The Slogans as a Handrail to the Stairs – Morris B.

The story's in the big book, the story of five-time loser wins. And without going any further, I'm going to let him come up and tell us about himself. Let's welcome Morris B. from Raleigh, North Carolina. Never get used to this. Don't ever get used for it. I've done it a thousand times. I swear I get nervous every time I get up before a crowd. My sponsor said, you better get nervous or you don't. You're in trouble. Well, I'm glad to be here. I'm Morris. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. Hi, Morris. Hi, everybody. I like Nashville. AA is alive and well in Nashville. I get around a lot of cities. Some are more active than others. Well, now I'm going to tell you what it was like and what happened and what it's like now in a general sort of way. In fact, I've cleaned up my story so much sometimes I don't hardly recognize it. I leave out some of the gory stuff and read the book and hear a little more about it in the book. We know one thing for sure. We know Noah was an alcoholic, right? He had to have two of everything. All right? Okay. We also know from history that Columbus had to be an alcoholic because hell, he didn't know where he was going when he left and didn't even know where he wasn't when he got there and didn't know where he'd been when he got back. And a woman paid for it. See? That's the beautiful part of that. The other day in Raleigh, last Sunday, I was at a meeting and this guy said he went to a meeting in a nudist colony and he said he sure got a new perspective on bottom. And he says, and he says he became aware of his shortcomings too. And his wife said, no instant gratification here. well yeah everything I know I've learned in this program I've never had an original thought and this thing saved my life and gave me a whole new way to live I had a pretty rough life and at 44 I came into this program and you know a measure of success dealing with success is harder than dealing with failure and it seems like in my sobriety that I've gotten just what I needed just when I was barely able to handle it. And I really am careful today what I pray for, because by golly, most of the things I've prayed for I've gotten. I don't pray for things unless it's going to help somebody else. They tell me it's okay to pray for something if it's on the benefit of somebody else." I was born in North Carolina, and I don' t know. In those years when I wa rn, if they'd have had these school psychologists and everything, they would have probably found something wrong with me early on, because I've never been right. That's why I'm here, because it wasn't all there. But my life was never dull. That's one thing about it. Ran away from home as a young man, like what little neon lights they had back in those years. They looked mighty good and I'd been running all my life. Only a couple of years ago did I discover that even in my sobriety, I'd been running every four or five years I'd leave one place and go to another place and then if I got burnt out I'd run down to one of the islands you know or Mexico or Costa Rica and I was having a lot of fun doing that burning out and running down to St. Thomas or San Juan I run out of islands you know then it dawned on me about two and a half years ago that that I was still doing some of that stuff some of those dysfunctional stuff but anyway I'm here today and I'm glad to be here. And at 16, the month I turned 16, I went in the Navy. And when I got out of boot camp, looking back now, I was an alcoholic at 16. I didn't know that for many years. But I was drinking alcoholically and acting like it as a young man. I always wanted to be a Navy pilot and I wound up getting a Navy flight school but I goofed it up like everything else. Alcohol cost me every opportunity I ever had. But you know, if I've got to have a terminal illness, I'd rather have alcoholism because this is one illness where you can take all your weaknesses, all your liabilities, and turn them into strength. And that's it. I don't know any other terminal disease. And that is what has happened. And I see it happening to a lot of people. There is a program and there is a fellowship. See, and I need them both. I need people. I tried to be a hermit. I took early retirement a couple of years ago. Tried to be a hermit. Damn near went crazy. Got depressed. You know, felt trapped. And so I don't believe in retirement now. So I'm semi-retired. I just run around all over the country and don't drink and go to meetings and pray like hell and have a lot of fun. You know if you can't have fun out of life what's the point in being here? You know and I do have some control tonight over how much fun I have and learning how to play. Because, by God, if I'm negative, I'm suicidal in the sense that I'm destructive. I can't have any happiness if I're negative. I can'T have any peace of mind or any serenity and no spontaneity. So, you know, it's not because I'm a good guy. I mean, I don't want to be the victim. And so I have to work hard at having fun. I've had a lot of fun here in Madison. I like it. So it behooves me to stay positive, think as if, act as if. And it works. Some days are tough, but I know they'll all pass, and just nurturing self-cleansing—incidentally, this is a self-clensing fellowship, and if I get too dishonest or too phony, then I'm going to be in trouble. So I love AA. It's my family. It's an extended family. Anyway, I went in the Navy at 16. I was an alcoholic. Anyway, I went in the Navy at 16. I was an alcoholic. I knew it later, but not then. Had a lot of trouble. Went on court marks. I was apprenticing three times in six years. And I finally did get under honorable conditions and got out in 47. I had three marriages, two children from the second one. I'll tell you more about that later if you think of it. I didn't see my two children for 24 years. And in 1975, I saw them. And they're doing fine. That's something I may regret the rest of my life. I forfeited watching two children grow up and develop so I could drink and do my thing. That was part of my illness. I don't know how to undo that. The way I've tried to undo it is being in the treatment business about 18 years is working with people, especially when I had the opportunity to work with young people and families to try to make up for what I didn't do to my own family. I've only got one story now, and part of it is I'm going to be talking about prisons and some stuff, and it's the only story I got. And the main reason that I like to show the contrast was I was a zero, folks. I was an associate dropout in regular society. My own family didn't want anything to do with me. And then I got in this program, and wonderful things started happening, and I can't even believe it all myself. And they keep on happening. As long as my free will is in tune with God's will, I feel good. Boy, when I get out of tune, I hurt. But you know, I've got tools. All these tools we've got around here. The slogans, the principles. You know,I look at the slogans as a handrail to the stairs or the steps. you know and everything to me is in is in the now all the power of life is in the moment and the essence of my being is love but i can't easily does it next week and i canít let go and let god demar i gotta be in the present and i have to work at that and it makes it a lot easier you know very little matters uh recently i i saw a minister who's in a marriage to young people that only had a few months sober, and he didn't want to marry them, but they insisted. And I heard him tell them that two half-wits don't make a whole wit. But he married them and then he patted them on the back and said, kids, remember one thing in your marriage. There are no big deals. You know, I have lacked some of that and every now and then I'll say there are no Big Deals. Even when it seems like a Big Deal, I'll stay there. No Big Deal. And that's the way I find it. Shortly after I got out of the Navy, 47, I was in trouble, you know, drinking heavy and in trouble. Instead of doing these things—you know hindsight is always 20-20—I look back, sure I wish I had done things differently but you know I was an alcoholic and I might not have gotten to this program. So it took what it took. I don't understand hardly anything and I don' t know anything. It's a mighty fine feeling to realize you don't have to know anything. I wound up in the federal penitentiary and it wasn't too bad, it was kind of like an extension of the military service, but that was my first D. But then I left there and went to North Carolina and got in trouble, and boy, there's a difference, there is a hell of a difference between that chain gang and that federal penitenciary, two different schools. It was pretty rough. And I found myself in that situation, and it's a hard thing to realize that you are a dropout from society and people don't really want much to do with you. It was quite an awakening to have to find meaning in your suffering. And I figured, well, if I'm going to be a loser, I'm going to be a good one. And I caused a lot of trouble, not only for myself, but for... I got in as much trouble almost inside as I did outside. It was rougher in those days, too. Times have changed. Anyway, in 54, I escaped from North Carolina and went on out to California and got knocked off and went to Folsom Prison. Stayed in Folsom a little over two years and because I had all these retainers, they let me out a little early. And I went on up to McNeil Island in Washington and other federal joints. Then North Carolina came and got me. All total, I did 12 years, 12 hectic years. When we got back to North Carolina, they had built a place while I was gone to take all the screw-ups, management problems, you know. They got all kinds of names for them as good as this, the talismans. But this place was a pretty rough place, and it was next to a quarry, a rock hole. And we went in naked, and we came out naked, and we put on the jumpsuit inside. We didn't have anything, no reading material, nothing in there. That's where they gave us a couple of bags of stud smoking tobacco, and I rolled one. I didn't smoke until I was in my 30s. I've been smoking ever since. I rolled that stud and inhaled it and got dizzy. I've Been Smoking Ever Since. I'd probably get addicted to ice water if it had anything in it. But that was a rough place, and I'm not going to go into too much gory stuff, but I was only in there four days, and then I said, hell, I ain't going to break rocks. And so four of us lined up and broke our legs, and they just took us up and gave us a tetanus and set our legs and took us back, locked us up. So that didn't work. So the next thing that stumbled on, and it is pretty gory, It was the lye. You know, you can take one little inhaler full of lye and you can ride about four guys. And most of them were doing long sentences and in a lot of trouble and just spread the lyes out on your skin wherever you wanted something to take them off. And that would have been good to take off tattoos. I never thought about that. But you put it on there and you wrap a cloth around it and you wet it and about five hours later you've got a big black scab and it eats through a few veins and it looks bad. It's not all that bad. But it looked bad. Eventually, I had to have a skin graft. What we were doing, in essence, we were fighting the system. I wanted to cost them as much as I could cost them and hire up what I could and damage. This was what I was doing. But I was still the victim. But anyway, I got out of that place. I did every day of my sentence. and I went home to a little town east of Raleigh, Dunn and drinking heavy and later on got on speed heavy but I was heading for serious trouble and one of my brothers waited until I got good and drunk and he put me on an airplane and sent me to California to the other brother who's an Episcopal priest and he met me at the airport. I still believe to this day I helped drive him into alcoholism because four years later he came in this program And he's still in it, you know. I stayed ten days at their house and liked to drove them crazy. Took me into Los Angeles and I was going to go to work. And in that period of my life, work was not my strong suit. I'll tell you. And I went to this employment agency and I went up on the seventh floor and I fill out some papers and an application and this lady says, Barbara, hang around. I want to talk to you. So I hung around until 4.30 and I went in and sat down and she said, now what is this? And she's looking at my paper. She says, this thing's full of holes. I said, what do you mean? She said, you've got a lot of self-employment down here that used to work for the United States Department of Justice. In what capacity? And used to work for the Department of Prisons. That was before it was correct. In North Carolina. Well, what did you do for them? I said to work for them. She said, in what capacity? And she says, now do you want to level with me? And so I leveled with her. She was in AA. I'd never met anybody in AA before. Boy, they can see right through you, you know. So she verified all my references and got me a hell of a good job making good money. This was 1960, the first year I was ever in this day ever. It took me 10 years to get in this program. But she introduced me after I stayed on a four-month drunk, and I couldn't kick it. So I know it's progressive because I couldn' t get over that drunk. I couldn''t stop drinking. Used to I could eat raw eggs and suffer a few days and get ready to do it again. At that time I couldn ''t cut it off and wound up in the hospital. Well, that was a promotion. Hospitals versus jails or prisons. uh the first time ever uh admitted and knew i was an alcoholic and went into a meeting i felt like i'd been promoted a lot of people have trouble staying there an alcoholic hell it was a promotion for me uh that's the shape i was in uh after i quit that job i really got on a drunk and I couldn't get sober again. And in those days, my thinking was so fouled up, I thought that you get on a drunk and use up the bartenders and people that you can con and you rip everybody off and you leave town. Just change towns, you know? In the beginning, and I don't like to admit it, but in the beginning I used AA. People tried to help me. They prayed over me. They prayed over me until I was thirsty. They tried everything, gave me 24-hour-a-day books, took me to meetings. I would leave a meeting and I'd stop at the first bar. If the urge hit me, I never made any effort to stay sober. I never called anybody. And I went in and out of AA for five years. I never heard the word surrender. It's a strange thing, but there was something there I wanted. The first meeting I went to, I don't remember what was said there. but I do know the sparkle in people's eyes and they were laughing it was on Wilshire Boulevard and I wanted to go back to some more meetings I'd go to meetings and get drunk I went to meetings half high and I learned how to use AA I really did you know, I read the book so I could argue them in discussion meetings and got outside of the arid club in Phoenix and I was shaking like a leaf Because after I went to that first AA meeting, I'll swear my drinking seemed, the alcohol seemed to make me work. Something happened. I don't know what it was. Maybe my guilt over knowing there might be health and I wasn't willing to take it. They put me in a halfway house setting out there in Phoenix and in three weeks I was cured. I mastered the program. I'd saved up about seven bottles of terpenhydrin codeine. I had a few green hearts and I still had a car and a little money and so it was a planned drunk. I took off to Tucson, down in the Mexican Nogales. And I kept putting gasoline in the car. I didn't put any oil in it because it blew up somewhere. I wound up in Arizona State Hospital. The car was in some little town down the line. I woke up sitting in the corner, pumped full of Thorazine, my legs felt paralyzed. And an AA meeting came into that hospital. And I ran into that AA meeting and boy, it felt good because I could do my penance so quickly and I could make promises to myself that they weren't any good because the addiction was much stronger than my promises. But I got out of there and I went to some meetings and I stayed straight at least two months. Two, two and a half months is the most I could ever get in those five years. I couldn't get any time. I never surrendered. I never really tried to get this program. It's like my smoking today. I don't smoke as much as I used to but I said, God, if you'll take the desire away, I'll quit. Ain't that a hell of a remark for somebody that's over almost 20 years talking to God like that? I know what the hell I got to do to quit. Same thing I did to quit alcohol. I just don't want to. You know, I didn't come into the program to be a monk or a priest, and there ain't any danger of it, believe me. You know? I just want to get a little better and be a better person. To me, that's spirituality is to grow and become a better person, not hurt anybody. Every morning I get up in the morning, and honestly, I like a spiritual program. I like being happy, and I say, God, fill me with gratitude and fill me with love, and just direct me through this day. And I've been doing that now, and it works. And most of the time I feel real good. When I have a bad day, I got the tools to do something about it. Anyway, after Phoenix I had to get out of Arizona. I got in some trouble and that was the second state I'd had to leave. I had leave Louisiana when I went down to see my children back about 1950. Ray's held and the in-laws had me locked up and I said, �Well, you'll never see me again.� They let me out of jail on condition I'd leave the state, same way in Arizona. And I didn't see him for 24 years, and I'm still paying for that. Two or three o'clock in the morning, I pay for not being with those children and not seeing them grow up. And it's a regret that I don't know if that promise will ever come true, but I won't regret it because I do. In, left Phoenix, went to Oakland, San Francisco. I went into AA a month or two and jumped again, in and out, in now. And in 1965, I resigned from AA. I didn't send in a letter or anything. I just threw all the books out the window. You know? Threw all my books out the window of this apartment. Because I used to stay in an apartment while I was drinking. I'd stay two or three, four months until the sink is full of dishes and you spray black flag over it to keep your roaches down. You never wash them, you know? Roaches all... I'm talking about marijuana roaches, pussies. I had the other kind too, but roaches and seeds and empty bottles. And my last good load of speed, some guy knocked off a drugstore and I bought a whole brown bag full of white vinnets. They lasted me about a year. Helped me get crazier. You know, the alcohol does a job. That other stuff really does a jobs. I mean, you get squirrely as hell, you know. So in Frisco, I got into trouble. I was working for a record company, records, cassettes, LPs, you know, tape, 8-track, in those days. And drinking and drugging, you could smell the marijuana out in the plant. Had about 70 hippies working in there, and of course, I'd join right in them, you know? was the foreman oh lord but this one truck driver said uh i needed a set of tires he brought me a set of ties and then when i need a carton of scotch tape or something he'd always bring anything i wanted so one day he says why don't we go into business together i deliver these records to you you sign for half of them i'll leave half of him on the truck so over a period of time we had a whole warehouse full of records and uh i make a contact over in at the bar i hang around with eddie uh because he was probably probably belonged indirectly to the to the company uh not i'm talking about the mob and uh he said yeah i know an outfit in chicago will handle handle those things for you we had classical instrumentals rock and roll we had all kind record and tape. And then I got a phone call at work, and Eddie said, hey, I got to talk to you, I got to talk with you. And so I got off and went down and talked to him. He says, that outfit that was going to take all these records, you're working for them. They own the company you're working for. Well, I left San Francisco. I didn't mess around. In fact, I sold my share of teeth to this Mexican guy that was my partner. I don't know what happened to him. But I can remember coming back cross-country, and I know once I stopped in Salt Lake City, and I woke up in the morning, and I didn't have any pills, I didn' t have any booze. And Salt Lake city is a Mormon town, it's kind of dry, but they did have some ABC stores, and I'm out in the morning and I've taken like a leaf and nobody's on the street much and finally I saw a guy with a paper bag and I said, hey, where'd you get it? He said, two blocks down there and I go down there and I can't see anything. Little small signs that A, B, C. Well, I found the store and I went in there and you're supposed to select what you want and fill out a form. I couldn't fill out the form. I was taking too bad so the guy filled the form out for me and I got a fifth. You know, as soon as I got that fifth in my hand, I said... I got out to the car and took a couple of good drinks, and then my next job was to find a contact or a doctor to get some food. And I came on cross-country, and I got to North Carolina, and the folks looked at me right strange. My family, they were a little frightened. I went on down to Key West, and that was in 58, and stayed drunk the whole winter down there into 59. Into 69. 69 was the last year I drank. And I had to even get refinanced a couple times, but I stayed drunk all winter and then came back up to North Carolina where my brother was in business and robbed a department store up there. And boy, he was hot. He was mad. He was really mad. And during the robbery, a lady, there were three special forces guys, and they didn't want to behave, so I fired on the floor, and they straightened up. And the bullet ricocheted and hit a woman in the ear. And she sued everybody. Boy, she's still suing as far as I know. Well, I go into court, and they gave me 15 to 20 years and the non-prostituting. So I get back up to Central Prison in Raleigh, my old alma mater, and it had been 10 years and they let me work in the kitchen office and part of my duty was to take inventory of the whole storage room, the foodstuff, the oleo and eggs and then go into the meat locker and that's Saturday or Sunday in July of 70 and these guys I worked with went to AA, a couple of them, wanted me to go and i said no i don't hey it doesn't work for me i tried it tried it for five years it didn't work from me and i don' t want to hear about it and you guys can quit leaving those brochures and cards lying all over the place and uh but in that cold storage room somebody had bolted the serenity prayer to the cold storage door and i stopped in my stride because i knew what that serenite prayer meant and i remember the meetings of aa i went to and they said if It hasn't happened yet. It will happen if you keep drinking. I went back to my cell, and that serenity prayer, I couldn't get it out of my mind. God grant me the serenities. But the word except is a big word. Except the things you can't do. And that serentity prayer just kept going over in my mind, and it was that night or the next night, the first chance, I went to this auditorium for the AMU. And I walked in there, and Tom, I don't know if he's ever talked over in this area or not, But he's a hell of a good guy. And Tom and I was there, and I remember saying, well, I went for five years. It didn't work for me because I didn't take the fourth step. He said, my God, no wonder you didn't get sober. That's all you know. You didn't make the first step. It wasn't the fourth steps. It's the first steps. If you don't take it, if you don' t take the first, you can't take your rest of it. If you're going to identify an illness, you can' t get any help for it. You can' d see it. So I started going to meetings. I got back into my program all over again. And about that time, there was a big grant, about half a million dollars. They were going to train some ex-problem people. And I'd been branded incorrigible from the days of the 50s. And there were eight of us that they put in this school that were going train us to be power counselors and work in the correctional department. Well, I went through nine months of that school. It was good training. And only because I was in AA then and practicing the testicles that I got through it. And then when we finished that school, they paroled all the other guys but me. I didn't have enough time in to be paroling. But they did call up and had me go before a committee and they put me in minimum custody. They said, we're going to reluctantly put you in minimum custody. We hear you're in AA now. All those years and all those penitences, nobody ever mentioned my alcoholism. Nobody. All the testes. This committee did. They put me in minimum custody, and I went out to the minimum custody unit. That's where I met my first sponsor, Big Gene. His name's mentioned in there. And Gene was the man for me. We didn't tell his wife about my record because he took me into his home, and he was the men I needed because he was right on target, and he wasn't a BS guy. He was right over there. He was what I needed. And he took meet a lot of meetings. And incidentally, one Thursday night, the Big Book group, that was my first group where I got my foundation. And they were studying the Big Books and the steps. And at the BigBook group, this girl Gertrude said, Morris, how about chairing the meeting? I'd been over there about ten times. How about chairING the meeting tonight? And folks, when I got up to go up there at the head of the table, I felt ten feet tall. I felt like I had rejoined the human race because I'd been beating up on myself. I was a zero. I was the zero that dregs the society and dangerous at times and crazy. You know, it's hard to stand up here and say that stuff, but it's the truth. You know? If I'd have run into me, I'd know what I'd done. You know. I don't really know any reason I'm still here except to maybe carry the message. God delivers it. All I can do is cherish, you know. But I did. I felt like I'd joined the human race. And I really got into my program. I think I had better spirituality then. I was living one day at a time. They went over after I finished that school. They went to the governor to see if I could get paroled. And they checked down in Fedville where the robbery was. And they said, no, we don't want that man on the street. Law enforcement. We don't wants that man in the street and I understand why. Two weeks later, I opened the mail and there's a commutation. They cut five years off the bottom of my sentence so I could be paroled, Governor Scott. And I went to work at Popeye Center. And I was only there about two, two-and-a-half months when I got a call from mental health. I didn't even know what mental health was. And they said, how would you like to come to work in mental health? And I said, what's mental health ? We want to start an alcoholism program. And in 72, what was an alcohol? I don't know what an alcoholist program was. so i talked to my sponsors and they told me what to do just cool it let it happen and sure enough first of the year i went to mental health uh and i stayed there six and a half years and i used to joke about it you know to work at mental health you gotta be a little crazy you know well you do i mean it helps but uh but you see those people helped me obviously i needed all the help I could get. I mean, the social workers and the psychologists, they helped me. I didn't know at the time how they were helping me. And I was going to a lot of AA, but I needed all the health I could give, believe me. And after about six or nine years, I resigned and went into the private sector. And I went over to Charlotte. Now, I'll tell you a couple of things, and I'm not telling you to tell you how great I am. It's to show you the contrast between a zero and a person that gets productive and becomes a fairly good citizen, you know. So I wasn't in Charlotte long, and I was program director, and I stayed there about four years. I learned a few things. And in 82, I just, for some ungodly reason, I don't know why. In fact, I'll tell you something tonight that people may have trouble with, but I'll swear I don' t believe my life is any of my business. The older I get, the stupider I get. I don't know a damn thing, and I don' t even know what I'm doing in Nashville. So when I wound up in Key West, I didn' t know what I was doing in Key west, and it rained all that month of January 83, and so I went over to the part of Key's hospital, and I talked to the administrator, and I said, let's put a chemical dependence program in here. I never had to put a program in anywhere. We met with the hospital board, and in three days they said, put it in. They didn't know me from Adam. By God, I put it in. One of your local ladies out at Cumberland Heights. Bunny, I needed some material. For about five years, and I realize it now, I didn't realize it then, that I used to run away to the islands. I'd run away into Jamaica or St. Thomas or Nassau or Costa Rica. And it was an excuse to get away. I'm burned out. I need a vacation. Well, I've just about run out of islands. You know? I've been all down there. All to no avail, you know. It was just running away. It was part of my old pattern. Anyway, I left Key West and came back up to Columbia, South Carolina and put in a program there. And then there was a search committee in North Carolina and they called me in and most of the guys there were NAA, the banker and the lawyer and the doctor. They said, we want to put a program in down here. We're going to build a building. and handing me the blueprints, change what you want to change. We haven't even broken the ground yet. And I had the experience of watching that thing being built and then putting in the program and staffing it and stayed three years. And I finally reached the point where I'd accomplished what I thought I'd set out for, so I was going to take retirement. I don't even believe in retirement today. If you can walk, I don'T believe in it. You better have something to retire to. I think everybody ought to try six months of it. Damn near drove me crazy, more crazy. But I resigned and took that early retirement, and I've learned a lot just since 87. You know, I never quit learning. I just keep learning an awful lot. And I was down there in a little private practice in C.U.S., a parentless wife I knew, and she and I were in private practice. But I only worked about one to two days a week, and I wasn't productive enough. So I guess that's what I'm doing in Nashville. I just got a little more productive. But it's fun doing what I have to do. So that's just a general overview of my story. Now I'm going to tell you what I've learned in AA. A couple of things here. My sobriety is a gift. I didn't deserve it, didn't even want it. It was a gift, And thank God you can't sink too low for this program. You know, I didn't think I was worth anything. And I wasn't. And the things that this program has brought to me and given me, today I don't put any conditions on my sobriety. I do put conditions on other things, life and relationships and work, and that's where all my trouble comes from. If I treated every other segment of my life like I treat my program, You see, there's no room for conditions in this program. I'm still a little phony and a little selfish and get angry sometimes and a long way from being perfect. But I'm not as bad as I used to be and I'm trying to get a little better. The reading, the study of the program and trying to work the steps. You know, I learned a long time ago you can store up a lot of data upstairs, A lot of information, but until you translate it into living, into behavior, it's just stored up data. And if it gets stored up data, it'll get you drunk. Good intentions. They don't work. To me there's a program and there's the fellowship, I told you earlier, and I need them both. Now when I was over at mental health, a guy told me, he says, Morris, you know you are a severe character disorder, he said, and they don't usually get well. They're impossible to treat. And this psychiatrist said, so whatever that AAA thing is you're going through, you better keep going. You just better keep doing it, you know? And I said, I didn't even know. You know, I was not a skilled person. I said what do you mean I'm a character disorder? He says well, you are. He said character disorders blame, they put the blame on everybody. They blame God, they blame the system, they'd blame the family. He says why don't you just become a good new writer? And I said, well, what do I got to do? You know? He said, he said, neurotics blame themselves. No matter what happens, you know, they blame themselves for everything that happens, you know. So, so I'm a character disorder that turned into a neurotic. What I found out in this program is that pain wears away my faith. But, you know, I've got the tools in this program, if I'll use them, to transcend pain, to rise above it. And I try to do that because I'm not into pain. They say, you Know, no pain, no gain. Well, that's true. We don't grow much without some pain. I look back over my life and the times I grew the most was when there was crisis and tragedy. That's when I grew up. When things are going my way and everybody's doing what I want them to and everything's flicking, I don't go in. I get complacent and I stagnate, you now. To me, love is action. And once I got on a search, spiritual search, every now and then I'd go on a spiritual search. I don't know what I was searching for. You know? God ain't lost. And spirituality's right here. You know, it's like... I was reading one day and I was meditating and praying and I hurt. And I got angry at God. I don' t know if any of y'all ever been angry at G-d. I don't know, I've got to make this over. I got angry at God. I said, buddy, I ain't going to ask you for your will today, not after yesterday. You know? And I kept thinking about that and about an hour later, I just busted out laughing. I just bust it out laughing and I said you stupid. You know, you're shaking your fist at God and every now and then you get mad at God for doing it. You know, I had to be 60 years old to find out there's nobody to blame in life. I need something to blame occasionally. There ain't nothing to blame, folks. You know? I am responsible for my behavior and my thoughts and my statements and my feelings. They're my responsibility. There's nobody to blame anymore. It only took me 60 years to realize that. You know. But most of all, what I realized was that God doesn't want my mouthing. Well, He wants my meditations and prayer, but He wants more readings. He wants my will or it wants my will or whatever you believe in. I had a little hang-up in the beginning on this God thing. I don't anymore. I'm not sure what anybody believes. You see, no is a complete sentence. I don't know. I just don't knows. But I do know what works and I know what doesn't work. I had an sponsor that told me, well, if you know what does work, you've got half the answer. Just quit doing that same, that's half the answers. But no, I keep doing the same. That's the insanity. I'm still being restored. It's taking a little while. I had three wives drinking. I haven't had one since I've been sober, and I don't know if I'm... You know? And every time I'd get close, I'd run like I'd sabotage you. And now I got glaucoma and blind in one eye and getting old and I need somebody to take care of me. So now I'm thinking seriously, you know, about, well, it's a selfish program, you know. And somebody told me that there are no Easter's without Good Friday. And you know that's right. And I've had enough Good Fridays. I won't be crucified anymore. And I don't have to be, you know. This is a new life and a rebirth into this program. And God knows it's wonderful, folks. It's a good family. And I found out another thing since I've been sober. There are no villains and no heroes. Really and true. There are not villains. It's all in between my ears, where my bottom and everything else is, you know, up there. And this lady I used to work with used to have a thing on her desk that said, Lil, this ain't no dress rehearsal. And the more I think about that, that all the power of life is in the moment. And it behooves me to stay in the here and now. The slogans, everything is in the now in this program. They might have been written in the past tense. But I've got to live them in the Now. When I get negative, I get suicidal, as I told you before. I have to work at having fun. I have work at staying positive. And when I'm positive, I have less pain. Humorous, humorous, enthusiastic people, they have more antibodies, they get less disease. will surely get less cancer. Everything I look at in life almost dictates that I stay positive. And there are no big deals. Boy, I can make big deals out of anything. I don't ever want to lose the ability to laugh. My mind at times was my worst enemy. It was like a turret because of thoughts that would enter in. I found out in this program you can fantasize. You don't have to act on a fantasy. You can take a gun and you can cock it and aim it. You don'T have to pull the trigger. Nobody ever told me that. I thought if you cocked it, you were supposed to pull The Trigger. You're supposed to go try to make it come true. Or if you get in a relationship, you want this person to live up to your fantasy. Nobody can live up To my fantasy. That's the most unfair thing in the world is to expect somebody to live Up to your fantasies. Beautiful program that lets me begin again every day or any time during the day. and when I'm negative and angry and I want things to change or mad at politics or something on the news, it always comes back into me. If you would change the world, first change yourself and that's what I've been trying to do. Let me see. What else? I was reading something. I forget whether it was a little brown book or what but nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little. And, you know, I don't know about the rest of you, but I know it's hard for me to be satisfied with anything. Down there in Key West, snorkeling, fishing, and after about six months, I'd get up in the morning and stare at another beautiful duck. What? Yeah. You see, if that ain't an alcoholic, I ain't never seen one, you no? Nothing's ever enough. you know and when i get empty inside and i have felt empty boy i have felt that wind blowing through my gut you hear tom brady talk about that sometimes yeah you can fill that empty hole up temporarily with money and sex and running away but it won't last the only thing that's ever filled that hole up in my gut a spiritual value a feeling that you're cared for friend of mine john up there at west Palm. We just had a big meeting, big dinner up there in Raleigh. He says, hell, all these people still love you and they know you. That's a compliment, you know? If somebody knows you and still likes you, that's a... I didn't even like myself for many years. Time takes time. The first time I heard that, I didn' t know what it meant. But you know, some of these little truths I've learned in the 80s, they sound so profound. You know, like if you don't drink, you can't get drunk. You know. A two-year-old knows that. Time takes time. I never had to hurt it, you know? I don't know what the truth is. I know one or two truths. One of them is that I can't drink liquor and mess with drugs. But we all have one or three truths. And we get together in these meetings and we share our truths and then we get a bigger truth. That's how I've learned how to live a little bit and have some fun is sharing my truth and learning from your truth. Now, this is a very practical program for me. When I get angry, it cuts me off from God. I think the book says my despair is a measurement of my distance from God Well, if I'm angry, I'm cut off. If I'm going 90 miles an hour, I're cut off if I don't have time to stop and smell the roses. So, it behooves me to be in the here and now and be positive if I want to have a conscious contact with my higher power. So this is very simple, too. And I have control. Me and God got control today, God and myself. We have control over my life. There are probably two sins. I heard a lady say this years ago. The greatest sin in her book was to not live life to its fullest potential. And the second biggest sin was to be indifferent to your fellow man. You know, I never had thought of those. You know, I'd always thought of another set of pens, you know. Let me just inject something while I... No, I better not do that. You know. It's not fair to make jokes about Al-Anon. And I ain't going to do that unless it's not appropriate, you know. All right. Folks, I'll say it. I'll preface it with this, though. Thank God for the enablers of the world. I always had one that nursed me back to hell, got me out of jail, took up bad checks. Thank God. I mean, I probably wouldn't be here today. But there was this lady around one of the 12-step programs that had a... She died and she had that life-death experience called the light at the end of the tunnel. Somebody else's life passed before ours. You know? So they tell me that this program We have to walk a narrow path Well, I have felt during my sobriety That to be spiritual and to be right You couldn't have any fun You walk this narrow path Yeah, the path is narrow uh it's the razor's edge that mom talks about but you know with acceptance and faith and love that path is not a razor's edged gives me room to bounce back and forth you know it was too restrictive until i try to find out what love is and to me love is action chuck c says before he died that these guys called him at two o'clock in the morning they were arguing what love chuck He said, it's the same damn thing in the morning at 10 o'clock as it is at 2 in the morning. And he said, then he said love is action hung up and love is that you know really God is all or nothing and if you're having trouble with spirituality or with God I want to feel good and getting on my knees and praying makes me feel good. I don't give a damn how many doubts I got or what I believe. If it makes me feel good, I'm stupid not to do it. I drank booze that made me feel Good, or it's like filming. But I believe as much as... Somebody said a long time ago, Burke, I think, that there's probably more faith in honest doubt than all the religions of the world. If I'm human, I're going to have an occasional doubt. It doesn't mean that I disbelieve. It's just part of my humanity. Stuff slips into my mind. But by golly, to me, this God that I believe in and don't know much about except intuitively is either all or nothing. There ain't no in between. That's the way I look at it and it makes me feel good. Like we say in the program, the song is over but the melody lingers on, you know. God wants my will. In those days when I was acting out and crazy, I was arrogant, alienating people, hostile. You know what I was? I was a hurt little boy that wanted to be loved, and I didn't know how to be love. And I tell patients this in treatment centers sometimes when I talk to them. The ones that are acting out, they're the ones that need it the most. They don't know what to do. They don' t know how-to get it. I didn' t known how-ta get it, and I was seeking love and doing all the wrong things to get it— running people away from me, turning people off. You know, Emmett Fox impressed me in Sermon on the Mount. You know everything, what goes around comes around. that every smile I send off, every good deed is going to come back to me. So why wouldn't I be good to people and try to love people and send off good vibes? Well, because I'm a human being. I can't deny my humanity. But this program has opened my eyes up. It really has. It's opened my eye. I don't know. They tell me when you run out of something to say, sit down. So I've run out on what I had to say and I want to thank you all for letting me come. And I love all of you. I love AA, folks. I love you. Thank you.