Why the Alcoholic Ego Heals Quick – Don P.

Solid AA all the way through. He has got one heck of a story. I've heard it before and I'm not going to try to tell you any part of it. So at this time, I'll give you Don. My name is Don, and I'm an alcoholic. my heart is really full. Before we get lost, I want to thank Buddy and whoever else was responsible for bringing me down because I love Texans. You all are so friendly. The fellow i sponsor taught me some texans before i came so i know how to talk he says when you get to dallas you tell them this this is the only texan i know we got to keep the government out the oil business by the grace of a merciful and loving God who gave the healing power to you and you carried it to me. I've not had to have a drink of alcohol or any of the things that I used to do since December 26th of 1967. And that's awesome to me from the time I started until that date with the exception of the penitentiaries where they wouldn't give me any. I drank and dosed. Now, I am not a drug addict. I'm an alcoholic who had drug problems, so we won't talk much about that. It's hard to know where to start because with 16 years of living one day at a time in God's world, I've had 16 years worth of one day at a time of spiritual experiences and that's all I'm really here to share with you tonight is me and what that walking the spiritual path has done for somebody who was useless and it's very hard for me to sit here and figure out what am I going to tell them so before I came over I asked him to just fill me with his love and let it flow through me and into your life I'm here to talk to one person and I know that if I tried to talk to all of you it would scare me to death but I'm her because there's one person who needs to hear what I have to say I hope the rest of you stay awake along the way but if I say something that you understand please listen because there is a message for somebody here tonight besides me I drank alcoholically from the beginning meaning that I never had a drink where there was any control let me share with you first the miracle in my life then we can get going and the miracle is simply this there is no other place on this planet I'd rather be than right here now and there are no other people that I'd rather be with than you. And there has never been born and never will be born anybody I'd Rather Be Than Me. And that's by the grace of God in this program. Because I was always trying to get anywhere but where I was, and I never did like the people I hung around with. They were scoundrels. Boy, I picked losers. and every time I took a look at me I said there's got to be somebody better than this that's before I ever heard about alcohol that's just how I felt growing up when I was 13 I can still remember laying in bed crying one night thinking I must come from Mars or somewhere because I don't feel like other people say they feel I'm inappropriate appropriate. I laugh at hockey games. You know what I'm saying. I'm sensitive. I felt like I was three feet tall with a big wart on the end of my nose, and I couldn't speak plainly. I've always known that if you and I sat down somewhere and you'd say something bright and I'd say that's how I started acting and then one night because I started drinking for the simplest reason of all that's what you did with the guys around there they started drinking and I started great big deal the thing that we all were working toward was to get old enough that we could get a drink and we did one night we got a fellow an Air force guy from Lowry Field to buy us a quart of whiskey and we went out into the country and my wart went away and my voice got deeper I felt okay for a little while my thinking changed beautifully I was going to go back into Bill Bonsid's drive-in and kick the hell out of this guy who'd been giving me trouble that I've been avoiding and there was a girl back there that I had no intentions of beating up. But it is in my nature that if one works, take ten. And I nearly died that night from acute alcohol poisoning because I tried to drink it all. And they walked me around and kept me on my feet because they knew if I laid down, I'd probably stop breathing. And it was four years before I could even smell whiskey without retching. but one of the first clues that I missed and I missed most of them was that immediately I found out what kind of alcohol wouldn't make me rich when you see everything I know has come to me since I got to Alcoholics Anonymous so if you hear some familiar stuff it means you've read the big books if this doesn't sound familiar for God's sake go read the Big Book I drank alcohol for the effect produced by alcohol with rum I felt like the world's greatest lover so when I wanted to feel like a lover I drank rum and if we were going to go out on East Colfax and look for trouble I drank vodka because it made me mean and tough wine made me a poet we've got some poets in the crowd and I can remember the sense of joy that comes from drinking Coors beer and listening to Ferlin Husky sing Four Walls crying like a baby Because, you see, alcohol did some very specific things for me. It made it possible for me to feel things that I couldn't feel without it. And it made it impossible for me stop feeling things that I couldn't deal with. I was in my first federal penitentiary when I was 19. Now, please, I'm going to talk about penitentiaires because that's where I went, but please don't get the idea that I was a big-time gangster. Big-time gangsters don't get to the penitentry once, and I've been there three times. I went to the Penitentiaries for the first time because when I start drinking, I can't find my way home. And there's a federal law against getting lost if you're in the Navy. And I was. When I was 17, I joined the Navy to save America from the communist menace and to come home to Denver a hero. God, I wanted to be a hero so badly. Because when was 17 I was nobody and I knew I was never gonna be anybody but maybe I could go to Korea and come back a hero and I came back two years later out of a federal penitentiary and the great horror of my life began because up until that point the alcohol did what it was supposed to do and I got back home now and the vodka made me drunk and the rum made me drunk and wine made me drunk i didn't get the feelings and that's when i started adding other things to it and over the years i just mixed a whole lot of stuff up but one of the things i love about alcoholics anonymous is that i used to scream out what's wrong with me because i really didn't know and i've been through a variety of different therapies and all he told me what's wrong with me i wondered why i ended up at 19 in a federal penitentiary and i never did understand it it baffled me it baffles me that i couldn't get back to my ship on time they kept giving me these 24-hour liberties and i really intended when i signed off to get back on time and they expected me back on time. And I loved the Navy, folks. I really did. I loved the smelly places we lived and I loved being at sea. There is nothing to this day quite like being at see at night for me. And it baffled me that I couldn't get back. When I came to you and you told me exactly what's wrong with me and exactly why I couldn' t get back to my ship on time. It's It's because I have an allergy to alcohol. If I had an allergy to tomatoes and I ate tomatoes, I'd break out with an itch. Well, I have an allergy to alcohol, and if I put alcohol on my body, the symptom that I get is a screaming me-me itch for more alcohol. And there is going to stop me once that starts. My early sponsors shared with me at a level I could understand that once I set that cycle in motion, I've lost it. I am no longer in control. I've loss the power of choice. I will drink. And love of family can't stop me. I used to think I didn't love them enough. It isn't that I didn' t love my family or that I did' n't love my work or that I didn't love me. It's just that once I start drinking, none of those are powerful enough to overcome the craving for another drink. It's not that simple. I'm out of control. I had some marvelous, kind sponsors. I got comfortable with that idea and thought, ah, now we've got it solved. They said, by the way, now that you understand that, that's completely academic if you never take a drink. That will never happen if you don't take the first drink. That's why the first drink got me drunk because it set this terrible thing in motion. If I never take the first Drink that will never happen again. So they said to me now why is it with a lifetime of experiencing that you take the First Drink? Well, there's a piece missing up here just not there. I can't remember that sometimes. I drank for a lot of different reasons, but the main reason that I have to always remember is that there are times I drank for no good reason at all. There are no choices left to me where alcohol is concerned. I've got a body that if I give it any will kill me, and I've got a mind that can't remember that or won't remember So for me, I can forget about therapy. I cannot learn enough about alcohol or alcoholism or psychology. God, do you realize how blessed we are? Our disease is so devastating that there is no human power that can deal with it. So we don't even have to go looking. but the blessing I am sensing these days is that this whole world is full of sick people it really is we've got some folks out there that have to learn how to cope with fear my God what a terrible thing that must be to have to know how to deal how to cop with fear and they have to learn how to deal with anger I don't know how to deal with anger you let it run until it's a rave and then you go berserk or you kill it with a good drink we're blessed I came to this program I'm going to share just the last week of my life briefly because it's important to me because that's the week that Don got to see Don for exactly who he was and all the blinders were taken away and if there's pain in it please don't feel any pain because I'd bless that week I was on federal parole I got careless in 1966 again and the feds came and tucked me away again so I was not on federal patrol and I had gotten back into my sickness after healing up in the penitentiary and I was really into it And the Christmas week of 1967, things began to happen that brought me to my knees. And I hope to God you've had this week. I had two little boys that I'd been dragging around this country since their mother had left. One was two and a half and one was a year old when I started dragging them around the country. And we had to drag them around because one month anywhere is the best I could put together. I had to keep looking for it somewhere out there. and the heat was on several years before that I had stopped trying to be normal and decided to try to be a super freak and I almost made that one but we were on the move we finally landed back in Denver they wouldn't let me move anymore the parole officer was somewhat against that he wanted to know where I was all the time and we lived in a little $40 a month basement apartment we were on welfare because I couldn't work my god I was drinking and shooting dope you can't work when you're doing that it's in the way of it we lived underneath a lady who raised cats now i don't mean just a couple little stray tabbies running around this lady had a a mania for cats and if you've been around more than three at a time you know what that is and her place was cleaner than mine and that's the wake i saw that I've never heard heroin because of my keen alcoholic mind when I was 14 years old they showed us a movie about junkies and I forget which of our speakers mentioned that but that scared the hell out of me and I determined I was never gonna be a junkie and my mind said junkies use heroin so if I don't use heroin I won't be a junkie and we came out of wherever we'd been for two days and I nudged the guy next to me and I said my god let's get out of here we're in a junky pad and it was my house and I saw it now if you've been on the road and some of you have you know that the promise of America is true there's money in the streets of America all you have to do is walk around with your head down all the time and you'll find it laying in the streets not much but a little out there on Christmas Day we had it down from my folks place so that the kids could visit grandma and grandpa and Grandma and Grandpa could visit the kids. And we found a dollar in the snow. If you're not through drinking, I'm going to share a couple survival techniques with you. Christmas Day, any tree lot in the country will sell you the biggest tree they've got for a dollar anytime after 4.30. We bought the biggest tree on the lot at quarter to five for a dollar. That's how I learned that. I took it home. I'm an alcoholic. It didn't fit the room. It tilted. The drama of that still gets to me. But the thing that finally broke me was when we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and my dad met us at the door, and he said, I'm sorry, your mother says that I can't let you in. She can't stand watching you die anymore and i finally saw what i'd done to my mother clean and clear and then dad snuck us in when i saw what had done to him i used to holler out nobody cares nobody loves us and i thought that was a lot he loved us enough to jeopardize his home that day so we could see the kids and me and i saw what I'd done to my children. My God, what a thing to do to your kids. And I had done it. My way of life did that. Well, the upshot of all of that week was that that night I laid down and I quit. Quitting is a very crude form of surrender but it worked. I quit I took my first inventory. I looked inside of me and can find no reason whatsoever to continue on with this. I knew if they found the body, the children would be taken care of. They'd either go to my folks or to a foster home. We'd already been through all that. I chose to die rather than live one more second as I was. And that's surrender. And I did. I took a two-month supply of the dope I had in the house and I put it in my arm and I drank everything I could find and then laid down and then died. I did. I got to tell you the disappointment I felt the next morning when the police came in to take me away was severe. i am acutely aware because of my own experience that god must have work for me to do because i'm here i used up all of my time everything i've had since is bonus time i didn't know that that day all i knew was i was on my way to jail again Now, I had not been honest enough to even holler for help. If you're concerned about are you honest enough to work this program, don't worry about it. You're not, not if you're new. I couldn't tell anybody I needed help. I'd set myself up on a fraud and deceit charge that would get me six weeks to six months in the county jail so I could rest. My God, I was tired. But that isn't why they were there. They had nine different charges this time, and the first one called for three years to life in the penitentiary. And the D.A. told me in no uncertain terms if you beat me on this one we'll bring the others one at a time and I'm going to tie you up in that county jail until you're an old man but you're through. And I laid in the Denver County Jail for five months waiting trial and healing. Oh God. the alcoholic ego sure heals quick but I can remember some things that happened and I didn't know what it was but if you're not through drinking let me share how to survive in a county jail anywhere in the world the rules are simple I lie to you for 10 minutes you lie to me for 10 seconds and we both go take a nap just remember you've got to listen for 10 and we used to stand walk to tears and talk about what we were going to do when we got out all of us high rollers none of us could make a hundred dollar bond that's why we laid in jail waiting for trial but we were all big shots we were going to get out get some whiskey and go into the hills and get high that's what we were gonna do when we get out and I can still remember my mouth moving those words out of it but I did not feel that here anymore my gratitude for Alcoholics Anonymous starts from there before I ever met you. I didn't want to do that anymore and I didn' t know that there was any other way until you came to me and said to me, you don't ever have to drink again if you're an alcoholic. I didn''t know that. If you are an alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink again. I could sit down right now. But if you heard me say that and you believe that, I just tricked you. You can never again say you didn't know that. They offered me a deal, and from here I have to talk to you about the power of God as I understand him, because God had entered into my life actively before I met you. They offered me a little deal. They knew I was pretty sick and I was still on federal parole, so they worked out this deal. They all thought I was a drug addict, and they talked to the parole department, and everybody said, if you'll plead guilty to a reduced charge, we'll give you a little short stretch, suspend it, and send you down to Fort Worth to the federal drug hospital over here. I'd been healing for five months and I discovered something interesting about me there's at least two of me in here I've talked with some schizophrenics and they're amateur but two things went off in me I had reached the place where I was wanting to go anywhere do anything that anybody said because I was caught in the bind I had chosen to die and I was still walking around in the body I'd tried to kill and it didn't know how to live. I couldn't live successfully and I couldn'T die successfully and so I was wanting to go anywhere and do anything. The other part of me said, a hospital, how nice. See? I've played that game all my life. Hospitals have two things. They have doctors and they have books. And I'm not putting doctors down but God bless them they will tell you what's wrong with you about how long it's going to take for you to get well and all the symptoms you're going to present along the way that indicates you're getting well and between that with that information and the books in the library I'd be out of there in six months because I had been presenting what you wanted me to be for years and I was really good at it so I took their little deal and by the way I'm not anywhere near as old as I look the charge that they had me plead guilty to can only be served on someone 17 or younger so they changed my age in open court Gary Hart thinks he's got problems and the deal went through now if you know anything about power you know that when the federal government and the state government get together and say Don goes from point A to point B that's where you go five days later I was in the fish tank in the Colorado State Penitentiary hollering out wait a minute this isn't the summer camp I signed up for God knows I'd die in Fort Worth and because I had quit and surrendered and became willing to go anywhere and do anything he sent me to the one place where I could hear what I had to hear but I happen to be one of those people that believes that if you're new to Alcoholics Anonymous and this is your first meeting, this is the one you're supposed to be in. But somewhere in this meeting you'll hear what you need to hear to get you through to the next meeting without a drink. Or you'll here what you need to here to get to the next meeting without a drank until your head finally clears up enough so that you can hear what we're really trying to say. Now they came over to the fish tank, these three guys with numbers on their chest walk in in our third week, and the guard hollered, You guys will come down here and you will listen. Whatever he said, so I listened. This guy said, My name is Doc, and I'm an alcoholic, and that means that I'm powerless over alcohol and drugs and guards and all the circumstances of my life. My life's become unmanageable, and if any of you smart bachelors think you can still manage your lives, look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing. Oh, and I hurt him. I hurt he. My introduction to A.A. was that way, and it was followed with an invitation we had a requirement beyond just the desire to stop drinking to get into my original group on Friday night the group met and they let real people in from the outside you didn't get to go to that meeting until you had completed the 12-step study school which meant that every Saturday afternoon and every Sunday afternoon we gave up our movie and or our yard privileges and went up to the school where in five weeks we were carried through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a choice we had to make. When I got to my new cell, they had gone so far as to put a little slip of paper reminding me of that. So went. And they gave us the word. For the next five weeks you have nothing to say. If you knew anything at all, you wouldn't be here. Don, your best thinking puts you in the penitentiary. You're not doing so good. Why don't you be still for a while? We'll show you a new way to think. They talk to me about the physical nature of my disease. Just telling me I have a disease isn't good enough. I have two others. I was also certified as a sociopath type 2 and a psychopath. they're both uncurable also that's one of the reasons the federal people decided not to take me to Fort Worth I'm untreatable a psychopath has no conscience a sociopath does but just doesn't give a damn and I was booed so just telling me I have a disease isn't good enough it's nice but I needed to know the nature of my disease. If I drink alcohol, it sets off a cycle in me I can't stop and I have a mind that's incapable of dealing with that. It's obsessed with the idea that it won't happen next time. So we came to the second step and I hope you'll follow me on my journey because it's finally clear to me what we're going to do tonight. We're going take a journey and I had some problems. I was terrified because I was certified insane and I had visions of having to spend the rest of my life on a psychiatrist's couch trying to unravel what I had just failed to unravel in 33 years of hard work it was very noisy up here in the process of life I had become everyone I had ever met or read about or seen in a movie because when I looked at me, there was nobody there. And so I tried to be everybody. And they were all talking at once. I have at home some papers from my last week because I wrote a lot. When you're taking as much speed as I do, you've got to keep something in motion. And there's a whole sheaf of papers from that week of the incredible truth that I was putting down. And every one of them, in one way or another, says, please be quiet. Be quiet. It was so noisy up there, and I was afraid I was gonna have to sort that out. I couldn't do it And my sponsor said Don you're not a psychopath You know sociopaths, you know schizophrenic says you you do those real good Back me into that corner. I'll show you a psychopath He says, you can really act this out. But that isn't what's wrong with you. You suffer from alcoholic insanity. And it carried me through the story of a young fellow who was a car salesman for a company he used to own. And he'd gone out to a bar to have lunch one day, a little upset with his boss and with himself, and just kind of seated. And the thought went through his mind that, hell, I just had a full meal. I can safely have a drink of alcohol if I put one ounce in a glass of milk and he did and it didn't hurt him a bit my big book says that whatever the precise definition is we call that plain insanity lack of proportion and the ability to think straight now that's what my sick mind could grasp lack of portion and the inability to think street if one works take ten three jobs two wives I didn't have a car in high school I had a maroon 1949 Mercury convertible with leopard skin seat covers and two blondes for one week the blondes broke the top and it pissed me off and I sold the car I can't think straight i get from a to b by way of q i can't think straight my dad used to tell me that it helped me to understand and i'm going to speak a little heresy tonight i'm sorry no i'm not 99 days out of 100 if I'm tempted to drink alcohol I can think that drink all the way through on the 100th day I can't think straight I'm powerless over my own mind and I've always known that and it terrified me and now I know that and I love it because the battle's over I don't have to I can't think straight I am reduced to a place where I must find some power greater than myself that will take care of that for me on the day when I can do it if you're fairly new here there's another thing you're probably feeling I did when I got to the place when I urgently wanted to do this thing and do it right I worried am I going to be able to do it wrong I didn't think I was constitutionally capable of doing it right. Let me put your mind at ease. You can't, you won't. It takes rigorous honesty. And I'm 16 years on this path and I still don't have that. I did everything here for the wrong reason the first time. But that's part of what convinces me that this is spiritual in nature. My motives don't make any difference if I'm trying to find God. I took my third step for very practical reasons, and I did it wrong. One of the things my early sponsor had that I didn't have was that he got in and out of his cell whenever he wanted to. And the reason I knew that is because every time we were locked up, he was wandering the chairs talking to us. And I wanted what he had. there was something else he had that i wanted and i saw it in his eyes and there was no fooling about it this man was in that penitentiary for killing a couple people on the street one day when he was 17 years old in downtown denver in a shootout with the police i've never done that but he talked about that day to me he woke up that morning with the feeling that nobody cared whether he lived or died. And that hurts. In fact, I don't know anything that hurts any worse than that. So he started drinking to kill the pain. Only that day it didn't kill the paint. It got him involved in the pain and made him so mad he went out and killed some people. Well, I've had that experience waking up knowing nobody cared and trying to kill a pain and instead getting involved in it. But the man that was talking to me was incapable of killing anybody, and I knew that. He had been changed. I am with you tonight because of that. I did not come to Alcoholics Anonymous to learn how to cope with life. My coper broke years ago. I came here because I desperately needed to be completely changed over, made new, There was nothing to work with. I didn't put a life back together. I didn' t have one when I got here. And they promised me an entire psychic change, a change of mind. They used words like reborn. He said God is merciful. He said Don you weren' t always a psychopath. He said the most important thing for me in the second step was the word restore. He said, God will take you back to the time when you were sane and you get to start all over again. He also said, we don't know when you went insane. We will assume it was about three seconds after you were born so we don' t have to fool with it. And he gave me the key to life. He said forget everything you think you know about anything, particularly about God, because if any of it had worked, you wouldn't be here all of it drop it he said anything that really is the truth that you've learned will still be there when we're through this process but the rest of it he said the truth won't work for you because you're a thief by nature and you're warped i'm rubber minded he said you take the truth and you put it in here and my ego says oh that's nice i wonder how i can use that to get an edge on the next guy and i warp it so when i use that it isn't the truth anymore. So he said, forget about it. We're not going to deal with that. I was told that I had to have, it was imperative for me to have a spiritual experience. I've been looking for God all of my life. I've always known it would be spiritual in nature. But I'm a thief by nature. I always took it from out here to put it in here. I've had visions, genuine by God visions. We had the privilege of eating peyote with the Indians in Nevada one time. And I had a vision. A great huge bird flying, but it had no head on it. And I knew that that was me in my life. I was flying high and no direction. That kept me straight for four months. We lived in the north woods of California and didn't see anybody for four weeks. Four months. the minute I hit San Francisco I was gone so much for visions I've gone through a number of those kinds of trips so I knew it would be spiritual in nature and then they gave me some good news God has work for you that was not good news I knew what it was he was going to take me to the corner of Colfax and Broadway in Denver and make me hand out Watchtower magazines and ask perfect strangers have you been saved man I couldn't see doing that we talked a little about that and I was reminded the fellow at the corner of Colfax and Broadway handing out Watchtower magazines gets to go home at night I didn't and he probably picked the clothes he had on I hadn't he probably ate the breakfast he chose I didn't. For all my arrogance in relation to that man, his life was better than mine. And it helped open for me the truth. Whatever God has in mind for me, whatever God has on my mind, is better than anything I have in mind. And the proof of that was right there staring at me. My best choices put me in prison. anything he's got in mind for me is better than anything I've got in mine for me so I came up with an urgent desire to turn my life over to God and I went back to my cell and took my third step and sat quietly and waited for my flash of light and had the worst experience of my entire life I'm an alcoholic and if it goes boom and shakes this room I can handle it I've had federal agents smashing down doors and beating me in the head and I've had visions and I can handle all that. I said that third step and waited and absolutely nothing happened. Boy, that'll get you. But I learned something. If you go do what your sponsor suggests that you do and you don't get the results you think you ought to get go bitch at them. And I did. And his response to me was Don you'd be grateful you didn't have a flash of life they've damn near killed you all your life. and then he did what the people of Alcoholics Anonymous do better than anybody in the world we're kind of limited in this old body we get a certain amount of time allotted to us and then it's over I won't get into the philosophies that I believe in about that but this time there's only a certain number of people and it's very precious and he took some of his very precious time that afternoon and he gave it to me he shared with me his experience he said God knows you probably can't stand one more big shock in the shape you're in anyway and he shared how it had been coming to him gently over a period of time as he did certain things God awakened his spirit and he said Don I ask him how do I make this real to this day I've got to be able to feel it man it's got to be real and he sent me away to take an inventory he said as you reveal yourself to you God will reveal himself to you and two hours later when I finished it I took it back to him to take a fifth step see all I'd done is written down a bunch of bizarre because I thought that would impress him. He looked me right in the eye and he says, that's garbage. You wrote that to impress me. Get away. The same man that had just spent two hours being gentle with me threw me out. Well, I went off and found a fellow that would listen to it by God. And I began a series of spiritual awakenings because this man spent two horas justifying my behavior to me and tell me it isn't that bad. And by God, it was that bad and I knew it. And I awakened to the fact that once more in my life somebody who would tell me what I wanted to hear so I could keep doing what I wanted to do. And if I didn't stop that, I was a dead cookie. And so I went back to my cell and I began to pray in earnest for some kind of help because I'm constitutionally incapable of being honest and I know I must do this and the directions were in the book so I followed them sneaky stuff I'll share one of them with you because I love it in 1966 when those federal agents came through the door they weren't nice and in the midst of all that my four year old let out a shriek and his big cough and a reaction turned around put a gun to his head and it was just a reaction I know that today but I went from resentment to hate on the spot and I nursed that hate for months and months through the federal penitentiary and out and I cooked up a scheme that I won't tell you about because some of you may not be through drinking yet but it was a beaut but he went on my list he said I'm supposed to make a list of people I'm mad at that's all I have to do he was there and I said I was supposed to put down why I'm mad at him I had 22 reasons I was mad at Him one bust 22 reasons that's kind of egotistical it affected everything in my life I tried desperately to take the attitude my book said that this man like myself was perhaps spiritually sick and I could get that far you damn right He was and I still hated Him but this marvelous process got me without thinking about it I went ahead and did what was next it said I'm supposed to forget what he may have done and resolutely look for my own faults and it literally burst on me I'd invited him into my house I'd been smuggling marijuana not paying tax on it and that makes him mad I brought him there me everything that happened that day was my fault the damage that was done to my son I caused it not this man and I'm convinced that until you have had some sense of spiritual contact don't for God's sake take that inventory I could not have lived with the guilt of that had it not been that I had already come to understand that God loves me as I am where I am despite what I may have done He loves me and will heal me of that. And without that knowledge, I couldn't live with that. And I went on through and that inventory was shabby. My God, there wasn't a whole lot here. My memory didn't work too good. I burned it out. But I put down everything I could find and my spirit was quickened because I knew the truth. Me running my life means that's the kind of things that'll happen. But now there's a new manager And I learned some things about fear. God, we're blessed in the fear thing. I always thought fear lived here because that's where I felt it. Fear lives here because that's what I make it. The kind of fear that has come to me when I'm walking home at night in my own neighborhood, which is perfectly safe, and I hear a Pekingese dog bark about six blocks away and in two steps it's a bull mastiff, it's in the next bush is going to eat me. The kind of fear that comes when my alarm didn't go off on the new job. And I wake up and I'm 10 minutes late and my mind says, my God, that means we're going to catch some traffic. We'll be 20 minutes late when we get there. We're going to walk in and he's going to say, where the hell have you been? And I'm not going to like the way he says it and I'll probably say, what the hell do you care? He says, I care a lot. I tell you, you're sorry. And I say, no, you don't want to quit. So I don't even get up. because I'm afraid of that confrontation. The unnamed fears that I lived with, they said let's put some names on them. So we started making a list of the things that caused me to feel fear. One of the first ones was fear itself. I was afraid to feel afraid because it fragments me. And then there were dogs and cats and snakes and I was afraid of being alone and I'm afraid of being with people I was scared of talking and I wasn't afraid I wouldn't get my turn to talk and the list began to be almost amusing I was just afraid of everything I wasn' t at least a bit afraid of failure because I was one I did that real good I was terrified of success you know if I did anything right I knew that it was sheer dumb luck. I also knew that you would expect me to repeat it the next day. And I had no idea how I'd done it right the first time. I played football one time when I was little, and I can remember making a quarterback sneak in the shock of suddenly seeing nothing but air between me and the goal post. And it so stunned me that I'd known that that I stopped and turned around and seen what was happening. And they creamed me. That's the story of my life. I took that shabby little inventory and following directions that said I was to find someone who would not be overly affected, I picked a fellow named Jim because he'd been in the program the same length of time I was. He was salooning. Nothing I could say would bother him a bit. But Jim loved me. and I felt what today I know is compassion. You see, Jim was in that penitentiary. He was the first one convicted in Colorado of vehicular homicide while intoxicated. He had killed somebody with his automobile while he was in a blackout. I knew why I was in the penitentiary. He didn't. He wasn't a criminal. He had no mind, nothing in his mind that would explain why he was there. So I felt a great thing for Jim and when we were finished that day I felt something new he said all afternoon well I talked this garbage out and all he would say to me when I'd run a little dry he'd say just enough to get me started again and somewhere that afternoon I stopped being alone you see up until that point in time there had been me and who I needed you to be I'd never dignified any other human being with their own existence it was just me and who I needed you to be no wonder I was alone but that afternoon there were two of us it was me and a fellow named Jim and he was there all by himself had nothing to do with me except that he loved me I haven't been long since and I have often wondered see they let me out before they let Jim out You can imagine, we got pretty close. And I get my messages in funny ways. I got a job eventually when they let me out driving a truck. And the one part of the job I didn't like is that when everybody else got to go home at the end of the day, I had to take the packages down to the bus station and sit in line. And I never knew what time I was going to get off. It kind of irritated me. One day I'm sitting in line and a prison guard came through the door with Jim. sending him home to Florida the odds of us ever meeting again are beyond calculation but God knows that my mind cannot have unfinished business in it we had five minutes and he knew I was okay and I know he's okay whatever he's doing there's no unfinished business between me and I by the grace of God. That's how He works in my life. Well, I went back to my cell after we'd finished that afternoon and I reviewed that thing and had a couple really neat awakenings. Up until that time in my Life I had been a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. Off the line, I'm incredible. Any new job, any new situation, no problem. I learn quickly. I just never finished anything. after my review I was aware that I had done a shabby job but I had done everything I could possibly do for that day it was finished I'd finally done something to the best of my ability and I had a lifetime of work ahead so when I said my seven step prayer I asked God please in his mercy don't let the things I haven't found yet get me before I find them and I found some more last week and I'm still alive so he must still be working the stuff I find these days is really shabby I don't mind if you think I'm a burglar or a rapist or any of that high status stuff but I don' t want you to know that from time to time I yell at my 10 year old in fact you'd have loved it six months ago I was in the best spiritual condition I've been in for a long time I mean I was just kind of floating through the house and these two little girls started picking at each other and making noise and that's my house, you don't do that there and I shifted somehow run them upstairs and as they went into the rooms they slammed the doors and I wasn't two seconds behind them and I had both doors off the hinges and headed to the basement with them if we're going to slam them we don't get them, right? see my house has pretty heavy because we have absolute respect for privacy in my home and I just took the privacy away by God and they went on to school and I'm down at the bottom of the stairs with those two heavy doors when it burst on me idiot before they get home from school you got to carry these damn things back up and put them back on the window and then go to that little ten year old and say honey wish I hadn't done that will you let me off the hook what do I have to do my sponsor set me free with the key in the eighth step of this program i am convinced that the most important thing for me was to get involved in the house cleaning process and the making of amends i was always baffled of why church wouldn't work for me and please understand i'm not saying there's anything wrong with church but it wouldn't work for me. See, I know that God forgives me. There's no doubt my mind never has been. But for reasons I still don't completely understand, this alcoholic must pay for his ticket. I can't live with guilt, and God removes the guilt. And that leaves me with sense of shame and I'll die of shame so I have to go back and one at a time clean those up and so my sponsor gave me the key says what I want you to do he says we know what you've done you know what you did to these people but you have no idea of what that did to them so what I want you do is take a piece of paper make a list to these folks and then one at a time close your eyes and picture them in front of you and ask yourself this question can you feel willing to look at them right in the eye, each one and say to them I've harmed you and I know what I've done but I don't know what it did to you. Will you please tell me what I have to do so we can get the books to balance Bill Wilson was asked one time about the spiritual awakening because he had his big one and he put all the elements of that in our big book and he said to the person who was talking to it you have all had the same experience and that night locked away for the night in a cell in the penitentiary I got free I was lifted no weight was lifted from me I was gifted as I became aware that I am willing to look any human being in the eye and say to you, if I have caused you any harm, you please tell me what I have to do so we can get square. I finally have some peers, the whole damn human race. I am no better or no worse than anybody. And Ernie, I don't remember if Ernie remembers this fellow not a little Chicano gangster who gave me the key that my mind needed for that. As good as you are and as bad as I am, I'm as good as your heart is. I'm not as bad a man as I was. And I entered into my evangelistic stage. If I'm sponsoring you and you don't try to save the world around the eighth and ninth step, we go back and start over. I became literally filled with the Spirit of God and the urgent need to get square with the world and get on about his business and they wouldn't let me out of that penitentiary. And they wouldn'T let you in. And I learned a very valuable lesson. By God's grace, I can live with the things I have done in the past until such time as the opportunity is there for me to straighten them out directly. And that's very important because there are some folks that I cannot see again because they're dead. And there are some folks I can't see again because they don't want to ever see me again. And it answered the most important question in my mind. How do you go back to the mother that you put in a position of saying you and your children can't come here on Christmas? You don't go back and say, geez mom, I'm really sorry. That won't do it. What you do after you say, you tell me what I have to do, you shut up and listen while they tell you. And after I had gotten out and after a period of time when she could adjust to it came so she'd allow me to come to the house, I was able in a way to say those words to my mother and I listened and she told me what I had to do. She said, Don, all I've ever wanted was for you to be happy. So, on a regular basis, I go by my mother's house happy. She told me that I was six years sober before she really believed I was going to stay that way, but that's okay. My mother is a kick in the head. I quit trying to compete with my father, and he taught me a very important thing. I went to him to make amends, and I did what you taught me to do. I told him how important it was to me and I started telling him, you know, I've lied to you, I cheered you, robbed from you, and then he said, please stop. I know all that. All you can do by going into the details is hurt me all over again. and I are just going to have to go from here. My father and I have a marvelous relationship today. And the things that I must make direct amends for, I do. I used to charge him two dollars to shovel the walk because I needed the money. I just go shovel the walk now. My mother's too old to do it, and he won't. And I fix the roof. I do those little things. But most importantly, my father and I talk today. We are peers. He's a marvelous man. He some mad these days. His mind is just as sharp as it ever was, and his old feet won't work anymore. So he can't go skiing with me and do those kinds of things. But we sit and we talk. And he said to me the other day you're as welcome here as the flowers in may. So I go over a lot. There is nothing in the world I can do to change what I did to my children, and I hurt them. I did severe damage. I drug them in and out of crash pads in Berkeley. I'm one of the nuts that came out of Berkeley in the 60s with brandy snifters full of LSD screaming, where there's dope, there's hope. I had a pro-loss remind me He says, by the way, it's a good thing you've got 12-step work to do because you're partly responsible for the mess things are in these days. I'm keen to go clean some of that up. My older boy was so severely damaged that the day came when we thought we were going to have to lock him away. For a year and a half he'd been doing very bizarre things. He'd hit my young stepdaughter one day and I'd kind of finished it. And he was hiding in the basement. Wouldn't come out for a couple weeks. And we tried everything. We took EEGs and EKGs and blood tests. We tried everything and there was nothing wrong with him. So I did some praying and we talked one day and I said, Honey, there's nothing more I can do. He said he'd kill any psychiatrist we took him to I said I don't know what's wrong there's nothing I can do you're going to have to find your answer the same way I found mine within yourself and I said do you still believe in God he said dad I don' t think I do but because you do I'll keep praying about a week later we came out of that basement he said let's check my eyes that's all was wrong with him when I was lower than the other and he saw the world differently than his friends did and it made him feel strange and set apart and he couldn't talk to me about that well we talked real good now once he got to seeing things a little clearer realized I wasn't trying to hurt him and we talked about how nice it is we don't have to do what we used to, and we talked about my pain. And he's fine. He's coming out of the Air Force to take over my business for me. I do roughing, and he says, you're getting too old for that. Two grandchildren now with Joey on the line. I had to let him go to find his own answer. You taught me that. My young son, watch for him. He's six foot two and blond and good-looking and hasn't got a lick of sense. And after a year and a half of him wrecking cars in blackouts and getting the babysitters pregnant and so on and so long, he was destroying our home. and the principles of this program have taught me that our house operates by our traditions they're very fine spiritual principles that make any group work my little family's a group he's destroying the unity of our home and my lovely wife, God bless her she's a sane lady I don't know how that ever happened watched me go through the agony and didn't mess with me and the day came when I realized that if I saved my son one more time and bailed him out he was guaranteed to die I would kill him but if I put him out he had maybe one chance in a thousand but at least he had a chance every time I saved that kid he was trying to work through whatever condition life condition he has to work through and every time I'd save him it made it necessary for him to go back to the very beginning and do the whole damn thing over again That isn't love. So it was 20 below zero. And I had told him the day before, if you do this thing again, you'll have to leave. And he did that thing again. But only by the strength that God gave me, I put him out that night, 20 below, no money, no suitcase, no nothing. And let him finish what he had to do. And I was given the grace not to go see where he was sleeping because he was slipping under the stairs outside on an old mattress in a sleeping bag some guy had given him and I couldn't have stood that. Hardest thing I've ever had to do. He's alive and well. You still may see him someday, but he's okay. He's got his own little business and he brought my little grandson Josh to us. I don't have to wreak vengeance on my son. My grandson's taking care of that. Boy, he's a pistol. Two hours of him and I send him home. I love him, but two hours of himself. He's a busy little fellow. He loves to ride with me. When I'm going around just checking things, I go by and I walk in and he says, Josh goes, Grandpa, Joshie and I have a good time. He has completed the circle of love for me. And that would never have happened if I hadn't surrendered my son to God, too. Making amends has been fun. I could go on for hours about making amends. In the process of making amens, I became a member of the human race. I had seen things happen for other people while I stood there. I'd been given the grace never to know what it was, because then I'd take credit for it. But I've watched other people's lives change because I walked in and said, ten years ago I did this to you and I'd like to get square. Apparently there aren't very many people in the world that do that. It seems to shock them. I get so frustrated doing this. I've used up most of my time getting to what's really important. That's the day-to-day living of these principles in my life. I have to wake up every morning and say, What do you want me to do? I'm yours. What do want me do? And since I started that, he's had something for me to do every single day of my life. And it hasn't been handing out Watchtower magazines. By the way, I discovered there is a guy down there doing that. He doesn't need me down there. He needs me here. I've known that for a long time, but I got lost in my six years' sobriety. someone convinced me that the 12 steps were like high school and it was time for me to graduate and for about four months I got lost and I knew I was lost and I didn't know how to get home two members of Alcoholics Anonymous one of whom at the time I wasn't even sure liked found me I'm telling you this tonight because God has once again done a thing one of my dearest friends in Denver I haven't seen for damn near two years but he's here tonight and I told it privately and I'll have to say it publicly thank you Ernie he came to me and he said for you all of the answers you need in life are here in Alcoholics Anonymous and that one little piece of information was all I needed to set down my burden and get back to God's business. You and I have something here that's so precious and so important I can't stand it. I'm not a person who can just have something to do every day. I have to have a cause. And boy, do I have one. You andI, with nothing more than the wretchedness of our past, the garbage of our lives, get to go out into the world where people are dying and where their families are dying and their children are wondering why in the hell did this have to happen to me I didn't do anything and if we'll go under God's direction and share the garbage of our lives with these people they don't have to die that's a cause that isn't something to do and I really don't like people puking in my lap I'll never have. But I've never been on a fun 12-step call. You give them the best you can get and they call you a stupid son of a bitch. But the joy that comes to my life from doing that, and every now and then one of them says, That makes sense. Where do I go next? I keep doing that. And I don't have any choice. I don' t do that because it's neat. I don''t have a choice. If I want to keep what I've got, I have to go out and give it away. And I like what I'm got. My home group is the best group in Alcoholics Nines. I know you don't believe that, but I do. Every Tuesday night at 8 o'clock we sit down as a group and we read the big book. and we talk about what we just read and if it says do something, we do it. There's a lot of directions in there and a lot to find prayers. We've got new people coming that don't know how to pray so we go through the book and there's a prayer and we all pray it. And the only reason I know it's a good group is because the people that come there stay sober and most of them get evangelistic eventually. I got one now that's going to make an old man out of himself he's going around saving everybody and I love my group I love to sponsor new people oh my god what a thing that is God sends me the psychopaths because he knows that I know who they are They're frightened little boys. Terrified because they don't know how to do anything. And I know about that. That's what it was. And I just love them. I look them in the eye and say, you don't have to do that anymore. They sent me one a while back that they were afraid to have meetings because they're afraid he's going to kill somebody. We took him down my basement and let him cry for a couple of hours and he's fine. He's still a little bit strange. But he's been through our process. You know what we've got here? Do you mind if I take just an extra five minutes to share my new visions with you, because I've run out of time? While I was doing it for the General Service Conference, I got a chance, because of that experience, to see some things about alcoholics and underdogs. We got this, for one thing. That's an amazing document. been in the hands of untold millions of alcoholics. And I haven't met one yet, including me, that hasn't looked at that and said, you know, that'd sound better if it said it this way. We haven't changed a word? That's heavy duty. Haven't changed a word. Maybe there's something important in there. We are the first generation in history, to my knowledge, that has the information necessary to make the truth out of the fact that alcoholics don't have to die drunk. They don't need to drink anymore. My research has taken me clear back to Noah. There's a thought. He had a pretty important job to do. Complained about not enough snakebite medicine. As soon as they found dry land, he planted grapes. As soonas the grapes grew up, he stomped them into wine. got a row of drunk and threw his family out in the wilderness that's not social drinking from that day to this alcoholics have died and we are now privileged to be not only among the generation but part of the society that gets to live with the truth that we don't have to what an incredible blessing that is and as a result of that I've come with a new feeling I'm always known that my obligation is to the new person walking in the door I must give this to them but I have a new obligation now and I I'm convinced that it reaches now to the alcoholic that comes through that door fifty years from now when I'm dead and gone I am obliged not by what I do but by what I don't do that would change this fellowship. I'd like to see it intact so that that person gets the same shot at sobriety I had because that's all we need. So I'm very careful of what I do these days because I don' t want to change this thing. And the bottom line for me is not how much I know or how well I work the steps or how will I can sponsor i love you you loved me until i could understand the process and for some folks i've got one fellow i've been loving for six years he can't do this his mind is too scrambled but he's six years sober and i just love him and play golf with him and tell him he's an idiot he's afraid he's in it so i tell him as an idiot and love him anyway and he's okay I'm going to tell you my story and sit down if I'd have done this at first we wouldn't have had to go through this I had become everybody I'd ever met just like old legions and I was a mess and I wasn't afraid I was going to have to unravel that and he told me we don't do it that way here what we do here is kind of like the story the fellow that for the first time had seen Michelangelo's statue of David I don't know if you've seen it but it breathes and he was awestruck and he went to Michelangeli and said how in the world did you do that and Michelangela said to him well I took a block of stone and I chipped away everything that didn't look like David and that's what I got that's Alcoholics Anonymous for me with God as the sculptor and your love and fellowship and the steps and the things that we do here as the chisel and me as a willing block of stone one day at a time we're chipping away everything that doesn't look like done and so far this is what we got thank you Thank you, Don. That was good. Let's don't forget as soon as we say to the Lord pray everybody clear the building we've got a dance about 30 minutes is there any announcement anything we're going to have a dance right back here the dance will be right in here supposed to start at 10 o'clock I dare to put on time but let's try let's stand and be dismissed Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power of the Holy Spirit.