The Vital Sixth Sense of Sobriety – Kenny D.

Thank you everybody. My name is Kenny and I'm an alcoholic. I actually am a fisherman, but most of my fishing has been up in Seattle, Washington, by the way. Most of my fishing has been up in Seattle, and most of the operations that I'm involved with are in Alaska. And they don't have too many red snapper in Alaska, so I just wanted to let you know that I're not even sure I'd know a red snaipper if I saw one. But I have caught a lot of fish larger than 64 1⁄2 pounds. uh i'm exceedingly happy to be here this morning i'm i'm uh incredibly grateful to the serenity by the sea conference for getting in touch with me for asking me to to come and be here and for treating me so special and for my wife shannon came down with me and she was she's a little choosy about the the conferences that we come to i get asked to speak here and there and And sometimes we'll do a little Tri-Cities deal or something. Not so much the OMAC winter roundup. No, Kenny, I'm busy. The dogs, you know, I'll stay home for that. We went over to Honolulu, Hawaii this year. Oh, yeah, yeah. Kenny,I think I can make that one. Destin, Florida. She looks it up on the Internet. No, I think I can get my mom to come take care of the dogs. I think we should be able to work that one out. So we've had a fantastic time. My wife Shannon was raised in Los Angeles, and I've had her kind of sequestered up in Seattle for – we've been married 15 years. We've been together for 17 years, and all of them happy, and just we've got a really great relationship. But so it's nice. You got my wife out into the sunshine and the beautiful white beaches, and I thank you for that. I want to thank Chris for asking me to come and share here especially, and particularly I want a thank my host, Clint, for being so kind and picking me up. And Clint's a seafarer as well. I did start out in the fishing business going to sea, So we had a lot in common immediately, and we've shared. And once in a while you run across these people in AA that you just know that this will be a lifelong friend, and I know that's going to be the way it will be with Clint and his wife Linda. And I got to know a little about his story, and it's really – I gotto see him stand up here today. His daughters, two of his daughters are here today for the talk and to see their father. And it's just so amazing how we bring families together here. And it just brought me to tears to see Clint up with his daughters, and I know how special that is. So it's great that you guys are here this morning. So I want to get a couple of things kind of off my mind here first. And I want to be really clear that I've been the recipient of incredible kindness in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've ben the recipient unbounding love. i'm a person that has uh seen so many incredible uh if i was to make a top 10 list of all of the most loving and kind and considerate stories i i've i've know of they would all be stories from alcoholics anonymous it's it's really amazing and one of the things that's come to mind for me recently are just these things, this love and tolerance of others is our code. It's a line I really, it's been hitting home with me a lot lately in Alcoholics Anonymous, how important it is when the new people come into the room that we realize this spiritual potential. And I guarantee you, I'll talk about this in a minute, but I'll guarantee you that the day I got sober there wasn't anybody thinking, and I think we'll bring this guy down to Destin, Florida and have him be our Sunday morning spiritual speaker. There's this piece that says, out of our big book, I brought my big book up with me this morning, and I always do that when I talk. Some of the things, you know, I may quote a couple things from the book, But I'm probably not going to, you can rest assured I'm not going to open my book and start reading the book to you this morning. But this idea that it says most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints and respect for their opinions are attitudes which make us more useful It means the more open-minded I become, the more useful I am to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's been really important to me. I bring my big book up because there was actually a time in my sobriety when the message was, Kenny, we're going to a meeting and you're not to share. that we want you to sit and listen. We're going to go, and you're not going to be talking today. And there's a reason for that. It's because my story in the beginning was what it was like, what it wasn't, what it looked like, and what it looks like story. And it would just never end. It was these poor people that had to listen to that stuff. I would just go on and on and then I would be, well then I got into treatment and they're thinking well finally my God and then it would come and then I drank the day I got out of treatment and thenI was back and I was worse than ever and theni was in jail and then i was in this institution and there's just but it never and finally as a result in early sobriety really of and I gotta be a little a little bit careful after our speaker last night of choosing my words wisely because I used to say and I will continue to say this It's really tongue-in-cheek, but I fell into the loving arms of a group of men that hand-carried me through this big book. And that is the truth of it. You know, I was a person that was not going to get well in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the nice thing is I have a part of my story today that's the what happened part, that I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps having been hand-carried through this program by a group of men that read this book to me word for word. And they read every word out of this book to me and everywhere there was something that I didn't understand we looked it up in the dictionary and we read paragraph by paragraph and it wasn't a study, it was a do. They shared their experiences with me and I've always been so grateful for that that I have that. I have this what happened part of my story and what it's like now. I've been sober since June the 8th of 1989. I've had 24 years of sobriety in June. I've Been Married, as I told you, and with Shannon for 17 of those years. I have a daughter who's 21 years old that came to live with Shannon and I when she was 5. We raised her together. She's 21. She's never seen me take a drink. Some of the stories that I would tell you But from her perspective, she's come and heard me share my story several times. And from her prospective it's always this, yeah dad I know, I know. But it's like the story of the guy who tells his kids about how he walked uphill to school both ways in the snow. And they could barely afford shoes. She's like, I don't know, dad drinking is too much, it's not good. And the drug's bad, bad, and bad. and, yeah, Dad, we know, we know. But she doesn't really get it. She doesn't really get it because the person that she knows is a different man than the person that came to Alcoholics Anonymous. She knows it's true but she just doesn't understand how it could possibly be the same person. She's been with me 21 of those 24 years and she will tell you today that she's told me several times over the last few years, Dad you really are becoming a more calm person you've got a your your your you are calming down and i'm a person that got to alcoholics anonymous and i had to find a way to calm down or else and it might seem impossible for you to to believe but i had periods in early sobriety where i went 10 days without sleeping sober that's what was going on in my mind when i got here i would stay awake all night long and walk the streets and eat sugar. Probably part of that was, you know, the quadruple lattes. Thank God they didn't have all these rock stars and all that stuff then. And to this day I never have drank one of those kind of energy drinks. But had I been in early sobriety I'm sure I'd have been all over those things by the case. So, I just feel compelled to share a few of those things with you about the kindness and the love that I received here in Alcoholics Anonymous and how important that is that when the new person comes in that we realize that these people have had the crap kicked out of them and it makes a difference in the way that we treat these people and that I should reciprocate that kind of love to the new people that come into my life today. So I think I have become a kinder and more gentle person the longer I've been sober. This kindness and love that I talk about, it didn't always feel like kindness and love to me. It felt like sometimes I was being attacked or that this stuff was being forced down my throat. And one of my mentors would say, Kenny, you know, you might not want to do these things. I didn't want to go to the stores that I shoplifted and pay the money back and make those amends. I didn'T want to GO TO PEOPLE THAT I OWE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO AND TELL THEM HERE I AM AND COME UP WITH THE MONEY AND GIVE THEM THAT MONEY. I DIDN'T WANT TO REVEAL EVERYTHING IN MY FIFTH STEP. And tell me from the beginning that, you know, I know that you've spent a lot of time writing this inventory. But I also know that there's a few things that you didn't put down. And I'm not going to leave you alone, but I'm going to leaving you here with God so that you can write those things on a piece of paper or take it to the grave list. And when we're all done here today, I'm going to ask you to read those things to me. There's a piece in the 10th step and it's, you know, the 10st step in the big book is so profound that it has this piece that says, you count the number of times they use the words intuition, intuitive thought, the inspiration. He even goes further and calls it the sixth sense. He calls it the vital sixth sense Vital means life-giving. Either we find this or we drink. The doctor's opinion is really clear that unless we find the ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a few drinks we'll be restless, irritable, and discontent. that I need to find that ease and comfort in sobriety that I once found in the drink, or else I'll drink again. That comes through this inspiration, this God connection, they say in the big book our more religious members call it God consciousness, this awareness of some presence larger than myself. And the vital sixth sense, the thing that I think about, I think of the mother. When the mother's at the sink and the kid walks behind the mother, the mother doesn't even see the kid, but the mother says, uh-uh, hang on here, what's going on? And I had the fortune of, I'm so happy I got sober when I got sober and I'm happy I get sober with the people I got sober with because they had this awareness this there was that vital sixth sense this understanding of kenny i know you're holding something back and i'm going to leave the room for a while and i am going to let you sit here with god for about 20 minutes and i will come back and we are going to read those things when we are done so i was able to do a fifth step withholding nothing i didn't want to do that but the message was that kenny this is going to be like a mother's kiss compared to what the booze and drugs are going do to you and i knew that was true. It wasn't always easy, it wasn't always easy to accept but there was something I just inherently knew that this was the last stop in the road for me. So I got, I was raised in Seattle. I'll tell you a little bit about my story. I was raising in Seattle, I was raised in an alcoholic home. My stepfather, who I was raised with, died on the streets of Seattle homeless, was a terrible, terrible alcoholic and never got sober. And I saw him struggle through my entire youth. Saw him in delirium tremens. I saw the effects of alcohol. I see him screaming out in terror. I seen him with violent shakes, those kinds of, um, uh, my mom got sober. She's been sober now about 40 years. Um, so, you know, I came from this home and in early, uh... I started drinking when I was about 12 years old. I started drinking much before that, but 12 was about the time, the first time that I ever remember where I intentionally went out to get my hands on as much booze as I possibly we could. And there were some things going on in my life as a child, and I think one of the speakers said earlier that it doesn't really matter. This didn't make me an alcoholic. I shared a bedroom with my brother who is an amazing man, and he's not an alcoholic, and he slept in the same bedroom as I did when we were growing up. So this isn't what made me an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, I sometimes think it's harder for other people coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and I think it is important to recognize that sometimes that it is harder when people, and a couple of my favorite speakers are this way and I have sponsored, I got a chance to watch a lot of men make their bed and walk again. I have had a chance To sponsor a lot Of people in Alcoholics They had everything that they were disposed of. They came from a good family. They had good mothers and fathers. And sometimes it's harder for them because I had the ability, I had something to blame all this stuff on. I didn't know that it didn't have anything to do with that until I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. But when you come from one of these other families, it can be really difficult because you're like, I shouldn't be like this. I shouldn'T think like this . . . Why am I like this? So it doesn't really matter where you come from. This is just my story. My house was the house where there was a big party. We actually moved to a new house so that my parents could be closer to their favorite bar. That's the truth of why we moved there. I don't know if that was why, but they were definitely the most excited about that. That they could now just walk up the street to Don and Isla's, which was the local tavern, and they would stay there until the tavern closed about 2 o'clock in the morning and then the party would come to our house and it would be just this wild scene. The police would come. There was violence. I would wake up in the morning. We'd just moved to this new house. It was a brand new junior high school. I would awake up inthe morning. I was still wet in my bed as a kid. I would be covered with urine. I didn't have any clean clothes I didn' t know about personal hygiene so I didn''t brush my teeth or comb my hair take a shower I just towel dried myself off the best I could I picked through the clothes that were on the ground tried to find the cleanest clothes and I would go to school that way to this new school and I was considered a bit of a freak and then I had this other deal that wasn' t well appreciated which was that I had these deals I don't like the term drug of choice because for me alcohol was the drug of no choice it didn't matter I had no choice over alcohol if it was rent money, if it were your rent money it didn' t matter it was the drug of not choice but if there was a drug of choise my first drug of chouse was called lack of oxygen to the brain and what that meant was I would choke myself as a kid until I would find this euphoria and I would let go just a second before I was going to pass out and I would just be in this daze and the old man could be yelling at me and just nothing mattered. So I was a stinky, kind of urine-soaked kid with this long, greasy hair and then I would choke myself and stagger around. I'm glad you find this humorous. But my popularity waned a little bit in junior high as a result of that. But this is what I did. I got my hands on some booze. There was a hippie that lived next door. This was the early 1970s, and there was a hippie that lived nextdoor to us, and he was a really good hippie, so he did the proper thing. Once a year, he would mow his lawn. My brother and I got to do that. It would be about three feet tall, and we'd go over and cut all his grass down. And then when we were done, you know, it was like a two-day affair when we were done. He would give us money. And so we went over to him and we said, listen, we'd like you to consider rather than giving us money if you could buy us some alcohol. And being a good hippie in 1972, he thought, you know, he was more than happy to buy alcohol for 12-year-olds. So he said, yeah, sure, but what kind of alcohol do you want? Well, at my house there was always a gallon jug of Gallo wine on the table. And there was plenty more where that came from. That was just the staple. There was a gallon mug of this Gallo line. So I said, well, we'd like wine. And he said. Well, what kind o' wine do you wan? And I said, I just kind of, you know, I think I already had that peculiar mental twist going because my answer to him was, I kind of thought, what do you mean? I said we're concerned with volume. You know, we want as much wine as you can get with the amount of money that you have. so he did the right thing and he said, okay, I got you I know where you guys are coming from and he left and he came back and he had two grocery sacks and in those sacks were five fifths which are the big bottles of MD-2020 and I like to tell that story just for that reaction right there because I could end this story I think I could End This Story right there, it'd be just fine. But this started a pattern in my life and I drank that. I got my hands on that alcohol. I drank it as fast as I could. I drink as much as I could. Even the other young kids that we'd invited down to the schoolyard to drink this wine with us were saying, hey, I think there's something wrong here. You should not drink this much. They had no idea, but they just knew inherently there was something wrong with Kenny's drinking, and I got, you know, I was this real introverted kid because of all these things that were going on. I didn't talk to anybody. I was frightened to death, but once I had that wine in me, and that was something that went well into my drinking, was I always knew if I drank a bottle of cheap wine down really fast, I would get that warm feeling, able to catch my That day there was a gal at the school that I kind of liked and she was cutting through the schoolyard that night on her way home and I just ran down this hill and professed my love to her, tackled her to the ground and tried to force her to give me a kiss and that was as good as my drinking ever got And that's the truth I always drank as much as I could, as fast as I could. Years later, things progressed for me very, very quickly. Our home was a broken home. I ended up in foster homes and group homes and institutions. I turned to a life of crime to support a drug habit. Ended up arrested and in jail. and never made it to high school. You know, there were a couple of things along the way. John mentioned I was a fisherman, and that's, you know, I took a job as a fisherman when I was 17 years old. I made my first trip to Alaska, and I got on a fishing boat, and I just loved these guys. You know, they were just incredible people. And it was the first time in my life I'd been around real men who worked hard and they took me under their wing and they taught me how to work and they talked me some skills and I really excelled. In those days, it was really the wild, wild west in Alaska. Today, I'm still in that business and I manage a fleet of vessels and we've got a couple hundred guys working for us. And, you know, it's a really – but it's whole different fishery now. Every boat before you go out, the Coast Guard comes down and does an inspection. You have to have certificates that show that everybody on the boats passed a drug test. It's a whole different deal. But there was none of that shenanigans when I was – And so everybody on The Boat was drinking and doing drugs. And we didn't like work hard and play hard. We played hard while we were working. And doing dangerous work completely out of our minds. And the guys that I worked with on the boat were doing the same thing, but they knew that there was an intensity to Kenny's drinking that bothered them. And it scared them. And those guys put me through treatment twice. Paid for my treatment and put me Through Treatment twice before they fired me. In the last three years of my drinking, I'm so enamored and in love with Bill Wilson and his story and his writing abilities. When I was taken through the book and I looked at Bill's story, he said I'd written lots of sweet promises. This time I met my wife happily observed that this time I'm in business. That means his wife, this person who was probably his greatest doubter at that time. But this time she realized something was different about Bill. He really meant it this time. There was some kind of a shift or a change in Bill that he meant. And then he writes that heartbreaking line that shortly thereafter I came home drunk. And I knew what that meant. I knew What That Meant. I knew what he meant by it. Then he went back, and that was his self-will. And then he said, okay, well, he went black, and he learned all about this. Certainly this was the answer, self-knowledge. And I'd been there. I'd gone to the treatment centers and learned all About Alcoholism and knew all kinds of things and had all kinds Of intellectual concepts, and I knew everything. And then He says, you know, how could this have happened? And he's off drinking again. And then his last deal that he tried was the fear sobered me for a bit. Trembling, you know, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered my for a little bit and I understood that. But I came to understand that self-will and self-knowledge and fear will never keep me sober. I knew that. I tried all those things. The fear that God, I don't want to go through that deal of... before I got sober I was 28 years old I was living in the back of my mother's house and you know I had overdosed in her bathroom and tore the shower curtains and everything off the wall I was yellow these guys would beat me up in a bar and I'd have surgery on my left eye I was just a total wreck and I can tell you that story but then I can think about you know that mind of the alcoholic that at some time I won't be able to recall that and if I do it's going to be vague as if it happened to somebody else and the thing that I will recall is that when I drink a bottle of wine down real fast whew I'll remember that it's the mind of the alcoholic and that there was an answer for that there was a solution So the last few days of my drinking, there's a part in the big book I'd lost everything worth. If we have this obsession that drives us, and that's the way it was for me. I had an obsession that I would somehow be able to put the right combination in. If I got the right composition of the right drugs and the right amount of booze and everything was just right, just for a minute, I would be able to take one deep breath. And from there, I was going to be able TO get sober. I just thought if I could just get to that spot for a MINUTE, I'll be able To stop. And that type of obsession, I lost all things worthwhile in life. I ended up behind, there was a McDonald's down in Seattle. and next door to the McDonald's was a little store and a couple of things and there was a place called the Baranoff Tavern which is still there. The McDonald's just recently was tore down and the Baratov Tavern was there and the Barranoff Cavern is a Viking bar in Seattle which means that's where all the Norwegian fishermen go to drink so I kind of knew the area a little bit and the McDonalds, if you walk by the front it was a facade but if you walked around behind there was a space about six feet between those two buildings with some bushes and I would be I was I'd crawled back in there I built a little cardboard lean to so people even if they got back in there they couldn't see exactly what was going on and you know there was I would hear these these I could hear the people from the drive-through and I would it was the real kind of a nerve-wracking way to live because I could hear all this noise of the world going on from in my little box and and i would hear people come in and say i'd like number three supersized with the diet coke and i thought they were saying somebody called the fbi there's a freak back here shooting coke so it was really it was a nerve-wracking way to live But, you know, Bill Wilson writes about those final days of drinking. And we're so lucky to have this rich literature here in Alcoholics Anonymous. After I was taken through the steps, a really wise man suggested that I... He wanted me to go back and read the big book, but he wanted me to read it like I was reading poetry. He said, you've got to find a way to spiritually blow through that. People say, read the black and white. He wanted us to read the book and he wanted us to spiritually blow through that. What is the essence of what's being said here? And we're so fortunate that we had Bill Wilson holding the pen and somebody that was so eloquent the great fact is just this and nothing less that I've had deep and effective spiritual experiences that have revolutionized my entire attitude and outlook upon life the person that wrote The Pitiful and Incomprehensible Demoralization the guy that wrote The Four Horsemen Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand but in the final moment this person who was so eloquent wrote the way it was for me at the end behind that McDonald's and Bill's holding a pen and he writes no words can tell Somehow I had a friend that was going to an A.A. hall Out in back of this McDonald's It was a strip mall And out behind there It was kind of a horseshoe shaped parking lot behind And there were some decks And one of these was an AA hall in Seattle called Fremont Fellowship. I could see the people out on the back deck sometimes laughing and having a good time. And this friend of mine who I'd actually, that neighborhood where I lived, his family actually took me in for a year. I lived with his family. They saw there was trouble in my home, and they took me. So they were like family to me. And he was going to AA meetings at that hall. So I thought, well, if I could just get out from behind here and if I can get into that meeting, my friend Don's going to give me a place to stay for the night. That was the best hope that I had when I came to you was that somebody would let me stay in their house and that he would nurse me back to health which he'd done several times I came into Alcoholics Anonymous on a Thursday night on June 8th of 1989 it was an 8 o'clock meeting I don't know what kind of spiritual help I received that allowed me to get out from behind at McDonald's and walk around the corner and walk in the front door of that hall, but I did. I was emaciated. I was filthy dirty. I had zero minutes of sobriety. I had no shoes on my feet. I had a pair of jeans that were filthy. My shoes were in a bag that I was carrying in my hand because my feet had abscessed and I couldn't get my shoes on anymore because my feets were sore. and i sat through the meeting my friend didn't show up i don't know if i thought he lived there at the hall or what but he wasn't at the meeting and something happened to me that i didn't expect and uh the meeting started wrapping up and i was sitting in my chair and i just started crying in this a meeting big alligator tears and i think back and i I just think like, you know, when I think about that, when I cry now, there's something attached to it. And then I knew I was crying, but it was empty, just hollow. I could have been sitting there not crying. I could Have been laughing. It didn't matter. There was nothing left. It was just totally empty and these tears were streaming down my cheeks. And I like to say that I learned about giving from experts in Alcoholics Anonymous. a man who was to become my sponsor came up to me after the meeting. He was the secretary of the meeting that night. Came up after the meet and said, hey, my friends and I have been talking and if you'd be willing to go to detox, we'd be happy to give you a ride down there. As a matter of fact, he said, we've already made a few phone calls and they got a bed for you. So I thought, well, how in the hell do these guys know that I need to go to detox? And then I thought well, you know, I got kind of a busy social calendar and you know how long is this going to take and uh but i knew the answer you know it was it was yeah i'll go it's no big deal and that intuitive thought that inspiration didn't take me to seattle detox they took me up to everett which is one city just north of seattle not very far but it was this divinely inspired deal that they tookme there because if i think they'd have taken me to downtown i would have just maybe walked out the door but once i was up in everett and they got my clothes away from me and i was in my pajamas, you know, thoughts of suicide were running through my head and I thought well I'll just hang myself here in this detox and I couldn't find anywhere to attach a sheet because they designed these rooms for people like me. And just the idea of trying to argue with these people to get my clothes back, I just didn't have any game left. To argue with them to give me my clothes back and have to go through the guy. And then he's going to bring in second base and third base. And these guys are going to try to convince me to stay. And I knew the whole deal, what an effort it was going to take just to get my clothes back. And Then I was going have to try and figure out how I was gonna get bus money. I didn't even know how to catch a bus from Everett to Seattle. But how I was gonna try to get bus money, hustle that up to try get to Seattle, to try tell, con somebody and try to what kind of a packalize am I gonna have to come up with to get somebody to help me to get well, and I just didn't have it in me. So I got my first five days of sobriety at the Evergreen Manor Detox in Everett, Washington. Al, the guy that took me there that night, picked me up after five days, and he owned a little car lot down on Highway 99 in Seattle. And this was a little dirt lot, you know, maybe had a dozen cars for sale, and there was a literal apartment that he'd fixed up in the back, and he let me stay there in that apartment. Every day he would come by, and every day for six months, Al would come seven days a week before I ever remember missing a day. Al would comes and knock on the window and wake me up, and he would take me up to Jack in the Box and buy me a breakfast jack and a cup of coffee and talk to me about Alcoholics Anonymous. And Al was the first man I ever prayed with in my entire life. I was 28 when I came to AA. I started in on this path of working the steps. There was a group of people that were working out of the big book. They found me hanging out at Fremont Hall. They would do what's called troll in the bottom. And they would come by and look for the face of hopelessness. And there they found me. And they told me that this guy Frankie called it special education AA. What that meant was that a guy like me wasn't going to get the solution hanging out in the meetings. And there was a difference between being... I mean, if you want to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a great thing. There's only one requirement. And I tend to like the short version of the third tradition. The only requirement is the desire to stop drinking. But if you don't want to drink, if you're going to want recovery from alcoholism, you're gonna have to get to work and there's some things you got to do. There's a difference between being in the meeting and in the solution. If you think you're in the solution because you're in the meeting, you're not. That was a great message for me. It was a huge gift. And these guys were going to be doing this deal. There was a guy that was one day sober longer than I was. I was actually, excuse me, I was one day sober long time ago. Longer than Patrick. And Al was his sponsor as well. And Patrick actually started going down to this workshop. And I thought, well, you know, I got to get down there. You know,I'm one day sober longer than him and he's kind of relying on me quite a bit here. I better get down here and make sure they're doing it right. And I'd been to treatment quite a few times. So I started going down to the workshop and some really miraculous things started happening in that workshop. You know I started reading a book from this place that I talked about. I started realizing that this book was meant for people That couldn't stop drinking That had no answer People that were this chronic type This hopeless type This type whom all other methods had failed And there was something there for me And besides the people that were doing the workshop They were so full of life and so happy There was just this camaraderie And I just really felt at home with these guys And we got close to being able to do our, we got up to the third step prayer. And there was a guy coming to town that was doing a little retreat up in the mountains. He was a guys from California. Everybody thought, well, geez, let's go up to this retreat, the whole workshop, go upto the retreat. And when we're up there, we'll do our third step pray together as a group at this retreat. and patrick and i thought patrick had called a couple nights he called down to the car lot he was staying in a little boarding room right up the street had a little basement room in a house and uh i was i really was i was always had a little game i could always get a um find some place to stay or some girl that would let me stay at their house or some uh person you know i was really homeless just for a few minutes at the end but patrick was a guy that was right off the skids and had been for a long time and he had this little uh room and he called me one night and said hey you know after we were talking about god and the third step he said i had this wild experience i was laying on my bed and i felt like all of this energy just was coming out of my body and I just felt like I was completely purged of all this stuff. And I just, you know, felt totally light. And I thought, well, Patrick, you know, that sounds a little funny to me. You know, something must be going on here. And we got to talking and we decided that I said, well Patrick, did you drink the coffee at the workshop? And he said, yeah, I did drink the coffee. And I said well Patrick I didn't drink the coffee and I didn' t have any such experience. And so clearly what we have on our hands, we have this group. It's a cult that exists, must be a cult that exists within Alcoholics Anonymous. And we're going down there and these guys are putting drugs in the coffee. And eventually they're going to be after all our worldly possessions. Yeah, Patrick's at the boarding house and I'm at my sponsor's car lot. But, you know, the amazing thing about that is there is some tongue-in-cheek about that, but that's a true story, and I honestly believed with every fiber of my being that this might be what I'd gotten involved with. You know, I was completely out of my mind. And I would go to the workshop, and there's still people sober around Seattle today that remember what I was doing. So we decided we would go up to this deal. We had a car that I'd bought from my sponsor off the car lot. He got my first sober job, my first sober car. I was still living at the car lot when I had my first AA birthday. One year sober, I was still living in the car life. And I came home from a meeting. I told my sponsor, well, what are we going to do? Come on out. It's one year sober. And he says, no, no. As I recall, it was an 8 o'clock meeting that you walked into and it's not 8 o'. So you better get up to the 8 o.'clock meeting if you want to get a year. And I was really upset that this guy hadn't made some big celebration on one year's sober. And I went to the 8 o.clock meeting. I came back from the car lot, came back to the car lot which was closed down. Everybody had gone home for the night. I came down to the car lot, I walked in, and there was a birthday cake. Al and I, we had such amazing experiences, and he's still sober today. He's one of these guys, he was in the hospital, and that's one thing that happens if you stay sober long enough, your mentors and your sponsors will get old, and have problems, and I've had some really great experiences with him. And he was in the hospital. He'd had some heart problems. He was in Alaska, so we only made it to Anchorage. And they said, well, geez, we can't fly this guy to Seattle. We're going to have to do open-heart surgery right here on the spot. And they did a surgery in Anchorage, and I happen to know a lot of AA people up in Anchorge. And so I thought, well this is perfect. This is my chance to kind of give back to Al. I'll call all these AA people down there, and I'll tell them go up there and have a meeting for Al. in his deal and I called Al up and I said, Al this is great I'm going to have all these people come up to your room and help you out and they're going to have a meeting and Al says, Kenny you still don't know me very well do you? And he says, you know I've got a big stack of AA literature sitting here on my desk on my table next to me and my phone's ringing off the hook. He said, I'm doing really well but if you know somebody that needs some help if you'd send them up here I'll wrap them up. isn't that nice and those are the kind of people I've been exposed to around Alcoholics Anonymous or people that have that kind of attitude but anyways I got a car off the car lot from Al he sold me this car it was a $100 car and this was a $100 tax license included tabs everything out the door down the street for $100 box and uh and it had this transmission fluid leak which if you parked it just wrong on a hill it would have this huge lake of red fluid that ran out and the tires were totally bald and so we're going to go up to this retreat up in the mountains and we have to go over snow call me pass coming out of seattle and uh and we're looking at this car and we'RE thinking gosh you know i don't know uh patrick you know we weren't going to get it we had plenty of offers for rides but when you're in that kind of state of mind you need a getaway vehicle and so so we were we were not going up there without a car so he said you know what when i was at the very end he said i was living in my car behind this tavern and these guys had broke my windows out so i'd put up plastic and then i had to sell my tires and wheels and and then but he said I think the car ended up over at my sister's house, and it did run. He said, I think it had a little problem with the heating water pump or something. So we drove my car over there. Here's this car in the grass and the weeds, and we're thinking, well, it's definitely a way better option than the car that we drove there in. So we got this thing fixed up. We got tires and wheels and a battery, and we put a new water pump in it and off we went in Patrick's car and there was a little overheating problem going on and we'd drive a couple miles and we would have to pull over and we had to wait for the thermometer to come back down and other people from Seattle were heading up to this big retreat and they saw us on the side of the road they would pull over and they would say hey what are you guys doing are you all right oh yeah we're just kind of chilling here for a little while taking it easy we'll be up there we'll see you guys up there we're doing just fine and then they would look and they saw all these huge jugs of water in the back seat. Well, what's with all the water, dude? You guys sure you're alright? No, no, we're fine. We just kept going a couple miles, going a few miles, going a several miles. Going a couple of miles. And then we thought, maybe there's something to this prayer thing, Patrick. Maybe you and I should just say a little prayer together. And we said a little Prayer God. We're just a couple drunks who are trying to get up here and do our third step. Just a little deal. And we go on and we look on the side of the road and there's this bus that's broke down, a big yellow bus. And the hood's up on the bus. And all the people are out. And there it says on the side of the bus, The Church of God on the Side of This Bus. And I just looked at Patrick and I said, Patrick, if he ain't getting them up the mountains... We've got to... We've gotta... Because that's not just any church. That's not just any church. I mean, I'm not sure where everything falls, but that is the church of God. I mean that's got to be pretty high up there. But we made it up to the retreat and we did our third step and I did my first inventory. And, you know, it's again, when I was in the inventory process, I did inventory with a guy that was the facilitator of that workshop. I'd asked him to come sit in on my inventory and he said, listen, I'm a busy guy and I don't have time to mess around with you. I think he used a different kind of expletive. He said, here's a day that I have. I'll come down to the car lot on this day and we'll go in the back in your little room there and we will do your inventory. But he said if you're not done with your inventory When I show up, I'm going to leave and I'm never coming back. So you got that clear. And the day, that night before, I was writing inventory and writing inventory and I was thinking that guy, these people in the workshop hadn't really been treating me all that right. You know, every time I would start expounding on, you know, all this experience I had, hey, they continued to kind of bring it around to this deal that kind of irked me that, yeah, well, that's great, Kenny, but what happened next, what happened next and it was always I drank again and that kind of bothered me that they keep pointing that out but the but I was just thinking you know when he comes and listens to my inventory and hears what everybody has done to me my whole life he's going to be so sad that he treated me this way in the workshop in front of everybody and then I had this other thought which is that when he shows up I'm going to be so stinking drunk, and there was a little A.M., P.M. little mini-mart deal up the street from the car lot, and I think I'm gonna go up there and buy one of those cheap bottles of wine, I'm gotta drink that thing down real fast. And when he comes, I'm just gonna tell him what I think of him and his workshop. And I just went back and forth, but I ended up finishing the inventory, and he showed up, and he's one of these guys who was awake. We got to reading the inventory and he pointed out that, Kenny, we're not gonna be able to fix this. Here, if you think that this is about fixing all of your life's problems, you've come to the wrong guy. This is about asking God to remove this stuff and for you to get a brand new life in Alcoholics Anonymous. Twenty years in the psychiatrist's couch can't fix this, Kenny. There was just an incredible amount of damage and relationships and dishonesty and abuse. It was just this deal. But we started out with resentment. I had perhaps one of my largest resentments on there. But it was a real simple piece of inventory for people that have written inventory out of the book. It's these columns. Here's the first column is the person, second column, why we're angry. It was a real easy piece of inventory because it was my mom that had an easy first column. Second column was super simple. She ruined my life. Just didn't really have to go into that too much. And he started being able to ask the right questions and he asked just intuitively. He would just get quiet and then he would say, Kenny, how old was your mom when you were born? and he didn't know but I knew my mom was 19 when I was born and I have a brother that's 18 months older than I am so she was 19 a teenage mother with two young boys I said well Kenny was it all bad? so and I thought well I had to give him that no it wasn't all bad It was just mostly bad, but it wasn't all bad. Well, did you have a Christmas tree at Christmas? And I thought we had a Christmas tree at Christmast, yeah. Well, who do you think did that for you boys? And I though about my mom and he said was there food? And I said, well, yeah, we were slim on food and we really were poor. But we had, yeah there was corn flakes It wasn't Frosted Flakes like I wanted, but yeah, we had food. Well, who do you think did that? My mom doesn't play much anymore, but she was a musician and she played guitar. She would go to the university district where the University of Washington is in Seattle, where we lived, and she would play guitar in the coffee shops when I was a kid on the weekends to make extra money for us kids. And then I remembered that at night my mom would come into our room, and I don't ever remember her missing this. My mom would Come in and sit down on the floor of my brother and I's room with her guitar and sit there and sing songs to us and play our guitar until we fell asleep. That's a pretty loving thing. The answer, my friend, is whistling in the wind. Joan Armatrading. She would... You know, this is... And as we started looking at this stuff, when I was institutionalized, my mom was a very moral person, still is. She always taught us, you know, do not steal, don't lie, you know the golden rule, treat your neighbor, she was a very loving person, you've got to love your neighbor. Do unto others, you know all of those things were things that we were brought up with even though there was a lot of chaos. There were these core values that she just wouldn't compromise and but uh my brother and i got to doing some things and and ended up institutionalized i was in a in this work camp down in the area called nacelle washington which is about as far from seattle as you can get and still be in washington state probably three and a half hour drive to get down there and she would work all week and she Would come and see me on saturday and i remember you know, that was the only hope I had was that my mom, nobody else was coming to see me, was that mi mom would come and visit. And my mom came and she'd spend Saturday night there and she would spend the night in that little town so that she could come and do another hour on Sunday morning. My wife Shannon calls her Mother Earth. She's a She's a big woman. She has long gray hair and wears, you know, big dresses. We finally, a few years ago, had to talk her into selling her Volkswagen pop-up camper van because she kept going on these excursions and then she'd call us from like the middle of New Mexico or the mountains of Colorado or something And she'd be broke down. And we finally said, Mom, you've got to have something more reliable than this. But it was heartbreaking because that was her freedom. I mean, that was the place where she came from. My wife and I moved into a new home not too many years ago. And it's really a spectacular place. And we had my mom come, and she wanted to do the blessing for the house. And, you know, I was five years sober before I had a conversation with my mom where she didn't ask me if I was still sober. She didn't always ask the direct question, but that's what was going on. That's what, you Know, we alcoholics, and I know there's Al-Anons here, and there's, you know, i don't want to say anything too controversial, but we alcoholists make other people sick. I know I've had to make some amends in my life I know what I did to some other people My mom, I would call and she would say it would always be something for a while it was just are you still sober? What's your birthday? You know, all those kind of things And then eventually it got to be have you seen Al around? Which was another way of saying are you Still Sober? Are you still seeing Al? Do you still like to go to that meeting up in the, you know, up at the hall? Do you see this guy or that guy that you introduced me to? We had, but it was five years. I was five year sober when my mom, I had a conversation with my mom. the first one I ever remember where I was able to hang up and I think, my God, she knows I'm okay. She didn't ask if I was sober. We just had a conversation. But my mom came to our house when we did this and we had a drumming circle and we went around the property and she brought cornmeal from this shaman in Colorado. I swear to you. And she sang and we sang and the kids sang and my friend Mike L. from Indianapolis was at my house at the time so he got involved and was singing and doing the deal and she hung a piece of red cloth that had to be in one direction and she had five crystals that had been placed around I mean, she wasn't going to miss anything and all because she wants to know that her boy is going to be okay and that he's going to live in a safe house so the truth is that I grew up in the presence of great love and it was such an amazing discovery that Alcoholics Anonymous gave me I used to have this friend Steve I said I was only homeless for a few minutes at the end but I was homeless several times as a teenager and I remember I would be kind of wandering the streets And I had this friend, Steve, and he had this great garage. And so I would go over to his, Steve's garage. And it was just the coolest thing. He had huge big speakers, which were the thing back then. And we'd be playing Pink Floyd. And he'd have all kinds of mind-altering substances. And he had girls. And he Had a cool dog that was just meaner than hell. And, you know, it was just such a sweet, amazing place. But his parents just let him live in this garage next to their house so he could like go in and get food and stuff and come back out. And I just thought, man, if I could – when I was a young kid and I'd be wandering around homeless and then again as an adult for a little while, Now, I'd see these clearly underutilized garages. And I would think to myself, my God, how great would that be to have a garage like that? I mean, Steve's place was so amazing. He had a bong that was so big, I would have to ask Paul down there to light that thing up for you. You know what I mean? But the point of the whole thing is that I used to think about that and see these underutilized places, and I'd think, God, I'd put up some blankets here and I put a little bed in there and I run some water in from a hose somewhere. I'd have a little light in there and I'd hook up some music and people could come over. The thought was if only somebody else would let me live in their garage life would be great. And just a few years ago I was thinking about that story and it occurred to me that I never saw the house i never saw that there was a family that there was uh bedrooms and kitchens and all those things i always you know and and you don't know what you don' t know and you dont see what you dont see and i never sa the house i thought the best thing for kenny and and uh um through some reason, you know, it's amazing what happens when this obsession to drink, this merciless obsession that Bill talks about is removed. The kind of people that we end up with in AA because I never would have guessed in a million years but as I've progressed I just ended up being kind of sufficient in business and figuring things out and learning how to cooperate and a lot of it was stuff I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous and I've I've been in negotiations where I've used things and told them, listen, you know, this is about the unity of the group and we need to hang together or we're going to die separately and that we need to vote and have substantial unanimity. We don't want people going home being upset on the way that our organization is put together and people are just, God, where did this guy, what business school did this guys go to? But we've had some success. We live in a really beautiful home in Seattle and have a nice view. And this friend of mine that's heard me tell that story came over. He lived just down the street, a guy that I sponsor. And he came over to see the new place. He was the first one, first AA that came over to see our house and he came in and see the water. And he just looks at me and he says, hey, nice garage. So I get to play around with those kind of things today that I get to ask myself, what is the garage in my life today? And Shannon and I say that all the time. We get to these things where we know this is good, but maybe this is just the garage, Kenny. Maybe we need to think about doing something. Maybe we can do something more for somebody else or maybe we can expand on our life. I'll tell this one story and I've got just a couple of minutes left here. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was as hopeless a drunk I think as any of the guys I've ever worked with you know I just was convinced that I knew I was an alcoholic but I just thought what else is wrong with me it was going to take something more profound and I'd heard about these things I'd watched late night television in the motel rooms and I thought well maybe it's going to be I'm going to have to go to one of these guys, it's some kind of a demon or something and maybe I'm going to have to get the hands laid on me. Someone's going to have to lay some hands on me and I thought well maybe if they just got me and they just took the heel of their hand and they jammed it into my forehead and said, you know, demon of alcohol be gone and then I would drop and I would flop around and I would come to and that obsession would be gone. I really believed that. I thought maybe that there's somebody that could do that and I went to a couple of these kind of things And the problem was always that after everybody left and I was by myself, the obsession would return. And then I thought I'd heard about these people like my mother that would go to the guru and they would spend time with the guru and the guru would whisper in their ear some mantra that was meant only for them. that they would have this mantra and that in times of difficulty and trouble they could stop and say the mantra and repeat that to themselves and all would be well. Well, maybe I need to go to the guru and the guru can whisper this mantra in my ear. And the nice thing about that is that one of the things I've learned in AA is the I am. that I can't say the I am for Ralph as much as I've come to love him over this weekend. I can say Ralph is a loving child of God, but only Ralph can say I am Ralph and I'm a loving childhood. I'm the child of god that when my creator speaks to me, he calls me by name. Only Ralph can do that. I can do it for the guys that I sponsor as much As I want to. I can not do it just for them. So I realized that that first day, coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was a fellow named Matt who we just saw a couple weekends ago that was at my very first meeting. I see Al was at our first meeting as well. He was at the very first meet on my 20-year sobriety. There were seven or eight people that were at that very first meeting when I wandered in that night, still sober that came to my 20th birthday. I still see Matt. And I thought about this just the other day. just a few months ago. I thought, you know, I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous and Matt stuck his hand out and said welcome to AA and helped me find a seat and he laid the hands on me. And then they gave me this mantra that's come to be incredibly sweet and meaningful to me. And that is my name is Kenny and I am an alcoholic. So thank you very much for having us down here to Destin.