The Sponsor Who Used a Spiritual Scalpel – Don P.

Good morning. My name is Don, and I am an alcoholic. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and my home group is the Denver Thursday Night Group, which meets in Denver every Thursday night at 8 o'clock. And I'd like to tell you a little about my group, because I think it's a very fine group. We are an old-fashioned AA call-up meeting. That's how we operate. We have one topic, what you were like, what happened, and what you're like now. And we never know who's going to talk that night because you're just called up and you have five to seven minutes to share that. We expect you to take 10 and we get testy if you take 12. The group was designed as a place where you as a sponsor could feel free to bring a new person and know that they would at least hear about Alcoholics Anonymous. Those who want to get serious, at 630, at the same location, we have a big book workshop. For those who wish to sit down, we start at the very beginning of the big book. And using a method we got out of Winnipeg, we read our way all the way through it. And everybody gets a chance to experience the recovery process of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then we send our missionaries out throughout the world. Once a month, we have a group conscience. An hour before the meeting, we found people will come before but won't stay later. and every quarter we have a full group inventory where we set a separate night aside, have a little potluck, and sit down and discuss our group's business and our groupís problems because we have them. Weíre filled with people, which means we have problems from time to time. And at one of those group inventories, one of our young members said, ìIím a little confused.î According to the fifth tradition, it says our primary purpose as a group is to carry our message. And I've been coming for about six months, and we've never left this room. I don't understand. So we now sponsor a meeting in a treatment center. Our group carries its format into a treatment centre every Wednesday night at 8 o'clock, and that's an open meeting. We believe in sponsorship. We do things together. We have a monthly potluck just for fun. And for me, the other day I became aware of one of the most exciting things in my group, one ofthe things I like about it. We had two crying babies in the meeting. That's a result of some of our younger members putting together families. And I realize for the last two years we've either had one or two pregnant women or one or three crying babies at every one of our meetings. And I still believe that's one of the reasons that Alcoholics Anonymous became viable throughout the world, the restoration of the family, because I see AlcoholicsAnonymous as a family. I lost mine, tossed it out, used it up. And some of these family things have become so important. One of our girls, for instance, I belong to a worldwide family of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think within the family there's immediate family. There's some folks when I see you, I know you. We belong together. And as a result of your trust in me, I've had the opportunity to literally travel the world with his family. And I try to tell my group about that so that they can have this same safe feeling I have. I have no fear anymore. I can go anywhere literally in the world and I know somebody. And my wife and I had the opportunity to be in Osaka, Japan a year ago in March for a little AA thing. And I've never been anywhere in AA that I haven't encountered someone that I met before. We were standing in the lobby of a hotel in Osaka and two little Japanese gentlemen walked up to us through the interpreter, reminded me that we had met on a little shindig in Oahu three years before that. And it tickled me and I told the group about that. Anyway, in Montreal or in Seattle, one of our girls who'd only been sober for a year and was frightened and wanted to know whether she should go or not, which was a silly question. We all went, of course you go. She came back from Seattle and told me on Saturday she was standing on the street in downtown Seattle petrified lost she'd lost track of us there were 48,000 of us hanging around with badges on but she couldn't find any of us her immediate family and she couldn'T move and she didn'T know what to do and she said a Japanese couple walked down the street and saw her badge and it said Denver Colorado on it And he said, oh, do you know Don's song? That's what I belong to. That's which you belong to When I came here, I didn't belong anywhere For my very first drink of alcohol I began to cut myself off from anything reasonable and decent Because it did something for me I came to alcohol desperately needing to be changed because I was weird from day one. Well, I didn't think like human beings said they thought. And I didn' t feel like the human beings on my street said they felt. And I was agitated. I found a good description of me in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, restless, irritable, and discontent. And I brought that to alcohol. as a rite of passage where i grew up on east colfax and denver when you reached 15 or 16 we got a guy from lowry to buy us a bottle of whiskey and you went out east of denver and drank it and we did that and i went into the evening three feet tall with a big ugly wart on the end of my nose and i felt strange a couple drinks later the wart was gone a number of things happened what I remember most is that all of a sudden I had plans I was into life I wasn't bouncing off anymore I had some plans there was a fellow in my high school class that had not been treating me very well and my plan was to go back in to Bill Bonsid's drive-in and whip him and I could have done it that night and there was this little girl in my class who hadn't been treating us she wasn't treating me at all and we were going to have a visit that night and I could have visited that night. But I didn't know that it is in my nature that if one works, take ten. And before the night was over, before we got back to Bill Bonsib's drive-in, I was nearly dead of acute alcohol poisoning. My partners kept me on my feet and threw coffee down and I threw it back and they'd throw it down and I'd throw It back and I think that's all that kept me alive. and my keen alcoholic mind made a decision that night if this is what bonded bourbon is going to do to me i'm never going to drink bonded bourbons again but i quickly found out some other forms of alcohol that wouldn't do that to me and i made some other discoveries that i identified when i got here i definitely drank for the effect if we were going to fight i drank vodka because When I drink vodka, I get mean. If you're going to fight, you ought to be a little mean. If there might be girls tonight, I drank dark Bacardi rum because with dark Bicardi rum, I'm one of the finest lovers you'll ever encounter. Oh, I'm good. With red wine, I am a poet and a painter. I remember those times in my life when I couldn't feel anything. And I still have a great fondness for the feeling I got when I would drink Cooler's beer and listen to Furman Husky singing Four Walls, and I could just cry like a baby. Alcohol became the only thing in my life that was consistent. The rest of my life began to become inconsistent. I drank for a thousand reasons. I drank to feel taller, to feel shorter. i drank to feel better to stop feeling bad i drank to feel bad the horror of my life is the certain and sure knowledge that most of the time i drank for no good reason at all i was in my first federal penitentiary when i was 19 years old as a result of alcohol and didn't know that part of my problem is that when i drink i get lost and i can't find my way home and there's a federal law against that when you're in Uncle Sam's Navy, and I was. They would give me a 24-hour liberty and expect me home in 24 hours, and that was a silly thing to expect. I could sometimes make it in 25 or 26. One time, I was 23 days late, and when I got home, it wasn't even there anymore. They were on their way to Korea, and at that time, that was, that was a shooting offense. I was in some real, real trouble. I ran with a kid from Appleton, Wisconsin who was slick as can be. He got us on a Pan Am Clipper and we beat the ship to Japan by three weeks which proved to be somewhat of a mistake. I don't know how mad our skipper was when we missed his ship but I can tell you from first hand experience how mad he was when he saw us standing on the dock waiting for him. Because he was done with us, and there we were again. We were now his problem again. Anyway, I ended up in prison over that. Came home baffled. And I continued that kind of behavior for a number of years. I would be super straight for a while, and then super freak for a While, and super straight for a little while. and I used up a family and I used up some jobs and the best way I can describe me at that time is that I was a sprinter in the game of life not a long distance runner I'm really good off the line give me a new job, a new challenge and my desperate need for you to accept me will cause me to learn everything quickly and I'm really good but my nature is that don't you dare look aside because I get distracted very easily and I think that's the gravest damage I did to my family I'd fall down and they'd help me up and I'd start off and everybody would say oh look he's going to make it this time and then I'd call down again and I just beat him to death with hope I ended up hauling two little boys around the country with me my last three and a half to four years I quit trying to be anything except a madman I'm one of the freaks that came out of Berkeley in the late 60s throwing all these acids around screaming out where there's dope there's hope burn down city hall now i am not a drug addict i've used a lot of drugs that doesn't necessarily make you a drug addict any more than just drinking alcohol makes you an alcoholic if anybody ever wanted to talk about that we can talk about that later but the end result was in christmas week of 1967 seven, I was bone-weary tired. And this was a week I want to tell you about because it was a marvelous week. It was the week I surrendered. And for me, surrender is a process that I went through where I saw the lies of my life for what they were. Lies. We all have them. And I only had a few left. I was on federal parole for a little indiscretion I'd committed in 1966. My kids and I lived in a basement apartment underneath an old lady who raised cats. And my lie was that no matter what else, I'm taking care of my little boys, and we have a home that's warm and clean and nice, and as I looked around my house that week, I realized the old lady who raised cats had a cleaner house than I did. We lived in a pigsty. I weighed 133 pounds, and I didn't feel good. I had always prided myself that despite all my other activities, I had never turned on any young people. Well, that was the week I couldn't get out of bed until this 16-year-old kid I was using as a runner showed up to help me get up. And I had turned him on, and I was using him, and I saw it. And it began to fall apart. The pieces of me began to disintegrate. I'm a rarity in the alcoholism field these days. I come from a functional home. We just celebrated my parents' 60th wedding anniversary a couple weeks ago. They still like each other, live together, and talk to one another. My brother's a professor of music at the University of Colorado. My sister just retired from IBM as one of their top executives. I am the only alcoholic in my family. We've looked. We had one old uncle we thought might be a good candidate, and 20 years ago Walter's doctor said, Walter, if you don't quit drinking you're going to die, and Walter quit. He didn't have what it took to be an alcoholic. The only problem my family couldn't solve was dawn. So I know what Christmas is supposed to look like. Christmas week of 1967, as I looked at my house, it didn't look like Christmas. We had found a dollar in the snow on the 24th, and on the 25th they'll sell you the biggest tree in the lot for a dollar. And that's the one we bought, of course. The ceiling was about six and a half, seven feet high and the tree was about eight feet high so it tilted at the top. And it was decorated with the kind of garbage that people like me have to decorate their trees with. You cut out some cardboard stars and you crinkle up some aluminum foil and cut some milk cartons in half and string the stuff up. And it didn't look like Christmas in my house. And I began to see what was going on. There were two little presents under the trees for my boys. The public merchandise Martin Denver had given me a pair of cowboy boots and a little shirt on credit because I didn't have any money. So the boys each had a present. My kids had taken blue paper towel. This 16-year-old had stolen a case of blue paper tile from a service station. And my little boys had wrapped up everything that would fit in a blue paper towel. This morning we broke. Christmas Day, by the grace of God, I ran out of lies. Pardon me. We went down to my folks. so we could spend a little time with Grandma and Grandpa. My dad met us at the door, and he said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother said I can't let you in here anymore. She can't stand watching you die. One of my last lies just crumpled. I had been saying for a long time, leave me the hell alone. I'm not hurting anybody but me. And that was a lie that day, and I sought for a lie. I'd hurt my people. I could see what I've been doing to my children. Then my dad just tore the last one up. He snuck us in anyway. We live in a big old house. It's big enough to sneak you in. And I'd been saying, nobody loves us. Nobody cares whether we live or die. And he did. And I could say it. And I didn't have any lies left. Now, there was some self-pity mixed in with my feelings that day. but i walked past that into the truth and the truth was when i got home i recognized that i had finally reached the bottom of absolute human pain i was useless everybody on the planet including my own children would be better off if i weren't here and that was a fact they'd be better in a foster home than they were with me my dreams were now dead my people's dreams were dead my kids dreams were did. All the wonderful stuff I wanted to do when I was a kid. Brian and I were talking a little about some of that this morning. I was good kid until I started drinking, and all those dreams were dead now. They were never going to happen. I had spent my life doing things I didn't want to do and doing things not getting done the things that I did want to do, and it was never gonna happen. There's only one thing you can do in that state of mind. I quit. Now I didn t know there was any hope because i had tried everything i've been on a spiritual search since i was a little boy i was one of the first people in dionetics back in the early 50s i knew l ron hubbard i know i was crazy then i've Been in and out of a number of churches psychiatry psychology i've eaten peyote with the indians at their easter ceremonies and had visions when we started taking lsd it was for spiritual enlightenment not to get high it worked so i took a two month supply of the garbage i was using and put it in my arm and drank everything in the house and i laid down and i died it's a crude form of surrender but it's real former surrender when i woke up in the morning i didn't feel good the police were at the door i had set myself up to be arrested because i was tired i'd set up a little deal to get me six months in the denver county jail the kids would be taken care of and i could rest the county jail is rest camp for people like me i lie to you for 10 minutes you lie to me for 10 seconds then we both go take a nap and they feed us and everything's cool That's county jail. They came with nine charges, and the first one called for three years to life in the penitentiary. The Denver District Attorney told me that he was going to bring the rest of them one at a time if I beat that one, but I was through. And I honestly didn't care. What had happened inside of me, and you have to understand what I know today and can describe to you, I didn't know then. the joy of what i found in alcoholics anonymous is that i used to have it all figured out so i could run it now i experienced that maybe later on i'll understand what happened well i had reached a state where i was now willing to go anywhere anybody said and do anything anybody said if meant i didn't have to be me anymore because i was not a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying i'm walking around in a body that won't die carrying a mind that won't work and it's still breathing and i had to have some kind of answer i didn't care where i went my first experience of the power of god came before i ever heard the word and i find it interesting in the big book it doesn't say i have to believe in god but it says one of the essential requirements is that i come to believe en the power of God. And that's how it worked for me. When I came to trial, they offered me a little deal. They said, we'd like to avoid the expense of a trial and we got you. We've talked to the federal people and I owed them four years. They said the federal authorities have agreed that if you'll plead guilty to a reduced charge, we'll turn you over to them and they'll take you to Fort Worth, Texas to that federal hospital and they can fix you. And I am not an idiot. Federal hospitals better than penitentiary any day. Two of me made the decision. There's always at least two of me at work, even today. I knew that if you put me in a hospital with doctors and books, I'd be on the street in six months because they would tell me what was wrong with me. They would tell me about how long they thought it would take to fix that, and then they would tell me all the symptoms I'd have to show them to convince them I was getting better. That's my best game. I was also willing to go anywhere and do anything. So I took their deal, and they kept their bargain. They suspended my sentence, reduced it, gave me back to the federal people to take to Fort Worth, and five days later I was in the Colorado State Penitentiary fish tank saying wait a minute I didn't sign up for this one and I think that was by the grace of God I had surrendered had I gone to the hospital I'd have been out in six months cured of drug addiction I'd gone back to Denver and on some hot day I'd had a cold Coors beer and I would be locked away permanently somewhere drooling today because death is no longer an option for me i tried it it didn't work all that's left for me is permanent madness and i know that and god knew that and i didn't know i was alcoholic and nobody knew i was alcoholic i was certified by one group as a sociopath type two by another group as a psychopath and one bunch thought i was a drug addict and one thought i was a manic depressing because when the game gets played i know how to do all of those Six of you big guys backed me into a corner. I'll show you, psychopath. The federal man in charge of my life changed his mind, and I've talked to him. He doesn't know why. Changed his mind. What he said to them is we can't help this one anyway. Let's just get him off the street so he didn't hurt himself or anybody else. But I was taken to where you found me. In my third week in that fish tank, I can still hear it. You people will come down and you will listen. And I didn't have a full social calendar that day, so I went down to listen. And I believe to this day that that was my first spiritual awakening. God has made of me a listener. And that's all it takes if you're new here to start getting well. If you'll listen, really listen, you have a chance. And that is what I did that day. I went out and I listened. A guy got up and he said, my name's Doc. And they had three guys in there with numbers on their chest. He said, my name is Doc and I'm an alcoholic and that means that I'm powerless over alcohol and guards and drugs and all the other circumstances of my life and if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your lives look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing. And I heard him. They said a number of other things that I heard. The Alcoholics Anonymous message is next. Please listen, the rest of this is all fun. If you are alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink alcohol again in your life, ever. You don't have to feel like you've been feeling ever again. We do not promise you a pain-free life, but the pain of active alcoholism did never again be yours. And they said that with such assurance I heard them. And I didn't even know I was an alcoholic. I heard them say, you don't have to feel like that anymore. They said, Don, your very best thinking put you in a penitentiary. You're not doing so good, are you? I couldn't argue with them. I had been doing my best for years, and there I was. They said we can show you a new way of thinking. Well, we had to go to a 12-step study school in order to go the main meeting on Friday night where they let real people in. we spent five weekends. We gave up our yard privileges and our movies and spent three hours every Saturday afternoon and three hours every Sunday afternoon in school. And Jim and I went, I think mainly because I wasn't afraid of the prison. It's just another community and you learn how to live there. What had me concerned was that sometime between a year and a half and five years from then, they were going to put me back into the real world when I didn't have a clue as to how to live out there, and I really didn't want to live the way I'd been living ever again. So Jim and I went, and we encountered sponsorship of the finest kind. The new guys, we all sat down, and there were three of them. And I don't know if you've had the experience, but three clean convicts smiling is an intimidating picture. one of them said now you new guys for the next five weeks have nothing to say if you knew anything at all you wouldn't be here so be quiet we didn't get to talk for five weeks in a meetings we talked outside the meetings they would come talk with us in fact one of the things bruce had that i wanted was that he seemed to get in and out of his cell anytime he pleased when i'd be locked up and couldn't get out, he'd come by and visit with me. And I wanted what he had. On one of those trips, he said to me, Don, do you know it's possible for me to think one thought at a time? And he hooked me forevermore. Boy, that's something I'll pay any price for. But they did what I think is probably the most important thing in 12-step work. It's what I will do if you and I sit down and talk. They told me precisely what's wrong with me and then precisely what to do about it. I hear a lot today in Alcoholics Anonymous about the promises. I truly believe that the promises of AlcoholicsAnonymous start with the first two sentences of the first forward to the first edition of the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous. We are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. There's number one. I do not have to learn to cope with alcoholism. I can recover from it, not be cured of it, but recover from it. To show others precisely how we've recovered is the main purpose of this book. It gives me my life mission. If I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, my main job in life is to show other alcoholics precisely how I recovered from alcoholism, and that's what they did for us. I've always wondered what's wrong with me. Why do I do things I don't want to do and why can't I do the things I do want to? Why did I miss that ship when I loved the Navy? Because I have a disease called alcoholism. One of the symptoms of that disease is that I'm allergic to alcohol. If I were allergic to tomatoes and ate tomatoes, I'd break out with an itch. Well, I've got an allergic reaction to alcohol. If I drink alcohol, I break out with an itch for more alcohol. The simplest way I can do it, when I sponsor people, I learn to pray by sponsoring because you come to my house and your life's on the line and so is mine. And I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So I pray a lot. About 18 months ago, one of the founding psychiatrists at one ofthe finest alcohol and drug treatment centers in the world showed up in my house because he can't seem to stay sober. And he knows too much. And we're going through the big book like I do, and Dr. Silkwood describes it very simply, but this man knows too Much. He isn't getting it. The business about men who had been working on a business deal for months that would be settled favorably to them, only they took a drink a day or two ahead of time and missed their appointment. That's why I went to prison when I was 17, 18. I missed my appointment because I started to drink. He couldn't get that, so I'm praying. What do I say to him? And it came to me. If you're new, this is all you need to know to get well, to start. I said, Don, what happens to you after the first drink? He said, Well, around the fourth or fifth drink, I start losing track of what I'm doing and I go a little crazy and blah, blah, bla. I said, Don, what happens to you after the first drink? Well, around the fourth or fifth drink, I'll lose track of what I'm doing. What happens to me after the first drink is the second drink, and that's all I need to know about alcoholism to get started on the path. It will happen every time I take a drink. The Chinese said it 3,000 years ago. Man takes a drink, drink takes a drink. Drink takes the man. That's alcoholism. He got it. He's still sober, almost 19 months now. He's not sane yet, but he's sober. I'm not sure he's... I feel pretty good about that. Now I know what's wrong with me. And then they said, no, that's academic, you know. It only happens to alcoholics. It happens to all alcoholics, and it only happens after the first drink. So we're back to my basic question. What's wrong with me why do I keep taking the first drink well the problem is there's a piece missing in my mind it's not there I'm obsessed with the crazy idea that I'm supposed to feel good all the time and that's insane but of more importance to me is the recognition that for no good reason at all because I'm an alcoholic, if I rely only on my own resources or on anything I know, the day will come when the information won't show up. There's a piece missing. My neighbor has it. One of the benefits of living sober is that I've been in the same house for over 14 years, married to the same lady. And when that happens, you end up having to talk to your neighbors. and real people have a thing they call small talk I don't know what the hell it is I don' t do it well they can talk for hours and not say anything but I want to be a good citizen so I have learned some small talk I'm up to four sometimes as much as five minutes now I can tell you at least three kinds of grass we don't want growing in our neighborhood and I know all about liquid fertilizers and how to put them on and when to put them on pruning trees I'm slick I know what paper we take who's doing what in the neighborhood but my neighbor and I were talking a while back and he ran me out of small talk and when that happens I either have to leave or we're going to talk about Alcoholics Anonymous and God and alcoholism because I don't know anything else it was a revealing afternoon because this man shared with me he owns a bar so he's interested and he shared a common experience with me. He told me about the night that he drank too much whiskey and he got drunk and he fell down and he threw up and he made a fool of himself and then he said, and I haven't done that since. That's the man whose reactions are certainly different than mine. I had the same experience. I drank too mucho and I got drunk and I fell down and I threw up and I made a full of myself and I get up and learned how to enjoy being a fool he has a thing in his mind i don't have he can remember how badly he felt about his behavior and it attaches to a thing that says then don't do that again i can remember i feel time and time again and it doesn't attach to anything if it attaches one night attached to it was bad chili that's why we puked so much my first drunkard attached to bonded Burberry I am absolutely convinced there have been times in the past and there will be times in future where everything I know in my mind about the program and about anything won't show up in my sixth year of sobriety I had an experience that just rocketed that home to me we were having lunch, I was now working behind the walls, because God takes my life in full circles. And I got to pay my debt right where I got it. And part of that deal was to get jobs for the guys coming out. So we were meeting with some businessmen in Denver over lunch. People do business over lunch, I decided, when I discovered. One of them had discovered a new liqueur. It was green and it came in a tall, skinny glass. There wasn't enough in it to do anybody any real good, but it was there. And they were passing it around so everyone could have a sip of it and taste it. And everything I knew showed up. I knew I was not going to drink this. I knew why I was now going to drank this. All of my defenses were there. As it came by me, I thought, I wonder what it smells like? So I put it under my nose to sniff it to smell it. It burst into my mind that the difference at that moment between life and death for me would be the twitch of a muscle. With everything going for me, when something is in my hand and it's in this position, I drink it. And then I knew God was on duty because I got out of my body quick and watched him move my hand off. I haven't drunk anything green since or sniffed anything green since. If it's green, don't get near me. It's that serious to me. A twitch of a muscle can kill me. I need something more than just my resources. And thank God I was sponsored into how you get to that. I needed the actual power of God to keep that from happening to me. And how am I going to get it? Because my attitude was God had created the heaven and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, and as far as I was concerned, he was still resting. I had tried everything. But what I saw in these three guys was men whose lives had been changed, and they said God had changed them. Bruce was a killer. He would never leave the penitentiary. He'd shot some people in a stick-up one morning. But the man who was telling me the story was not the same man who had done the deed, and I could see that. Roy Nichols was a stick- up man who was no longer capable of doing that. It wasn't that he didn't want to, he couldn't. Phil Gutierrez was a wonder. He was a mean cat, and he looked mean. He came from Guam, bad looking dude. When Phil drank, he liked to throw things out of windows and the last time he had done that it was people and it was three stories up this is a violent human being but the man that was telling me the story is probably the sweetest man i've ever met to this day he taught me how to touch physically in a penitentiary where it's risky but nobody ever messed with phil there was a sweetness of spirit in him they have been changed they said god changed them i didn't care who changed them I wondered what they had so i went back to my cell and took the third step prayer and read it and had the worst experience in my life. I waited for my flash of light, and it didn't come. I'm an alcoholic. If this room starts to shake, every one of us in here is going to be a hero. I am a crisis-oriented human being. I can handle anything that comes down the pike except nothing happening. Well, it scared me and I went back and I bitched at my sponsor. That's what you're supposed to do if it doesn't work the way you think it should. He said, you dummy, you ought to be grateful you didn't have a flash of light. They've never killed you all your life. And we discussed it. Southern comfort on a roof in Phoenix, Arizona in the summer will give you a flash of light, I'll guarantee you. They've nearly killed me all my life. I go for the zest. It's got to go boom. He said, Don, God knows that in your present state you probably can't stand one more big shock anyway. And he began to talk to me about mercy, which is what he thought. This was the man who had killed some people. He described how it had come slowly for him and how he discovered mercy. And then he helped me to examine my concepts of God that afternoon, and that was a brutal deal, because he'd wipe them out as fast as I'd bring them up, he'd white them out. We ended up where I didn't have a concept left. And I can remember screaming at him, you're asking me to turn my life over to the care of nothing. He said, well, why not? Nothing can run your life better than you've been doing it. Now I believe that truth without love is cruelty, and confrontation without a real answer is brutality. But he loved me and he had a real answer, and when he had reduced me to nothing and my concepts to nothing, he discovered I still had one more reservation. The alcoholic ego is an amazing thing. I really believed at that time that if I truly turned my life over to the care of God, he would put me on the corner of Colfax and Broadway handing out Watchtower magazines and asking strangers have you been saved brother and I still just couldn't see me doing that so he said well let's talk about that. You got a sponsor you know what that means, be quiet I'm going to straighten you up here for a minute and he did it with a spiritual scalpel. He went from my jugular, he said Don do you suppose the guy that was handing out watchtowers down there today had breakfast where he wanted to? And I said, probably. And he said, you didn't. You suppose that guy that's humiliating himself by asking strangers, have you been saved, brother, is wearing clothes he picked out to do it in? And I say, probably, and he said you're not. Do you suppose when he's all through making a fool of himself that he gets to go home? And I says, yeah. He says, well, you don't. and he brought me into a state of mind that I've been living in now for 23 years just a state of mind anything at all that God has in mind for me is better than anything at All that I will ever have in mind for me I've Been Living That Way For A Long Time And It Works It Solves The Self-Esteem Problem It Solved The Ambition Problem It Has Solved All My Problems I love to travel I love this is the most magnificent planet I can imagine when I ran my own life I lived in an 8 by 10 toilet and someone else had the key since I quit running my life I have been all over the world I've been to Guatemala and to Canada and to Russia and to Estonia. I have a key to my own house. Look where I am today, Superior, Wisconsin. I'd have never thought to come here. And I've had a wonderful weekend. Wonderful weekend. I quit messing with my life. Doesn't mean I don't want to from time to time, but I don' t. whatever he has in mind I'll go do I don't have time to tell you all the experiences that have come out of that I got to see the Olympic torch being run through Winnipeg I've just had so much happen I can't tell you I had to clean house when I began to awaken one of the things I awakened to is that I've done a lot of damage and I had to clean house. My first inventory was a lie. I wrote it to impress my sponsor, and he told me that. He threw me out. I went back and did it the way the big book said and made some interesting discoveries. Bob described the process for you. But I learned some things. Resentment is a spiritual disease, I discovered. It's not a mental problem. It's a spiritual problem. It's called a mental disease because it separates me and anything that separates me from the children of God separates me from God and I have to cut that out of my life federal narcotics agents almost killed my four year old one time in a raid and I hated him when I hit the inventory list and I went over that I put that guy's name down on the list and I put down all 22 reasons why I hated and I still hate him. When I put down what that was doing to my life, then I still hated him. And I tried very hard to take a kindly and tolerant view and to think that perhaps he was spiritually sick, and I had to say, you bet he is, and i still hated it. And your process wasn't working for me because I still hate him. And then I read over what it said about the new attitude, and that was lovely, but I still hate anything. And then I made a mistake. I just did what it said next and I forgot to think. And I began to put down where I might have been at fault there, and I had one of those burst of light deals. I had invited this man into my house with a hand-engraved invitation. I'd been smuggling marijuana out of Mexico and not paying the federal tax time. And that really pisses him off. I was his job. I brought him there. The promises of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. Not the ones we keep hearing about, but the promise in the fourth step. The fourth step was not for me to find out who I am. It's to help me find out Who I'm not so we can get rid of that and then whoever I am will just show up. There's no way I could have lived with the guilt of knowing that I caused my son to nearly be shot had it not been for the promise that this deal was to help me face and be rid of the things in myself that are blocking me. That's what made it possible. I don't have to do that again. Now, the only proof I have that that might work is that for 20 some odd years there hadn't been federal agent in my house, although the IRS showed up several months ago for summary. I don't know why they were there either. The guy confused the hell out of me, but he seemed to have been pretty nice. He saw how confused I was and after about an hour he said, oh just sign this. I'll take care of the rest of it. Don't worry about it. And I guess that's how you're supposed to deal with federal people. Stay confused. I hadn't done anything so I wasn't afraid of him. I learned about fear in inventory. I thought it lived down here. Well, I created up here. I've got a high-grade manufacturing plant in my head. It was two and a half years before I could do a legitimate sex inventory because I couldn't remember anything. When it got done, it fit on a three-by-five card, and I realized it's a wonder I ever had children. But a great healing took place in that period of time. I look on the sex inventory process today as a conduct inventory. The questions apply to my business life and to my personal life. And I took the fifth step with my friend Jim and cleaned my house and hit my evangelistic stage. There's an interesting observation I would make to you. In spiritual terms, the word amen is the closure. So be it. This process is done. That's what it means. there is no amen at the end of the third step prayer but there is one at the end of a seventh step prayer which has led me to conclude that everything from the word God at the beginning of the third step to the amen at the seven step is all part of one prayer which makes it a spiritual activity not intellectual activity and I learned that prayer is activity not just sitting in a chair quietly talking to God it's an activity it's a living breathing thing what a wonderful discovery well, with what little time I have left I think the most important activity of my life and that's the twelve step work is in the making of amends the most spiritual thing I know is that if I have harmed you I owe you without reservation and when I first came to that I was bothered they wouldn't let me out and they wouldn'T let you in but my sponsor Bruce was never supposed to get out of the prison and he was free and I knew it and I went to him and I asked him about that and he gave me an exercise to do he said now I want you to go back to your cell tonight and make a list of all the people you've harmed we started with the inventory list then he said just add anybody else you can think of because if you met them you messed with them and the exercise was this He said, Don, you know what you did to these people, but you have no idea what it did to them. You're so insensitive. So I want you to close your eyes and take them one at a time. And while your eyes are closed, picture each person right in front of you. And see if you can get a feeling of willingness within yourself to look each one right in the eye and say to them, I've been wrong. I've harmed you. Would you please tell me what I have to do so that we can get these books to balance? and as I went over my list that night in that cell in that penitentiary and realized that if I have harmed you in any way whatsoever I will look you right in the eye and we will get it straight I was lifted and set free what this did was make it possible for me to make the really tough events what you do after you ask the question by the way, shut up and listen while I tell you i was clear on what i'd done but i have to listen the toughest one i can remember was the amount i had to make to my mother who i had put in a position on christmas day to say you and your children can't come into my house you don't just go back and say ma i wish i hadn't done that i'm sorry in fact my sponsor said i can't ever say i'm Sorry again he says you've sorry your whole life. You get to say I was wrong or I apologize or wish I hadn't done that. Well, months after I got out, Mom let me come by and I found a way to ask the question. Not directly, but I found away and then I listened. She said, honey, all I have ever wanted for you was that you be happy. So for the last 19 plus years, I've been going my mother's house on a regular basis, happy. And that's all it took. She told me once it was six years before she really believed I was going to make it, but I wasn't trying to prove anything. I was just going by. The lady who wouldn't let me come in on Christmas Day, we almost lost her last year. She had a heart attack. I'm the one that wasn't allowed to come in and nobody had any faith in, but this time I'mthe one they called to make sure dad got back and forth to the hospital. Quite a change. It's through my mother that I have been able to have the experience of anonymity. I have seen God take my very worst transgression and turn it into a tool for healing for hundreds of people. In my sickness, I stole her $2 bill collection. I've done some bad things, but that's just chicken shit. That's the worship it. And when I came out, later on we were able to talk about it and I admitted it. But if you'll recall back in the early 70s, $2 bills were taken out of circulation. So I never got to replace the collection. But because my life is none of my business and I don't run it, I ended up down in Virginia about five years ago to do one of these deals. And they took us up to Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's home. And he's on the $2 bill, and they are back in circulation. They had boxes of them. So I bought enough to replace her collection, and it touched me. I'm an emotional person. And I told everybody about it that night in the talk, and we all had a good cry, and It was fun. And brought the $1 bills back to mom, and she pretended it didn't matter, but I could see it really did. And two weeks later, I got an envelope from Virginia anonymously with $2 bills in it. I knew what had happened. Someone else had done the same thing, couldn't make amends and was having to live with that. So through me, someone else got free. This has become really an interesting phenomenon. It's rare I go anywhere that I don't end up with some $2 bills to take home to my mother. They come in the mail. She got one from Canada the other day and was just thrilled. My sister told me she's doing something with these. She has her little collection that I replaced in one envelope, and she has this other envelope full of $2 bills now, and when her friends come over, she pulls that out to tell them about Alcoholics Anonymous as she sees us. She says each one of these means somebody is getting healed. It's getting free. That's not a bad picture of what we do here. She loves you all. She thinks you're weird, but she loves you. The biggest thing in my life today is my family. And I did some grave damage to my children. In and out of crash pads. They thought Hells Angels were cool. that's who we live with. When I got busted, I got busted. I hurt my kids. And we've talked about it over the years and with my younger boy, things worked out pretty good. We were able to talk it out and he works with me and we've gotten together. My older boy Terry has never been able to let go. He's never really been part of the family. We'd talk but only if I initiated it. There was just something wrong. Every time I thought of Terry, there was pain in my heart. And Terry had pain all the time. And we could never work it out. Now, I stay busy in the program by sponsoring people, and that's what keeps me in the steps. So I'm always working steps. But periodically, I take myself and put myself in someone else's hands to let them take me through it as a new person. And after I rotated from your General Service Board, I needed to reevaluate my life. and I went to a friend, and we went through the steps and got rid of the few fears that were there and the major resentment I had against God. Because I believe this. God does speak to me directly, either through you or in the silence in my room. I can now think one thought at a time, and there are those very precious times when I think nothing at all. I just sit quietly. But God never yells at me, never. so I must have a quiet mind or I won't hear and that's why I do that in November of 1989 I sat down and I did that and I was sitting quietly and I began to think of my son Terry and it occurred to me that the last time I had been arrested he and his little brother were arrested with me and they went through that trauma and then they ended up in a foster home and it was a very bad foster home bad things happened to my kids at that one because we've talked about it and for all that we had done it occurred to me that i had never thanked him for taking care of his little brother the biggest damage i did to him was that at eight he had to grow up real quick to protect his little Brother from this hospital environment and at eight that's tough and it damaged my boy and i've never thanked him and because i believe there's only one time and only one place and that's here and now i got a hold of him immediately and I said, Terry, I know we've talked about this a lot but I want you to know that what you did back then was a very brave thing. And I want to thank you for taking care of your little brother when I couldn't and I heard his voice change on the spot. Now I get Bronco tickets and I don't even know what they do. Apparently, I'm told they don't either, right? So two weeks before this, I had called Terry and said, you want to go to the Bronco game? He said, sure, Dad. And he came by and got the tickets and went. Two weeks after we had talked, I called him and said would you like to go see the Giants play? And he said, Dad, are you going to go with us? The healing was starting to take place. about six weeks later he called me and if you have kids you know what you do is you just listen and visit until they tell you what they want they call for something and I listened and we visited and I listen and we visit about ten minutes later I realized my son and I had been visiting for ten minutes and that's the only reason he called the healing was beginning to take place and the only thing I had done was say thank you now when Terry got married the first time we weren't even invited to the wedding my wife and I next Thursday he's getting married he's asked me to perform the ceremony good stuff that's what this is about all I did was say thank you. And I've been thinking about that in terms of our program and the spiritual life I live. That's all the twelfth step is, is thank you, it's the only way I can say thank You and mean it. To give back what was given to me is the only way I can saying thank You to God with any meaning the only way I can thank you is to carry your message to the next person so the 12th step then becomes thank you and I'm learning to say thank you in every language I can you should see it work on the street we were in a Chinese restaurant the other night and as the waitress served us I said sure, sure and she came alive she didn't know anybody in this country spoke Chinese so she started speaking Chinese to me and I said no that's all I know but now I know Bukichi because she's teaching me Chinese thank you is the beginning of communication it's the giving away of the gift and the gift must always be kept moving and so all I can do this morning is to thank you Bill Wilson's last message was that His last words to us were thank you The old Arabic thing that he said I salute you And thank you for your lives Thank you for mine