Why He Had a Sobriety Problem Instead of a Drinking Problem – Paul M.

I have not taken a drink as a result of a God that will never forgive me, sponsorship that should not be trusted and a program of action that will never work, since May 5th of 2001. Very distracting. I want to thank Matt for asking me to speak. It is always an honor and a privilege to speak in Alcoholics Anonymous, or anywhere really at all. For a long time people were asking me to stop doing that, although really my head tells me about damn time. I'm grateful to be here, I'm grateful to being an alcoholic, I am grateful to be a part of this group. You guys rock. I've never been anywhere where there was more enthusiasm for what the hell is wrong with me than here. I'm not going to go into a long, long drunk log about where I was and what I did but to qualify myself, I love getting loaded and you know what? AA has no opinion on outside issues hence AA might never be drawn into public controversy, but I love smoking pot too. My idea of a good time is dropping three hits of acid and trying to figure out a Rubik's cube and a strobe light. Get it on. Problem is that both of those things tend to cause problems. I mean, the first time when I started getting loaded, I was just all pothead. I was not going to be a drunk like my mom because my mom's an alcoholic and I had a very low opinion of her at the time. So I wasjust not goingto drink. Iwas going to smoke pot because you can quit that. It's not physically addictive, and I'll be just fine. I'll just be cool and hang with the cool guys. And it wasn't too long after that, I was running the streets of Spokane. I was dealing drugs on the street. I was drinking. I was stealing acid. I was doing everything you could do to stay alive and loaded down the streets. A series of events occurred. I left state with a number of people hot on my trail, many of them not very pleased with me, and went out to Wisconsin to get a new start. you know and everywhere I went I got thrown out of every place I was I went to Wisconsin I got tossed out of my mom's house I had to leave my grandma's house I was staying with friends here and there they all asked me to leave I wound up going to a I was at one point I was in a mission in Madison, Wisconsin and after two months of me not getting a job or doing anything to improve myself they asked me I don't know how many people have been thrown out on a mission but that's really off on your self-esteem so you know honestly the first time I drank I never was going to be an alcoholic. The first time I drank, I was on the run from a boys' ranch. Me and Mike had not eaten or had any kind of meal or a decent place to sleep in like two days. We weren't going to go back to Morning Star Boys' Ranch, and we hooked up with a couple of guys driving around Spokane in a car. Or there was at least one guy, and there was like three girls. And then I was kind of the odd man out. But we went over to this one guy's house, broke into the basement, and he stole a big, big gallon of vodka from his parents' house down in the basement somewhere. I don't know, it was a gallon jug or something. And went over to the basement of somebody else's house and we were going to have a party and they handed me this big old Slurpee cup, one in 32-ounce jobs. And they're like, you want to make your own drink or you want us to mix one for you? I don' t want to look stupid so I'm thinking I'll mix my own. And they handed the jug and I filled that thing almost all the way up with vodka. And they were going, do you want a little bit of orange juice with that? I said, why? They were like, well, for flavor or something, so I splashed a little in there and mixed it around and took a sip. couldn't breathe and i thought well i did with children do i plug my nose and just hammered that thing down um sat there trying to breathe for a minute i got vapors coming out of my eyes you know that's i never drank like that before at all and uh everybody's going dude you're cool man you really know how to drink do you want another one and i don't think i had an alcoholic moment there i think i had a stupid moment there I'm like yeah I made myself another one hammered down in 15 minutes I think I downed about a fifth a gallon of vodka on an empty stomach. I'd been on the run. My system was already on crash and burn. I have brief recollections of periods of time through that night, vomiting yellow, vomiting clear, vomiting nothing, vomiting some black stuff they told me later was blood. I recall later on in the night I was laying on the floor of this basement because it was nice and cool, and thinking, God, I don't want to have to crawl into the bathroom again. Jesus. And I look over and I see this. It was a grill, like a sewer grill, laying right on the door. Right on the ground on the floor in the middle of this basement. Perfect. And I just kind of crawled over that and lay next to it and puked in that all night long. I woke up in the morning, and it was actually the grill from an outdoor cooker laying on the concrete floor. And I had this stream of vomit all the way down the side. Oh, man. So I swear I was never, ever going to drink again. Alcohol is crap. I mean, this is terrible. Why am I doing this? You know, I'm never going to do this again. Guess who's speaking at an AA meeting tonight? That really, you know, that was a bad beginning for me, and most people would never, every day. They'd never do that again. But what happened is I've got to stay loaded. I can't deal with life. I've come to find out that what I have is I don't have an alcohol problem. I have a sobriety problem. I mean, I can drink pretty good. I can do a lot of other stuff pretty good too. I can handle the heat. But what happens is when I get sober, I discover that I cannot deal with Life on Life's Terms. I cannot dealing with you people. I cannot look you in the eye. I have no self-confidence. I have not tools for living. I have now way to get through the day dealing with my job and the pressure and the stress and the kids and the wife and those retards in traffic. Like, you know, nothing is – I can't deal with it, you know. To this day, my sponsor still thinks I should avoid things like firearms, stun guns, and dynamite. I get a little edgy. So, a lot of running. Make a long story short, I wound up in North Dakota running with a carnival. Shortly after that, I found out that I was going to be married. You want me to connect the dots on that? We'll do that when I have more time. Got married, had kids, started getting loaded again. You know, I'd quit for a little while and then discovered that a relative of hers was a stoner and that I could buy booze once I turned 21. It was a lot easier to get. So I was drinking, I was getting loaded, and I wasn't going to do any of them powders. If I was doing powders, I had a problem. Never mind I'm dealing drugs out of the closet in my house with a wife and kids and a decent job. If I'm doing powzers, I've got a problem, so I wouldn't do any that. You've got to have boundaries. So eventually I wound up getting popped. People tend to notice when you're running around drugs, doing illegal stuff. What happened for me is I got arrested. They only caught me with a little bit, but it scared me enough knowing that what I had at home was a considerably larger amount than what they caught me mit. I got rid of that and I just backed out of that scene. Given a good enough reason, I quit doing that. Given a gut enough reason I quit smoking pot. I did a little here and there, but what I did is I turned to the solution to all my problems, Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor Brew. I had a 40 of Mickey's every day. After a while, I started thinking, well, I could handle two of those and I'd have two 40s of Mickey'S Fine Milt Liquor brew And then it would be an exceptionally good day or an exceptionally bad day, one of them little doddles of Jose Cuervo, who was my very best friend. Pretty soon you get the bigger bottle, and then I start doing the math and thinking how much money I could save, and I got a case of beer in the fridge and I've got a big old half gallon or a fifth of Jose, depending on what I can afford, in the freezer every two days pretty soon. I was doing that every two years. And what I did is I stayed loaded on almost a daily basis for a very long time. I didn't drink at work, except for some Saturdays in there I didn' t really discuss. But I wound up drinking on a regular basis, and it was a couple of years into that that my wife and I wound up getting a divorce. I discovered some things I won't go into from the podium, but it was enough to where I decided I can't do this anymore. And we wound up getting separated, and we were in the process of a divorce, but we were just separated. And for the first three months, I was insane. I was drinking more than I normally drank. I was doing things I normally wouldn't do. I was hanging out with people I normally wouldn't hang out with. Driving out of town drunk 60 miles, driving back into town drunk, 60 miles. One night I woke up doing 70 miles an hour in the ditch on cruise control between the two sides of I-94 because my car had landed from jumping one of the little access roads the cops used to turn around and chase you. I wokeup to just boom, and I opened my eyes, and there's grass and water and stuff flying over my hood. It took me about a 16th of a second to realize this is not a dream. Floor it peeled out up onto the road, and the first thing I thought was I wonder if anybody saw that. You know, looking around. Nothing to do with drinking. And really, I looked at the place where I went off the road since then. And if I'd have done it about a mile or two before that, I would have hit the underside of a bridge. And ifI had done it a mile after that, I would've dropped down between two bridges. If you don't believe that there's something out there looking out for drunks and idiots, there is. I should not be alive. The places I've been, the things I've done, the people I've known, the places I'm in, the places i've been. There's no reason a guy like me should be alive, you know? and I once heard a speaker say that you know all my life I'd said why me why me why me you know I always felt like the estranged one I always feel like the different one I always fell like everybody's picking on me everybody's out to get me anybody feel like anybody's out there to get them I know that you know I always thought I always felt that way and what this speaker said is the last time I said that is about a couple of minutes before I got up here to speak why me why do I get to be sober why do i get to be the one that gets to be here and be a part of this why do we get to be the one that gets another chance at life. Guys like me don't live through this. And to the best of my understanding, the answer is that my work is not done and your guys' work is nicht done. There's a reason we're here. People like us don't get to live. So I came wandering into Alcoholics Anonymous entirely by accident. May 4th of... Well, accident, we call that God's way of staying anonymous. But what happened for me is the night before, this girl I had met, her, everybody's got a her or him, depending on whatever, She and I had gotten into a fight. Some stuff had come up, and I had flipped out. And I don't know about you, but I tend to drink and overreact. I wound up flipping out. I roughed up her. I roughped up my house. I broke some stuff. I woundup taking this really nice crystal chess board of mine and beating it senseless with a hammer to prove to her how much pain I was in. And made my point. She left. And in the process, I had cut my finger open on a piece of this crystal chessboard. It cut me in. And I didn't remember this until I was two years sober. But I'd wandered around the house and I bled on the carpet and a few other things. And, you know, she'd said something about before she left and I wrapped it up and I was looking around, I see bloodstains on, you know, and I wound up calling my mom that night and talking to her an extended period of time. My mom is sober by the way. And she's been sober for quite some, I think it was about 14, 15 years now. Um, and i had called her up cause I, you know, I know I'm a drunk and I've become the person that I swore I would never be. I've roughed up a woman. I've cannot stop drinking. You know, my life is completely falling apart and I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go and there's no solution to a problem of my type you know and uh the reason i found out i thought later i figured it out that the excuse that i had given myself to call my mom at that late hour of a night was that she had used to work in a dry cleaner she knew about cleaning stuff and i called my mom to ask her how to get the blood stains out of the carpet you know i remember that i was like two years sober and that just fired finally in my head and i started crying jesus you know I mean where's a guy at when that's where you're where you are you know the book talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. It talks about that point where you get the jumping off point, where you can't imagine life with alcohol or without it. It's the end. I can't drink. I cannot drink. What do I do? Where do I go? There is no solution to a problem of my type. What happened is the next day she came home and she told me all these things that I needed to change. I knew dang well it was her fault, but I politely and I think very generously told her, okay, sure, we'll try and do this and this and this. She said, by the way, I'm going to a dance tonight with another guy. It's an AA dance. You can go if you want to. And I'm thinking oh God, you know, AA and a dance? And I don't dance. It's not a matter of I can't dance, it's a matter if I won't because if I get up there I'm gonna look like an idiot and you're gonna see that I feel like an idiot. You're gonna open me up, expose me to everyone. Everyone's gonna turn, laugh, and point the earth. It's gonna swallow up and eat me. That's how I get. I get a little nervous. I don'T want to go to a stupid dance. I don't want to deal with these AA Nazis, you know? I know that, Jesus, I've seen some AA before. You know, the AA I saw was just a bunch of old men sitting around chain-smoking cigarettes, sucking down coffee, holding hands, chanting their little prayers. You know? That's not going to help a problem like me. I need serious help. Probably psychiatric help, maybe for life. Very strong regiment of a whole lot of stuff. And I came wandering into Alcoholics Anonymous expecting nothing. And it wasn't a dance. It was a bloody roundup. There's 300 to you yo-yos running around in suits and ties and dresses and everybody's all happy and smiling and, you know, first thing, as it happens a lot, the first thing that happened is this joker comes dancing across the room with his hand out. Hi, I'm Cain. Is this your first meeting? Geez, look at this, you Know, here we go. And I didn't want him to think I was here for the meeting or nothing. I'm just here to, you Now, I just don't, you I just want to straighten things. So I just said, yeah. And he said, great, let me find you a seat. He took me over to this guy, Jeff, and he says, Jeff, this is Paul. It's his first meeting. Can he sit by you? And Jeff says, no, no, I'm doing a sobriety countdown. Why don't you have him sit way up there? I didn't know it was a setup, but I'm sitting in the third row now and I'm surrounded by people on both sides like they're not going to let me out. And I'm thinking, geez, I was drinking this morning. I had like three or four beers that morning. And this guy Jeff gets up to the podium and everybody said this hello. Hi, Jeff! And I am thinking, what the hell was that? Whoa! He says he's going to do this sobrieta countdown. He's going start at, I believe it was 30 years And whoever has 30 years, stand up. And then he's going to count down. And whoever had the least amount of sobriety in the room gets a free copy of the big book. I'm thinking, oh, shit. Great. I know that he knows I'm new. This Cain guy knows I'M new. She's sitting next to me. She knows. The Keith guy in the back of the room, he knows. I'M doomed. And I'M waiting for them to expose me because they're going to. They're going TO stand out and they're GOING TO say this guy was still drinking today. Get him out of here. We want sober people in AA. That's it. I didn't know why we have meetings. I didn't know that the only reason that we have these meetings, Bill says that we still meet frequently so that a newcomer may find the message they seek. Why we meet is so someone else gets to stay sober, not so I do. It's so someone other gets a chance to hear it, to get it, to understand that they're not alone in this world, you know? And I came in that room and they counted down and he gets down to seven days and I'm thinking, oh Jesus, and I look and he's looking at me. I'm like, oh, six days, look around and I still haven't stood up and he looks at me and I was like, crap. He gets down two days and I haven't still stood up and I was waiting for him to say who has one day of sobriety and I knew I wouldn't be able to stand up because I don't and what he said saved my life, he said is there anyone in the room who's in their first day of sobriery and I didn't want, I don' know why I stood up but I did, I stoodup and Iwas expecting the AA police to chuck me out the door because we don't want people like you around here, you know, we don' drink around, you have to get out. What happened is 300 people came out of their seats and they gave me a standing ovation, I turned around, I seen people grinning I seen a couple people a little shiny in the eye maybe had a tear or something. You guys were glad I was there and I had It had been a long time since anybody had been glad I was anywhere. So I went up, got the book, went into a complete state of shock for the next 12 hours, sat down with my book, and this lady got up to share her experience, strength, and hope from the podium, this lady named Nancy M. And I had nothing in common with Nancy. I mean, she's female, I'm not. She's older than me, lives in another part of town, different story, different life, different everything. And she stood up there and she told me about the secret fears I have. She told me About the secret anxiety that I have everywhere I go. The bigger the crowd, the more alone I feel. She told me all of these things I had going on in me. She talked about the way I was hiding my drinking, not word for word my story, but the thing she said reminded me that I would lock myself in the bathroom with a couple of drinks and I'd be smoking cigarettes and drinking and smoking and drinking and just trying to make the room smaller so I could just disappear and my kids would be banging on the door, hey dad, hey dad. And I'd say, just a minute, I'm smoking. I remember putting coffee in a coffee mug, drinking it and putting beer in the coffee mug and telling my kids I'm just drinking coffee. Little stuff, little stuff like that. But when I look back on it, I've been lying and cheating and stealing and doing all kinds of stuff for a long, long time. You guys knew what was going on. You guys know how I felt. You guys new what it was like to drink the way I drink, feel the way feel, think the way think. You knew what's going on in here, and you guys were sober. And you seemed to be doing fairly well. You seemed to have this light on in your eyes that I had not had in a long long time, I've walking around with tombstones in my eyes for years. And you guys seem to have a solution. I knew it wasn't gonna work, but I thought screw it, I've tried everything else, what's the point? I'd already checked myself into the nut ward planning on going in there in like three days. Because I was going off the deep end. There's no way I'm going to make it. And that night, after the talk, I went up and talked to this guy, Kane. And I'm like, yeah, you know, so high. And he's like, hey, what do you think of that? And he was just grinning. I said, well, I think it's pretty cool. You know, it sounds cool. I think I'm gonna give this a try. And he says, cool. And I was like, but what's his deal with a sponsor? Between the meeting and him, I'd had like 38 people come up to me. Hey, how are you doing? You got a sponsor. Hey, How are you Doing? You need a sponsor, hey how are doing? Get off me, you Know? And I finally, you know, I said, I don't know what to do though. I said what's the sponsor deal? What do I do? How do I get a sponsor? Who's a sponsor. Who's from town? I don' t know. This is an odd bunch of out-of-town people. He says I'll be your sponsor. I'm like oh crap, not like that, you kno. Fine. I said wha do I d? He said well, just three things. He says make it to at least three meetings a week. Make my home group your home group. Fine, I can do that. I can always back out if I have to. What else? And he says we meet once a week and we go through the book and I'll show you how to work the steps. Okay, and I was waiting for the hat to drop on the third one because he was going to say you can't drink if you're an AA but what he said once again saved my life he said call me before you drink. Well I can do that and I will be calling you a lot because I drink a lot man and I called him on a nearly daily basis for my first year, month and 11 days of sobriety there was a few times in there I didn't call him when I was doing things I did not want to talk to him about he took me through the steps He taught me about alcoholism. He showed me that, you know, for me, there's two very deciding factors for me. You know, I mean, we talk about drugs. How many people are potheads? Yeah, there is a few out there. How many of you have realized too late you took too much acid? That is a couple. How many in here thought I need to quit drinking and found that you can't quit drinking? See, that is what I get here. I get identification. You guys know what it is like to be me. Some of you know the other parts. But everybody here that is alcoholic knows what it's like to not be able to quit drinking, you know for me That's the important part. He taught me that And I knew this long ago I just never found the words for it He taughtme that when I take a drink I can't seem to stop drinking when I takedrink I get thirsty I take another drink. I get a little more thirsty. I take an other drink I geta little bit more thirsty I have never thought to myself. I like the taste of bottled water I've never sat down and drank a whole case of bottling water and a two liter of bottilled water in a night You know, I've told myself I like to taste a beer But I tell you what, I like the effect produced by alcohol. I like what it does for me. It gets me out of me enough to be okay in the world and comfortable. And once I start drinking, I don't seem to be able to stop. I don' t know how many times I've thought to myself, I'm going to have a couple of drinks. I've never ever told myself, I'm gonna drink a half a case of beer, half a fifth of Cuervos in three hours and throw up clam chowder through my nose. Not into play. That happened a lot, man. Wasn't eating a lot of solid food. So, you know, I came to believe little by little that you guys might have a solution to a problem of my type because you were describing what it was I did and you guys were doing things that seemed to work. I didn't think it was going to work for me but I had to believe that it worked for you. And really that very first night I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of something bigger than me which at the time was AA and Cain. And since then what my sponsor has done, what his job has been, whichever sponsor I've had was to get me closer to a God of my understanding. My sponsor is not the one who restores me to sanity. No human power can restore me to insanity, but my sponsor little by little gets me closer to a God of my understanding so that I can be restored to sanity I sat down and I did that inventory and I wrote down things that I was never going to tell anybody for a while there was about 8-10 of those I was not going to put down on paper no way in hell and I'm sitting there debating this one day with myself I can't put this down I can'T put this DOWN and it was like this voice popped in my head and said what do you think you've been running from Paul? Crap Write it down I wrote it down in Elvin because I'd been studying Tolkien's handwriting, and I didn't want anybody to discover these things. So I had to memorize how to read it to do my fifth step, and I did my fifth steps, and he looked over and saw that, and what the hell is that? Well, it's Elvin. Keep driving. He told me one day, you will sponsor people just like you, Paul, and I have. The step I hung on was step six. I know everybody's got a step somewhere where they hung on. They say step six is the one that separates men from the boys or the women for the girls or whatever you want to call it. But for me, that was where I hung. I went through and I looked at all this stuff and realized everything that was wrong and it was all, Paul's a problem. I am the one common denominator in every single thing that in my life sucks. Paul is always involved. So are you willing to let go of that stuff? Are you willing to have God remove these? Nope. There's a couple of those I was having a really good time with. Remember those times I wasn't calling my sponsor? Yeah. I was a year sober actually and my sponsor introduced me for my one year, and he said that he could count the number of suggestions that I did not take on one hand. And that would be Amanda, Heather, Bobby Joe, Renee. These are things that, you know, your first year of sobriety can be real difficult. You do what you want. Really, it's none of my business. I don't give a happy hoot one direction or the other. But I guarantee that in my experience, I screwed everything up, damn near killed myself about four times over stuff like that. So anyway, step six, I finally did that thing one time too many, and I realized that I was sick and tired of who I was. I reached that point of, once again, can't live with it, can't life without it, can'T keep going this way. What do I do? Have you had enough? Are you sick and tire to live in this way, Paul? Yeah. So I wound up, I called him up, I said, what do I dO? He said, go to such-and-such page, read these two paragraphs. So I did. And I went in there and I read six and I red seven and I did the little prayer in seven and I said what do i do now? He said remember that fourth step? Yeah. I said that's your eighth step. Let's go get ready to start making amends. Oh Jesus. I know a lot of these people and a lot of them are still not happy with me. You know, I work with some of these people and I wound up, I was making amends. I'm making amens to people at work, taking them aside, telling them, you know what? I don't know about you guys, but I love to talk smack about people, you now. 12 and 12 calls that character assassination, a polite form of murder. I love talking about people behind their back and I do it in a way that I'm just trying to help you understand why this person is different over here, you know, because they've got this and this and this and this and this you know? And what I do is I try and get everybody on my side. I want you on my site, you know? And I've done that in Alcoholics Anonymous a great number of times. I've had to make amends to a lot of people, you know? Oddly enough, just in coincidence, you know, I've said, I don't know, I've talked to my sponsor about that, and he said, well, Paul, that's because you're sicker than most, and you have to make a lot more amends. It's always my fault, you know? But it's true, you know? I do a lot of stuff, and I have to maintain this thing really a lot. I have to really concentrate on staying in this program, doing these steps. I keep coming to this on a regular basis. I work with other alcoholics. I've been working with somebody since I was four months sober. That person is still in this room. I don't sponsor them all still. You listen to the history of AA and they talk about how Bill, when he got sober, went around for six months trying to work with other alcoholics, trying to give this thing away that was given so freely, trying to give someone else the buzz, you know, the good time. This is where it's at. He's trying to gives this away and for like six months people are stealing his silverware and lying to him and getting drunk and it's not working and he's just putting all this effort in and it seems like nothing's happening. And my understanding, he went to Lois at about six months sober and said, you know what? This is ridiculous. We've had our stuff stolen one more time. You know, I don't know why I'm doing this. It's not work and not one person has stayed sober. And she said, you did. And to me, that's a really big deal. Not everybody I've worked with has stayed sober, but I have been trying to give back this buzz ever since I got it. I came in here and you guys gave me something that you cannot buy. You cannot pick it up at Walmart. The cops can't give it to you. The police can't Give it to your parents can't give it To you the priest can't Give it To You. What what you've given me back here is an opportunity to earn us all back. You know, if you want self-respect, you do respectable acts. If you want dignity, you carry yourself with dignity. If You want self esteem, you Do esteemable acts. I mean, there's this long, long list of things. If y ou want it, you got to go out and get it. You know, I did six and seven and I was waiting for this to not work, you know, because six and Seven, there is nothing in between seven and eight where just God comes thundering out of the heavens with his flaming chariot and lightning bolts and thunder and wipes away all my character defects and I'm wonderful. You Know, I was Waiting for that. It'd be nice and I knew it wasn't going to happen and it didn't. So I thought, well, it didn't work. What I've been given is this. I've being given back a choice. I did not have a choice before. I've beeing given back a choice whether I drink or not. If I take a drink today, I will drink more. Guaranteed. I have a physical allergy to alcohol and when I drink, I get thirsty. I have mental obsession that tells me that somehow, someway, this time I can have a drink and get away with it. And every time I fall into that, I take the drink, I get thirst, I wind up drunk and I find that I don't want to quit anymore and my head changes itself. What you guys have given me is you've given me AA. AA has given me a God. My God has given me a choice. Today I have a choice whether I'm going to drink or not. That mental obsession has been relieved just enough to where I do not have this overpowering need, undeniable power that says you will take a drink sooner or later, Paul. I've been given back a choice today whether I take a drink or no. And I've be given back a choice on all the defects of character that I have. I have a choice today whether I am going to talk smack about you behind your back. I have a choice today whether I am going whether I'm going to lie on my time card. I have a choice today whether I am going to steal things from work. I have choice today whether I talk smack about Calvin behind his back, which I really get a kick out of. He's just a bigger target. I have the choice on all of these things, you know? And I have choices whether I really want to make amends about this crap too, you now. But that, you kno, from that very night, I had KT and Marcus M came home with me and helped me dump out my booze. And from that following morning on, I have not had to take a drink. I have no had to... Geez, I'm not even going to go into it. I have not had to do a lot of stuff. I've been given back a little piece of my sanity, and I haven't been given back the life that I had. I've being given something much better. You buy an old house and you got a used house, you have to go in there and rip out everything and replace it with new stuff. I think Bob D said something about that in a talk I heard once, and it's true. Everything of value in my life that I thought was of value has been replaced with something much bigger and much better today. The life I have today just blows me away. I still cannot believe that some dope fiend, alcoholic, street kid, carny loser is in the kind of job that I'm in, with the kind of woman that I am with, in the kinda home group that I am with wearing a bloody suit for Christ sakes. I don't do suits. I'm leather and jeans baby. Two foot of hair get it on you know. What I am doing here still blows me away. I don t know but evidently there's a power out there greater than me that still has some kind of use for me because I should be dead and if it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous and all of you guys I would have missed it all. Thank you for my life.