The Simplicity of a Daily Commitment to Sobriety – Joe P.

Thank you. My name is Joe Peterson. I'm an alcoholic. I've got to tell you what I told him on the golf course today. Where else are you going to get a lesson like that for four bucks? I have to thank the committee for inviting me. It's always a treat to do what I'm doing here tonight. It never gets old. I do this quite often. God has given me the opportunity to do this many times in the past, and I would hope it will continue to be many times in the future. But it never gets older because you meet so many fascinating people every time you go to another city or another town and share the miraculous message of Alcoholics Anonymous. You just get to meet a plethora of people that really make an impression on your life. I have four things going on in my life today that every recovering alcoholic should have. I have a home group. We meet every Wednesday night. It's a step group. It's the only home group I've ever had since I've been at Alcoholics Anonymous. I have an sobriety date, June 25th, 1980. So I've been around here for a while. I have a sponsor who's been sober for over 40 years, who has shared his entire recovery experience with me. But the most important thing that I had going on in my life is a relationship with a God of my understanding that I learned from the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to tell you a story about sobriety dates. Sobriety days are very important. This story is particularly for the new people that are here tonight. There's a story told in AA about a guy who was sponsoring a young man, brand new in the program. And they were going to meetings for about three or four weeks together. Every day they went to a meeting and the guy kind of disappeared and he didn't see him again for a while. And a couple months later he saw him at an AA meeting and he walked up to him and he said, how long have you been sober now? And the guy said, well, I had 90 days but I drank last night so now I only have 89. If you're new, that's not the way we count. Sobriety dates are really important. I'll tell you one story that will tell you how I qualify to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. This should remove all doubt when you hear this story. Many years before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had a place in Ocean City, Maryland, which is about a three-hour drive from Baltimore. And every weekend for 52 weeks a year, for a long, long time, I would make that three-hours trip every weekend. And most of the time, I would do that drunk. And it got old after a while. And after a While, I said, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore. You know, I made a commitment to myself that I was not going to make that trip drunk. and next weekend came along and I left my office on Friday afternoon. I left my office for lunch at the normal time 10 o'clock to make this three hour drive to Ocean City and decided I better stop at the local bar and have some lunch before I go. So I did that and somebody bought me a drink and I bought them a drink and you know how that goes. well to make a very long story short about three o'clock in the afternoon I finally make my way out of that place having been there since 10 o'lock in the morning and you can imagine what kind of shape I was in and I get out on the highway and I start this three-hour drive to Ocean City and as soon as I get on the driveway I get angry with myself infuriated you've done it again just last week you made that commitment to yourself that you weren't going to do it again And here you are again, drunk and a three-hour drive. And before I was five minutes away from that bar, I had one hand over one eye. Now, I don't have to tell you what that does. You all know what that is. So I'm driving down the road with one hand over one eyes. And the farther I got away from the bar and the closer I got to Ocean City, the more angry I got with myself. You have done it again. I was so disgusted. But by the time I got the Ocean City I had the answer. The problem was solved. When I got to Ocean City, I bought an eye patch. Now, the good news about the eye patch is you could move it from one eye to the other. But isn't it interesting how we in the depths of despair of alcoholism think we always have the answers and the truth is we really don't know enough to ask the question. I will tell you that when I was 30 years old I had what the third tradition calls the only requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous the desire to stop drinking I wanted to stop drinkin' when I was 30 year's old because I could clearly see that all of the major problems that were going on in my life were directly related to how much I drank. Every time I got in trouble, alcohol was a major factor and I had the answer at age 30 the answer was crystal clear stop drinking. What I didn't have at age 30 was the ability to make that happen. I tried. Oh, I can't tell you. I don't mean half-hearted attempts. Honest, sincere attempts because my mindset was if I could stop drinking, maybe the trouble wouldn't happen as often. Maybe it wouldn't be as severe. Maybe life would get a little bit better. The answer was crystal clear. But what I didn' t have at age 30 was the ability to make that happen. Had you called me an alcoholic when I was 30 years old, I would have denied it. I would've admitted to you that there may be an occasion or two when I drink a little bit too much, but an alcoholic? Not me. You couldn't call me an... I couldn't call myself an alcoholic for many of the reasons many of you might be able to relate to. I couldn'T be an alcoholic because I know what an alcoholic is. A bum in the doorway drinking out of the brown paper bag. That's an alcoholic. That wasn't me, and that description probably doesn't fit many people in this room. You know, I was in denial so strong. I mean, I used to do things to hide the way I acted and to hide how I looked. I used so much murine it showed up in my urine specimen. Some of you can probably relate to that. So I tried to stop drinking and found out that I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried or how often I tried or no matter what I tried, I couldnít stop drinking. After all the sincere efforts I put into it, nothing ever worked. So when an alcoholic like me or perhaps you is confronted with that fact, you try to stop drink and find out that you canít. When an alcoholic is confronted without it, if youíre like me, you say to yourself, ìIf I canít stop drink, I'm going to do the next best thing. I'm gonna control it. Don't laugh. I'm gotta control how much I drink, how often I drink where I drink what I drink who I drink with and that list just goes on and on and on. And I'll make a real long story very short by telling you I spent the next 17 years of my life trying to find some control that would work and nothing ever worked. It always got worse. what I got caught up in without understanding it was what I now know today to be the downward spiral of self-destruction. What I didn't realize, you may have thought in that whole 17 year period of time, I'm a fairly well educated person, maybe somewhere along that line in that 17 years I might have come across the thought even by accident that maybe none of this stuff that you're trying to do to control your drinking, to control you behavior when you drink, None of it is working because you're powerless over alcohol. That thought never entered my mind. I had to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and have someone explain that to me. You're powerless over alcohol." So, that whole... I've once heard alcoholism described as the total wasting of the spirit. What a powerful message that was. Because it described exactly how I was. Exactly how I was living, exactly how I was thinking when I finally got to Alcoholics Anonymous. Totally wasted in spirit. That zest for life that I once had was gone. Every spiritual value that I ever attached to life was gone Alcoholism had taken away the love from my wife, the respect from my children and every ounce of self-respect that I ever had The total wasting of the spirit and that's bad news But let me tell you the good news. From the day I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, the awakening of that spirit began. It began the day I showed up at Alcoholics Anonymous. I got to Alcoholic Anonymous in a miraculous way. By the time I got there, by the time I got to Alcoholix Anonymous I only weighed 118 pounds. My color had gone from normal to yellow to gray. I have been told that's the last stage before death, but that was the condition that I was in when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I lost it exactly as the big book describes it, the three-fold stages of alcoholism. I had lost it spiritually, I had loss it mentally and I had lose it physically. You know spiritually I was an absolute spiritual zero when I cam here. My relationship with God when I came here was some of you may relate to this it was called let's make a deal God get me out of this and I won't do it again was I the only one that ever said that but that was a sad commentary on the state of my spiritual condition when I came here but that's what it was I lost it mentally blackouts were a deal I had blackouts that lasted hours and days and weeks I have a vivid recollection of leaving, going to lunch one day and winding up in a hotel room someplace and waking up and don't know where I am. And I look out the window and I see a damn palm tree and I know I'm not in Baltimore. And I scratch around and find a telephone book and find out I'm in Fort Lauderdale. Don't know how I got there. Don't Know How Long I've Been There. Call my office and tell my secretary I'm going to be a little late this morning. that kind of stuff happened a lot but it was when I lost it physically that it got the attention of my family now when your weight gets down to 118 pounds and you look like walking death and you don't want to do anything other than to drink and you have lost all motivation to do anything else in the world other than to drink and it has an effect on your physical appearance it gotthe attention ofmy family the family decided to have a meeting now it's not a good sign when the family has a meeting and you're not invited that's not a good song they had many meetings to which I wasn't invited but I'm sure that I was the topic of conversation they were trying to figure out what the hell to do with me maybe how to help me none of my family members were alcoholic they didn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous if I was from a dysfunctional family it was because I was the dysfunctional member of that family But someone at one of those meetings, one of the family members, remembered that there was a guy that I used to drink with and they knew that this man had gotten sober. They didn't know how, but they knew he had gotten silver and they decided to try to contact him to see if he could help me. Now God put this guy in my life on two separate occasions. The first time God put him in my Life was when I literally watched this guy become an alcoholic. I saw the whole thing happen right in front of me. I watched it all happen to him. You know, this guy at one time was a very successful businessman. He had a big job, made a ton of money, had this huge house, a beautiful wife, a nice family. He was an usher in church, a Boy Scout leader. He lived the American dream. And I watched him go from being a social drinker to an alcoholic. You know? I could never figure out why I couldn't leave work, stop at a bar on the way home from work, have two drinks and get the hell out of there. I could not do that. I could make my wife understand how it could take me 20 minutes to get to work and seven hours to get home. But it was always like that. That is alcoholism by the way. This guy was one of those people who could stop on the day on the way home from work had two beers and then leave. There came a point when he stayed a little bit longer and a little but longer before you knew it, he was there for as long as we were, us alcoholics. And I remember his drinking just got way out of control. And I remembered saying to him one day, if you don't do something about your drinking you are going to suffer some serious consequences. Bartender give me another drink. Of course Of course, he didn't pay any attention to me. But I watched him literally become an alcoholic. I can't tell you how many times I would be at this end of the bar and say to the guy next to me, if I ever get as bad as him, I'll do something about it. And how we as alcoholics can rationalize that kind of thinking. Common sense, which we're not famous for using, would tell us, why wait until it gets that bad? Why don't you do something about it right now? But we can't ever bring that kind of thinking to any logical conclusion. So, I watched him lose it all. I watched Him lose his job. I watched HIM lose his wife, lose his home, lose his family, lose all of his worldly possessions. And He just disappeared one day. Nobody knew what happened to Him. I mean, He's in the bar every day. And there came a day when He just stopped showing up and nobody knew what had happened to HIM. We thought maybe He died and we missed the funeral. Well, the second time God had put him in my life, he's sober. And he's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is the guy my family called. They called him and told him the condition that I was in and asked him if he thought he could help me. And being a sober member of alcoholics anonymous, of course he agreed to call me. And the call came one night. We renewed our friendship over the phone and out of the clear blue, he said to me, are you having a problem with drinking? which I thought was a rather strange question for that dude to be asking me. But somehow I answered yes, and that was significant because I had never really ever answered that question that way before. My mother used to say to me all the time, Joseph, why do you drink so much? Now why do they insist on asking that question of an alcoholic? Think about it. If I could have answered that question, she wouldn't have understood the answer. People who are an alcoholic don't understand that there is no choice. I had no choice, I had to drink. People who aren't alcoholic don'T understand that, but I'll tell you who did understand it, the very first person in AA that I told that to said, I know exactly what you're talking about. So I'm on the phone with this guy and he's starting to share his story with me. It got a whole lot worse for him before it got better. But then he started talking about Alcoholics Anonymous and the people in AA and the simplicity of the message and the simplicity by which after all of those years, he was able to get sober. And then what his life was like today and how he was unable to put his family structure back together again and hold down a meaningful job and how good his life is. And with everything he shared with me I started getting a tiny message of hope and the message of hope was based on the premise that having known the kind of drunk that he was having seen him lose it all if this thing worked for him maybe it might work for me now that's a tiny strand of hope but I reached, I was able to reach that night what I know to be my moment of truth. And I believe that that's what has to happen to every person in Alcoholics Anonymous who wants to get sober. Nothing, no recovery can take place until we reach that moment of truth, that moment of truth is that moment that we get honest with ourselves about what we are. Get honest with yourselves about what we have become. And here's how it happened to me. As my friend was sharing his story with me, I interrupted him and said, you know I'm not as bad as you were. And he said to me, how bad do you want to get? And I couldn't answer that question. That became my moment of truth. It was at that moment that a surrender took place. It was that moment that I got honest with myself about what I had become. It was in that moment that denial became a thing of the past. I know that that became my moment of truth because I walked over to the sink and I poured out a glass of whiskey and I haven't had a drink since and that's the power of Alcoholics Anonymous that's what can happen when you take that tiny strand of hope and you bring it to the rooms of Alcoholic Anonymous and let these beautiful people show you how to convert it to use that's exactly what I did I went to AlcoholicsAnonymous the next day my friend said you see he couldn't take me to Alcoholics Anonymous because he was calling me long distance from North Carolina which is where he was living but he said go to AA this tiny message of hope that I'm getting is coming through this telephone line from 500 miles away I don't even have the opportunity to look this guy in the eye and I'm giving him a call and I am getting this message of Hope through this phone line but he says go to AAA Look them up in the phone book. You'll find them under A. Well, I'll tell you something. It's not as easy as it sounds. But I sorted that out and I called AA. It was Northeast Maryland Energy Room. The lady answered the phone and I did what my friend told me to do. I said, I want to go to an AA meeting and I don't know where they are. And she said, well, where do you live? And now I think she's getting too personal. I said, well, I live in Joppa Town. And she said, well, there's a meeting in Joppatown tonight. And I said tonight? How lucky can I get, huh? You probably got one meeting a month and I picked that day to call Alcoholics Anonymous. So she told me where that meeting was and then she said would you like me to send someone to pick you up. And I said, no thank you. I didn't want that big yellow bus showing up out in front of my house with that big AA sign on the side of it. What would the neighbors think, huh? Well, I'll tell you what the neighbors would have thought. They'd have helped me on the damn bus. So I went to that meeting that night and on the way to that meeting, the disease is making one final attempt to keep me away from you. The disease is saying stuff to me in my head like, maybe you've made an error in judgment here. You know you drink too much but with what your friends shared with you, you put that in place and maybe you don't need all this AA crap. You don't have to go to all these damn meetings. You don'T have to get involved with this bunch of losers, the gloom and doom society. You'll never be able to smile again and laugh again, have a good time like I have been having a hell of a lot of fun lately. Your life is over, Joseph. That's what the disease is trying to tell me on the way to that meeting. Thank God the message of hope my friend shared with me was strong enough to help me overcome what the diseased was trying to say. What it was trying for me to tell and I went to that meeting that night and each of us has had that first meeting experience when we're on the outside of the door and we don't know what's on the inside and if you're like me you're full of fear and anxiety and you don't know what to expect. And I walked in and I saw a room full of people that looked just like you, all neat, clean, well-dressed, looked like you had some purpose in life and my first thought was I wonder where the alcoholics are. Surely they can't be this group of people. And somebody banged on the table and I said, well, I guess we're all here for the same reason. They're going to start the meeting, bring the drunks in, show us what they look like and say, if you keep drinking and this is what's going to happen. And of course that isn't what happened. I soon found out indeed that I belonged. You know, all I had going into that meeting was what my friend shared with me on the telephone. I had no proof. I had since discovered that alcoholics demand proof. But I had not. I had none of the proof. All I had was his word for it and that tiny message of hope that he shared with us. But I'll tell you what happened that very first night at that very last meeting. That tiny message got reinforced a hundredfold by the presence of those people. I could see in you exactly what my friend described to me over the telephone, and I somehow sensed that I was going to be okay, that what I had been searching for for all of those years I was coming to find right here. There was a guy who spoke at that meeting that night, and he said a lot of stuff that I didn't understand. Of course, it's my first meeting. I remember clearly there was a lot of God talk which I thought was rather strange to be in an AA meeting but after the meeting I walked up to him and I did what my friend told me to do I stuck out my hand I said, my name's Joe I want to stop drinking and I don't know how he said, well maybe I can help you and I said well what I really want to know is how do you get sober? and he looked me right in the eye and said, don't drink and there was this long pause in which I'm waiting for the philosophical, ideological, analytical explanation of how that's going to happen and he isn't saying a word. Finally, he said, well, that's the way we get sober. We don't drink one day at a time. I said, well, I don't know how to do that. He said, I will make a suggestion to you and if you put it in place, I know it'll work. he said if you really want to get sober what you're going to have to do is make a daily commitment to sobriety not a long term commitment alcoholics don't like long term commitments remember one day at a time I saw right through that I knew what that meant forever now there's a time frame an alcoholic isn't willing to accept forever we break that down into a time frame like one day at a time and somehow we're able to put that in place and somehow be able to make that work so he said you have to make this daily commitment to sobriety I said what is it he said the daily commitment to sobrietty is simply this I'm not going to drink today and I laughed I said I used to do that all the time that will never work he said I'm glad to hear you say that because you can make that daily commitment to yourself today and if you try to keep it by yourself today you're going to fail today just like you did in the past but here's the difference you must make the daily commitment you must realize that by yourself you can't keep the commitment that you've made to yourself so you bring that commitment to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and let these beautiful people show you how to make it work so they share their strength with you so that one day at a time you can become strong enough to keep the commitment that you've made to yourself. And that's how I got sober. Making the daily commitment, realizing that by myself I couldn't keep it but with your help I could. The simplicity of how an alcoholic gets sober. There was no philosophical, ideological, analytical explanation to how I was able to get sober. It was making the daily commit and you helping me to keep that daily commitment. after i've been sober for a couple i guess about two weeks 27 years ago in maryland and i'm sure the same thing would apply here in florida or any place in the world really there weren't nearly as many aa meetings as there are today and every time you went to a meeting every day you saw the same nucleus of people because that's where the action was that's Where the Meeting Was and That's Where You Went and After I Had Been Going To Meetings For About A Week Or Ten Days a guy came up to me and he said, do you have a sponsor yet? And I said no. And he said you do now. And that's how God put my sponsor in my life. My life hasn't been the same since. The sponsor relationship that my sponsor and I began to develop began on about the 10th day of sobriety. I must tell you something that happened earlier than that. On the 5th day or so, sobriety, I walked into a room just like this, sat down in the second row. And a guy sat down alongside of me and he picked me as a newcomer. And he said, how do you feel? And I said, I feel terrible. He said, How long have you been sober? I said five days. And I was kind of proud of that. He says, What are you doing to stay sober? And I told him the only thing I knew. I said I clenched my fist and grit my teeth and at five to say it 1000 times a day. I'm not going to drink today. That's what I do. And it works. He He said, sure it works. But would you like to make it a little easier? And I said, how do you do that? He said why don't you ask God to help? Well, that wasn't the answer I wanted to hear. And with as much insufferable arrogance as an alcoholic can get I said to him what the hell has God got to do with getting sober? Can you imagine? And he smiled at me the way an old timer always will and he very gently said to me you're going to find out that God has everything to do with getting sober you're gonna find out that if you do something as simple as I'm going to suggest to you that what you're trying to do here will be made a whole lot easier with God's help than it is without and I couldn't argue with that and the simple prayer that he taught me was the alcoholic's prayer God please help me stay sober today it didn't get any more profound than that that was as simple as he could have made it for me He said, you say this prayer every day. And then he said three words that changed my life. He said watch what happens. And I believe that each of us has to take that part of the message. Watch what happens because I know enough about recovering alcoholics to know that we can pray our butt off and if we don't watch what happens the miracle can go right over our head. The way we see God working in our lives is when we watch what happens. So I started saying that prayer. Things started to happen as I watched what happened. Things starting to happen that had no logical explanation. The first glimpse of the miracle that happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous was that a number of days after saying that prior, I suddenly realized that the compulsion to drink was gone. Where did it go? Or more importantly, who removed it? And I'll tell you something. It's a whole lot easier to stay sober when the compulsion to drink is removed than when it's eating you alive every hour of every day. A miracle. I know enough about miracles to know that as good as the people in Alcoholics Anonymous are, there isn't a person in this room or indeed all of Alcoholics Anonymous who has the ability to perform a miracle. So who did that leave? I started to understand that there must be something to this God stuff. So now I've got more going for me that I'm not going to drink today. I'm asking God for help. And my prayer prior to coming to AlcoholicsAnonymous, I've already shared it with you. Let's make a deal. that foxhole prayer that most alcoholics are familiar with. But here's what I know about that foxholes prayer. God knows the difference between a foxhole pray and a sincere plea for help from an alcoholic. God knows that difference. When an alcoholic makes that sincere plea for help, God shows up. And that's good news. But there's even better news. He doesn't come alone. he brings with him a whole host of people his disciples the disciples are you and you and you and me it is the disciples who carry the message look it up in the Bible it was the disciples who carried the message so when God shows up he brings all these people with him people who not only share a message but people who set an example I saw a quality of life in the people that came before me that was way beyond the quality of life that I had and I desperately wanted that and the relationship began with my sponsor and I and I wanted to be exactly like him after a short period of time, I wantedto be exactly like him we went to meetings together every day for a long long time and he's trying to share he knew what an arrogant SOB I was when I came here. He's trying to share a message with me that will give me some humility. Trying to make me a more humble person. And remember, we went to a meeting. Well, first of all, a lot of us come here with issues that we want to be resolved. Yeah. And I had issues. And we were debating one of these issues for what seemed to be a long, long time. I don't know if it was a debate because I was the only one doing the talking. He was doing a lot of the listening. But the debate continued for a long period of time and the reason why it took such a long time was he wasn't giving me the answers I wanted to hear. Sponsors do that, you know. Rarely do they give you the answers you want to hear." He took me to a meeting. I remember one of the meetings was about an hour drive from Baltimore. It was on the outskirts of Baltimore and it was a Sunday night. It was a huge meeting, a couple hundred people. And we get there and we walk in and we sit down in the front row which is where we always sat. He called that intensive care. It's where I still sit today by the way. And we sat down in the first row and he got up and went to the bathroom and while he was gone the young lady who was the secretary of that meeting came over to me and said would you like to chair the meeting? And I said sure, I can do that. and now my sponsor comes back and I said she asked me to chair the meeting he said what did you tell her I said I told her I would he said oh I said yeah but now I really don't know what I'm going to say he said why don't you tell them all you know that won't take long not too long afterward he's speaking at a meeting at Crownsville State Hospital and he took me with him and he spoke at the meeting and he called on me and I said a few words and after the meeting a guy came up to me and he said I really liked what you had to say you really helped me and on the way home I said Bill you know a guy came upto me after the meet and said that I really helped him he said I want to remind you that you just spoke at a mental institution sponsor relationships nothing like it let me say a few words about sponsorship while I'm on the subject I can ask a rhetorical question that might give you an answer as to why you should have a sponsor what better way to learn how to do something that we don't know how to than to ask someone who's already done it, how did you do that that's what a sponsor did for me he shared the whole recovery experience with me, one day at a time one step at a tim one meeting at a times my sponsor used a common sense approach to explaining the implementation of the steps to me, the recovery process. He told me in the beginning that sobriety without the 12 steps is an endurance contest that an alcoholic will lose and you can take that to the bank. He said sobriery without the twelve steps is like going to bed with your shoes on. You go to bed without your shoes and you might get to sleep but you ain't going to get comfortable. sobriety without the 12 steps is exactly like that you might get sober you might stay sober but you ain't going to get comfortable and then he started explaining the steps to me sharing his step experience with me he said what does the first step say I said we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable he said right but that's not going to be strong enough for you he said of course you have to admit it that's what the step says. But if that step is going to have an impact on your life, you're going to take admitting it to the next level. And that's the level of acceptance before it will have an impact on your light. And the acceptance has to be total acceptance. You have to accept it as the big book describes to your innermost self, to the depths of your very being. And until you can do that, that step will not have an effect on your recovery. So it took more for me than just admitting it. I had to take it to the next level. He talked about surrender. And he explained surrender to me in simple language that I could understand. He said, The war is over, bozo. Alcohol won and you lost. I could understant that. There's a story told in AA about a guy who came to his first AA meeting and he heard so much good stuff and when he went home that night his first AA meeting he goes home that day and that night he takes all the booze he can find in the house and he poured it into the toilet and three days later he flushed it now I would submit to you that that is not unconditional surrender the surrender for an alcoholic can have no strings attached but that's what I needed in order for that first step to have an impact on my life Total acceptance, unconditional surrender. You know, we use adjectives in AA to underline the importance of many of the principles. Total acceptance unconditional surrender rigorous honesty all of that stuff you know, that means that is really important stuff when we put an adjective in front of it. So now he's saying to me the first step in I have already shared with him this prayer that this guy taught me on day number five God please help me stay sober today he said you know that that can be for you the implementation of that second step on a daily basis on your knees when you're saying your prayer in the morning why don't you use that as your second step prayer acknowledging the existence God please help me stay sober today is acknowledging the presence and the existence of a power greater than myself and asking for his help I can offer you no simpler implementation ofthat second step on a daily basis than that. And then he said, tomorrow we're going to do the third step and we're gonna do it at my house and we'RE gonna do IT ON OUR KNEES. What does the third steps say? I said, it says we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. He said, right. I said wait a minute, just last week you told me not to make any major decisions in the first year. And now, that's a major decision for an alcoholic, especially under the new person as I was then because I didn't understand the simplicity by which I could make that happen. There is a formal third step prayer in the big book that we are all familiar with. There's a much simpler prayer that my sponsor taught me, one I can use every day, one I've been using every day for the past 27 years. God, please direct my will today. it didn't get any simpler than that. And every day when I say that in the morning, I am making that decision today to turn my will over to the care of God. What an impact that had on my life. When I started saying that simple third step prayer every morning, what I discovered was that my will was getting channeled in some spiritual direction that I didn't understand, but I started to see the evidence of it. I started to become motivated by the results I started to see that there's more to what we do here than just not drink so you know I was well now my sponsor taught me that there are many steps that I can put into place on a daily basis in the form of prayer my prayer every morning starts with God I'm powerless over alcohol And I say that every morning because I don't think God's going to forget. I say it so I don' t forget anything. And then the second step prayer of mine, God please help me stay sober today. And the third step prayer, God please direct my will today. What a basic spiritual foundation that provides for me every day of my life. I don''t care what happens during the course of the day. I'm prepared to deal with it because the spiritual foundation has been established right up front. it's a daily a part of my daily exercising that daily reprieve that God gives us has produced an enormous amount of results for me things started to get a little bit better home life started to get a little but better my attitude toward people as it promises me in the big book started to change my attitude toward God toward people this whole spiritual way of life started to become more meaningful to me than a drink ever was and I have discovered over the years that I have been sober that that's what the 12 steps do for us they help us put in place a way of light that will become more meaning and more meaningful to us than a drank ever was that's why the 12 Steps work for each and every one of us no matter how old we are or how young we are no matter how rich or how poor no matter what our level of education is no matter how far down the scale we have gone, the 12 steps work for each and every one of us primarily because of their basic simplicity. Not one time in all of the years that I have been sober and in all the suggestions that have been made to me, not one time was ever a suggestion made that was beyond what I was capable of doing. It was all simple, simple, simple stuff that produced profound changes in every aspect of my life. That's what we promised the newcomer. We will share with you the simplicity of this program so that you can derive the benefits from it that we have derived. When I was about nine months sober, my wife discovered Illinois. Illinois. And she came home talking a language that I didn't understand after she'd been to a couple meetings. It was kind of like detaching with love. But when you somehow sense that you are the detachee, it gets your attention. I went through about three or four months of the sniff test every time I came home from work. You know what that is. They get close enough to you not to kiss you but to give you one of those. I came up from work one day and said to Dottie, What's for dinner? She said, we're having an Al-Anon dinner. I said, what's an Al Anon dinner? She said fix it yourself. I just, of course, the combination of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-A-Non and the 12 steps of both programs saved our marriage. I came here with a wife that didn't love me. I have a wife that loves me today. I know that because she tells me so. And I take the time to tell her that I love her. And those kids that I had, that had no respect at all for their father when I came hier, they have the utmost respect for their Father today because I certainly am not the same person. I'll tell you a real quick story about a ninth step experience I had. When I was making amends to my oldest son. By the time I got sober, my kids were spread out all over the country. I have one living in Oregon and one living in Minnesota and one in Missouri. I'm about five years sober and my son decides to have a family reunion in Minnesota. All of us came from all over the country and we gathered in Minnesota, and I knew when I was flying out there that but I was going to have an opportunity to make direct amends. See, that step says made direct amens. I had many times done it over the phone, through the mail, but I didn't have the opportunity to do it face-to-face. And I knew I was gonna have that opportunity to do that when I got to Minnesota. And before that weekend was over, I took all three of them aside one at a time. and I made the amends in as spiritually meaningful as I could do it. I asked God to put some words in my mouth and somehow they came out in somewhat of a meaningful way and when I finally got to my son, my number one son and I said, and I did that and I gave my amends to him his response was this Dad, when I was really young you were my hero and I worshipped the ground that you walked on And then I watched you become an alcoholic. And I came to hate everything you stood for. And I come to hate you. But I can tell you that since you've been involved with those folks in AA, you have certainly become a different person. And after what you have just shared with me today, I can only hope and pray that I grow up to be exactly like you. now that you can't put a price tag on that for everything else there's MasterCard but but that's the kind of joy that Alcoholics Anonymous can bring to a recovering alcoholic who makes the effort and the daily effort exercising that daily reprieve that God gives each and every one of us I am sober today you'll hear this many times in AA if you're new I am sober today through the grace of God well indeed I believe that but let me tell you what I know the graceofGod means to me what the graceoffGod is for this alcoholic and maybe you might be able to relate to this. The graceofgod for an alcoholic is when God gives us the gift an unmerited reward of honesty open-mindedness and willingness the three ingredients that on page 568 of the big book you will find it describes as being indispensable to recovery none of us bring those three things in here with us when we come to alcoholics and all of this God gives us that gift but then he throws the ball right back in our court and he says I'm going to give you these gifts now what are you going to do with them? and at that point we have a choice to make We can accept them, or we can reject them. Now there's another choice in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous described in the chapter to the agnostic, where it says in essence, this is not verbatim, but what it says is that in sobriety we now have a choice to make. And it's a relatively simple choice. Live life based on spiritual principles, or die an alcoholic death. Take your pick. With the parameters of that choice that far apart, who in their right mind would pick an alcoholic death? Alcoholics do it all the time. You've seen it. I've seen It. Now the new person doesn't understand the simplicity by which we can make that right choice. The new person listens to that and he says, spiritual principles or an alcoholic death, those are the two choices. Nothing in between. well there is something in between it's called a half measure but the new person doesn't understand that the new guy the new new person is going to say how bad is an alcoholic death give me some more information before I make that choice but the truth is that that is the choice we have to make and what the new person has difficulty with and I had it just like everyone else does or most people do I didn't understand the simplicity by which I could learn to live life based on spiritual principles. If you're new, don't let the 12 steps overwhelm you by the magnitude of what you perceive them to be. Believe me when I tell you that each one of those 12 steps has a simple, simple, SIMPLE implementation. Especially when taken with the suggestions that a sponsor will share with you. with the implementation of those steps that a sponsor will share with you. It is the 12 steps that give meaning to life. It is The Twelve Steps that make the difference between just being sober and being able to participate in the mainstream of life. It is THE TWELVE STEPS that help an alcoholic to build a quality of life Somebody told me in real early sobriety something I've never forgotten. He said, Alcoholics Anonymous can become for you a one-day-at-a-time opportunity to improve the quality of your life. And I bought into that way back then. And I still believe in it today, more than ever. I still go to as many meetings today. I go to more meetings today, really, than I went to in the beginning because I've got more to lose today. And I'm not talking about stuff. Although I've Got a Lot of Stuff that I've accumulated over the years. But what I'm talking about is the qualityoflife. That's what I would lose. Alcoholics Anonymous, when Alcoholics Anonymous celebrated its 25th anniversary, the convention was held in New York City and the President of the United States sent a telegram to Bill Wilson that he read at that anniversary meeting. It was at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. And what the message was that the President shared with Bill Wilson was that he recognized Alcoholics Anonymous as being the spiritual movement of the 20th century. That hasn't changed a little bit since then. It hasn't change at all. This is the spiritual move of the 21st century. century, you know how we, how Alcoholics Anonymous can take a totally irresponsible chronic alcoholic bum like me and bring him into the rooms of AA and teach him spiritual values which will give meaning to his life. That's what we do in AlcoholicsAnonymous. You know people who aren't familiar with AA think that we come here and we talk about drinking stories and you know all of the escapades that we had while we were drinking. We do that a little bit, but what we really share with each other is the spiritual message, the quality of life, you know, the ability to live life based on spiritual principles. You know, that's what's available to each and every one of us, the message of hope that my sponsor shared with me is what I now get an opportunity to do to other people and the people that I sponsor. Now, God has given me a gift and that gift, I recognize it. The gift that God gave me is the ability to share a step message with a new person in simple language that that person can understand and to stand before a group of beautiful people like you and share an AA message in language that you will understand. That is a gift that Gott gave me. I had nothing to do with that. But I have to accept that gift and I have to use it. And one of the principles that I really have to focus on on a daily basis is humility. And when you get called on to do what I'm doing here tonight, you get called onto do this a lot. You know, if you're not careful and you don't focus on humility this stuff can go right to your head and I don't want that to happen to me. So I really have to focus upon humility. You You know, in the seventh step, it talks a lot about humility. Let me say just a couple of words about the seventh steps. Seven words, seventh step. The newcomer, as I was once, the newcomer might think that just because it's only seven words, maybe that's not as meaningful a step as the rest of them. But I will tell you to the contrary. And part of the proof I can share with you is this. if you look in the 12 and 12 you will find out that it takes seven pages to explain the importance of those seven words. That tells me that's an important step and most of that writing in the twelve and twelve is all about humility and how we really have to focus on that if we are to live life to useful purpose and I say a seven step prayer every day God I am entirely ready today to have you remove from me all those defects of character and shortcomings that stand in the way of me being useful to you and to others. I ask God to make me a more humble person every day, and God does that. I am a much more humble people than I was when I came here. And sometimes God puts people in my life that make me more humble today than I once was yesterday, and sometimes a little bit more humble than I used to be just an hour ago. And I'll tell you a quick story about how God works in my life in that direction. A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a conference in Minnesota. And when you do one of these talks, when the talk is over, people want to line up on the stage or next to the stage and they want to come up and they wants to shake your hand and they wanna tell you what a great message it was and it's hard to be humble when that crap's going on, I'm here to tell you. And sure enough, I gave the talk. And when the talk was over, the line formed. And about 30 people deep into that line was an elderly lady. And when she made her way up to the front, she said to me, That was the best AA talk I ever heard. And I took her hand in mine. And I said, Well, what you heard was God talking to you. God put those words in my mouth. She said, it wasn't that good. That's how God works in my life. There are three basics that worked for me in the beginning and they still work for me today. And I don't care if you've been sober three days, three weeks. three months, three years, 30 years. The same three simple basics apply to every person in this room and they are so simple. Let me share them with you. The three basics are this. Don't take a drink today. Go to a meeting today. Ask God to help today. And if you do those three things, I'll tell you what will happen to you. If you don't take the drink today, you're going to get sober and you're gonna stay sober. If you go to a meet today, Today you're going to hear the message. If you ask God to help today, you're gonna understand the message! God bless you all.