The Stone in His Shoe and the Magic Elixir of Low Self-Esteem – Paul M.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here and it's good to be sober and I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to come up here this morning and do service. It's a privilege and an honor. and I thank you Justin for picking me up at the airport and bringing me out here it was quite a journey we pulled off the road and I'm thinking then we go further and further into the woods and I am thinking to myself all these people in the AA witness protection program I know they say you wouldn't be going any lengths but this is ridiculous you know and I mean I know we're anonymous but come on you know. And even the journey over here I stopped in Minneapolis and I always call my sponsor and I called him, I'm going to this kabuki type theatre, he says where are you? I said I'm on my way to Montana. He says oh you're going all the way to Montana to talk or forward you go to listen you know but I told him what he meant to me which is good for a guy like me I'm a bit like the Irish guy who loved his wife so much he almost told her you know and so I really had been having a great time you know I just thank you John for calling me called me last year and say, can you come out and speak in Montana? I said, let me check my calendar. I think I might be rearranging my sock drawer that weekend, you know, and moving the solids over here and the stripes over there. But I think it's a good idea. I think we can fit it in. It's been absolutely wonderful. Isn't it wonderful to come here? And it's so true. Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the few places in the world that I know of where you can walk into a room full of strangers and start reminiscing, you know. and we've all been here, we mightn't have stood the bar drinking together but we understand terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair and the joy of living that is Alcoholics Anonymous and I love the fact that this convention is very fellowship orientated, plenty of time to connect with people, see old friends, make new friends, I love that you know and less is more you know and regards. And I see there's a lot of new people here and probably starting out in relationships and Alcoholics Anonymous perhaps you get a kick out of this. I was about 20 years sober and I went through a divorce in AlcoholicsAnonymous and after a while like some people were and the reason I'm saying this I really think that Rick gave a great talk yesterday I you know just I'm actually fascinated by non-alcoholics you know I look at them almost like an anthropological study you know and uh oh there goes one now you know there's a half drink on the bar and they're leaving this is very interesting you know I'll have to so somebody was setting me up on a couple of dates and whatnot and I got it wasn't like a blind date, you know, with a non-alcoholic. It wasn't a blind date like, you know, we're meeting Grand Central Station under the clock. I'd be wearing a red carnation carrying the New York Times, you know. It was like that but I didn't really know much about this woman. So we're out having dinner and I'm having a glass of water and she's having a class of wine and she says, I notice you don't drink. I says, no, I don't drank. She says, you don' drink at all? I said, no, not at all. She says, not even one sip? I said not even one sip. And I'm starting to get a little bit annoyed you know and she said, well what would happen if you took a drink of my wine? Well I said just imagine you wake up you don't know where you are you don' t know what day it is you don''t know what time it is you got one shoe on your phone's gone your car keys are gone you're totally dishevelled. She says that would happen to you if you took one drink? I said no it would happen to you if I took one drink you know. Suffice to say the date went downhill from there on in you know but it just shows the juxtaposition, we all laugh at that because we get that, you know the juctaposition between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. I'm standing up here, for the grace of God, I've been an alcoholic since August of 1992, but I realize today... And I hope I never forget it. One drink creates a thirst I can't quench. I got a body that won't let me drink and a mind that won'T let me stop. I'm powerless over alcohol. One drink, stand this podium today, and I hope you'll understand and I will hope I'll never forget one drink, destination unknown. When I controlled my drinking and I couldn't enjoy it. And when I enjoyed my drink and I could not control it. And that is what separates me from the normal heavy drinker. I do not know why. I used to get a lot of mental gymnastics when I first came to AA. Why did I become an alcoholic? Where did I became an alcoholic ? When did I come an alcoholic ?? You know the old alcoholic conundrum ? What came first, the chicken or the cake ? You know Wanda ? There are a few guys that got drunk trying to figure that out. I just accept the fact my name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic that tells me who I am what I am where I am and what I need to be doing and if I know that I'm all right and when I'm more right everything around me is all right too even if it's not alcoholics now this has allowed me to come to terms with my past so I can live in the present for the future which is the rest of today but if I was to speculate my upbringing, my family I know it may come as a shock to some people here in the room this morning but I'm not from the neighbourhood originally you know it's about 25 years now since I left my native Cuba and I grew up in Northern Ireland just outside of Belfast and the sort of neighbourhood I came from if you didn't drink you moved it wasn't like oh that's what alcohol does I knew what alcohol did. I'd seen it in my own family, I'd see it in the neighbourhood. It was not uncommon to see people falling down drunk on a Friday or Saturday night. My family life, looking back on it, is a bit like Eugene O'Neill's long day's journey into night. There was alcoholism on one side of the family and mental illness on the other side ofthe family. And I'm not here to speculate, you know, or point the finger, but when I took my first breath, I blew a .28, you know? And I could have been taken from the delivery room right to the AA room, you see that newcomer in the bassinet? Give him a white chip. Make sure he doesn't swallow it, you know. Have any pop-up big books around here, you know? All I know there's been two turning, I mean there's very few things in your life that are like seminal moments where your life was one way before and your life was one way after. I became a father, things like that, really seminal events and for me drinking alcohol was one of those seminal demarcation lines in my life. There was life before alcohol and there was life after alcohol and it was almost like a fault line running down the center of my life you know. I don't know before I even took alcohol you know that squirrely type thinking i mean nature nurture was a symptom looking for disease i don't know all i know i took alcohol and you've heard all the different metaphors my life went from black and white to color with one drink you know the when alcohol most people i found out and i was in the bar business the last five years drinking and i bartended the first 12 years in sobriety most people drink because what alcohol does to them I drink because of what alcohol does for me alcohol does something for me that it doesn't do for the normal heavy drinker one of our speakers gives a fine talk on alcoholism and this disease of perception one drink immediately changes my view of reality his sponsor used to talk about a new pair of glasses in other words the ones we looked at before was not seeing life clearly and all I know is I took that drink and it did for me what I couldn't do for myself. I was a low self-esteem. I had this stone in my shoe. I took that drink. I could be everything I thought you wanted me to be and for a chronic people pleaser with low self esteem it was a magic elixir. It was a potion and looking back on it now booze will give you a lift to give me a lift but it says in our literature is a herbaceous creditor i made a faustian bargain i made it deal with the devil i mean in charles dickens book a christmas carl they have those three ghosts the ghost of the past and the present and the future at that time when i took my first drink if the ghost OF MY ALCOHOLIC FUTURE had to come along and said I want to show you something look in through that window you see that guy drinking around the clock against his own will you see That Guy Who Has Quicksand Stretched All Around Him You See That Guy who has pushed everybody that mattered anything in his life that's you in 15 years I just said you're out of your mind it can't happen no way but that's what happened and the merchant of Venice Shylock just wanted one pound of flesh not this disease it'll take your job your car your partner their shirt off your back but what it really wants is me six feet under there's a lot of terminal diseases out there but this is one of the most terminal if I hadn't stopped drinking drinking would have stopped me and that's not some theory I've come up with That's just my experience in 22 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've seen people drink an AA that I thought would never drink again. And that tells me it's a daily reprieve, not a pardon. There are certain things I must do to enjoy this way of life. The only way that I coast in Alcoholic Anonymous is downhill. And eventually it slides out. So if you're new here today, What Alcoholics Anonymous did for me was it gave me something that I never had before. It gave me Something Between Me and the First Drink. Left to my own devices, I'm either going to drink or go off a bridge. And most alcoholics I have found will take a drink before they do the latter. So if you're new here this morning and you hear nothing else, get Something Between You and the first drink. You hear people say in AA, oh you're just an arm's length away from a drink. I suppose that's true. Because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm 12 steps away from my drink. And that's a long, long way from when I first walked in here. But don't get me wrong, they're not 12 steps up to anything. They're 12 steps down to a sense of humility. A friend of mine went drinking after a long period in AA. He says, you know how you go back drinking in AA? you give those steps back one step at a time you take your will back in three become insane in two so insane that you tell yourself you're not an alcoholic or you don't cure and get drunk again the first step so my job is to stay 12 steps away from that first drink so if you're new here this morning you might be saying paul i don't know if you can see my face i'm not laughing i backed myself into a corner i can't get out of i'm in a trap i can spring i know we're surrounded here by forest you hear that metaphor you go 10 miles into the forest you got to go 10 Miles out i don't believe that in Alcoholics Anonymous i don' care how deep and how dark and how painful that forest that you're in right now may seem Alcoholics anonymous tells me and i'll tell you that you're just 12 steps away from a new life. Just 12 steps away from brand new life You hear people coming to A&E and they go Oh I came to A & E and I got my life back. I don't want my life back it sucked I had it for 30 years I could do nothing with it I got a whole brand new life in alcoholics and all this or there are people in my life when I was drinking absolutely but things are different today my world today because of the program of AA, my sober house is built on concrete before where were we on a Sunday morning like this lost, like that great line in the days of wine and roses lost on a sea of booze and if there was any coordinates it was pain and misery and every once in a while we'd wash up on the dry land because alcoholics were great starters we'll get things going again but everything was built on sand and had no permanence and the first drink would always come back in again and we're washed out to sea with more debris than the last time because of AA and the principles of AA and the people in AA my world is built on concrete and just like that story I used to read to my daughter she's 11 now but when she was much younger I'd read that story to her at night time the world out there will huff and it will puff but if I stay close to the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous my sober house will not blow down so I encourage you you might be saying well Paul these steps seem like a foreign concept these traditions Debbie mentioned last night we have a triangle inside AlcoholicsAnonymous and there's three parts to it unity service recovery and I believe this so much that I bet my life on it in a daily basis I believe you can put All three parts of that triangle into your life from your very first meeting. Unity. We do together what I can't do alone. Many meetings make it easy, few make it hard and none make it impossible. I've got to be a part of rather than apart from. I've Got To Be A Part Of Alcoholics Now. Get right into the middle of AA. Service. One of our speakers used to say he passed away recently. that has pay grade and Alcoholics Anonymous is servant. Why? Because I'm shackled to self. By the very biochemistry of this disease, my Holy Trinity is me, me, me. So if I'm functioning for the well-being of another person besides myself, I'm doing service in AA. If you put away one more chair than the one you sat on at a meeting, you're doing service in AlcoholicsAnonymous. Recovery. maybe the 12 steps seem like a foreign concept we have slogans easy does it live and let live one day at a time they were like the banisters to the steps now i'm here to tell you not in the theoretical but in the pragmatic from personal experience you can stay dry on two parts of the triangle i've done it you might even stay dry in one part of the triangle i have done that too but if you want to be happy joyous and free if you want to get free from the one person I could never get free from which is me and live in the one place I could never live which is right here right now I got to put all three parts into my life and I got to do it every day because this disease is so cunning it's so baffling it's powerful it's insidious and above all is patient. And you leave Alcoholics Anonymous when people are leaving AA. You don't know you're leaving. It's not like when you back up a truck and you hear beep, beep, beep, oh let me drive the other way. It's a drift. It's almost a glacial drift. And you wake up one morning you have no unity. You're not tethered to AA through service. you're not connected to your fellow alcoholics through service you're working a program of recovery you're part of that spiritual continuum being sponsored and sponsoring someone as Bill Wilson stood outside that hospital on his anniversary night and he had that vision of a chain of drunks around the world one drunk helping another and that's what I ask myself on a regular basis how strong is my link in the chain is as strong to the people that went ahead of me and more importantly as strong are the people coming behind me if someone comes to me today and says can I go to that place that you speak about can I know happiness and peace and serenity can I comprehend those words absolutely walk this journey with us because we do together what we can't do alone now the thing about those three parts of the triangle I remember one time I was in Las Vegas I don't gamble but I like to watch and they're playing high stakes Texas Hold'em maybe you've seen it on TV and the guy stood up and he got all his chips and he says I'm all in and I thought to myself what a great metaphor for Alcoholics Anonymous this is me I gotta be all in and I gotta do that I gotta get to be all-in every day I've tried the A hokey-cokey put your left foot in, put your left foot hard, put you left foot back in again I gotta get all in and I gotta all in every day but it's a small price to pay it's funny one of our speakers used to talk about he would use that analogy and it's so true I live in New York City and they got Sloan Kettering the cancer hospital if you went to that hospital and you said to those poor people in the terminal ward listen we have this program unity service and recovery you work 12 steps 12 traditions you follow these simple spiritual principles and you can be relieved of your terminal disease one day at a time they would beg you please take me with you but i the ego of the alcoholic i'll sit in aa with an equally terminal disease and i'll tell you what i'll do and more importantly I'll tell you what I won't do. I'll do this but I won'T do that. I'LL forgive him but I'm not forgiving her. I mean it's complete insanity and that's why I need to be a 22 year sober. I need TO BE ACTIVELY SPONSORED in Alcoholics Anonymous. I NEED TO BE ACCOUNTABLE TO SOMEONE ON A DAILY BASIS IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. I NEEED SOMEBODY BECAUSE THE TYPE alcoholic I am. This disease of mine is very subjective and I can't see the wood for the trees. I need someone standing outside my life who is not as emotionally attached to my life as I am who can say it may appear that way but that's not the way it is because it's so true that saying when I'm inside the jar I can'T read the label. I NEED someone standing OUTSIDE the jar who can say, Paul, you're not that person you think you are. You're a child of God. As Chuck Chamberlain would say, you're one of God's kids and you're growing along spiritual lines. I feel so blessed to be standing here at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll be quite honest with you, I never took sobriety for granted, but I took AA for granted. There's a meeting down the block three nights a week, what's the big deal? And you hang around AlcoholicsAnonymous and you learn a little bit about our history, perhaps go to one of our world conventions like last week and you'll learn how this magnificent reality of Alcoholics Anonymous, this miracle not only the 20th century and we're all miracles here in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I know we threw that word around in the Latin AA. Oh, I woke up this morning and I had a bagel. It was a miracle, you know? But I believe that word miracle cannot be understated in alcoholic synonymous. The definition I like best of miracle is a complete reversal or upheaval of the laws of nature. It's in my nature to be drunk right now, and I'm not. Now how did that happen? It didn't happen because of me. It happened because of you people. You did for me what I couldn't do for myself. And it's so much more than a miracle. I think it's mercy. And the definition of mercy that I like is entering into the chaos of another person's life. And in August of 1992, when everybody, and rightly so, was going this way, the only people coming this way was alcoholics and anonymous. And they carried this message. My message might not even keep me sober. they carry this message and what is the message of Alcoholics Anonymous when complete defeat through alcohol step one body won't let me drink mind won't Let Me Stop meets hope in human form step 12 recovery can and will begin that's been my experience and we stood I stood in that stadium last week in Atlanta there was probably 60,000 people at their Friday night meeting but when you take that all away, what does it come down to? As Dr. Bob said in that three-minute talk he gave in 1950 in Cleveland, it comes down to one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic. When you take it all away and you simmer it right down to its purest form, we have one alcoholic talking to other alcoholic. I had the good fortune to stand in Akron, Ohio on the actual day and the time that Bill Wilson first met our other co-founder, Dr. Bob. And what really moved me about that, and they literally set the scene so well, who's the archivist there in Akron, and she told like Dr. Bobby was so hungover that his 15-year-old son drove the car to this prearranged meeting at this gatehouse. Bill Wilson was six months sober working on this idea that he had. I wonder if I can stay sober by trying to help another person get sober. And he hadn't got any success in six months he had stayed sober himself but he hadn'T been able to and before he left Dr Silkworth, brilliant man, non-alcoholic said why don't you stick to the physical and stay away from the spiritual experience that you had and talk about the one two punch that puts every alcoholic on the ropes the allergy to alcohol wants to drink they can't start and the obsession with alcohol their body won't let them drink and the mind won't let them stop. So armed with this information Bill Wilson reached out to Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio and what really impressed me about that and it still does to this day about AA when Dr. Rob came in Bill Wilson didn't say you know I haven't drank in six months and you should do this and you should do this and you shouldn't do this. Bill Wilson says, I haven't drank in six months and this is what I did. Big difference there. I haven'T met an alcoholic yet that wants to be told what to do. We show by our experience and our strength and our hope and those two men started this thing. We're standing here this morning and we could pretty much trace this moment in time back to that moment in times. The great miracle of the 20 centuries because for thousands of years there was people like us couldn't fit in, took drink ran at life with drink ran away from life without drink we were society's first outcast and those two men started this and when you think about it it's almost incredible it's like building an aeroplane and learning to fly at the same time but don't get me wrong I believe in I believe this very much I know it's probably not so much here in this remote area but once we get to the main road I wouldn't have to knock on too many doors and I'll find someone drinking themselves to death right now totally oblivious to what's going on in here this morning and what I got from going to Atlanta last week is if you can't leave alcoholics in almost a better place at least leave it the same so the next guy or gal who's sitting drunk this morning has got somewhere to go because that's what happened to me in August of 1992 on the worst night of my life given that grace not to drink and I'm glad there was someone standing at the door with a firm handshake there was 12 steps on the walls 12 traditions on the wall and all I had to do was to step into this beautiful thing and get the life that my higher power always wanted me to have before drink took me down another road just in my own personal life I started drinking at 13 or 14 years of age in Northern Ireland the troubles were going on there like a low level civil war I was a working class Catholic from the wrong side of the tracks I said at Belfast and I took to drink some people talk about I just stepped right in within a few weeks of drinking I'm getting my stomach pumped out on school nights My parents didn't know what to do with me. I had a promising soccer career. That went out the window. George Brest, who was a famous world-class soccer player, lived a couple of neighborhoods over and all that stuff. Now, I would have told you. Now, he was a sort of a guy. Now, why do I tell you that? I loved soccer. I would've had like these posters, my bedroom wall with all my heroes. I lived it. I breathed it. I couldn't get enough of it. I took a drink. I don't think I kicked a soccer ball six times after that. Now, I would have told you for many years that I give up soccer. I didn't give it up. Alcohol took it. It took it from me. Alcohol will take that. I'm not going to stand up here this morning if you're new like some snake oil salesman and some traveling medicine show on Promising the Moon and the Stars. There's things that I lost through drinking, and they're not coming back. There's Things That You Lost Through Drinking, and They're Not Coming Back Either. But because of this program, we can live with ourselves today. who among us could live with the guilt and the shame and remorse of this disease if it wasn't for the 12 steps to alleviate that I found the hard way that we don't do this just because they're nice we do them for their necessary for recovery if I want to get physically and mentally and spiritually and emotionally rehabilitated I have to work this program I have tried every other way of getting the vital spiritual experience without doing the program some symbolic victories along the way but nothing of any permanence I tried to for whatever reason I don't know and I don' t care anymore I had this hole in my soul and I tried a fill with booze and people and places and things it would work for a while but everything would lose its shine very very quickly my life was character oh this is it no that's not it either oh no this is it no this stone in the shoe this over the rainbow type philosophy somewhere someday out there it's so true like alcoholism I was always looking for an outside fix for what's an inside job you get to AA within the first 30 days you find out that it starts within it was only when I started to start working on myself that these other things would fall into place. Alcohol just came into my life like a freight train. I was a daily drinker before I was out of my teens. I was morning drinking before I WAS OUT OF MY TEENS. My parents didn't know what the troubles were at their height. I remember one night my mother saying, and things were bad at this time. It was a school night. I WAS PROBABLY 15 OR 16. She goes, I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE YOU WERE. Her and my brother were looking for me. she goes I seen this figure in the distance getting up and falling getting up and falling she says I knew it was you and it just got worse and it got worse and it get worse but the good news is that sobriety is progressive too and as far now as you go with drink you can come back up and alcoholic synonymous alcoholic synomics didn't promise me the moon and the stars they didn't even tell me my life would get better they said you'll get better and chances are if you get better then the things around you will get better too so i said i run the gamut there i'm a guy who's running out of options in northern ireland a big this big chip on my shoulder i figure because of the troubles this working class catholic i can't get a break big chip of my shoulder in fact when i first came to a this guy says to me you know something, you're a well balanced guy I thought to myself finally somebody knows what's going on around here he said you've got a chip on both shoulders I hated everything, I hated everybody I could always find the needle in the hair stack and sit right on top of it so my life's falling apart but I'm an alcoholic, I don't want to look in I'm a finger pointer, I'm into the blame game accountability is not where I want to come from so my life's falling apart in Northern Ireland so what's alcoholics do we're famous for the geographical cure it's no coincidence I'm standing in America when our sex and there was a runner, a long distance runner somewhere someday the right relationship in the right town the right this so I come to my father you know typical alcoholic such a grandstander I said to my Father I said sit down I got some bad news for you he said what is it I said, I'm going to America. And don't try and talk me out of it. He says, talk you out of? It'll help you pack when you're leaving, you know. On you go, Columbus, you now. Let me give you some fatherly advice. Turn left at Greenland, you known. I washed up in a place called Rockaway Beach, New York. And you talk to the old-timers in New York City. They go, oh, Rockaway beach. because it's a big Irish American community to go, oh Rockaway Beach. It's not even people in there just regular folk to go oh Rockway Beach the Irish Riviera it should have been called Cirrusas by the Sea they had more alcoholics per square, I mean it's amazing how the alcoholic is we got this built in GPS system you could have blindfolded me and put me in a sack I'm going to find a neighbourhood that drinks as much if not more than the one I just left that's just the way we're wired you know and to make matters worse I get a job as a bartender now I'm using the word bar here in the loosest possible context I worked in a bar it was a super bar you got thrown into rolling out of you know this bar had it all alcoholics drug addicts degenerate gamblers and that was just the staff that wasn't even the customers you know I'll give you a mental picture and then I'll move on if you want to see a full set of teeth in this bar you needed 32 customers you know what I'm saying and that includes women maybe now and again like a glamour girl with three teeth would stumble into the place you know upset the whole ecosystem hey baby where have you been you know water finds its own level and so do alcoholics now fit it in like a glove there's now there was nobody saying it's 8 o'clock in the morning what are you doing with a drink in your hand and like Bill Wilson says in his story going down a ski jump I probably did in 5 years in New York but might have took 10 back in Ireland my brother is sober 5 years less than me and we were talking about it I said I really believe my mother and father through no fault of their own putting cushions underneath you here's 50 quid go up to the bar and drink like a gentleman where I went to New York there was nobody it was lights out five years bang face on the concrete and I experienced forms of drinking that I thought I would never do it I mean I've experienced every what I think every aspect of drinking I was a weekend drinker I was daily drinker I was a morning drinker I was binge drinker but the drinking that put my lights out I hope it's my last was 27 to 30 I became a periodic alcoholic and you know the equation the drunks would get longer in duration and the peer between them would get shorter and I would drink the worst years of my drinking this is an ironic fact about this disease the worst year of my drink 27 to 30 were after i made a firm conviction not to drink anymore the worst years i would do stuff like it says in chapter three taking oats making proclamations putting x's on calendars i'll stop for lent but you see back then i had nothing between me and the first drink and here's what happens to me the thought of a drink becomes the obsession to drink the classic definition an idea that crowds out all other ideas all I can say is drink nobody's beaten that I end up with a drink in my hand time and time and time again, and I mean horrendous drunks convulsions, seizures, round the clock drunks, locked up for a drink, strapped down to drink restraining sheets, another restraining sheet and I drink again and I think again and it's one more attempt at drinking followed by one more failure at not drinking followed by one more attempted drinking ad infinitum a child a five year old child could have come along and said don't get in the ring but don't in the rings means don't take a drink and I don't know how not to take the first drink so what do I do I do the epitaph of the alcoholic I do the doggerel of the drunk it'll be different this time and I get back in the rain I'll watch it it was her it was this it was that I take the first drink one drink because the thirst I can't quench one destined one drink destination unknown and I'm lying looking up at the lights one more time wondering how this happened again and this didn't happen once or twice this happened for three years I'm not a valiant man but he stretched the imagination I only ever had one bar fight I thought I did pretty good it was like a draw although most people thought she won and I'm not a violent man by any stretch of the imagination but if another man did to me what drink did to him he'd have killed him with my bare hands but I signed up for this time and time again those last three years and there's times that stick in your mind I remember one time I would go off the grid months at a time my poor mother in Ireland would talk to other people that she knew had relatives in New York and she'd be asking her embarrassing questions like would you ask your son if he has seen my son in Newark does he know anything about him I remember one time she tracked me down I'm living here's a guy that was going to make it big in America I'm living on a concrete floor in a basement of an apartment in the Bronx. It was a Christmas Eve. There's something about Christmas Eve in the life of alcoholics, you know? And there was a phone that took only incoming calls and she tracked me down and I picked up the phone and I remembered I had this huge abscess in my mouth and I got the money twice to go to the dentist and I drank it both times. And I'm on the phone and she says to me with the time difference between Europe and here, she says Paul I went to midnight and at mass tonight and I prayed for you I'm thinking to myself don't pray for me I'm beyond the beyond I ain't coming back I'm dumb but I'm not stupid and I'd like to tell you I walked outside and there was a light I'd love to tell what at some Frank Capra moment it's a wonderful life but I didn't because I had nothing between me and the first drink I didn' t know about the problem I sure didn't know what the solution or the process of going between one to the other. It was just me against the drink. Even something as emotional and moving as that, alcoholism will run right over the top of it. And I drank again because I got nothing between me and the first drink. And I drunk for another couple of years after. At bottoms to bottoms to buttons. But alcoholics are anonymous, believe me. And the sad thing about alcoholism. and I'm so glad of the Al-Anon representation here the sad thing about alcoholism by the time you're actually graveyard dead from this disease you've been emotionally and spiritually and mentally dead for years and anybody who mattered in your life is long, long gone they say go away and drink or go away don't drink but you must leave our lives we can't live this anymore and that's what was talked about last night by Debbie this Jacqueline Hyde of the alcoholic Robert Louis Stevenson was an alcoholic and I'm sure some of that book was semi-autobiographical but because of us down here on a Sunday morning sober, 22 years you can't get where I am today from where I came from without AA you just can't it's an impossible journey and I come here, I know how the movie goes but I wouldn't miss it I get a front row seat for the very best that humanity has to offer to see someone walking in on the worst night of their life I'm being given the grace not to drink and I don't know why we're sitting here I bartended, I told you for 17 years I seen, I don'T mean this out of false humility I seen better men than me good family men drink themselves to death before my very eyes I'm glad that AA is not a meritocracy by where your good deeds out there ensure that you have a place in here, you would have a different speaker this morning and I used to think oh we're the chosen ones and a friend of mine from Brooklyn says does that mean the guy on the barry this morning is unchosen God's grace is like the rain it falls on everybody I don't know why in August 20th 1992 that drop of rain fell on my face and I wanted not to drink just a little bit more than I wanted to drink and the guy down the block wiped it away and drank himself to death I don' t know I tell you what I do know there's two ways of stopping drinking if you hang around here long enough you can stop on this side of the grave or you can stop on the other side of the grave. Alcoholics Namas gives you the opportunity to decide which side ofthe grave you want to stop on because you will stop drinking one way or the other and that's why we have to give this thing away. We have to help another alcoholic. We haveto be in that spiritual chain. If I'm doing AA alone, I'm not doing AA. I'm doing something but it's not AA. There's a friend of mine who says it's BB. B. I said, what's BB? He said, I don't know but it's not AA. I'm here as a recipient of an old fashioned 12 step call in Alcoholics Anonymous. I love when I hear people tell their story even in a regular meeting and it goes down and it goes down and it goes down, and then there comes that moment, and then. And my ears go up like a German shepherd, because I know God's coming in the next sentence. And my and then moment, I was with this woman. I tell you, and the thing about this alcoholism, those last couple of years, where we just, the people in here from Al-Anon, we just... That's what we do. We squeeze and we squeeze until there's nothing left. And here's what happens to me. I'm a periodic alcoholic at this stage. And here is what happens to me, if you're new here this morning I almost went to the grave not knowing the difference between alcohol and alcoholism. A drinking problem is solved by not drinking. Our book gives two examples a medical reason, a romantic reason and those people can stop or moderate. But what about the real alcoholic? What separates us from those? I have alcoholism. And that's a horse of a different colour. It's mental, spiritual and emotional. And in my case, wrapped up in a body full of sick emotions. Childish emotions. I like to say sick emotions because it sounds good. They're really childish emotions. That is majesty the baby. Not drinking. For me, when I tried to stop drinking by myself, the minutes would feel like hours, the hours would feel like days and the days would feel like weeks. I'll give you one vignette that just sums up for me the difference between alcohol problem and alcoholism I came off a very bad drunk, I had an alcoholic seizure in a bar, I woke up on a restraining sheet now I've been on restraining sheets before and this woman who was close to me at this time in my life was at the bedside and eventually they took the restraining cuffs off, and they give me some librium to get me off the ceiling. And I took her hand, and I wasn't trying to be cinematic. I took her hand and I said, I don't know why I can't drink, but it's obvious I can drink. And that's it. I'm done. It's over. Finished. Put a line through it. There's a friend of mine says, Paul, if they'd have got a lie detector machine, you would have passed with flying colors. Because I meant that. Not at an intellectual level, at a visceral level. I'm done. It's over. And I left that hospital with a bit of a spring in my step, but I didn't have unity. I didn'T have service. I DIDN'T have recovery. I Didn'T know what the problem was. I DidN'T know what the solution was. One more time, it was me against alcohol. And here's what happens to me when I try to stop drinking without a fellowship and a program that allows me to find a higher power that helps me live with me on a daily basis here's what happens to me when I go toe-to-toe with this disease perhaps you can identify a week goes by I get this stone in my shoe I don't know where it came from but it's there all the time two weeks go by I get Thisknot in my stomach I don' t know where came from, but it is there all the time three weeks go by the top button of my shirt feels tight all the time a month goes by it feels like everybody's on my case even if they're not that's 30 days without a drink that's not a drinking problem that's a living sober problem and i left that hospital and 30 days later or thereabouts i was drinking again and nobody was any more confused than me our book says the alcoholic is the bewildered one i was drunken against my own will for goodness sake with the tears rolling down my face knowing where I was going to go knowing where i was going end up or perhaps worse and that bad drunk and here's what happened she's at work she breaks down crying at work and this woman who just started with the company says why is that woman crying oh she's got this on again off again boyfriend Irish guy bad drinker nobody's seen him for about a week, they might have to break the door down. My father's got this friend who's in this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you want me to get his number? Beyond the realm of human engineering, a phone call is made and a note comes under my door. I'm locked up in the apartment. I made Howard Hughes look like a social butterfly, you know? I'm locked up in the apartment here's a recipe for unhappiness I would lock myself up in the apartment and I'd play the saddest blues music that I could get my hands on and listen to stuff like BB King nobody loves me but my mother and she might be jiving me too that's right BB or the Allman Brothers the whipping post that's right yeah or my all-time favorite was the great Warren Zevon if you won't Believe me, I'll find somebody that will. You know what? These are the uplifting music that alcoholics listen to in their cups. So this note comes under the door and I picked it up and I'm drinking. I haven't eaten in about 10 or 11 days. I used to have seizures coming off drinking. Now I'm having them while I'm drinkin'. DT, the whole nine yards. I used see people going to work. I think Bill Wilson says about that maudlin depression just sittin' there at the kitchen table drinking bottles of gin. I'd see people going to work and coming home, and I wanted to be where they were, but I knew it was a bridge too far. But alcoholic synonymous has built that bridge back to life. This banished self-banishment, ostracized from life, had my face pressed up at the window of reality wondering, how do these people do it? What's wrong with me? what's wrong with me I must be insane a lunacy commission should be appointed as Bill Wilson says and I know come under my door and it said what I've been hearing since I was a kid you're nice guy but you drink too much and I picked up the phone which is totally uncharacteristic for me and I called a complete stranger I'm your Irish stoic don't tell nobody nothing keep your voice down the neighbors might hear that was my code of conduct but desperate times call for desperate measures and i picked up the phone i called a complete stranger who was praying that i might call and he says paul i said i can't stop drinking he says you can't start drinking because you're an alcoholic he said i'm going to come over to the house and help you me and another man and he said something very funny well not funny but ironic he says do you believe in god i think myself Oh, man, I've got Billy Graham coming over to the house now. I was going to say, can you pick me up a quart on the way over? But I guess that's out of the question. I grew up in North. Me and God had parted ways many years before. And it wasn't some top-of-the-mountain chart in Heston, MGM movie. It was that glacial drift again. You just let this go, and you let that go. I grew up in a time and a place where people literally shot each other outside the front door over who had the biggest God. We were burned out of our house in 73 by the opposing paramilitaries. I said, God? And people mentioned God. God? He never came down our street very often. I thought that was very slick and bohemian. But desperate times cost for desperate measures. I was a man in August of 1992. I was one without a plan. I was a guy who was out of options all my scorecards read zero he says Paul why don't you get down on your knees and me and this other guy is coming over and I got down on my hands and knees for the first time in probably 20 years with any degree of authenticity and I said the alcoholic prayer I've heard it many times and it was a hot August morning in New York but it was crying in the dark if there's anything out there please help me and I felt like someone walked up behind me and took a great weight off my shoulders. A sense of peace came over me that I've never experienced before or since. And the two men came to the door. I told them what I just told you. He says, Paul, you had a spiritual experience. It will get you sober. He said, I had one of those in a straitjacket in 1961 in Bellevue Hospital. It will keep you sober, but it won't keep you sober. We got to get you to alcoholic synonymous. There's people who have had those and drank themselves to death. And I realize that today. and our 12th step it says having had a spiritual awakening you know the key to success in AA it's not having the awakening it's staying awake because it's so easy to fall asleep and let this go and let that go, and those two men I was too sick to go to a meeting of AA but four days later I was strong enough to get into a car and get brought to a meeting, they bookended me in and brought me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in the last few minutes I'd like to tell you what happened I'd come into AA and took the ball and scored a touchdown but I came in here with old ideas I was sitting in alcoholic synonymous with bar room mentality that dog eat dog and I wouldn't do what's required I was going to meetings I was doing plenty of meetings service, I said I'm making more coffee than Juan Valdez are you kidding me service but I wouldn't do door number three I wouldn' t do recovery I was stoic I was walking around carrying two hefty bags full of garbage I was carrying stuff around the schoolyard for goodness sake and defended it and justified it and right if you know the life I had and if I go out and I stop somebody in the street and say no no oh Paul that's terrible but now they said Paul, you've got to let go. You've got to get free. You're going to get free. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. We sang about freedom. We marched in the streets for freedom. I wouldn't have known freedom if it had jumped up beside me. I'm free today. I'm as free as any time I've been in my life. It mightn't seem like much but to get on a plane in New York and fly to Montana, that's a freedom I never had before I came to AA. Alcohol was the common denominator in my life. Every decision I made was divided through drink at least once. I don't care if it's going from here to the door. Is there enough drink to get me there? Enough when I get there? Enough to get my back? And when you live your life as we do, under those parameters, your life gets smaller and smaller and small with less people in it. You're sitting where I was, sitting in an apartment, drinking round the clock against my own will. Bill Wilson sums it up better than anybody I ever heard. quicksand stretched all around him and no matter which way you turn there's nowhere to go and all the stories have been told and all those songs have been sang and it's over and we're the last ones to find out I come in to Essendon with those old thinking that you can fool them at 7.30 at the coffee pot, I've done it how's it going Paul? It's going great you know when alcoholism comes to visit me 2 o'clock in the morning anybody home? could'ves, should'ves would'ves guilt shame remorse I'm lying there awake cringing in the dark a guy come up to me I had a sponsor but it was name only a guy came up to him in a meeting one night he says Paul can I talk to you he says you're dying and you're down in AA and the help is right on the wall he says you're like a starving man at a spiritual banquet all this food's an offer and you over here living in bread and water keep nobody at arm's length with your glib one liners he had my number he had my number my life was, I tell you something this disease goes on I don't care if you're not drinking I came into AA, I didn't owe very much money within two and a half years I was thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt and I know why today still trying to fill the hole in my soul maxing out my credit cards go to the Caribbean, I feel good for a week, always end up back at that the same equation if one of our speakers says, me on me. I can't get me off of me. I'm shackled to self. I had a bottom of two and a half years sober. I'm driving out of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Guy cuts me off. Oh really? I go after him. I don't care who's driving the other car. Could have been Tony Soprano. I didn't care. I know they go on his expressway. We're talking five lanes. I jammed this guy against the guardrail. This is two and a half years off drink. I got out of the car. There's an Asian man sitting behind the wheel shaking. His wife's crying, and his three kids are crying in the back. I was disgusted with myself. I apologized profusely. I get back in the car, I hit my head off the steering wheel. I said, I'm crazy off drink that I was on it. I drove to my sponsor's house in name only, and I said to him, I told him what I just told you and he sat back and he goes how old were you when this happened I said are you listening to me it's happened 20 minutes ago what do you mean how old was I this is why I'm getting nowhere, you're not listening to what I'm saying he said I'll ask you again how old, and I got it Harry T about the shrink that helped Bill Wilson coined that phrase, his majesty the baby I want what I want and I want it right now I'm trying to put square blocks in round holes. I'm full of untreated alcoholism. Sitting in AA. Dying in AA Against my better judgment, which is everything that's helped me in AA has been against my better judgment I put pen to paper and I did something I thought I wouldn't do before I get into the causes and effects of my drinking that old hour of stinking. I am not going to go into the whole ins and outs of it. I put pen to paper. I put stuff down on paper I thought I would never put down because I wanted to get free. I wanted to have what you had. It's a program of attraction, not promotion. And I put this stuff down in paper and I'd like to tell you I did it nice and quickly but I dragged that out too. I'm such an alcoholic. I fought this footstep for so long. I thought they want me to do a footstep. I ain't going to do the best footstep that anybody's ever done in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous I wanted my sponsor to stand up to me and go I just want the group to know that Paul who I am honored to call my sponsee recently presented me with the Hamlet of Four Steps it was a rollercoaster I cried, I laughed, I cried two thumbs way up you know I want a newcomer to come to me and go are you the guy with that fourth step that everybody talks about. And I'd be like, yes I am, and yes I did. It really didn't take that long either, you know. There's no one trick ponies around here to 12-step program. All 12 steps are equally important. They all have their importance. I put this stuff down, I told this stuff things I thought I was bringing to my grave. Now, I'm going to tell you, the steps of alcoholic synonymous, you think, oh well, I'll learn about me and I'll talk about me you know when my life caught on fire it's good to get a full knowledge your condition going through those steps but you know what my life called on fire you know my life took all new meaning when I turned around and I took another man through the steps that's when great events came to pass in my life that's where this whole program came full circle when you're sitting there with somebody else and even I was talking to my sponsor last week this way this thing works and I needed some advice from him and I knew what he was going to tell me but I need to hear it from him that's how this thing works he tells it to me and it completes that spiritual circuit up here it's all jibber-gabish it's untreated alcoholism it's so subjective I need the help I need it to hear from another person and I'd like to tell you my life has gotten much better this last, you know I've had a wonderful life here now AA. I went through a divorce at 20 years sober, really shook me up and if I got through it one day at a time, thank God. I suffered from a lot of things in AA. I got a lot of defects but thank God one of them isn't pride or ego. I put my hand up. I'm 20 years sober and I'm going through the ringer. It's been my experience. I've met a lot of great men in AA but none of them are telepathic. The squeaky wheel gets the oil you gotta let somebody know what spiritual time it is in your in your day and thank god i did that i realized early if i try to navigate my way out of this this labyrinth i'm a beaten docket i need you and you need me and that's okay by me i have a got a daughter in aa i come in dead in a high school diploma 32 years of age two and a half years so i'm back to school I said, I'm a sponsor. I can't do this. He says, Paul, how do we do things around here? One day at a time. What if I fail a class? You'll take it again. Nothing beats you failing but a try. All we ask you to do is try. I love school. Got a degree. Got another degree. Two graduate degrees. When I first started teaching, I wanted to teach the brightest of the bright. I did that. Got in other plans. Now I work in special education with children. And I need that to be constantly reminded. I work with kids who will not graduate. terminally ill and that keeps me out of self to see these kids and the courage they have i go to their homes and visit them one-on-one for the new york city board of ed as i said you can't get where i am today from where i came from but life goes on i thought i come into a and i walk between the raindrops it's a daily reprieve i'll give you one story i'll end on how i realized this like that. I was about 14 or 15 years sober, I was still married at the time we were moving house and I was going to be in the house, all I did was give the keys over and get the phone disconnected. All that was in the apartment was a blow-up mattress so I was there by myself and in the middle of the night I had a heart attack. Now I'm here to tell you something, if you're going to have a heart attack do not have it on a blow up mattress I'm rolling back and forth like a boat of fish and there's like a phone next to me but I'm such an alcoholic I want to see what I look like so I crawl down to the bathroom and I pull myself, I say jeez I look terrible and I slid back down again and then I go to the phone I call the ambulance they bring me to the local hospital in Rockaway they're like oh no you got to bring him to north shore hospital long island jewish it's called they got a 24-hour team on standby so they bring me there and they got this crash team waiting and they ask all these questions on a scale of one to ten what's the pain like have you got anybody here with you family dependent we see a cross around your neck are you a catholic i'm like why is it better than jewish typical typical alcoholic want to keep all my options open, you know. Oy vey, can you believe this is happening to me? So I'm on the table and I flatline on the table. It turned out I had this problem from birth that I didn't know about. I flatlined on the cable. I'm dead for about three minutes. I had the whole after death experience. Now why am I telling you this? They brought me back to life. Put some hardware in to make sure it didn't happen again. And I'm leaving the hospital and I'm telling anybody that will listen, you're looking at the new me. With the AA experience and this after-death experience, I'm not going to get annoyed in traffic anymore. I'm no longer going to be annoyed I'm never going to go to the supermarket anymore. And sure enough, for about a week, I was like the Dalai Lama of Long Island. Somebody had cut me off, I'd be like, peace with you my brother. I'm in no hurry, I'm an eternity. I've been to the other side this is not all that important you miss a few meetings you don't talk to your sponsor and even something as deep and profound as that, alcoholism will roll right out of the top of it so that tells me what I need to hear I'm saying this for myself as much for anybody else I needto be a part of Alcoholics Namas I gotta be right in the middle of AA I don't want to be out in the margins I want to go right inthe middle of Tribalong it's been a wonderful weekend I want to leave you on a few words of a place of my birth that sums up how I feel about you and I feel about Alcoholics Anonymous this is the Irish blessing may the road rise to meet you may the wind be always at your back may the sun shine warm upon your face the rains fall soft upon your feels and until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of his hand thank you very much Thank you.