The Sobriety That Was Worth Every Day of the Wait – Patsy R.

Thank you, Barbara. My name is Patsy Rodeca and I'm an alcoholic and I use my last name simply because I remember reading something that Dr. Bob said that it was just as wrong to um to be anonymous within the fellowship as it was to break the anonymity anonymity outside of the fellowship and by golly if this group tonight ain't the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous i don't know what is and i want you to know who i am and what i am i want to thank you for asking me to share with you and i'm going to have to ask you to bear with I'm not only an alcoholic, I'm a mess tonight. I'm sick, I ain't well yet, and my throat's bothering me. But I thought, well, I got something I want you to hear. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to agree with it. You don' even have to believe it. But if we can leave this room, each of us in our own way aware of a few things, then honey ours served my purpose here. I don't have a prepared speech because I'm not a public speaker and I don' have any jokes. Thank God that precious little Georgia gal gave the jokes because I would be lost if she depended on me for jokes. I always laugh up to punchline but I figure if you wanted to be entertained you would have gone to the theater and if you wanted a professional orator you would have gone to the coliseum or the convention center but you've asked me and you have granted me the privilege of sharing with you the most important thing in my life and i still to this day am amazed and in awe when i look back and realize that at the most desolate desperate weakest moment in my life people just like you gave me purpose a primary purpose to stay sober and try to help another alcoholic and that has with time and sobriety made everything else in my life secondary I was just talking with someone today we were talking about jobs and they have a little difficulty the alcoholic does have difficulty putting that job in its proper perspective and priority I had a little thing that helped me when I used to have to work for living I'm married Eddie so I don't have to work anymore. But he used to say, I had to work for a living, but it had nothing at all to do with my life. And I'm not going into a drunk-a-log because it really wouldn't serve any purpose. I'm here, and by God, that qualifies me. I said that I had no prepared speech, but believe me i am prepared i spent over half of my life at one time pursuing my disease of alcoholism in order to become one of you i didn't wake up one morning and just say i think i'll be an alcoholic i don't think that happens to any of us but it is astounding when we stay sober in aa and look back in retrospect and if i had any message to give you anything to suggest perhaps that would be the sum total of it all, darling. Just stay in there and stay sober until you can look back in retrospect and then all of the pieces will fit in place and all of these pieces will fall in place and then that understanding and comprehension will come, the thing we know nothing at all about. Now I don't know where those pieces are going to fit into a mosaic or a jigsaw puzzle and it don't really make a whole lot of difference but i did spend half of my life in a desperate pursuit and determination to become an alcoholic the pathetic thing is i didn't even know i was doing it i didn t know the price tags i was paying for that disease i didn d know that i didn' t know and by the grace of god and the help of you people i have been able to stay sober one day at a time over 30 years within the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous so i am prepared thank you so much i have no gems of wisdom but i followed my direction i did not know i was an alcoholic oh i can tell you that a little bit i can't let that past go completely uh because it brought me to where i am today i was the youngest of three children and my mother died when i was born and i blamed myself for all of my young life for my mother's death i believe that my father and my sister's people blamed me also do you know that i was sober 17 years in alcoholics anonymous before i could confront my own father with that information and it wasn't even so so you see what martyrs we are what high queens of tragedy we are but that's what made up the personality i was born in a state of fear i was always trying to live up to somebody else's expectations and never really fit i really didn't sit anywhere until i came into as and there's a funny thing here i love what that little old fella from uh i think it's tennessee but he says after you come in aaa and you get sober uh if you go drinking again you don't fit in the bars anymore after you've been sobering and you don' fit in aa so we just hung in there while you got the chance and the shot at it but there was an early marriage and i will tell you about the first drink i ever took because there's a message there believe me i was sober for about 14 years before i even remembered it so believe that book when it tells you it will be revealed like like little vicky said what i don't know tonight i don't need to know it will reveal and believe that when we can take it and when we comprehend and when we understand but i was very young it was in the days of bootleg liquor and the boys had flask on their hips and i wanted to be one of the crowd and i wanted to be accepted and I wanted to be in with the group. And I found myself for the first time in my life in the backseat of an automobile taking a straight slug from the jug. And I didn't have to take very many. I did not do this because I just loved the taste of that bootleg liquor. Now don't believe that. And I didn t do it because there was a physical compulsion to have a drink or I believed I had to have drink this was the first drink i was taken in my life and i did it for somebody else i did it to for somebody's approval well i didn't have but two or three drinks and they took me home and i couldn't understand this i had done this for them now why are they dumping me i went upstairs to go to bed and i got violently ill now 14 years sober naa I look back in the cold light of truth and in retrospect, and what really happened. My stepmother came into the bathroom and asked me what was wrong. And I said it was the chocolate ice cream at the party. That was heavy even with 14 years body. I said my God Almighty! The first drink I ever took in my life. I got drunk, I got sick and I lied about it. That pattern didn't change a heck of a lot in the ensuing 20 years. I went on a few years later and picked on a young man and I married him. It is kind of sad to reflect that at such a tender age I had lost my life up, not necessarily with alcoholic drinking but on my way. The sense of values the attitudes the personality the double standard and the pretense and the sham that the drink would give me i was well on my way and at the tender age well i'm not going to tell you how but anyway it was very young and i thought if this was a prayer from every fiber of my being please god let me make somebody happy before i die and this is one of the little things I treasure about my being in this fellowship. For so many years of my life, I blasted through the lives of people and I kind of dirtied everything that was in my path. And by the grace of God and the help of you people and one day's sobriety, I am allowed to gently touch your life today and perhaps with a tenderness and a softness that can be meaningful to both of us. And that's a metamorphosis honey for me uh so i picked on this young man and every fiber i meant it i meant please let me make somebody happy i've never been able to answer the question if that was really so and that really was how i felt why in the name of god did i put him through 20 years of unadulterated hell that's exactly what i did wasn't very long after that marriage had been consummated i thought Well, I didn't like it, really. I zigged when I should have zagged. And I wanted out. In those days, you didn't marry and divorce. Today, you don't even marry. I mean, I've come a long way, baby, let me tell you. I've seen a lot come down the pipe. But anyway, I did not get the divorce, and I struck on the brilliant idea of, well, maybe if I have a baby. That is not the solution, honey, if any of y'all entertain that. I had four children in six years, and I know you tell me I'm not supposed to blame anybody or anything for my drinking but myself, but those kids drove me to drink many times. Don't you think they did? For about a period of 17 years, there was not a day that passed that I did not drink something. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that I was a drunken stupor for 17 years. I raised those children, and I functioned, and I did a pretty good job. The funny thing, the alcoholic's got to do a better job. He's gotto keep one jump ahead. I never will. I don't know how I lived through the PTAs and the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and the Garden Clubs and all that crap. That really was. Because I thought they were attributes when I came to you people and I found out that they were nothing more or less than my defenses. I had to have something to hang on to. I was fast losing my sense of well-being and my self-esteem and I did not like the person I was becoming. I don't believe I was born an alcoholic. I didn't intend to become one and I didn' t mean for my life to turn out the way it then and it was such a subtle insidious thing because there was a time i could take a drink or leave it alone but i didn't leave it along and after coming to you people i understood that something happened to me not the husband not the child not the bartender not the boss it happened to be and as i said the most pathetic part of all i did not know i came to you people thinking i was a no count drunk woman and you relieved me of that human extremity and for that i will be eternally grateful because i was so filled with self-loathing and self-condemnation i'm going to tell you about what hopefully is my last job you know what happened in between you know the paths i had to take and the lives I had to blast through, and the price tag I had to pay. The places I had to go because I had to follow that bottle and I didn't know I had to. By this time, the marriage is not in very good shape. The discipline with the children is practically nil. The finances are horrendous and we owe owed every bank and loan company in orange county and i was going to town to pay some bills my husband i like to say this because it sounds kind of wicked and i don't have much wicked stuff in my life anymore today the man i was married to at the time i think that's better than just saying my husband said that sounds like a lot of marriages too done that's another thing about alcoholics. They are marrying people, let me tell you. I didn't know it till I got to you people. So I was going into town to pay some bills. My husband said, I better not let you pay that bill because you have a couple of beer joints to pass. Now honey, this was several years ago and we know nothing about these little push button things and computers and all that, but that computed for the word ever come out in our language, I'll tell you. Right back there and every one of you in this room, every drunk in this, room knows exactly what I mean. There was no reaction, there was no retaliation but brother I knew what had been said. I went into Orlando, I paid those bills and I passed those beer joints and aren't we noble and magnanimous and strong when we do something like that? I got to Orange Avenue and I said damn his soul I'll show him. Sound familiar? And now about this time in my story, I have to tell, I was telling Harry, honest to God, I'm living too long. Because I used to, my drinking was kind of a peculiar pattern. I either drank with people or alone and it didn't make any difference. But after I started drinking i did like to prowl a little bit and i would start out in the classiest place in town now there's a lot of you young people today you're not even going to know what i'm talking about but there were wide brim hats can you imagine me i'm not even five foot tall what am i doing in a wide brimm hat white gloves silk stockings and sitting at the bar disintegrating in that mirror that's in front of you watching yourself disintegrate i never could understand why i started out in the finest swankiest place in town and then three four days later i wound up in some dive behind the railroad station i didn't understand that till i i came to you people i used to cover it up with i did things foreign to my nature but but you people told me that that it was destined that once i took that drink and as soon as i made that remark i went right in the angiobelt hotel in the cocktail lounge and i started drinking in those days the angie belt was a classy swanky place it's a kind of scroungy today but that's why i say i'm living too long my story don't sound as good as it did 15 20 years ago and you told me that once i took that drink the path was destined because i was going to follow that bottle no matter where it led me and i had no understanding or comprehension of that well a strange thing happened about three four five days later i was drinking myself sober and i this had never happened and it was a frightening frightening horrendous experience because dark reality was coming in and i was scared to death and i don't know why things happen in our mind so quickly but years can flash by in a split second. And I'm drinking and I'm not getting drunk. I think the last few years of my drinking was mostly for the oblivion that I knew that bottle would give me. That oblivion was a beautiful thing. It didn't solve anything, it didn't change anything, but it gave me that that relief and that being out of it. And now, my God, it was even taking that away. And I looked back in my mind's eye without realizing what was happening. And I remembered when there was a time I could take a drink or leave it alone. I remembered When It Was Fun, and it did make me a good conversationalist and a good dancer and with a sharp wit and humor. And I remember when a couple of drinks in the evening would give me a good night's rest. and then I remembered as time went on that drink in the morning would get me going and then I saw the thing turn and it started taking all these things away the drink no longer made me capable of being a good dancer on the floor it no longer let my tongue be silvery and I got kind of sloppy with it and it no long gave me a night's sleep and so far as that drink in the mornin' well I got drunk before I got papered off and I was off to the races again now I realize and this thing's happening in just a split second I realize that the very last thing the bottle can give me it is taking away I can't get drunk and I were scared to death and it was perhaps at that time that I reached the point that every drunk in this room reached we don't know what it is and we can't put it into words, but every one of us said something happened. And I don't know whether it's that I looked in the cold light of truth for the first time in my life, and I knew it was the drinking, and i knew i could not stop drinking. Oh, i had gone 10 years and i can stop drinking anytime i want to. I'm not hurting anybody but myself. Oh my god, don't we say those words, and aren't they awfully hard to eat after we've gotten sober in AA? And we do have to eat our words. But we didn't know that we didn' t know, and that not knowing sustained me. I was ready to go home, and I could not go home. Only to do this over and over again, and I knew I would. I got off of the bus, and i was going back to the tavern because where else is there for the drunk to go. I share this with you simply because I must never forget this. We all say every now and then from whence we came. A red traffic light stopped me at Orange and Central in Orlando, and I looked at that traffic light and I am going to the tavern. I know the one I'm going to. I'm Going to Buddy Bear's if any of you were around or land in that time i'm going to drink till i die i'm gonna follow that bottle wherever it will take me until i fall over this is my intent because i don't know what else to do and i looked at that red traffic light and i said please god don't ever let me take another drink as long as i live i don t know to this day whether it's the first prayer i ever said or whether it s the first time god ever bothered to listen but i'm gonna tell you something you be careful what you pray for because sometimes he answers you exactly the way you ask i went right in a drug store and i called alcoholic synonymous the club room is about a half a block away and i made that half a black which today when i walk back take those steps in my mind's eye it is still ten thousand miles the only thought was if i can just make it there but filled with this self-condemnation and self-loathing and from whence i came i didn't even know if you'd let me in but you see it isn't necessary to know a damn thing coming into AA. The only thing necessary is to want to stop drinking. When I came in, it did read an honest desire to stop drinkin', and for my own benefit, I'm glad it was there. If I'd had the word desire to screw around with honey, I'd have messed up for sure. But that kind of pinned me down, and I'm grateful for it. But the needs are supplied. I made it to that door, and went upstairs and if there is i have to say today if there's such a thing as a blanket acceptance of the 12 steps not understanding not comprehension just blind faith and acceptance and that's the way i came up here tonight because i have been coughing my head off for four solid days and i knew i wasn't going to be able to talk but i ain't doing bad with a little help thing. Honey, I'm going to tell you, I've been having a lot of help. I've been going to everybody in this room, I can say, you say a prayer for me. And then after a while, Daddy said something, honey, just say a little prayer. We all do. We get nervous, we get uptight, we get this. Everybody does. They say, oh God, don't leave me now, you know. And so I had to tell Eddie, he said, well, all you do, honey is just say the little prayer, leave the results in the hands of God. That's what I heard when I first came into AA. That's where I'm going to hear two days after I'm dead, really. But this white child took a little page out of Dr. Bob's book, too, down on my knees. Honey, I want him to do me so bad. But if there isn't such a thing as a blanket acceptance, I believe I made it at that time. now I'm going to tell you what happened to me and what I was told and what has sustained me like it or not believe it or no bear this in mind honey it has worked they took me home that night and someone said we ought to buy her a half a pint she's gonna have a pretty rough night someone with all the love and compassion and understanding known to man said hell no that she can shake and sweat and die but she's had the last drink she's going to get and I did all three of those things for three or four days but I didn't make it something happened because you people people just like you And some of you in this room, you, because there are some people in this room that were there when I came in. And oh, that's a good feeling to know there's always somebody before you and somebody coming in after you. And you and me can stand and bask right smack dab in the middle of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a great spot to be in. I was uh you people made me think that you were shaking and sweating and dying right with me I was told to do two things someone said get down on your knees and thank god you found a that did not make any sense to me but I did it they said when you get up in the morning get back down on Your Knees and ask God to help you go one day without taking a drink that made even less sense but i did it um you know we here going around a abrams today i came i came to i came to believe honey if you really look at this thing you believe before they even let you in because they've done a little job on you uh i'm praying every morning i'm asking to asking a god i don't even know to help me stay away from a drink and it doesn't even make any sense except i didn't drink that day i went to a meeting that night and someone the next night and someone said you went 24 hours without a drink unless the gym they said that's as long and you'll have to go without a drink until the day you die. So I didn't swear off, and I didn'T pledge, and I didn' t quit. I'm just going to try not to take a drink today. That made it that made an intolerable situation tolerable honey if you know what I mean because I could not have stood the idea of that long black road oh my god never take another drink as long as i live that would have driven me to drink but you told me i had already done it i know when i got into my steps and i was having a little problem with this well i'm gonna get to that a little later too but anyway i was told to do those two things ask for help in the morning and thank god at night they evolved in my aa recovery as principles my principles do not have to be blue sky ultra virtuous things this was a practice this was a discipline, this was a principle that I have not failed to do one day since that first date, 18th of June 1953. I have a childlike attitude and you don't have to agree with me but you have granted me the privilege of keeping it and I've got an idea somebody asked me one time if I still ask God to help me go through the day without a drink and I said I sure do. I need it more today than I did when I came in here, honey. I've got more to lose now. And it is awesome when you realize how very much hinges on the fact whether I take a drink or not. I was sober 19 years and my oldest son came into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. i had nothing to do with his coming into aa we were a thousand miles apart during his his indulging in his disease and i only knew what this son would let me know i was fortunate enough by the grace of god to have him as a guest at my home and he was going to some aa meetings with me i thought he was just being nice to mama i was recently widowed and he knew that aa was my life and these were my friends. All the years before, he had never shared any of my AA life, never made a remark about my sobriety, and that's kind of rough, and I want to share that with you people. I know your sobrietry is important to you. I knew how important mine was. Don't let it throw you too much if it's not important to the guy sitting next to you or someone you love. The day will come that it'll work i was sober 14 years before my daughter made any reference and even then she says mama i'm so glad you found a way to stop drinking that was worth every day of those 14 years honey but because she hadn't said it was not worth taking the drink over one time i had to sit all four of my children in the living room they were on my back because you know those kids didn't like me sober they didn't want me drunk but they didn'T like me sober and they they would do they would try to keep me from going to meetings they would try to nail me to the cross you know i mean i know today these are these are things they did deliberately because they told me and i had to sit this is going to any length this is willing to go to any i told all four of my kids and i'd have laid down and died for them any hour of the day and night but i had to tell those four children that all four of them put in a paper bag and shook up together were not worth me taking a drink over. So then my sobriety was surely becoming the most important thing in my life without me realizing it. I was given the book shortly after I started going to meetings, and I was told how many meetings to go to, and for, in case you don't know it. I would like to tell you that the AA program and our recovery does not start with the fifth chapter. That's about all y'all hear, or the masses, but it don't start there. There are previous chapters in this book. I love what Wesley says about the textbook, and I can't tell you tonight. I told anybody that is here from Clearwater that heard me give the definition of textbook the other Sunday, you tell them because I forgot what it was. But for that I looked up the meaning of textbook and it was a standard that was used by students, a standard work used by student for a particular branch of study. And that's exactly what our big book in it i come to you i am unknowledgeable i am desolate i am desperate and i am experiencing a human extremity such as i have never known in my life before and you are going to give me a solution and i it's kind of like the book says i was driven each of us are driven into aa under a lash of alcoholism and it is here that we learn the nature of our disease and we do want to know it meant a great deal to me when you told me that i was sick that i had a disease it relieved me so much of the self-condemnation and self-loathing that i would carry around He told me the nature of the disease, physical, mental and spiritual. I understood that if we're sick in three ways, we've got to get well in three ways. And there's also three ways out. I'm not saying this to frighten anyone, but the disease is physical. If you're an alcoholic and continue to drink, you're going to die. I've seen it happen. was in a little group and it still happens today i'm not saying it happened 30 years ago it did then and it's happening today everything that's ever happened in alcoholics anonymous is still happening i have some grapevines that are back in the 40s and don't you know they had the pill problem in their meetings and they've had all the same kind of problems that we have the treasure running away away with the money and all these kinds of things so there ain't nothing me uh all you gotta do is like uh john was saying every a comes of age but i did find in those in those early chapters that that i had i had to concede to my innermost self that i was the alcoholic i loved having the privilege of of seeing the a copy of the original manuscript of the big book when it was not written in we and they, it was you. And it made it mine. And I still have a childlike attitude toward this fellowship. I'm very happy that all of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have found sobriety and recovery and a new way of life. But you know what this is really all about. In 1934, God knew that in 1953 Patsy was going to need something and he better get to work and have something really working good for her. That's how much my program means to me. It was given to me by the grace of God and it was very, it was prepared very well. My banquet was very well prepared. I learned that when they were telling me about the nature of my disease, I could die, i could lose my mind or i could find a way to stay sober and that was all she wrote i know all of you've heard the little thing little girl little lady from tampa used to say years and years ago about alcoholism and pregnancy so well you weren't just a little bit i don't know when i reached that point of no return i'm very grateful i'm sorry for a lot of things that have happened in my life but i regret nothing i didn't take one drink too many and i didn t drink too long i'm just like i drank just enough to bring me exactly where i was supposed to be at a given time in my lives and they're telling me about the mental and the physical and the spiritual and i thought about an automobile if your automobile breaks down you are going to take it to an automobile mechanic and if your tv breaks down you are going to take it to a tv technician and here we are honey the mind and the body and the soul of man in a state of complete collapse where else can we take it except back to its creator the creature in this whole thing is when you tell me you're telling me these things these are fat because you were telling me this is precisely what happened. You were telling me that I have an illness that only a spiritual experience will conquer. Now that is heavy. How can that come about? Well honey, that is exactly what the big book and the 12 steps are all about preparing making possible the spiritual experience that is necessary to conquer this illness of alcoholism I sometimes I get sounded like a Methodist minister but I ain't but they without this this particular approach to my steps i could not i could not have have had one day's recovery uh left on my own volition i could have loused it up i had to get hold of something for real where there was no longer a double standard and by the time i get to that that fifth chapter you have told me you have told me that i'm going to be granted just one day's reprieve and it's going to be contingent on my spirit the maintenance of my spiritual condition you've told me they're going to times when i'll have no human defense against taking a drink now bear in mind i am dealing with the drink i'm not trying to get good and i'm not trying to get honest and i m not really trying to get god i'm trying to get well and the thing that must be conquered is this mental obsession and physical compulsion to drink and you are conditioning me in these previous chapters to be willing to go to any length you even come up and tell me that i'm like the man that has both his legs cut off and we don't grow new ones these are facts these are things that are there i can't argue with that big book it's in black and white if newt had told me these things i think all news that's just your opinion but when i get that book and it says it in black and white, and it's fact. And it's something they've already done. It's already happened to them. I can't argue with that. But it works into and it evolves the solution. So how do we find this power greater than ourselves? It says something about the lack of power was our dilemma. It had to be a power greater than ourselves. And these are heavy words talking to somebody coming fresh off the streets a practicing alcoholic i will tell you a little something when i hit that that first step in this program and it was about at this time after a little bit of knowledge understanding comprehension had been then i was i was given the steps to embrace and to make a part of my life and and admitted I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable. I didn't know about what you meant about hitting bottom, but that had to be. Because if I did not hit a bottom and realize it and accept it with all of the devastating consequences, honey, I wouldn't have gone on with these other steps. Nobody would. And what crunched that for me, it's so amazing how things happened that kept me from conning myself or giving myself a snow job. Ironically, it was almost a year to a day before I walked into an AA club room and that morning I felt a little more remorse, a little more guilt or something. Anyway, at a low ebb, I called Alcoholics Anonymous and they sent a lovely, lovely lady out to my house. And she was clean and happy, and her hair was curled, and she was just all the things that I wanted to be. And I'm, my hair's stringy, I'm in a dirty house coat, I'm shaking off a drunk, and I hated her insides, I'll tell you the truth. And she knew she was not reaching me, but after a few moments, she left a little bit of literature. Well, I did what every practicing alcoholic would do. I went to the icebox, got a couple of beers, and then I picked up the 12 steps. You don't read it that way. I had my two beers, and I read these 12 steps, I had not hit a bottom. And I looked at those steps, and I said, those people are crazy. Ironically, almost a year to the date, I walked into my first AA club room, and I was ready. I had hit my bottom. And it was not a difficult decision to make. It was not an easy decision to take. It was a difficult admittance. It was no a difficult acceptance because you had conditioned me enough before I reached my first step that there was hope and there was a chance and I was no longer this no count drunk woman I thought I was. And I'm not drinking There are a few 24 hours of sobriety and I'm making meetings and I're praying twice a day whether I want to or not and things are changing I didn't know what an alcoholic was at this particular point but it didn't say that I admitted I was an alcoholic it said I admitted I was powerless over alcohol I knew what alcohol was. I didn't know what was unmanageable in my life I just knew I had made a mess of things and then you assured me it was not important for me to know Just continue, just continue. When I got to that came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity I had a little problem how in the name of heaven do I believe? The guy said you went 24 hours without taking a drink and you came to to believe you could go another 24 hours. You come to believe by doing. So I've been believing, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Now I am fully aware of all of the insane things I did when I was drinking but that insane mental obsession believing i have to take a drink that i have been relieved of and that's the insanity that step is talking about it's not the things you and i did it's nothing attitude it is the very fact that after a measure of sobriety in aa for me to entertain the idea maybe this time I am totally insane made a decision to turn my will in my life over to the care of God as I understand if I had anything to offer you it would be read the steps exactly the way they're written there are no double meanings and there are no superfluous words they mean exactly what they say and we act accordingly we can if we follow instructions, but you're going to do it the hard way, the same as I did, and about this time. The only thing we're dealing with in this third step is making a decision. This step has nothing at all to do with the will of God. It is going to concern your will and your life, my will and my life, when I find out what it is, but I'm not going to know what my will in my life is until I take the fourth step. Now I'm beginning to see the paradox and the humor that this God of mine has, the exquisite humor. Just take a picture of this. You tell me in the first step, I am powerless. My life is unmanageable. I am insane. And in the third step you say, make a decision. Now that's going south. Making the decision was the only thing that I had to do and I have found for myself a new will. I did come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity and he did but I don't stay restored and I did make a position to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him but i changed my mind the first step is the only step that you and i can take completely 100 once and for all every day for the rest of our life we can work toward the perfection of the efforts here's another little thing that's a little unique uh in the fellowship of ah by the time i get to my fourth step now i'm well now i've not cured but it's been some time since i've had a drink the alcohol is out of the system i'm going to meetings slowly the thinking pattern is changing the healing process the healing processes are taking place why because the first step removed me from the bottle that took care of the physical aspect of my disease the second step took care Of the mental obsession of my disease and the third step is taking care of The spiritual bankruptcy that I find myself in so i'm coming into my fourth step a whole complete well personality not cured then by god i'm going to find out what's wrong with me the thing is working backwards the doctor diagnoses and the doctor does all these things before he tells you gives your treatment the psychiatrist the ministers and a gets you well and then it's been diagnosed it gets kind of kind of crazy from now on so i go into my fourth step made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves read that step well it says moral inventory it does not say immoral but i'll lay your dollar to donuts you're going to crawl upon the cross before you get out from under it inventory is inventory the procedure is the same no matter what the commodity is something will be revealed about this time or so it was with me i had admitted to my life being unmanageable and it was in my fourth step that i slowly began to realize the unmanagable things in my life you see i am still thinking about not drinking a way to keep from taking the first strength so my first approach to the inventory is the things i can root out that might possibly drive me to drink again or cause me to drink again not necessarily to get good or get god admitted to myself to god and another human being the exact nature of my wrongs and this is a step that's going to take courage it's going to take perseverance there is an honesty and there is a humility i found brought on about by my own humiliations there is a relief and a release because you see we are guaranteed a freedom at the at the end of that the end about third step there is a prayer and it says relieve me of the bondage of self and the following steps are to bring that about the release of the bondage of self and i am finding out the things i cannot handle if you are about this point in your recovery and you are concerned about who to take this step with that step don't say nothing about who you take it with it tells you to take it however if you want some guidance it is in the book there are guidelines and instructions the important thing is that i take this fifth step i will tell you honey from the bottom of my heart please don't take your fifth step at an a.a podium that is not the place i can't tell you where to take it i can tell you where not to because i have seen some sad things that says to myself to god and another human being read this stuff well funny thing about this time i'm coming out and i've got facts now you see the inventory how little or how much was written because the book says so and the written word is there to bring about clear thinking and honest appraisal to relieve us of a little bit of the emotions that we're going to get involved with please don't stay on step four so long it keeps you from taking step five you've got the rest of your life to go back and pick up the ends but i am coming from this from my fifth step and i got facts in my hand now i know something about me and i know i got to do something about these things and an alcoholic can deal with facts slowly slowly as we get into our steps in our program we do accumulate the tangibles that we can hang on to and it will hold us in good stead i like to think about this time i'm undergoing what i call god's divine surgery now i told you that in my drinking sprees i used to say i did things foreign to my nature I didn't know what was fine till I got into that fifth sixth and seventh step of the Alcoholics Anonymous program it went against all the grains in my being you were asking me to do things and change things and surrender things that were the furthest from my mind and that is what I meant when i said about that first step in that bottom i would no more have continued had i not had my foundation and that first death that this is the way you go or you die this is your solution it had to be that severe with me i had my facts i had to be conditioned and i had to be prepared became entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character and defects of characters are facts that we can deal with another step comes right after that humbly asking to remove these shortcomings and there's a little bit of uh of confusion sometimes with people about the the defective oh we'll split a half an argument or to keep from taking a step that's probably what we do but we'll split the hair on the defect of character and the shortcoming the defective character is a fact and a thing that is so in my life the short coming is when i indulge in it the human frailty all of these defects of character are going to present themselves in my light in some measure until two days after i am dead how i act react indulge enjoy or hang on to is the shortcoming that can kill me it is funny but we will hang on and we will indulge until it hurts so much that yes we will humbly ask him to remove all these shortcomings because it seems that pain is the price tag the likes of you and me has to pay for our recovery but having paid it most of us learn our lessons our lessons well here's another little thing i did become willing to have god remove them and i did humbly ask him and i don't let him stay removed i got a little battle there until two days after i'm dead too What I think I'm trying to get across, honey, is don't make this a heavy trip. Don't make these steps a federal case. They are there for your joy and your excitement and your freedom and your new way of life and your release and your relief from the bottle. Embrace them as such. Enjoy them as much. And about this time in my recovery and my sobriety, if I was on an island all by myself, I am in damn good shape. I'm sorry I cussed. I-I'm gonna work on that next year. That'll be but I am that's one of those things I'm not as big as used to be, but I'm not as good as it could be. So if an apology is necessary please consider it made. But somehow I make it emphatic to me when I say a damn and a hell once in a while but I would be fine but I see this is not an isolationist problem or disease. I have got to you are preparing me and this program is preparing me to take my responsibilities and I've got to be a productive citizen of society and I'm going to be able to do that. i've got to take my responsibilities back in the world and in the family and you're preparing me for that but i'm thinking my world's pretty good i've i've uh i've had my inventory i'm not too much at odds with myself i have had my confession and sharing i have asked god to remove i'm letting well maybe i ain't honest but i ain'T lying as much as i used to and i don't love everybody but i really couldn't tell you anybody i hate so and and and i'm not drinking and i're praying twice a day so things are changing well i think i'm pretty good and maybe about this time i could rest on my laurels and i can't because there's another step a continuing process and these next two steps deal with other people and i don't know we drunks don't handle other people very well we don't handle ourselves good either but that other person we usually get all right here i gotta make a list of all persons of harm and become willing to make amends to the mob now you will understand why it was suggested with pen in hand at your fourth step you've got a reference sheet there you got a fact you got something tangible to work with it says make the list it don't say become willing and then make your list. Make your list and then get to work on you with the willingness. A strange thing, those two steps are tied so closely together because it says may direct amends wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Now I can be wrong but don't correct me because I let me give you in my never never land but there's uh the little things paradoxes about AA the one I mentioned about it got me well before it diagnosed me and about here I'm understanding another thing um I think well you know I could break every spiritual law known to man and it is written go and sin no more I could broke every civil law that is on the books and after I have faced my judge, gotten my sentence, served my time, I come back into society to pick up the pieces of my life. Nowhere do I have to go eyeball to eyeball with the man I have offended, my brother. Only in AA do I know to this day where that demand is made up. There is reason and there is purpose and I don't have to understand my important my important action and perseverance at this time in my recovery is to make my list become willing and make the amends in god's time and in god way when the psychological and the physiological happening of this willingness comes about and it comes through prayer and meditation and the grace of god and the guidance of another drunk when i am completely willing things have a way of moving pretty fast about that time in your life as you keep there is a magic in this eighth and ninth step in our program because you know we hear the young ones today and we're all talking about our now and it is at the end end of my ninth step that i am i am completely free of people places and things and i am indeed in my now and it is at this point where for so many years in my life i drank because of people places and thing at my ninth step honey i stay sober in spite of them the release and the relief in making these amends restitution has to come just a blanket i'm sorry i was a practicing sick alcoholic that won't quite cut the mustard for the harm and the hurt that we have made over the years if you are going to pay your bar bill as your first making of amends you are only establishing credit for your next drunk that one can wait honey i can't tell you who you hurt the most but if you tell me who loved you the most go to them the ones that loved us the most were the ones that interfered with our drinking and we had to blast through their lives and through their dreams and through their hopes and I had the audacity at one time in my life to say I'm not hurting anybody but myself honey that ninth step was heavy when I got to it I am in my now, I've done a little bit of house cleaning, I am not drinking there is a measure of understanding and comprehension and I'm on my way I want to stay this way. Someone told me one time that step one let me in AA. Step two through nine prepared me for AA and steps 10, 11, and 12 were AA and in that tenth step I'm going to continue to take personal inventory and when I'm wrong promptly admit it. That is going to take care of this one 24 hours you gave me that first day. This is going to give me the privilege of being wrong. It will give me open-mindedness and the willingness to regret that wrong and want to set it right, and to hope to do better tomorrow. Don't make a federal case. The key word is continued and promptly. I got a little story I'll share with you if you're interested after the meeting when i had to ask in my sobriety how soon it is promptly because i was sick honey i was sick but uh the inventory is a little different this time too in the fourth step it was a moral inventory this is a personal inventory because at my tenth step i am responsible i'm responsible for my sobrietty for my actions and for my reactions of this day and you have told me that this program and this recovery is to discipline me in unselfishness and love. You've told me the code of AA is love and tolerance for others, and it's going to be this continued personal inventory that might bring about the practice and the change in my life. thought through uh thought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understand him praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out i want to share a little discovery of my own at that step in my life i don't know whether you missed it i missed it for a long time Because about this time, everybody goes looking for God, and he ain't lost. But we spin our wheels, and we're reaching out. It says, thought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact. Honey, if we have been painstaking, by the time we reach that 11th step, you and me, the likes of you and I, have got a conscious contact whether we believe it or not whether we're aware of it or not and it is only through prayer and meditation that we improve you notice at the tenth step it says continued inventory do that at night do that at night when you go to bed to round your day off and leave leave it all in the capable hands of god your meditation do in the morning see they know really don't make too much sense to meditate and pray uh and turn over and go to sleep uh you can't take advantage of any of the beautiful things that would come into your life but it's when that new day dawns and that gift of that new day has been given me with not a blemish on it and i'm gonna louse it up for the days over but the beginning of that brand new day get in tune with this power greater than myself. Seek his will for me that day. I lived for many years on just the thing of Lord send me. A lot of times, God what amazing things have you got in store for me today. You've got this conscious contact. You are tapped in. You've gotta power greater than yourself. Now by God use it. He is inexhaustible and make it a joy and an excitement. The will of God. You and me want to know what the will of god is well as soon as you think you know honey i'm going to tell you it ain't every time i have ever questioned myself or deliberated on is this the will of god it ain's the will of god when i am about my father's business i do not know a thing about it i will tell you this and this could start you off surely for the likes of you and me alcoholics Surely it is the will of God that you and I be sober. Start there. I can take you a little further because it is written somewhere, Be joyful in all things. In everything be grateful. Pray without ceasing. For this is the Will of God concerning you. And with this understanding and with this comprehension and this joy and this knowing, I am not the desolate, desperate, unknowledgeable person I was when I came to you. I've got something going for me now. I have not got it alone but you have given it to me and it's like a chain and we are links in a chain. I want to digress just a minute now because you know the steps that so many times people ask about the most important step. The most important set for you is probably going to be the one that was the most difficult for you to take it will have a deeper meaning but when I was trying to figure out the most importance step in this program someone told me if you were hanging 50 feet in the air by 12 links of chain tell me which length of chain is the most important and that's how closely knit and interwoven and you can't take one step out of context because when you take one step you're working on the one before it or behind it but because of this i have indeed had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps as i come into my 12th step And I try to practice these principles, and I try to carry this message. But how can there be a message without a messenger? You and I are the messenger. I've heard many times in AA and I'm sure you have, we are told shortly after we come in we have to get active. And of course you do. But honey there's a lot of difference between action in the AA program and activity in AA. Don't spin your wheels too much. And you will hear, as I have heard, I'm too new. Well, I'm new. I'm scared. Well I'm scare. I am not capable. Well I'm not capable." And then once in a while you'll ask someone to do something and they'll say no and i have one question how in the name of god could you and i have found our sobriety if the day we came in everybody said no this is responsibility you don't have to agree with me you don'T HAVE TO LIKE WHAT I'VE HAD TO SAY YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE believe it, but I am compelled to tell you because this is precisely how my recovery was made possible. I look at my twelve steps and I can say perhaps with the first three steps this God of my understanding says, Patsy, I love you. And And in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh step he will say, Patsy, I forgive you. In the eighth and ninth step he demands that I love you, my fellow man. In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth step he says, Potsy, love me back. Now do you want a guarantee tonight? Do you want me to give you a guarantee of how you will never take a drink again? That sounds facetious, doesn't it? But I will guarantee if you will keep one hand reaching for the hand of God and the other hand reaching for a sick alcoholic you ain't going to have a third hand with which to take a drink. Thank you so much for putting up with me.