The Spiritual Disease: The Centimeter Side of the Ruler – Keith L.

Tanya Cushman Reviewer. Peter van de Ven Thank you very much. My name is Keith Lewis, I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Keith! Hi, it's so nice to be here. I haven't... So your tradition is to give your sobriety date. Well, I don't have one. Just kidding, just kidding. By the grace of God and the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and a string of very cruel sponsors, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink since May 13, 1973. And for that, I am grateful. It's really nice to be here. I was in Omaha in 1987 for the mini-conference and had a wonderful time. As a matter of fact, Mary Ann and Dick C. hosted me then, too. And Mary Ann was kind enough to pick Julia and I up at the airport. And Dick was playing golf. But I'm not hurt. I mean, I don't care. make any difference to me if he'd rather be playing golf than pick me up at the airport. It's okay with me. I hope he putted well. It's good to be here and I want to thank you and the committee for having us. And I'd like to thank you for having my wife come along too. It's really nice when that happens. We get away and get to spend some time together and And it's always a privilege to come, to be asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. But to speak at a conference like this is really a privilege. But there are a lot of weekends we don't get to spend together and so it's always nice and I want to thank you very much. I'm just sort of overwhelmed with the thought of being here. I've heard about this conference for so very long and had looked forward to coming to coming here and have a lot of friends here. A lot of people that I've met over the years and some people that you've driven out of here who now live in North Carolina. Jimmy is with us and Steve M and a number of other people. They tell me that they're your rejects and if that's true, boy, you got something going here because they're all fine members of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was telling Julia when we were talking about coming out here that this is really one of the areas that's strongest in service and just strongest in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it really shows, and it's in the enthusiasm and the number of people and the numbers of people and the amount of meetings and everything. It's really a pleasure to come and be with you. I was born in 1943. This Sunday I'll be 50 years old, and nobody gave me a chance to have that happen. But I wasborn in a small town in Ohio down on the river just south of Pittsburgh, a place called Martin's Ferry, Ohio. If you've never been there, I wouldn't bother. It's largely canceled at this point, but it was a great place to grow up. I'm the eldest son, the second child in a family of ten children. I'm Irish. I won't tell you what church I went to. I'm going to make you guess. I'll give you a hint. It has something to do with bingo, but I'm not going to say any more. And I was blind from a very early age. I could see what was going on, but I never understood what was going on. And so I was what we refer to as spiritually blind. I didn't recognize the fact that the place and the people with whom I grew up was very, very special indeed. And if you had found me a little over 20 years ago and I was sitting in a bar someplace in Washington, D.C., and asked me what had happened to me, I would have been able to whine and complain about the fact that I grew up in poverty. You see, we were very, very poor. And then I would've told you that I had all these brothers and sisters and that there was never enough to go around and all that stuff. And what I'd like to tell you tonight is that all that was wrong. We didn't have a lot of money But we had everything that was important I had a mother who every day hugged us and kissed us And told us that she loved us I had father who worked hard his whole life And did without everything for his children He literally lived for his family He didn't own an automobile or a television set Or anything as long as the child needed anything And it wasn't until we all grew up and ran away that he was able to finally buy an automobile after he retired. I had this disease, this spiritual illness, this thing that preceded my first drink, which allowed me only to see the worst things in life. And I don't know why that was. And it was amazing to me, as I've gone back and talked to my various brothers and sisters, that I saw things very, very differently than they did. And I just did that my whole life. I don't know why that was. I don'T know whether Mother had a square nipple or they put me on a potty chair backwards or what. I have not the foggiest notion of what caused this. But I just saw things differently, even in the people who grew up in the same house I was with. For example, I was the only one who thought there was something under his bed. And people always said to me, well, you're a night person. Well, of course I'm a nightperson. There's something under my bed waiting to get me. What, you want me to drift off to sleep? And I knew it was there. and if I pressed my little ear against the bed, I could hear it moving around down there. And I not only knew it was there, I knew why it was here. It was waiting for me to dangle my little legs over the side of the bed and that's history. I mean, I knew that and so while everybody else in my family was sleeping, I was laying there thinking about that thing under the bed and wondering when it was going to happen. It was goingto happen, it had to happen, but just when. And I knew if it ever got me, I'd never come back. And the reason I knew that was I'd never met anybody who came back. No. And that's all the evidence I needed. And I always figured these things out for myself. And I had this way of looking at life that was just incredible to me. People have said to me over the years, do you really think you need Alcoholics Anonymous to stop drinking? Well, the answer to that is yes. But that's not the important thing of AlcoholicsAnonymous. the important aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous is I needed something to teach me to think differently I just thought in a way that was no fun I mean it was just no fun when I went to do my ninth step with my brother Denny I'll tell you about Denny in a minute but when I wanted to do my ninth steps with my dumb brother Dennie he missed most of what happened when we were kids it's just amazing to me I began to say well what about those nuns And he said, oh yeah, weren't they something? I said, they sure were. He said, you know, they gave up their whole lives just to teach little kids like us. I said well that's one way to look at it. And what I remember was the fact that they used to beat my knuckles with a ruler and they used to use the centimeter side of the ruler on me. That's what I remember, it's just amazing to me how distorted my view of things were. And that was long before I ever took a drink. I used to sit around and worry about things. I'd worry about what I was going to do with my life. And I was only six or seven years old. And I had the foggiest notion of what I wanted to do when I grew up, if I grew up. I mean, I wasn't even sure. And, um, and I knew whatever it was, I'd fail. I just knew that nobody told me I just knew that you know when I before I got sober my now ex-wife and I went to a psychologist well she went to the psychologist and then he asked me to come in he wanted to know who could live with this woman and so so he brought me in and and and he said to me he said I understand that uh he said that you uh that you drink quite a bit and i said yes i do i said i drink a lot and um i said if you're married to her you drink a Lot too and it turned out that he wasn't married to Her but he did drink A Lot and uh but uh but he had a long talk with me and he arrived at what the problem was I I said to him I had my heart in my mouth and I said don't me doctor do you think I might be a alcoholic he said of course not you're too young and he said you have to go to job he said but if you keep drinking as much as you're drinking you will be an alcoholic and I saw when I thought it was important and he was a little irritated at the question but he said a couple years immediately I knew that I quit in a year and a half and and but But he told me, he diagnosed what my problem was. He said, your problem is you have a poor self-image. And I thought, you know, at least somebody who understands. And so he fixed me up with something called affirmations. I don't know if you know about affirmations, but back in the 60s, affirmations were real big. This guy got his Ph.D. in affirmations and so what he did, he took my own personal history and he typed out all these affirmations from my own history. They were Keith's affirmations. And so the idea was every morning I was to get up and I was just standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom and I would still affirm myself because I had never been properly affirmed. And I think it was the nuns, I'm not sure, but I think it was. Nuns have been blamed for more stuff than the Nazis. If that's only right, they've done more stuff than the Nazis. So I stood in front of the mirror. You know, I was so excited to discover I wasn't an alcoholic, I got very drunk that night and called my wife names, which were probably true. I don't remember what I called her because I was in a blackout. But just the thing was that the next morning, she was supposed to stand beside me when I affirmed myself, which would further affirm me, and she chose not to do that. But being undaunted, I went and stood in front of the mirror to affirm myself this first morning of a new life. And I looked in that mirror at those yellow bloodshot eyes and I got out my own personal affirmations. And it said, Keith, today you're a winner. Today you're wonderful husband. Today you are good and caring father. Today you're going to go to the university and be the best researcher there. And there were two pages of these things, and I got about halfway through the first page, and I said, today you're full of crap, that's what you are. I may have been a liar and an alcoholic, but I wasn't completely deluded. But I had a poor self-image. Of course I had poor self image. If you did the stuff I did, you'd have a poor soft image too, or you'd be a sociopath, and those aren't good choices. But I grew up with this strange way of thinking. And I was convinced I was right. Now, I never ask anybody, but I was convinced I Was Right. And I had all these old ideas. It was amazing. I was brand new in life with old ideas, it's just amazing. I don't know how I did it. But I brought old ideas with me into the world. And I always had this view of things that just didn't seem to match up with everybody else's. And so I was constantly in conflict with everything. I went to a Catholic grade school and a high school, and when I was in the high school I began to, well, if we'd had any money I would have been called an acting out adolescent. But we were poor and didn't have good insurance, so I Was just a punk. And I was always in trouble. I was always getting suspended and sent home. Mainly pranks, you know, things that I thought were clever, other people didn't. I'll give you an example. Sister Regina was our biology teacher and she would have me I used to do detention, they'd have you do things. It's forced child labor in Catholic schools. And if I got into trouble, she'd make me do things. And one of the things I had to do was I had to clean Adam. And I don't know if you remember, but Adam was the rubber man, remember? Remember Adam? You know, and you'd take all his parts out. And before every class, she'd dismantle this poor rubber man and we'd name all the parts because that's important to know in case you ever see anybody dismantled. You can... I never figured these things out. But, you know, you just might go to a grocery store someday and somebody just got hit by a shopping cart And you could say, my, there's his liver. You know, it's important stuff. But at any rate, I had to wash Adam. And so I took Adam's bladder down to Home Ec. And I got some yellow food dye and mixed up a yellow solution and squeezed his bladder. And it filled with a lot of this yellow stuff. and I put it where it belonged in Adam and if I ever need to I can put all the things in the right places because I cleaned Adam a lot but that day as we were running through the organs everything went well until we got to the bladder and she pulled it out and all that yellow stuff ran down her arm into her habit they wore those back then And so I got another six weeks. I guess my favorite person was Sister Victoria. Sister Victoria was a librarian, and she was an extraordinary person. She was strange. I mean, she had a view of life that was very, very different than mine. And she was, like, always happy. And no, she wasn't happy. She was what I found in Alcoholics Anonymous. I used to find a lot of people in bars that were happy, but she was joyful. She was filled with joy and she would just run around just filled with joy and it would be brimming over and she had these views of life like weird stuff. Like she'd say, you know, every boy is a prince and every girl is a princess because we have a father who's a king. And I thought, isn't that nice? And so we'd run around calling each other Prince Keith and Princess Mary and things like that and ridicule her and laugh at her and used to do a lot of detention in the library and she loved me very much she'd say Prince Keith it's nice to have you with us again today and she used to put me over behind a magazine rack where I wouldn't be contagious she said I was a prince but I spread and so she'd put me behind a magazine track and I used to watch her and watch the rest of life from the magazine rack. And she would strut around this little library. It's a tiny little library with a bunch of old books, you know. But she acted like she was doing what God wanted her to do. It's the strangest thing. You would have thought she was in a Library of Congress because this woman was in the midst of God's will for her. But we used to make rosary beads when you did detention. And for you heretics, rosary beads are things that Catholics pray on. And there are ten beads in each decade and there are five decades. And we'd make these things with pliers and beads and things and then they'd send them to the missions all over the world. And of course I made them with 11 beads in all the decades. And over my tenure at St. John's Central High School I made literally hundreds of mutant rosary beads. And they were all over the world. And this nun never caught on. And, you know, you can't let stuff like that go. So just before I graduated from high school, I had a talk with Sister Victoria. And I said to her, I said, Sister, you Know what I've been doing the last few years? And she said, Yes, you sly little prince. She said, I know what you've been done. She said, you've been making rosary beads with 11 beads on each decan. And she said, I also know why you've been doing it. And I remember thinking, I hope she tells me because I have the foggiest idea why I do these things. And she said, you've been doing it so people all over the world will pray extra prayers and you're going to get all the credit. Don't you just hate people like that? you know well and she said something very strange to me she said now you know one of the things that happened when i was a child was i had a horrible speech impediment and i i couldn't talk and people couldn't understand me when i did talk and uh and i was literally it was miraculously cured it really was. It's an interesting story, but so I really did see myself differently, and after she told me why I was putting all those beads on her rosaries, she asked me to sit down, and she took both of my hands in her hands, and he had a kind face. I have an old high school yearbook. I mean, believe me it's old and um and there's a picture of and i got it out we've been packing we're moving and i get it out and looked at it and gee what a kind saintly face she had and she looked me in the eye and she said you know keith she said when i first met you uh she said uh i always i knew you were special and she says i know that god has something in store for you she said one day you'll go all over the world telling people how much god loves them and i remember how it terrified me, because she had to have the wrong guy, and I couldn't talk, and all these things. And she showed me on her beads. They used to wear these long beads, remember? So they bang them against the desk when you're taking tests. And she told me that she put a special medal on her beads, and every time she got to them, she prayed for me. And She said, I'll always do that. And I have a feeling she did. But, you know, I mean, I was surrounded by all this wealth, and I couldn't see it. Because you see, even before I drank, I had the spiritual disease of alcoholism. I couldnít recognize the incredible love and beauty that surrounded me. And it wasnít them, it was me. And I wasnít bad or warped. I donít know why it was. The receiver was broken, thatís all I know. I had brothers and sisters who saw these things and heard these things and reveled in these things. But I didnít hear them or see them. And I saw life very, very differently. I saw it as something that had to be endured and it was dog-eat-dog and you've got to get yours before somebody else does and all those things which I know now just plain aren't true. So I had this very distorted view of life. But most of all, I was afraid. I had things under the bed. I had failure already posted in my future. I had all these things that no one told me. I just assumed were true. um you know i was doing a i uh some years back i i had a man on my eighth step list his name was richard and i hadn't seen richard in years i mean he was on my list and uh and julia and i went up for my 25th high school reunion and i finally found richardand i said oh come here i got to talk to you i said so i took him aside and i i i'm going to make amends to him let me tell you what I did. This characterized me. I think my character defects don't have to do with one person. They have to deal with the way I live my life. They, they have to deal with a way I view life and things. But, but Richard was a guy I admired very much. He, he was a great athlete. He was a year older than I was and so he's a big guy. So big guys are important when you're a little boy. And in every day we we'd choose up baseball or football teams. So every day, we had the same teams because everybody always picked the same thing, but you had to pick them. I mean, that's part of the deal. And so every day he'd pick, and first he'd picked Tommy, and then the other guy'd pick somebody, then he'd Pick Me, and so I was always on his team. Well, one day, a new guy came to this school, and Richard wanted to make him feel welcome. So he picked him first, which messed up the order, which meant I ended up on the other team. Well, I was crushed. I was absolutely crushed. I'd never been so rejected in my life. So I did two things, and it's what I did the rest of my life until I came to you. I punished the guy who picked me by dropping two touchdown passes. I didn't drop them. I didn'T even try to catch them. Then I looked at him. But most importantly, I punished Dick or Richard for doing what he did. And the way I did that was I wouldn't talk to him. I just cut him off. I just had nothing to say. And he felt terrible. So finally, after a couple days, he came to me and he said, you know what I've got? And I said, I don't care what you've got. He said, well, I have an extra Twinkie. And I never met a kid who had an extra Swankie. But he said I've gotten an extra twinkie, and he says, would you like to have it? And I say, you don't want it? And he said no, no, I'd like you to have it. I said are you sure you don' t want it. And he says yeah, I do not want it, so I threw it on the ground and stepped on it and walked away. so and i and when i was doing my my uh eighth step or fourth and fifth step i realized that this was a pattern of mine i'd give you a chance one chance if you blew it i'd punish you as long as you'd stay around but and so i knew that i wanted to make amends to richard for all those people i had done that too so i finally found him and so we went over the side i said richard i said i really want to make a men's do he said what on earth for we haven't seen each other in 30 years or 25 years and uh i said to him i said well i said remember when we were in the third grade and and bobby harrington moved to town and we were picking up football teams and you pick bobby first and then you pick tommy you know and then i ended up on the other team he said yeah and You took my Twinkie, and you threw it on the ground, and you stepped on it. Yeah. Now, that's a distorted way to deal with life. And the point I'm trying to make is that I had this going before I ever took a drink. And, you know, I didn't know what I was supposed to be when I grew up. I thought everybody did. You all acted like you knew. So what are you going to do when you leave? Well, I'm going to go to jail. I'm not going to try to do this. And you all act like you've known it for years. You know, you're only 17 years old. But you at least spent the last 15 years knowing what you're going to do with your life. And I thought I was the only person who didn't know. And I knew somebody was going to ask me. And I had to come up with something fast. So I said, well, I'll join the service. Back then it wasn't a matter of if, it was where and when. It wasn't if. And so I joined the service, and I did an inventory before I left. I stood in front of the mirror, I took my shirt off, andI flexed my muscles. and I was about 5 feet 1 inches tall, I weighed 113 pounds and whatever else I was, I was a boring killer so I joined the Marine Corps it made perfect sense to me and the next day I went off to Pittsburgh and I had my physical and I swore in and that night for the very first time I drank I'd had a drink or two during my lifetime at home but drinking wasn't part of anything we ever did He didn't have any money and that sort of thing. And it was rarely alcohol around the house. But I drank. And what happened to me, you know, my life changed. It changed dramatically. I was this frightened 17-year-old kid who had never been more than 100 miles from his home. I was in Pittsburgh, and the bar was filled with real men, you-know-the-kind. They had tattoos. They knew words, stuff I couldn't even imagine doing. And they all had women with them or real women. You know, they're the kind who hang around with real men. And they all knew the big picture and they knew what was going on. They knew all about life and they knew about women and they new about politics and they know about God. And I was the only one in the whole place who didn't know. And the bartender came over. He was a real man. He said, what do you want? And I thought, oh no, a quiz. You know. I'm not even gone a day and they're already giving quizzes. I always had that feeling that When you least expected it, they were going to say, take out a blank sheet of paper and put your name in the left-hand corner. They were goingto give you a quiz, and I hadn't studied any of the right stuff that lifetime. So I didn't know what to say. So I watched the other guys, and they ordered a beer, so I did too. Then he came back again and asked the same question. He gave the same answer, and he came by the third time. By this time, I'd caught on, soI answered first. and that's when it happened for me that miracle that only happens for alcoholics it was somewhere between the second and third drink in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1961 my life changed in such a way that was to alter the course of my existence because at that very moment for the first time in my life I belonged for the 1st time in life it all made sense to me I remember I stood up I didn't mean to stand up I probably couldn't have kept from standing up I just sprung to my feet, you know. And I said, of course, it's so simple. Why didn't I see it before? And it just made perfect sense to me. I understood that fear was gone and I understood about everything. And I looked around that room and my heart broke because that bar was filled with a bunch of pathetic, snibbling little men and all of them had women with them who were looking at me with those hungry eyes. You know how they do it? They were saying things like, I'd give anything if I could have a man like that. And everybody was so confused, and I just went from table to table just filling people in on things. And they had a million questions, and I had answers I didn't even know I had. They just rolled out. And before the evening was over, I was answering questions they weren't asking. I mean, I just got so far ahead of myself, and it was absolutely magnificent. Up until that moment, it was the single most significant moment of my life. It was an evening that I knew I would never forget. And I haven't. But I also knew that I would spend the rest of my life in Pittsburgh. Whatever the name of the town was, to me it would be Pittsburgh because that's where I found the big picture for the very first time. And, you know, my sponsor, I have the greatest sponsor in the world, a guy named Tom I. And Tom and I used to have this ongoing discussion about whether or not I could have stopped drinking then. He said, well, that's before you crossed the invisible line. You could have stop drinking. I said, who in the hell would have wanted to? It wasn't crazy. That's the best it ever was for me. And I spent the next 12 years trying to get back to Pittsburgh, and I never quite made it. I mean, I had great times, but it was never quite like that. And the longer I drank, the greater price I paid to try to get Back to Pittsburgh. And then eventually, the way it worked was that I was willing to put up with horrendous things in my life with just a chance that I might have a moment or two in Pittsburgh. And that's what alcoholism is, I think. I think alcoholism is that you risk absolutely everything for that moment of clarity that may or may not come. And I ended up mortgaging my whole life. My drinking isn't all that dramatic. I drank in this country and I drank in other countries. I didn't do it because I wanted to, I did it because I had to Very early on the decision to drink was taken away from me In order to not drink, early on I had put myself in places where I couldn't drink Very early I ended up volunteering to go on cruises, the Mediterranean cruises or Caribbean cruises or something like that. Not because I wanted to see the places, though I did. But the real reason was I had begun to recognize the fact that I'd gotten into a daily pattern of going to the NCO club. And every morning I'd say, you know, tonight I'm not going to go. Tonight I'm going to stay and square away my gear and I'm gonna go to the library or go to a movie or do this or do that. But I wouldn't do that at four o'clock when they had utility hour. I wouldn't make that walk to the club and I'd say well I'm just going to have a beer or two and a sandwich and I'm going to go home and I'll change in civilian clothes and I want to go do whatever and you know what happened I'd go back and change in civilian clothes and I go back up to the pub and I closed the pub and I was powerless to say no to taking a drink that day and once I took the drink I was powerless to say no to drinking until the club closed And I was young and strong and in good condition, and I'd get up every morning and I would run. And that's how I told myself that drinking until 1 o'clock every morning and sleeping for three hours wasn't bothering me. And so the way I stopped drinking is I'd volunteer to go on one of these cruises and Iíd be out to sea for a little while and there was no booze there. I know now that in a matter of a few years I would have been taking booze there. I ended up doing all the things that I swore Iíd never do. People ask me why do alcoholics commit suicide. The amazing thing to me isn't that we commit suicide, the amazing thing is that more of us don't do it. You figure, I think that I have a disease that guarantees that I'll violate whatever principles I have in my life. And that was the story of my alcoholism. I loved the Marine Corps. I went in and I'll tell you, I just loved it. To begin with, with a barracks full of men, it wasn't as crowded as my house was when I grew up. And the drill instructors were tough, but they were sort of soft compared to the nuns. So, and I just loved it. I loved all the physical stuff. And I went to Parris Island and I got Dress Blues Award and Outstanding Man's Award on Parris Island. I gained 30 pounds and grew a few inches. And I just love everything about the Marine Corps. And I was going to stay for 100 years, and I worked hard to get a commission, and I was given an opportunity to go to Officer's Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. And I turned it down and got out. And people said to me, you know, you've worked so hard, why did you get out? And what I told them was, well, you knows, I came in when I was 17 years old, and I really don't know anything about the world, and I think I'd do myself an injustice if I didn't get out and look. The real reason was that in those last three months or four months waiting to go out to officer's candidate school, I drank on duty, which is a horrible violation of the principles and rules of the Marine Corps. I led a patrol in a combat zone in a blackout, which is downright insane. I had begun to do things. I had began to do thing which caused me to question my sanity. I had a rage about me that hadn't been there before. The rage had always been taken away when I drank, and now I drank and the rage was still there. And I began to fight, which wasn't something I had done a lot of. Again, in a combat zone, I had an automatic weapon and a colonel who had been aboard ship for a while and came in his nice starch utilities and everything, and he saw me and was walking up the beach with this weapon on my shoulder and he said to me, he said, Corporal, he says, I want some of those coconuts. He said, get some of those for me. And I shot the top of the tree off. And I said, you want anything else, Colonel? He said that's all, that's All. And then later I went back and I said you're out of your mind. I mean, you know, in a couple months you're supposed to go to Quantico and go to Officer's Candidate School. You know, they're going to call you an officer and a gentleman. You're crazy. You're out Of Your Mind. And I began to watch my behavior deteriorate in such a way that I did what I was to do with every endeavor. I blamed them for what was happening to me and I left And I think that more than anything else I think to me that what being powerless over alcohol means Is that I'm guaranteed to violate the principles Of whatever my station of life is Then I'll blame others for that And I'll go do something else So it isn't amazing to me That we commit suicide What's amazing is that more of us don't And that's what I did Before I found you I see now that I was doomed to repeat that behavior. I'd find something I liked, I'd throw myself into it, I'd give myself to it wholeheartedly, and then gradually I'd begin to cheat and lie and steal. And eventually I'd violate every value associated with that and then I'd blame that for it and I'd leave. And I did that with marriage and I didthat with a couple professions. And before I was 30 years old, I'd lost my wife and children and I was living in a basement of a dive in the Skid Row section of Washington, D.C., and I still had a job, but I wasn't showing up much, and I Was thousands of dollars in debt, and I began to do what I'd swore I'd never do, and that is I worked in research, and I couldn't make it into the hospital or to the university, so I began To fake data and to lie and to steal and cheat. Now, I'd sit home and drink and say, I really hate research. It's really a dumb way to spend your life. Nobody reads this crap. You know, it's a waste of time. And then one day I began to drink around the clock, which is something I'd never done. And then One Day, May the 13th, 1973, I woke up, and the only thing different about that day was I knew I couldn't live another day. That was all. It was just that simple, and it wasn't dramatic or anything. And I went into what passed as a bathroom and what passed als a place to live, and I had enough pills in there to kill me and three or four other people. And I either began to take them or I don't. I don' t remember to this day. What I do remember is that I made a simple statement. I said, You know, you're 29 years old and at least it will be over. And I heard a voice. It was very clear. And it was a woman's voice and it came from outside of me. And it said, When you're twenty-nine, it's not supposed to be over, it's supposed to start. And I was startled by it. And I immediately had a clear thought. And I'd been fogged up for so long that I didn't realize it. I wasn't thinking clearly, but I just thought it was crystal clear. And I remembered that my ex-wife had told me, had given me two phone numbers and told me that if I ever wanted help, maybe these people could help me. And I ran out to find those two phone members, and I found one. Later, I found that one phone number was to Alcoholics Anonymous and the other was to a little treatment center. And I couldn't find the one to Alcoholic Anonymous. I didn't know what they were, too. I just knew that they were phone numbers. So the one that I did find, I called, and it happened to be that little treatment center. I hear a lot of people say negative things about treatment centers from podiums like this, and it seems to get a lot mileage. But I must tell you, if that place was where I needed to be, and I think God knew precisely, precisely where I need it to be. I think only God knew how very, very sick I was. And I called that place, and this woman with a British accent answered the phone, and she talked to me in a very kind way. And I told her I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I had a feeling that if they didn't help me, I'd die because God had given me a special gift. And the gift was to recognize that if I took one more drink, I would die and knowing that would never keep me from taking it. And that's the key to me, to Alcoholics Anonymous, recognizing that I'll drink again and if I do, I'll die, but knowing that will never keep you from drinking. And when we talk about the steps tomorrow, I'll go into that more, but, you know, I knew that I was powerless over alcohol, and I didn't know that. I didn'T know I was an alcoholic. I didn' t think that's what was wrong with me. I thought I only drank because all these things were wrong with my marriage didn't work out, and I did' n get to stay in the Marine Corps, and it would have been a horrible mistake, and I was in a job I hated, and on and on. And I grew up in poverty, and Mother had a square nipple, and I'd been put on a potty chair backwards, and all those reasons that I was the way I was. And I'm glad Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't deal with any of that stuff. I'm Glad AlcoholicsAnonymous has a perfect plan of recovery that none of that matters. It just doesn't matter. I mean, it's insignificant. I mean the only thing it's good for is to give you something to talk about the first few years you're sober. You know, I mean aside from that it's not worth much, but you know, you can sit until 2 in the morning at the coffee shop and really dwell on these things. And if you do that and don't drink, you'll get sober. If you don't do that and don' t drink, you'll ge sober too. But I had to wait three days to get to this place and I didn' t know what I had so I didn't go to a hospital or anything and back then you couldn' t get into hospitals with what I h ad and so I did the things that a lot of us do. I convulsed and I got very, very sick and did a number of things And most of all, I remember hearing music for three days. I heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for three days. And it came from the strangest places. It came from out-at-light switches. It came form the radiator of my car. It just came from all kinds of places. And one day, I knew it was time to go. And I somehow got in a car. And I drove the 30 miles from Washington, DC to this little place, which was in a condemned hotel out on the Potomac River. and it took me five hours to get there because I had what we used to refer to as the horrors. The horrors were those things that I would be overwhelmed with fear. I think they're called panic attacks now or something but we called them the horrows and I couldn't drive. I could drive maybe a mile and I'd begin to shake and tremble and I pull off the side of the road and I get out and if you walk with the horros if you can make yourself walk sometimes they'll pass and I walk and I wet my pants And I was changing my pants on Route 29 outside of Washington, D.C., and my Phi Theta Kappa key fell out of my pocket. And I wondered what had gone wrong. And I went to that place. And, of course, what they did for me was they loved me. And the other thing they did, which was most significant, was that they put me on a bus that night and took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's when my life changed. And, you know, I was never to know where I was going to end up that night in Pittsburgh, nor was I ever to know where I would end up that night in suburban Maryland when I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. But it's been a love story and an adventure beyond anything that I ever could have imagined. I went through the door and they had something that you have here and I really appreciate. We have at my home group and those are called greeters. They had a man there who was a mutant. He had two heads, and the reason I know he had two heads was I never liked to look people in the eyes. I thought it was obnoxious. I was a shoe person. I looked at people's shoes, and this guy was an eye person, and wherever I turned my head, his face was there, and he's looking at me. So I figured, this guy's got two heads. And he shook my hand, and then he shook it very firmly, and they looked me in the eye, and He said, oh, you're new. I don't know how he picked that up, but he did. It must have been psychic, but he knew that and then he said to me a strange thing. He said you know son if you keep coming here you'll never have to drink again and I remember thinking that's not my problem but that couldn't happen and then He took me in and He introduced me to a woman who was about 10 days older than Dirk. She's the oldest human being I ever saw in my life. Of course back then everybody in AA was old. AA's gotten a lot prettier and younger than it used to be, but took me in and introduced me to this old lady who got me a half a cup of coffee, and I didn't know why. I thought you all were poor, and it wasn't until I got the coffee cup halfway to my mouth that I found out why I had a half-a-cup of coffee. I had what is euphemistically referred to as the flyaways. The flyaways, if you put your arm out here, you're okay, or if you do it like this, if you don't put it here, you're OK, but anywhere in between, anything can happen, And so I threw some coffee on a man behind me. But he seemed to take it well. He did move, but he took it well and they thought it was funny. I mean these strange people, they thought everything was funny I remember the third meeting I went to, a woman came in crying and she said, my husband's having an affair with another woman and I said, it's probably my wife. And they reacted just like you did. I mean, you were looking at two people whose lives had ended and you laughed. Everything was funny that you did, you know. I blame that on old-timers. If you're kind of new, let me warn you about old-Timers. There are a bunch of them around, particularly around here. I mean, Peggy and Dick and Brian, as you're going to hear later. I mean they're old-timers, and they're just not well people. They mean well, but I don't know what happens to them. I don' t know if it's all this smoke or coffee or what, but something happens that they're thinking, and then they lie. They say things like, you know, we come here because we need to. That's not true. They don't need to come here anymore. The only reason they come here is the only enjoyment they get out of life is watching people like you and me suffer. And when I came in, the place was lousy with old-timers. Dick and Peggy were there when I came in. And really, they enjoy your problems. I mean, they really do. It's like they don't have a life of their own anymore. And so they wait around to hear what's wrong with you. And then they laugh. You don't believe me? Go to Peggy right after the meeting and tell her a problem. And the first thing you'll do is laugh i can i can guarantee it i don't know what they do with their problems but they laugh at yours and the other thing about them is uh they love it if you don't have sex they're not having sex anymore and they don't think anybody else should either i came in i um i had a secret uh i had a sex secret uh not many of us have that but as as 29 years old i was impotent which will put a real crimp in your sex life and uh and i kept it a secret like all the other secrets like the thing under my bed and everything, but one day I found myself really worried and going half crazy. So I figured I'd seek out an old timer and I found one. Big mistake. And I was beating around the bush. Finally he said, what's the problem? And I said, I'm impotent. He burst into laughter. Wonderful. Don K. And he said a lot of us had that problem. He said it will go away. I said when? I thought it was important. He said, what, you got a full social calendar? Ah, you know. And I went to my sponsor, Dan, and I didn't want... I never told my sponsor any problems I had because I didn' t think he would want to sponsor somebody who had problems. I don' t know why. I figured that one out all by myself. So I tell other people about my problems and then I report to Dan about how well I was doing. But I went to Dan, and I finally told him. And I said, Dan, I'm impotent. And he said, oh, he just smiled. He hadn't been around long. And he says, you know, a lot of us have had to deal with that. I said well, when, Dan? And he say, well, there's more than one way to look at that. And I say, Dan that seems to be one of those either-or things to me. He said, no, no. He said there are a lot ways to look it this. He said for example, he said you have a lot problems don't you? And I said, yeah. He said, whenever anybody has a problem, you have it too. I said I've noticed that. And he said, you probably have hundreds of problems. I said probably thousands. He said yeah, we have probably thousands and he said can you think of one that's going to be more fun to work on? I thought, you know, I can't. So that's what sponsors do is they make you laugh at your misery and I remember Dan said to me he said oh, you got the old infinite problem, huh? He said a lot of us have had that You know, one morning I got up. And if you're kind of new and your brain doesn't work very well, I know how frightening that can be. I got off one day, and I'm still living in this dive. It took me two and a half years to get out of this basement of this house sober, but it finally did. But I got out one morning, andI got ready for work, and I got in the car. I was going to work, and a terrible thing happened. I couldn't remember where I worked. I just couldn't for the life of me. And I was terrified, you know. And I had a business card with a dime taped to it. It was my sponsor's business card. It had a dime tape to it, and I called him from a phone booth. And he'd just gotten to work, and he said, Hello. I said, Good morning, Dan. It's me, Keith. He said, Keith, how are you? I said I'm fine. Fine. I said that's fine. I was wondering how you were. He said well, I'm find. He said tell me what's the noise? I said well I'm calling you from a phone booth. And he said is your car all right? I said oh yeah, car's fine, Dan's fine I was just wondering how you were doing. Finally, he said, Keith, what's the problem? And I said, well, it's not much of a problem, Dan. I just can't seem to remember where I work. He said, oh, you got the old I-can't-remember-where-I-work problem. He said a lot of us have had that. I've been coming to these meetings for over 20 years. I've never met a person who forgot where they work. But, you know, he told me where I worked, and the minute he told me. I mean, I knew it all. I knew what I did and everything. It was just the first piece of information that was missing. Then he said to me, he said, things like this can be frightening, but it doesn't mean that you've lost your mind or anything. He said, you're going to be all right. He said really a lot of us have these little lapses. Then shortly after that, I had an opportunity. I was invited to go to France to study with a cytologist who was a great scientist. And I knew another idea I had about life and sobriety was that you couldn't do anything that you enjoyed. That's what I thought I heard people saying. Now, I watched people having a ball, but what I felt the message was was I couldn't do anything I enjoyed. And so I knew that if I asked Dan about going to France, he'd say no. So I was going to tell the professor in Paris that I couldn' t come. And I thought, well, I'll ask him. So we went out and I said to him, I said, boy, you know, I'm really doing well, aren't I? He said, yeah, you are. I said I'm already getting a handle on this. And he said, Yeah, yeah you really are. I said you know I may be six, eight years ahead of my time. He said well I wouldn't go that far. He said what's going on? I said well, I was asked to go to France to study. He said Well isn't that wonderful? I said You mean I can go? He said Of course you can go. He said, you have to go. I said, you can't say no to God and to Alcoholics Anonymous. He said God delivers these things to us and I said well it's going to be a few more months. He said yeah. He said I didn't think you'd let me go and he said I'm grateful that you're willing not to go but you have to go It's not that we can't do things it's that we have to learn how to prepare to do things and so we spent the next few months preparing to do things and so I went off to France And so New Year's Day in 1974, I'm walking the streets of Paris sober and literally in tears of gratitude that I was there and I was that free. And while I was There, my friend and sponsor Dan just happened to come through town. How those things work out, you know? And Dan came through town, and he and I spent some time together, and we took a train down to Sartre to see the beautiful cathedral. And, you know, one of my old ideas was that if I were ever afraid, I couldn't tell anybody because somehow I wasn't supposed to be afraid. I don't know where I understood that. You know, I have a horrible fear of heighth. And the old idea I had was that if you're afraid of heighthts, you have to face the fear. So I volunteered to go to jump school. And fortunately, I'd busted a kidney up a few months overcoming another fear, and so they wouldn't let me go to jump school. But what I did was I ended up going to mountain climbing school. So I climbed mountains with my eyes closed or drunk. And that's how I thought you dealt with fear. You know, I guess maybe 10 years ago or such, I moved to North Carolina. My ex-wife called me up, and we were talking about the children. And she said, I understand you bought a house at the beach. And I said, yes. And she says, I'm really surprised. And I say, why? She said, well, you hate the beach. And I thought about it, and I thought, well where did she get that? I don't hate the Beach. And then I realized what had happened. She loved the beach, but to go to the beach from Washington, D.C., you have to go across something called the Bay Bridge, which is 475 miles long and 500 miles high. And you always get stuck right in the middle of it. And rather than tell my wife I was afraid of heights, I convinced her I hated the ocean. So we'd go to the mountains. I didn't particularly care much about the mountains, but at least I didn'T have to go across the Bay Bridge to get there. And that's how complicated a life of an alcoholic can be. So we're going down on this train and Dan's all excited about showing me this beautiful cathedral built in the 12th century. He's going on and on. And he said, you know, and inside there's a catwalk that goes around the top. And he says, we can go on that catwalk and we can lean out over and we can look down into the cathedral and see it all. And I'm thinking if I lean out over that, I'll see it alright. It'll probably rush up to meet me at about a foot per second per second. But you know what I began to do is what I always did. I began to prepare myself to be brave. And we got off the train and we're walking across this lovely square in this little village and finally I stopped and I said, you know Dan? I said I can't go up there because I'm afraid of heights and he smiled and he said oh he said you got the old I'm Afraid of Heights problem he said a lot of us have had that and uh and then he gave me a different idea he said You know he said Keith you don't have to go up There he said that's a beautiful cathedral if you never go up He said or you could go part way and I thought there's a novel concept he said or you could go until you get afraid and then you can take my hand and that's the aa way and you know i did i went halfway up those steps and i said boy i'm really a little nervous and he said well take my hands and i took his hand and we walked up now i didn't dance i didn' t lean out and look but i went up there and i went up there because uh because i had a hold of somebody's hand who in just six months i had become convinced loved me and cared about me and that's the story of alcoholics anonymous i've gone to incredible heights not because of me but because of you anything i've ever faced because I could go as far as I can go and then when I become afraid or unsure or filled with doubt I just reach out my hand and the hand of AA has just always been there and then they say go a little further I was so pleased that so many of my friends can meet Julia because Julia was one of those things that I was very, very afraid of I knew all about Malaysian chimps I used to get in and out of relationships with a fair amount of regularity and they were always the same they were all the same we were always to use one another and to violate all those principles and to not be faithful and all the things that I always did and things like that and then I met Julia and I knew very early that I loved her and I didn't want to ruin it and I left to my own devices I would ruin it I would just automatically do the things that would ruin them So I went to my sponsor, Tom, and I told him that I met someone I really like and I would really like the relationship to work and would he help me do it. You see, I'd watched Tom, and Tom had been married to Fern for over 20 years. And I don't mean he was married. I mean, he was really married. He was married like many of you are, dedicated to one another and cherished one another. And I wanted to learn to cherish someone in my life, and I wantedto see someone inmy life as my partner and not as a threat or to take something away from me or whatever the crazy ideas were. And, you know, he walked me through it. He took my hand and, you know, I said to him, I say, well, we should have an exclusive relationship because of the way I feel. He said, no, no ,no, no. He said don't rush into this. He says I don't want you to rush into this.He said I want you get to know her better before you make it an exclusive relationship. And so that's what I did. And then one day I said I think I'm ready. He say I think you are too. So we became an exclusive relationship. I was over 40 years of age at this time and I didn't know how to do any of these things because I'd never asked and and so then we had an exclusive relationship and it felt pretty good and and it fell kind of nice and then I said to Tom I said I want to Julia to marry me and he said well that's nice but you have to become engaged and I said no no no I said that's an old concept he said well it got to be that way for a reason Keith he said he said engagement is a very important phase in growing together and I said well alright so I don't understand it but I'll do it and so one Christmas Eve I bought a ring and I had a fire in the fireplace we were going to go to midnight mass and you know all the stuff the tree was lit and everything and the fire was lit and I had this ring in my pocket and I was nervous as I could be and I didn't know whether I was supposed to get on a knee or not I had called her parents and asked their permission and they questioned her judgment but thought it was It was okay with them, and that's not fair they didn't. My parents said to me and her parents said to her the day we were married, my parents got me aside and said, you know, Keith, you've got the best of this deal. And her parents did the same thing to her. But I was going to ask her if she would be engaged because I didn't know how to say it and I couldn't get the words out. She got up to go to the powder room to fix her makeup before we went to church and I chased her in the bathroom and I pulled this ring out of my pocket and I put it on the wrong finger with the wrong hand and asked her if we could be engaged and she fell into my arms in tears and we went off to mass that night and every time we looked at one another we just started to cry and then we spent a year and a half engaged and then I knew why it's important to be engaged and then i came up with a brilliant idea before we were married that maybe we'll live together and tom says keith that's not your way he said you worked so hard at this he said don't do that wait and we did and and then we were husband and wife and then We lived we moved in to our house together And it's just been incredible And you know I never could have done that because I would have done it the old way And the old ways to do it the way I knew how to the only way I know how to do It which was wrong, and it had never worked before and it wouldn't work this time either But when I became uncertain and I just reached out my hand, and a hand of AA was there. And you walked me through it. And that's the way it's been with virtually everything. I always think of Peggy and Dick, and I apologize to them for talking so much about them, but they were very important in my early sobriety, as they are, I'm sure, with a lot of you. But they started a meeting called the Fox Hall Group, and it was on Fox Hall Road. And it was a good AA group, but my perception was that everybody who went to that meeting was rich. That was my perception because it was the wealthy part of town. And I worked at a university only two blocks from there, but I didn't belong there, you see. They had the wrong guy. And I was still this poor kid in the Ohio Valley. And my father worked for a man who owned a factory who loved my father. He loved my Father and he loved his family because my father's a good man and a hardworking man and a very lovable man. And every Christmas his boss would invite him to the house and before we went to the House, my father would give us this little talk. He'd say, now don't do anything in that house and don't touch anything. He said, there are lamps in that House that cost more than I make all year. And so we went out and we wouldn't even go to the bathroom in that Haus. And we'd sit there And I know that the man was trying to say, come on, let's play Marvels. And he'd draw a circle with a piece of chalk on his rug. And I'm thinking, that rug costs more money than my daddy makes in his whole life. And, you know, I couldn't shoot Marvels on that rug. And I had all these old ideas that I hauled in. And what it really is, it's poverty of the spirit is what it is. And at Fox Hall they had their own cups and things. And one of the reasons is because they washed the cups after it was over. And there were a lot of blue-haired old ladies in the neighborhood. And that was a big social event, and they used to make all these nice little finger sandwiches and stuffed mushroom caps and everything. I'd never been there, but I heard all about it. And I knew they were all snobs. Now, I'd Never met one of them, but i knew they we're all snobes. So my sponsor, Dan, said, I want you to go meet me at the foxhole group tonight. There's a wonderful speaker. I said, Well, I don't go to that group. And he said, Why? I said Well, i don't like those kind of people. He said, You mean all those alcoholics? and he said I want you to be there and he rarely ever said things like that but I said okay so I found the raddiest clothes I could find and I took my own styrofoam cup and I was going through the line and Dan was behind me and it was an AA styro Foam Cup not a cup and saucer and I'm going through The Line and there was a man named Roland who was a professor at Georgetown University Romantic poetry So I got sober and I was granted a scholarship I took a course from Roland But Roland was a strange looking guy He had a handlebar mustache and curly eyebrows And looked like a professor of romantic poetry So he said to me How do you like our meeting? And I said, well the Swedish meatballs suck And my sponsor smacked me in the back of the head and told me to get through the line. So I sat there and tried not to listen to whoever spoke. And when the meeting was over, Dan took me outside. He said, we have to talk. And I said, what about? And he said, about your attitude. He said why do you have such poverty of the spirit? And I asked him, what are you talking about? And he says, why do want to doom yourself to poverty? And he say, that's exactly what you're doing. He said you've judged these people as bad because you think they have something. he said to begin with many of them don't but more importantly it's what it's doing to yourself he said you've got an attitude that'll doom you to never succeed he said because whenever you begin to succeed you'll think you're like one of them and you'll make yourself fail you'll sabotage yourself he said You'll put yourself in debt or you you'll walk away from a job just before you become successful. And he said, You better change the way you think. And you need these people to do that. So my job was to show up every Monday night at that meeting until I learned that I was like them and they were like me, and we were all the same. But the old idea would have damned me to failure because that's what I learned to do. And so the point of all of this is that left to my own devices, even if I could have stopped drinking, which I couldn't have, I wouldn't have wanted to live the life that I would have been forced to live. Alcoholics Anonymous changes us, and it changes us in very, very dramatic ways. And it's frightening to look at some of those changes. I mean, I'm a religious person, and boy, just the thought of that terrified me. Now, I don't think you have to be a religiousperson, but if you want to be, you can be. And I'm one of those people. I was so afraid of that, I used to run around and say, well, I Don't Like Organized Religion. The truth was I wasn't a pope. If I'd have been a pope, I would have loved organized religion. But what I was was afraid of trying to live my life in a way that I knew I couldn't live. I was afraid of the failure. So it was a lot easier not to even try. And I have become. I've gone back to the church of my childhood and I love it very much and I feel very safe and secure there and I try to go to mass as often as I can and all the things that Catholics do. I do, I love that and I've come back to that and in no way is it necessary for other people but it was necessary for me and what Alcoholics Anonymous did was it freed me up to find out that I didn't have to do it perfectly that people in that church and other churches are just like people in AlcoholicsAnonymous and that is that they're doing the best they can with what they got and they're not asking or acting like they're more than they are I just perceived them that way. So the key to this thing for me is the fact that I've been wronged. I was fairly newly sober, and a man told me to... He's a funny guy. He said, the guy I talked to about my impotent problem. And he said to me, he said, I want you to do something for me, Keith. He said I want to borrow lipstick from one of the girls in the program. He said oh, I don't want you doing anything else with the girls in the programming. That's right, you can't. and he said i want you to get some lipstick and i want you to go home and write on the mirror keith you were wrong and i said i can't do that you see because my problem is i have a poor self-image don't ever talk that way to an old timer they they haven't read any of those books and and so so i got some lipstickand i went home and wrote on the mere keith you werewrong and and and i was disgusted and i threw the lipstick away and i i went off to bed and it was a normal night and i tossed and i turned and my mind raced and and I knew I'd never make it, and I talked to myself all night about what a loser I was. And I got up the next morning, and I was depressed and near tears, and I started to coffee, and I said, today you're going to go to the hospital, and they're going find out you're a bum and you don't know how to do your job. Just a normal morning, and you're gonna be alone the rest of your life. What difference does it make? You're impotent. It's a normal warning. And I went in, and I looked at the mirror, and it said, Keith, you're wrong. I said well thank God, because if I'm right, I'm in a hell of a lot of trouble. So the key to this whole deal for me is being wrong. If you can be wrong about most things, you can become a good person. You can be happy and joyful beyond your wildest dream. But if you're right, think about it for a minute. How would you like to live in the world if you were right? That's a frightening thought, isn't it? What if we're right about them and they're really like we think they are? think about it so the key and I think the great blessing for Alcoholics Anonymous for me is the fact that I've been wrong I've gone about virtually everything not bad, just wrong not bad just sick I love in a chapter working with others the last sentence in the first paragraph it tells us when we're going to work with a newcomer it says remember they are very ill what a wonderful wonderful description of me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous remember I was very very ill and you remembered I was very very old, you never judged me you laughed at all the insanity in my life and then one day I learned to laugh at it, I attack a man in an AA meeting, Henry used to insult everybody and I was sober about 6 weeks I was out of my mind And I'd seen this guy before, and I didn't like him. It's one of the few good decisions I made the first six weeks out of seven. And Henry would go along, and he'd insult everybody. And he'd call them names. I mean, he's just a nasty man. And he's coming down the table just indiscriminately and without bias or forethought insulting everybody. Equal opportunity insulter. And I'm saying he's kind of like, I said, God, please, God. If there is a God, don't let him insult me. So he called me some kind of a name or something. And the next thing I knew, I was strangling him on a table. I was strangling him, you know? And everybody's just sitting there drinking their coffee. And then I realized what I was doing. And I knew I'd be kicked out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got off the table and a whole group applauded. And some old-timer said, I've been waiting for 10 years for somebody to stop Henry And we finally got one in here sick enough to do it, he said. He said, here, boy, you sit next to me. I'm going to enjoy watching you get sober. And that's what he did. He enjoyed watching me get sober, and I didn't know how much he enjoyed it until I've been able to enjoy watching some of you get sore. And that's the way it works in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I never want to do anything but to hang around and to enjoy watching people get sober. And then maybe one day I'll be an old-timer, and I'll get warped. And my perspective on things will go, and the only enjoyment I'll Get Out of Life is watching you suffer. Now, the enjoyment I get out of life is watching you get well. God bless you. I am so excited about this weekend and some of the folks we're going to hear and everything. I'm just really thrilled and it's again a pleasure to be here and I want to thank you very much.