Told Charlie the Big Book Displays a Conspicuous Absence of Intelligence — Don’t Drink, Read It Again 😆 – Nick

Good evening. My name's Nick. I'm an alcoholic. I'm thankful for my sobriety. I'm thankful to be here. I would like to thank Terry for this gracious opportunity to be here tonight, and it's a privilege for me. You know, sobriety is alive and well in Yuba City, I'll tell you that. That's quite a birthly celebration, and it says a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous and the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous in here. You know, I came here Friday night, had fun listening to Fernando and meeting some of the people, seeing a couple of familiar people, and, you know, there's a tangible energy in this room, in each and every Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that I go to, and there's a power of attraction in this room, and it's not the tables or the chairs, but there's a presence in this room, and I really am privileged to be in touch with that power, that privilege of being here, and the energy that brings me to this room and you to this room. And I feel great tonight. I'll tell you, it's a privilege being here. You know, it's always nice standing in front of one of these things and not having to enter a plea, you know. You guys know about that. It's also a privilege to be in the right 12-step program, you know, there. I mean, two drunks started this in 1935, Dr. Bob and Bill W., to fix the problems they had, and they did a marvelous thing because this 12-step program, when I first got sober, I used to go to bookstores. I used to go to bookstores and look at the recovery section. There was three or four books, and now there's shelves and whole sections of this stuff. I mean, there are 12-step recovery programs. I mean, do you realize how many 12-step programs are registered? There's 236 of them. Incredible. I mean, for every problem under the sun, we have A-A-N-A-C-A-D-A-B-A-G-A-S-L-A-A. I mean, parents without children. You've got sex without partners. That is a really happy group, by the way. You know, I am waiting for the meetings for sexually abused sumo wrestlers. I mean, think about it, ladies. The way they dress, man, they're just asking for it, you know. I am glad to be in the right 12-step program. You know, there's some confusion about that in my early days when I was first getting sober. I was down in Redondo Beach and, you know, going to judges and paying fines, and I really needed the meeting. I was in first six months. I wandered up to the Redondo Beach Fellowship. I found it, you know, the directions. I finally find the place, and I go in there, and I'm sitting at the coffee bar. And, you know, I'm wearing a suit because I went to see the judge, and there's a guy sitting at the bar. He had that red-eyed whiskey look, you know. And he looked at me, and he said, You here for the Elanon meeting? I said, No, I'm here for the AA meeting. He said, AA don't work. I said, Oh, really? He says, Yeah, I've tried it for a long time. I'm going to Elanon to learn how to live with my drinking, you know. And for a while, I thought, You know, he may have something there, you know. You know, I was born, I was born of chronic malcontent. I don't know about you. When I was born, the doctor slapped me. I didn't stop crying for 35 years. I was born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands. And everything, everything in my life was wonderful until I was two. Because it was about then that I discovered I was in this incredibly dysfunctional family. I mean, there's a Hawaiian word called papuli, you know. It's called dysfunctional. We would sit around and psychologically abuse each other until somebody had a seizure. And then we'd have pie. Everything's normal here. And, you know, I don't know what to tell you about my beginnings and, you know, trying to fit in. And, you know, you have memories growing up. And one of the fondest memories I have is of my mother. And you know how growing up, you have certain experiences, certain memories you tune in on. My mother, of all things, it was her hair. Because her hair, you know what she did? She dyed it, she cut it, she permed it, she permed it, she cut it, she dyed it, she dyed it, she cut it, she permed it, she permed it, she cut it, she dyed it. It was like week in, week out. You know, dye it, cut it, perm it. Most women just teased their hair back in the 50s. My mother was pissing hers off. I walked into the bathroom. There's 35 pounds of hairspray in there. I see a fly stuck in midair, you know. My mother's in there with a glass of wine, you know, doing her hair, you know. Dear old mom, you know. I don't know what I can tell you about my... My dad, you know, his heart was in the right place. He tried to provide food. But he was a chronic, periodic alcoholic. You know, Thursday, 5.30, he wasn't home. He's gone for the weekend. And he had that tremendous change in personality and what alcohol does to people. And he did try to put groceries on the table, put clothes on our back. And, you know, he did those things. And he would come home, you know, late the Saturday morning. And he did try to spend quality time with me. I mean, he'd take me out for the walk. Saturday morning, go look for the car. You know, he was just quite a guy. He was a window climber, too. You know, my mother would lock the doors and he learned to climb in a lot of windows. Occasionally crawl in the wrong window in the wrong house, you know. In Hawaii, it's very open air. The windows are open. It's a tropical climate. And I'd hear Mrs. Correa running around with the broom, whacking him, you know. He's in one house too late and then he'd show up. But that was dear old dad. You know, and he would try to change my behavior by shaking me. You know, you just grab a kid and it's like I was some kind of attitudinal etch-a-sketch. You know, something's wrong with this kid here, you know. He raised. So, I mean, that's the kind of, you know, the family I grew up with. And it was an experience with this family, I'll tell you. And in the Hawaiian Islands, it's party consciousness. People love to drink. People love to drink and have a great time. Weddings would start at Thursday, would end Monday. You know, four or five hundred drunken people running around. And, you know, my Auntie Louise was losing her toilet. And the teeth and me stepping over bodies. I mean, just incredible fun. Yeah, we knew how to drink, you know. There are a couple of definitions of an alcoholic. I don't know really what an alcoholic is. They say an alcoholic is someone who can use up a year's supply of anything in two weeks. You know. And I identify with that. And if you have a large capacity to drink, that's one of the signs. You know, I used to have this tremendous capacity to drink and drink and drink. And that's one of the signs of alcoholism. And I had a friend. I had a friend saying, you know, you can really, really put it away. You can really put that stuff. You know what that's like? It's like telling someone with tuberculosis, hey, you cough really well, you know. It's a weird analogy. But, you know, growing up in the islands, it was a great place to grow up in. I still remember my first sexual experience. I was really anxious and I was apprehensive and I was alone. I felt so guilty about that stuff, you know. Every time I did it in another room, I thought I was cheating on myself, you know. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of crazy cousins. You know, Donnie, Freddie, Bobby, Pee-wee, we, you know, these are crazy. We thought we were young, macho studs. You know, my cousin Donnie found this article in a porno magazine for a penis enlarger. So we saved all our money, sent away for it. They mailed us a magnifying glass, you know. Welcome to capitalism. You know, and I still remember my first dysfunctional girlfriend. You know, I asked her, am I the first? She said, you could be. You look familiar. Had a great old time. What a place to grow up in. What a place to drink at. And had a lot of fun drinking. Did a lot of crazy things drinking and wound up in a lot of strange spaces drinking. My first experience with alcohol was with a half a gallon of Red Mountain wine, me and three cousins. And we opened that thing up. And, you know, you're young and stupid. And we drank the whole thing in like 20 minutes. I mean, I started throwing up. I not only threw up everything I ate that day. I threw up everything I ever ate in my whole life. I mean, breast milk was coming up, you know. I was sick. Food from former lifetimes, you know, like wheat cakes from Egypt. I mean, just, you know, and I stayed away from it for two weeks. You know, went and did it again and passed out in a lot of places. I remember as a kid passing out in the bathroom. Once at my auntie Violet's house and I woke up with my head on the bathroom scale, you know, and I'm getting up coming around. I could see the I could see the numbers. You know, I looked up and my head weighs 23 pounds, 23 pounds. You know, I got depressed because I was a fat head, you know, had to drink some more. So, you know, there I was. And you guys remember near beer? You know, we got to so many problems drinking near beer. My cousin said, hey, man. You should try near beer. You know, I said near beer. That's like going on a date with your sister. What do you do? You go to a bar, drink two six packs of near beer and get in a fake fight. You know, that stuff didn't ever work for me. So I want to tell you how I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in November of 1969. I was blind drunk for about two weeks. I was a binge drinker and lost. I lost a lot of jobs. You know, I I just thought I tried to be responsible. You know, I would call up and, you know, say things like, hey, you notice I've been gone for two weeks. Yeah, you're fired. Come get a check. And I'd go down and get my check and be drunk. And I was on a park bench in Allah Park, east side of Honolulu. And a gentleman came up mid morning, early morning, and he tapped me on the shoulders and he didn't say a word. All he did was this. He was a longtime sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, a guy named Chinaman Charlie. And he did his finger and I got up off the bench and I started walking and following him up Hotel Street. I don't know if you know where Hotel Street in the old days was. That's Skid Row Bars. It's a place that people, the tourists, don't see. And it's a thriving spiritual community, you know, junkies and prostitutes and Skid Row Bars. And I was following up the street and he just did that. And I kept going. I thought he was going to take me into the Swing Club or the Hover Hover. Or the liquor store here somewhere. Give me something to drink, something to eat. And he would stop. He would stay about 10 or 12 feet in front of me. I could never catch up with him because he just kept... And what he did was he took me to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And you know, as I got up to the steps, I saw the sign, We Care. I saw the 12 steps, the 12 traditions on the wall. And I got up there. And you know how it is before an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. All the people are standing around. They're kissing and they're hugging. I got there. This looked like an orgy with morals to me. I didn't know what was going on here. And they sat down and they talked. And it happened to be the 11th step meeting. And they were talking about God consciousness, conscious contact. And in Hawaii's international community, people from all over the world traveling through, there was a couple of Buddhist monks in orange robes sitting just chanting. And it was really like I was just amazed looking. I was really looking for the alcoholics. People were well-dressed. You know, their hair was brushed and their, you know, they just sparkled. They had, you know, they had a charisma. They had an energy. They had something there. And these were nice, normal-looking people. And I kept looking around for the alcoholics. Where the hell are the real alcoholics, you know? These guys look too good. They're having too much fun. They can't be alcoholics. And what Charlie did is, he told me in his own inimitable way, he gave me one of these big books. And in his own inimitable way, he said to me, You no drink. You go to meeting. You read the big book. And he gave me the big book. Now, I lived on the other side of the island, windward side. I took the book home. I was young. I was healing up. I was also a part-time genius. And I read the book real quick, you know. Related it a lot. I got the 12 steps down and really wondered why they wanted me to come back. You know, I related to Pearl talking about keep coming back because those were the three words that I heard in that meeting. But I was just misinformed about why they wanted me to come back. Maybe they needed help. You know, they're kind of old. They're 40, 50, you know. This intellectually inclined book need, you know. Maybe they need some help. I go back. I check the meeting out. I go to the meeting. There's Charlie. What do you think of big book? I said, well, Charlie, it seems to display a conspicuous absence of intelligence. It manifests unmitigated infantilism. Most of it is irresponsible and incompetent. And I did note, Charlie, a salient lack of perspicuity. And Charlie went, don't drink. You go to meeting. You read the big book again. So I took the book and I read it again and again. And it began. It began to make sense. Now, what Charlie did, he was a wise old Chinaman. He sent this guy after me. This guy was two years sober. His name is Moki Ata. Moki Ata is 6 foot 10, 380 pounds. He's got shoulders in two different time zones. This guy's there. And Charlie calls me up and says, Moke will pick you up at 7.30. Moke have problem with anger. Moke have problem with patience. You better be ready. And I say, Charlie, this guy's impatient. He's angry. He's huge. I mean, why are you sending him to pick me up? When he see you, he will feel better. What the hell was he talking about? And here's that big guy grunting at the door. Hold on, Moke. I'm getting my shoes. I went to a lot of meetings, you know, until I got into the rhythm of sober living. And I loved it. You know, I was one of the original young people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I loved it. And I went into the room, and they put their arms around me. God, what wonderful people. And I was just terrified. I didn't know how to ask for help. There was a guy in the Marine Corps, Smitty. I mean, he's 20 years in the Marine Corps. He was out of the Marine Corps for eight years. But he spit-shined his boots. He smoked, you know, stubby little cigars. He rolled cigarettes up in his sleeve. He pumped fire and had tattoos. Bald. You know, Mr. Sensitive, I used to call him. You know, the type of old-timers I'm talking about. I think I better get their asshole made. You know, real wonderful guy, you know. And I would bring books to meetings. Different kind of books. Ortho-molecular psychotherapeutic approaches to addictive consciousness. And Smitty would walk by the table and say, Well, well, look at it. You're about to put down them goddamn books. I said, Smitty, why would I do that? Reading ain't no good for an ignorant alcoholic. And he'd walk away. Beautiful Asian gal, Margaret. You know, we'd be at coffee at the coffee shop. She knew I was scared. She wanted me to talk and shit. Tell us who you are. You know, I really wanted to say, I'm terrified. I don't want to drink anymore. I'm scared I'm going to die. I just, I'm losing it. And this is the way, you know, you have to have a smoke screen. You know, alcoholics, we got to be way up there, way down here. We don't know how to be basic human beings. You know, and so this is what I tried to say. Margaret, I really need help. I'm scared. I'm terrified. What do I do? But it came out like this. Well, I'm a man of great learning whose veneration for truth is only exceeded by my high moral character and my majestic presence. And there was Smitty sitting across the table saying, oh, there goes Nick again. Sounded like his head popping out of his ass. What a guy. You know, these people were anchors in sobriety for me. And I did a geographical. I left. I checked in in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is great Alcoholics Anonymous. Great AA. And the first thing I had to do was to call up and get connected. And I did. I showed up at a meeting in Los Angeles. Except I was a young guy. I was trying to stay sober and do sobriety. I knew what to do. I had enough program in me. And I sat there in that room and I could feel the energy. But something was different. You see, what was different was that I was out of the people that I felt really loved and cared for me. Now, people loved and cared for me there. But, you know, I was disconnected. And what disconnected me, if you know, here was my sense of perception. This is a disease of perception. And my disease tells me this. If you treat me special, then I can feel average. And if you treat me average, I feel rejected. I don't know why that is. And the long and short of this is at roughly around four years, a set of circumstances so incredible in my life I won't go into. I found myself at a six o'clock morning bar to pick up a drink. And I turned to go to get out of there because I had enough program to say, hey, you need to go to a meeting. You need to call someone. And I turned back around. I picked up that drink. And that drink took me away for roughly about eight years. And everything that happened to the people in Alcoholics Anonymous and the rooms in Honolulu began to happen in my life. All the insanity of alcoholism. And I got sober May 23, 1982 at Highland Hospital. It was not a program. It was a Save Your Life program. And I got a sponsor. His name is Bill Mason. Sober June 3, 1967. And his sponsors, Dave Hamza and Clancy Eye. So I was put in with some marvelous people around me. And my home group is the Tri-Valley Fellowship in Pleasanton, California. And for that, I'm truly, truly grateful. And the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. But those eight years, I have a whole other episode of stories I do on that insanity. But it wound up in San Francisco on the streets. I had 56 drunken publics, lost countless jobs, businesses. Bankruptcy. You know, the insanity that goes with the disease. And it ended in May of 1982. Several weeks before that, I was in the city of San Francisco walking around in the fog in the early morning. With a little coat and a pocket rocket, you know. I used to start out at the Mark Hopkins Hotel drinking five, six bucks a drink. And wind up on Jones and Ellis, an 89-cent bottle of nitrine. You know, just like a rock. And there I was, wandering around. And the streets in the wrong area. I was in the waterfront there, the Fisherman's Wharf. And it was so foggy, I could hardly see two or three feet in front of me. And stumbling around and wondering, what the hell am I going to do? I can't drink anymore. I can't do this. I don't want to live. I don't want to die. I'm just nuts. And losing everything. And there's a foghorn. You know, in the bay, when the fog is thick, the boats are out there, the foghorns hang. Loser. Boy, I heard that. I had to have another dip, you know. Next morning, I'm back in jail. And, you know, I know the bailiff. I know the jailer. I know the judge. Hey, hi, Nick. How you doing? You should not know those people on first-name basis. Something is wrong with your life if you know those people. And so there I was. And in May of 1982, through a set of circumstances, I wound up in Highland Hospital. And I was dying of alcoholism. They had me in the emergency room. And they worked on me in the emergency room for a week. And they worked on me in the emergency room for about three and a half hours. I came in hanging on to a quart of Kessler whiskey. Remember that Kessler whiskey? Smooth as silk. It says right up, smooth as silk. It burned a hole in my throat. They lie. And they took care of me in the emergency room. I was hemorrhaging blood. And they took care of me about three and a half, four hours. They put me upstairs. And in 24 hours, I had a grand mal seizure. And after the grand mal seizure, they shot me full of Dilantin to control the seizures. And then 72 hours later, I slipped into where normally you get better. I slipped into what's called delirium treatment. It's called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. It's a condition that kills a lot of alcoholics. And in this four-point restraints and hallucinating and just dying of alcoholism, full-blown DTs, they had a beautiful African-American doctor. There was an African-American doctor on the floor that was an expert in addictions. And he said, you better hook him up with an IV alcohol drip or you're going to lose him. And that is what they did. They hooked up an IV alcohol called ethanol dextrose solution. And there I was in the gurney just, I could feel the alcohol. I could feel it bringing me back to some semblance of sanity. And as I lay there on the gurney table, and looking at all the bottles, I could feel they were giving me something that always worked for me. And I looked over and I saw it on the far left, the bottle. I saw ethanol. I know that's alcohol, pharmaceutically pure alcohol. And I watched the line as it went down. There's a little dripper, control drip. And I looked at that and it was going way too slow for me. I see we have the intensive care section over here. I'm not trashed enough to turn it up. And in came the nurse. And she saw what was happening. And you know what? She didn't say, don't do that or you're bad or what are you doing? She didn't say any of that. She slapped my hand and just went. She said, why are you throwing your life away? And you see, when she spoke those words, I was in between a space where I could hear with a moment of clarity, I could hear what she was saying. And those words penetrated into my bones. Why are you throwing your life away? I didn't have an answer. I never had an answer. And then they told me I had to have emergency surgery because I had some other complications. I had a hemorrhaging kidney. My liver was failing. And then during the seizure, my appendix had broke. You see, and poisons were leaking into my system. I had a fever of 105. My life was on the line here. And they called in an emergency medical team, a liver specialist, a kidney specialist. Two surgeons and two anesthesiologists that were arguing about me. I mean, I'm going up in the elevator and listening to these anesthesia. Well, he came in. They gave him medication in the emergency room. They shot him full of dilantin. They gave him valium. They shot him with Librium to bring him out of the delirium treatment. They put the alcohol IV drip back on, which he turned up. And now we're going to give him anesthesia. And I'm thinking, yes, yes, yes. And I was voting for the guy. The other guy says, yeah, we need to give it to him. The other guy says, no, we need to control this. No, go with it. I'm rooting for the guy rooting for me. So I go through this emergency surgery. And it's an incredible thing. They saved my life. And on the other side of surgery, I still had a critical time in emergency care and intensive care. I was at this place. It was May 23, 1982. And I really didn't want to live anymore. I certainly didn't want to die. I couldn't drink anymore. I sure didn't know how to get sober. I was in that place called deep spiritual unrest. And, you know, my system started to shut down. It felt like a rock was on my heart. And I had May 23, 1982, what is called in our big book, in the appendix, a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening. I call it a private illumination. I do not have the words to transmit a transcendent experience. Because it is not about words. Not about words. I can tell you this, though. That experience shifted me from where I lived for a long time called problem consciousness. That's where I lived. I hate you. I hate me. And I don't care. I used to tell judges that. And that's where I lived, problem consciousness. May 23, 1982. I shifted into solution consciousness. Which was real simple. It was thank you, God. If you're an alcoholic of my type, there's only one prayer. Every morning I get up. Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. How can I serve? And I attempt to live my life from May 23 to 1982 in solution consciousness. I really believe our program is about love and service. And I have to tell you this. New checking this out. I've got to tell you, it's awfully powerful stuff. There are absolute miracles that happen in this room. And I want to tell you, my life is not a miracle. The miracle is Alcoholics Anonymous. The miracle is that drunks like you and I who should be dead get to gather together on an evening and share recovery. It's a we experience. It's not about a me experience. And I love Alcoholics Anonymous. And I have a gift in my life. And she's here tonight with me. And she went through all of this insanity with me. And her spiritual program is unbelievable. She's an inspiration to me. She's been the one constant thing at my side. She was there at treatment programs. She met Dr. Paul. And she met a lot of old timers. Many treatment centers. Many failures. And just continued to pray for my recovery. And I'll tell you what a gift she is. You know, we grew up together in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know how those relationships are, co-dependent alcoholic relationships when you're young, you know? You know about those, huh? We call them psychosexual karate, you know? I mean, they say, you know, the rocks in her head fit the holes in mine. You know, it's like a perfect match. Two totally dysfunctional people. You know, thanks to the fellowship and the grace of God and a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, Robbie and I have 29 years together. It is really a blessing to be here. Thank you. You know, the fact that Robbie and I are still together after 29 years is living proof that there is a loving God. Because by keeping us together, he spared two other people. Somewhere out there, there's two people who are very lucky. Don't even know it, you know. So here I am in early sobriety, getting sober, you know, running down to the fellowship. These two guys, they pick me up in the bedroom. I can't even walk across the room. I got a tube hanging out. I'm jaundiced. And they take me to fellowship in Pleasanton, California. And I sit in the room and I look around and I feel the incredible presence. And I feel the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous. I feel a reprieve on a daily basis based on the maintenance of a spiritual condition. And, you know, that's what our program is about. You know, I discovered very early on that it's simple. You know, step one is the problem. Step two is our solution. Step three is the commitment to pursue the solution. What is that solution? God is or he isn't. You either go with God or you don't. God is everything or he's nothing. You know, I choose to go with God. Every morning I get up, I say, Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you so much for my sobriety. Thank you for my incredible wife, my beautiful family. Thank you for the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a relationship with a loving God who energizes me. And I go for morning walks. And I feel so connected. I was so neglectful of everything outside my, you know, crazy consciousness. And now with the gift of sobriety, I remember 97 days sober going for a walk. I'm walking down May Way in our neighborhood and I see the, I see flowers. I see this beautiful tree that I, I don't know how many times I passed that drunken sober. I saw a tree just bursting with tree-ness, you know. Just wow. You know, and I'm walking around the corner and 97 days sober. And I have a sponsor and I found some beautiful people to hang out with. You know, I turned the corner on near May Way and I'll cross it right there. You know, and all of a sudden. I got mugged, you know. No, nobody touched me. It was a mind mug. You know, if you're early sobriety, be careful, you know. My alcoholism has popped up and said, hey, you don't really believe this crap now, do you? I mean, life is a sucking, swirling eddy filled with a few moments of false hope in an ever-darkening universe. You know, I just went out to go for a walk and have a good time. Now I want to go home and hang myself, you know. You better get a sponsor. Don't do this program on your own. You know. And when I first met this beautiful man, Bill Mason, you know, he would tell me, Nick. He'd call me up. Nick, I want you to make two AA phone calls every day. I said, Bill, I don't know anybody. He says, you have my number. Hang up and call me back. What the hell is this guy? Is that you? Yeah, it's me. They made me do two AA phone calls every day. And I go into the meeting. I show up a little late, sit at the edge, you know, and then take off because they didn't want to hug anybody. They didn't want to talk to anybody. You know, I thought they were clique-ish. You know, I talked to Bill. He said, hey, they think you're a snob. Oh, really? He says, what I want you to do. Oh, here it comes. Four months over. I want you to go. Every meeting we do, I'm going to watch you. He says, I want you to go up to two people you do not know. Two total strangers. Go up to them. Shake their hand. Introduce yourself. Tell them you're happy to be here. I'm not happy to be here. Tell them you're happy to be here anyway. Fake it till you make it. Shake their hand. Make a little eye contact. And I think, eye contact, well, easy enough. But for how long? I mean, there's a fine line between the eye contact and the piercing stare of a psychopath. Hey, buddy, keep going to meetings. Good to see you. Keep people away from me, you know. And I got into the book. God, I love that book. Directions for Living, an owner's manual. And I love it. Page 83. Spiritual life is not a theory. It has to be lived. And I love page 84, that awesome line. Love and tolerance of others is our code. That's our code. Love and tolerance of others. And, you know, page 85 talking about it's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. You know, I know how to do that. I used to sit in the room, you know, resting on my laurel, you know, 14 months sober. Sitting in the back. I like to sit in the back. You know, you can judge better from the back. You know, taking people's inventory. I had an editor. I had a critic. I had a judge. You know, four or five voices going on in my head, you know. I had enough personalities to stand for a group picture all by myself, you know. So there I was, having a committee meeting back there, judging people. You know. Looking back there, judging people going in and out of the rooms. Yes. And there's a meeting going on, you know. If you're here, I'd like to invite you into the room. We have a meeting going on. I heard a speaker do that. And I thought, how did he know I was hanging out there thinking about these things? Incredible. You know, and I used to like to assign blame. You know, like Catholic school messed me up. You too? Anybody go to Catholic school here? Oh, yeah. Are you okay? You got the uniforms and everything. How long were you in for? Hey, where did you go? What school? That's great. Beautiful name. I went to Our Lady of the Most Vicious Blood. I am talking biker nuns, you know. These are bad, man. Remember Sister Mary Butch, you know. She had tattoos born to raise Lazarus. And every time I talked to her, she'd be whacking me with a ruler, you know. And I think, oh, yeah. There's another guilty Catholic, you know. And walked around the meetings. And I got that page 132 talking about we absolutely insist on enjoying life. So here I was, 93 days sober. I will never forget this. They invited me to go water skiing. Sober. I couldn't believe these group guys, you know. How did this happen? I'm in the water. I'm hanging on to the, you know, my feet are in the boards. And I'm hanging on to the stick that's attached to the rope. That's attached to the boat that Jack built. This is not a normal boat. I'm talking these engines like about eight foot high. You know, wires over comb pipes. Twin jet carbine engines, you know. Huge scoop on the top. This thing is sucking in birds and babies and houses, you know. And I'm in the water hanging on to this thing for recreational purposes. Now, I'm terrified. But I'm too macho to say anything. You know. Besides, the guys in the boat, they couldn't hear me. They just saw my face which seemed to be saying, Please abuse me. I had a high rate of speed. I have no common sense. Or the short version. Hit it. Bam. Whang. I did one of those cartoon. Whang. This thing pulled me out so hard it took my bones right out of my body. You can look back and see a Caucasian wetsuit floating where I used to be. And they're dragging me around the lake, you know. Water is coming into my mouth, exiting my lower orifices. I'm talking reverse enema colon holiday time here. And they're dragging me around the lake for half an hour. And I'm an alcoholic. I don't know how to let go. These sorry alcoholics. They pull me up in the boat, you know. Pat me on the back. You did good, dude. You did good. Do you feel clean? I wouldn't have been any cleaner if I was freebasing Metamucil. I mean, two weeks later. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. I'm in the water. Two weeks later, I'm in the hands of another life Then I go back to the fellowship. I bitterly complain about my experience, you know. I did have fun. He laughed and we had a great time. We just had a great time. You know, I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not the person I was that came in the doors. I grew up here. I'm not here. I learned to love, I learned to laugh. Great friends. In the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one day, there was a beautiful man that came up to me and he had an interesting book. It was about Mother Teresa. He gave me this little paperback and I started to read about Mother Teresa. One of the stories that I love about Mother Teresa is when she started out, when she was, you know, we all have a start and she made a beginning. We knew what she grew into, but in the beginning she didn't have much. Didn't have the Sisters of Charity then, didn't have all those donations. She just had very little. She had a big heart. And she heard about a family that was starving. You know, a Hindu family, they had six kids that were starving. Dying of starvation, we don't know what that is. I can't imagine, I can't imagine seeing my kids waste away because of nothing to eat. They're starving. And she heard about it, so she got a large bag of rice and she lugged it over her shoulder and she brought that large bag of rice and set it on the table to the mother. And Mother Teresa said that mother taught her something. And what that mother did, as a Hindu mother who had six starving children, she went and got another bag. And took half of that rice that Mother Teresa gave to her. Put it in a bag, put it over her shoulder. Mother Teresa followed her. She went across the street to her neighbor. Now her neighbor was a Muslim mother who had four starving children. And you have to understand the difference between Hindus and Muslims. And she went across the street and she gave that Muslim mother that bag of rice. You see, when I came here, I was empty. I was hungry. I was dying. I was starving. And you gave me what you had. You gave me that manna, that spiritual food, that love. And I became a trustee of that love, a participant in that love, a receiver of that love, a giver of that love. That love's changed my life. It's changed the very being of who I am. It was you who taught me how to love and how to serve. And I have no words to express the gratitude I feel. I'm so grateful I can't see. I mean, I'm overpaid here. I'm overpaid. You know, I got into running an alcohol detox after about five years sober. It was one of the largest social model recovery programs in Northern California. 35-bed detox, street detox, drunks coming in the door, dying, seizures, ambulance there, three or four times. I know alcoholism. You know, I'd come to work one day and they'd say, hey, you just died. She died. And the following month or so, you know, this guy, he died. He had a seizure. I know alcoholism killed. And what a privilege it was to see alcoholism up close, you know, because it's just about one drunk talking to another. And next time you're at a meeting, take a look at the person sitting across from you, be it he or she. You know, because as you talk to that person, so you talk to yourself. As you treat, as that person, so you treat yourself. As you see that person, so you see yourself, because in that person, you will find yourself or lose yourself. I had a great privilege running that detox for many years and I didn't have a vacation for a long time and I had a privilege to travel to get away for over a month. And through, you know, the grace of this program and the love and the fellowship in here, teaching me about love and service, I chose to go to the other side, to the other side of the world. I wound up in a place called India. And it was great good fortune, you know, Robbie let me go for that long. And I was wandering around in the streets in one of the major cities in India. I've never been out of the country before and I'm walking up the sidewalk and there's some people in front of me, you know, tourists looking at things very interesting, different. And all of a sudden they split in different directions. Everybody just ran away. And, you know, I'm looking at the people running away and all of a sudden I see why, they're running. There is a leper coming down the street sidewalk. And I've never, you know, you hear about it, you can read about it. But to see it, I saw this man who was dying of leprosy wrapped in rags and he smelled so bad. And I got to be honest, I turned to go, I turned to run. And I turned to, you know, walk away and something tugged at me. And it was you, you who taught me to love and serve no matter what the circumstances. And it's not about the messenger. It's the message. And I turned around, I looked at him. He had his arms out like this and he spoke English. He was begging. You know, so I gave him like 30 rupees and he said, thank you. And every morning I used to see this leper at the same time on the same corner. And I would give him, you know, 40 rupees, 40 rupees. And he said, thank you. His name was Sukidro. And he asked me one day, Nick, what, Nick, what are you doing here? You from America, what do you do? You know, he told me he used to be a water truck driver for the city and how leprosy happened to him. And now he got ostracized and now he's dying on the streets. And so I tried to tell him I was running a detox about sick alcoholics that are dying. And I don't know how to explain this. You know, I said, I run a detox, you know, it's called alcoholism. And he said, bangla, the Indian word for alcohol. He said, bangla kills, bangla kills Sukidro's uncle, bangla kills Sukidro's brother. I just gave him 40 rupees. And I swear as God is my witness, he said, please take 30 rupees back and buy something for the sick ones at the detox and tell them that Sukidro is praying for them. I'm overpaid. I'm so grateful. I can't see straight. And one morning I followed him. You know, when I give him money, I follow, what was he doing? And he hobbled around a couple of blocks and I followed him and there was a food vendor with a large bench just about like this and he would put food, fruit and rice on one side and Sukidro would go to the other side and put money and then they would switch. He would go get the food and the guy would clean, dust the money off and Sukidro would take the fruit and the rice and I followed him and you know what he did? He went down to the side of the train station, dilapidated cardboard, feces, urine on the ground, smelly, what conditions, unbelievable. And there were lepers that were dying that could not walk and he was feeding them. I'm overpaid. I came back to this country and so blessed, so blessed. My life is so blessed. Ten years sober. Nineteen ninety one. I get up having a great time in sobriety. I get up and I'm bleeding, bleeding, wind up in the emergency center, wind up San Ramon, regional. They're doing this test and that test and this test. You know, they're sending me in for an MRI. What the hell is an MRI? You know, the alcoholic mind, you think in massive rectal incision, what were they going to do here? No idea. They do all of these tests at Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. I wanted to celebrate. I had plans. You know how we plan. Then they sent me over to my doctor in the evening. He sent his help home. I go in and he puts his arm. I'm around me and he has tears in his eyes. He says, Nick, you have a large malignant tumor on your right kidney, the size of an orange burst. It's hemorrhaging and it needs to come out right away. You know, I put my arm around him and he's a beautiful man. I said, Doc, it's going to be okay. You know, it's going to be okay. He looked at me like, what planet did you say you were from? And he asked me an interesting question. He said, uh, where do you get this? Spiritual fortitude to handle something? Like I just told you as a doc, it's a program called alcoholics, anonymous, a loving God, as I understand him and the fellowship of some marvelous miraculous people. And he just nodded. And then they call me back more tests. They found a spot on my liver, the size of a grape. And they told me things did not look good. And I found myself in emergency. I mean, not emergency surgery, but a surgery called right radical nephrectomy. They removed my kidney, my adrenal glands, my lymph nodes. I did not touch let them touch my liver. I could die on the table. There was all kinds of complications. When I woke up in intensive care, you were there. My wife was there. My children and family was there. They moved me in a room, 15, 20, 30 people at a time, a list of phone calls, your constant love, your constant prayer. Just one thing. I had to be on the giving side. I didn't know how to receive what I was getting. It was you who bolstered my immune system. It was you who prayed for my recovery. It was you who came and visited me. It was you who helped me along the humble path that we share together in our common solution of how to live amongst any kind of problems. Mine happened to be a malignant cancer and slowly and gradually, I began to heal because of your love and prayers. There were so many people at the hospital. They moved me. They put me in another. They hid me away. No more visitors. I remember Big Tim from Tri Valley. He comes up with a little plant and a card and I'm gone. And where did he go? He went to the head nurse and head nurses. Is that guy famous or something? Tim said, Oh, yes, but we don't know his last name. So, you know, I, you know, that was in December of 1991 and I recovered. And if you knew here, whatever kind of problems you have going on, if you've been here for a while and you're and you're suffering, you know, I have learned to bless my obstacle. I learned to bless the suffering that comes my way because it is my greatest teacher. It is my greatest awakener. And as I get to my relationship with God and thank him for whatever he sends me, I learned this beautiful prayer by a great saint and I use it all my sobriety. The prayer of surrender. It is not a prayer. A petition is not a prayer of asking God what I want the prayer of surrender. I'll pass it on to you and it acknowledges ignorance in the beginning says, Lord, I am ignorant. I don't even know what to ask of you. Give me that which you think best for me and give me the strength and the courage to be happy about whatever you deem. To give me and about how and where you keep me and the story. I've learned to live that prayer through the grace of God and a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, on my daughter's birthday, January 31st, I had pizza. I was in the emergency room again, you know, with this kind of blockage. They gave me the barium. It passed right through. This is January 1999. I'm living and loving the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of friends. A lot of meetings and they were going to let me go home. And here comes this guy with an X-ray. And I knew it. You know, guy from the National Cancer Institute, a young doctor. He brought up an X-ray. He says, you know, whatever that was, blockage was is gone. But since you have this history, we checked your other kidney and sure enough, you have a large tumor in your left kidney. I don't have any more kidneys, you know, and surgery is really, really risky. Risky. This tumor is close to my spine. We go to UCSF. We go to Stanford. Who is there with me? You know, my wife is there with me. My life partner is a guardian angel in my life. And I go there and they say, well, you know, you can take the whole thing out. You will have no kidneys. You'll be condemned to dialysis. So many years to live, the poor quality of life, all kinds of different things. You know, an auto transplant they put in my hip. You know, he went online and cried out for help. My husband is dying of a recurrent renal cell carcinoma. He's dying of a recurrent renal cell carcinoma. There's no chemotherapy that works for what I have. And she put a call out and somebody from New York City called back and said, this happened to my mother. And she went to this place. It's one of the top five cancer centers in the world. So we looked it up and they said they treated kidney cancer. And the long and short of this is that they're very selective, very selective. And we sent everything in, you know, 3% selection. And I got selected. I figured my chances were pretty good. We have 3% program. I made it here. Why not there? And I got in and they treated me. You know what they do? It's an incredible thing called biotactic radio surgery. You lay on the table, you do these x-rays, they find the tumor in your body. They shoot these high proton energy beams and they burn the tumor out. Leading edge technology was featured on 60 minutes. Dr. Gil Lederman tried to treat, George Harrison, but got to him too late. That was my doctor. What a privilege. I'm overpaid. You know, they do these things. They, they put me in a body suit, a pure body suit to my hook me on a flotation table and they put me in, in this huge linear accelerator, you know, one and a half million volts. I'm going to shoot these high proton energy beams into my body. I'm a poor alcoholic laying on the thing there, you know, and then they remind me about the disclaimer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why did they do that? Because my tumor was so close to my spine, they had to shoot these beams around my spine. They taught me to breathe in the top 16th of my lung. And I had to stay absolutely still. They say if you move or we miss, you will not get up off that table. I said, how long do I have to lie still? They said 45 minutes. I said, how many times do I have to do that? They said five times. And I lay there on the table. I lay there on the table, and I know the third step, prayer. And I say to myself, God is or he isn't. You either go with God or you don't. God is everything or he's nothing. And I put my life in God's hands. And God and you and your love and prayers saw me through a recurrent healing disease. I'm overpaid. I'm overpaid. You know, I'm going to close here. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love the people on our fellowship. And I close with the story that I love. And it's about, you know, it's our story. It's about some sharecroppers. You know, sharecroppers are so poor. They're barely eking out a living. They have nothing. They plant seeds in the ground. They grow the crop. They harvest. They take it in. They sell it just to buy enough grain to go back and plant and barely eat out a poverty level living. And one year, for some reason, that grain had just a little bit extra growth. And they took it in and they had just a little bit money left over. They went to an old Sears catalog and they found enough money for a handheld mirror. They didn't have screens in their house. They didn't have any mirrors. And they sent away for this. And you know, where they lived, the postman came on horseback. With the little package, the little mirror, and delivered it to the family. The mother of the family, you know, she opened it up and her husband's standing there with her and she's looking in the mirror for the first time, really, for the first time, really seeing herself. And she says, John, John, you always told me I was beautiful. Thank you so much, John. Thank you for making me feel beautiful, you know. My hair and my eye, you tell about, you know. And then John took the mirror and he looked at it, you know, and he said, hey, Martha, I'm kind of ruggedly handsome myself, you know. Thank you. And they had a 13-year-old daughter that was there and said, Daddy, let me see. And she grabbed the mirror and she looked in the mirror and she said, Daddy, look, Daddy, I'm pretty, too. Mommy, I have your hair. Mommy, I have your eye. I'm beautiful, too, you know. And mom and dad, they're having a group hug, you know, just feeling that love, that only families that are close to God. Families that are close can heal and they love her. What they don't want to happen is the little boy, the little boy, they have a little boy, he's eight years old. They don't want him to see that mirror. But little boys have so much energy, you know. What happened to this little boy when he was three? The family mule had kicked this little boy in the face, severely disfiguring him, lost an eye, crushed the nose. He's grotesque. And they have no money. No doctors. He barely lived. And you know, little boys have so much energy, he ran around the corner and he jumped right in the middle and he grabbed the mirror before anyone knew what happened. And he looked in the mirror and he said, I'm ugly, Dad, I'm ugly. What could his mother and father say? And he just nodded, yes. He said, have I always been like this? And his father said, yes. And he said, I've always been like this. And he says, you love me? You love me? And his father said, yes, I love you, son. Why? Why do you love me? He said it. Because you're mine. Because you're mine, son. And every morning, I promise you, every morning I get up, the 12 steps of recovery in my mirror. And I see my ugliness. I see my defects. I see my shortcomings. And on my knees I say, Father, I've always been like this. And he says, yes. I said, Father, do you love me? And every day he says he loves me. I do. And I say, why do you love me, Father? And he tells me every day, because you're mine. You and I all came from the same source. There's only one Father. We're all sisters and brothers here. And I promise you, every night when I go to sleep, including tonight, my wife and I, you know, I take her hands. We're laying down in bed before we go to sleep. I put her hands in my hands. I say, Father, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And we're laying down in bed before we go to sleep. I put her hands in my hands. We clasp hands, and her hands are in my hands. And we pray the Our Father prayer. It's our Father, everybody's father. You know, it's been such a privilege to be here tonight, such a privilege to meet each and every one of you. God bless you on your journey. If you're new here, keep coming back. When Nick says, well, I'm going to close this with a little story. I don't know about you guys, but I didn't want him to close. it. I thought he was really good. Let's give him another hand. Good job. I'd like to at this time thank my readers.