The Young Bucks Who Need to Button Their Chin Strap – Tim H.

My name's Tim Hopkins, I'm an alcoholic. Sober by the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous since my first AA meeting which was July 12th, 1987. And nobody's as surprised that I'm still sober as I am. um the uh the wheels of my drinking had been falling off for years um and i was still trying to convince myself that i was an exceptional drinker i was not a garden variety drinker uh i was a quality drinker and and uh i had uh made a lot of uh awarenesses since i've been sober last time i spoke here i was asking colleen i think um you know the wheels continue to fall off in life and uh i spoke here uh maybe six or seven years ago it was right after i got robbed at gunpoint at an aa meeting in a tough section of town at seven o'clock in the morning okay it wasn't a tough session of town it was in awatuki which i call south phoenix because it adds credibility. But life happens as we go and we find ourselves. So I started drinking at an early age, and I remember as a child my mother put booze on the gums of my younger siblings, and I can recall thinking I should have teed longer. I was not a social drinker. I wanted what you had and what I had, and I would do whatever it took to get it. I was selfish and self-centered from the very start. When I was young, I was that 3-year-old that was just banging on his high chair. And when I got to AA, I was still that 3 year old banging on this high chair Everything was mine, and I always wanted more. And no was a great answer for me. No. I won't do it. I was defiant. And all of that leads to you get to an age where you can drink a little bit more often. And I broke into a gangster's garage. He owned a liquor store and he owned a bar, and he kept his surplus in his garage. And I was 10 years old, and my cousin and I and a couple other buddies broke into his garage, and that was the first night that I ever had my own bottle of Windsor Canadian whiskey. And I had had nips of my uncle's drinks all along, and they would wind me up. And I come from a large Irish Catholic family. I never heard anybody say they came from a small Irish Catholic community. And I have a lot of friends who are Irish Catholics. And I said, I had 26 cousins on one side, and my grandparents were off the boat. And drinking was part of the fabric of our lives. And so I got this bottle of Windsor Canadian, and I knew what was to be done with it. So we camped out. and it was one of the greatest nights of my life and I look back on it now and I laughed I cried, we told stories I think we sang show tunes it was an event it was a spiritual awakening for me and I woke up the next morning in my own vomit, in my sleeping bag in my old soiled clothing and I knew I felt awful but I knew that I would do that again and when you're 10 you're not really criminally gifted at that point. So I got caught and I lied about it. I got in trouble, but it never seemed to stop me from thinking, this is what I want my life to be like. I want more of this. And as time goes by, you get more opportunities. And if you dedicate yourself to finding opportunities to get loaded, you'll find them. They told me if I put half the effort into my sobriety that I put into my drinking, I'll have a great sobriete. And I found that to be true. The deal with me was it took off. It became a bigger part of my life. And so I don't know that you're supposed to encourage it, but God forbid, I'm sure everybody in here is going to stay sober the rest of their lives. But if by chance you don't, I recommend drinking in the morning. Just if you haven't tried it. And if you can combine that with drinking in the shower and be a multitasker, I recommend that. AA is not going to stop anybody from drinking, okay? But it certainly wrecked my drinking. It really put a hitch in the way I was thinking because you guys were all here And I'm not. I'm someplace else. I was such a gifted drinker that I was given a scholarship when I got to college, and it wasn't an academic scholarship. I was employed by the Stroh Brewing Company out of Detroit, Michigan. I was the campus representative for the beer distributorship. And I was supposed to promote alcohol on a college campus. And they gave me the keys to a warehouse that I had unlimited access to alcohol, and they gave me a 1953 refrigerated milk truck with 20 kegs in the back and four taps on either side and people were happy to see me and I promoted drinking on a college campus and I had to maintain a C average in order to maintain the scholarship and it took me three semesters but I got my grades down to a C you know if I was supposed to maintain an A average you'd be looking at a Rhodes Scholar because I you know in our book it says I had arrived okay I had arrived drinking started to take on a bigger part in my life and and I wasn't there for academics I was there for social life and uh and you know I I let myself do things that I had told myself I would never do and I knew I should never do and I didn't want you to know that I was doing these things. And I didn't want you to know, you know, that I was making judgments that were going to hurt myself and others. I was making spiritual decisions that I couldn't live with for a long term. And it hurt to be me. But I decided that the college was the problem and eventually I got a job and I got out of college and I ended up with a great job. I landed on my feet and I was doing munis and shelters in New York City and New Jersey and, you know, living the fast life. And I married my high school sweetheart and we had a couple of kids and drinking was no longer you know... It was a necessity. And it really screws up your marriage. It screws up Your Parenthood. Your priorities just are torn asunder because I really wanted to be a good husband and I wanted to being a good father but I couldn't. So I identified a lot with those feelings when I came to AA. When I came into my first AA meeting, I was a chiseled 235 pounds. Same frame but I was just blubbery but I wanted to look good and I came into AA just broken and I didn't want you to know that. But there were these two guys that I drank with at Freddy's in bernardsville every day at lunch and one day they were gone they had just been abducted some kind of vortex or hail bop comet or something and they were going on and my good friends rich and bill were no longer there and and life went on but six months later i showed up and i called alcoholics anonymous and a woman named pat d answered the phone to those of you who helped set up and provide any service to aa i thank you it's important to make sure that this is available for the next guy. And Pat D answered the phone, and she said, Alcoholics Anonymous may help you. Now at this point, I think my scorecards were reading zero. I was being sued for a lot of money by a former investor. I, um, I was overweight. I bled out my esophagus every morning in the shower. Um, my wife and I weren't getting along. She had a boyfriend that I didn't like. And it was awkward. It was awkward being me. I'm clumsy to begin with, and now I'm really clumsy, and it seems like my center of gravity has just been destroyed. And so I call Alcoholics Anonymous because in the old days they didn't have those guardrails that would protect you from hitting a bridge abutment. You know, the deflector guardrailes. And I had a guardrail picked out that was my guardrail that had my name on it. And I was at the crossroads of live and die when I came to AA. And, you know, we have a good time here, and you hear the buzz, and you Hear the laughter, and You hear the stories. But the truth of the matter is this is a deadly, deadly disease, and it wants me left alone until I'm so hopeless I want to die. And that's how I was July 10th, 1987. And I hadn't had a drink. I almost got arrested two days before, but that wasn't my fault. Again, it was never my fault, and I detoxed for the last time hopefully, and I called Alcoholics Anonymous, and she said, AlcoholicsAnonymous, may we help you? And I said, I hope so, and She asked me if I knew, could I get to the meeting? It was in PPAC Gladstone at a little church called St. Bridget's, and I'll never forget it. And I pulled in there five minutes until the meeting because I didn't want to be there too early. And I get out of the car, andI'm trying to look cool going to AA. I don't know why. And as I approach, I'm halfway across the parking lot. I look up at the porch, and there's my two friends, Rich and Bill. They're the greeters. And I can't run away because they've already recognized me. And they shake my hand and they said, Timmy, we've been waiting for you. And they brought me in and they sat me right down here where Allison is. And I was at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I hadn't had a drink in 30 hours. And for a guy like me, that's a long time. And physically, I was uncomfortable in my own skin. And I Was having some physiological difficulties. But they sat Me there and I felt a sense of comfort. and I had a cup of coffee and those Danish cookies, you know the nice ones the upgraded cookies, not the bulk cookies from Denmark maybe Danish and my arm goes into involuntary muscle spasm and my first AA cup of copy goes on the wall right over here. Now it wasn't my fault because I was looking at the Blessed Mother. We're in the downstairs church, right? There's an upstairs church and a downstairs church and we're in it. We're sitting in the upstairs church and it's the same setup. It's except you play bingo and have pizza parties there. And the Blessed mother is over here and she wears blue and the Holy Father is over her and he wears brown and I'm sitting here and I look at the blessed mother and I say, Jesus, what is she doing here? And then I looked further down and her sandaled foot is on the head of a serpent on this globe and the snake sees me and I see the snake and that's why the coffee went. Now, the coffee's launched. You can't take that back. Once that's launched, it's gone and we overlook a lot of things in AA but if somebody throws a cup of coffee against the wall, it's going to get noticed. They didn't say anything to ridicule me. The one guy chops me in the ribs and says, don't worry about that man. It happens all the time here. so i'm feeling a little bit better before the coffee hits the splash board there's a guy with a sponge and another guy with a wet mop now i'm out coffee and i'm thinking this is a loss a guy comes over and he hands me half a cup of coffee he takes the cookies out of my hand and gives them to bill and he gives me half a cup of coffee and he says use two hands I'm saying these guys got a system but wait a minute because I'm fast, I'm quick on my feet what about my cookies he says don't worry about the cookies if you take the coffee and you put it down Bill will give you a cookie laughter I don't know about you but that's solution oriented for me now We have a perfectly good AA meeting. There's three guys from Perth Amboy. Anybody been to Perth Anboy besides Danny? It's a hole, okay? You don't go there without a wingman. And the only reason to go there is by non-habit-forming pharmacological products at a discount because it's wholesale prices everywhere in Perth Amboy. And who likes paying retail, really? So they got these three guys from Perath Amboy and the first guy gets up he's a black guy and he did 12 years in jail for shooting his brother in the knee, non-lethal. But he was a felon, so they had to prosecute him. He did 12 years. And he was delighted to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think, wow, that's awful nice. And the next guy gets up, and he's of the Italian persuasion. And he's a huge dude, and he's got the head of a mastiff just stuck on his shoulders. And he has gold chains where he is supposed to have a neck. And he's got a double-breasted Armani that he took off somebody's truck. And he talks with his hands, and he speaks in a strange dialect of New Jersey, but I understand most of the dialects. And his family welcomed him around again, and he was allowed to be an uncle to his nephews, and he Was allowed to show up back at the family parties where he had been unwelcome for years. And he used to hurt people for fun and for pay. and he hadn't heard anybody in five years and he said that Alcoholics Anonymous is the best thing that ever happened to him. And I'm thinking, Jesus, that's a great story. In my head, you know, I try not to look at the serpents but what's happening to me is something that I never intended to happen. I was identifying with a sober member of AlcoholicsAnonymous and nobody told me, try to identify, not compare. This is my first meeting. You know, I'm still green. But I'm identifying and my head's going like this. Yeah, I felt like that. Oh, that sucks, dude. How'd you get out of that? Oh, you got out of it. That's good, nice. And I'm having the spiritual awakening that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. The third guy I got up was the biggest guy in the room. He was just a twinkie under four bills and he had wild gray hair and wild black beard and he has a lot of hair. He had ink where he was supposed to have flesh And he had animal carcasses draped over his, I don't know what was going on with his getup. And he Had a heavy gauge chain that, I Don't know, you know, what is the heavy gauge Chain for really? That goes to your wallet or your back pocket. I'm not a biker. He was a motorcycle enthusiast. And a former one percenter. And he gets up and he is the happiest guy in The room. and I am sitting here freaked out because I'm falling in love with Alcoholics Anonymous at my very first AA meeting. Now, the meeting closes, and when you throw the coffee on the wall, chances are they know you're new. Apparently this is a very helpful group because they all want to help. Now, this is 1987. They're all giving me their phone numbers. I don't want their phone number. I want to get the hell out of there. I want to get as far away from these weird people who I really love as soon as I can and that's what's wrong with me there's help available and I want to run from it you know I want to go back out to the car I'm living in with the beer tap as the gear shift and all my earthly possessions packed around me and go about my miserable life and these people are outreaching to me and welcoming me and they want me to call them And there were no cell phones back then, and so I've got all these. I walked out of there looking like a paper mache doll. And so they're saying, well, call me tomorrow, and we go to 90 meetings in 90 days, and we get a home group, and you get a service commitment, and there's a lot of stuff that they do, which I wasn't really interested in. I kind of wanted to test out of, if you could give me the books, I'll test out the early portion of this recovery. I'd like to really kind of move into the next portion of recovery where I don't feel so weird in my skin. And they told me there's no microwave sobriety. You know, you've got to do this a day at a time, and it's more like a slow cooker. I left there looking like I was at a lending library. Okay, I've got literature, I'm trying to find room for it in my car, and I go over to the, there's a parking area in Pluckham not far from the meeting where I was staying and I was sleeping with my sunglasses on because the lights were on 24 hours and I said my prayers on my knees because they told me to say my prayers on my knee and they gave me a 24 hour book it was the first book I was given in Alcoholics Anonymous and they said we're going to have a meeting tomorrow be there at 7 o'clock I said okay I'll see if I can make it because homelessness is kind of busy. And, you know, I got restraining orders to violate and, you know, it's just madness. And, uh, you know, I've got to go give depositions and, you know. You know, I got nowhere to go. I've got no life. I'm not allowed to see my kids without supervised visitation. And they're two and three years old. And this is not the way my life was supposed to work out. I had a great upbringing. Parents loved each other. They gave us a good example. They gave use great opportunities, and I burned it to the ground. I had like the reverse Midas touch. You know, nothing turned to gold for me, and I was a hopeless disaster, but I said my prayers that night, and the next day I didn't drink, and at 5 o'clock I've got nowhere to go and nowhere to be, and so I'm over at the church, and there's nobody there, so I'M walking through this old cemetery in Pottersville, New Jersey, talking to the tombstones, which I think is popular in AA because Bill Wilson did it over in Winchester Cathedral. I went over to Winchester cathedral one year and I walked into Winchester it's two hours north of London it's in the middle of nowhere and I go to the docent docents are about as funny as oncologists she knows a lot of docents she's huge in the docent community a docent is like the tour guide at the at the winchester cathedral and everybody is there to see the cathedral but i'm one of those people i said to the dose and i said listen tell me where the hampshire grenadier is he says oh you're one of those he says go out to that big tree hangar right it's the sixth tombstone on the right And there was the Hampshire Grenadier who, you know, I don't know what Bill Wilson was thinking or why it showed up, but on the first page of his story, he goes and he remembers. Here lies a Hampshire Grenadiere. They're kind of like Green Berets, okay, old school, who caught his death drinking cold small beer. A good soldier is ne'er forgot whether he dieth by musket or by pot. And I want to see that stuff today. I want a walk in the footsteps of the guys who set this up. I want know that I'm on the right footing. So if you get a chance and you find yourself in the U.K., go see the Hampshire Grenadiers tomb. If you get the chance, go up to Stepping Stones. If you got a chance, go to Bill Wilson's grave up in East Dorset, Vermont. There's a bed-and-breakfast there you can stay and have a lovely meal with a bunch of sober people. That's what you do once you get sober. But as you're getting sober, you're wandering around the cemetery wondering what am I going to look like underneath there and what's it going to say on top of me because I'm not long for this world. So I'm having my chat with the higher power. And now it's 7 o'clock and the guys aren't there. And all of a sudden Rich and Bill pull up and they said, come on. I said, well, where's everybody? Because last night there was 100 people here and now there's nobody. They said, we've got to set up. Oh, Jesus, I'm in indentured servitude. So we're pulling chairs out of underneath the stage, and we're setting up coffee, and we'RE putting books out, and WE'RE getting the place ready. And finally I'm enjoying a cup of coffee without too much of a shake. I'M holding down a cup OF COFFEE. And they hand me the ashtrays. You know, the old-school ashtray is the red, gold, green, and silver. Not the flimsy cardboardy ones, the tin ones. And he said, Hand out the ashrays. I said, Listen, I don't smoke. I'm not handing out the ashtrays. And he says, you've got to hand out the ashtray or you're going to get drunk. And I'm thinking, I should have read the literature because I want to call bullshit, but they gave me a lot of stuff to read and they said, tell them your name and tell them welcome to AA and give them their ashtrae. Okay, this half of the room smokes and this half ofthe room doesn't smoke. AA is genius that way. hi I'm Tim welcome to AA here's your ashtray some of them wanted to talk to me because I was the guy that threw the cup of coffee the night before I'm like move along here's you're ashtrays and one guy comes in and says I'm sorry I don't smoke I said I don' care take the ashtrae I'm going to get drunk and he took the ashray they told me that the ABC's were ashtrays, brooms and coffee there was nobody too stupid to get sober, but the graveyards are full of fellas that are too smart or the guys that wanted to get sobre next time. I got one more good run, I'll get sober next time, a lot of time next time doesn't roll up, so now I'm, you know, I'm living this sober life and it's a freak show, I'm an alien, okay, because I've been drunk so long, that's my normal life and now I am not And the only people that I'm actually somewhat comfortable with are these other AA people, but I'm a cynic and I don't trust you and I Don't Like You. Right? You know, I Don'T Like You, I DON'T Like YOU, he's got his hat on wrong. I mean, I can find fault with everything. And a couple of guys wanted to sponsor me, and I was clearly not ready for that. I really wanted to, you know,I want to get the advanced degree. I don' t want to Mickey Mouse around with the journeyman stuff. And they took me everywhere they went. You know, I thought my name for a long time was Get-in-the-Car Dummy. And I would question them. I'd say, well, where are we going? They said, what do you care? You're homeless. And I always had to sit in the back seat on the hump because I had the least amount of time. But they would bring me with me to drunk guys' houses and they'd put me in the kitchen and I'd wash the dishes because they'd shown me how to do housekeeping at the AA meetings. And so I'd be making coffee, and they'd be out 12-stepping a guy. And every once in a while, they'd say, and you see him? He's sober 30 days. And I'd want to go out and tell them how I did it. And they told me I was carrying the disease. They said, we don't want what you have. We've already had that. That's why we come here. You know, we're trying to get away from that. But every night they would take me with them to the diner. We got sober in the diners in Jersey. And they didn't want to hear from me during the meeting. They told me to take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth. And you've got two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately. But every day, I'd have a drink with them. Every night they'd take me to the dinner. And I was a little undernourished, and I didn't have a good food plan at the time. And I ate all the major food groups. I had coffee, I had pie, I ate french fries, and I had ice cream. And basically, I think those are the four food groups of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because my body was screaming for sugar. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I put down the booze. My body still wanted sugar. And who am I to deprive my body? And these guys in AA knew it. They'd been around the block a couple of times. This is not their first rodeo. They know what they're talking about. So they bring me to the diner. And you know those suicide tables that they have in the diner, the round ones, the horseshoes? I'd get in first and then I'd get surrounded by these AA guys and there was no escape. But that's when they wanted to hear from me. How was your day today? What did you do today? Did you pray? Did You call another alcoholic? I had these lists. I had to call three alcoholics a day and it couldn't be the same three every day. I Had to call different alcoholics all the time. And I was like, what am I going to say to them? Tell them I told you to call. You know, and if they don't answer, leave a message. And I'm working off of pay phones a lot. So, and I had to do three anonymous things every day and not get caught. Okay, for somebody else, I had do three anonymous things. So I would go, I was trying to get back on my feet, and I would go at 4 o'clock and I'd hold the door for people coming out of the bank where I didn't have an account because I didn'T have any money. And I would hold the doOr for them and tell them they looked nice. And then I would put shopping carts away because they told me to do something nice for somebody else and I said well, and I had to call my sponsor before the 530 meeting and so I had the report back to him that I told this lady she looked nice for the same lady well that only counts as one nice thing and there's rules there's a lot of rules in aa because i thought that that was two nice things but apparently it was only one and then i would put two shopping carts away and that's only one nice think and so you get you they're gonna hold they're going to raise the bar for you you know because i'm a loophole guy You know, I want to be efficient. I want To Be Solution Oriented. And I don't want to get caught. And so this is allowing me to be in the public, in regular society, not AA society, and learning how to live again. You know? I had, you know, credit is hard to get and easy to screw up. And I had screwed up my credit, so I was paying a lot of little nicky ticky tack, you know, balances. And I just, I wasn't doing very well financially and the former, the future former ex-wife, whatever, was garnishing my wages and we still weren't getting along. But every day I didn't drink was a real victory for me. You know, I went another day and all of a sudden I'm sober six months and I've got a sponsor and I'm working the first three steps and I am feeling a little better. My situation is not great. I'm still not living where I want to live. I am living with my wife's parents house okay so my future former in-laws are are setting me up that's where I'm living because I've got nowhere else to go and um and the guys from AA come over there they're friendly people they're saying hello to my in-law's I'm like leave these people don't I don't want you you know I don't wanna see you um so I'm sober six months and my sponsor says well you know you really need to you know start working on a searching and fearless moral inventory and I'm thinking, I really need a new sponsor. And so, you know, is there another option? And he said, listen, Tim, I know you don't want to do it, and I don't want to go through this, but this is what I've got to do. You're either doing your fifth step with me on Easter Sunday or you're getting a new sponsored. I'm like, Mike, that sounds a little extreme. He says, no, Tim. You know, it's time. And so I'm weighing it. You know, do I get a new sponsor? I told him, I said, I know what you guys are doing. You guys are brainwashing me. He said, Timmy, your brain could use a good scrubbing. He had an answer for everything, I swear to God. And he was a lawyer and they'd love to argue. They can argue for days. And he would let me go to his house when he wasn't home and I could play with his dogs and I Could feed the birds. He had a bag of bird feed and he had bird feeders and I would feed the birds, and I felt safe. And there were more places in my life where I felt safe since I had been affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. No place was safe for me prior to then. So I do my inventory and I've got it broken down from a manual down to a three-ring binder down to a bunch of index cards. And we did our third step on our knees. And he got up and said, tell me everything you got, Tim, and tell me the stuff that you promised you would never tell anybody. And I went through that process with him and I walked away a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I felt that that separation had been just torn apart. And now I was in. You know, if they had a decoder ring, I would have gotten the decoder ring. You know, there was some kind of transformation that occurred not by thinking about doing an inventory, not by thinking about making amends, but by actually taking the action required to do those things. This is not a program of acumen. It's not about what you know. It's about what you're willing to do. You know, this is not an intellectual exercise. How many columns are there? Who cares? Tell somebody your whole story. Put it in a way that is comfortable for you. You know you don't have to use a number two pencil. You don't need to use the number one. You don' t have to us a spreadsheet. Use something. Okay. Do what works for you What I have found is find a sponsor who's been through this and do what he tells you to do. My life has unfolded into goodness. I'm not the man I was 30 years ago. You know, in AA we hear, I'm, you know, I'm Not the Man I Want to Be, I'm NOT the Man I Ought to Be. But thank God, I'mnot the man I used to be. Everything that I needed in AA was basically broken down into little nursery rhymes. You know? Don't drink and go to meetings. You know behind every skirt there's a slip. You know, a whiskey glass in the woman's ass make a fool out of me every time. You know? Use it, don't use it, I don't care. I'm just telling you. You know it's what I heard. You know this is a simple program for complicated people and the last time I was here I had been robbed at gunpoint at an AA meeting, and I talked to my son. My son was 19. I got two kids, TJ and Kevin, and one works for the International Golf Group in the golf division, and the other one's a Green Beret currently serving over in Afghanistan. He's a troublemaker. He was a troublemaker when he was this big, and he's a troublemaker this big. When he was 19, he was living with us, And he's, you don't want to, okay, it's like living with me when I was using. You know, every, he's wrecking the truck. He's going to jail. He's doing this. He's getting in fights, a lot of fights. And I said, TJ, you know, we don't live like that anymore. One day he got beat up and he got to a party late and he over drank because he was trying to catch up and 10 guys beat him up and, and he was left for dead and they called me to come pick him up. And I'm here to pick up my son and they said, your son's not going anywhere. And when I went into the emergency room, he was in four-point restraints and he was catheterized and intubated and he was savagely beaten. And I didn't recognize my own son. And the machine was going, pshh, pfft, pssh, and I called Fuzzy because it was 7 o'clock in the morning back east. And Fuzzy said, Tim, I'm going to tell you what you told me. That's not your son. That's God's son. And you have the privilege and the responsibility to be his father while he's here but whether he comes or goes is not your concern and i wanted to kill fuzzy and uh and then i wanted my to pull my son out of there and save him and then kick his ass and uh but but what i recognized is that's not my son that's that's god's son and and tj shortly after that joined the military and and uh um three weeks ago i got notified that he'd been injured in an ied attack in helmand province and you know he's been he's Been in there 15 years and and he's uh he's like the reverse of welcome wagon he's not the guy you want to see coming through the door um he's um heavily trained and And he's got three bronze stars and a couple of Armored Commendation Medals for Valor. And he has everything that I would hope my son would be. But I'm afraid because he got blown up. And his flak jacket absorbed everything, and his helmet absorbed everything. And he had a traumatic brain injury. And there's nothing in this book that tells me about T.J., but it tells me how to meet calamity with serenity. And it gives me a design for living that works when I don't feel like it should be working, when it's working and I don' t like what' s happening. And his buddy that he was with lost his foot, and T.J. was under doctor's supervision for three weeks, and he got cleared to go back to his group. And now he's on a two-week deployment where we won't hear from him. It will be radio silence. And I love my life. I love my life I was diagnosed after I spoke here in June of 2011 with stage four squamous cell carcinoma in my throat and the oncologist funny guys let's have a party with them the only reason they're invited is for the drugs so the oncologist says to me you better get your affairs in order And I called a couple of my guys, you know, because I called guys that are here. And, you Know, Fuzzy wanted some of my ties. He likes my neckwear. I get Danny on the phone and Danny says, My middle name is Silas. I said, Danny, I'm dying of cancer. What do I need to know? He said, S-I-L-A-S. I want at least $5,000 in your will for keeping you sober all this time. Steve from Florida says, you know, I've always been fond of Beth. Do you think she'll be dating? You mean after I'm dead, you You know, the doctor told me that if I could survive the treatment, there's a chance that I would survive. And here I am. And, you know, a year ago, December of 2016, I just came back from vacation with my kids and my grandkids and, you Know, loving life and living large and making a big wake everywhere I go. And I came back, and the doctor wanted to see me. He says, listen, I just did a catheterization. No big deal. Put a couple stints in and send me loose for a couple more years. And he said, no, I think we've got to do open-heart surgery. We've got TO do you're all blocked up. And so they did quintuple bypass surgery on me in December of 2016, which that's great. It's great! Two months later, I can't walk to the mailbox. all of the bypasses had collapsed on themselves. So the quintuple bypass surgery where they crack your sternum open, yeah, try not to have one. But if you do have one, have one that works. I got a name of a surgeon not to use. You know, what happens? Okay, all of a sudden I'm back on injured reserve and I got these new guys coming to my house. I've got criminals coming over to my house because they think I'm dying and they want to tell me everything about themselves I don't even sponsor them and they're coming over and they say your chances are kind of skinny I'd like to tell you a couple things is that okay? can you hold the water up a little bit more this is my life and it's the greatest life I've ever had I mean, it is, okay, when I came to AA, I was 29 years old, and my history was awful. I had a history of being just full of it. Everywhere I went, I Was full of It. My sister didn't want anything to do with me. My parents didn't Want anything to Do with me, employers, former friends. I had former friends coming Out my ears, and I would move to avoid having these Former friends, and so what happened was I had A lousy history. now you fast forward that 30 years i got a great history i've got the greatest history i have ever had i've become the man that god would have me be i've been able to do things that i would sit in the bar and tell you all about the things i was going to do i'm doing them i went surfing well i didn't really surf okay I got the surf equipment and I took surfing lessons and I went in the ocean and I paddled a lot and I got up on my knees and I fell off. But I took serving lessons. You know, this is after the surgery. This is after they told me I wasn't going to be able to have a decent life. And what happened is I've got 15 stints in my arteries right now, but they finally hit a couple that made sense. and so I've got blood flow and I was just getting used to deciding okay if this is as good as I'm ever going to feel I'm going to be okay with that God and that's a clumsy process you know my spiritual development ebbs and flows and there's sometimes where you know God and I are walking hand in hand on the broad highway and there're sometimes where he's dragging me along kicking and screaming and there'S sometimes when I'm trying to pull him along you know like hey come on let's go over here the most important thing I can tell you that as a result of being a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and having a sponsor, Howard and having an own group, Ahwatukee Men's Stag and having the commitment which I do I bring the donuts to the Ahwatukee Men's meeting and I try and get there early for the guys who set up. I want them to have first dibs at the donuts before the locusts come in and just wipe us out but it's important for me to stay active and stay in the middle of these things. Sometimes the loneliest person in the world is the guy with the most time. You know, sometimes the still suffering alcoholic is the guys with the time in the room. I always like looking at the young bucks and button your chin strap. You're in for the ride of your life. It's the greatest riot I've ever taken. This is, but it's not for sissies. You know, this is full contact. There's a lot of DNA exchanged here, and I've been in... You guys are filthy minded. You know, if I say something dirty, at least I'm telling you it's dirty. You know we we express ourselves and we invest ourselves we get involved in people's lives and we go to court with them and we goes there to pick them up after they get out of jail you know we go when their families are falling apart and when their brothers die an overdose ninety days sober you know why him not me thank you god you know because some have to die so that others can live this is not a walk in the park you know you don't all just sit around in some zen garden meditating and levitating you know there's heavy lifting that goes on here um i got chased out of one guy's house with a cleaver you know he's drunk and one minute he's very happy and he's showing us that he wants to be a photographer he's drunk he's just a drunk dude and uh he but all of a sudden he's going to be ansel adams and uh so he's shown us these blurry pictures of holstein cows in black and white and and trying to convince us that this is really remarkable work and we're having a good time until he shifts to that demonic possessed guy like one minute he's you know we're taking pictures with him and the next minute he says I will murder you and your whole family and he's got some credibility and then he's Got This Meat Cleaver and Kenny OB goes out the front door and I go out the back door, and we're like the Three Stooges. And just running away from his 12-step call, I went into his 12 step call. Guy just got out of the joint, right? And he's buff, dude, and he is ripped. And he is tatted up, and he's wearing a nice new pair of wife beaters. And I answer, you know, I go to the door, and I said, I'm your ride to the AA meeting. He says, come on in. He's got a tall boy in his hand. I say, oh, this is just freaking great. And he shuts the door behind me and locks it. I'm thinking, oh, I've got to jump out the window. This is awful because you're supposed to take two guys with you on a 12-step call. But basically those are suggestions. They're not rules. But I wish I had my gun that had a legal carry permit with me because it could have gone horribly wrong. I mean, those things happen. You know, we went and picked up. We got a call one night from a lady whose daughter was in a shooting gallery in New York City. And myself and another guy went in, picked up a 12-year-old girl, and it was the wrong girl. And we ended up taking another girl who turned out to be the right girl. And, you know, it was 5 o'clock in the morning. And,you know, art, we destroy lives, okay? We destroy lives. But as long as I stay sober, I can do a little bit of something to make amends for those lives that I destroyed. I recommend these two books and a lot of other literature. I bring them around with me because they add credibility. It gives you the impression that I know what might be in here. But I do think that they're not to be put up on a shelf. They're to be used as textbooks. Try and do what's suggested in them. And if you're not sure how to interpret what's being suggested, ask somebody. You know, it's best to have a tour guide for this deal. There's a lot of guys in here that know the ropes and are willing to take the new guys through it. It's hard. I love newcomers. I mean, the more banged up, the better. Give me the guys that are just face plants. Just give me Danny Miller. You know, unsafe at any speed like a 1964 Corvair. And what happens is we become responsible, respectable members of society who pay our taxes and love our families and are kind to children and animals and old peoples. And I like living that way. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you.