed me this map and he said you're welcome to show up and we're going to have fun and I kept thinking, how in the world can you possibly have fun without getting loaded? I sat here today, and when you said you were celebrating 34 years, I remember one of the first meetings Chuck was celebrating 29 years. And I remember sitting there thinking, first of all, 29 years in a row? And then the other thing I thought was, can you imagine how stupid, boring, and glum life would be after 34 years of sobriety? Just imagine what life would feel like. how could you possibly have any fun? And here's a guy handing me a map to his house saying we're going to have fun. And I thought, I don't know how to do it. But I had no place to go. My friends didn't want anything to do with me. I was very close to losing my job. Life was falling apart. So I went to Mike's house and they were playing frisbee golf and they had a good time and it was actually pretty enjoyable. I had met this guy at a meeting. His name was Mike. and I started talking to him. And he was one of the nicest, sweetest guys God had ever put on the face of the planet until I mentioned those magic words. And then he turned into this complete self-righteous jerk. And those words were, will you be my sponsor? And the minute I did that, he said yes, he would. And like I said, the meeting was from 645 to 745, and I worked from 6 to 6. So I would get off work, I would go to the meeting. after the meeting I would go over to his house we would literally walk into his house, he would fix me pancakes and coffee and we would sit there and we would read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and eat. And we would read a couple paragraphs and we'd discuss it. We'd read a couple paragraphsand we'd discuss it and when we got to the third step and it said you need to do this prayer we literally got down on our knees and did the prayer. Then we sat down and we started doing a fourth step. I had been told time and time again, you need to work the steps. And I'm a quick study. I really am a quick studie and I can read things and I remember things. And when I first got to AA, I knew the big book. I could literally, I could read the bigbook, I would quote the big book, I can cross-reference the big book with the 12 and 12, with As Bill Sees It, with all the pamphlets you have back there. And I got to a point, I was one of those self-righteous book thumpers. I hate those people. I would walk into a meeting carrying my big book and what would happen is people would have a problem and I'd say, you know what you need to do, Pete? You need to read page 86, 87 and 88. Oh, you have a problema about sex? Did you know that we talk about sex on page 69? Oh,you have a problme with resentment? Page 552. And I was going around and I was giving everybody. You had a problem, I had the answer and it's all right here in the book. A couple years into this deal, I went to a dance at the it wasn't the U.S., the Pass Club is what it was called over here in Portland. And Curtis Delgado was playing. There were four, five, six hundred people in that room. I was a couple years sober and I went in and I was standing there and all these people are dancing and laughing and joking and having a fabulous time. And I sat in that Room hopelessly, desperately and miserably alone in that Ring. And I looked around and I thought what in the hell is going on with me? And I got in my car and I drove home and I called my sponsor up and I said, man, I'm screwed. When I drank and when I got loaded I couldn't handle it. I couldn' t do it and the best I've ever been able to achieve was I ended up in a treatment center. And I've been sober for a couple of years. I know the book inside and out and I am absolutely and miserably alone and I'm dying inside and I' m ready to take a gun and stick it in my face and pull the trigger. And my sponsor said, you know Adam? He said, you know that book Inside and Out? He says, but the problem is that you don' t know you don't do it. You know, it's one of those deals that's like, take my advice. I'm not using it. You know? Really? You know. And I mean, it was miserable. I was just miserable. And he said, have you considered working the steps? Well, I had worked the steps. I worked the step the minute I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous. And we can do it right here if you like. Number one, we admitted we were powerless. I'm none. Two, came to believe there's a power greater than myself. There isn't. Three, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to care of this thing that doesn't exist. That ain't going to happen. Number four, we did a searching and fearless moral inventory. Let's write this stuff down. I grew up on the streets, you guys. You write nothing down. Number five, we admitted to God, to ourselves, another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Now if you think I'm not going to write this stuff out, write this thing down, you know as well as I do. You copped to nothing. You don't admit it. Number six, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I wasn't ready. Number seven, we humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. I didn't have any. Number eight, we made a list of people we had harmed. My attitude was I never harmed anybody. I went over to Keith and Michelle's house to have a good time, right? We're here to party. And besides, you chose to hang around with me, right ? That's your problem, not mine. Number nine, we make direct amends to such people wherever possible. The people I screwed, what do you do? Walk up to Steve and say, man, I'm sorry I stole 100 grand worth of stuff. I'll pay you 50 bucks a week. You know, these people take guns out of their briefcases and shoot you. So I'm not going to do that. Number ten, we continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. You guys need to know something. I'm Adam. I'm Not Wrong. Eleven, we thought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. I used to pray and meditate. I used sit in the middle of the floor with a pipe in one hand and a bottle in another. I'd cross my legs, get in the mantric position and listen to Led Zeppelin going to California. you know and I'd sit there for about five minutes if that my head would be racing and invariably I'd slip into a sexual fantasy everybody knows meditation doesn't work and then 12 having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps you guys if you don't do the first 11 the 12th doesn't look so there we just worked the steps and it took me 30 seconds okay a minute and a half but I just worked this stuff my sponsor asked me if I worked the step so I said yes I did. And he said, did you work them with somebody else? Or did you do them in your head? And if you did do it in yourhead, what is your source of information? So I started working the steps. I was going to Mike's house. We were eating pancakes and drinking coffee. You know, and I was scared. I honestly and truthfully, nobody in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous that I'm aware of has ever woke up in the morning and said God, life is beautiful. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping and God wants me as a raindrop. I think I'll do a fourth step today. You know, my experience with working the steps is when the pain is great enough, you will work them. So I told my sponsor at that time, after that little dance routine, I said, I will go to any length and I will do anything you ask me to do. Period. End of conversation. And he said, okay, the first step. Are you willing to admit you're powerless and my life was falling apart. I'd been sober for a couple of years and my wife was falling down. My life was calling apart. Yeah, man, I was done. I was absolutely done. I constantly find myself in a state of surrender nowadays, even to this day. So yeah, I'm powerless and my Life has become unmanageable. Two, came to believe a power greater than myself. I can safely say there is no doubt in my mind right now there's not a thing that a person could say or do to me right now that will ever convince me that there is not a God. I've seen too many things happen. When I was eight days sober, true story, when I was 8 days sober I was alone and miserable and hurting and beat and I went home and I crawled into my bed by myself and I was just dying inside and I got on my knees and I said, God, I'd do anything to have a nice warm body to wake up to. And the next morning I woke up and my cat was about this far away from my head. And I wokeup and I saw that and I thought, you know with God I didn't realize you were supposed to be specific. And I also realized at that point in time that God has got a sense of humor. I asked Him for a nice warm body, and I got it. So that was a pretty nice deal. And so I started just a little glimmer of maybe there is something out there and maybe He does have my best interest in mind. So then step three, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. At that time, the decision was very easy and my sponsor made it very abundantly clear he said when you make a decision you need to put it into action and so I did I made that decision that yes, I will turn my life over to the care of God and he said okay, well you need to do a fourth step and I've seen countless fourth steps I've see the Hazleton I've seeing a number of different ones and I'm not going to criticize them but the best fourth step that I have ever done in my life I opened up the big book and the bigbook says we were as definite as this example It didn't say we used a computer-generated check sheet. It didn' t say that we do this. It said we were as definite as this example. And you write down your resentments, your fears, your sexual conduct and you do it in a column and you write the stuff down. How did it affect me? What part did I play in it? And I literally wrote all of that stuff down and I had thought it countless times. In fact, for a long while I kept putting the fourth step off and my sponsor kept coming up to me And he said, you know, how's your fourth step? And I said, oh, you don't think about it. I'm thinking about it this one on for about a month or two. And then finally, one day I went into a meeting and he said how's Your fourth step and I said I'm Thinking about it and he walked over and he opened the book and he put it down in front of me and he says what is this chapter say right here and I Said well, it says into action and he Says that's right. It says doesn't say into thinking It says into accident get off your ass and do A fourth step So I wrote all this stuff out And and then After I got finished I you know I finally got to a point where I decided it was time to share it with him. And as I was writing this stuff down, even though I'd thought about it countless times, the thing that happened when I wrote everything down was that I began to see a pattern. I beganto see how much fear was literally just dominating my life, how I was afraid. It was as if I knew... If I said this... You ever have that conversation with somebody without having the person there? If I say this, they'll say that. Then I'll say this and then they'll says that. And you just have that whole situation down And then when the real conversation comes about, you're not following the script. And then I get lost. I don't know. You're not supposed to say that. So I found that there were patterns in my life. I mean, I've always excelled in school. I'm a relatively intelligent human being. And yet it's amazing. I can sit up here and explain to you the quadratic equation. I could literally sit down and mathematically prove to you how the quadratic equation works, whatever the hell that is. But if you asked me to change the oil in my car, I couldn't do it. And my fear was, what if you people find out who and what I really am? What if you found out... All my life people have told me, Adam, you're a smart man, you're going places, you're gonna do something with your life. And my prayer has always been, what if I fail? What if I don't? What if they find out that I'm a failure? So the solution to that is don't do anything. If you don't doing anything, and you can't fail at it. So my life was just empty. And all of these things, one of the biggest deals that happened, and it was very difficult for me at the time, on April 1st, 1985, I got a call from the coroner down in San Diego, California. And this guy called me up and he said, Mr. Coleman, I'm sorry to tell you this, but we found your father's decaying body in his apartment. And you need to come down to California and you need take care of all of your father. He had a lot of father's affairs. And I went down to Califonia and I could spend an hour telling you the story about my father. To make a long story short, I went down there. I had to clean his apartment. I blew his car up. I ran into U-Haul. The U- Haul broke down twice. I suffered a severe nervous breakdown on the side of I-5, literally. I walked into a field curled up in the fetal position and just started rocking back and forth. And then when I finally got back to Vancouver, I finally Got Home in a U-Hall and I drove, literally drove the U-haul into the garage. I mean, the garage came falling down. And it was a very traumatic point in my life. And I swore up and down I would never tell anybody that because what would you think of me? What kind of no-good, rotten, low-life sleazeball would allow his father to die that way? And I wasn't about ready to tell a soul anything about that. And yet here I am doing my fifth step with my sponsor and I'm sharing this information with him. And as I was going through my fifth step, I would tell my sponsor stories. He in turn was sharing his story with me. Now some of the things that I had done were bad and I will freely admit that. But I'll tell you, some ofthe things that my sponsor did were disgusting. They were! And at no point in time did my sponsor ever use those words like Like, dude, you did what? You know, he was always supportive and he always shared this stuff with me. And after I got finished doing my fifth step, he said, I want you to go home. I want to turn off your TV, turn off the radio. And he says, I want você to go back over this list and I wantyou to make sure that you want God to take all of these defects of character. So I took this list home and I put it down and I looked at it and he said when you're done I wantyou to get in the book and Iwantyou to look at the seventh step prayer and I wantyouto do that prayer. and so I went home and I looked at the list and I checked everything out and then I went over and I opened up the book and the prayer said something about God, I offer myself to you the good and the bad and please take this away and I read that and instantly I read it and I was thinking why would I want to give God the good? No matter what I'm always fighting the steps why wouldI want God to take the good if it's good, it's g ood I would want to keep it And if I'm not going to give him the good, why would I give him the bad? That seems like a cool trick to play on God. You know? And I'm sitting there and I'm reading this prayer and I think, I can't do this. I just can't be a Christian. I just don't want to do this and as I'm going over the list it suddenly occurred to me the best I have ever been able to achieve was to end up in Alcoholics Anonymous. The best that I've ever been able to do was to fail miserably. You know, and I thought, okay, If that's the best, maybe God can do better. And if I'm going to ask God to take the good, I'll ask Him to take that as well. And let's see what happens. Let's roll with it. And then the eighth step, it said make a list and I had my list because I'd done my fourth step. And in the ninth step, I made direct amends. As I was going through my amends, my sponsor said things like, you don't just walk up to somebody and say I'm sorry and you're done. He said you learn from your past experiences and you move on. Case in point. Your father passed away and he died alone. What is your mother doing today? He said, I want you to call your mother once a week and keep the I love you's current. When your mother's birthday comes rolling along, I'm a computer geek. I have my computer set up that when it's my mother's birthday, it beeps at me two weeks ahead of time and it says, hey Adam, it's your mom's birthday. And you will go out and you will buy her a card and an appropriate gift. You know, the holidays used to come rolling along. and I used to think you go out and you buy something expensive and inappropriate and give it to them and it makes everything okay. So you buy your mother an appropriate gift. And it just so happens, I mention this story because we just went out with mom yesterday. Her birthday was the day before yesterday. It was her 79th birthday. And Nancy and I and some friends took mom out to a nice lunch and we sat down and we had lunch with mom and we celebrated her birthday yesterday. And I call mom once a week and I go out with her once a month and I have breakfast with my mother and I keep that I love you's current And my mom and I have a tremendous relationship today. And that's what making amends is. It isn't walking up and saying, I'm sorry. If you stole something from work, you don't steal things from work. When you go to work, you do the best job you can do. They don't owe you anything. They're nice enough to employ you because you're a smut. Go to work and do it. And so that's the way that I make my amends. And then the tenth step, I would love to say that I do a 10-step every day, and I don't. But most of the time, I pay attention to what I'm doing on. I'm a natural smartass to a fault. And sometimes I will say things and do things that are not meant to harm people. I was at a Christmas dinner years ago, and the people were getting drunk, and they were having fun, and they weren't doing anything. They were enjoying themselves. There was this girl named Lori, and she was getting really drunk. We were at this place called The Idol Vice, and they actually go around with an accordion, and they sing to you and this stuff. And this guy went up and he was serenading Lori. And as he was, he reached over and he grabbed his tie and he took her hands and he tied them behind the chair and he sat there and he started rubbing her shoulders and he said, my God, your shoulders are tight. And I turned around and I looked at him and I said, yeah, and that's about the only part of her body that is. And it was meant to be funny. It was meant for her to be cute. It was made to be cutely. And it later turned out that she was dating my boss and I didn't know it. And so a couple days later, I went up to Lori and I said, hey, you know about what I said at the restaurant. I said what I had said was completely inappropriate and I owe you an apology and I'm sorry. And she said, I got drunk and I don't remember anything that happened there and I have no idea what she said. And I wasn't going to share with her, but I made my amends. So I watch what I say. And most of the time, I watch it. I watch how much I say and I watch when I do. And I encourage everybody, judge me by my actions. I don't have a problem with that. I really don't. The prayer and meditation. When I got up this morning, Nancy said, Are you nervous? And I said, No, I don' t have time to be nervous. And then I got here and there were about three people in here and then I started getting nervous. And then you guys started showing up and thenI got even more nervous. And then when I finally got here, when I finaly get up here, I usually do okay. And my prayer, whenever I do anything like this, is always the same. It's, God, I hope these people don't hear what I have to say. God, I hope they hear what they need to hear. And that was my prayer this morning. And I do pray and I do meditate. And I can sit down and I can relax and I try to listen to those voices in my head. And knowing that of all the voices, Dr. Paul used to say, I've got those committees in my hand. And each personality is the same. This one says you're going to fail. This one says you're okay. This one say you're a putz. This one said steal it. And of all the voices in the head, that one of those voices is the voice of God. Conscience is the presence of God If you do something and it feels right and it is right, then it is probably God talking to you. So that's what I try to do is I try sort all these different things out and I try find out what can I do to help people today. It's not about me. It's about helping other people, and I like this program for that reason. And then the twelfth step, which leads right into it, the twelveth step is you carry the message. And I try to carry the message by, and I shared this meeting the other day, I honestly and truthfully believe that one of the best twelve-step works that you can do is be the best sober you can be today. You know, people at work know that I'm sober. People in Vancouver know that i'm sober, I'd love to say my students know that im sober but I'm not going to get in front of my students until I'm drunk. But I try to be the best sober that I can be today because I believe that that's my responsibility. I love Alcoholics Anonymous and I believe in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And so I try to practice these principles as best I can. I mentioned God a little bit, and I feel you're doing the program itself a disservice if you don't mention God because like I said, when I first got here I had an attitude. Everybody told me, you need to find God, you needと find God. And my attitude was, I'm Jewish. You know, everybody knows the Jews are God's chosen people. And when you walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and you hear people say, you need to find God, you needと find God. My attitude was, I don't need to found God. God's looking for my ass because I'm a Jew. You guys need God. I will be the first person in the world to admit you guys need that God. I, on the other hand, am one of the chosen ones. And I'll tell you this right now, an attitude like that will get you loaded. so what I did was I started my sponsor once told me seek and you shall find and I tried to figure out just what exactly that means and what happened was I began to have a problem with this God thing and I started to look for him and what happen was I was at a club downtown Vancouver one day and there's a bunch of one way streets and as I was there the guy came walking in with a book as Iwas there I was talking to a friend of mine and I'd had a fight with my boss. And I was not in a very good mood. And as I was talking to this person in the club, I make a deal with God every morning. You put it in front of me, I will do it. It's that simple. So I'm sitting in this club and I'm talking tothis girl and as I'm telling her what I think of my boss and as i'm talkingto her and I am just furious, I am absolutely furious and asI am talking to her all of a sudden somebody says hey look outside and I look outside and there's a van with a guy in a wheelchair in the back cruising down the road and there was no driver and I saw that and everybody in the club just stood there and I threw my coffee down and I ran out alongside this van and I stopped it and we missed this parked bus by about I don't know 20, 30, 40 feet and I turned around and I looked at this guy in the van and I said are you okay and he says yeah I'm fine and because they're all one way streets I took the van and I went around I had to drive it back around what had happened was a guy got to the bus stop and he went in and he forgot to put the car in park. And so it just started cruising down the road. So when I went around the corner, this guy came out of the bus stopped and he saw his van going down the street and he was going down the road and so naturally he assumed somebody stole it. So he goes chasing after the van while I'm going around the corner. So I drive around the block and I get back to the Bus Depot and there's two guys standing there and I said, do you have any idea whose van this is? And they said, yeah, it's his. And this guy's running down the road looking at me going, you no good rotten son of a bitch, you're stealing my van. He starts yelling and screaming at me. And he finally gets about this far away from me and I said, let's think about this. I said first of all, if I stole your van, we would not be having this conversation. Two, ifI stole this van, I would throw the guy out in the wheelchair. He can identify me. I said three and most important, I said I want to thank you for helping me believe in miracles And the guy said, what in the hell are you talking about? And I said, out of a hundred million sperm, yours is the one who made it. You have got to be the stupidest man I have ever met in the face of my life. And I proceeded to tell this guy what I thought of his family heritage. Stupid people! And I took the keys and I gave them to him and I walked back into the club. Keep in mind, I was pissed. And I walked back intothe club and when I walked back in, literally everybody in that club stopped and they stood up and they started applauding. And they said, Adam, you did a good job. You did a good thing. I shared that story about my cat. I told you, when I wake up in the morning, I ask God, you put it in front of me and I will do it. I meant Pete saying, Adam, will you show that show girl? I didn't mean I want a van cruising down the road. You know? And And so I started to seek and I began to find. And I saw him in my cat and I saw them in this van. I was talking to my sponsor and I just told him the story that I told you and he said, Adam, what do you think the guy in the wheelchair was thinking in the back of that van? And I said, if it were me, if I were in a van and it was cruising towards a bus, I think the only thing that would be going through my mind was God get me out of this one. That's exactly what I would think. And my sponsor looked at me and he asked Adam, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you are worth the answer to that man's prayers? That maybe God talks through cats and maybe God walks through vans, but Adam, maybe God works through you too. You know, I mean me, this lowlife slimeball who allowed his father to die a certain way who got thrown out of Keith and Michelle's house. All of a sudden, God feels that Adam, you are worthy of His presence. That's a pretty neat deal. So that's what I do is I try to live my life as though God is working through my life. I'm constantly asking myself the question, what would God do? If you were working for God, what would you do? Would you really take that extra 10 minutes during a break? Don't you think God might get a little bit pissed? Would you treat that newcomer with respect and dignity? Or would you tell him, hey, sit down, shut up and listen to me, I have nothing to say? What would God doing? And so I try to live that way as best I can. I don't do it perfect all the time, but I do it as best as I can And that's my program. That's the way that I try to do it. I always do this. I've got about two minutes left for that. I want to share one of my favorite stories, and I promise I'll shut up after this. And it's the story of the invisible boat. And the story goes that there's a guy who's drowning and he's just paddling around in the water and he doesn't know what to do when a guy in an invisible boat shows up. And he looks at the guy in the boat and he says, hey, get on board. And the guy just kind of looks at him funny and he goes down for the first time. And he comes back up out of the water and the guy in the boat says, will you please just get in the boat? And the guy's paddling around and he goes down a second time. And he finally comes back up out of the water and the guy with the boat said, will you just please get in the boat? And the guys knows that the third time is a charm and so he climbs up and the next thing he knows the two of them are sitting on top of the water. Makes no sense but they're sitting on the top of the water. And then the guy with the boat say okay now I want you to start to row and the guys down there say I don't see anything. And he says look you need to start rowing but I just don't get it. And the guide says look if You grab hold of the oars and you start to row, you'll begin to see. And so the guy reaches down, he grabs hold of these oars and he starts to row. And as he does, they start to move and wakes appear in the water and the more he rowed, the more him finally began to see this boat. And the moral of the story is if you're new and if you don't get it, you're not supposed to get it. Just get in the goddamn boat. Don't go down for a third time. Thank you again for letting me share and I appreciate it. God bless you guys. Thank you.