The Solution Found in the Absence of Fear – Dave

Now it is my great pleasure to introduce our speaker for this evening, Dave W. from Fair Oaks. I was going to write that down too. Hi everybody, I'm Dave Mullen, I am an alcoholic. and this thing's moving around a little bit I guess it'll hold on how we doing today? I don't think so we're getting tuned up up here okay oh okay can we get some water good deal just right everybody cooling down a little bit in here? yeah I think that's great the air came back on and right that I was thinking we were going to get meltdown tonight but appreciate the privilege of being able to share it tonight it's nice to see we got a full house here today we got quite a few people out in Texas right now and they had a wonderful meeting tonight and for those of you who are new we've got an international going right now and there's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of over 60,000 people in a stadium they're just wrapping up just about now in San Antonio so Alcoholics Anonymous definitely works and it's a phenomenal thing but it is amazing and I've always thought this Alcoholics Anonymous is basically a retail not a wholesale program this is nice to share from the podium but the real action the thing that seems to work the best is when one alcoholic reaches out to another and something happens it's magical and I have to be a little careful I do some things we talk a little bit once in a while and sometimes it's so easy to get things way, way out of proportion. I'm reminded of a guy down south. I talk about this story a lot of times because it helps me. I don't know if it's any good for you, but this guy did a lot of talking down south, and he got kind of wrapped up with his ability and his spiel, and he got asked to go out and do one of these deals where it was out in the country, and it was one of those where they give you the directions where you go down three miles where they have the broken barbed wire fence and they've got the mailbox hanging on the left side of the tree and then there's a big barn with a crow painted on the side and he gets there and there's a barn opened up and there is hay all over the floor nice and smooth and a couple of bales set up in rows and he looks inside and there was this one little guy setting up the coffee machine over on the sid and that's it and being that he is a fairly substantial speaker at least in his own mind he is waiting for the crowd to show up and it gets closer and closer to the meeting time and he finally walks over to the little guy that's making the coffee and he says, I don't know what to do. He says, it looks like it's just you and me. I don' t know what we should do and the guy looks up at him and he said, well I don''t know much I'm just a farmer and I haven't been very much educated but if I went out to the North 40 to feed my cows and only one showed up I wouldn't let her go home hungry and so the guy took that as his cue and he proceeded to get up to the podium and talk for an hour and 57 minutes. This little guy sitting on a bale of hay watching him attentively and at the end of the meeting he claps and they start packing everything up. They pack up the coffee pot and everything like that. He couldn't help it. It was driving him crazy so finally on the way out the door he says, hey I've got to ask you how did it go tonight? And he said I need this he says so basically he says to the guy how did it go and he says well I don't know much I'm just a farmer I've not been educated much at all but if I went out to the north 40 to feed my cows and only one showed up I wouldn't damp the whole damn load on her you know so lest we take ourselves too seriously I want to thank the committee we had a great dinner tonight met some new friends we had an wonderful conversation we were all bawling and crying it's how this works it's amazing when you find new people and you connect and you realize the commonality. We were having a serious discussion. I was fortunate. Today was an interesting day. I mean, I don't know about you. I drank this way, but I'm sober this way. But started off early this morning. A guy was on the front porch and we started talking and then a couple of other guys called and I said, well, why don't we all meet at my place about one o'clock? And it was just barely enough time to get changed and go out to dinner with the crew today. but it's been a full day and I don't know about them but I'm treated and I drank for a reason I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I wasn't sure why I was here at first I remember my first we were talking about that today my first jaunt was about three weeks sober and honest to God we're going up we found out somebody knew that there was a national convention up in Canada and it was in Vancouver and that seemed like a good idea so we took off on our cars, and we're driving up, and we pull off in somewhere in Medford, Oregon. And somebody had a... It was back in the days when everything was printed, so they had a printed directory, a world directory of members of Alcoholics Anonymous. We called somebody up in the area of Medford. They were so tickled that we called. I remember I never... It was just my first introduction to AlcoholicsAnonymous, but these ladies took out their best china and served us coffee, called all their neighbors that were a member of our organization, and they brought them over to the house. And they wouldn't let us leave. They just wouldn't let us live. They had a speaker meeting going that night and they wanted us to go to this speaker meeting and I'm kind of, you know, new at this but I've been around for a while. I'm a keen study of what's going on in AA and people talking about the basis of the disease. I mean, people say things like, you know you're really self-centered. You're going to think everything's about you and I don't know and I kind of go okay, I got that one and on and on and so we're at this meeting that night And they talk about identification in Alcoholics Anonymous. And here we are in the middle of the sticks in Medford. I'm a city guy. And we're out with the local population, and this guy is at the podium, and he's doing a little speaker meeting. It's not a big one, but it's big enough. And we were back as far as we could get in the back row out there trying to hide out. I got my two buddies with me. And the guy who's talking from the podium now, he's really different. I mean, this guy did 25 years in the pen. And he's talking about having a behavioral disorder so bad that even when he's in the Penitentiary, most of that 25 years he did in solitary confinement. He couldn't get along with the inmates. Could not get along avec them. Absolutely upside down and crazy. And he was talking about what had happened to him and how he was able to come back out, have a career, be in a different life. But about this period of time when he was in that prison and his attitude and his approach to life and how upside down it was. And periodically during that pitch, he would look out there and he would say, you understand what I'm talking about. And at first I'm going, that's it. That's what they told me. You know, it looks like he's looking at me, but that's, you know, they gave me the Q in AA. That has nothing to do with me. And he keeps talking. And pretty soon one of my friends hits me in the, he's obling me in The Ribcage. And he goes, do you know that guy? And I said, no. And it goes a little further on, and I'm thinking this is crazy. and pretty soon my other friend bumps me and he says, you gotta know that guy he's looking at you and I've been in some pretty good jams but I managed to squeeze out of doing long term time and at the end of the meeting that guy walks right up to me, looks me right in the eyes and he goes, you know exactly what I'm talking about don't you and I did and I didn't know nothing about being in the joint but I knew about absolute bone chilling solitary confinement in a crowded room by the way of my life the lifestyle I was living the things like I did it had long since outgrown that warmth and connection and this guy was talking from the heart and I began to understand what you people were talking about about identification about being able to hear yourself and another person's story out of context perhaps from the way you're raised but it went in And all of a sudden, AA started to have some credibility. Another thing that they said was about why I drank. I really thought I liked the taste of Jack Daniels. I really did. I mean, I was absolutely convinced I did. And I did, you know. But what I'm saying is I like lemonade too and I never went out at 3 in the morning on a stormy night looking for lemonade. So it's easy to get distorted about what we like and what we don't like, you now. and what I'm getting at is it's said that an alcoholic like me drinks essentially because I like the effect produced by alcohol and I think that's a pretty long sentence you know and I couldn't tie that together too well until I looked at that for a while and I began to look at what was going on in my life and earlier on I think I was all of the age about eight or nine I talk about this one a lot but I was already upside down and sideways in life and confused and I didn't know what the heck was going wrong with me My parents had shipped me out to these experts. It kind of feels lousy when you're shipped out to an office and everybody kind of says, take care of him. Send him back when he's better. And they were looking at me, and they'd always look at you with this enthusiastic look. I don't know if you've ever been treated by professionals. It's like they're rubbing their hand, and they go, oh boy, we got one. They've got a long list of their credentials. And I'm not saying there's probably a lot of people that do a good job in that, but I've been through this before. and it's like they've got a long list of credentials on what they're going to do and they're just happy as hell that they've Got a Victim to work on and you go back the first week and then about the third week you can see that they're puzzled and they are kind of looking at you and they have lost their confidence and they were trying to figure out what the hell we've got here so I was losing my confidence real rapidly in experts being able to figure up what was wrong with me And I was precocious and sideways, as far back as I can remember. And I went in for an operation. It just so happened I developed a tumor. And they thought it would be serious, so they were going to have it surgically removed. And I remember going to the hospital. And I, I went into the hospital, I didn't like it, I was pretty young, I didn' t like staying overnight somewhere else like that with these strangers. But anyway, they came in in the middle of the night, they put me on a gurney and they took me down to a room. and it was a well lit room it was really bright and I was scared to death I just remember thinking what in the hell are they going to do next and all of a sudden they took this thing out that looked like a Mr. Coffee filter and they put it over my face and I thought what inthe hell is that and then they started to drip something on that and it wasn't it was the most phenomenal thing I'd ever come in contact with in my life up until that point in time I had never come into contact I levitated up off that table and went to another room that they said wasn't there. But the point I'm getting at is that I had never been in an experience like that. It was like everything changed in my consciousness. The temperature changed just like tonight. All of a sudden, the room got cooler. I didn't know what fear was because I lived in it every day. And all of a suddenly, I was in the absence of it. And it would be like being in downtown New York at rush hour and suddenly not being able to hear any of the cars. It was the strangest feeling I'd ever had. It was absolutely quiet, and it was peaceful. And I didn't know what that was. Those demons had stopped yelling at me already. I hadn't had a drink yet, by the way. We'll talk about that later. But what I'm getting at is I now had been under the influence. I didn'T know it. And what they did is they started to pull me back from that room because they were finished downstairs. And I wasn't. I didn' t want to come. I was going to stay in the mezzanine. And they yanked, and they yANKed, and I came down, and I got sick as a dog, which is what you do when you come in contact with that kind of thing. But I found out, you know, I guess I say this a lot because I would think it was pretty serious what they were doing, and you'd think I'd be real concerned about what the prognosis was because they'd cut some stuff out of me, and it wasn't. I was so fascinated with what happened in that room that I only wanted to know one thing. What did they put on that mask? And I put two and two together within about two years, and I was off to the racetrack. I found out that was a derivative of alcohol and it was the medicine that I had never found up until that point in time and it fixed me as best as I know how. I mean, it literally made it a world that I could fit back into and I stopped dropping out of school. I was out of schools for periods of time but it got me back to integrate back into life and anything that can change a room that drastically, that quickly and that much, I was already incapable of saying no to. I needed that to exist and that's what it said it said that I drink for the effect and the effect is prior to that coming in contact with that mask I was experiencing already the symptoms of alcoholism I was feeling restless, irritable and discontent if you take a clock on a pendulum and you look at that thing and you just let it wind down I don't know, maybe I'm guessing I don' t know what it's like to be normal but I think most normal people when they get right in the middle and it's all wound down they're peaceful I'm not. I'm actually restless, irritable discontent at my normal state of being. That's the way I'm wired. When I exert myself with some of the things you've taught me here, I get out to the other extremes where I can feel peaceful. But if I don't keep widening that clock, I'll come right back down to my normal state of Being. And I don' t think anything has changed in all the years since I came here. But what I'm here to tell you is I made a passion of going with my medicine. And I followed it with everything I could. I can't imagine anybody, I don't know if there's anybody in here that just gave up because they got tired or something like that. I didn't. I made a pact with myself. I studied my parents. They obviously didn't follow their own goals very well and so I figured out where they had made mistakes and I decided that I wouldn't make the mistakes they made and I did everything I could and I moved around in life and I got places that I needed to go and I woke up many, many years later in a place that I just had to pinch myself. I basically had become what you'd call very successfully materially. I had a very well-run business. I had lots of friends. But what I'm trying to say is I wasn't sleeping under the bridge. And things were getting better supposedly on the outside but something was going on. I would get these spills. The medicine was starting to get intermittent and it would come and go. It would flame out once in a while and I would get more restless inside so it would take a little bit more of the medicine to get me back to the place where I first started. And I kept going, I just kept pushing and striving to accomplish and produce things in life. I was raised right from the saddle as a kid that if you want something and you're willing to work hard for it, it's yours for the work. So I wasn't one that thought that you sleep in and expect everything to come to you. It was just like, work hard and life will open up to you and that was my experience and the more it opened up and the mere it produced the emptier I got and it was the strangest feeling. I remember I met Larry years ago and I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I had enough to feed several neighborhoods and all these things people that still wanted to talk to me and I had become completely empty and I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. It's a special kind of hell when you've had more good fortune than anybody you know. And it's not enough to make you feel full, you know? And I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me, you know? I was laying on couches talking to people and I couldn't get rid of this hole, this empty hole that was stuck in the middle of me. No matter how much I achieved, no matter how many times I got an award again, something like that, I felt like a peeled zero and I didn' t know what the hell is wrong, you know? So when you got a problem like that you just drink a little more, you know? And as I did it people started to get cranky. I don't know about you, but people would, at that point in their life, it's amazing how your best friends start getting real cranky and breaking out. It seems like everybody's got PMS or something like that. But they lose their sense of humor. So we started to have to narrow our lifestyle a little bit. People wouldn't ask us back. And things kept happening like that over and over and again. But I was dedicated. and you really can't be much of a drunk if you're willing to let a few things like that distract you so I kept drinking. In fact, towards the end of this there's probably people in the trades but just to show you the last year before I sobered up I can remember being on the board of directors for a major detox facility and I kept thinking don't pass out in the meeting It's not going to look good. It was terrible. I mean, it was like a wolf in the chicken house. And I was living a life that was totally a lie, totally back-ass, where the double life in spades, you know. I had a poor sick father and I was the golden boy. And they had asked me to join the board because of my illustrious career in the outside world and the fact that I took concern on this pitiful drunk. And here we got one of the live wires right there in the middle of the whole thing, you see. and everything in my life was going to hell in a handbasket. I can remember I couldn't drive anymore. I would have these terrible things. I had a business, and people sought after some of the things I was doing, and it was embarrassing. I'd be right at the point where I was ready to close a sale, and I'd lose consciousness. That's really hard to close one when you're on the ground when you wake up. People don't want to sign the contract you had out and all ready to sign. And I decided what most alcoholics do. I've been educated, I've got a high IQ, so I did the homework, man. And I looked at it and I arrived at this conclusion that I had a brain tumor. So my next step was to buy a lot of medical insurance to take care of my family in my hair after. So I was doing the responsible thing. I was treating what I had diagnosed was wrong with me and keeping it under the covers because if you come clean on that you're not going to be able to buy any more insurance. and I was treating my brain tumor. And passing out and things like that were becoming regular habitual habits. And we had moved towards the end. We had moved to, oh my God, I thought we'd died and gone to heaven. We moved into a neighborhood that was people just like me. They were people that were supposedly successful people all over town. We were all living in the same neighborhood. We all seemed to like to have a little party once in a while during the week and everybody had a standing deal where if you ran out, you'd come over to our place and use whatever stock we got. So it was perfect, you know. It was like, I don't know, it was just really something. And we ran hard in there and that's where I really started the crash and burn. And one of the guys down at the end of the street was in the car business and he was very successful with that himself and he ran with me for a long time. And so I knew who he was. If you live much, I got traveled around the world you could take one of us, put a blindfold on and spin us around in circles and drop me in a foreign country and within three minutes I'd find another alcoholic I just know how to locate my own kind and how to have fun and find things that are going on and so he was like me and I knew he was one of us and he started showing up at our parties with a glass of 7-Up and it was the damnedest thing ever seen and not really because you do that You get in trouble, and you've got to swear off for a few days. But what I'm trying to say is he showed up the next weekend with a glass of 7-Up, then the following weekend, and the following week, and it was driving me crazy. It really was. I just kept thinking, how long can he do this? I mean, if it was somebody else doing that, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But I had never seen somebody drink with that much passion that could go with 7-up that long. And I was looking. I kind of thought he had a trick. so I'd be talking to you but I'd be listening over here because I was trying to figure out what his secret was and he was demonstrating the virtual impossible to me I had never seen that before he was doing something that a drunk can't do and he Was going one day at a time without a drink and it Was like he Was screaming at me and mind you this guy never once ever said hey David you want to look at your drinking he never said a word to me and it was like he Was screaming at me so you whoever you are out there, especially you that have been around a little while or some of you that are new. What I'm saying is people are watching, whether you think they are or not. And what we do is very, very important. There's no fine free time in this life. And what I do, what you do, and everything like that, is what you're doing. It's not this way or that way, but it's going to have an effect. My thing was I thought I was the only one that I ever affected, and I missed that by a million miles. But what I'm getting at is That guy was the loudest message of Alcoholics Anonymous I ever heard. And he never once said a word to me until the end came. I went to a party. It was a Valentine's Day party. It was February 13th in 1983. And I had absolutely busted. All this stuff had gone out of the bottle. I could not get anything to feed me anymore. If I could have stayed out in left field another moment, I would have. Absolutely would have。 I had no desire to quit drinking or whatnot. I just couldn't get anything more out of the bottle. It had gone flat. And the more I drank, the more it pushed me down. So I don't understand any other way. That was my experience is that it had to stop working for me. And I went to him and I had one of those nights where my tongue wouldn't work and I couldn't talk and I walked up to him and I was trying to babble something out and he intuitively knew what was going on. He just said, Dave, don't even try to talk to me right now. He said, just go home and get some sleep and call me in the morning. And in the morning I called and we talked and he got me to your people. And it blew me away what was going on. First off, I thought I'd come in the wrong room. People were laughing and carrying on and seemed to be happy and I thought there was nothing freaking funny about medicine going away. That was not funny. I had not coped on the face of this planet for years. And to people, it would be like going into insulin shock and saying there's no more insulin on the face of the planet. I mean, that was not a happy scene and there was nothing to be laughing about and people were. But I had enough trouble going on that I couldn't live on the other side of the door. So I stayed and listened to this nonsense is what it sounded like to me because you obviously didn't have the same problem I did and I stayed long enough to start to hear a few things. Probably the biggest thing that happened to me and without that thing happening nothing else could have happened. Nothing else could happen. But we ran around. I got involved with a guy, one of the guys that was at the beginning of this group over here with you guys was one of those first six people. He set up a little compound out in Del Paso Heights. This was a high roller guy, big real estate guy, big shop from Santa Clara and he decided to become the Pope of Greenwich Village in Sacramento. I mean, he basically took vows of poverty. He setup a shop and all he did was treat people and did a little work out at the hospitals. I actually worked with my old man in the hospital at the time. And my wife at the time had been trying to knock some sense into me and she had gotten down into one of these groups down at his place and she kept trying to get me to go down and see him. And we got going. I got involved in Alcoholics Anonymous finally and he and I would go out because he said you're fortunate, you've got some stuff in your life so he says let's start using it. So we'd go out and take all the people from the streets out to dinner at two in the morning, you know, and things like that at the coffee shop, out of brawleys and everything like that. But we'd do this night after night after night. And it was just insane. We were just going with everything we had to do this. And the thing that was getting me was that we were going to meetings during the day and we were all talking and crazy and upside down and didn't have a clue. You know that, don't you? And one night I came home and it was probably 2.30 in the morning and I was just exhausted. You ever do that where you just drop off and it's like Even today, it still takes me two minutes to fall asleep, I think. But that particular night, I was dropping off and I had one of those moments where I was just falling down on the pillow and I shot straight up in bed. And I was leaning on my back on the wall and I thought to myself, what in the hell happened? And I realized that not once since about six in the morning when I got up that day till 2.30 that night when I was going to sleep, not once that whole day had I either thought about drinking or not drinking. and I realized because we were going through day after day after day of not thinking about drinking anymore, it had beat the hell out of me but I was thinking about not drinking and that will drive you crazy if you're new don't drink this, don't drink that, just everything is about not drinking. You're looking at signs and you're putting the X over them and I had never everything in my life was about planning the next drunk and that one day that one little period of time maybe 18-19 hours, I'm not sure but what I'm getting at is I realized that I had blanked out it was like a mini Alzheimer's I literally had forgot to think about the most significant thing in my life for just that period of time and I don't know about you but that blew me away I thought what in the heck was that and all of a sudden I looked back and I thought AA must know what they're doing there's something to do with what those people were talking about and so I came back and I listened a little bit more and next thing one thing led to another and you know a month went by and six months went by and finally I get a year birthday and I was amazed here I am physically sober I'm not thinking about but without that ability to break that bond I used to get a sweat in the palm of my hands and when I got that it was a matter of moments really or hours at the best until I was drunk again and here the very most significant thing in my life had been broken like the fever had broke and I was at peace about it and I couldn't figure out what that was and so I began to get busy I was always doing that we were stacking chairs washing coffee cups doing things that they told me to do and we did that I didn't question that but after the one year birthday chip I came to the conclusion that it was time to make up for all the bridges I've burned and so I basically stayed in the meetings I stayed secretaring a lot of meetings I've always been active since I got here. You people seem to know what you were doing. I wasn't doing too good in my life, so I better pay attention, and I did it. But what I'm here to tell you is after that one year, for the next three and a half years, I busted my tail. I arrived at the conclusion, maybe you're not like me, but I'd look around the room and I'd say, I know what's going on with them. They sleep in on Saturday and stuff like that. I'm going to get up early. So I got up early, I worked six and a halftays a week, and I'm gonna rebuild what fell down in my empire. and I worked and I worked and I worked and then I worked some more and what I'm here to tell you is at the end of three and a half years my life was more upside down than it was the last six months of my drinking and I didn't know what the heck was wrong I had a friend that was in very high position in the state of California overseeing medical licenses all these things my game plan at that point time was to cut in line at the electroshock therapy center. I really didn't know what was going on anymore. I thought I was losing it. And I went to what was probably going to be my last meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I did the unthinkable. I literally, for the first time, to the best of my ability, I just told the truth. I told them about what was going On in my life. I was being divorced a second time. My business was going through the tubes again. I couldn't go to my office. I was afraid of the people that worked for me. Everything was upside down and crazy and confused, and I felt like I was popping out of my skin. And I wanted to thank them for showing me how to go a day without a drink all that time, but I got other problems. And Iím telling this stuff from the depth of my heart about how upside down my life is, and two guys, two hobos that were in that meeting started laughing out loud. I thought that was rude. And right when I'm finally spilling my guts about everything that's going on, they're giggling about it. They think it's funny. And at the coffee break, they wouldn't leave me alone. They were outside on the park and they hung in there with me. And one guy stayed out in the bumper of his car until 11 o'clock that night. And I heard what may have been said a lot before, but It was the first time I'd ever heard the message, I think, of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had never heard it before. I thought what we were hearing at that time was you just hang with the groups, you run to the meetings and you're going to suffer a lot and over a period of time you just get better. And if you can go through the hazing, it's kind of like going through one of those lines where they hit you with the sticks, you come out on the other end, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna become a winner. You're going gonna be a winner, you know? And they said no way. They said no away. They said you don't know anything about that. he said come over to my house tomorrow we'll talk I got in the door it didn't help me much he said I know who you are he says if you think by getting me as a sponsor you're going to be ok he says forget it that's not going to help you you either know you're in trouble he'd never even met me this guy had never met me he's a bad dresser I make more money than him and he looks at me and says you're a short change artist you know and he starts taking my inventory and stuff like that but he said this is something that if you're going to do it David, he says you're gonna have to give it your all and I looked at him and I thought give it my all you know look what I've he says I know what you're thinking he says it's not about competing with me or anybody else he says when I give it 100% I get what I need and when you give it 100% of what you can do you'll get what you need but you're not in competition with me and he says you're going to have to start doing that now whether you like it or not or you can get a little bit more of what you want but if you want I'll show you what to do and he says I was going through this long winded debate about whether this really worked or whether AA worked or whatnot I know there's nobody that ever thought that before but I did you know white light spiritual experiences and all that stuff that's for the spiritual people right and he said to me the most incredible thing I've ever heard He says, why don't you give this six weeks of everything you've got and tune everything else out. And he says, at least when you go off and do whatever you're going to do, Mr. Smart Pants, he says you can tell somebody that you gave it your all and it really doesn't work. But he says until you do that, you can't do that. And I'm a betting man. I thought that little punk isn't going to shame me like that, so I took his bet. And I got busy doing things that were absolutely ridiculous. I mean they had nothing to do with staying sober. It didn't. I mean, it was being kind to people that were, you know, crooked. It was all the wrong things. At the time, I swear he was on the take from my wife at the time. He was defending her all the time and but he asked me to do things. I mean we used to say something in the old group that I sobered up in down there in Norsec And they'd say that, I'm not putting anything down. It's just we each hear what we hear. So I'm no here to be an expert on AA. I'm just telling you about my experience since I've been here. But they would say things in this meeting like, AA is a place for people who want it, not for people who need it. And I got to tell you, it's very important for you, maybe somebody out there, to hear this. I tell you if that were true, I'd be dead today. I never wanted what AA had. But I got up to a point where I knew I needed it. and I started doing things I didn't want to do with people I didn'T want to do them with in places I didn' t want to do it. And you know what? The program didn' T give a damn about that. It worked just fine when I started doing that. It took me several years to go back and read Bill's writing. Write the book. Write the book from the guy that founded this thing. He says, Who cares to do these things? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered and extreme, doesn' T care for this at all unless he has to. So I thought, My God, you guys all cared and I didn´T. and what he said is you just need to develop the capacity to realize the necessity and that's what I began to get I began to see that I wasn't going to get my way and I began to do things in a manner that I had never done before in places with people I remember God we had a I got this man was always challenging my thoughts he was saying things I hadn't heard in the meetings before he told me you don't know nothing about prayer and I said what do you mean I don't have I don' t know nothing about prayer and he says there's two sides to it why do you expect it to work with only one side. And I said, geez, I was an altar boy, all that stuff, and you're barefoot on rooftops in New York, for God's sakes. The guy was a drug dealer, you know? But he was doing better than me. That really ticked me off. So he said, there's two sides to prayer. And i said, okay, tell me all about it. And he says, you get down on your knees in the morning, don't you? And I say, yeah, I do. And he says, what do you do when you get up off your knees? And I said, well, I go into my day. And he said, there's your problem. And I thought, what does that mean, that's my problem? And he goes, there are two sides to prayer. He says, don' t ever expect your prayer to work if you just get on your knee and pray to God. He says you've got to do the most important side which is when you get up of your knees and step into your day you've gotta stay awake. You've got look for the answer to that prayer. And if you get back into your days and just get into what you think needs to be done, you'll never see it. I've heard things in AA. This is the one thing I believe from the depth of my heart. Anybody. I mean, if you want to talk about it later, I'll talk to you about it. But I've hear people say that you can't see, feel, and touch God. And I want to tell you something. If you're in as much trouble as I am and you've gotten as upside down as you are in your life and they're asking you to turn your will and life over to something you can see, see, and feel, and touch, I will join you in wherever you want to go and we'll trash this whole place. but what I'm saying is they began to show me that there was something here if I would do it that I could have evidence hard evidence and he began to tell me why don't you pray to this God that you don't know exist and ask him to produce something in your day significant enough that you can't explain it away and he said you do that consistently he says now what I want you to do he says when it presents itself I don't want you To question it he says I just want you to step into whatever it is. So I said, you sure? And he goes, yep, do it. Well, I'm only in the fifth step. I go to a meeting. I tell the truth. I tell everybody how my life's going to crap and it's upside down and crazy. Three guys come up in the middle of that meeting and ask me if I'll help them. And I said I can't help you. I'm crazy. But they asked for my number. So I go back to this guy and I say, okay, Big Shot, you told me to pray the prayer you told my to do all this stuff these two guys come up and ask me where is this thing where you can't give away what you don't have and he says you are right but you told him to pray the prayer and to step into anything that was presented to me and he goes you are correct and I said so what do I do and he looks at me and kind of looks at you that way and I know I've got a dilemma going here I'm either going to follow that prayer through or I'm going to go back to what I've always had which wasn't working too good so I got out on that busy street corner of Allegra and whatever I'm a proud guy you know and we've got two guys that I'm going to go into their apartment on and there's a busy intersection there's cars everywhere and I decided the only way to helpfully handle that is I got down on my knees in my suit outside this guy's apartment with all those cars going by and I prayed that please don't let me kill anybody when I go inside you know help these guys. I began with a vengeance to try to do anything and everything I could do to begin to just trust that there was something that cared about me enough and would start to take care of me. And I got busy. And the reason I'm here to tell you that is I got so involved in that activity, eventually we got through steps and things like that, but a lot of the steps got filled in by the real sponsor. And i'm not talking about the other one, you see? There was things being said in those meetings that I had never heard in a meeting of AA. You know? And I was curious to see who was saying them. And things were happening and all of a sudden I was more fascinated by that than by anything else which is exactly what it tells me to do and all the sudden I realized that I was back in that room when I was nine years old you know and I had back the thing that I left in the bottle of the pill you see and I began to realize why you had laughed in that first meeting that I came to some of you were laughing for other reasons but certain ones were laughing because they had found the answer. And that these hobos, per se, these people without a lot of education had found a way to essentially produce the effect that I used to get from the bottle of the pill. And that's the only reason I'm still here today. You see, I've got to be under the influence of it tonight, the same way I was under the influences in the late days of my drinking. If I sober up, I'm in deep trouble. I don't know about you, but I've either got to either be under the influence of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps, or I've gotta be under the influence of booze, but if I try to just go cold turkey and live life on life's terms on my own two feet I'm a mess. And I've been here a lot of years and I am actually probably more a mess today than I was the day I got here, but I'm not trading places with any of you. My life is wonderful. It is a wonderful life. It's provided for me. Not because I stood up and flew right, but because something greater than me provides that life to me. And that to me is the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not a time thing. If you're new and you begin to do that, you've got the same thing I've got tonight right here at the podium. It's nice to have a little consistency to show that it can work over a long period of time. But other than that, this is not about the members of Alcoholic Anonymous because as far as I know it, there's only one thing that can keep any of us sober here tonight and it's none of us. And that's the big deal in AlcoholicsAnonymous. The reality is there is something that created each and every one of us, Whatever you call it is your business. But it's about the business of reckoning with that and going back to the business of turning over something called self-sufficiency and going Back to the Old Business of Being Taken Care Of. And it's good. It doesn't mean that we're relinquished. I've got to stay real busy. But I was a self-sufficiency expert in my own life. Maybe still can be. That's why I still take 10 steps all the time. Every time I get in trouble, it's when I've gone back to taking care of my life. It's always for a good reason. It's because I've learned something about myself but if learning about myself would treat my disease I'd have left here a long time ago I'm dependent upon something that isn't human it's the main ingredient there isn't any other ingredient that provides that if you're new or if you've been around for a while and you're stumped because life has a way of doing that I've never been here for any length of period of time where there's not some new cataclysmic event that had asked me to stretch my imagination beyond anything I've ever known. How many times is it, Larry? I mean for any of us. I'm trying to think three years ago I had a divorce or the back end of a divorce going on. My best friend from 27 years died. The mother of my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer and my daughter was having a heart attack over the fact that her mother wasn't going to be around. Oh yeah, and I lost my job. I think there was a few other things going on but what I'm getting at is it was a wonderful event in hindsight it wasn't so good going into it but it drove me one more time to a point where I was broken I had no new answers I had nowhere to go no way to get past that you know everything that's ever happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous it's real and it's good is when I'm totally stumped if I've got a clue of how to solve my problem what in the heck am I doing here go out and do it you know this is based on the fact that I've gotta problem that I can't solve and it stays that way One of the guys that passed away a long, long time ago used to mirror that over and over and over again. He said, I'm caught in a trap I can't spring. So it's like, so when can we start the steps so I can spring the trap? That's not the answer. My freedom today, my peace tonight up here is based on the fact that basically I know I'm a failure and that it doesn't interfere with the success that's going on in my life right now. It's actually the main basis for it happening that way. I'll give you an example. If you're new or relatively new, or if you've been around for a long time, try helping yourself not take a drink. That'll get you drunk real fast. Sometimes it's hard in AA to get somebody to actually accept the fact that the basis of this whole organization, the way it got founded, was based on the idea that I've lost the power of choice. I swear to God sometimes I get into places where I think choice is the answer what i'm hearing is i got the choice for this now i got that i don't have a choice and that's why i'm peaceful tonight if i could choose not to drink then i gotta learn how to choose not tomorrow and that gets me restless tonight i'm gonna stay up late trying to make sure i don' t choose wrongly tomorrow and i don''t think it's a little issue i mean you know i'm not saying that there's not other ideas But it's the mainstay of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was started because nothing on the face of the planet knew what to do with people like us. And it was very, very successful by the basis that we have a non-human problem. We probably have a hypersensitivity to being close to something greater than us. And the closest thing we ever found was liquor. Or sometimes other things we tend to get hooked up to. Members of the opposite sex and money and fame and all that stuff but the base thing is we have a predisposition to a sensitivity of conscious apartness from god and the treatment is to do the things to bring back the unity of that to bring us closer to the thing that created us whether we think it or not the one thing i would say is the symptoms always the same never made any difference i would have sworn that was not my problem when i got started in steps i remember telling them how do you make me trust god you've got to make me trust God. Thank God these alcoholics knew what was really wrong with me. I really thought my problem was I didn't know how to trust God any of you ever think that way? What they told me and actually Ron says he never said it but what I realize now is they said David your problem isn't that you don't trust God your real problem is you have no way to stop trusting you I come in here saying I'm beaten and then somebody says well why don't you do that and you say well that'll never work I've flat ass failed in my life somebody says do these things right here and you'll be okay and I'll say well that's good for you but that won't work for me I have an over extended capacity to have faith in myself when it doesn't deserve it that's what's amazing what do they say an alcoholic zone person can lay in the gutter and look down at the world you know you ever do that probably some of you are doing it right now listen to this jackass up at the podium it really isn't me it's you I'm a jackass but that's still your head and if you do welcome because you're in good company most of us do most of use are getting ready for the night we get up here and we'll do it different But the point then, this is a disease. This is not just a bad habit. They began to explain to me that alcoholism is a disease that centers in the mind. And I treat it by drinking alcohol. But the disease centers in my mind. What do I mean by that? It's a mind that tells me that I know me better than you know me. And because of that I can't listen to you. First off, I think I've got good eyesight so I think I see what you're doing and I don't. And I think I hear what you are saying and I do not. Have you ever done that? We talk about that one all the time. You go in there and maybe I see Robert and he says hey, I haven't seen you for a while and what I hear is Robert says I'm not going to enough meetings. So I come over to Tom and I say Tom, Robert's an asshole and we need to avoid him. No offense, Robert. But it's all in the good sport of a disease. What I'm getting at is I don't hear so well. I don' t hear so well. I project things that aren't being said. I hear things that aren't going on out there. I had a friend the other day. We were trying to convince him to go home and rent the movie The Beautiful Mind. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen to see what it looks like to be an alcoholic. We're actually living in a life with things that aren't really happening. And it's hard-pressed to get people to listen to that in AA, you know? It is. Our book says that. I'm just going to quote it a little bit. I can't help it. It's in the 12 and 12. But it says that most of us are willing to accept the fact that we're problem drinkers. Most people would say that, right? We didn't do too good with that. But it said few indeed are willing to endure the suggestion that we are in fact quite mentally ill. There's a real deal-breaker, right, That will make you real popular at AA. And the difficulty is, we laugh in many ways and things like that, but most of the people get pushed out not ever knowing what hit them. It's like a great white. If you could tickle its nose before it bit you, that would be fair play. But it hits so hard and so fast from the side, you never see it coming. You never see het coming. and this is not letting up we've been around for 75 years and I've got to tell you it's a wonderful solution it's the people that are coming through the doors of AA we don't have to perhaps lose as many as we do but we've got to get out of the idea that we need to do value added with the program the program that came out of the book originally was perfectly fine. It works wonderfully with alcoholism. We don't need to bring new ideas on top of it. These hobos, these people that helped me, I had a very good education. I was trained by people, people from the White House staff, things like that. People took a long time to give me credentials on the wall. And one guy that was barefoot on the rooftops, another guy that went to Scotland, was from Scotland, never even finished high school. These guys told me things that nobody had ever told me on the face of this planet. And they're still the most important thing I've ever heard in my life. They knew what was wrong with me. I had a good fortune years later. One of the guys, real big guy in the state of California, had this position. And I'd come to him and ask him to help me get down there for a little therapy. And he came to me one night and he said, will you help me? And I said, what do you mean would I help you? And he says, why would you want me to help you because you're one of the sickest guys I've met in my life and you're not sick. You know, you're doing better. And I said, well, so what? So what do you want to help? He says, well I've been taking medicine from my patients and I can't stop using it. Would you meet me at the dumpster and we'll throw it out. So these are the people that are educated beyond their capacity to follow the instructions. You see what I'm saying? This is not a deficiency of education. Sometimes I think we think that the treatment of alcoholism is to get better educated. There's nothing wrong with finding out a little bit about it but he won't treat it. Carl Jung said that to Roland he was working with a criminally insane as far as I know and he was workin' with quite a few people in his clinic most of them were what you'd call double modalities some of em were schizophrenic and like that Carl says to Roland after he falls out he says, Roland, I gotta get ya outta here and get your bed back I can treat these people I can't treat you you're too sick so what I'm sayin' is I met these guys and they said, cheer up it's much worse than you think and what I found was that was the missing link we were talking about it at dinner tonight Mark and I were talking but the biggest problem I see people all the time they're saying they have trouble with prayer and meditation or something like that they've never had a problem I mean, I haven't really I'm going to tell you you can pray and meditate all you want if there's not the foundation in the first two steps for what's wrong with me there will never it says right there driven to AA by the depths of my problem and there I'm confronted with the truth about alcoholism and it says then and only then will I become open-minded to conviction. You think I'm going to give up and start doing things in my life that are really needed to be done if I think I can weasel out of it or do something different? It's very important that I'm faced with a fatal problem. And I'm not talking about drinking now, I'm talking about sober, not drunk, that I am still going down. That sponsor that got a hold of me after four years, four and a half years, said what makes you think you're okay now? And he said there's basically three curtains that you can pick in this game show of Alcoholics Anonymous. Curtain number one is you drink and you die drunk. And I'd done that. I buried my dad and people that were very close to me that I would have done anything for. But they were dead nonetheless. He said curtain number two is you go crazy from not drinking and you either end up committing a crime or end up in paper slippers in some mental facility. That's number two. That sounds equally kind of skeptical, right? And he says, Number three, you're going to actually have a significant experience of the spiritual kind. And he said, There ain't no curtain four. There ain'T no curtain for it. Now, I think it's wonderful. AA is a great place to come and hang out and be safe and be in your meetings long enough to hit a real bottom so we can find a real God. But that is the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not an agnostic organization, as far as I know. And if that bothers you, they always told me that fine, the other thing will drive you right back in the door. We're eventually going to look for something. Frankly, if they told me shaking dead cat on the roof at midnight would do for me what this does, I would be a disciple of dead cat shaking. so get over it I want the goods I was stuck on the west coast of Spain one time we were on a hiatus and we got stuck in this little town no fresh water oh it was terrible and the worst thing was we were stuck at this camping spot we'd been on one of these little things where we met a couple of cuties and we were going to set the world on fire and we got to this little Mexican resort and the only thing they had was this stuff called Anisette. I don't know if you know what that is, but it is the most god-awful thing I've ever seen. It's sweet as hell. It tastes like pure licorice. The only redeeming factor in it is that it's got alcohol in it. And I'm here to tell you that as ugly as it is, if you hold your nose long enough and pour it down your throat, eventually you can't snow it anymore. And what I'm getting at is I didn't care what it tasted like I didn' t care that it was sweet if I could get enough of it in me it got me to where I needed to be and that's essentially what we're doing here I didn''t start off the first day I drank as a raging alcoholic I remember I tied one on I went out with some friends and we went out with his sisters they were older and the parents were gone and we tied one on big time I was about 12 and oh my god I remember I woke up the next morning I just thought I'd been hit by a truck and I swore off for a whole week I did not drink for a week it took me a day to tie my shoes and what I'm saying is I drank the next week and then I didn't drink every day after that little by little over the years I got to the point where I could drink every couple of days and then a little bit longer I could think every day and then i got to a point where I wanted to walk around with an IV card on rollers with it plugged into me that was my goal at the end If I had kept working, you'd be seeing me up here with an IV cart right now. So what I'm getting at is essentially the 12 steps are a set of principles, spiritual in their nature, which if basically practiced as a way of life. Now that's a funny word at first. That means that I don't sit in a discussion group and talk about them. It means I've got to take the things that they're taught. Bob used to say this. My sponsor's sponsor would always say, the book says two things. It says, do this, don't do that. Do this, Don't do That. I'd say, where does it say that, Bob? And he'd say look here, and he'd show me. And he said, this is the way it was for me. He said, did it ever happen to you? And I remember one guy, I remember a guy who had a terrible time with his, he probably could have had a labor relations suit. The boss of all bosses. This guy was mean as a tell-all of the hunt. And he's telling me about all this stuff. He's got him dead to rights with the labor unions on the whole thing. And I said, I want you to water his plant when he's out of the office. He said, You want me to what? I said I want to water is plant and do other things that he won't be aware of but start to do something for that man that you hate so much. And he said, Why would I want him to do that? I said because you might get sober another day if you do that. And little by little, we still laugh about it today. That guy's a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He's got a little other trouble going on in his life right now. But we still laughed about that. That guy is still a prick. He's one of the worst bosses. I would never suggest you to work for him. But the guy that worked for him is great. He's fine today. He watered his plant and he got to the point where he was willing to be kind to this man and he broke his own fever, you see? People don't make me what I am. What happens is I think you doing what you do gives me the right to treat you the way I want to and that's what takes me out every time. I would have sworn when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous was the reason I was hurting was for what you did to me. I know maybe some of you are like that. I really thought that my real problem was that I wasn't as conniving as the rest of the people I was with and I was too kind. And when you're working with wolves and you're kind to them, they tend to snarl up and bite you and things like that and so I was sure that really what I was is I was selfless and that was my problem. And that if I learned to be a little bit more selfish with people and take care of my own rights and set my boundaries and all this stuff that doesn't, I can't find it in the book. You know? And what I found was my problems arise out of myself. I had to be shown by another man though. This man talked about living, I'll never forget, I go to pick up my sponsor's house. I was going to go, he's not here tonight so I won't catch hell from him. But I go the sponsor's home to his house to do a fist step let's say. And I drive up to the house. The reason I trusted him because he was a drunk just like me. I drove up to his house, and mind you, I'd get to the house and I'd see the front door open and he'd come running out towards the car and I said, what's going on? He says, get out of here. We're getting out of hier tonight. He says I can't go back in. We're having little sparks with the wife tonight. And he was having trouble himself. You see? And he began to talk to me about how he treated his home life and what was going on. And because he wasn't a drunk and because he knew he was doing better than me and I saw he was even more corrupt than me, I knew there had to be a God. I began to watch what he was doing. This guy is still not right. We sit down at meetings and he looks over at me and he goes, man, you're sure effed up. And I said, I know, so are you. And we laugh and we got in it great. This does not require me to be anything other than what I am. I'm perfectly good being just as messed up as I was the day I got here because of the solution you gave me. As far as I know God doesn't have to work steps. He's already got them down. If I turn my will and my life over to him, he intuitively knows perfectly what to do. My problem is I keep trying to think on his behalf. You ever do that? Good luck. I can't emphasize that enough. I think what's important about this is I have a living problem, I've got to have a living solution. What good is a life or a God that can't be in this room with us right now? If you're looking around in this room, and if there's somebody sitting within two chairs of you right now you don't know, and you would take the time tonight to say hello to them, and find out something that's outside of your own comfort zone. Something that's new that you don' t know. And step towards it and say hello to somebody or something like that. That has more to do with this process than anything else on the face of the moon. The problem with alcoholism is that it's a disease in the mind and the mind's trying to protect me. And so it's created a barrier around me and around you. Just like Herbert Spencer says, it's the perfect bar against any solution because it's contempt beyond investigation. I already know I can't talk to you because you're not right. I never met you, but I already knew that. And I've never been right yet. Have you? I'm probably going to be wrong tomorrow. And it's the greatest thing in the world. I've not been right about anything yet. And that's the beautiful part of this. I think it's God's job to be right and it's my job to being wrong. And it is perfect that way. When I was a little kid, we went down to Southern California one time. And the trouble that spiritual growth makes it so rough is, is in the human form, I think if you are 10 years old and you are living at home, nobody says anything. But if you're 40 and you're living with your mother, everybody starts to talk. And they start saying there's something wrong with your son. What I'm getting at is everything in the human form is about over a period of time you get more capable of self-governing and self-reliance and taking care of yourself. The reason this is so difficult for me to grasp is it's just the opposite in the spiritual realm. The longer I've been here, the truth is the less I can do you see and the more God becomes participating in my life this is a job if there is progress versus perfection it's that I'm less involved in my wife today than I was the day I got here and I trust enough to allow God to provide a life to me that I could never provide for myself and my big fat ego gets out of the way long enough to let somebody else take the credit all along you know I've got to get over this notion that there's going to be brag value in this you see i know just enough to take everything out right now i love praise you i think you do and i we were talking about with katie there tonight and it was like i used to love to stand in front of a group of people and get a round of applause but you know when you're dying drunk that round of pause won't do much for you you really won't you know i know that for a fact maybe some of you that haven't had applause for a long time think if you get that back it'll treat you i can tell you i can short that cut a little bit on you and tell you that it doesn't do it you know um you know what i'm getting at is it's about letting something else begin to do for me first with booze because i accept the fact from another alcoholic that i've lost the power of choice but then eventually in the sixth step we began to see with all other things all other things you know we take it piecemeal at first maybe but what we begin to find out is there's somebody that has a bad... I'll give you the best example I can think of. I don't want to talk all night, but I used to... You ever have domestic problems? This is a guy who's... I've had a few. And what I'm saying is I had a hell of a time... I'll pick on my first wife. We would just go around and around and around. That gal was hell-bent on getting me sober until about two months after I got sober and then she lost her shadow and she wasn't too happy with that. She had to look at her own drinking. But what I am getting at is we would go round and round and around all the time. And it wasn't until years later, being an Alcoholics Anonymous, that I started to get the idea of spiritual development. What I'm here to tell you is we fought like cats and dogs except for one exception. She had a dad that I idolized. He was a drunk like me. And I just thought I'd died and gone to heaven getting into this family. My father-in-law was my hero. I mean, we would fall asleep in the mashed potatoes together at Christmas time. It was like I had company. And when this guy came, I looked forward to his visits. And what I realized was, God was showing me this one time. He would come to the house, we'd pick him up at the airport, and we'd drive him in, and for that whole week my wife couldn't do anything wrong. She couldn't doing anything wrong because her dad was in the room. And we'd go through this week, and I'd talk about how good the cooking was and everything like that. At the end of the week he'd go back to Texas, and we drive him out to the airport and we say goodbye and hug and all that. and we didn't even get back in the car. We were on the way back to the house. I told her everything she did wrong for the last week, you know? Now it got to be a clue about that. I realized that I would treat people one way when their father was in the room and another way when they were alone. I don't know if you're hearing what I'm saying. But I think I can treat you any way I want except for one thing. When I know that the thing that created you is in the womb with us all of a sudden you look different to me. You see? and I began to realize a little bit about spiritual development and what it is you see it's about not making decisions alone and basically not making the decision at all looking to her father per se when her daughter is upset with me and crying and maybe going to him who knows her a little longer than I do and ask him what the hell to do with this you see and I begin to get clues about life about people that I knew not enough to help them but I'd go to him and I'd say you know him you've been with him ever since I got here help me with this and I'd start to get answers to things I could never have ever tapped into in my life and I still get them on a regular basis we're going to close up in a minute I'm going to tell you that Alcoholics Anonymous works if you're here and you want to give it a try I've got a lot of people in here that want to help but it works consistently when we work it I'm sober by the grace of some of the work we did today you know I never got to a bar on a Tuesday night and told not to pour me anything because I drank so much on Monday. Did you do that? So there's no such thing as completing steps. In other words, it's a work in process. I'm trying to do the things tonight to stay under the influence of alcoholics and non-alcoholics tonight. I like the way it makes me feel. I like what it feels like to be under the influx of what you people gave me. I encourage you as we're getting out of the meeting maybe to meet somebody new. Don't do the unthinkable for God's sake. Don't tell anybody that you don't have all the angles on all your problems solved because you're liable to get help, you know. But what I'm getting at is this is a place where if we reach out and admit to each other that we don't Have All the Answers, something can begin to happen, you Know. And that's really what it's at. That's where God appears. That's what we get real fortunate. Thank you so much for the privilege of being here tonight and thank God we got the temperature back down.