Why He Needed a New Experience of Higher Power – Clint H.

Without any further ado, Clint H. from Los Angeles, California. Thank you. My name is Clint, and I'm an alcoholic. and I'm glad to be here I am glad to be here it's I feel like I have a lot of friends in the room stay out of that coke machine Well, one last friend more. I had a hell of a time getting here. I was supposed to come out yesterday and I was supposed to leave from here to go to catch up with Cindy at Club Med at Sonoma Bay, wherever that is. And Tuesday afternoon we started a trial in Los Angeles. I thought it would be over in a couple of days. And then I discovered... Right? My client got accused of sodomy and I got charge reduced to following too close, which I felt was. And then they, no that's not true. And the judge ordered us in court on Friday and I spent the whole day there and I didn't get out of L.A. until this morning and there was a big delay in Dallas, and all that got thrown off. And I've got to go back to court on Monday, and I don't know. It'll leave me Monday afternoon to get a good tan and lose 30 pounds, and then I'll be ready to go to Club Med. I think I can make it. But I'm glad to be here. I'm really, really glad to being here. I get a wonderful feeling that you've had an extraordinary time together so far. And I know that tomorrow will be wonderful with my friend Bob. And I was glad to, I didn't know who was going to be at the airport. I called Sheila yesterday and told her that the plan, or two days ago, and Jim had already left town and I couldn't tell him and Sheila said she'd relay the message and I did not know who Was going to Be at the Airport and Mary was there and Tanya and Melissa showed up At least I recognized Melissa. I didn't know who else would be there. We had a wild ride out here. They seemed to take turns driving. I never quite got the hang of it. The car never stopped, but there was kind of a... No, I was very appreciative that they picked me up. There is a transformation taking place in my relationship to Alcoholics Anonymous and to the steps. And some of you I have used as examples over the years and as an awareness that the level at which I was playing this game was not the level at which it could really be played. I'm thinking of Jack and Pat and Vannoy and other people that are in this room, Bob. And so I'm glad to be here to kind of, I guess, give you a progress report. But there's more to it than that because I clearly need to be in touch with the fact that I'm just a drunk, clearly need to be reporting to you what has brought me to this place and what makes it interesting to me that our paths have crossed once more. I was brought up in one... We were talking some of us the other night about this feeling of difference and it was interesting as people shared some of Us felt different because we grew up in a home where everyone else was normal And some of us felt different because we grew up in a home that was characterized by really bizarre people. And I was in the latter category. I grew up In a home where my dad was a drunk and he was a nasty drunk and he was unpredictable and unstable and he Was around part of the time and gone. But when you're sitting in a, occasionally we'd go out to eat, we'd be sitting in A restaurant and my dad would be knocking back doubles. And at some point, he would do something like this. He'd stand up and he grabbed the waiter and he'd say, Do you love your country? And they'd go, Oh, this is going to be a long evening. And he just, oh God. Because the power in his life was alcohol. And my mom had a power in her life. And so some days you'd find yourself on the street corners passing out religious tracts. And that was just as bad because it felt humiliating. It felt weird. Nobody cool ever did anything like that. And we were given a lot of information. My mom had a lot OF rules and the rules mostly come out of experience and fear, I think, like we didn't have any money. So the rule was money is bad. I think if she'd have had some money to give us, that wouldn't have been the rule. The thing starts out the love of money, but it's really money is mad. Dancing is bad, dancing, because that's where the girls are. And my dad had some interesting experiences that way. And so dancing is bad movies are bad because it depicts dancing and stuff like that. Sex is turbo bad. And you don't even have to talk about it much to get to how bad it is. All you have to do is ask a question and instead of answering the question directly, they go, oh, I guess we won't talk about that at the table tonight. And you kind of get that sex is bad. Sex is something that is just so bad that it cannot be discussed. And a lot of things are bad. And so there was, it all came out of fear and it all came out a real need on her part to protect us and a real lead on her park to make sure that we stayed on the straight narrow and I must also include what clearly was a real conviction on her path that we would not stay on the street narrow. I have a twin brother and what he didn't think of, I did. There were four kids eventually in the family. I was my mother's favorite for the first few years. I adored her. I adored my mother and she adored me. I mean, we had something very, very special when I I was a little boy, three and four years old. I just loved to talk to her and I loved to be with her and I love to laugh with her. We had something that was extraordinary. My brother wasn't even in the game. He just... And we're identical twins and it was me and my mom. And it was so special that I... I was shocked when I learned something different. When I was about five, I guess maybe coming up on five, I think I had been prepared for the fact that my little sister was going to be born because I don't remember a lot of upset around her birth. But I remember about seven or eight months later it's like she's still here I mean if I'm the neatest little kid in all the world why is she here I mean I can take a joke but Jesus and one day I went into the crib where she was I don't know exactly what I did, I either hurt her or was checking her out I don' t know exactly what the hell was going on But my mother grabbed me and threw me out of the bedroom. And in that instant, I knew. In that instant an old idea registered for me. I knew she didn't love me. She hadn't ever. She loved my sister. And it was over. and I didn't even get that it was over. I just, something went out of my life and from then on my mother and I were at odds. We were just at odds We lived in Billings We moved a lot My dad was in the service we moved all over the place but at this particular time we lived in Billings and my mother would send me out to mow the lawn and there was just a little postage stamp patch of lawn out in front take me all day to do a 30 minute job on that lawn I had so much the task was not that enormous but you know the objections make it tough the difficulty is never in the task it's always in the objections And boy, do I have objections to doing what my mother wants me to do because of that enormous and profound betrayal. And I couldn't have articulated that in a million years. All I was was a big pain in the butt. And I could not tell you why. People said, why are you acting like this? I don't know. And I did not know. And then she sent me out to clip around the edge of it. And that was a whole different thing. And it was just a mess. It was a mess。 And my mom and I were at war. And it stayed that way. My dad came home, and then we'd move, and he'd take off someplace, and we'd go back to Billings, and he would move, and he could take off some place and go back the Billings. My grandmother was always in Billings so we always went back there. And my grandmother hated to see us coming, but what was she going to do? She did not like kids around. and the years went by and my dad's drinking grew worse and my mother's relationship with God was more intense and those were the two powers in my life. There was alcohol and there was God and I didn't think that either relationship much benefited the people that had it. Drinking made my dad look weird. He'd be okay for about 20 minutes and then he'd start throwing furniture around and you know, I didn'T exactly bring out the best in him and I go, God, why is he? And my mother was dragging us to church four and five times a week and doing all of that kind of stuff. When I was 13, the Korean War had just broken out. My dad went off to Japan. We drove back to Billings. I did not know that my mother that winter had discovered a lump in her breast. And she was really sick when we got back to billings and we moved into my grandmother's house where there was a basement down below and now there are four kids and we're living in this little basement down underneath and my grandmother had my mother upstairs and was taking care of her in one of the bedrooms and we were not allowed up there. We didn't get up there One time in that year my sister got up there and my mother was so excited to see her that she kind of almost fell out of bed My grandmother grabbed my sister and threw her out of the room and sent her downstairs and we all just stayed in this basement and then the spring of 1951 my grandmother opened that door one day and yelled down there she said your mother died last night are you going to go to school today or not and we went to school and I'm numb you know I've lost her but I had lost her years earlier so it wasn't a huge shift really and four days later we stood outside of a little grave in the low rent part of the cemetery in Billings, Montana and they buried my mother and I couldn't cry and I didn't have any grief to share and I didn't know how to process it and it was just like I stopped breathing very deeply at that point. I was 14 years old and I stopped breathing. I started just living on the surface. I was a little somebody called somebody else a water bug on the service of life. I was a water bug. I just stopped breathing deeply And my dad then took us with him, and we wound up going to high school near where he worked. Two years went by, and after a football game, somebody offered me vodka and orange juice, and I started breathing deeply again. Okay, all right, now we're cooking. Now I know why my dad drank. I loved it from the beginning. I loved alcohol. I loved the pills that I added along the way. My mother talked to us of faith and belief, and I didn't know what those words mean, but in looking back on it, I can tell you that within a year I had a deep belief in alcohol, born of my experience with it. A deep belief, an abiding belief. And a few more years went by and I discovered something interesting one day. I had an occasion to buy a bottle and I couldn't drink it right away and I threw it in the glove compartment of a car and I felt better knowing I could drink it later. I didn't even have to put it in my system to have it make me feel better because I had it under my control and I knew I could get it later and that's called faith. That is faith. And I had faith that when I got to that alcohol, it would work and get the job done. And my relationship with alcohol was very precious to me. My relationship with alcoholic was absolutely important. And I did not know and nor did I care whether I would become alcoholic or whether I had already become alcoholic. None of that stuff mattered much to me I simply knew that booze made a difference and that my life was better with alcohol in it than without. I got married early. I got through college, got to dental school. They threw me out of dental school because I drank too much. I lived on Skid Row in Portland for a year and drank that way. And I like Skid row drinking. Skid Row drinking is easy drinking because there's no pretense to it. Nobody bothers you much. Skid row drinking kind of lets you know how you're playing the game. I came out of a blackout in a Skid Road cafe. You know, in those days, you know you've got to take care of yourself. So if you really, really want to go on a health kick, you tend to drink in places where they serve pickled pig's feet. So in case you want to eat something, you've got it right there. And this was one of those places they apparently served chili. But it was a bar is what it was. They called it a cafe because you could get chili. I came out of the blackout and I'm sitting across the table from some lady that I had never met before. I didn't know who she was. Looked like an Indian lady. I didn'T know her name. I didn' t know how long we'd known one another or where she'd been or what was going on. I didn't know the nature of her. All I knew was that she had chili all over her face and she was asleep. Some delicate flower that I'd invited to dine. And when I walked out of there, just disgusted with myself for having sunk so low. I only made one mistake. I looked in the back bar mirror and noticed that I had chili all over my face. We matched, paired, pitching slowly forward into bowls of chili as we furthered our romance. We gave up a lot to come to 88, didn't we? I went in the Marine Corps for a while after that I loved the Marine Corp I was always humiliated to be standing in front of some commander's desk I was invited to resign my commission for the good of the service and to avoid a trial by court-martial it was a period in my life characterized by other people framing my life in short, tight little sentences my commander one time in a fitness report said and he got it all down in one sentence Lieutenant Hodges consistently fails to live up to the low standards he has set for himself then I got out of the Marine Corps and a cop one day in Glendale wrote a report about me and he said and he had it all done in one sentence He said, I discontinued the field sobriety test because the suspect was injuring himself. You know, I just. By this time, I when I moved, I got out of service, moved to Glendale. I started out living in a little apartment and then I lived in the car and thenI lived inthe garage. And by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1966, I was living in a two-car garage in Glendale, California with three other guys. And I could not have told you the name of those guys for anything on earth. It had been cut up into four little rooms and I lived in one of those little rooms and sneaked in and out of there late at night and avoided the guy that you paid the rent to. And those little rooms are the same all over the world, I guess. They're just little nasty, foul-smelling, goopy little rooms with a wet mattress on a spring and a little bulb coming out of the ceiling and no decoration or anything like that. Nothing on the wall except maybe a little chili. You know, just a foul-snilling place. If you haven't given up your social life altogether, there's an old copy of Playboy magazine laying around in there someplace. You pick up a lot of social skills that way, I'll tell you. Honey, I'm home, you know, one of those things. And that's the way it was. And I was going in and out of jail and I was having myself a big time. And I didn't know what... Did you ever get a half a haircut when you were drinking? and you finally decide to get a haircut because maybe the next day you're going to swing by the post office and see if there's any mail because your mailing address is general delivery. And somehow or other, I always had the feeling I should get a hair cut to do that. I think I knew I would go to jail if I went to the post officer. And you sit there for a while and the guy seems to be doing okay and then you say, I've got to go. And he says, You know what? Give me five minutes. I'm almost done. You know, I've Got to Go Now. I'll be back tomorrow I've got to go you walk out of there a little lopsided I stood in front of the judge in the Glendale Municipal Court I was lost I didn't know what to tell anybody about anything so I'd say things like guilty with an explanation I had no explanation it's just what other people said I had some children someplace I hadn't seen them I hadn'T sent any money my father was still alive someplace my brother was still around someplace I had a little sister and a little brother some place. And I didn't know where those people were and I didn' t want them to know where I was. And one day a bail bondsman who had bailed me out of jail a few times said, I've got to take you some place today and I thought he was going to take me back to jail. And instead of that he put me in his car on a hot Wednesday noon in July of 1966 and took me across town and we crawled up a long flight of iron stairs hanging on the side of a building in Glendale, California. And by that day, when that day was over, by the time I was back in that garage that night, I had been to two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard at that second meeting that night a guy talk about not only drinking but about bad checks, which doubled my idea of what AA was about. I thought, God, it's not only about booze, it's about bad checks. I came out a few months later. I was still in the reserve so I came to Fort Sill with five weeks of sobriety under my belt right around the first of August that year. The first week I stayed sober and the second week I was drunk and I got humiliated myself and my commander in the airport at Dallas on the way back by marching a battery of troops through the airport, drunk. I was drunk. And I got back to Glendale and I went to the club that day, the next day, Monday, the 14th of August, 1966 and the guy said, don't make too big a deal out of the fact that you got drunk. We're not surprised. You're an alcoholic. That's what you would do. You want to surprise us? Get a job. Drink and won't surprise us. As devastating as it will be to you, it will not surprise us because that's what you will do. And he was right. That's why I do guys like me drink. We drink no matter what. We drink. We drink I had placed myself beyond human aid and I did not know that I had place myself beyond human aid by the acquisition of a really interesting idea that even when I was not physically in need of a drink I was emotionally in need of a drank even before the phenomenon of craving had kicked in, I had an obsession to drink I had started out drinking not knowing what would happen I continued to drink for a year or two with the idea in mind that I hope this experience is the same as the last one because I love the way it made me feel. And then I went through a subtle transition and the transition placed me beyond human aid because the transition meant that from then on I was going to drink not because I liked the experience the last time, but I was gonna drink hoping that this time it would be different. I mean, that is an interesting transition to make. You start out doing something because you love the effect and then you begin to do it hoping that this time it will be different. By any analysis, that has to be called a peculiar mental twist. And that peculiar mental twit placed me beyond human aid. And I did not know that. And I had been beyond human aide for quite some time. and I have not had a drink since the 14th of August, 1966. And that is because of God's grace in my life. That is becauseof God's Grace in my Life. It's a funny thing. As I look back on these 25 years and some, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous absolutely out of any answers. And I knew I was out of many answers. And maybe within nine months, I knew that the obsession to drink had been removed. And I can remember with real clarity the day that it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't had a drink in nine months. It's a stunning realization. And I knewthat I had not done that because I had tried to quit drinking when I was drinking and I could not quit drinking. I can't do that. And I know that God had done that. I knew that he had done that and I was so grateful that he had done and I got the feeling that that was all I was going to get I did not know that other things were available it's sort of like a dive bomb approach it's or like obsession to remove drink is removed and then I'm kind of on my own he's come out here to Oklahoma to work with you guys and And it's sort of like, thank you. Really, thanks. Great trick. Great job. Thank you. Appreciate it. And now I'm on my own. Now the book doesn't say anything like that. The book says my relationship to Alcoholics Anonymous is to allow me to tap into a power that will solve my problem. What's my problem? I don't have a spiritual basis for my life. In about three places, very plainly, it says I can either live a life of alcoholic despair or I can accept spiritual help. Those are my choices. I can live a Life of Alcoholic Despair or I Can Accept Spiritual Help. I can have a power of alcohol into my life or I could have God's power in my life. I'm not one of these people that likes those kinds of things. I always look for the middle ground. It's like, are you alcoholic or not? Well, a mild case. Are you married? Well, my wife is married. He's got everything or nothing. Well, he's not as much as they say he is. I like the middle crowd. And I really dislike those two extremes. I can lead a life of alcoholic despair, blotting out the weird condition I'm in until the bitter end. And you can do that sober or I can accept spiritual help. What's the problem with those two alternatives? Why do I object so much to either one? Now, the answer is the same for both of them. I don't have any control either way. I don'T HAVE ANY CONTROL. I DON'T HAVE any control crawling around on the floor in the garage. I DONT HAVE ANY control if I've turned my will and my life over to the care of God. And so my response to that, without even knowing it, is what's behind door C? I've got to get my own power going. I know what I'll do. I don't want to drink. I really don't wanna drink and I don' t wanna turn my will. You know what? My uncle did that. he went down front to get saved one day and they sent his butt to China to be a missionary. So it's risky business, you know. You've got to be careful about that. I don't want to do that. So I'm going to get my own power. I think I'll build my life on my power and I didn't think this through. I just rejected both those other alternatives. And you can do that active in Alcoholics Anonymous. See, there's three parts to the deal. There's recovery and there's unity and there service. And that's the triangle. That's what that triangle represents. The three sides of that equilateral triangle. And so you can get involved in service if you're doing anything that advances the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to the guy who's still drinking. You're involved in Service. If you're setting up chairs in a meeting or making the coffee or doing that kind of, that's service. You can get involved in that and it works and it's important. And you can get involve in unity. Unity is just simply about supporting and having a home group and a place to be. And that's important, unity is a part of, unity as that wonderful feeling we get. It's described in the book as the feeling amongst the passengers of an ocean-going vessel shortly after, moments after rescue from shipwreck. I felt that in here tonight. And so did you. And it's precious. It's a precious part of our thing. And I got involved in service. And I Got Involved in Unity. And I Get Involve in Getting My Own Power Going. how am I going to get my own power gone? I don't want to drink again and I'm very glad to be sober and I am very clear that I did not get myself sober and Iam very clear that I got sober within the framework of Alcoholics Anonymous and at the hands of some God that has took a momentary interest in me so I got to get my own power. How am I going to do that? Well, one thing you realize, it doesn't take long to realize that Glendale, California is not a power base in AA. So you move out to the west end of Los Angeles and I jumped into the middle of a group. Got a powerful guy named Clancy to be my sponsor and I'm glad I did that. He's still my sponsor today and I love him very much. And I jumped into the Middle of what was the beginnings of the Pacific Group Jim Shaw was in the middle of it, 45 days ahead of me in sobriety. And he still is 45 days head of me and so you think that wouldn't be the case all the times I've done it a week at a time. But God damn it, he's still ahead of you. What am I going to do to get some power now? You know what? That wasn't quite enough. I've got to have a little more power than I'm getting from the sponsor and from the group I'll sponsor some guys that's what I'll do I want to develop a little something to say at the podium so I paid part of the money back when they caught me I wrote out a little inventory and read it to somebody I took a careful pose with my sponsor you've got to watch it you've gotta be careful you've Gotta make sure your sponsor does you call him and you give him a throwaway problem it's the safest way to hang do you want me to wear the blue tie or the yellow tie today he says wear the Blue Tie that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard you saved my life again thank you don't give him a real problem sometimes you've got to watch it like a hawk one time I went to him and I said I got a problem he said what is that I said I hate my ex-wife hater he said really I said yeah he said do you want to do something about that problem well that's yes I do I wouldn't have bothered you otherwise I didn't want to do anything about it I enjoyed hating her but I said yeah sure you bet he said well if you want to change how you feel about somebody you have to change how you treat them I said okay thanks a lot And he said, how's that child support coming along? Pardon me? I'm going to get to that. He said, yeah, you are. You're going to be able to do it. You're not going to go and get to it real quick. So pretty soon I'm paying child support. I'd sort of been paying it up to that time, but he put real certainty into the deal. real certainty as only he can do. And it made a huge difference. I paid it from then on. And it makes the relationship with my youngest son much easier because I don't have any guilt attached to that. And I'm glad he told me that. I'm happy for him. I'm so glad he insisted that I do that. Once in a while they catch it even when you're trying to keep at an arm's distance. But what else am I going to do to get some power? I've got to have power in my life. I need to bring some power into my life before I get married. That ought to do it. Shouldn't it? Can't I depend on her to put the power in? She better. I know what I'll do. I'll go to law school. That oughta give you some power. My God, that'll get it done. When I was five years sober, I started going to law school at night. That was an interesting thing. A guy told me to do that. He said, look into it. I found out if you go at night, it takes four years. I went back to him and said, do you know how old I'll be in four years if I go to law school? And he said, how old will you be in three years? How old will I be in two years if you don't go to the law school? And I said, well, carry the one. They're so dumb, I added it up for them. And I'm glad I did that. I love doing that. When I was nine years sober, the state of California gave me a license to practice law. We're making progress. They wouldn't give me a licence to drive a car when that bail bondsman brought me to you. So things are moving. That ought to give you some power, huh? Well, no, not enough. I'll get to be partner in the firm I'm working for. I'll change firms. I'll get to be partner there. This track was a little slow at the first firm. I made partner. That ought to do it. Get a little equity interest in the firm. What am I going to do? That's not it either. Bring another woman into my life. Two at a time. It doesn't make you feel very powerful. It makes you edgy. I'll do some... And all this time, I'm going to meetings. I'm involved in unity and service. And I'm looking for power. They may tell me to talk, I go talk. And I can talk about a spiritual program and dismiss it by talking about it. It's an interesting thing to do. Every once in a while I'd run across Jack and Pat Claytor and I would say they have something that I don't have. Spiritual life is not a theory, you have to live it, whatever that means. You've got to get some power. I went out on my own and started a firm with somebody else I brought another woman into my life these relationships aren't working real well because I don't trust women because I got an old idea buzzing around in the back of my head since I'm five years old that you can't trust them they say they love you and it turns out they don't and if I just limited that old idea to my mother or it would have been bad enough, but I didn't. It's all important women. It's always the women in the world that are important to me. That's how they are. See, when it's your old idea, it doesn't seem like an old idea. It seems like that's how it is. I got an opportunity to take some seminars and do some stuff about how my mind works. Lots of seminars in Southern California. and those were interesting they provided explanations there's a difference between explanations and answers and I didn't quite notice that but I did that for a while and in the process brought this dramatic woman into my life and pretty soon somebody invited me to go back up to Los Angeles and start trying big lawsuits with him and there was an income stream and the right house and the correct car and I got an image and I'm 20 years sober and I've got an image. When I was in the Marine Corps, images are interesting. I'm the only one that ever sees my image. In the Marine Corp in camouflage class, we were told to put branches of trees on trucks so they'd look like trees. And my trucks always looked like Trucks with branches on them. And I always look like a jerk with an image. I keep that image in place. Interesting way to play. And I'm vaguely aware of this. I get a sense some days that it's pretty shallow. But I'm bonded by my ego to something, and that is the image. to the house, to the income stream, to whatever. I'm bonded by my ego. And I did something a little bit stupid. I got kind of back into the steps a little bit. I said a prayer that you ought not say if you're not ready to say it and they warn you not to do that in the book. And the prayer said, relieve me of the bondage of self. And he did. He did. Pretty soon that relationship was gone. The house went on the market. My law partner ended the partnership in a way I didn't like. And I'm totally devastated. I am just out of answers and out of resources. What happened to all that power that I was bringing into my life? What the hell happened to it? I'm sober too long for this. And every once in a while I hear where somebody around the country with 22 or 23 or 24 years of sobriety has gotten drunk. And I'm scared, and I'm 24 years sober. This was in the fall of 1990, and I am devastated. It is clear to me that I can never have a relationship. In fact, a guy asked me, he said what do you think the common thread through all those failed relationships is it? And I said, I don't know. We always say, I don't know. He said, we were in a restaurant. I would never forget it. He said it in a loud voice. He said, well, who should we ask? He said it's you. You're the common thread. Do you want to do something about that? Tom, please lower your voice. But it's kind of fragmenting, you know. It's kindof falling around on the edges. And I don't know what to do. I mean, it seems to me I've given it the best shot I can give it. isn't really this about me finding my own power so I can live a better life? Isn't that what this is about? And if that's the case, you know what? I took it quite a ways. I took a quite a way which is very distracting. He invited me out here to speak at an Al-Anon conference and on the way back in the airplane I noticed something that began to change my life. I looked inside, and there was a core in me that was not touched by the loss of those things. Please turn your tape, and I'll rewind. Turn your tape and continue on side two. where that income stream had been ripped away. There wasn't any scar where the law practice had been torn away, where the house had gone, where the relationship... I was just... Whoever I was was unaffected by the loss of that stuff. Well then what was the upset about? My ego was not unaffectED. See, it's quite clear. Somebody told me about the same time you can be at any given moment coming either from love or from fear. And if you're coming from fear, you're living your life from your ego. And if You're coming From Love, that's an entirely different thing. If You're Coming From Love You're really a God-directed person. And I have come since to know something, some piece of the puzzle that's very important for me to keep in mind. And that is this, I cannot defeat my own ego. I can't do it. That has to be from a power greater than I am. A month went by and I'm dying on the vine and I've been trying to tie off all the loose ends at this old practice and I don't know what I'm going to do or where I'm gonna go and the relationship is down and there's a big fight about a piece of property and there are all kinds of upsets in my life and I am just crazy. And I went to Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee, to a conference. And two things happened there in Nashville. One of the after-dinner entertainers, a country and western star, not an A.A. member, but the guy that wrote that song and played it, the drop-kick me Jesus through the goalposts of life, he's sort of like, he doesn't care what's going on. And he happened to make a funny comment. And he said he wasn't getting married anymore. What he does now, every five years, he goes out and finds a woman he hates and he buys her a house. And I thought, well, it's an approach. Way to go. I kind of like that. But the other thing that happened that was so meaningful for me is I ran into a guy. A guy that I knew at the conference introduced me to this guy and told me that he really was remarkably good when it came to the steps. And I liked this guy, and I was interested, andI was wondering what am I going to do? This guy and I sat up in his room until late that night, and he knew exactly what was going on with me. I did not know anything with clarity at that time. But he pointed out to me that he said, you've taken it about as far as you can take it. If you're going to take it any place from here, you're gonna have to come to believe that there is a power greater than you that'll take it from here. And he said something else. He said, you know, anything that God has in mind for you is better than anything that you have in mind for you. And he said, haven't you taken it about as far as you can take it? If you could have taken it farther than where you are right now, wouldn't you have done that? And I said, yeah, I never stopped trying. I never, ever stopped trying when I was in the drunk tank. I didn't. I never stopped trying. I just felt that more effort was needed, more management on my part. I really didn't, I could not get that my life is unmanageable. And now I'm beginning to get it. It's an interesting thing to finally begin to get a little glimmer. Well then how have I stayed sober? It's 24 years at that time. And that's God's grace. That's God'S grace. I heard a guy later that year or the next spring say something that amazed me. He said, you have to qualify for God'S Grace. And I thought, pass. And I went up to him afterwards and I said, that's an interesting thing. I've always been told that God'S Grace is a gift. He said, no, you have to qualify for it. In order to get God's grace in your life, you haveと be a liar and a cheat and a thief and a real jerk. I said, thank God I qualified. I guess those other people don't need it, maybe. Turned out this guy, who I'd never met before, never heard anything about before, lived about eight miles from me. Had moved over there from Denver. And a couple of weeks went by, and he and I started to look at that book, the big book, the one called Alcoholics Anonymous. My friend Johnny says if you want to hide anything from an alcoholic, put it in that big book. And God, there was stuff in there that I couldn't believe. Some very precise instructions. Some extraordinarily amazing things are said in that book. and he said that book was designed to give me an experience. And we started at the title page in the table of contents and began to go through that book. And I was very excited about what I found in that book and we got up to that part in a little while where it describes these relationships of what one might consider having with God like employer, employee, principal agent director, actor, father, child. He had given me a prayer and it's a very powerful prayer as every prayer is powerful unless I'm saying it from my ego and then it's just nothing. It went like this. He said say this prayer. Dear God let me set aside everything I think I know about you and about me and about this program and about these steps for an open mind and a new experience of you and me in this program, in these steps. And I love that prayer because I needed an open mind and I needed a new experienced. Because you get jaded after a while. You get sort of AA slick after a While. You know who not to talk to and you know what to say from the podium and all that stuff and it's sort of a reflection of a life based on self-will run riot, A little activity, a little action, a little unity and a little service. I was out in San Diego in a hotel room a couple of weeks later after I started saying that prayer every morning and every night. And I put on my part of the case and the other guy was putting on his and I had kind of a little breather and one morning in that hotel room I'm looking at this book. And I'm considering all of those things and I've already had to face the question, is he everything or nothing? And if he's everything it seems like whatever relationship those are like father and child would always be in place. And I can't tell you exactly how it came about. All I know is that I had said that prayer. all I know is that I had become willing to go to any lengths to have a relationship with God and when I walked out of that hotel room that morning I knew more about a father and a child than I had ever known before in my life and I had a place inside me where I can go where God is and it has been that way since that time and it's been a remarkable thing to have more joy and more clarity the words that are used in the book are extraordinary power, peace, happiness and a sense of direction isn't that something? isn't there some kind of a life? power, piece, happiness and a sens of direction the flat promise I had been asked to go to Billings I don't want to go to BillINGS I do not want to go to billINGS there's some unfinished business in Billings for me that I do NOT want to face I hadn't been there in a long time and so I didn't have time to go to BillINGS and then I had this experience and now I'm under new management and I got asked a second time to go to Billings. John asked me. And I had time. And I know that Charlie made reference to it last night. I have a grave to visit in Billings and an Al-Anon friend of mine flew up there with me and when we got off the plane and after we had had lunch, she said, are you going to go to the grave today? And I said, yeah. She had a shopping bag full of things for me. She put a liter bottle with water in it. And she put some shears in there and she put a paper, some paper towels and some Kleenex and some seeds for flowers. And we found that little grave and I cried my tears. I'm down there clipping around that thing. And I cried my tears. And I'd think I was done and I would cry some more. And I would start to get up and go over to the car and I wouldn't stop. I would try some more." And when I left the cemetery that day, I knew she loved me. I knew that it had all been based on a misunderstanding. and I knew that I loved her. And so, as Jesse said, we had quite a weekend in Billings. It had been 40 years since I had been there. And I discovered something else. The Al-Anons and the AAs in BillINGS are close. They don't interfere with one another's programs, but they are close and I know that you heard Cindy already during this weekend and I think that you must have gotten a feeling that I did that they love those AAs. And the AAs love and support the Al-Anons in Billings. And I loved that feeling there. I loved it. I love that so much. Because we need to love and care for one another and not make sly comments about one another. And so I love that so mucho. And Corinne called me when we were back in town the next week and she said, I forgot to tell you something. I said, what's that? She said, the Al-Anons and Billings have taken on a little project. They're going to make sure that your mother's grave always looks great. Now that's... I don't know where you get that except in AA and in Al-A-Non because God loves us. I just don't understand how that comes about. I'm from Los Angeles And we know about urban insurrection there. I call these people my Al-Anon gorillas. Mindless acts of love. Senseless kindness. No reason for it. Drive-by stuff. just because. Random goodness out there. Isn't that incredible? I took that fourth step exactly the way it said to take it in the book and I took a fifth step. You know, when I got to the end of that fifth step I was able to look at that part that says we went back over the first five proposals to see if we had left any stone unturned because we were building an arch through which we could walk to freedom. And I knew that I had left no stone unturnt. And I new that for the first time in my sobriety. And that does an extraordinary thing with six and seven. Extraordinary thing. I had heard Jack Claytor here and at Mountain High talk about six and seven. And I knew he knew something I didn't know. And I was totally clean on one through five. And I looked at six. I looked up at the number of people and I looked to the objectionable actions that I was willing to have go out of my life. And I made a list of the ones I wasn't willing to let go of. And I prayed for willingness and I got willingness. And when I was ready, and it took two more days, I was able to say, take this from me. I don't want this anymore. Those two steps are given about two paragraphs when the big book is written. And by the time that it gets to where they're doing in 51, the 12 and 12, they say these are the steps to separate the men from the boys. I mean, there is an evolution here. It's like when you look at the forward to the first edition, it says anonymity is important because we don't have time to earn a living and meet all the demands that will be made on us. And in 1964, when the long form of the traditions got written, it said the concept of an anonymity has immense spiritual significance. And so we're kind of not a static thing, except we have a basic concern that any part of these precious steps in the book and the first 164 pages will be changed. But it's a living, breathing, alive thing that we have here. Step seven prayer is a powerful prayer. I had an interesting time talking to a gal. This gal's name is Joyce. Joyce is 20 years sober. Cindy and I were up in Coloma at a little country conference there just because I had bought some property up in that area on the American River. We went up there to look it over and be with those people. Cindy is sober 20 years. Cindy's at the, I mean, Joyce is at the podium after 20 years of sobriety and she tells a fascinating story. It knocked me out. She talked about when she was 10 years sober, she had a terrible fear of heights and she decided that what she would do in order to get rid of this fear of height was she would become a skydiver. That would not have been my approach to it, but that's what she wanted to do. And so she took lessons. And the day came when she was supposed to do a solo jump out of an airplane. And it was a big day. This was a transforming day. And out in the drop zone was her husband, her kids, the women she sponsored, her ex-husband. Big day out there. and she went up in that airplane, and she came out of the airplane, and the only awkward part of the day was the parachute didn't fully open, and she fell a long way. And the stop was a sudden stop. And she broke a lot of bones in her body and spent many, many months in bed. And her husband left. But her ex-husband, who is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and she became friends again. And as the months went by, One day he's in her hospital room, and he's helping her eat or do a bed bath or whatever they're doing. And they're spending some time together, and they're feeling close to one another. And they start talking about this business of out of the airplane for the first time. And he said, let me ask you a question. He said, well, why did you do that? And she said, I wanted to get over my fear of heights. And he started to laugh. And she says, what are you laughing about? And he says, all you had to do was humbly ask. I love Joyce for telling that story. I've been jumping out of airplanes all my sobriety. I've had to jump out of planes all my life. I've tried so hard. And all I had to do was ask. And so today I ask. And I took step eight. I got a long list of amends. I had to make amends for some of the amends I've made. Because I made them without any power. See, you've got to take step one before you have any power for two. And step two to get power for three. And you need power for 3. You need to tap into something. Because next comes 4 through 9. And if I haven't turned my will and my life over to the care of God at that point, I'm in trouble because steps four through nine are contrary to my will and against my life. And I've got to, by the time I get to seven, give up a lot of stuff that I've been depending on pretty much. It tells you to be careful about taking three. Don't take it till you're ready. Because things will begin to go out of your life that you may still need unless you've transferred your support system. So I began to take step nine. I went up to Seattle I talked to that lady that was my first wife I talked to my oldest son I talked to my next oldest son and then we met at his home for dinner first time the four of us had been in the same room in 30 years and we wept and took care of one another she's married again and she's happy and my sons are doing well My oldest is in AA, and he's practicing law up there in Seattle. I had to go to my twin brother, tell him how it was to be his brother. Now I tried to take his birthright away from him. And he's doing well. He's sober 10 years in AA in Portland. And I had the opportunity to talk to him. I had a chance to go see my next wife. And I went to Betty. I married Betty when I was five years sober. and I didn't treat her so good. We were married eight years, and I did not treat her real good. And I had never made a proper amends. And at the end of telling her, Bob and I were talking about this tonight, how sorry I was for the way I treated her, and I asked her what harm she saw that I did not see. And they tell you. They do. And you need power to be there. And you get it. And I asked her at the end of that, what can I do to set this right? And she said, I'll tell you what you can do. You can show me how you got where you are. She's got 26 years of sobriety. I said, get a brand new copy of that big book and I'll spend time with you. And we're doing that. And I have a lady in my life, and Cindy has a five-year-old. She's at Club Med now. Maybe I'll get down there next week. But she and that five- year-old have got a special thing going, and I look at them, and I love that boy, and I love her, and I get such a wonderful sense of how it must have been with me and my mom before I got turned to concrete. and I got a wonderful sense about God's grace in my life. I have a wonderful sense about the power of this extraordinary program. I have wonderful sense about how much God loves us. I think, you know, those wonderful attributes that we assign to God, I think those are the attributes that мы should assign to one another. I think all we can come up with is human ideas. And it's the idea of who the other person is. I think if we had any idea who God was, it would blind us. Sometimes I have an intuitive thought or two. That law practice took a different direction and it's doing fine. But these are not my days in my life. I have used them all up. These are God's days and your days. Somebody said that you cannot be truly useful to somebody else, to anybody else or useful in this world until you are essentially done with yourself. And I would hope that I can be done with myself. I would help that I could maintain a relationship with God who will make it unnecessary for me to be self-serving so much as I was. Each day is a challenge and each day is interesting. Each day ist different. But each day I start out asking God to direct my thinking because if I am either coming from love or coming from fear, I better have some power greater than myself directing my thinking. Because when I hit that agitation and doubt line in the middle of the day, I better be able to ask for help. I better get some kind of capacity to ask for help, to pause and ask for the right thought or action. So I start out my day that way. And I've discovered something interesting. If I end the day by taking the review of my day as it suggests in step 11, I get just a little glimpse of what God's will for me might be. It isn't anything about what I do. It's mostly about what I am. I don't think God's will for me is what I do. I think it's what I am and so today I know that he wants me to be happy joyous and free and I know that's the result of being with you in meetings like this at places like this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.