You Can Do Anything as a Member of Alcoholics Anonymous If You Prepare Properly – Keith L.

Thank you. My name is Keith Lewis. I'm an alcoholic. I'm really delighted to be here. I really appreciate being asked to do anything for Alcoholics Anonymous. It's always an honor, and I especially appreciate being asked to do it at the beach. That's a double honor. On a golf course, which compounds it. I just want to thank Mary Kay and Tom and the committee for inviting Julia and I. I'd like to thank John and Chris for being such good hosts and hostesses, and just everybody involved with this for just a wonderful time. We went on to Mass this evening, and we were talking on the way back about what a nice, relaxed, laid-back event this is. It's wonderful. It's really one of the fine events I've been. I've been doing this for 20 years, and this is really one of the fine events I've ever been privileged to be invited to. I profoundly thank you from the bottom of my heart. I see so many friends, Ted and Michael and Uncle Mikey Way and my friend Ross from up in Washington, and just so many friends that I have here. Wallace back there in Stanford, who I've known since I moved to North Carolina, and just so many people. It's just really, really special being. I want to thank the speakers I've heard, too. Brenda was just wonderful Thursday night. If you missed her, I urge you to please buy the tape. It's a powerful message. I hadn't seen you in four or five years, and it's just great to see you again. I hadn't heard Ruby, but I had the privilege to share with her better half. It's our turn. And it's great to see you again. It's really great to meet you, and to hear Vince last night, it was just such a moving experience for me, and so funny, too. It was really, really hilarious, and I'm looking forward to hearing Pat. And so I'm full. I've got everything I need already, so I'm leaving. Thank you. This is about me, after all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'm not from the South. I know it may grab some of you and surprise you, but I'm really not. I'm a naturalized citizen. I married a woman from North Carolina. I'd like you to meet my Al-Anon. Julia, would you stand up, please? I came South. I came South. Mike always tells me I married above my station. I came South in search of a wife, and I found one. I was also running from things, but it's another story. I was actually born in Ohio, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Wright Brothers. That's about it. I'm the second child. I'm the eldest son in a family of 11 children. I'm Irish. I won't tell you what church we went to. I will, however, give you a hint. It's got something to do with bingo, but I'm not going to say anything. I guess we were poor. At least I thought we were, and I thought that for many years. I used to sit in a bar and cry to the person who would listen to me and tell me what a rough life I had with 10 brothers and sisters and on and on and on and on. The problem was always... The problem with all of that is it wasn't true. It sounded good, but it just wasn't true. Now, we didn't have any excess material goods, but I certainly wasn't poor because I grew up in a family with tremendous love, a family that prayed together the rosary every night, that my parents were genuinely interested in everything that was going on in my life, and just wonderful brothers and sisters. I grew up in a small town on the Ohio River, and everybody was your parent. Everyone would correct you. And then they'd call your parents to tell you that they had corrected you, so you always did double duty when you... And I was surrounded by wonderful people my whole life, and the problem with me was I was an alcoholic, and what that means to me is that I'm incapable of responding to the love that's around me. I just don't see it. There's something wrong with my vision. I can always see what's wrong, and I can never see what's right. And somehow I couldn't experience any of that. And from a very early age, I had a bad speech impediment, and from a very early age, I spent all of my time alone as much as possible. I was a guy who had something lived under his bed. I don't know if they had any of those in the South, but there was something down there, and at night I'd press my little ear against the mattress, and I could hear it moving around. And I knew what it was down there for. It was waiting for me to dangle my little legs over the side of the bed. That's history, and I knew that. And I also knew I couldn't talk about it. I knew that there were certain things you can't talk about, and nobody ever told me that. I just intuitively knew that. And so I was the only one who was aware of this thing under my bed, and I used to lay there at night and think about it and worry about it. I worried about other things when I was a little kid, too. I worried about getting married, because I didn't like girls. I was about four, and I just didn't like them, and yet I knew I'd have to marry one of them one day. And I knew I'd have to get a job, probably in the mill, you know, where my dad worked, or in a coal mine, and I watched people going in and out of the mill, and none of them were like me. They were all bigger, and I thought, I've got to get a job to support this woman I don't want to marry. And I just really labored over these things, and I couldn't talk, and I couldn't be understood. Only my parents could understand what I said, and they thought I was wonderful. And, you know, my mother passed away. I passed away recently, but you know how you think back over these times. I remember I was in the first grade, and the nuns, oh, I gave it away. The nun said, is there anyone here who would like to sing a song for us? And I put out my hand, and my mother just shrunk, you know. And she said, what would you like to sing? And I said, I want to sing, You're a Gandalfag. So I sang, You're a Gandalfag, you're a high-flying fag. And my mother just wept. The beauty of it all, you know. And she told me that night, she said, son, I've never been more proud of you in my life than I was today when you sang for all those people. And, you know, to her, I was normal. And it scares the hell out of you, you know. And they tried to teach me to talk. And so finally, I went to the library. And I asked the librarian. And I asked the librarian, who talked real good? And she said, Winston Churchill. So I got those records. I don't know if you remember, they used to have red records in the library. And I'd go home and play Winston Churchill, and I'd try to talk like him. And I was the only kid in the Ohio Valley with a British accent. And I also, I like to talk about my first drinking experience. I think it's important, if you're going to be an Alcoholics Anonymous, to have a drinking experience. And I questioned some of the people coming to my home group. But that's okay. That's a different topic. But my first drinking experience took place when I was five years old. I was at home. I didn't go out much when I was five. And it was with my father and my brother, Dumb Denny. And Dumb Denny's a year younger than I am. And Mom was out. She was either at the bingo or having a baby or something. And Dad was watching us. And he gave us each a beer. I guess he thought it would be sort of cute, you know. And I drank it, and nothing happened. But Denny, on the other hand, had a spiritual awakening. Last time I saw Denny, he slid out of the chair, and he was rolling around under the table, singing Mary Had a Little Lamb and other drinking songs. And my father panicked, and he wrestled him to the ground and got his clothes off and took him up and put him in bed. And Denny was having a great time. He's singing and carrying on and laughing. And so he said to me, get ready for bed, son. And I said, okay, Dad. He said, if you don't tell your mother about this, I'll take you to the movies next weekend. I thought, well, that's a good deal. You know, when you're five, they don't negotiate much with you. And so I went and got in bed, and Denny wasn't hearing it. And I was watching him. He's singing and everything. I'll never forget this as long as I live. Old Denny stood up in his little crib, and he urinated on the floor, you know. And I remember thinking, you know, there's a kid who's powerless over alcohol, and his life has become a management. And I'm sad to report that Denny just never made it. He just never developed beyond that. It's a sad thing, really. He went on and did some strange things. I'll share some of the things he did. I'll tell his story. I'm tired of mine. He did things like this. Denny went to, you ready? He went to one college. He had one major. You know, he graduated in four years. He went to one graduate school. Graduated at the top of his class. He was offered like eight jobs, and he took one. And last year, he retired. He's 53 years old. He retired as a vice president in a large international corporation. And the strangest thing of all was he married one woman. Now, here's a guy that had the world in the palm of his hands when he was four years old, and he just let it slip through his fingers, you know. I had to work at this thing. I was 23 years old before I urinated on the bedroom floor for the first time. Now, the other thing I remember was, I remember when I was in high school, and Julia and I came back. Julia and I had been married coming up on nine years. And shortly after we were married, we went, had occasion to go back to Ohio for a wedding. And I took her to this little high school I went to, St. John's Central High School. And it was really, it's a tiny little, you know how places are small when you go back. And I was reminded of this nun we had. It was a really strange bird. Her name was Sister Victoria. And I like to think about Sister Victoria, because, Sister Victoria was a librarian. And she's a strange woman. She'd say really off the wall things like, every boy is a prince, and every girl is a princess, because we have a father who's a king. Isn't that weird? And so we'd run around calling each other Prince Keith and Princess Mary. And she was, like I say, the librarian. And she used to walk around this library like it was a Library of Congress. I mean, it was a tiny little room with some old books. But to her, it was where God would have her be. She was in the midst of doing God's will. And to her, that was paradise. And she was just one of these enthusiastic people. And when you served detention, you used to serve it with Sister Victoria. And I was, well, if we had had any money, I think I'd have been diagnosed as an acting out adolescent. We were poor, so I was just a punk. And so I spent a lot of time going to detention. I spent a lot of time going to detention with Sister Victoria. And what they used to do is they used to make us make rosary beads. They'd give you a wire and beads and pliers, and you'd make these rosary beads. Those are things that Catholics pray on, for you heretics. And there were, like, ten beads to every decade and this stuff, you know. And so she put me behind a magazine rack. She said I was a prince, but I was contagious. So I sat back there, and I made rosary beads for four years. And mine were different. I made them with 11 beads in all the decades. And so, you know, by the time, they'd take these rosary beads and they'd ship them all over the world to mission. So by the time I graduated, there were hundreds of mutant rosary beads out there. And, you know, you can't let them not know what you're doing. And when it came time to graduate, she hadn't caught on yet, so I went to inform her. And I said, you know what I've been doing for the last four years, Sister? And she said, yes, I do, you sly little prince. She said, you've been putting extra beads in all the decades of the rosary, and I know why you've been doing it. And I remember thinking, I hope she tells me, because I haven't the foggiest idea why I do that. And she said, people all over the world are praying extra prayers, and God's going to give you all the credit. Don't you hate people like that, too? Then she said something that just terrified me, absolutely terrified me. She took both of my hands in her hands, and she said to me, she said, When I first met you, I knew you were a special little prince. And she said, I put a medal on my beads. They were these long beads. Remember, they bang them against the desk when you're taking tests. And she put a medal of St. Jude, who was a patron saint of lost causes, on that thing. And she said, whenever I get to this medal, I say a special prayer for you. And she said that one day, God's going to send you all over the world, and you're going to tell all his children how very much he loves them. I was terrified. I was just terrified. I couldn't talk. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I mean, everybody in the world knew what they wanted to do but me. And so I left home. I mean, you know, if you don't know what you're going to do when you leave home, they won't know you don't know what you're going to do. They'll think you're doing it. And so I left home. And back then, you know, the way you left home was you joined the service. All men went into the service. It wasn't if, it was where and when. Those were the things. And so I took my very first inventory. I stood in front of the mirror. I took my shirt off. And I flexed my muscles. And I turned sideways and stuck my chest out. And I was 5 feet 1 inches tall, and I weighed 113 pounds. And whatever else I was, I was a born killer. So I joined the Marine Corps. And just, oh, my parents. I was 17. They had a sign for me. My mother just about had a nervous breakdown. And she cried all night, you know. And all night she kept saying, Scott, they'll kill him. And my dad kept saying, don't worry. Pat, they won't take him, you know. So the next morning, with that vote of confidence, we got in a taxi cab and went to the bus station in Wheeling, West Virginia. And I took a bus from Wheeling, West Virginia to Pittsburgh. And it's the second longest trip I'd ever been on. It was 60 miles. And I was terrified. I didn't know anything about anything, you know. It was a real bad year, and they took you if you had a pulse. And so that afternoon, I was sworn into the Marine Corps. Now, you heard some pretty disparaging words about the Marine Corps last night. Something to do with venereal disease and things like that. I feel it fair to point out a few things, okay. Now, I was in the Marine Corps for four years, okay. I never caught a venereal disease. I got drunk before you did what you do to catch a venereal disease. But I knew a lot of guys who did have venereal disease. And we talked about this for a long time. Every guy would go to a Navy corpsman, and they'd come back and say, I have a venereal disease. We finally figured it out. The corpsmen were giving guys venereal disease when they were giving them physicals. So that's how Marines get venereal disease. I just, that's one of the subjects Ruby didn't cover this morning, so I thought I'd throw it in. So, I guess that and circumcision. But at any rate, that evening, you know, I never knew what to do. I mean, I don't know about you, but I never knew what to do, and I thought everybody else did. It wasn't until I got to AA that I found out you didn't know what to do either. But I always thought you knew what to do. It's like you understood the big picture, and I never did. And so I sort of watched you, and I did what you did. Right after you did it, I was fast. You probably even thought I was doing it with you. But it was just right after you. And so these guys, we get sworn in and stuff, and we're standing around. There were four of us, me and three guys from Pittsburgh who had the big picture. And they said, hey, kid, we're thinking about going over and getting a sandwich and a beer. I said, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Why don't we go together? They said, all right. So we went over to this bar in Pittsburgh, and that's where my life changed. And, you know, if you're alcohol, you can know exactly what I mean. I mean, I went into this place, and it was filled with real men. You know, they had tattoos and stuff, you know. They all had real women with them, real women hanging around with real men, you know. You know, I knew that. And I followed them over, and I sat down, you know. And the bartender came over. He's a real man. He said, what do you want? And I thought, oh, my God, a quiz, you know. I always knew that when you least expected it, somebody was going to say, take out a blank sheet of paper. Put your name in the upper left-hand corner, you know. And I studied a lot, but I always studied the wrong stuff. I always felt like I, and I didn't know what to say, so I watched the other guys. And they ordered a beer, so I did, too. You know, years later, a psychologist was to say to me, why do you think you drank in the first place? You know how they scratch their chin, you know. And I thought, that's got to be important, you know. So I remember I went, I got a fifth of scotch, went down by the stream. I drank a fifth of scotch wondering why I drank in the first place. And I went to a bar. By this time, I was hanging out in Hillbilly Joints on Indianette Highway in Maryland. And I said to the guy sitting me, well, tell me, sir, why do you think you drank in the first place? Get the hell out of here, he said to me. And I said, all right, okay. And I could never figure it out. Then I came here, and I found out that it didn't matter why I drank. What mattered was what happened to me when I drank. And what happened to me that night was I was liberated for the very first time. Vince described it beautifully last night. I was liberated. I, uh. Uh. Somewhere between the second and third drink, I saw the big picture. It was the first time in my life. And I remember saying, it's so simple. Why didn't I see it before? It's been right there the whole time. I just missed it. And I stood up. I didn't mean to stand up. I couldn't keep from standing up. And I was about six feet, four inches tall, and I weighed 220 pounds. And, you know, the muscles were rippling through my body and tugging at my shirt. And it was unbelievable, you know. And I looked around, and my heart broke because this bar was filled with a bunch of pathetic, sniveling little men. And, you know, all of them had women with them or looking at me with those hungry eyes. You know how they do it, you know. And it's incredible. And I had this instant knowledge. I was just illuminated. It was amazing to me. And I spent the rest of the night going from table to table filling these people in. I mean, I answered questions they hadn't thought up yet. I was absolutely brilliant. And somewhere around 11 o'clock at night, or a train left at midnight, and somewhere around 11 o'clock at night, I said, we had to leave. And it's sad. It seemed to me they were saying, please don't go. We've just discovered you. That's the way it seemed. And I said, no, I have to go and make the world safe for democracy. And so we went, and we got on a train. And presumably, the Marine Corps provided me with a Pullman coach. They must have, because I woke up the next morning in a Pullman coach. Well, actually, I was lying on the floor of the Pullman coach, and someone had wet the floor I was lying on. And whoever it was, he had wet me, too. I don't know when. And again, I was 5 feet 1 inches tall, and I weighed 113 pounds. And again, I was terrified. And I changed clothes, which was a good move. And I got off the train, and the guys were waiting for me on a platform. And they said, hey, look, we're going to go over and have a few beers for breakfast. You want to join us? And I said, that's just exactly what I was thinking. And so I went over there. And that night, that night, I fell off a train in a little village right over here called Yamasee. And somebody moved a bottom step or something. I don't know exactly what happened. But I fell across the next set of railroad tracks. And there was a very rude man there. They had sent to greet us. And he was hurling obscenities at myself and the other young men who went down there to die for their country. And I remember getting up, and I tried to explain to this cretin that he'd probably do a lot better if he treated us with a little respect. You know, he was so limited. He never really grasped. Exactly what it was I was trying to say to him. And they say that you can learn from any experience. And I got to tell you, what I learned that night was you can do a lot of push-ups drunk. That's what I learned that night. And you can do push-ups and throw-ups at the same time. I'll tell you that. And so the next morning, I ate grits for the first time. I was telling some friends about it. I never saw grits before. I didn't know what the hell grits were. So I did what any normal Yankee would do. I put sugar in my drink. I put sugar and milk on them. And this cretin looked at me and said, you're going to go far, boy. You're going to go far. And so I was launched into the Marine Corps. And I must say that I loved the Marine Corps. I really did. And it sounds crazy, but I absolutely loved it. You know, there were fewer people in the barracks than there were in my house. And the drill instructors couldn't even carry a nun's rosary beads. I mean, they were easy compared to the nuns. But most of all, for the very first time in my life, this sounds strange, but for the very first time in my life, I knew precisely what was expected of me. I never knew my job description until I joined the Marine Corps. They're very clear about what's expected of you. And they aren't a bit hesitant about sharing it with you. And I loved it. I loved everything about it. And I grew a few inches and gained a few pounds. And, you know, I just graduated from Paris on with the Dress Blues Award and Outstanding Man's Award. I mean, I really took to it. I was the only guy in that whole platoon that just loved it. And I was going to stay for a hundred years if they'd let me. The problem was that I had alcoholism. And let me tell you what having alcoholism means to me. It means that I'll fall in love with a way of life, tremendously enthusiastic about life. And every alcoholic I know is just tremendously enthusiastic about life. And then gradually or not so gradually, I began to violate every principle associated with being in the Marine Corps. Before my four years were over, I had alcoholism. Before my four years were over, I had earned an opportunity to go to Officer's Candidate School. And I turned it down and got out. Because within four years, I violated every principle associated with being a Marine, up to and including leading a combat patrol in a blackout. We took fire. I don't remember it. But fortunately, nobody was hurt. So I violated virtually every principle associated. And what I'd do then is I'd leave that way of life, and then I'd blame them for what had happened to me. And that's my alcoholism. It lasted 12 years. In that 12 years, I did more damage than I think a human being ought to be allowed to do to the people close to me. I joined many areas of life, including marriage. And I violated every principle associated with being married. When my first daughter, Kelly, was born, she had a good sense to be born in the daytime, so I was sober. But when my second daughter, Kimberly, was born, she was three months premature. And I was passed out on the living room floor. And my wife had thrown water on me to try to wake me up, and she couldn't. So in a panic, she got the neighbors. So when I came to, I was laying in my underwear watching the test pattern, and the neighbors were standing there looking at me. And I was just infuriated. And I knew that if she'd had that baby on time, I'd have been all right. And, you know, if she'd have waited until I was all right, she'd have carried that baby for two-and-a-half years. And— . But, you know, the amazing thing was I worked at a great teaching hospital at the time, and I got her in a car, and we raced. I was drunk, and we raced across Washington, D.C., with the flashers going and all the drama that a drunk can generate. And I got her to the emergency room, and I began to demand that they take care of my wife. I directed genetics units at laboratories at this place, and I began to demand that they take care of my wife. And I think of how mortified she was, terrified to begin with, having this baby almost three months early, and she's mortified having this drunken husband who was arrogant and everything. And so the baby was born and weighed about two pounds or a little less than two pounds. And I went home and went to bed, and as soon as I went to bed, the phone rang, and it was her, and she was crying and said, the baby has high-membrane disease, and they don't expect her to live. Would you please come back? And I remember how angry I was. I felt put out. I didn't know how to handle these things. My father knew how to do these things. He knew how to be a father. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to be a father. I didn't know how to be a husband. I didn't know any of these things. And I went back, and a wonderful physician, a girl I'd gone to high school with, was the chief resident in a neonatal nursery, and it was a wonderful physician there who headed that service. And three days before Kimberly was born, they bought an experimental machine. It was the first one on the East Coast. It was called a negative respirator, very common now. But it was developed, I think, at UCLA, and it was a very first. It was the first one they had on the East Coast. And it had come in three days before Kimberly was born. And a day or so before she was born, they came in on their own time with an engineer, and they put it together. And David, this doctor, said to me, my wife by this time was in a state of shock. She looked like a thousand yards staring. And David said to me, would you mind, Keith, if we put her on this? He said, I don't think she'll live. And if she does live, I think she'll be retarded because of lack of oxygen. But do you mind? We put her on the machine. And they knew I wouldn't sue them because I worked there. And I said, do whatever you feel you need to do. And then I found out what had happened to me, how low I had sunk. Our offices were across the hall from the neonatal nursery. And I sat in there at night, and I didn't drink for a few days. And I sat in there at night, and I kept the door slightly ajar and sat in the dark, and I watched this little kid struggle for every breath. And these little kids were trapped. What they call retracted. And they actually lift off their little mattresses in these things. And I was there. 72 hours is a critical time. And I was there watching when my wife went into this nursery and baptized our little baby because they didn't think she lived through the night. And I couldn't go to them. I couldn't go to them. And I hated myself. I sat there and loathed myself for what I'd become, the coward I'd become. And I went downstairs to the chapel. And I said, I got in front of the tabernacle. And I hadn't been there in a while. I hadn't been there in a long time. My religion, or my alcoholism cost me my religion, too. And I got on my knees in front of the tabernacle. And when I was a little kid, this was a special place for me because I knew that even when I couldn't talk plain, God understood me. And I got in front of the tabernacle, and I begged him to let this little girl live. And I said, I'll do anything if you'll let her live. Anything. If you'll let her live, I'll stop drinking. And I was drunk in less than 24 hours. I drank. I drank when I thought drinking would kill my little baby. And I could not drink. You know, there's a great philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pasquale, a Frenchman who, probably the last good Frenchman, but he's a Frenchman who said something that sort of fit me. He said, God created man in his own image, and unfortunately, man returned the favor. And I had created a God in my own image. And that was a God who would kill a little baby because her father was sick. And God didn't kill this little baby, and she survived. And it's absolutely miraculous. And she's 28 years old, and she's not retarded. She's an honor graduate from Auburn University. I always point out to her that I think you can be a graduate, an honor graduate from Auburn and still be retarded, but. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . He's a dentist. He doesn't work on my teeth, but he's a dentist. And they live in a little town in Alabama. Daphne, Alabama. And just great kids. And this Christmas, they presented Julia and I with a little granddaughter. And. . . I'm glad that God's not sick like me. You know, you can't live like that and survive. And my wife knew that it wasn't safe for me to be around the kids. One day I needed a drink badly, and my wife wasn't there, and I left a four-month-old kid in a crib because I needed a drink and on and on. And I knew I was just hopeless. I knew if a guy can't stop drinking to save his child's life, how can he stop drinking? And she asked me to leave, and I was greatly relieved. I could no longer carry the responsibilities, even poorly. And I was just greatly relieved she asked me to leave, and I packed two bags, and I went to where I needed to go, and that was to the Skid Row section of Washington, D.C. And during that six months, I remember the one time that I remember seeing her was in the middle of the night. It was Thanksgiving Day. I didn't know it was Thanksgiving, and I got up, and you know the drill. I woke up in a room I didn't recognize next to a warm body. I remember my first thought was, God, let it be a woman. That was my first thought. I mean, there are times when you'll settle for a little. And then you went through the embarrassment of acting like you remembered, and she didn't remember, and I didn't remember. And I got out and got dressed, and you know that sick feeling, that loathsome, depressing, and scary. And I was walking down the street. I went by a free clinic in Georgetown, and the woman asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, and I got a cup of coffee, and she said to me, Happy Thanksgiving. And I realized it was Thanksgiving. And I went down the street to find the pay phone, and there was two couples standing on the corner of Wisconsin and M Street in Georgetown. And they were standing there talking, and I walked up to them and stood with them. And they looked at me. I didn't think they could see me. I didn't think that I was present to them. I don't know if you know what I mean. And they just sort of looked at me, and I was embarrassed, and I walked away. And I found a phone, and I called my estranged wife and said, could I come out for Thanksgiving? And she said, if you don't drink, you can come here at 6 o'clock. So at 6 o'clock, I didn't drink all day, and at 6 o'clock, I went out and knocked on the door, and she opened the door and gave me a bag of turkey sandwiches and closed the door. And I got a six. And I went to the park and sat on a curb in the park and ate my turkey sandwiches and drank my beer. And that was the last social gathering that I'd been to. And I know how hard it was for her to do that. I know how hard it was for her to even give me a sandwich to what I'd done to her. I'd brutalized her emotionally, physically, every way you could think of. I robbed her of everything that mattered. And I went to where I knew. I needed to go. And one day, I won't talk about drinking. You know how to drink. But one day, I got up, and it was over. It was just over. I always used to think suicide was a big deal. But, you know, for an alcoholic, it's just the next thing. I kind of think that I'd pay whatever it cost to go to Pittsburgh, because I'll never forget that night in Pittsburgh, that first night. And, you know, one day, I was in the NCO club, and I said, give me a double scotch. And the guy said, that'll be 70 cents. It's in your Marine Corps career. And I thought, well, that's about right. So I paid it. And, you know, one day, I probably wanted a bottle of gin or something. And I said, you know, give me a bottle of Tanqueray gin. And he said, well, that'll be $8 in your wife and your children. And I thought, well, that's about right, you know, to get to Pittsburgh. And one day, I'm living in the Skid Row section of Washington, D.C. And I don't know. And I bought something, who knows what. And he said, you know, it'll be your life. And I thought, well, that's about right. It's just the next thing. It's the next price, that's all. And I went on May the 13th, 1973, I went in to what passed as a bathroom where I was living in front of a mirror. And Mike remembers that place well. And I said aloud, I had all these pills I was going to take. And I never took pills. I worked in hospitals, and they gave me a bunch of pills, and I never took them. Brenda thinks that's the saddest story she ever heard, but I just never took them. And I decided I'd take them all. And I said aloud, you know, you're 29. You're 29 years old, and at least it will be over. And this woman's voice outside of me startled me. She said, when you're 29, it's not supposed to be over. And I remembered that my ex-wife had given me a phone number when I left. And she said, I can't help you. Maybe these people can. And she gave me two numbers. And I ran out, and I pulled the drawer out, and everything fell on the floor. And I found one of the numbers, and I called it. It was a little treatment center outside of Washington, D.C. Now, I know there are people who stand at podiums, people who don't have an opinion on outside issues, who criticize treatment centers. But I'm not one of them, because if that place hadn't have been there, I'm convinced I'd be dead. And a woman answered the phone, and she knew precisely how to talk to me. She knew exactly how to talk to me, and she knew I was suicidal. And she asked me for my phone number, and she said, I'll call you right back. And I know the trick. The trick was to find out my phone number so they could trace me. And she called me back, and she told me that I could come in three days. And then she said a strange thing to me. Do you need trouble? Stopping drinking. And do you need help stopping drinking? Do you think you have trouble? And I thought, I don't know what she's talking about. I'd never stopped. And I found out what she's talking about. I heard those things and saw those things. And how do you get some money? And for three days, I heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Lovely piece of music, but not for three days. And it was coming out of the strangest places. Like, I'd park my car, and I'd put money in the parking meter in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. I'd say, wow, it's worth a quarter. And I went to the bank to get some loan on an alcoholic car. And I'm listening, and I'm listening, and I'm really getting into it. And I realized they didn't have Muzak. I was the only one who was hearing this beautiful music. And then I saw those things out of the corner of your eye. It would dart out, and that sort of thing. And somehow I knew that at the end of three days that it was up. And I got in my car, and I drove out to this place. And it was 30 miles away, and Mike and I had driven it many, many times. But that morning, it took me six. Six hours to drive 30 miles, because I had what they used to call the running fits. Now we call them anxiety attacks. But then they were the running fits. And I wet my pants, and I threw up. And I could only go for about a mile, and I'd start to shake and everything. And it took me a long time to get out there, and I finally got out there. And that night, they put me on a bus and took me to a place called Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, like Brenda, I never knew Alcoholics Anonymous existed. I never knew a thing about it. I thought it was an old organ. I thought it was an old organization. My ex-wife had found an old book in the trash room, Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought it was a history of an organization that existed in the 30s. But they learned so much more since then, and they did away with them. And so they put me on a bus and took me to Alcoholics Anonymous. And then my life changed. It was like my trip to Pittsburgh. And I'll never forget. There was a man standing at the door, a strange guy, you know, sort of an obnoxious kind of guy. You know, looking in the eye, you know the kind. Come around here, you know. Looking in the eye. I was a shoe guy. I looked at shoes. But this guy's looking in the eye, and he's shaking my hand, you know. And he said, and he shook my hand. I tried to look away. Like he had two heads. Every place I looked, he's looking me in the eye. And he said a strange thing to me. He said, you know, son, he said, you keep. First, he said, you're new, aren't you? And I thought, my God, he's psychic. You know. And then he said, if you keep coming here, you never have to drink again. And I wanted to scream at him. What do you know? I'm a guy who drinks when he thinks drinking will kill his kid. What do you know? He knew what I didn't know. And that is that the God of my understanding put me here. Because with you, I don't have to drink again. And from that day to this one, you've kept your promise. By the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and a series of pretty mean sponsors. One I share with Wallace and Mark and a few others. I don't have to drink. And it began an odyssey. And if you kind of knew, you know, I don't expect you to believe this. Because I would never have believed it. I admire anybody who's sober a week and can sit in a room. I couldn't sit in a room. I couldn't be around people a week. I mean, I just couldn't do it. I mean, I'd be hanging from the ceiling someplace or something. So I'd really admire you being here. But if you don't remember anything else, please remember. That all of us were sober one week. Wallace, who's sober 34 years, was sober one week once. And I was sober once. And all the people you see here are members of Alcoholics Anonymous have been sober for one week. We wouldn't lie about something as precious as that. We couldn't lie if we weren't sober. I mean, we could lie, but nobody would believe us, you know. And we couldn't show up here and not fight and things like that. So please believe that something that happens here is very, very special. Now, you don't catch it. It's like going to a corpsman and catching venereal disease. You don't do that. You have to do what Ben said last night, you know. You have to work these steps. You have to become part of this thing. And if you don't want to be, that's normal. Because I was isolated. I was really isolated. And people would ask silly questions like, what do you like? I had no idea what I liked. I knew what I thought I was supposed to like, but I had no idea of what I liked. And what I did was... I immersed myself in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I finally got a sponsor. I like Vince was one of those people who waited to get a sponsor. And the old-timers won't leave you alone. One guy kept saying to me, he said, you got a sponsor yet? And I said, no, not yet. He said, why? I said, well, frankly, I've been waiting to find someone I can relate to. Back in the early 70s, Vince would tell you, relate was important. And he said... Do you want someone to relate to? Go to a bar. He said, if you want to... He said, what you need to do is find a man you want to be like, if and when you grow up. And ask him to be your sponsor. I said, well, I wonder what I'd do to offend this man, you know? That's the way the old-timers were. And I'll tell you, if you're new, let me... Well, it is an honest program. Let me caution you. Stay away from the old-timers, okay? I mean it, right? Stay away... Guys like Mike and Vince and guys... And Wallace, guys like... Stay away from them. They're not nice people. They're really not. And they... I'm telling you the truth. And they say things that just aren't true. They say stuff like, I go to AA because I need to. That's a lie. They don't need to go to AA. The only reason they go to AA is the only enjoyment they get out of life is watching people like you and me suffer. This is true. It's true. If you don't believe me, go up to Milt after the meeting and tell him a problem. You know what he'll do? He'll laugh. You know? The first thing he'll do is he'll laugh. Hey, hey, hey, hey, you know? And if you really want to make your date, tell him a problem related to sex. They love problems related to sex. And their answer's always the same thing. No sex. You know? They're not having sex anymore, and they don't want us to have it either. And they always speak to you in parables. You ever notice that? They always speak to you in parables, you know? Say, well, you know, look, I can't sleep at night. You know, the world moves slowly. Yeah, right. And I remember I used to go to this old fool. I don't know why. I'm just a sucker for punishment. But I'd go to this old fool with my problems, and he'd just get the biggest kick out of it. And I was impotent when I got sober. It happens to a lot of men. And I wasn't happy about it. I mean, I can't drink in this, too. And I went to this guy, and I hemmed and hawed funny. He said, what's the problem? I said, I'm impotent. That's the problem. Oh, he loved it. He said, it happens to a lot of us. It'll get better. I said, when? I thought it was important, you know? And he said, what, do you got a fool's social calendar? Ah, you know. So then I go to this same idiot. You'd think I'd learn, you know. I go to this same idiot with another problem. And he said, you got a lot of problems, don't you? I said, I really do. I said, I have thousands of problems. He said, well, I'll tell you what I want you to do. He said, I want you to borrow lipstick from one of the girls. He said, and I don't want you to do anything else for a girl. He said, oh, that's right. You can't. So I want you to borrow lipstick. I want you to go home around on a mirror. Keith, you are wrong. I said, well, I can't do that, you see. My problem is I have a poor self-image, and I need to be affirmed. Don't ever talk that way to an old-timer. They hadn't read any of those books, you know. And so I went, and I bought a tube of lipstick. I didn't want to owe anything to anybody, especially a woman. Right, guys? And so I went home, and I wrote on a mirror, Keith, you were wrong. And I threw it away. I was just disgusted. I said, these people are nuts. They're insane, you know. And I went to bed, and I had a normal night. Remember a normal night at 60 days? Oh, you know. I lay down and closed my eyes, and for the first time that night, my head woke up. You know, take off, you know. And it was talking to me. You're never going to make it. They're going to find out you're crazy. That's your problem. You know, this stuff. You're going to be alone the rest of your life. What difference does that make? You're impotent. You know. You know. I finally drift off to sleep, you know. And then remember the leg cramps? Oh. I'd be jumping up and down beside the bed with leg cramps. And then 15 minutes before I had to get up, I'd go sound asleep. You know. And it would take three alarm clocks to wake me up. Everybody in the neighborhood got up when I got up. But my mind was still working, and it was saying, You're going to go to work today, and they're going to find out you don't know how to do your job. What difference does it make? You're hopelessly in debt. You know, just some normal stuff. And when I started to cough, I just wanted to slash my wrist, you know. And I went in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and it said, Keith, you're wrong. I said, Well, thank God, because if I'm right, I'm in a hell of a lot of trouble. And I just lost it. And I began to scream on the phone, Well, Mr. Fulbright Scholar, one of us is leaving here in a few minutes, and the other one's going to go back to his cell and get locked up. And Dan thought it was a little inappropriate, and he was trying to take the phone away from me, but I wasn't finished. And I got down on my knees, cradling the phone, and I'm screaming at this guy. And the other guests started looking in our cubicle to see what was going on. And finally the guards came over. They were curious about what was happening. Dan finally got the phone away from me, and he said to the guy, Yeah, I'll come back tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll come alone. And he hung up the phone. And I just knew I was going to be drummed out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew it. And so we left, and I'm waiting. I'm just waiting, you know. And he's not saying anything. You know, it doesn't make you crazy. And so finally I got over to the car, and I said to him, That was pretty bad, wasn't it, Dan? And you know what he said? He said, You know, Keith, I'll be honest with you. He said, Most guys wouldn't have done it that way. He said, You'll discover that we all develop our own technique in Alcoholics Anonymous. I never heard another thing about it, you know. Never heard another thing about it. Early on I figured out about sponsors. A sponsor's job is to find out the desire of your heart and then not let you do it. You know, that's what they're designed to do. And I was working. I was working, and I was working my way out of a deep hole at Georgetown University. And I was again in charge of experimental design and that sort of thing for the genetics bunch. And I was just sort of working. And I was working my way back in, and they were just wonderful to me. They couldn't have been nicer to me. And as a matter of fact, the chairman of the department was a member of our fellowship, and I didn't know it until I was gone from the university. He kept the anonymity very closely guarded. But he was just wonderful. He arranged for me to do a scholar. He got me a scholarship, and I didn't know his name at the time. I was sober about a year, and he called me to his office, and of course it was to fire me. You never go to a chairman's office unless you're going to get fired. And he told me what a wonderful job he was doing. And he said, I'd love to give you a raise, Keith, but the wage and price freezes in. And he said, so what I want to do is give you this instead. It was a full tuition scholarship. I could have gone to medical school or anything. And the desire of my heart was to study philosophy. And I was at Georgetown University, and so I took a degree in philosophy and theology. And I had to work at the same time, but what the hell? I mean, you weren't drinking. You know, just working and going to school full time is a piece of cake if you're not drinking. And all I had to do was go to seven meetings a week. And I mean, it was just easy. And compared to the life I've been living, and but I was sober about three months. And I got a letter from a man, his name was Jerome Lejeune. He died last year. And he's probably one of the greatest cytologists who ever lived, just an extraordinary man. And he wrote me and invited me to come to his laboratory at the University of Paris Medical School in France to study. And I knew that my sponsor wouldn't let me go because it's something I really wanted to do. And so I was just going to turn it down. And I thought, no, hell, give me a chance. So we went to lunch, you know. And after I paid, I didn't have the money, but I paid. And after lunch, I gave him this letter. And he read it, and his eyes filled up with tears. And he said, my God, this is wonderful. And I said, you mean I can go? And he said, you have to go. He said, this isn't about you. He said, the best you can do is crap your pants in a skid row dive and, you know, on Harvard Street. He said, this is about alcoholics. And I said, what? And he said, no. Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, the difference between Keith then, three months ago, and Keith now is Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, this isn't for you. He said, this is so all of us in Alcoholics Anonymous can celebrate the miracle of recovery. And I said, I didn't think you'd let me go. He said, you have to go. And he said, and let me tell you something. I've never forgotten this. And if you're new, please hear this. He said, Keith, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And we began to prepare properly for me to go to France and study. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you prepare properly. And he said, you can do anything in this world as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you because i couldn't keep from crying and that day i walked the streets of freeman i'd been in paris before but i couldn't leave the bar in the hotel i was staying in i couldn't get past the bar and i was there a couple months and wouldn't you believe it just what a coincidence my sponsor came through town and uh and we took a train ride down to to uh down to sartre to see the beautiful cathedral and uh and he taught me a great lesson about fear i have this tremendous fear of heights and um and and i thought that the way you dealt with fear was you were brave you know you kept it a secret then you got brave and that's how you you dealt with the fear of heights and and he was telling me that we could go to the top of this cathedral on a catwalk and look down and see this magnificent thing and right away my heart stopped and i began to get brave you know when i was in the marine corps and i was afraid of heights i didn't tell anybody and i i tried to go to jump school because i figured jump out airplanes you won't be afraid of heights and i busted a kidney a few months before that overcoming another fear so um they wouldn't let me go to jump school so i went to mountain climbing school so i spent a month in the sierra nevada in the middle of winter rappelling off the sides of cliffs drunk and the guy i'm rappelling with said i'm not climbing with you anymore you're drunk and i said i'm a hell of a lot better off drunk than i am terrified and uh i said we're both lucky he said i'm not lucky enough to climb with you anymore and so and what i discovered was that being brave isn't a solution to fear i always thought it was it isn't being brave you know i started to get brave and then i stopped because i've been a member of alcoholics anonymous for a little over six months now and i knew there was a different way to do things and i said to dan i said dan i can't go up there because i'm afraid of heights and he said oh you got the old freight of heights problem he said a lot of us have had that i said really oh yeah a lot of us had that he said you know you don't have to go up there he said it doesn't matter he said or here's a novel concept you can go part way he said or you can go until you're afraid and then you can take my hand and that's how we did it i went until i was afraid and i took his hand and we went to the top and in everything that i've done as a member of alcoholics synonymous i've done it because i've taken someone's hand and gone to the top i could do nothing before i met you nothing except make big plans and talk big and make excuses who i didn't work and you know the thing if you're new the thing about alcoholics anonymous you don't have a problem we can't we help you with and you don't have a problem you know we may refer you to somebody who knows more about it but you don't have a problem that's going to shock us into to asking you to do anything but to keep coming back and that's the truth and i mean i don't care what your problem is there's nothing that's going to scare us off because we need you here you know i i remember one time i had such thinking problems when i got sober i mean my brain just wouldn't work i was driving to work one day and this is a true story i forgot where i worked i said about two months and i forgot where i worked and i tried to remember the more i try to remember the crazier it got and everything you know and i had dan's phone number he made me carry it a card he taped a dime to the card he made me carry it and and so i called him and i didn't want him to think that i was as sick as i was because i didn't think he wanted to sponsor a guy with problems you know so so he answered the phone and and i said good morning dan he said keith is that you and i said yeah he said what's the problem i said no problem dan i was wondering how you're doing he said i'm fine keith said what's all that noise that's why i'm calling you from a phone booth he said tell me buddy did your car break down i said no car's fine i was just wondering how you're doing and he said keith what's the problem i said well it's not a real big problem dan it's i just can't seem to remember where i work and uh he said to me he said oh you got the old can't remember where i work problem a lot of us have had that i you know so then he said to me he said um he said that's scary i know he said but he said you know you've done great damage he said the book says that we it's a very unnatural thing to pour that much alcohol in our brains and he said he said but i want you to know he said you're going to be okay and he said you know your brain is going to readjust and you'll be okay and he said one day you'll laugh at this i said you sure he said i'm positive he said may i make a suggestion i said anything i'm honest willing and open-minded and he said if you ever have this problem again keith he said if you can just remember to look on the front bumper of your car you have a parking permit the university and i remember thinking where do these people learn these things they make it look so easy you know i'm astounding let me um let me talk a a little bit about about the steps and and i want to talk in particular about uh about the the eighth and ninth step um you know there's just so much this time next month uh by the grace of god and fellowship of alcoholics synonymous i'll be sober uh 25 years and that just can't happen and i never planned to stay here 25 years i mean i really didn't because i didn't know about this here if i had known that this was a treasure trove of great wealth that it is i i would have made plans to stay here but they weren't my plans to stay here what i did was i fell in love with who and what you are and i just aspire to be like you that's all and and one of the things that you do to be free is to do the steps and and and you know and i i had some people on my eight step list and i wanted to talk just for a couple minutes about this if i could please uh one of the people on my eight step list was dumb denny and um and uh some years ago i took it i drove he was then living in jersey now lives in northern california but i drove from washington up to new jersey to have a talk with with dumb denny and uh we began to talk and his wife jan knew that this was a different kind of talk and she excused herself and went to bed and i was able to tell him how how sorry i was for the way i had criticized him and and i said any time i found any flaw in you at all i said i broadcast it to the family i said i i detracted from you and i said uh i said you you look so good you know you did everything once and uh you know you're such a successful guy and everything and i i always felt you know i always envied you and i always felt so inadequate around you and i said what i've done the last six months it's just the opposite i told him all the good things that are true about you and i stand ready to do anything else i can do to prepare the friendship that we once had i played second base and denny played shortstop and we played shortstop and we played shortstop and we played shortstop and we played we were a wonderful com double play combination we were wonderful brothers and uh and he just started to laugh he said you know if if you owe me an amend then i owe you an amends and he said all my life i've envied you he said all my life i've been afraid he said i've been afraid to change majors i've been afraid to do these things and he said he said i always envied you keith you said you never gave a about anything he said if things weren't going well in one country you'd go to another country and he said you went to skid row and you came back he said lost your wife and your children and you came back he said he said the strength and the fortitude and the character that you portrayed on me he says is beyond anything i've ever experienced and i discovered that we weren't good and bad we're just different and now we're best friends and we play golf as a matter of fact last year we won his golden cutter championship out of this club and old guys never win that i mean young guys from stanford win that and uh and we won it i mean we just whooped up on those young guys you know and uh and uh and it was like the old days when we won championships together and things like that it was incredible and and then and you know i grew up in this church and and and his church was so very very important to me and when i came to alcoholic synonymous i was one of those people was religiously anti-religious you know the kind and uh waiting for somebody to defend me and by talking about god and um and and my sponsor pointed out to me that i had a pretty negative attitude about organized religion and i used to think i used to say i don't like organized religion the truth was i wasn't the pope if i'd have been a pope i'd have loved organized religion you know and um so i put religion on my my a step list and i went down to a a little retreat center uh where mike and i would go quarterly for retreats and and i i went looking for this young theologian who would understand the significance of this incredibly humble act i was about to perform and uh and i couldn't find him and what i found instead was an old old priest who was waiting in his rocking chair rocking back and forth in his room he's reading his breviary and i knocked on his door and said father can i talk to you for a minute his name is jim and he said come in come in and i sit down in a rocking chair across from him and i talked to him about about alcoholic synonyms i i talked to him about about the kids that that i had lost and and everything and i talked to him about where i'd gone and but most of all i talked to him about how i ridiculed people like him because i was afraid of them and how i blast beamed the church and and blast-beamed god and uh i don't know that that's not my job it's not my job my job is to be a poet because we should and blaspheme God and everything. And I got about halfway through, and the guy put his book down, and he got up, and he pulled me up, and he began to pat me, and he began to cry. And he said, son, he said, please stop. He said, I was just asking. He said, I have a disease that's going to allow me to go home soon. And he said, I was just asking God as I understand him where I missed it. And he said, he sent you. He said, too often I stay with the 99 who agreed with me. And I didn't go after the one that was lost. He said, I'm sorry you had to be out there all alone. And what I know about the eighth and ninth step is it isn't about me. I'm very concerned about some of the things I see in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not going to give a lecture, believe me. But one of the things I'm concerned about is people think it's about coming here to get better for me, and it's not. It's about coming here to become spiritually fit so I can carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I carry it. I carry the message to a holy man who spent 50 years as a priest doing the right thing. And God would pick a dirtball like me, carry the message to a holy man, amazes me. And then I was free to be in that church or not be in that church as I chose to be. Prior to that day, I wasn't free to do that. I made amends to God. I put on a three-piece suit. I went to a little chapel, and I sat down, and I just told God the truth. Just told him the truth. And I left. And knowing I was loved beyond belief. See, I'm the prince, the king. I went to my father. My father was one of those guys who never told me he loved me. That's what was wrong with me. My mother had a square nipple, and my father never told me he loved me. And it took me years to... I'd go to make amends to my father, but in a few minutes, I'd be in a rage. I used to drive from Washington to Ohio to make amends. And in a few minutes, I'd be in a rage, and I'd drink half a cup of coffee, and I'd storm out of the house, get in the car, and drive back to Washington. And my father used to say to my mother, I'm worried about that boy. He drives a long way for a cup of coffee. And then suddenly, one day, I knew it was the right time. And I didn't know what I owed him an amends for. I know I'd worried him, and I'd done all those things. And I'd called him names, and I'd done all those things. Once, I almost hit him. Fortunately, I didn't. But I knew what I owed him an amends for. And he was talking to me, and he said, Son, do you remember your first... And I said, yeah. I said, I work in a bowling alley. I set pins. And he said, do you remember the first day you went to work? And I said, no. And he said, I took you to Louie's hot dog stand, and we had lunch together. He said, do you remember what you ate? And I said, I'm going to go out on a limb to add a hot dog. And he said, of course you had a hot dog. He said, do you remember what you drank? And I said, well, I always drank orange pop. He said, not that day. He said, that day you had a root beer. He said, I drank root beer, and I think you thought men who drank, or worked, drank root beer. And he said, and I explained to you what it was like to be a good day's work for a good day's wage, and that you owed your boss respect, and he owed you respect. And he said, I explained it all to you. And he said, you were such a frail little boy. And he said, I was terrified. And he said, well, you had to get on a bus to go to the next town to work. And you said, I said to you, Son, do you want me to go with you on the first day? And you said to me, no thanks, Dad, I'll do it myself. And he said, you got on a bus. And he said, I watched the bus until it was out of sight, and you never looked back. And I realized that I robbed this man. I robbed him of what he did best, and that was to be a father. He said to me, he said, you never ever needed me for anything. He said, from then on, you bought all your own clothes, you paid your own way. He said, all your brothers and sisters who went to college and to graduate school, he said, they all let me help them. He never bought a car until the last kid was out of college. He said, they let me help them, but you did it all on your own. And I thought, my God, I'm sorry that I robbed you of what you did best. And a few months later, I needed to borrow. I needed to borrow a couple thousand dollars. And from that day to this, we've been like that. If you're new to Alcoholics Anonymous, if you'll stay with us, I can promise you great things will come to pass, things you can't understand. My mother, who was such a wonderful woman, and like I say, she passed away, and she died what some people would call a horrible death because she suffered greatly for six months. She didn't see it as a horrible death. She believed that everything that we do is a prayer, and particularly suffering. And she offered her suffering that her children would come back to God. Those who were away. And she raised 11 of her own kids, and they raised kids who had no place else to go. And on her 50th wedding anniversary, they had 11 children, 20 grandchildren, and 20 great-grandchildren. And mom died at home. And my sisters and brothers took care of her. And Julia and I would get up when we could. My brother Larry is also in the fellowship, lives in Wilmington. And he and I went up one night, and we were with her. She loved the rosary. And at night, when everybody was asleep, I'd come down and pray the rosary aloud. And from time to time, she would wake up and smile and then drift back. And they put the picture of all the kids and everything on the wall, and she would look at that and smile. And she was pretty lucid one night. And my niece, who was in the fellowship, ran in, and she was all excited because her sponsor was going to be speaking. And she said, come and hear Barbara speak. And I said, well, I thought I'd stay with mom. And my mother said, no, no, no, son. No, no, no. She said, you go to that meeting. That's where you're supposed to be. She said, those were the people who brought you back to us. She loved alcoholics and armistice. And when I made amends to her, I asked her what I could do for her. She said, only one thing. Would you give me one of those coins that they give you? And so every year on May the 13th, I'd send her a token. And when she listed the things that she wanted in her coffin when she died, the thing on the top of the list was my 23-year chip. Because you brought me back to her. My brother, Terry, who died of alcoholism. Sounds horrible, but it isn't horrible. I saw a guy walking the streets today. And I said to Julie, my God, it's Terry. The guy was a dead ringer for my brother who was on the streets, like I was on the streets. And he lived in a basement of places like I lived in a basement of places. And 20 years ago, he went to Alcoholics Anonymous. He settled for 90 days. But for whatever reason, a miracle didn't happen for Terry. What did happen for Terry was that I tried to make amends to him. And he didn't. And he didn't. And he didn't. And he didn't. I went to town when I went home, and he never let me around him. And I just yearned to make amends for my brother. And we went up for the 50th wedding anniversary, and I finally got an opportunity because he came to the 50th wedding anniversary drunk. And my brothers came to me and said, Terry's here drunk. I said, of course he's drunk. He's an alcoholic. And they said, should we tell him to leave? And I said, good God, no. And I imagined Terry sitting down the street. Remember how it was? One more drink, and then I'll go. One more drink, and then I'll go. I said, he must love them a lot to come here like that. And I not only made amends to him, but I freed my brothers and sisters to love him just the way he was. He contracted cancer and ended up in the hospital, and I went to see him. And nobody would leave me alone when I'd go home. They're always hanging around you, you know. And so I told him I was leaving to go home, and I ran over to the hospital, and I spent a couple hours with Terry. And we talked. We talked about stuff, and he asked me about the things we grew up with, about rosaries and about scapulars and things. And I had to have a few of them, and I talked to him about it. And we just talked brother to brother for a couple hours. And he let me hug him. You know, when I study theology, there's a concept. For those of you who think it's over, you've wasted time, there's a concept in theology. And it has to do with time, and there are two kinds of time. There's chronos, chronological time, which is linear. And there's kairos, which is God's time. And God's time is always now. And that's why in the program, they teach us to live in the now, you know. And I got to hug my brother, Terry. He was frail. He was pretty sick by then and pretty wasted away by cancer. But I got to hug him. You know how it is when you're an alcoholic. You can't hug much. And I only hugged him for a few seconds, but I hugged him forever in God's time. And when I left, we were all right. And my family got to take him home, and they got to nurse him and take care of him. They got to watch him come back into the church that meant so very much to them. And they got to watch him die with dignity, incredible stuff. Great things will come to pass, great things if you join us in this way of life. There's a power that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous that I believe happens no place else. Don't get me wrong, I don't make a religion out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a way of life which frees me up to practice my religion, frees me up to practice my politics, frees me up to be a good husband, frees me up to be a father, frees me up to be all the things I want to be. I don't quote the big book like it's sacred scripture. I just don't do it. There's a guy who's always bugged. He says, don't you believe it's God-inspired? I said, yeah, I think God had a lot to do with writing that book. A drunk couldn't have written it. But he said, I think it's the inspired word of God. He said, I think they ought to put numbers on it and chapters and things. And I said, well, what would it be? I said, would the pictures, would the personal stories be inspired? Yes. I said, well, you know, after the first edition, they threw some of those stories out. I said, that's heresy. And he said, well, only the first 164 pages are inspired. I said, well, how about those ones with the I, I, I, I, I, V, V, the ones that Mike talked about? And I said, are they inspired? You know, the guy goes nuts. So I think we've got to be careful about that. I think what Alcoholics Anonymous is about is a message. It's a way of life that we transmit one to another. And I want to close with this. And I talked too long, and I apologize. I'm just so excited about being here. But, you know, one of the things I like to do is we have a teaching hospital. And if you have a teaching hospital, go and talk to the interns, the young doctors who come. And I put on a coat and tie, and I went over and talked to them about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, do you ever get a patient who wants to talk to someone in Alcoholics Anonymous? I'll come any time. And I got a call from somebody, and this little doctor. And she said, it's probably a waste of time, but there's a man here who won't talk to anybody. But I asked him if he had talked to a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he nodded his head. And she said, so if you're not too busy, I said, I'll be right there. And I put on a tie, and I went over to our hospital. And this nice little doctor, cute little girl, had the obligatory stethoscope around her neck so you know she was a doctor and not a high school student. And so she took me to this guy's room, and she said, would you like to see his chart? And I said, no, I don't think I need his chart. I said, I want to show him my chart. And we went to his room, and she was going to make herself, and I said to her, would you please excuse me? And there was a man laying in the bed, and he was a black fellow, and he was laying in the bed, and he was looking at the ceiling, and he didn't acknowledge my presence. And I pulled up my chair, and I said, my name's Keith, and I said, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I understand you wanted me to come over here. And he nodded his head. And I began to tell him my story. You know, that's all we do. We don't have any answers for anybody. So I began to tell him my story, and I told him, and I almost died on Harvard Street in Washington, D.C., and his head jerked, and he looked at me, and he said, when was that? I said, 1973. So I was living on Columbia Road, Washington, D.C., in 1973. I said, Ontario Liquor. You used to go to Ontario Liquor Store. He said, yeah. And I said, remember the barrel where they had three-fifths for $10, the good stuff? He said, yeah, yeah. And I told him, I said, you know what I used to do? I said, I used to put on a sport coat and an ascot so nobody would think I was a bum. He said, I put on a tie. And I remember I went in there one time, and I was holding up the bottles, you know, three-fifths for $10. And I said to the guy behind the counter, tell me, sir, is this a pretty good vodka? And he said, what the hell do you care? We'll get you where you need to go, you know. And he said, that was a nasty guy. I said, yeah, he really was. And we started talking, and pretty soon, and there's little interns wandering around back and forth and peeking in the crack of the door, you know. And this guy's sitting on the side of the bed, and we're talking. There's only alcoholics can talk to one another. And we're great friends. I mean, we're lifelong friends. We've known each other. We've known the degradation and the fear. We've known each other forever. Our whole lives we've known one another. And we talked, and he made me promise he'd come back. And I said, I'll be back tomorrow, and I'll bring another guy, and on and on. And I left, and this girl had gathered all the other interns together. And they were so excited. And she said to me, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever seen. She said, that was magic. She said, would you do a workshop for us? And I said, would you be willing to do some homework? And she said, oh, of course. I said, you've got to drink real bad for at least 10 years. I was able to say to her, this isn't about learning. I said, this isn't it. I said, you go on and be a great doctor. I said, because wherever you go, all you've got to do is get the name of a couple of alcoholics, a man and a woman, who are active members in Alcoholics Anonymous in your town. And let them come and do this. We need great physicians. You go be a great physician, and let us have the alcoholics. I said, God hasn't given me many talents, but he's given me the ability to speak to another alcoholic. And that's what you're going to have if you're new and you'll stay here. The ability to change the life of another human being. And once you watch it happen, you'll never go anyplace else. There's no action like this action. Again, I want to thank you so very much for your kind attention to my stammering words. And again, I want to thank the committee and everybody associated with it.