If It’s Not in the Book It’s Not Important – AA Speaker – Ray O.
AA speaker Ray O. shares his experience with the 12 steps and the Big Book, discussing powerlessness, Step 3 surrender, Step 4 inventory, and how the program’s spiritual principles transformed his life after 60 years sober.
Ray O., sober since November 1965, is an AA speaker who has attended step meetings nearly every day for decades. In this talk, he breaks down his personal experience working the 12 steps, emphasizing how the Big Book became his guide to recovery—particularly his sponsor’s teaching that “if it’s not in the book, it’s not important.” Ray shares how he moved from terror and powerlessness to discovering a power greater than himself, and why the steps, taken in order, are the medicine for the disease of alcoholism.
Ray O., an AA speaker with nearly 60 years of sobriety, explains how the 12 steps and the Big Book saved his life after he hit bottom in 1965, moving from complete powerlessness to discovering a higher power through sponsorship and step work. He discusses the practical application of Steps 1–3, the importance of the Fourth Step inventory as “medicine” for alcoholism, and how understanding powerlessness is the foundation for all recovery. Ray emphasizes that the program works because it addresses character defects—not drinking—and that the Big Book contains all the essential guidance needed for recovery.
Episode Summary
Ray O. is an old-timer in Alcoholics Anonymous, sober since November 24, 1965. In this extended talk, he walks through his understanding of the 12 steps with the clarity of someone who has lived them for nearly 60 years and attended step meetings almost every single day. He speaks about sponsorship, the Big Book, and the spiritual principles that transformed his life—and he does it with the voice of someone who has seen the program work for thousands of people.
Ray’s bottom story is devastating. Before his second trip to AA in 1965, he was a tenured law professor at a major university, the youngest in the United States. He had a wife, seven children, a law degree, everything—and then it all fell apart. He spent his 35th birthday in a mental institution. By 1964, he was sitting in a big chair at home, drinking vodka, brooding, planning revenge, unable to get dressed, burning the chair and urinating in it. He was in a state of terror so complete that fear is what finally drove him back to the rooms, not the drinking itself.
His sponsor was a man named John, a lawyer and a Big Book fundamentalist who had a simple but transformative teaching: “If it’s not in the book, it’s not important.” When Ray brought concerns about his job, his marriage, his problems with other members—anything outside the four corners of the Big Book—John would respond: “Is it in the book? Then it’s not important.” This wasn’t dismissal; it was wisdom. Ray learned that the program would handle everything if he worked it, and that his job was to focus on the steps, not to manage his life circumstances.
Ray walks through Step 1 with depth and honesty. He explains that admission of powerlessness is not just an intellectual agreement; it’s a spiritual concession made to your “innermost self”—your spirit. He describes how he couldn’t stop drinking no matter what he tried. He tells a striking story about a member named a research chemist who insisted the problem was capillaries—and how his sponsor shut that down fast. “Even if he’s right,” John said, “it’s not important because if it were, it’d be in the book.”
The turning point for Ray came six months into his second sobriety. Every morning he woke up desperate to drink. One morning, walking through Grand Central on his way to work, something shifted. He realized he hadn’t thought about a drink. He hadn’t wanted one. He was astonished. He called his sponsor and said, “I didn’t want a drink this morning.” His sponsor said, “Congratulations,” and hung up the phone. Ray sat there and realized: the only thing different in his life was the meetings. He had the same job, the same house, the same people—only the meetings were new. “Holy shit,” he thought. “There must be something at those meetings.”
That experience gave Ray the belief he needed for Step 2. He didn’t find it in theology or a church. He found it in the fact that he no longer wanted to drink. His sponsor never lectured him about God. The power became real through Ray’s own lived experience.
Ray addresses the confusion around Step 2 head-on. He points out that the book says “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”—not that we all came to believe in God. He emphasizes: there’s no requirement to believe in anything. The power greater than ourselves showed up in those meetings. For Ray, it eventually became his understanding of God as a caring father—a concept that made sense to him because he was a father himself.
Step 3 is about making a decision and turning your will and life over to the care of God as you understand him. Ray explains this not as giving God permission to run every detail of his life, but as an offer of surrender: “I’ll do what you want. I don’t know what you’re going to ask, but I’ll do it.” It’s about admitting that your way didn’t work and being willing to try another way.
The heart of Ray’s talk is the Fourth Step—the searching and fearless moral inventory. He calls it the medicine for alcoholism. He explains that the book says a business that doesn’t take inventory goes broke. An inventory in AA is what you have on your shelves now—your current resentments, fears, and character defects—not your whole life story or autobiography. He criticizes the treatment industry for asking people to write massive life histories that blame their parents. The book is simple: write down who you hate, why, and what it threatens. Write down your fears. Write down your character defects. Write down your sexual problems. That’s it.
Ray spent three years and forty-five minutes doing his first Fourth Step, which he acknowledges was ridiculous. He explains that when someone says they have a “Fourth Step problem,” they actually have a First Step problem. If you truly believe you’re powerless and that there’s a power greater than yourself, you won’t hesitate to do the inventory. You’ll take the medicine.
He illustrates this with humor and precision: people come in with three-thousand-page autobiographies blaming their parents. Meanwhile, alcoholics are relapsing and dying without doing the actual step work. The medicine doesn’t work if you don’t take it.
Ray also speaks directly to his understanding of what alcohol is and what alcoholism is. The disease is not the drinking; it’s the thinking. It’s the spiritual illness that alcohol attacks. He talks about Bill Wilson’s correspondence with Dr. Jung, where the Latin word “spiritus” means both spirit and alcohol—and why alcohol is so deadly to the human spirit.
Throughout this talk, Ray’s tone is matter-of-fact, direct, and shot through with dark humor. He’s not gentle about human ego or self-deception. He’s a lawyer by training, and he reads the Big Book like a legal document—word for word, plain meaning. He doesn’t soften the truth. He doesn’t inspire through uplift; he inspires through clarity and lived example.
What a listener will take away: the steps are not suggestions, they’re instructions. The Big Book is the manual. A sponsor who knows the program will make you take your medicine even if you don’t want to. Powerlessness is real, and it’s the doorway to power. And if you want to recover, you don’t need to understand God—you just need to be willing to believe that something worked in those rooms, and to follow the path that others have already walked.
Notable Quotes
If it’s not in the book, it’s not important.
I didn’t want a drink. There must be something at those meetings that works on people like me so they don’t want to drink.
The whole thing is spiritual. There’s nothing you can pull out and say this is spiritual and this isn’t. The whole thing is spiritual.
We admitted we were powerless. We never were connected with anybody for your whole life. You’ve never been part of we. And that was true. He said you’ve always been by yourself.
If you don’t take the medicine, you’re not going to recover from the disease. It’s such a simple thing.
A fourth step problem is a first step problem. If there’s any reservation there in the first step, then you don’t need a power greater than your own because you’ve retained power.
The medicine is a searching and fearless moral inventory. Nothing to it. And it embarrassed me to tell you—it took me three years and forty-five minutes to do it.
Deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other, it is there.
Step 2 – Higher Power
Step 3 – Surrender
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Big Book Study
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Long-Term Sobriety
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 1 – Powerlessness
- Step 2 – Higher Power
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Big Book Study
- Sponsorship
- Hitting Bottom
- Long-Term Sobriety
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker and for the next uh couple of days I am going to be discussing with you my experience with the 12 steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have done this before and I usually start off by entering a disclaimer.
Uh I am not here I don't consider it my function to be here as a teacher to teach anybody anything about anything. Nor do I do I consider it my function to explain to you what's in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Very simple book.
It's in English language and I'll read it. And I don't have any particular insight into that book that's any different than anybody else's. The one thing I come I come here with is experience.
I am an experienced member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have been a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous since November the 24th, 1965. And in those years since then, except for the usual emergencies, etc., it is fair to say that I haven't had a meeting of Alcoholics economist every day since.
And the meetings of Alcoholics that I attend on a regular basis are step meetings. So I have what I bring to this gathering is experience and as Don read in our preamble that is what we share here. We share our experience on strength and our hope.
I have opinion on everything. I have opinions on all types of things. I try not to share my opinion.
you I will I'm sure but my opinions are wellinformed opinions and I will die defending them etc etc so when if you hear me giving opinions you'll just have to excuse me because the way I am and if I end up preaching to you that's the way I am I don't mean it to be that way and but that's the way it of times comes out I am required by form to tell you that I do not speak by four alcoholics autonomous And now what I tell you is just what I think secretly I don't believe that I am telling you gospel truth it should suffice for the whole fellowship. Unfortunately I am bound by a lot of tradition. So, I I have to say that as a matter of form, I say I've been here a long time, and you can tell by looking at me, I've been someplace for a long time.
And uh I don't talk about drinking very much because I don't think it has very much to do uh with it. like everybody else. When I came here in 1965, I came actually I came here the first time in 1963 and I lasted 10 months and I was not successful.
I got drunk and I experienced being drunk after having been to AA for 2 years between 63 and 65. And when I came back to our Aston the second time, I came here with a much different approach than I had the first time because between 1963 and 195, I demonstrated to my own satisfaction what powerless so. And uh it was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to me.
And as this book says, I was reduced to a just a pitiful and incomprehensible uh demoralization. That's what the book says about and that's the way I came back to alcoholics 1955. I'm sure that I came here so that I wouldn't drink it.
But I over the years my learning and my experience is such that I I don't consider that I'm here not to drink. That's not who I am. And if you're new, if you're and I understand there are some people who are new, that's first our first rule and maybe it's our only rule and that's don't drink.
Go to the meeting. Don't drink in between me. But there is much much more to alcohol than not drinking go to meetings.
Drink not drinking and going to meetings is vital. It's as breathing is to living. But there's a great deal more to life.
There's been healing in Mexico. And I found that out and and my thoughts about the program are constantly changing. the last period of time, say the last several years, what I I've come to understand for my own purposes is that I'm host for me nothing less than a search for a relationship with God.
That may be different things for different people, but that's what I have been pursuing now for the last period. I've been And as I say, that's a much different approach than ever I had when I first came. There was a period of my life when I'm before I became a Caholics when I where I had been very successful at a very young age as are many alcoholics.
And one day I was sitting there and and I had it all. I had the whole thing. I had it all all together.
And the next time I looked around, everything was gone. And I wonder where the hell it went because it was there. The last time I paid any attention anything, there it was.
And it was gone. And I was sitting there and I was in a complete state of terror. And I lived in that state of terror for some period of time.
And uh I used to sit in this big chair. I had a house. I had a wife.
I had seven children. I had a license to practice law. I had already been fired from a career job as a teacher of law.
In 1962, I was that's why I came to AA the first time. And now it was 1964. And I'm sitting in this house, this big chair.
I have a bottle of vodka. And I'd watch television. Many times it was on and I would drink and I would brood and I'd be in terror and then I brooded some more.
Then I'd set fire to the chair because there's the smoke. But the chair didn't burn because I also had taken a leak in the chair. So it would smolder and it would smell.
But it would never it would never burn. And I was sitting there in that dirty old chair brooding, worrying, and planning my revenge and thinking to myself, "Someday, you know, very soon, too. Someday, I'm going to get out of this chair.
I'm going to get some dry clothes. I'm going to get a typewriter, you know, and they'll hear from me, boy. They'll I'll be there.
They'll hear for those guys that push me around. They'll hear for me. And I would contemplate what kind of an action I would bring.
You know, something exotic, mandamus, or some stupid thing like that. And every once in a while, I'd have to go vertical and search for money. So, I was very active practicing continuences and adjournments.
And I had a patented all-purpose affidavit that I would fly around in various places. I was like Cornucopia. All the work would come in at one end and nothing would come out at the other end.
It was just like cornucopia in reverse until the day that I showed up. And I don't think it was the drinking that brought me here. I mean, I knew about the drinking.
I knew about the drinking. Long time before I came in, that was no news to me that I was alcohol. I knew everybody in my family was alcohol.
I was not news. I think I could have drank some more. I was 37 years of age.
My older brother lasted until he was 48. My uncles and my cousins usually died between 45 and 50. I've been to the funerals.
I knew about my family. I knew all about this stuff. And I wasn't I think I could have hung on a little more and drank.
But what I could not take was the terror. And that's what got me. Fear.
and my fear mounted to terror uh very very bad and almost immobilized. So I called a longtime friend of mine who's also a lawyer and longtime member of this program and I talk about him a lot. His name is John and he's my sponsor.
He now is retired and lives in Ireland in his retirement. So, I don't see him very much, but we we correspond back and forth and uh I asked him if he would help me and he said he if I would not drink and go to the meetings and so I began that way and it's been a constant evolution ever since. And I was brought to the steps of this program which is what we're going to talk about very early uh by John.
He's he was and is a very orthodox member of our he's a very big book oriented member of our time and he was forever sticking my nose in the book and he used to tell me over and over again if it's not in the book it's not important and I you have to know something he said it will be in this is the book it'll be in the book if it's not there it's not important we had a guy up there very smart guy who's a research chemist and also a physician and he worked for Sloan Ketering. He's very smart. Donald, remember Marty, remember very very Marty had come in a little before I did.
And uh I admired him and I sort of identified with him like he had four months. We had people there with 10, 15 years. They frightened me.
But 3 months, my kind of a guy. And besides, he looked all right. I I guess he went to college because he had all these jobs and degrees.
Not like the guy that drove the Schaefer beer truck who ran the group. I really want to associate with him. And one day I showed up and Marty said to me, "It's capillary." He said, "Tell me again." He said, "Capillaries.
The whole thing is capillary." He said, "I figured it out this afternoon in the lab. All capillaries. Alcoholics have something dangerously wrong with their capillaries.
And that sounded good to me. Doesn't that sound all right? It's capillaries.
I said, "Holy." And John showed up and I said, "John, Marty says it's capillaries." And he's very played, very cool. He said, "Get the book." So I went over and I came back with the book. He said, "Find the part about the capillary." So I said, "I don't think it's in there." He said, "Then it's not important." He said, "Listen, even if Marty is right, it's not important." See, he said, "I'm not telling you Marty's wrong.
I don't know the first thing about chemistry. I'm not a chemist." He said, "But even if he's right, it's not important because if it were important, it'd be in there." She said, "If you have a problem that's not in that book, then it's not important." And it took a while for me to understand what he was talking about. And I would come, you know, the way we are at first.
I would whine. Yeah. A lot of works are wonderful people.
They come here as I did, unemployed and unemployable. Correct. 6 months later, they're underpaid and their boss is an And I would he'd say, "Is there anything about that law firm in that book?" I say, "No, well, this not important." Oh, and it take a little while when you knew, you know, get I I have the usual whine about my wife and my children.
He said, "Look, you know, there's nothing in there about that. It's not important. I thought it was important." and I would have all of these problems and he would say it'll work out.
Well, how do you know that? He said I don't but it will. Yeah.
And it was an odd thing as you have experienced your own self. What he said to me was true. It's always true.
It always he said don't worry about it. So I worried about it and worried about it and worried about it and then it solved itself the way things do and I thought what was I worried about? Then I find something else to worry about and I don't know when that all you know finally finally went away and one time somebody else was at the group and they said as you hear off time they were having trouble with the spiritual part of the program.
John who was very mildmannered never used bad language the opposite of he got very exercised and on the way home I said what's the matter he said where do these come from I don't know I think he said he was from either he said there is no spiritual part of the program and that got my attention I said there isn't no the whole thing is spiritual there's nothing you can pull and say this is a spiritual this is you know pull out the six steps say see that's spiritual but you pull out the fourth step say that's not he said the whole thing is spiritual I thought the first step had something to do with drinking which is not a bad thought especially if you knew him but the way he explained it to me it doesn't have anything to do with drink much he said Look what it says. It says we first word it said you have never been connected with anybody for your whole life right you've never been part of we and that was true he said you've always been by yourself that was I don't know if this is true in your life but true in mine I suffered from a very very early age I early first grade from a sense that I didn't belong. You know what I mean?
I just didn't belong there. I didn't I didn't know anything about school or church or any of that stuff. I was 5 years old.
My oldest sister took me up to school, dropped me off. I found out I was an Irish Catholic. I didn't vote on that.
The first Friday I was in grammar school, my sister made me a bologn sandwich. Catholics didn't eat meat in those days. On Friday, I pull out a bologn sandwich.
The nun tries to take the baloney sandwich. I'm into a fist fight with a nun. My fourth, my fifth day in school.
With her, it's a big theological point. With me, it's lunch. I'm rolling around the floor with a sister of mercy.
And she won. And I didn't get any lunch. And they I was Raymond the heretic from then on.
And it was a goddamn hassle. And I went through all through school. Everything was a hassle because I didn't belong.
And that followed me all through my life. And even though I had that feeling, I was very strong. Even though I was successful, you know what I mean?
I was successful. I was a successful kid. I had a lot of friends.
I was terrific at school. Not only was I the smartest guy in the school all the time, but I was also president of my class all the time. I'm still the president of my law school class.
I get along with people. I'm all right. And I had a great job.
In 19 58, I was the youngest tenure professor of law in the United States of America. Guys, my class in law school. I was a star.
You know, they expected great things. And I was I lived in the right town. I moved into a town called Lmont, New York.
Right kind of a town. right kind of a house, everything, the right car and the right club and the right and I never ever felt like I belong and I'd be some bar on second avenue in Manhattan 4:00 in the morning drinking the guy next to me be spitting on my shoe trying to steal my change off the bar and I think to myself I don't belong here you know I'm a law professor I say, "Guys, I don't belong here." And I had a beautiful house up there with a dead and all that. I didn't want to go up there because I didn't feel like I belonged up there.
So, I wasn't, you know, I didn't belong in a salon. I didn't belong in my house. I didn't belong.
I belong. And I suffered that. I found out later what caused it.
It's part of alcohol. But he was right. I had never been part of we never never I grew up that way.
I grew up uh I just found out about four years ago my family was dysfunctional. I didn't know about that. But I found it out.
All I know is my father died when I was two and I had an alcoholic mother. So you grew up the best you could and all the rest of it. And I just never felt I was never part of anything.
Didn't belong. I was very good by myself, you know. Still am.
I don't mind. But I was never really part of anything. And he told me that he said you to be part of a group spiritually because you're acknowledging need all these people help.
And the group I joined at that time very small we had maybe nine people 10 people just a little bunch we sat around chair Wednesday nights said all these people got you asked them help you want to know something you asked him he was in a different group they'll tell you well you got to be part of it and so I became part of the weird The admission of powerlessness. The book says that we can see this to our innermost self. Our innermost self.
This magnificent body that you're now looking at. This is my outermost self. The innermost self is spirit.
Not the blood bone stuff makes me in most self is the spirit that each of us can that what is what we really are spirit you know our bodies have all taken beating over the years but it repairs itself or it doesn't but that spirit stays and that's where the confession of powerlessness mean according to Indeed your innermost self alcoholics have lost the power of choice when it comes down that concession has to be made this way spiritually doesn't mean there is what I tell you doesn't worldwise I can tell you anything what make what I tell you or what you tell me I can admit to the whole world I'm an alcoholic if I don't concede to hear. I used to tell people in bars before I came to Alcoholics that I was alcoholic. That was my defense after the time.
When the bartender say, "But Craig, you know what the hell's wrong with you?" They listen. Yeah, but that's his wife. I know.
I That was my defense. Well, and where I grew up, if if alcoholism was a defense. It wasn't a mitigation.
It was an absolute defense. So, what the hell did he do that for? He was drinking.
Oh, well, that's the Irish culture. You know, >> why he shouldn't? The man was drinking.
Ah, perfect. Complete defense. So, the admission of powerlessness I take to be a spiritual thing.
I really do. And uh it was not an easy thing for me to do. It took me 3 years to get a year.
I was not successful. I did not concede to my innermost self. That was not I came here the first time.
I guess I I came to get out of trouble and I got out of trouble. Once I got out of trouble and I didn't need this, so I got drunk and I was not part of a group person. I didn't have a sponsor.
I learned. I learned. The book tells me that someone like me has to be beaten into a state of reasonable.
What I said that's what happened. Alcohol just beat me and beat me into a state of reasonable. And for me to admit my life was unmanageable.
I think it's saying the same thing twice. If you notice in the first step, there is no connecting word there. It doesn't say we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives were unnatural.
They just got this little zip in there hyphen I guess you call it or a dash or something. I think they're saying the same thing twice. I the unmanageability of my life resulted from my powerlessness over and my powerlessness over alcohol resulted in an unmanageable life.
I think it's all all the same. And my life was unmanageable in the true sense. I could not manage it.
That's it wasn't a question of houses and cars and money and all that. I just couldn't manage. I mean, everything was unmanageable.
I would spend a half hour getting dressed, you know. It was just a hassle. My god.
Oh, now you got to tie shoes. Jesus, what next? I got the kitchen, have a drink over this one, not come back up.
One year I ran around loafers like, you know, b clip on ties. Maybe a slick guy like me with a clip on because I could manage. It was just they should have had a keeper for me.
And ultimately they did. And of course, you know, we we describe this in our in our program in a variety of ways. And the 12 and 12 is very clear on this.
It says that not much good is going to come to one of us unless we've arrived at that bottom. They call it a bottom. And when I speak around and those of you who have listened to the tape have heard this, I say this because I think it is true.
I say that there's a time for all of us. And I think there is a time for each. I say that there is a line somewhere beyond which is simply not.
And it seems to me that there is a point some below which we simply not sink. And it also seems that there is a level of pain some beyond which no human is required to and I don't know where this line is. I only know what happened and I think this is different in each case.
We all come to it in our own time in our own way. What the destination is come to the end of a dream as I do where the only thing left is to become a member here part of this thing part of alcoholics part of the we and the beginning moves are very very simple you come here. Don't drink become a member of a group of alcoholics.
Get a sponsor. And I just read as I read the beginning of the fifth chapter tonight, rarely have we seen anyone fail who has thoroughly followed our path. What is a path in this beautiful location where we are here?
If I see over there a way made through the woods here, I know when I see that that other people who have used this facility have gone that way and their steps have created path. Correct. And if I here I am temporarily from Michigan.
If I want to take that path out there, the smartest thing I could do is to find somebody who's been along the path. He knows or she knows some parts of the path may be a little tricky, a little more difficult than other parts. Gets narrow, it gets wider, it gets deeper.
And more importantly, if I spoke to one of these nice ladies around here, the Presbyterian ladies who know the path, they can show me the way. They know where it comes out. They know it's at the other end of that path.
And so I had this and I followed him. I put my steps behind you every step of the way. And we went on by not drinking, by not going to meetings, by being a member of a regular group, by having a sponsor.
I was able to say as I am now that I am powerless over I have no power. It isn't a question of drinking too much or too little or differently or some place that has nothing to do with it. I just have no power over it.
You know, if you read that first step a certain way, it says if you read it a certain way, it says that you cannot stop me. Can't. You have no power.
Your power you can no more stop than fly animal. I could not stop. I would tell myself I got to stop.
I'm going to very soon. Let's see. I have three course left for very soon I will stop because I didn't want to be that way.
I didn't want to be that way. I didn't want to be. I wanted to be a good lawyer.
I really did. I was smartest at best my law school class. Why shouldn't I be a good lawyer?
Everybody else thought I was going to but I wanted to I wasn't any kind of at all. I wanted to be a good husband. Yes.
At least I didn't want to get caught not being a good husband as I always was cuz I was an incompetent. I guess I wanted to be a good father, but I wasn't. And I would try.
I got to, you know, I got to do something about it. But I could never get it together. Well, if I just have two more drinks, then I'll be strong enough to stand up vertically.
Two more and I'll get dressed. I just won't take it easy today by that time. 9:00 in the morning and I already had a half a court.
I couldn't marry you. Couldn't marry. But now I found myself here.
I found myself on a path. I had the sponsor. I had the group.
I was going to meetings every night because of my sponsor. I remember one time the way we walked. He called me up.
He said, "Thursday we're going to such." I said, "I can't go on Thursday." There was that little pause, you know. He said, "Is that because you never drank on Thursday?" I said, "What time you going to be here?" I would tell him, he would, you know, he just wouldn't let me get away with any of this. And now I found myself in now.
See, all of this is very hard to reconstruct. It's just too long ago. So these dates I give you are not I don't know convenient story here I am with about 6 months a drink every day obsession to drink had not gone away every day I wanted to drink but I was afraid to drink because I knew what happened when I died I was just scared to death that I would go back there couldn't do the terror was right there used to say to me, "The tiger is still in the woods.
Don't go into the woods." That's where the tiger was. I knew it was. And I had gotten a job.
I worked in Manhattan. I lived in a place called London. I had to take a train to Grand Central.
So, I went in this morning and I wanted up to then I wanted to drink very, very badly. This morning I got on a train, went into Grand Central, my office connected to Grand Central. I got on the train, walked over, drove Grand Central up the elevator, sat down in my room, and I just out of my chair, ordinary morning, and it hit me.
I didn't want to drink. I had not thought about a drink. All the time I've been awake, I've been awake like an hour and a half, 12.
I hadn't thought about a drink. I used to drink in Grand Central. Great place to drink any sort of and I used to go, you know, I knew where all the bartenders.
It never occurred to me to have a drink there. So, holy So, I called him up. He was downtown Wall Street, large Wall Street.
I said, "I I didn't want a drink this morning." He said, "Congratulations." And he had off the pump. It was so astounding to me. It was so startling to me.
I really said, "Holy shit." And I sat thinking, you know, the worst thing alcoholic could do in most cases think should rip those signs down from all of our meeting rooms. Here I I I figured it out. My cool, analytical, finely trained, incredibly honed mind.
I said, "I live in the same place. I hang out with the same family. I'm working here.
I ride the same train. I live in the same house. I see the same people." Only difference in my life is that I go to those meetings.
I thought, "Holy must be something at the meeting that works on people like so that they don't want to drink. Power I came to that all by myself." Power. See, a lot of people start talking about the second step and right away they're talking about God.
I was at a meeting this afternoon here and lady talking about the second step. She got it all used. They could have written the second step that way if they wanted to.
Bill Wilson could have written that. We all came to believe in God. You know, he had enough clout that they probably could got it through.
He could have said, "We all became Presbyterians, part of God's frozen people." And as we all know from our wonderful legal studies, the first rule of construction, the first rule of construction when you're construing something is look at the word, read the plain meaning of the words, right? basic rules of it says they came said we came to believe that you don't have to believe in anything and very 12 is very clear in it says there's no requirement you believe in anything we came to believe that a power greater than our own not a higher power, not God. A power with a capital P admittedly greater than our own could restore society.
It's a statement of what happened in my favorite pamphlet in alcohol economist a member's view of alcohol. That author, great man that he is, starts off the pamphlet by saying that the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are a report of action taken. And in the 12 and 12, it says at the beginning thought of it, these are a group of spiritual principles which if taken can make us happily and usefully whole.
And this is what happened to these people who founded this program. They are telling us the action taken. The first thing they did, they said, "First thing, what'd you do first thing, Bill?" He said, "We admitted we were powerless over our lives management." And if you had him on a witness stand, you would say, "And then what happened?" So you're not leading the witness, right?
And he would say, "Well, we came to believe that a power greater than our own could restart society." And then what did you do? We made a decision. It's what they're telling us what they did.
Now, don't misunderstand me. We're going to get to God very shortly and probably never stop talking about it, but not now. Not in these early early days for those people.
This is what happened to me. I came here, I stopped drinking, I got a group, got a sponsor, and 6 months later, I didn't want to drink. And I thought, my god, I'm power.
It's exactly what I needed because I just finished admitting and conceding to my innermost self that I was powerless. And the one thing that someone with no power has to have is power. And I believed it.
Not because he told me about it. Not even because I read it in the book. I believed it because it happened to me.
I experienced it. I no longer wanted to drink. Holy I knew that I was not capable of that because I don't think there had ever been a day since I began drinking that I didn't want to drink.
Sometimes I couldn't because of the service and you'd be on ships in the middle of the Pacific. Was a little harder to get them a drink. Wasn't impossible, but it was just difficult.
You make a decision, well, there was so much hassle getting I just won't, you know, but here I am. I just drinking became to me a non-event just like that. It just didn't count anymore.
I wasn't for it. I wasn't against it. I just didn't give a about it.
It just didn't register. And whereas before, if you said, "Meet me at 1," I was there at 10:00 in the morning because how could I trust you? You know, you're not reliable.
I could get a caught down before you shut up. Should we have a cocktail before lunch? Sure, why not?
And I knew, you know, I knew that uh this had happened to me because of alcoholics for no other reason. And I I believed it because it happened. See, I was not a believer.
Talking generally, I just wasn't a believer. Uh my theology was I don't give a I would never get into a fight as with some guy and argue about is there a god? Is there no god?
I don't care if there is one fight. If there's not not one, it's okay to. It had nothing to do with the way I live.
I was busy, busy, busy, busy all the time. Busy. I had to get up, dry up, throw up, get some money, find a place, get some dough to get the booze, get the booze, worry about how I'm going to get the rest of the booze, get some more money, float a check, bounce a check.
Busy, busy, busy all the time. And then we time for theology. I had to worry about important things like is that goddamn bar going to be open?
Can I run a tab there? And I so I just didn't I was like everybody else I was born to a religion but I didn't vote on that as I told the first I went to the first grade and I found out I was Irish and Catholic. Nobody asked me and I so it was okay with me.
That was the nearest school and that's where they sent me and you don't say in the first year I don't want to go here. You know first grade I'd rather go to Harvard whacking the head. But I never took what they said very seriously.
I just didn't believe it. They would tell me all these things and I would say that's nice, but it had nothing to do with me. They told me things not to do.
That was the first thing I did. I was in the fourth grade in Catholic schools and I have no complaint about Catholic schools. I was educated all the way through law school in Catholic schools.
I never paid a dime tuition. They were very good to me. I just didn't believe what they were telling me.
Around the fourth grade, they told us about limbo. Remember limbo? All those babies that aren't baptized.
Oh, I get very annoyed about that. I told her, "N that's crazy. You're nuts.
There's no limbo. There's no babies floating around. Get out of your mind.
Bang bang." And I tell that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Limbo. Are you kidding me?
I was very much against limbo. That was my first theological position. And then we got into the seventh grade and they were dead against jerking off and I was all for it and I consulted my older brother and he was all for it too.
Then I said, "I can't pay any attention to these people. They they're not in their right mind." And I wasn't mad at them or anything. It just didn't interest me.
They had all these rules. I don't want to hear about them because everything they didn't like, I liked a lot. And I didn't rant and rave.
I didn't go to church. It wasn't I was mad at anybody. It just didn't interest me to go to church.
I had more important things to do. I was a very busy person. And on Sunday morning, I dip over to the American Legion or some other exclusive place like that where they had bars.
And Sunday, everybody else go to church. Was okay with me. M to call the children.
That was wonderful. Got them out of the house. All right.
And I so I just wasn't a believer. I didn't believe in that from the Bronx in New York City. Get a little cynical, get a little skeptical, don't believe anybody.
That's the way I was. And I I retained some of that. So when it came to believing here, the whole thing was different.
Nobody told me yet. Nobody gave me a lecture on it. Nobody showed me.
It just happened that I didn't want to drink. Boy, that made a believer out of me. And I It said they could restore me to Saturday.
That was okay with me. He pointed out to me that Jay Walker in the big boy where I picked up my memory. You remember that guy?
He goes across, he gets hit, he gets the broken arm, he goes across the next time he gets hit, he gets the other arm, he gets the leg, he get and his friends are saying to him, "Don't jaywalk, Herman. Because every time you jaywalk, you get knocked down. And he's saying it's not the J working something else.
And finally the fire truck hits it. Then the book says just substitute alcohol. That is that the way that was the way it was with me.
I would drink and I always trouble. I run out, knock down, fire, lose everything. And they and my friends would say to me when I had friends, you drink too much.
No, I don't. I don't drink. You You live the way I live.
You'd have to drink. You know, all those stuff. Wasn't the drinking.
Wasn't the drinking, was it? Until I was beaten into a state of reason. And even then, it wasn't the drinking.
It was me. Powerless. That was the beginning for me.
And the answer to powerless is to have power. And all that required for me in the beginning was an open mind. I said to him, "What is a power greater than my own?" I saw that Captain P.
I thought they were going to stick. And he said, "A power greater than your own is a power greater than your own." Very thenh. I thought for a minute that I was dealing with Moses.
You remember when Moses had that discussion with the burning bush? Remember that? And Moses said to the burning bush, "Who are you?" And a burning bush said, "I am who I am." And Moses said, "Thank you for clearing that up.
And that was the way he was. He said it's greater than your own. A power greater than your own.
Said, "Is it God?" He could be. You want it to be just power. He explains it that way.
If they wanted the right God, the right God. You don't have to worry about anything like that. And all you have to know is this is where the power and it is it alcohol is now I now see it as a power center.
What is it? What is it that we do here? Nothing physical going on.
We don't have any leafy green vegetable. We don't have any aerobics. We don't have any diets.
We sit around and we talk forever and then never again about the same old thing. Powerlessness, power. What is that?
What you you've had the experience. I'm sure trying to explain how close to me. No way.
power power. So I stayed another period of time and of course you know I was the usual egoomaniac and I always thought I was very very powerful and sometimes in my drinking career I was powerful. Sometimes I was given gifts that other men are not given.
one time in the fall during World Series time and these are in the days when the New York Yankees had a baseball team and the center fielder was a man named Man who wore number seven on his shirt and I uh had showed up at about 9:30 a.m. to have lunch with a guy in a place and he showed up around 1 and uh we had the lunch and he left and I was still vertical and I noticed that there was baseball game the World Series run behind the bar. So I just figured I would pass a few h few hours of the afternoon take off of my busy schedule and watch a game of the World Series and I did and I was watching and it Mr.
male came to bat and I noticed two very curious things. First of all, I was seeing the picture in color which had not yet been invented. And secondly, I could see right through Male's shirt.
I could see the bones in his arm. I could see the muscles like the shoe. I could see the hole inside of his shoulder.
And I watched that. I thought to myself, "Holy I have X-ray on." So I mentioned it to the guy that was sitting next to me. A gentleman much like myself who was passing a few hours with a tumbler of scotch or something.
And I told him, I said, "You know, I can see right through male's shirt. I can see his bones and all his muscles." And he got up and he went away. So I got home that night and my 9-year-old son was there and you know of course he played little league and all that and I said today I could see through Mickey Man.
I explained this to my son and he went and right then the phone rang and she picked it up. Somebody on the end the other end must have said what's new or something. She said well today he can see through people's arms.
So I went away and and that is in a in a really in a nutshell the story of my drinking life. You know, I had all this ability and everything went away. Everybody until I was left with myself which voice placement.
Now I have now I have more than 6 months. I have 8 months, 10 months, whatever I have. And I'm floating along.
You know, I never felt better. I'm now I'm a regular member of this group. I know where to put the car.
I know where the corp is. I know where the bathroom is. I know where the guru sit, where I'm supposed to sit.
I know everything. I'm all set. I'm fitting in.
I like these meetings. I like the people. I'm unable to say any cuz they wouldn't let you do that up there.
And I knew what to say if they would ask. Nobody asked me anything. And uh he said to me one night, he said, "It's time for you to make up your mind what you going to do." What are you talking about?
Said, "It's time for you to do the third step." Said, "I know you've done one and I and you tell me that you have experience two, so obviously you've got to go out." And I'd seen it. You know, they're on the walls and I'd seen it and I'm a pretty quick book. I knew the wall of words.
cuz I knew what that I said, what you know what's all this stuff about will and giving your will to God and your life to God. No, no, no. There's nothing.
I had heard people at church meetings talk that way. They were all very saintly. I thought these people were all turned over.
They were sort of floating around and God was handling a lot of the minutia in their life, you know, like whether they should get regular gas, expensive kind of gas, whether they should uh go to the beach or go to the ball game, whether they should get married or not get married. God seem to be running all these people's lives. I pretty interesting people.
So, I asked him about that. I didn't know how that was going to work out with me. He said, "No, no, no.
It's nothing to do with that. Just look at the words of the step and do what it said." Said, "The first thing you have to do is make up your mind. Make a decision." The decision you have to make, he said basically this.
You're going to stay here or you going to go back where you came from? Well, that's easy. And that's easy.
I knew where I came from. I knew what was back there. I knew about the terror.
I knew what that was about. And there was no possible way I was going to if I could help. There's no way.
So I said, "No, no. I I want to stay here." Well, you got to make up your mind. I made it up.
I want to explain. He said, "Then here's the next question. How will you live?" See, you will in your life.
How will you? You're going to live that old way. Then you're going to get the same result.
So, we have a way of doing it. If you're going to be with us, be part of the we, I want you to do things the way we do. That didn't seem so.
And he said, now among other things, he said, we pray around you. See, I know we used to open meeting, close meeting. We pray all the time.
A have a tough time in A. They really do. I I I sympathize with them, you know, and I have nothing at all against they get sober.
Don't misunderstand me. They get sober. Fine.
But it's it's an interesting phenomena because they get the ones I've met over the years sort of militant non atheist. They come and say, "I'm an atheist and I don't go for this God stuff." And said, "That's all right, Herman. Get a cup of coffee.
Sit down. Relax. It's all right.
Don't worry about it." Followed by the serenity prayer. He said, "I'm an atheist. Are you making me pray?" I tell him, "No, no, no, no.
This is you. You misunderstand. This is just the way we open the meeting.
This is not a prayer. We're just opening the meeting." Oh, well, you're opening the meeting. And then we go through the meeting.
Next thing you know, somebody's got him by the hand. He's going through the Lord's prayer. He said, "You're making a No, no, no, no, no.
We just That's how we close meeting. Close meeting that way. That's not praying.
And then we we we kid them along, you know. So I see that thing in the second step say no no no that's how I how has nothing to do what you think. On the third step they know because the G word is in there.
So we tell them don't get excited Herman. It's God as you understand them and you understand them not to be. So that's perfect.
Don't worry about it. Yeah, but you know, I see a lot of Please. You know, by this time, of course, you see the trick is we've sucked him in here for about almost a year and he's not drinking.
Things are getting better. He's getting better and the job is working out. Money's coming in.
You know, I'm pretty say I'll stick around. Then we don't really give it to him till we're on the fifth step where we call call God by his maiden name. Say see it was God after all But by that time we got him.
So he said to me, "You got to you got to make up your mind. How will you live? Your way is no good." I knew that.
I mean everybody So I noticed I watched the words deadly made a decision. Eternal will their lives over care of God as we understand. Well, as I told you, I didn't have a father and I resented that very much when I was young.
I really did. That really annoyed me. Pissed me off.
Nobody else had a father. I didn't have a father. They'd have these father and son things, you know, and some nice guy in the neighborhood would offer to take me and I wouldn't go with them.
Want to go anyhow. you, father son. Um, I rejected that.
But I didn't have a father. But I was a father. I am a father.
I have seven. And I knew about being a father. get experience that and I knew that at the end of these meetings we said every night that was a comforting notion to me.
So God, my understanding became then and and pretty much has been all this time this concept of our father, our father, your father, my father. And this thought that a father would care, make me feel good. And I knew the system of being a father.
I went to school on my first kid, you know, and you learn as you go along. And in my career as a father, I don't know what I I would guess I've been an average father. I have said no probably many more times than I ever said yes.
You know, can I have a motorcycle? No. Well, how about going to Europe?
Get the hell out of here. You know, no. God damn it.
No. No. Every once in a while I say yes.
And I knew when I told them no, that didn't mean I didn't like them. Didn't mean they weren't my kids. Didn't mean I didn't have a care for them.
I said, "Well, man, was that whatever this was was, you know, I didn't tell them what to do. I didn't tell them how to live. I just sort of had a general supervisory role over them.
I had control of the purse, which is always powerful. What the hell? I live in a house with nine people.
I was the only guy with a job. And so I uh I sort of adopted that notion that that this father that I had understood would care for me and I like that idea. I liked it and I came here for help.
No, when I came first, the second time I came here asking someone to help. My sponsor didn't announce me. He was my sponsor.
I had to go ask him. He was I had to ask him for help. He told me he would help me, but I would have to follow his instruction.
And I didn't see a great deal of difference in asking my sponsor to help in my initial days and asking our father to have a care. And what is that? What is that?
When someone like myself who is powerless needs all the help he can get at all time asks our father to care for prayer prayer communication God of my understanding any communication with God as I understand the English language is a prayer and the book gives it to us that way. The book starts out right after what I read tonight. I was alcoholic and I could not manage my mind.
But hey, no human power is going to help me. That's no human power. And that's me and that's my sponsor and that's all of you.
No human power, no doctor, no group of doctor, no podiatrist, psychiatrist, psychologist, chiropractor, no human power. Nobody, not Bill Wilson, not Dr. Mahab, no human power.
It's so simple. And now you see in the last many years the emergence of so-called treatment sector who are providing treatment for a disease for which there is no treatment and they're hopeless and they wonder why sometimes. And I I tell them very easily.
Sometimes I get asked to speak. I tell them you're a human power. It isn't that you don't want to help.
You just don't have the capacity to do it. Before I came to Alcoholics, every power greater than my own that I dealt with told me to stop drinking. The dean of the law school told me to stop drinking.
Judges told me to stop drinking. She who must be obeyed told me to stop drinking. All my friends told me to stop drinking.
All human power. And of course it was ineffective and I couldn't. But when I came here the power that was in those meetings at those those days that power removed from me.
That power was the power that I came to believe could help. And I I transferred that power into God as I understand which is my understanding power. And I read before as I read this beginning chapter, God has all power.
All power. And later on it says no human power. Anyone who reads that as we do and I hear it every night of me it has to have it had its effect on me and right after that it says see God couldn't would if if he was sought the question then began to me and that's when I began to get this glimmer it was just a glimpse I suppose a glimmer there was a great deal more going on around here than not drinking and going to me.
I mean, I heard it over and over again. A lot of people diamonds have especially been here a while, they just don't seem to listen to that. People read that.
I listen says God has all power. Now you find it now. Then right after A, B, and C, the next line says being convinced.
Being convinced of what? A, B, and C. I was convinced of AB.
We were at step three. Just what do we mean? And what do we do?
It comes right. Then they say, start this way. that a life based on self-will can hardly be termed a success.
I gave that a little thought and you know there was a time in my life when self-will which I had an abundance of was actually an asset or I I saw it as an asset. It was my will that got me out of that neighborhood in the south front. That was my will.
It was my will that got me into those schools. I will go to school. I told them and you know I was in trouble time I was very small and I was told well you know in this family we you don't go to college.
I said I will go to college. When that was over and I came back and they said I said I will go to law school. When I went to the law school, I said, "I will get on the law and I will be a student here and I will be and I was all and I had to sit down and say that's true." But it ran out somewhere along the line.
It ran away. It went away. And I had to admit my life was not a success.
Oh, I had the usual stuff we all had on our walls. That's how I not how I measure manageable life. I spent my 35th birthday in a mental institution.
How manageable can I be? But I said and it says a life based on self-will can hardly be termed a success. I said that's I was not a successful life.
I was not successful in living. I was successful in achieving because I was born with certain talents but I was not successful in a life because I just hadn't managed to accumulate any value substantial. It's all very very shall I mean and this idea of a caring father and it says and I take that to be a prayer and the book said that most of us many of us says of course the words are highly obvious something like this and I say this every day.
And when I say it every day, I try not to do it by wrote cuz I've known it by heart from the earliest days. Not not I say I offer myself to do with me and to build with me. You will relieve me of the bondage.
But I may better take away my difficulty. Go to evidence practice. Show those I would help build up your power.
They do. This notion I have of a fatherly power. So I translate that into my my own experience as a father.
And many of us here are fathers. Imagine if one of your kids came up to you and said something like that you'd have put away. Imagine if a kid comes say, "Hey pop, I offer myself to you today.
I'll do anything you'd like me to do. Take away my difficulties, pop, so I can be of help to you. Imagine one of your kids said that.
Say, "Pop, I have a hard time getting up for school tomorrow. Would you wake me up for school?" Oh, my little Johnny. He's been possessed by spirits.
And I think perhaps, how do I know? How do any of us know in an area like this what happened? But it comforts me to think you know I get comfortable thinking there is this power as father of all here I am and I'm telling him listen I'll do what you want I don't know what you what you ask me to do it I'll do it take away the stuff that keeps me from helping out like me would to prayer.
I have come to believe and come to think that frankly all of us prayers one way or the other. If a prayer is a communication with this power then all of our steps are like they're all prayers all spirit. Wasn't necessary for me to uh make a formal declaration of will or life or anything like that or ask God.
And I I what would what would God do with my life? I don't think he's very interested in that. I mean, what would he do with it?
Say, "God, Keith, want you to have his wife?" "Oh, yeah. Well, bring him up here." Is he finished with it? He's not using it.
Good. Tell him to come on up. I think this, and again, you know, this is what I think.
We're in an area here. Well, your thoughts, mine. I don't suppose believe that sort of patronizing I think it just the offer just the offer here we are admittedly self-willed egocentric to the extreme managed to just louse up everything we ever handled say it's like this.
Yeah. I had this notion. Maybe a lot of people have it.
I don't know. But I know I had it. I had this notion.
I thought God lived in churches. I got that growing up and going to schools. I thought God was associated with churches.
And if you wanted to talk to God, you went to church. And that's the way I was raised. You know, on Sunday morning, my mother, the widow, would wake us all up and march us over to church.
We'd all sit there. And you know, the guy would get up and he do his number and take a little snooze. Was all over.
As you got old, he stood in the back of the church. She could run out when the bars open 1:00. So I thought I lived in church.
And I thought there were groups of people in this world who had a sort of a an ine tough time talk to him and get me off the hook. And so I I didn't I wasn't interested in churches. So I didn't have any contact with God because I didn't go to church.
I still don't go to church. Not a member of a don't go to church. Not a member of a church.
I don't count myself. church. I don't count myself.
I'm baptized. I'm confirmed. I'm all of I'm baptized.
I'm confirmed. I'm all of that. that.
And so I just, you know, And so I just, you know, and I told that to John too. I said, and I told that to John too. I said, "Listen, you know, I I don't like "Listen, you know, I I don't like church.
I don't like anything about it. church. I don't like anything about it.
Music maybe, but I don't like the rest." Music maybe, but I don't like the rest." He said, "There's nothing with church." He said, "There's nothing with church." Well, God lives in a church. No, he Well, God lives in a church. No, he doesn't.
doesn't. How do you know where he lives? I still How do you know where he lives?
I know. Give me that book. I wrote over the book and this is what describes me so perfectly.
I am on every page of this book. Really am. Or at least I find myself there.
Maybe I put myself there. Maybe I want to be there. Do you book?
Oh, that's okay. Listen to this. So, I'm sure you know this, but this really, really an impression.
And they're talking about people like me, talking about people like me. They talking about people talking people like me about God. Says they said God made these things possible and we only smile.
That was me. Some guy said, "God loves you." I got that. You Yes.
Now listen to this. This a this a killer. Actually, we were fooling ourselves.
For deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pump, by worship of other things, but in some form or other, it is there. for faith in a power greater than ourselves.
And miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our makeup just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there.
He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality with capital G and I. We found the great reality deep down within us.
In the last analysis, it is only there. He may be found. It was so with us and it was so with me.
But this power it turns out which is all around us generated by this program and no other program this program in the final analysis is within us and we cover it I covered it over with pump self-gratification self delusion, vain, glory, ego do, but deep down it's there and you can fight it if and you can deny it. That won't change there. It's in the spirit that makes each of us Oh my god.
It was that spirit that alcohol almost guilt. That's why in Bill Wilson's correspondent with Dr. Jung makes the the Latin play on words.
Spiritus Latin same word for spirit and for that spirit which is interior. Alcohol can kill it. Alcoholism can't kill.
That's why we say we have a spiritual ill. That's why alcoholic synonymous works because the medical profession who are human powers and I'm not knocking out not take them as a as a whole or individually. They are human power.
It isn't that they don't want to help. I had a physician when I drank. He wanted to help me.
He did. He gave me Miltown. He gave me Librium.
He gave me Valium. He gave me Stellazine. He gave me thorazine.
He wanted to help me. He really did. He liked me.
I also was his wife. It wasn't that he didn't want to. He had no power.
He didn't have the capacity. and he ends up doing all the wrong thing. The dean of the law school who made me resign at John did not want to fire me.
He and I became and are now very close to me. Although he's pretty sick, he didn't want to fight. His wife told me, he said that he was a wreck for a weekend.
He said, "I had he had to do it." And he was right. I've told him since. I mean, I made all my amen.
He wanted to help me. She after all, here she is. Very nice lady.
She's stuck with this woman that she has seven children. The oldest only like nine. What?
What? I'm the only guy with a job and I can't get vertical. What is she supposed to do?
She's She's a nice girl. She has a college degree and all the rest. No big.
I'm supposed here I am laying on a floor. It was very important to her that I not drink for her sake for my sake cuz she had affection for me. I has affection and for the sake of her children.
No power. What could she do except what she did? I drank more.
more. You know how it is. The more they leaned on me, the more I drank.
They had my best interest at heart. It was never a question of that. It was never an issue that they didn't have my best interest at heart.
The point is they didn't have the power. They didn't have the capacity. The human power.
So I come here, become a member of a regular group, go to the meeting, come to these rooms. Pretty soon I understand what my problem is. But I never had any power over that stuff in the first place.
I understand that there's something here that's going to help me. Power isn't necessary for me to find it. put a name on it or a face on it or robes on it or place it into some building is the power and I had to make up my mind whether I was going to be part of that power be attentive to it or not.
So I asked that I asked how far I told him want to stay here. I offer myself. Here's a simple thing of that prayer.
Show me. Show me. My own experience is that most times I know what to do.
I really do. I know it. But many many times I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to get the I don't know how to get from here to there. So I asked him to do show me the way and invariably variably the last thing I'll say about these priests but this final notion of where this power is. You don't have to look very far.
don't have to very far. It's all around. It's in this room right now.
I feel it. I hope it's here. I assure you didn't commit you.
Not you. But you bringing ours and the we first three steps that I talked about last night as I went through them were not all that difficult to experience and I of course made the usual objections that new people do because it was these were strange uh strange ideas to me in a sort of elusive uh I think when you're first here it's a little elusive because that way I was used to after 19 years in the Catholic school system I was used to dogma and rules and and things like that where everything was very definite and very certain. But it seemed here that things were not that way.
They were very elastic and you sort of fashioned your own your own way. There were these guidelines that um were very wide. The parameters were very wide and and u alcohol synonymous has this ability to adjust itself to no matter what.
We're like a great big self-cleaning oven and the stuff keeps coming in and the oven just cleans itself out and and you know nobody ever seemed to be in charge of anything and uh nobody ever wondered how every you know I was looking like who's in charge here and people would just leave you know nobody wanted to be in charge it was very different than than anything I had experienced but no matter what the newness of it or the difference of it was the fact of the matter was that it worked. I mean, it worked for me and that's all I was interested in. I mean, I I have your best interest at heart, but really when you come right down to it, I'm still interested in maintaining my own sobriety.
And that's what I was interested in then. I just and I thought mistakenly at the time that if I could just get the drinking settled then I could go on about my business of being a master of the universe. But first I had to get you know just put that drinking behind me then I would be uh able to do these things.
Well as you know it just doesn't seem to work out that way. And so the first three steps uh they did bring me to a point where I did not drink and I did not want to drink and I was comfortable in the idea that here was a place where I could come and and live a life whatever life it was to be no idea without drinking. And that was good enough for me.
And then I I equate the first three steps. I equate that to an emergency room in the hospital because when I got here in my own mind it was an emergency. I mean I was in real trouble if I I felt like I was being fragmented.
I was going to fly apart at any minute and just I don't know what was going to happen next. It was just I could not handle it. It was it was terror.
Absolute terror. And I told you last night, I don't think it was drinking. It was just It wasn't what I was drinking that was doing this.
It was what I was thinking that was doing it. It was doom. Everywhere I turned was open pits and uh just terrible.
But you know that that wonderful healing power of the program just settled and the emergency passed. And uh the fact is that emergency rooms and hospitals are for that. They are to handle emergencies.
They're not there for the cure of disease. Really, it's to handle emergencies. It's to make sure the blood pressure is right, the fluids are right, the wounds are sewed up and bound up, the lacerations are taken care of, the bones are set, the bullets are taken out, the bandages are put on.
That's what an emergency room is for. It's an emergency. Then they take you up to the seventh floor of the hospital where they kill you at leisure because when you get up to the seventh floor, that's when the business of medicine begins with all of the tests and the diagnosis and the prognosis and the prescription of medicines and the protocol of care for the disease and all of that stuff that takes place up there when the emergency is all over.
And I had come to Clark the first time as I told you I lasted 10 months. Got drunk not not for any particular reason and I don't know whether I plan to get drunk or I don't know any of that. So I I was out of place and the guy said have a drink and I said certainly and I grabbed it and I drank it and then I went through two years absolute hell.
So now I'm back here the second time and I'm in almost the same time frame. I'm within the first year toward the end of it and I begin to exhibit signs of alcoholism, symptoms of alcoholism. Dr.
Silkworth in our book in the doctor's opinion writes uh based on his knowledge of alcoholism which was considerable. He writes of the alcoholic who is not drinking. So's opinion has to do with an alcoholic who's not drinking as observed him to be.
And so said these people when they're not drinking are nervous, irritable and discontented until he said they can once again experience that elusive feeling that comes immediately after a few drinks. drinks which I see other people taking with impunity. And he's describing an alcoholic who doesn't drink, who's dry, but not yet sober.
And here I am in my period of time for the second time and I am exhibiting those symptoms. I am nervous. I am irritable.
And I am discontented. The meetings are boring. There's too much smoke in the room.
I'm contributing to most of it. There's no parking. I mean, wouldn't you think they have parking?
For Christ's sake, we we really help this church. They don't even For Christ sake, why don't they have the You know, the speakers are very boring. I had a great suspicion many of them had never gone to college, you know, now where do they get these people?
and you know and he's watching me and one day he said to me here's a story he said you are very close to getting drunk because you are an untreated alcoholic and it's true and my own thought which I learned from somewhere along the line I think this is true because I've seen it to be true when someone anyone comes here with the only requirement for membership. We are I was given a great spiritual influx of power but that is not for an unlimited period of time. You get that and we call it the pink cloud.
you get that great surge, you know, around the second step when you see there's hope. Maybe maybe this thing can be handled and that power comes in, but it only goes certain period of time and then it begins to wayne and then I begin to exhibit nervousness, irritability and discontent. And the book says when you turn the page, when you're all finished with the third step prayer and an indication that perhaps you should take it with someone else and say it with someone else in the program, something I didn't mention last time.
You turn the next page and it says, "Now we get down to causes and conditions. Now we're out of the emergency room and we're up on the seventh floor where we can establish causes and conditions. You see, I understood and my sponsor explained it to me.
Here I am. I haven't had a drink in maybe 10 or 11 months and I'm acting this way. And he said to me, "Look, obviously it's not the drinking that's doing this to you because you don't have any alcohol in your system.
You're not drinking, but you're acting like a lunatic. There is something else the matter. It is not the drinking.
There is something else wrong with you. And now is the time for you to find that out." Now, nobody seems to know the cause of alcoholism. Uh, the medical profession and the health care industry issue these communicates from time to time and there's great talk about endorphins and thiqs and acetates and uh neurotransmitters and it's wonderful wonderful talk.
But when you get right to it and you ask them what causes alcoholism, they don't know. They just don't know. And you say things I do for you for for eight years.
I lectured out of medical school on this subject. These idiots are going through medical school. They got two hours in pharmarmacology and they got two hours for me.
What? Yeah. But I would go to the medical school and there they are in their white coats and I mean I don't have any disrespect for the medical profession and there they were three of them in the white coats and I would say to them listen is this genetic you know because I've met so many alcoholics mothers fathers and they say we have no evidence that it is.
So I open up to the class by saying I am talking to you about a genetic disease and they get all upset. What the hell do I care? I'm telling them.
I've been at thousands of meetings. I heard it over and over again. My mother, my father, my mother, my bottom line really is the truth of the matter is they just don't know.
And they'll tell you that if you really pin them down. They don't know. It could be this, it could be that.
At least it runs in families. They have a whole thing about science that I don't understand. Don't want to understand.
Our voice anonymous is very very simple thing. It says in the book and it says it in 12 and 12. It says that defects of character were the primary cause of our alcoholism and at our failure at life.
Failure at life defects of character. And the fourth step is the medicine. This is the beginning of a process that runs from the fourth step through the 10th step.
the inventory process. And this is the medicine for the disease of alcoholism. The emergency's all over.
I'm not drinking. I don't want to drink. And I think I'm going to be all right here.
It's time to take the medicine. I did I came the first time. I did not take the medicine.
I did not do a fourth step. And I got drunk because I didn't have a group. I didn't have a sponsor.
And I didn't take a fourth step. If I had been a member of a group and had a sponsor, somebody would have made me do a footstep. But I didn't have that first time.
So I was just a untreated alcoholic rattling around with no medicine. Now he said, "Take the medicine. Take it." Medicine's no fun.
I mean, we all know that there's there's no fun involved in medicine, but we have a different attitude about medicine. You go to a physician for something and he gives you a big bottle of this brown noxious and he said, "Drink it." So you do, you know, alcoholics, he says, "Take one teaspoon every four hours. So you take seven teaspoons every 15 minutes and and you're going to get better twice as fast because, you know, more than he.
But we do it without question. Nobody, you know, nobody says, "What's in the bottle? Who is this penicellin?
Where' the mold come from? Who did it? uh what was the name of the doctor who where's the laboratory I want to investigate all of this they say put it in your mouth you take it the guy go to the doctor you say this and that he says here you see this stick it in your ass twice a day all he says yeah how far up doctor no problem we follow and we follow those instructions but an alcoholic but an alcoholic you say to him now listen Charlie I want you to write down on a piece of paper oh no Listen, I'm working on that.
50% of alcoholics is working on the fourth step at all times. You know, you go to first step and they all tell you about how they drank. They think the that it says tell us how you drank like they drank a little differently than you did.
You know, the second step they think it says tell us how crazy you were. So they tell you stupid things about drunk and driving like you know like that's being being crazy. That's not being crazy.
And the third step, oh boy, that's when we're in tune with God. They're hand in hand with the master of the universe, you know, and they're rattling around. But then you get to the fourth step.
You're next. I'm working on that. Or we have other varieties who do a fourth step about every 20 minutes.
I've done the first one, but I'm going to do another one because I'm not sure about the first one. Then I'll do the third one. And then you know the step is very simple.
It says make a a don't misunderstand me if you want to make an inventory of 20 minutes okay with me. I'm telling you what the step says the English language make a searching and fearless moral inventory singular. This is the medicine.
And we all know if you don't take the medicine, you're not going to recover from the disease. Imagine some guy comes into the physician with the flu and he's hacking and coughing and sneezing and all the rest of it and he gives him the butler of the brown noxious crap and the guy's back a month later and he's worse. The first thing the doctor says is to him is, "Did you take the medicine?" And the guy says, "No." Well, why did you take the medicine?
Well, I don't want to take it. Well, you're not going any better. Well, get me better.
You're a doctor, but quite sick. I'm sick, man. I need help here.
I'll take the medicine. I don't want to take the medicine. Stick it up your ass.
Why does a physician say, "Oh, yeah, Charlie. Goodbye." Because if you don't take the medicine, you're going to get the illness. It's such a simple thing.
And here's the medicine. The medicine is this. Now, it's in the English language.
It says an inventory. Lately, since I'm an old an old aa fart, I can complain about things and be grouchy. And lately, with the advent of so-called treatment centers, which is misnamed because there's no treatment for this disease.
They're mostly ripoff centers or uh I know one that's got nine holes of golf. That's like a resort center. I know another one we get laid a lot and it's sort of a pleasure center.
But as long as the insurance companies are sitting still for this, it's I mean I have no greed for the insurance companies if this is the way they want to spend their money. But they don't do much good for alcoholics. In fact, I think they do harm to them.
And here's what happens. You sit here, the old person like me, and in through the door comes this guy lugging within this suitcase and he's got 28 days under his belt and he's been in Happy Dale. And he said, "I want you to look at this." I said, "What do you got in there?" He said, "I have my autobiography.
It's a 3,000page document." And they made me write it in burning acres or I couldn't get out. So here it is. See now what could be worse than asking a certified egoomaniac to write his autobiography.
Can you imagine anything worse than this? Now the step says inventory and uh these are not big words. Dr.
Bob went to Dartmouth and he went to medical school. So we can make an assumption that he knew something of the English language. Bill was a graduate of law school.
So we're absolutely certain about him. An inventory, as the book says, the book says a business that doesn't take an inventory goes broke. An inventory, if you have a simple operation like a shoe store, an inventory is what you have on the shelf now.
that you can convert into money now. Not what you had on the shelf when you opened it up 50 years ago or 30 years ago. That's not going to do you any good doing an inventory, you know.
And this this autobiography, the first 2500 of the 3,000 pages is devoted to the failure of his parents to love him. So, he goes to adult children of alcoholics and finds out he's a victim. And none of this is his fault in the first place cuz his parents are incapable of love.
And that's great. They have somebody else he can beat up on him. See, he can go to the grave and dig them up and and tell him what a terrible job they did and how they ruined his life before it even started.
And then you read this crap and he's talking about he's in the fourth grade and nobody likes him. I know why nobody liked him in the fourth grade. A little alcoholic.
That's why. Little egoomaniac, arrogant, no good, little son of a in the fourth grade. Everybody knew it.
He was defective. Ben and it is funny except that people get drunk if they don't do this and then they die. The book is very very clear.
It's so simple in this book. First of all, it says write a list of the people you hate and they give, of course, they knew educated people like us were coming along. They give you a form.
Just like practicing law, you fill in the form. There it is. You know, it's like a deed or something.
They give you a form. Remember, Mr. Brown, I told my wife about my girlfriend wants my job.
By any civilized standard of conduct, we are dealing here with a world class president. But it says if I am a man at Brown, if I hate Brown, what's the matter with me? It's an absolute communism.
But there it is. And you know, people come up to me and they come up to you too when you sponsor people and they say, "I'm having trouble with the fourth step. What kind of is that?" I tell them, "Listen, you want me to tell you who you hate.
How the hell I don't know who you hate. You hate who you hate. You know, they're right in the front of you every night you go to sleep.
Oh, one of these days are going to get this bastard." You know, you got a whole list. And you know why you hate them. And the book says, "What down what it threatens?
Job, security, sexual relationships." And in the last page over there, the edge of the page, you notice it impresses fear, fear, fear, fear permeates our whole our whole being as alcoholics. Fear, fear of this, fear of that. It's it's devastating.
That's what it was for me. Terror, fear. Every day was doom.
My hair would stand up. Here it comes. This is the day they come for me, boy.
Bang, bang on the door. Are you okay? Yeah.
being you have a right to remain silent. Oh, and no wonder when you turn the page in the book, it says we listed our fears even though no resentment was attached to them. Simplest thing in the world.
You don't need any help from me to tell you. I can't tell you what you're afraid of. I can tell you what I was afraid of.
And then you turn the page. It's just simply a question of reading the manual, reading the instructions. Of course, we're too smart for that.
Alcoholics, you know, they get instruction. First thing is throw the instructions away. All right, I'll put this together.
Everything's all right. It says, list your fears. Just list them.
That's all. Even though no resentment is attached. And you turn the page and it says we listed our faults.
Our faults. And in that, I asked him about that. He said go to 12 and 12.
They have a list there of the most common mistakes or errors of judgment. They call them sins. Sin is not a word they use much.
It's just the most common errors that we all make. And with no surprise, especially in my case, pride leads the list. Pride, envy, gluttony, slow lust.
I thought they said rust. I was all set. And all you have to do is you know how it affects your life.
It's a list being made. Then you turn the next page and it says now about sex. It's what it says.
Now about sex. It doesn't say now about love. Doesn't say now about marriage.
It doesn't say now about deep and meaningful relationship. It says now about sex. And it goes on to say that many of us, if not most of us, have some type of a sexual problem.
It says some people in Alcoholics Anonymous say we should have no sex. Others that says would put us on a straight pepper diet. Some would have no seasoning for our past.
We think there's a middle way. And it tells us it's a little sex manual for two pages. That's very nice.
And it says, you write that down. And at the bottom of that, it says, "God alone, God alone can judge your sex situation." Saves everybody a lot of trouble. All you perverts, God alone.
And And then you're finished. Then it's finished. It's finished.
That's the inventory. It's fourless. Nothing to it.
And it embarrasses me to tell you. It took me 3 years and 45 minutes to do it. 3 years and 45 minutes.
You see, when people say they have a fourstep problem, I mean, and you hear a lot when you sponsor people, don't you? Well, they get sort of hung up on the four step. And so, I'm having a fourstep problem.
That isn't true. It's not a fourstep problem. The reason they don't want to make a searching and fearless moral inventory is because they really never have decided to turn their will in their lives over to the care of God as they understand them.
The reason they have never made that crucial decision is they have not yet come to believe that there is a power greater than their own. that can restore them to sanity. And the reason that they have not yet come to believe that there's such a power is they really have never conceded to themselves, to their innermost selves, that they are powerless over alcohol.
It's not a fourstep problem. It's a first step problem. It's a first step problem.
If that first step, which is the only one we can take 100%. If that first step, if there's any type of reservation there, then obviously you don't need a power grade on your own cuz you've retained power. So why make a decision?
Because it's all fruitless anyhow. So why do the inia take your medicine? So you get sick.
So don't let anybody kid you about a fourstep problem. It's a first step problem. I was given a deadline.
You do it or get out of here. And I guess in in that go back to the medical analogy, most of us needed needed somebody to make us take the medicine. Your mother give you a little sugar, take the medicine, little honey or something.
Nobody likes to take medicine. But without the medicine, it's a very simple matter to me. Without the medicine, all you're going to have is untreated alcoholism.
Can I get a cup of coffee? And so here I am with this forstep. I have it.
I I showed it to him. I brought it to him. I didn't show it to him.
I brought it to him. I said, "I've done it." And he was, you know, very nice about that. And I said, "I want to go over with you cuz I'd heard that you go over with respons." And he said to me, "Have you admitted it to God?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, you got to do that first because it says admit it to God, to ourselves, and to another." First, you have to admit it to God.
I felt a little foolish. You know, I'm sitting here with this piece of paper, which I did sort of against my better judgment just to satisfy this fanatic I was dealing with. So, I he wouldn't be going like he used to go like this all the time, Paul.
You know, I don't want that, you know. I felt foolish. What am I supposed to do now?
He said, "I'll leave you alone. You admit it to God." And now I'm sitting there and I don't know what I said to God. I don't know.
I mean, I don't even know if I knew what how you go about this. It seems, but I did have this notion I talked about last night about a powerful father. So, I told him, I said, "Listen, you know, this is what I got here.
It's all on this paper and this is it. It's the best I could do and this is what I think is the matter with me and I don't know well now what do you say to God under these circumstances and recently when I think of this process I have been also thinking about my favorite story in the Bible. It's an excellent story.
You all know the story, but I'm going to tell it to you anyhow. It's in the Gospel of Luke. It's a story of the mercy of God.
And the story concerns this wealthy man who had the two sons. And the younger son came to him one day and said, "I like my inheritance." Now, remember this? The father tried to talk him out of it, but the kid insisted.
So against his better judgment, the father gave him the money. And the story and the Bible says he went off unto a far land and he experienced women and wine and riotous living and song. But in a in a short time, of course, the money was gone.
And when the money was gone, it's a given that the women were gone and and the wine was no longer flowing. And uh and so he found himself, as you recall, living with pigs on a farm. He was living with the pigs and eating the same food as the pigs.
And this is no place for a boy from a nice Jewish home to find. And so he thought to himself, I will go back to my father because even in my father's home, even the servants live better than this and I will go back to my father and I will ask him if I could be a servant and just work for him. I don't want to be a son.
I gave that up. Well, maybe he'll just give me a job then. And so he started this journey back to his father.
And the servants came to the father and they said, "Your son is coming back." And the Bible said the father went out to meet him, met him halfway. And the Bible says he recognized him a far off. And when the son came, the father embraced him and he said to the servants, "Bring out the good clothing and bring out the jewelry and bring out the anointing perfume and clothe my son and put the jewels on him and start a party for him and bring out the food and the fatted calf." And he said to his servants, "This is my son.
This is my son who was dead and now he lives. This is my son who was lost. Now he's found." And they began that party.
And the other son had stayed all the time, the older. And he was out in the fields working. And when he came back, he saw this party going down.
And he said to his father, "What is this?" The servants asked him to the party, said, "I'm not going." The father came out to see him. He said, "Come on to the party." Said, "I won't go." He said, "I've been here all these years working for you." Never once did you throw a party like this for me. And he goes away and comes back and look at this.
Never once did I have clothing like that to wear. Never once did I have the jewelry. Never.
And the father said to the son, the older son, "You are my son and everything I have is yours." Because he's already given the younger one his portion. So he said, "All this is going to be yours. But this is also my son who was lost and now he is found.
This is my son who was dead and now he lives joined the party. And the older son went to the party. And that's the feeling that I'd like to experience, you know, and I tell myself this is the way it was.
When I said to my father, here I am. I've done some stupid things. I've been away.
Now I'm back. And he started the party. It's been going on for a long time.
And then of course I had to admit it to myself. And if if you're like me, I spent a long time bullshitting myself. You know, it wasn't the booze.
It wasn't me. It was those bastards. It was those cretins.
I was surrounded by assassins and and no one had my vision and no one understood and you know and they're all jealous of my talents and that rotten son of a dean of a law school firing me. Godamn. I'll get him that rotten bastard.
Yeah. And I I was kidding myself. Lying to myself for years.
It wasn't me and it wasn't the booze. Two two lies. It was me and it was the moose.
And then I went over with him and he was very understanding and he didn't give me much advice or anything. He was a funny guy. He really was.
I would say something to him. He say, "That's good. That's nice.
That's good." You know, I'd say, "Listen, um, my law firm's just dissolved. We lost the best client. It's dissolved.
I'm out of the job." Oh, that's good. That's fine. He say, "You don't have to worry about that anymore.
You know, you want to get along too well with those guys. It's all right. You know, I said, "Well, all that all that money I expected that fee that never came." Yeah.
Well, that's good. That's fine. You don't have to worry about that.
You go to more meetings. You know, when I was all finished, he said, "You know, you're just sort of an alcoholic." This offended me. I had a sort of thought I was a rake, you know, something of a man of the world.
After all, I had been in 5,000 bars and I got laid three times. Well, that third one was that close, son. He said, "This is just typical alcoholic behavior and you sort of garden variety." You know, I really didn't like that.
I wanted to be be the worst alcoholic that ever lived or the best alcoholic who ever lived or something like that. And he sort of went poo poo poo, you know, and things I've been carrying around in my head for years. Whoa.
Whoa. You know, I had a lot of secrets. Oh, I was a man of mystery.
Very mysterious. Nobody knew where I was. You know, great man of mystery.
You can bring a guy here from Mars and say, "See that one over there?" And the guy was, "Hell yeah, he's a drunk." I was very mysterious. You know, I had all these secrets. Everything I did was a secret.
And every night I try to go to sleep, I'd have to review my secrets to make sure they were still secret so I could sleep. Then I wake up in the morning and I go through my secrets and they were still all right. Then I take that train in and while I was on the train, I'd have yesterday's secrets that I would have to add.
hope they never find out about that, you know. A lot of secrets. And now I he tells me I'm just sort of ordinary alcoholic and and plus he knew all my secrets.
I tell you this, I think that the difference with my between my being dry and my being sober was this step. This opened up for me. I really got a firm glimpse at this step.
what I think this program is about to search as I said last night search for my my understanding of a relationship with God. You notice this is a step where we call him by his maiden name. It's no more power greater than our own.
No more God as you understand him. This is just plain old God. They just slip it right in.
Admit it to God. It says doesn't say higher power, greater power, God as you understand him. just plain old God.
They got you now. See, and they open it up say look. And then I don't think it's an accident that it's listed that way.
God, ourselves, another human being. After all, what else is there? I mean, what is that?
The the term now that has lost its original meaning, relationships. You know, the only ones that seem to me to be important are these. God, myself and another human being.
What else? I don't have a relationship with tables, chairs, automobiles. And what I learned in this is is the importance, the priorities.
God is first. I'm next. The other human beings come later.
And in my life, since I've been sober and before, but I'm able to see it now. Everything is moving. You understand?
People come into my life over here and then they move through my life and they come out over here. And while they're here, they're very important. But then they seem to have a function and a relationship with me.
We function together and they go out of my life. In 1984, I was invited to be a teacher in in a uh brand new law school in Florida. And so I picked up and I went and I had been in New York.
I was born there and I've been there all my life except for the service and I knew all kinds of people and I was successful and everything else. And everything everything I had up there I thought at the time was very important to me. You know, I was a senior partner in a pretty good a very good law firm.
I thought that was important. I had a nice home. That was important.
I had seven children. That's important. I had an AA group that I've been a member of for 20 years.
I thought that was important. And on August the 1st of 1984, that all changed just like that. I got on an airplane and now I'm down to Florida and I have a whole new job.
Full-time teacher. I'm back as a full-time teacher. I hadn't been a full-time teacher since 1963.
I had been part-time, but now it's not full-time. I have a new AA environment to go to, new friends, new house, new everything. Everything that I thought was important just sort of became unimportant.
It wasn't as though I didn't remember all of that back then and treasure it and all of that. Sure. But it had gone out of my life.
It just changed. And and this is true almost on a on a monthly or annual basis. People come into my life and they're in my life.
You know, friends come in and they pass through and I don't see them anymore. The people I knew in New York for all those years, I don't see them anymore. It's always it's very rare when I see them, but they're important while they were there.
Lovers come into your life and they come through and they're very important while they're there, but they go out again. The only thing that seems to stay the same in my life was that I was attending AA meetings on a regular basis. Everything else was in a state of flux.
I once lived in a house with seven children. I now live in a house with no children. They visit from time to time or I visit them from time to time.
And we recently had a wedding and I saw them all at once and they're important to me, I guess, but I just don't see them anymore. They're not an active part of my life. They have their own lives.
They're married. I have grandchildren. They have they have careers.
All of my children are very very successful and they go about their business and I'm no longer a really active part of their life and that's part of the system they went through. But the important thing stays the same. God, myself and this program that has not changed and I learned that I got a glimpse of that in this step that there would be this ongoing flux of life is all it is.
You know, people get married, people get divorced, people are born, people die. And the permanency is this. And it was a difference between my being dry and being silver because now in this step, the medicine began to work.
The medicine was working. And we all know that feeling when you've been sick and down and all the rest of it. when the when you finally your system has the medicine well enough into it that you begin to say, "Oh god, I'm going to get better.
I'm not going to die." But bottom line is you have to take the medicine. In the last 8 years, I've had a lot of trouble with my eyes. I've had six surgical procedures on my eyes, three on each side, and they're very, very difficult, most of them.
And I didn't want to, you know, the guy, his opthalmologist, told me what I had and he said, "Now, tomorrow morning, 7:00, we'll go to the operating room and you'll be under a general anesthesia for about 5 hours and I'll stick a knife in your eye and I'll fix it." And that's what he did. It was no fun. No fun.
But I could see. I can see. I don't see very well, but I can see.
25 years ago, I would not have been able. I would have been blind. But now it's very high-tech med eye medicine especially.
It was no fun to do that. It was no fun to be in in a hospital for a week. It was no fun to be out of work for a month.
No fun at all. But the that was the means to get the result. And maybe this inventory is not much fun.
And maybe burying ourselves to someone else is not much fun. But it's the medicine. Medicine.
So I came to a place where I had done what I was instructed to do and I could feel a relationship. The book is very clear on this. I don't I don't like people to read to me, but you're going to have to put up with it.
Listen to what it says. talking of this fifth step. We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.
Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease.
Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience.
The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. You know we talk about the promises in the book on page 83 and 84.
The these promises are all over our book all over. And these promises here are promises that come after the fifth step. And I experienced those.
I really did. I could be alone at perfect peace and ease. And at that stage of this development, I did have that feeling that the drink problem had disappeared.
See, I had great doubt when I came back the second time as to whether or not I would make this program. After all, I didn't make it the first time. I was concerned I would make it the second time.
And I knew if I didn't make it the second time, I probably would die because that's what everybody else in my family did. But at this stage when I was finished with this with him, I thought to myself, I can I can do this. You know, I got some hope at the second step.
And around the fifth step, I really thought this is I can do it. You know, I can do this. After all, I saw other people doing this.
I thought to myself, this is going to be all right. I didn't know what was going to happen, and I still don't in my life. I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know. Perhaps when we come here they should do that to ush give us a little chart, a little map. You know, the first three years will be a little tough and then the fifth year things will begin to swing around and in your 10th year you'll be terrific and then you go by your 25th year you're absolutely wonderful and and you go to Oregon and you talk to people in a room, you know, but we don't get that kind of a thing.
We're told we just do it a day at a time and and then see what happens. And you all you have to do is speak to anybody who's got time in here and and I'm such a person. I'm I'm just telling you everything is just great.
And some days it's peachy keen. And so this is where I was and I got to the sixth step. And and the sixth step is of course the exact middle of this program.
And the whole program is going to turn on this step. And the words of the step are sort of it's really a vestage. When AA first started, we didn't have steps and we didn't have a book, but they used the Oxford group's four absolutes.
Remember, they were absolutely honest and absolutely pure and absolutely unselfish and absolutely something. And then when the book was was uh was published, this idea of absolute uh the group conscience said this won't work for alcoholics. They're not absolutely anything except dry.
And so at least I was saved from absolute purity, which made some interesting moments over the 25 years that I've been here. Uh how many times a week would semiannually be? I forget.
That's a little attempted humor there, you know. So, here I am at right at the middle. Right at the middle.
And uh the words like the words of all of our stuff. So, our simplicity itself said I wasn't. He said to me, "You're entirely ready to have God remove all your defects of character." I said, "I am." He said, "That's right.
So, what am I supposed to do?" He said, "Nothing. nothing to do. This is a bonus.
This is what you get. If you do one through five, you get six. See, the step doesn't say they believed they were ready.
They tried to be ready. They they decided to be ready. They got themselves ready.
Doesn't say anything about it. It says at the end of the fifth step, they were entirely ready. Now, the words threw me off a little because I suppose of law school training, you know, entirely and all and all.
I said, "What am I supposed to do?" He said, "Not a thing. Read the book." So, I took the book. And he pointed out to me, he says, "After the fifth step, we take this book." See, this this one, the blue one, big one, not the green one, not the red one, not some from Hazel crap in Miss where Mississippi.
He say, "Read the book and read the black part. Just the black part." He'd say, "Read that. Don't read the other stuff.
just the black. Said take it home, read it. So I took it home and it says we took this book down off the shelf.
Now that assumes two things. A you got a book and B you got a shelf and we reviewed the books as the first five principles. And then it makes sort of analogy construction.
Have we used water and cement and m I don't know about that stuff. But basically what it says is look over the first five steps. Have you done that the best you could?
If so, you're entirely ready. And we are lawyers, most of us, and and you, you know, there's a great difference between being willing, being ready, and being able. I was willing to come here this morning.
When Don got me, called me very early, you know, about 5:30, a little compulsive. Uh, I was willing to come here, but I wasn't ready to come here. I had to get ready because I had to take a shower.
I get some coffee in a room and that kind of stuff. And that's what it says. This this is a state of readiness, not a state of willingness.
Ready. I assume I think it's reasonable to assume we're all willing. I mean, what the hell are we doing here if we're not willing ready is another question.
Ready depends on steps one through five. And the analogy I usually use here is to gardening. It might surprise you to know someone like me from the Bronx and the pavements and the asphalt and all the rest of it.
I have a genuine hobby. I am a gardener and I developed that hobby when I was in New York and Don used to come down and and uh help me and watch me do things and he's a better gardener than I am. He has that Italian gift to make things grow.
And I had this garden and it was extensive and it was a flower garden and it was also a vegetable garden. And in New York around April is the time you start going out into the garden. And the first thing you have to do there is get rid of the winter kill and and these rocks that seem to accumulate.
They come from no place. And until you get the rocks out of the way and you work on the soil and as the days get better and the sun is shining and the earth begins to heat up, you can actually feel it. And uh you get a bed and you get it ready.
Now Florida is altogether different. Florida you can throw this cup into the ground and it'll grow flowers. Florida is a natural greenhouse and we have all sun all the time sun and all the time humidity.
So when I moved to Florida it was just and now I'm in the orchid raising uh business. I have I raise orchids in Florida cuz it's natural habitat for orchids. the gorgeous things and they're easily low maintenance and I have the usual other gardens and and flowers but it's no challenge whatever in Florida everything just sort of grows you can't kill it you go out there and smack it around but in New York I would get it ready and then I depending on how organic I was on a given year I'd either throw some defoliating pesticides on it or I'd throw on some organic materials and then I bring out my seedlings and or go from seat when it was warm enough and I'd put all the stuff in place and then I'd step back and God does all the rest.
He sends the sunlight, he sends the moisture and I would just add it from time to time. I was on an AA trip, one of those trips I'd taken. I was in some place in Tennessee and I got a pair of these farmers overalls.
I was quite a cut quite a figure. I was out there in my overalls and I'd patrol around with a hole. If I saw something growing there that I didn't like or didn't plant, I'd kill it and take a whack at it and get the weeds out of it.
And then in the fall of the year, I September, October, the end of September, October, harvest time, I would collect my crop, usually tomatoes and stuff like that, and I go up to our group with a bag full of tomatoes. And if I liked you, I gave you one of my tomatoes. And I had gotten to be sort of an assistant guru up there, you know, and I said, "You're doing great.
Here, have a tomato. They said, "Oh, the guru gave me this tomato and I made sure that you understood that that was my tomato and I grew that in my garden and that's my tomato and I'm giving you my tomato." And that's not true at all. I didn't grow the tomato.
What I did was get it ready. God grew a tomato. Nothing to do with me.
Nothing want to do with me. And that's what this is. When we are in a state of readiness, then the spirit of God comes to us and we grow.
We grow according to our natures. We grow. And while they all they tell us to do is to ask him because that's what the seven step is about.
I will spare you my lecture on humility. First of all, there aren't enough people here for me to give that. And secondly, I'm really not competent to give it.
But some people when they get to the seventh step, you I have to sit there and endure a lecture on humility. And the seventh step is not about humility at all. Just look at the English language.
Look at the words. It says, "We humbly asked him to remove our defects of character." Could have been written another way. They could have written it differently that we could construe it differently.
They could have written we became humble or we practice humility or we came to be as humble as we could or something like that. All I did was tell us what they did. And what they did, the verb here as we all know is ask.
And humbly being an adverb describes how to ask. They humbly asked the God of their understanding, my understanding, our father to remove their character defects. Humbly please is good enough for me.
It's it's a nice idea. You know, imagine one of your kids came up and say, "I demand, sir, that you give me a bicycle." They get the hell out of here. I demand, sir.
You know, that's not the way it works. They come up say, "Please, Daddy, dear. All my friends have bicycles.
I'd like to have a bicycle." You know, that kind of stuff. And the book goes on to give us a prayer. And the seventh step is by its terms of prayer.
Has nothing to do with humility. Now, don't misunderstand me. Humility is a wonderful, wonderful virtue.
It is a cardinal virtue. I've been to meetings where some of these dummies, they come in and they have written out the dictionary definition of humility. You want a definition of humility?
I'll give you one. It's right in front of you. Admit you're powerless over alcohol.
You can't even manage your own life. Is that humble or what? Believe that only a power greater than your own can help you.
You're no help to yourself. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a self-help program. Don't let anybody sell you that crap.
I heard some jerk on te television the other night. So, the greatest self-help program in the world is alcohol. You feel like getting by the throat, you Self-help my ass.
We start off, we're powerless. We can't help ourselves. Our help, if any, comes from a power greater than our own.
Admit that. That's humble enough. Then make a decision.
Somebody here in the room last night said it. Make a decision that your own life is none of your business. How's that for being humble?
If that's not enough, then write down every dirty, disgusting thing you ever did and go show it to somebody. You want to be humble? That's about 10 lbs of humble in a 5 lb bag.
I'll tell you that's the only definition of imunity we need. But this step is not about that. This step is prayer.
And you open up the book and it says it's a prayer. It says when we're ready, we say something like this. And it says, "My creator," I better read it so I don't get it wrong.
I am now willing M over here. Here it is. My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.
I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen.
This we have then completed step seven. That's it. You say that prayer and I think it's a daily thing.
I say it every day. I say in different ways. The words of course are very optional.
Well, that prayer interested me when I first saw it. I found it in view of my background. I found it a very interesting prayer.
I had the impression maybe I was wrong, maybe heard this wrong, but I I think I heard it all the time going through through the schools that I went to. I think I heard it from earliest times. And what I heard was this idea expressed in different words.
The idea was God loves good little boys. I remember sister would tell us that all the time. I'm I'm sure that's true.
God loves good little boys. Trouble was I was not a good little boy. I was a little pain in the ass and I was a very bad teenager and a sort of a crappy adult.
So I was sort of left out of that proposition. Yeah. And God, I'm sure he loved little boy.
He loved that little son of a over there with a clean shirt and he had pencils and pens. I used to bang the out of him at the recess, you know, just hated him, you know, rotten little bastard with the homework and a little book, you know, God loved him. But, uh, you know, I got thrown out of high school six times, so I knew he wasn't on my side.
It was a Catholic high school. So if they were throwing me out, I figured God didn't want to give much of a about me either. But this prayer is different.
It says, "Take all of me, the good and the bad." God maybe likes bad little boys, too. See that bad that stuff that I found out about four or five I knew about it long you know stuff I wrote about four or five that stuff is valuable stuff that's you know I hear people say take out the garbage that's not right that's not garbage that's not garbage that's valuable later on in the book it says our past is our greatest asset in dealing with newcomers that's not garbage that's gold. Some guy walks in here with us and he's new and he says, "Yeah, you don't understand.
I'm in trouble." Yeah. Well, I mean, I stole a little money. Oh, no kidding.
Well, you sit over there with the rest of those thieves. They're all over there. All the escrow breakers are in that corner over there.
Well, you know, I and I'm and I'm in trouble with the law. Oh, yeah. Is it a felony or misdemean?
Felony. That's that corner over there. Our misdemeanor are over here, you know.
Well, I'm broke. Oh, well, everybody stand up. And that's because we've experienced that.
Correct. This is not the goddamn ladies aid society. This is Alcoholics Anonymous here.
We're all defective. And we can welcome him. Come on in.
Be with us. Nothing. I mean, I've heard I don't know how many fifth steps.
The only thing I haven't heard so far is cannibalism. You know, we got all kinds of other in here. But where we pick up, you know, the system, you know, the program is such the power is so enormous that self-cleaning oven is just making gold out of That's what it amounts to.
And that's a great thought, you know. Take take it all. Take the good and the bad.
Use me. See, the point of the prayer is not that we go to heaven or that we be forgiven or any of that crap that I learned about. It's simply that we be useful so I may be of use.
It says to you and to my fellows, be a useful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. A useful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so in my own life, sometimes I say this prayer in different ways.
I say Lord please please help me to be a good member of AA today. How's that? That good enough?
I tell them I would like to be just a good member of AA today. That's enough. And that encompasses all of this this other stuff.
The seventh step is pure prayer. Be nice if it went on, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be nice if the sevenstep went on and said we asked to remove our character defects and he did that would be nice.
Doesn't say that. Doesn't say it at all. Now maybe it does.
I still have every character defect I ever had. It just doesn't they just don't push me around anymore. You know, my my lust doesn't move me, doesn't tearing around anymore, chasing people.
My greed does not impel me to steal. My jealousy, my envy does not compel me to injure you. Which was automatic when I drank.
It's automatic. I would if I any of my character defects popped up, I would exercise them right away. That's that's what they were there for.
Is that your money? Yeah. Give me that.
But now, you know, see the with us is the defects of character that move us into action, get you into trouble. I have lots of stuff, you know, back then and and uh I have things I like and they don't move me around, you know. You I like, for instance, I like classical music.
I really like classical music. I listen to it all the time. And the radio over in the hotel room I am right now and I've got the classical station from Portland 24 hours a day and it's playing.
It's very nice. If you call me up and say, "Listen, Ray, I have a CD over here. It's a Mozart.
It just came out. Why don't you come over and listen to it?" I said, "All right." Uh, yeah. If I have nothing else to do, I'd say to myself, "Let me see." Well, there's a ball game and maybe I'll go here and I got to see this guy.
And I'd say, "Well, Charlie, you go ahead and play it. If I get there, I get there and I'd like to hear it and I'll hear it someday." But you call me up and say, "Listen, I want you to come over here and bang my rich cousin." Boom. Ah, here I am.
You know, right into action. money, you know, but now I have these defects and of course age has a great deal to do with part of it. But you know, we have a way here.
And this sponsor of mine, I would do something that you're not supposed to do. I would show up, for instance, I would show up with him. He was a lawyer, as I tell you.
We'd have lunch a lot. And I come out of a courtroom and I go to lunch with him and I tell him how slick I was. You know, I took that judge and I bounce that stupid bastard from one end of the room to what a And I told the other lawyer, I'd give him a shot and I you know, and he'd be staring at me.
He had this terrible, terrible stale, these big Irish blue eyes. And he'd look at me and he'd say, "We don't do that." So I'd start to repeat myself, say, "I heard you." you know, he was in the same business. I know what you're talking about.
We don't do that. I said, "What the hell do we do?" And he would say, "We do the next right thing. The next right thing.
What you're doing is not the right thing. We'll do the next right thing." So, what should I do? He said, "Do the right thing." So, what should I do when it's all over?
Do the next right thing. So simple, huh? So, what do you want me to do?
He said, "Well, you don't like him?" I said, "No." "Well, pray for him." I said, "I don't want to pray for him." Huh? Too bad. But if you want to help with this idea you don't like him, you better pray for him.
He had all this in. I don't know where who told him these things, but I listened to him because I really did want what he had. And I think I probably was willing to go to any lengths.
And you know, the lengths I've been asked to go to are nothing. You know what I mean? Nothing.
Nothing has ever been asked of me that's difficult around here. There are no mountains to climb. We're not climbing mountains.
We're just following a path. There's no big, you know, we're out the Alps that we have to go over. I had to unlearn a million times more than I ever had to learn cuz I had old ideas on everything.
And my my mind was just old ideas, full of old ideas. Ideas that I my own efforts could accomplish something. Wasn't true.
Wasn't true at all. something meaningful, something like spiritual development. Yeah.
I used to ask him, "What are we supposed to do?" He say, "Develop spir spiritually." So, well, how do you develop spiritually? He'd say, "Well, why don't you go make coffee over there?" I said, "I don't want to make coffee." Then don't develop spiritually. I said, "You don't understand.
What I really need is a good job." Yeah. Hey, he said, "That's what I'm telling you. Go make coffee." I said, "How the hell is making coffee going to get me a good job?" He said, "I don't know, but I've made it for 3 years and I got a hell of a job." So, I went, I made coffee.
Next thing I know, I had a hell of a job. I mean, there's nothing in the book says you're going to get a job, but that's just what happened. He said, "All that other stuff," he said, "That's the stuff that's passing through.
Don't worry about that. You got a partner you don't like, tomorrow, you won't be a partner. got a wife you don't like tomorrow she will be your wife nobody else would have me so I kept the original model the seventh step is they call it six and seven some people do the old-timer step because it becomes more valuable to me every day I'm here and I close it this discussion of steps four five six7 uh because there's a prayer that I like and picked it up from one of my readings Thomas Merin was a uh Trappist monk and a very prolific author and Thomas had a prayer and I leave you with this.
He said, "Lord, I thank you for everything you have given me. I thank you for everything you have taken away from me and I thank you for everything you've left me." And I thank him for everything he's given me. The gift of life I've asked and I thank him for what he's taken away from me.
He's taken away from me the desire to drink. He's made inoperative these defects of character so I don't have to act on them. And I thank him.
and I thank him for everything he's left me which is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and each and every one of you. Thank you. seven step and uh it is a prayer I think and uh a sometimes operate subtly and it's all interior you know it's all an interior thing I haven't grown any taller since I got here whatever has has changed in me is been an interior change and we'd like to think that our prayers are answered I'd like to think that some are and some are not.
May maybe they all are, but they're just I consider them answers when I get what I want. But I've come to the conclusion of late that the answer to the sevenstep prayer is steps eight and nine. So you ask, I ask, take it all.
Do with me as you will so I can be youthful. That's my prayer. I want to be useful.
And the answer is all right. Then do what you can to repair the relationships with others that you I have damaged over the years. then you will be useful to me says my father and to those about you which I take to be primarily the members of Alex anonymous because they are of course the closest to me.
So I came to this this step as a step and of course I still had the same sponsor and he still was as orthodox as ever and he kept saying you got to write write it down write it down and of course I delayed writing it down because because I was alcoholic and I don't like to do things and besides that I had curious definition of harm you know I read the language that said make a list of all people who did harm came willing to make amends to them all I had this idea of harm. Where it came from, I don't know. Like everything else, I suppose it's a product of my background.
And I thought harm was that I recognized harm was financial and physical and I was not very physical. So primarily I considered harm to be if I if I took your money or even more refined if I took your money and you caught me. That was harm.
And uh and so I made a little, you know, I just did a little thing. I you know people like harm to see blah blah blah blah blah. And I gave it to him and he gave it right back to me.
He says it's the wrong list. Wrong list. So I pouted, you know, and I've been now I've been here more than a year.
More than a year. And I was used to him and I was used to this place and I was used to the program and I was used to the meetings and I was feeling good and things I'm not talking about spiritual development now. I'm talking about things were happening to me.
You know the phone was ringing. I was back in uh in a large law firm and uh doing well there. A lot of money I was making money and uh the things that money brings, you know, the house was painted, the furniture was repaired, the door that I had driven into in the garage was finally fixed, that kind of stuff.
Mkef was running around spending it as happily as she could which is okay with me and as it is when I quiet down as I did everybody around me quieted down and so my seven children were they were sullen but they weren't mutinous you know they no weapons or anything like that they just were normal growing up children and I understood all this I mean it was happening right in front of me it wasn't the question of faith. I didn't need faith. I still don't need faith.
I have faith, but I don't need it. I have experience. It's better than faith.
And so I I pouted a little and and thought he was, you know, being overly sticky with me. And like everything else I'd been taught to do, as I did this morning and as I did before this meeting, I prayed on. I prayed out cuz I had had a habit of prayer from him, something I didn't have prior to my coming here and I asked for power to to do this properly.
And then I made a list of all the people I had ever harmed. See, in the beginning, I didn't want to do that. You know, maybe it's law school.
I don't know if other people worry about words the way we do. I said, "Then what do you mean by all Huh? He said that that's not a big word.
I said, "Well, you know how you are when you're rationalizing. How about people who are dead?" He said, "It doesn't say all people now living. Just says all." Yeah, but they're dead.
He said, "Yeah, that's right. All everybody." I said, "Everybody." Yeah, each one. Yeah, that's right.
Well, how about people who moved away? He said, "That's less than dead for Christ's sake. Maybe they'll move back." Oh, and see, I was just weasling.
How about the ones I'll never see again? He says, "Don't count on it." And of course, the one guy I didn't put on my list and didn't want to put on my list, I was never going to put on my list was that son of a dean of the law school who fired me, a tenure professor of law, that rotten bastard. And of course, my sponsor was a lawyer and he knew my background.
He knew all about he knew all about this stuff before I came to AA. It sort of got around in the legal community. You know, does any of you know a tenure law school professor get thrown out?
You know, gets around. Besides, I was such a pain in the ass and so arrogant knows that everybody said, "Good, good. I'm glad he got it, little shit." And when he look at my list, he said, "Where's the dean?" And I went into one of my numbers.
Yeah. I said, "He screwed me." This guy, he did. He screwed me.
I was entitled to a hearing. I was this. He just absolutely screwed me.
He said, "Well, you harmed him." Whether he screwed you or not, that list is not complete without him. >> Jesus. Yeah.
I really was in a snit like the dean gives a whether he's on my list, right? Alcoholic, you know, we think think poorly. So I grudgingly put him on there.
Didn't deserve to be on there. Son of a All right, let me tell you what happened. And I said to him, I complained to him.
I said, "What is this magic? I mean, what the hell are we talking about here? You write people's names on a piece of paper and things happen.
It's magic. He said, "Yeah, it is." I don't believe in magic. That was like in 1966.
In 1975, 9 years later, I had the suggestion of of the guy in AA. I took the Florida bar exam and I passed it. And because I was a lawyer in New York City, they sent me a form.
I had to list five judges, five clients, and five adversaries in order to get through the character and fitness out of state law. Meanwhile, the dean of the law school, who had publicly said that I was the next dean of the law school, I forgot to tell you that, had gone on to the circuit court of appeals for the second circuit, federal New York City. Very prestigious court.
you know, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was a member of it and I had to put down five judges in 1976. So, I put down his name.
Meanwhile, I've been to see him without denial. We got along and put his name down on a piece of paper, mailed it back to Florida with some other judges I know. And I got a letter from them because I had also answered the question, "Have you ever been arrested?" Yes.
Five arrests, no convictions. Misunderstanding. a youthful man in the service of our country and growing up in my neighborhood where if you didn't get arrested by the time you were 17, you were not participating.
And so I got a letter from the Florida Bar and uh like yourself, it's a mandatory bar. I got a letter from him and they said, "Uh, come down here and be interviewed." So, I flew down there and I was interviewed by a member of the Florida P. I walk into his office.
I'm all, you know, a little apprehensive about this and here's a guy in a big guy in a white shirt with red suspenders and he says, "Mr. Ukei." I said, "Here we go." You know, some mushmouth. And uh he says, "I have a letter here from the court of appeals for the second circuit.
It will not be necessary to interview you further. Welcome to Florida." Oh, yeah. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Just like when you win one of court, right out the door, somebody changed their mind. I thought to myself, "Son of a it is magic.
It is." I write a guy's name down on a piece of paper in 76, I mean 66. And in 75, a guy says, opens the gate and says, "Come on in." The velvet rope here, mind it. What's that?
I know what that is. I know what that is. So, I finally had a list, a real list, and an odd thing happened to me as I was writing that list.
It was It was like something physical, a click in my head. I put down a name and click. I'd say, "I'll do something about this." I didn't know what I was going to do.
And some of this stuff I didn't think I I was able going to just going to be able to do it. I don't know. But I went click.
I'll do that. I'll do that. And I find out that there are other kinds of harm, emotional harm, which I didn't recognize.
I mean, if I told you you were an and you got upset, what's the matter with him? I mean, I call him that. He is an Look at this.
What's he upset about for Christ sake? I told him, "Your wife's a piece of too." And look at him. Look at him over there.
He's jumping up and down. What's the matter with him? Well, you heard his feelings.
I feelings my ass. I heard his feelings. Listen, my dick.
Why don't he stand up and take it like a You know, the book says we are like tornadoes, right? Going through the lives of other people. That was me.
If I hurt your feelings, if I insulted you or demeaned you or badmouththed you and you got upset, I'd figure you're a If you ask me something, god forbid you asked me anything. My my answer, the first part of it would be consistent and tell me how dumb you are not to know yourself. What's the matter with you?
You go to law school, you don't know the answer to this, you idiot. You I'll tell you. You know, give me some money and I'll tell you.
You see, it was the defects of character. My defects of character were such that I literally drove people away from me. You couldn't be in the same room with me.
My hate was so strong. You ever meet people like that? The vibes are coming right out of them.
new people especially I could God the new guy comes in the hatred and the anger and it's coming right out of him and I could I don't know if I'm overly sensitive or not but I but get near him boy and that was me and so because of that because of my own defects my own pride anger jealousy envy lust because of all of that I had driven people away from me. I could not be a partner to my partners cuz I'd steal from them. I'd glom checks and keep them, cash them.
I needed them. I had I had a drink. I kill them on the expenses.
Just absolutely kill them. I could not be a friend to my friends because I would use them terribly, hurt them, insult them. I could not be a father to my children, could not be a husband to my wife.
I was defective and I could not establish any type of a relationship with anyone else. although I had had them at at you know one time. And so the more I drank and the more my defects worked into action, the more alone I became, the more isolated I became.
And the is my defect, this way I think it works. The defects cause the isolation and the isolation bring on the alcoholism. That's why I think it is true.
And in the 12 and 12 on the ninth step, the eighth step, it says that defective relationships were the cause of our alcoholism and our failure at life. Relationships caused by defects. And my defects had made everyone go away.
And so at the end of my drinking, I was literally alone by myself. My best drinking was done by myself, you know. I mean, I was a very good barroom companion.
If you want to stand in a bar with me and listen to it, you know, and uh I was just terrible. Ms. O'Keefe of happy and present memory.
On the rare occasions that we would go out as a couple socially, Ms. O'Keefe would say to me on the way out, "I want you to do two things for me tonight, my dear." I said, "What is it?" And she said, "Well, the first one is please do not get falling down drunk." So, I never do that. I know.
Just don't do it. And the second thing is somewhere somehow in the course of the evening say I don't know and of course I was incapable of either either request you know but that's how I was and sometimes I still am and I I don't mean to be but I am. And so I'd driven everybody away and I was isolated and I was alone.
And one of the first things I felt when I came here, something I was talking about last night was that sense of belonging, you know, that came to me when I'm no longer, I say, no longer alone. And the beginning of that was was this because I had I had this list. I had this list and I brought it to to him the second time and it was as complete as as I as I could make it.
I hear people talking they got ongoing lists and they were running around adding list and I didn't have any of that. I just made the one and that's and I brought it to him and uh he was very helpful as he always was. He told me to what to do.
I, you know, I had sort of an idea of making indirect amends, you know, like an anonymous letter with a $2 check or something. Catholic church has a wonderful thing called the pool box. It's in the back of all the Catholic churches and you can put money in the pool box for the poor.
And oft times when I was going to confession in my youth, I'll confess to some stealing or something like that and the priest said, "Well, put money in the pull box." You know, you can get a discount, too. You know, you thought five bucks, you put a quarter in the in the pool box. It was a good deal.
And uh I haven't been in a convention in many, many years, but I remember the technique of the pool box. And I owed a lot of money to a lot of people. And I John said, "What are you going to do about you know you got this dough?" I said, "No, I don't have the dough." But I said, "I thought I'd throw something in the pool box." Yeah, you give him that shitty grin like you're running one by him.
He said, >> "Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.