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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. >> My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic >> and my life really in some ways was very different from Barbara's.

We're 11 years apart and our mother died when she was about two and I was 13 and my father remarried badly. uh in various ways one might say probably well in other ways I can't judge that marriage but uh Barbara was the one that uh bore the consequences of a completely different lifestyle than my older brother and I had and before I get launched into my talk and I intend to talk about an hour maybe a little less and uh there will be plenty of time for the workshops you'll probably have to race to the workshop job. But I'm not going to try to condense anything unless I'm seriously running over time.

But before I get started, I really want to add this disclaimer. My story is my story. I am not the voice of Alcoholics Anonymous and never have been.

My observations on our fellowship, which I find the most peculiar and unique and um I won't go into it. I will come out in my talk, I'm sure, how I feel about AA. Um, they're my views and how I interpret the program.

And if some of it is useful to you, I'm glad. If it's amusing to you, I'm even more glad. Uh, if it doesn't interest you at all, well, fine.

I'm going to try to be organized. I have always admired organization and it's a hard act to follow Jack and Derek and Arlene I feel but there's a smaller audience here. There's all everybody that's left over still moving around after the whole conference.

So in a way I'm lucky if it's a disaster it's only a small disaster. So, I've organized some notes and I'm going to try to give you a a quick biographical sketch uh which I hope will kind of organize me and my thinking. Then I will tell you about some of my drunks just to illustrate how I drank but also what happened to me.

My period of drinking wasn't all that long. And then I will tell you how I got to AA. And then the main part of my story is really to me at least the most interesting.

How I managed to stay in AA and get sober and stay sober in AA and what has happened to my life since. Because you know the horrible shock of being an alcoholic and drinking and carrying on like that and then suddenly stopping is that it dawns on most of us sooner or later that oh my god I woke up in the middle of my life and now every hour that I'm actually awake and not in bed and sleeping or unconscious for one reason or another I am actually going to feel experience and have to be here. And that is a horrifying thought because alcohol bought nothing if it didn't bring oblivion and sort of took the edge off of things, at least for me.

Anyway, the 40s kind of coincide with my pre-teen years. I was born in Bo, Wisconsin, which is an awful place, but I was only 5 months old when I left and went to Peru, South America. And I grew up in the Andes.

My father was a mining engineer and uh I lived in Peru um all during the 40s except we came back to the United States on vacation. I was a somewhat neurotic child. I was very touched five years ago when I was here at this conference when I did a workshop with Kevin I believe and he shared something to do with his childhood something that I really kept very quiet but I was a but beyond that I also like dressing up and playing with stoves and uh having dolls and all that sort of thing.

I was not exactly um the kind of child that my mother would have wanted and it could have been pretty obvious to almost anyone and she was a smart woman where this was all headed probably even in the ' 40s even though they didn't know uh about gays the way we do now in the 80s and 90s uh they certainly knew something and my mother wasn't too excited about it. I don't think my father cared that much. He was the one that had the little stove made for me and gave me a little vacuum cleaner one Christmas.

I don't know what was going on there. Barbara just took too long to arrive in our family. I think that's what it was.

They want little boy and little girl when I was a little girl. Then um during the 50s that coincides with my teens. I went to high school and that of course is a wonderful experience for everybody.

You all remember it, don't you? Uh it was it was even worse when you went to four different high schools and I went to high school in Arizona and Illinois, a military academy. uh its motto was called builders of men.

It's no it's no longer in business but I don't think I had anything to do with that. And then uh also California and I went to school in England for a year and a half. My 20s coincided with the 60s and the 60s were the years that I drank and that is when I became I believe I became an alcoholic.

I was a social drinker to start with and the 60s are for me in many ways the horrorfilled years. Uh even though some of them were pretty conventional. I finished college uh in four years unlike most people do now.

And then of course I worked on a master's degree for many years, various master's degrees in fact. And I spent two years in Peacecore and I drank during the 70s which coincided with my 30s. I was sober and that was the building of my career.

I published a book, a paperback, a hardback book, a paperback and some articles. Uh I was well launched on my career and that was all attributed really to AA because I was sober during the 70s. I also built a lifetime relationship with a lover and that was wonderful.

And I bought a house just before the 70s ended. And then in 1980, there was quite a little crash there. You know, my lifetime companion and I broke up.

You know, we had what I suppose straight people would call a divorce. I don't know what we called it, but it was a mess. And uh I uh it happened not very long before my big 10th anniversary speech in Madison.

Uh I was one of the more colorful and well-known AA personalities. and I was giving my 10th anniversary speech and there were really a lot of people there and I was a mess because I had just broken up with my 10-year relationship and so I had to start my talk by explaining that I was crying out of happiness and also because someone wasn't there who should be there and so on and you know that's how it was and also my god I was 42 and I was without a partner and who was going to want me well the 80s Oh, marvelous years. I discovered that lots of people want you.

I mean, I was in fairly good shape and I still am, but I apparently, you know, had not realized during the 70s and during this 10 year relationship that there were all these uh people who wanted me. And so, I didn't have a hard time from that. I I had a very interesting time.

I tried a triad for the first couple years of the 80s and that was interesting with two men. I mean we actually lived together and emotionally it was very exhausting, exhilarating, interesting and uh was sort of appalling because of course usually a triangle is a sort of unstable thing and the point gets larger and larger and I was the point and the other two ran off and left me brokenhearted. They had each other.

They moved around the corner. It was awful. I used to pass their house and I had a resentment even though I had been sober 12 years.

But um one of them by the way now they're both good friends of mine. Uh that's how we build family. Gays do.

You know our ex-lovers are our best their closest family members. They know us the best. And one of them lives in my house now and is just a roommate.

Anyway, and uh I also met what is now the love of my life and we've been in the relationship for seven years. I also had a child with a lesbian uh couple and uh were both um nurturing and raising her. And of course the 80s were the years when uh AIDS uh came on the scene for us and I started writing working the Madison AIDS support network which I still do and then my 50s are coinciding with the '9s.

So that's the quick biography and I think I managed to do that in about five minutes. that sort of sets the scene. So now I'm going to go back a ways and I'm going to discuss the portion of my story that I don't like very much because it's really um it's a pathetic story.

Well, I'll go way back first listening to Arlene talk and I can't even bring myself to summon up the image she had of her childhood and how she was treated. But then Derek, you know, was taught um, you know, he was beaten and abused. And Derek, it didn't sound like he had good childhood either.

There was a lot of alcoholism in that home. I was brought up in a home of privilege. Uh, I was loved.

I was encouraged to be the best that I could be. My mother and father and my brother nurtured and cared for me. And, uh, I was, we were also quite well off.

I would say upper middle class even more than that living in South America. I've never lived at the standard of living in which I lived when I was growing up since I was on my own. But I was brought up there was not alcoholism in my home.

And um my parents were far more than decent people. They were good people deep down. And they taught me things that I started to remember again when I sobered up.

And uh I had a very very wonderful childhood and quite a happy one even though I was a somewhat neurotic you know uh I had as good a childhood as you can be being gay in the 40s uh as a child and I believe I was certainly gay by that time. So what is my excuse? What am I doing up here?

You know why didn't I turn out okay? Well, I turned out okay, but I had this sort of period in between. And I'm just kind of just I'm just talking around the subjects.

I'll get into the 60s. I went in the Peace Corp in ' 62 to 64. And one of my drunks there, or a couple of them resulted in a variety of things.

First of all, there was a lot of anger and violence in me that I really can't account for. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it was that I was having to suppress that I was being gay because I'd already had some not affairs uh or even affairs.

Not even one night stands, just experiences with men. But I also had had uh experiences with women. I all I wanted to do was grow up and have a marriage like my parents.

And maybe underneath I knew that wasn't going to happen. So I was angry and violent about that. I don't know.

Ray, I broke a bottle over the head of the chief of police of the city of Cusco in Peru. And I'm a remember? I'm still I'm a grown-up This is in the Peace Corp.

And we nearly got in a lot of trouble over that because he was with a couple of his officers and it started this big fight and there were Peacecore volunteers involved. Oh, it was horrible. Then there were things like blackouts that started happening in the early 60s when I drank too much and I woke up um in Bruno Peru in bed with a policeman.

I maybe had a thing for it. I don't know. I don't think so.

But that was very awkward. That could have been a real nightmare because we're talking about Latino culture which is not very um you know favorable to our lifestyle. Then there were the drunks that were sort of suicidal.

I remember this fantasmagoric, strange, unreal scene, like out of a movie or something where I was in the medical post that I worked and I was very drunk and I shut the door. I put the Coleman lantern on. Uh there was no electricity running water where I was a PeaceC volunteer for two years.

And I was locked in there and I opened I put a needle into my vein with a syringe open and the blood started running out and I wanted to kill myself and I wrote a suicide note in blood. Well, fortunately I came to my senses more or less and um I cleaned everything up and I went to bed. I never told anybody about it.

Well, except in my first fifth step. I tried to throw myself over a cliff in another blackout. and I was suicidal in the early 60s.

Another dunk that happened in the later 60s when I was back in Madison, Wisconsin working on all these master's degrees that I wasn't getting because of course I would miss class. I would get sick and hung over and not make it to class. I would put things off.

Um the strangest was I would go in a blackout. I called my brother and sister-in-law. That's Barbers and my older brother.

They were farmers in Illinois and very very nice, wonderful people and also very decent people and very close to me. They never rejected me during all this time. And I apparently made arrangements to come visit them.

And it dropped and the next morning I was in this fog, you know, waking up. I don't know if it was a weekend or not, but this friend showed up at my door and he said, "Are you ready?" I said, "Oh." He said, "Well, you know, I'm ready to take you out to the airport." And I'm very quick, even though I was in this hangover, I thought, "Oh, okay. Just a minute, Alan." I went in my bedroom.

I threw some stuff in a bag, put some clothes on. I had no idea that I was going anywhere. But, you know, you can't admit that.

I was holding many secrets. As Derek said, secrets. I could not even admit to myself that I was operating blind.

So, we went out to the airport and fortunately in Madison in the late60s there were really only two airport desks and I was very lucky. 50/50 chance they hit the right one and I asked if they had the reservation for Michael Beas and they did. They gave me a ticket and I gave them a check.

Unfortunately, you know, people take your checks and that's how you get in debt. At least they did cuz I looked sort of respectable. I always thought about doing my drinking.

And I got on the plane and with Wistoff I must have gone into another blackout. Alcohol has very serious physical effects on people. You know it isn't just that you're in a blackout when you're drinking.

The blackouts happen after drinking. I just found this out uh after 88. I woke up in Chicago airport which is very big and very frightening with this ticket stuff in my hand and had to look to see where I was going.

This is all because I couldn't admit to my friend Allan that I hadn't clue what he was talking about. I would never would have spent all that money and everything and I had um you know I noticed I was going to my brother and sister-in-law and I I don't think I even called them. I just got on the plane and I got off the plane.

I had one sandal on and one off. I lost my return trip ticket and I was a pathetic pathetic crying wreck. And they met me.

They were there and the minute we got in the car, I just threw myself, my sisters in the whole lap and I just cried. It was so pathetic. That was such a sad thing.

So, there was a lot of self-pity involved and that got even more serious later on. Uh, between rage and hostility and self-pity, I was a mess when I drank. Um, and I was also I got into very dangerous situations.

I got into things I never would have gotten into. over. You know, I went to bed with people I never would have even dreamt of going to bed with.

At one time, I was robbed and nearly killed by somebody. And it was all because I was drunk and I was lonely. I don't think I really need to talk about my drinking anymore because it all sounds very much the same.

There's a lot of drama there. I was a drama queen. I drank because I was an author.

Of course, I hadn't written anything or published anything, but I did a lot of pathetic poetry writing that was just really bad. I mean, it was poor from a literary standpoint, and it was very pathetic from the point of view, the emotions displayed in it. But I drank because I was an artist and a poet.

And I drank because I was lonely. I drank because I was happy. The thing that probably was lucky for me is that I didn't drink every day because it probably would have killed me.

I got very, very sick the next day after being drunk. I could drink a whole lot, but then I would be very sick the next day. I could not drink the next day.

I could barely do anything except just throw up and shake and put myself back together. And then the next day, I was kind of really all right. And then it was the third day before I was really okay.

I was not a maintenance alcoholic. I did not need alcohol. I was not going to go into DTS.

I never had any physical things like that. I was a periodic alcoholic. And furthermore, you know, I was actually an elegant drinker.

I I drank mixed drinks. Was a lot of these beer or wine type people. And uh I really believed, you know, I was brought up with a lot of elegance in our home and a lot of dignity and as I say, with a lot of good values.

And um one of my drunks which wasn't quite as elegant as I I got fairly drunk and I think I also got on a plane. It might have been a Greyhound bus. I went to Minneapolis and I remember eating lobster and shrimp with a friend of mine at the top of whatever it was back then in the 60s in Minneapolis and I shhat my pants.

I was wearing a three-piece black suit and I just very gracefully went to the bathroom, took off everything, cleaned everything up, left the underpants still in the corner, put the suit back on, and went out and continued to eat. Now that's elegance. Now drinking drinking it was difficult to be what I knew I was and still drink.

But that's enough out of my drinking. As I say, I was a periodic. I never had to drink.

I didn't always get drunk even at the end when I drank. And uh I never I never um you know it was very not obvious to me or many other people uh that I was an alcoholic. Certainly not the kind of alcoholic we all know about and most people know about or they think they do.

The kind that just sits and drinks wine, you know, has wrecked their life. How did I arrive at AA? Well, AA is not exactly the kind of country club that I aspired to join or the group of people that I thought I wanted to be part of.

Now, mind you, I had already spent a couple of times in what we call the bin or the puzzle factory or uh the mental ward of university hospitals for suicide attempts. As a direct result of drunks and the deepening selfhatred and loneliness in the corner, put the suit back on. I went out and continued to eat.

Now that's elegance. You know, drinking. Drinking.

It was difficult to be what I knew I was and still drink. But that's enough out of my drinking. As I say, I was a periodic.

I never had to drink. I didn't always get drunk, even at the end when I drank. And uh I never I never um you know it was very not obvious to me or many other people uh that I was an alcoholic.

Certainly not the kind of alcoholic we all know about and most people know about or they think they do. The kind that just sits and drinks wine, you know, has wrecked their life. How did I arrive at AA?

Well, AA is not exactly the kind of So, we went to AA and I there was somebody up here speaking, some old man, I think, and I asked. Now, mind you, I had already spent a couple of times in what we call the bin or the puzzle factory or uh the mental ward of university hospitals for suicide attempts as a direct result of drunks and the deepening selfhatred and loneliness and fear that I had. I didn't like those places either.

I didn't like the people I had to eat lunch and breakfast and dinner with. I didn't mind. He was somebody who was very unattractive to me.

But he was a nice person. And I just thought, you know, I'd like to kill myself. This is this is so awful that I can be doing these things.

And I called somebody who had said, "When you are hung over, you don't feel well, you want to talk to me, uh, we can talk about your problem." And so I called this man up. His name was Richard. He's dead now.

And I went over to his place and he made me read chapter five and how it works and maybe some more out of the big book. My god. I mean I was hung over.

I was not dyslexic. Like I mean I didn't have any problem reading. I read too much.

I just never did anything. And you know I knew a lot about alcoholism by that time. I knew a lot about gayness.

I knew a lot about everything, but I I didn't do anything. But I read this book and then he told me his story, which was horrifying. Uh he was he was a horrifying drunk and he had been spectacular.

Lots of money and businesses lost and wife and four children and la. And uh anyway, he sent me to AA. He didn't take me because he was a twosteper, what we call an AA, a twosteper.

He uh helped the alcoholics get NA and he didn't drink. That was all he did. He did the middle part of the 12th step and part of the first step.

He didn't drink, but he did a lot of dope, but I didn't know that then. And anyway, it worked for him sort of. But I went to my first AA meeting January 3rd of 1970 and I was 31 and a half.

And like Jack, I felt in some ways I didn't belong. I was really much younger than most of those people. My first meeting had about seven people in it.

I think they were all men. There might have been one woman there, and they were wearing polyester plaid pants. I don't mean to offend anybody, but I don't like polyester plaid pants very much.

They were all World War II veterans. One of them was a World War I veteran. And this was at the height of the anti-war protest in Madison, Wisconsin.

And I was a very active war protester. I think it made me feel better to be involved in causes. You know, even though I couldn't get my own life together, at least I could work for peace.

And I threw myself into those activities. It was too frightening to look inside. It was much easier to look organization part.

And I went to that meeting and I looked around and I thought, "Oh my god." And these people, these guys also watch television. They talk sports and they play cards. And it was in this Allen clubhouse in Madison, Wisconsin, 511 North Carol Street.

And I just thought, well, you know, I was hung over still or frightened. My palms were sweating. They're sweating a little now.

And I was very hostile, but I was very pleasant. I had manners, you know. I was brought up with manners.

And I'm not prejudice. I look around at these white Anglo-Saxon middle-aged to old males, which is kind of what I am now. And and I knew that they hated blacks, they hated chos, they hated gays.

They were very prejudic. And I of course disliked or hated anybody who was prejudiced which meant that I was in a very awkward position. I believe uh the word paradox sort of fits this you know that Eileen was talking about it was kind of a bad paradox here.

I was hating everybody who was prejudiced because they were prejudiced but I was the most prejudice person in that room. But what saved the whole thing and why I sat there was that I was desperately desperately lonely. I could no longer afford to go to hospitals or psychiatrists.

Uh I had no money to do that. And um I just come to the end of the line. I just couldn't handle my life anymore.

And these old men just said, "Keep coming back, you know, uh give it some time." There was one thing that I remember the most. It was looking into the eyes of these men in Alcoholics Anonymous. There was a sense there that they knew where they were going.

There was a a peace that I had all my life experienced in flashes but was entirely lost to me by that time. To take you back briefly, I remember when I was 5 years old sitting in the high grasses uh in the Andes behind our house. The sky was very very deep blue and the wind was blowing through the grasses and I was as I say a very secure happy child in many ways and I was at one with the world.

I was at peace. And a woman in one of the workshops before said that the image of her god was the wind because even though you couldn't see the wind you could see its effect. And in this case it was gentle and it was blowing.

And I felt physically wonderful. And I was this little kid sitting in the grasses and I knew I was loved. I belonged in the universe.

And I think my whole life has been a search to go back to feeling at one with everyone and everything. Well, I got a sense of this in my first AA meeting hours after my last drunk, I think. And um I decided to stay and find out um what was going on.

I did not come to AA to get sober. I came to AA to get out of trouble. I mean, the idea of stopping drinking was just an appalling thing to me.

Um, so what happened? Well, one thing that happened is I said that January 3rd of 1970 was my first real AA meeting, closed AA meeting. Well, something strange happened.

Actually, March 10th of 1970 is my sobriety date. That means the date from which I had my last drink. So, I wasn't an instant success in AA.

I wasn't too bad, but I wasn't an instant success. And uh I had a couple of drunks in January. Winters are horrible in Wisconsin.

They are just a nightmare. And I used to blame a lot of my drunks on the on the hateful, horrible weather in Wisconsin. The frozen legs of contest.

I said, out of Dante's Divine Comedy, his image of hell is not a fire and inferno. It's this frozen lake down at the bottom of hell where people are eating out of each other's brain pans and they're uh exploiting each other. And that was my vision of Madison in January.

So, of course, I had to drink to get over it. Of course, I could have left Madison, couldn't I, and moved somewhere else. But that would have been too big a thing to do and too scary.

Uh drunks, I've noticed certainly myself, stay with what's familiar, even though it's awful. It's very frightening to change. But I walked into AA blissfully unaware that perhaps or well there's no doubt about it.

It was a big to my life and I was in for a lot of work which was uh something I didn't know about either. But I went there to get out of trouble. I thought I'm going to learn what these people have teach me and then I'm leaving.

I don't like this place. This is not my idea of a of a classy place to be. I didn't like the people that much.

And the clubhouse was very uninteresting, very bad taste. I told you I I'm a person of very good taste and I was brought up with a lot of class and the Aleno Club in Madison, Wisconsin looks sort of like a bar without the bars, you know, without the booze figures. Drugs developed it.

So now let me tell you, and I think I've saved good amount of time for the best part of my story, which is my sobriety. And what happened to me? First of all, I found after my last disastrous drunk in March that I was going to really have to do the steps.

I had walked in. I admitted I was powerless over alcohol. I think I knew that my life was unmanageable.

I mean, that's why I came there to get out of trouble. All these incompletes and this money I owed and these people who didn't want to see me anymore, I was going to fix all that. And um as far as returning to sanity, I knew I wasn't crazy.

I've always wanted to be, but it was worse than that. I happened to be a drunk, which wasn't as classy as being insane because you don't go to psychiatrist. You go to AA.

So I I came to believe I had always in my life wanted I'm like a peasant squatting in the dust lighting a candle and believing that the Virgin Mary is going to come around the corner and fix things because I had that in Peru. I went to mass with the maids with my covenants whatever you want to call them and uh I was impressed by the candles and the images and the light and there was a very simple and radiant faith there. These people believed even amidst very difficult terrible lives that things would be all right and that God was always there and that you could light candles and that it would work out.

And I always wanted to believe and even in my worst trunks sometimes uh I just couldn't figure out why God wasn't helping me. You know, I would make deals and nothing would happen. That's because, you know, I always thought and read about things.

I never did anything. But I went to AA. So I came to believe that God could restore me to sanity.

Sure. And um then um the third step was let go. Let God, you know, turn it over.

turn your life and your will over. I turned it over to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't have any problems with that.

Uh but I didn't really learn how not to pick up the first drink until I realized that I was going to have to not pick up the first drink each day. And whatever it took, I was not to drink each day. And that I only had one life to live in one day.

I did not have a years ahead to not drink. I just had today. And um anything that was happening to me, good or bad, would pass.

Those were magic words to me. It will pass. We have cliches in AA.

And I hate to say that my whole philosophy of life can be reduced to these nasty little cliches. I mean, it's not elegant, but it will pass is a marvelous freeing concept because even if you're bored listening to me talk, it will pass. you know even if I feel that I'm not doing a good job it will pass you know triumph and tragedy you know A's or Fs success or disaster it passes and there's something new and this is another thing that I learned in AA which was horrifying I had always wanted to find the answer I needed to know the answer I would if I just found the answer I would do anything that was required I mean, I was a good person and I never could quite find the answer.

I could not find the absolute truth of how things worked. But in AA, I found my first absolute truth, an answer. And that was that life is change.

Just wait around and things will change. And if I hadn't been given it will pass and only a day at a time, I believe I would have just killed myself. Because for somebody who wants the answer and wants absolute truth to discover that the only truth is that things always change is a disaster.

I mean that is not what I had in mind when I came to AA. I knew after my last run I was truly terrified and fear is a great motivator for me at least. I knew this wasn't a test I was going to pass or fail or a job I was going to get or not get.

This is my life that I was playing with and I was going to have to simply take seriously the steps which I had memorized uh before my last drunk in those three golden first months in a I was going to have to actually do them. So I sat down and after my last drunk I put the finishing touches on my first inventory which was six long yellow pages of legal pads and um or seven and uh I went and I told my fifth step to somebody in aa and I told them everything about my life and that one was to save my life really. I had to dump a lot of garbage.

I had some really bad things and I had scenes where I had really, you know, degraded myself. I hadn't really maybe hurt anybody else so much, but I'd had bad things happen and I had, you know, been involved in bad things and I had to get rid of it. I had to, you know, and I also had to find out what was going wrong because a good inventory and I just took it right out of the big book.

I had three columns. I had everyone I hated, including people in AA by that time in those three short months. Started with my father and it went right on through.

I think my sister was probably on it. Everybody was on it. And the institutions, the president, Nixon, the whole thing.

And then in the middle, what little incident, you know, can you remember that keyed it off? Well, what made you feel, you know, ashamed? What made you feel uh angry, etc.

And on the right hand side were the character defects. Well, I wound up my worst character defect is procrastination, putting things off. That was really how my whole life kind of fell over the edge.

I just didn't get those papers done. I just didn't do anything a day at a time. I just had the vision of having a book written.

I never sat down, wrote the first paragraph or the outline. And of course a lot of things didn't work out. So my major character defect was laziness.

My major emotional approach to life was fear, panic, and another major u character problem was lying, dishonesty. I lied a lot. I had a lot to lie about too.

And as the big book suggests, I took steps six and seven right away. Right after my fifth step, I went to a quiet place which is my apartment. I sat there, thought about whether I'd done everything as completely as I could have at that time, you know, a week after my last drug three months into AA and uh I um became willing to have all my character defects removed and I humbly asked God to do that.

I didn't understand step seven until I was five years sober. But I at least did it out of the book right there. I just did it.

It's only a paragraph in the big book. That's all step seven is is a paragraph. And I did it.

And it didn't work. I was late to work the next morning. I was frantic.

I was behind and everything. And I felt appalled about my life. So I kind of went skipping merily on there and I went on to steps eight and nine.

And that was kind of a false thing to do too. that hurriedly because making amends, who's going to believe somebody who's sober two weeks that they're, you know, making amends. I did manage to do some stuff.

I started paying my bills a little bit at a time at a regular time of the month. I got a lot of good practical advice, but going and telling somebody that you've done this or that and that you're a changed person isn't just going to work when they've been watching you for eight or nine years, making fool of yourself and lying all getting drunk over and over. So those amends didn't work very well either.

I called my father up and apologized for calling him in La Paz, Bolivia when I was drunk and having 15 operators on the line because you have to go through a radio patch in Santiago de Chile and then telling him that he's making his youngest son by that time he had another son in the second marriage that he's making that kid into a and it was his fault I was a I don't think I used that word then. a homosexual, I believe we were back in the early in the late 60s. And blaming him for everything in my life.

And that was very disruptive because a lot of other people listened in on this line and you know it was sort of was sort of embarrassing to him was like when I'd call my brother and sister-in-law at 2 in the morning and it was a party line in this little town in Illinois and five phones would be picked up and then I'd proceed to tell them my son story and everybody was fascinated with Norma's brother-in-law. He was so excited. I don't know how those people held their heads up in church because they were very faithful Presbyterians, but they did.

God loved them and they loved me with the true compassionate love. So, um I didn't do too too well on the amend steps either. 10th step which I discovered was living a balanced life, you know, and on a daily basis.

That's the whole thing, you know. Don't build up all the garbage. I learned when things went wrong to try to take care of it right away.

I also had to learn to to just a lot of things after I sobered up in my first year of sobriety. What happened was I failed my master's exam for my degree, which isn't too surprising because I hadn't studied and I was drunk all the time when I was in school. And I was fired from my job and that seemed very unfair.

I ran to my sponsor. He said, "Well, you have food to eat and roof over your head. You look all right.

You're sober, right?" I said, "Yeah, I'm sober." But he said, "Well, then there's no problem. You're okay." And go to another meeting. And uh I had to move from one apartment to another and I didn't have the month's rent and it was just it was so terrifying.

But um I was living my life a day at a time. asked for help in the morning and thanks at night for what I had which was sobbriety for the most part. Then I came to the most controversial step in the program which uh we had a workshop on yesterday.

Uh my sister did that on the 11th step sought and that's the key word because here I am 21 years later in aa and I am still seeking and that's all right because it's sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God uh as I understand him her it I prefer to call it the mystery and this is a step where I could did badly. Uh, you know, I could just go off in a philosophical tangent. Uh, I was so interested my sister got up and just said, I'm a sober pagan dyke.

You know, I'm sort of define where she's at. I'm very different. I'm very different.

More elegant because of my background. You know, I was my leanings were episcopal leanings. I wasn't burned by the church.

I mean, in Episcopal church, the worst sins bad taste, you know, and uh I would say that it's Catholicism without guilt. And so, but it still has at the heart of it the same thing. It has that mystery that I wanted to connect with.

And here was the 11 steps sought through prayer and meditation. And my sponsor, who had been through fifth grade, I believe before he dropped out, Ted Raymond, God love him. He's dead now.

He was the World War I veteran. I was, of course, hated the World War II veterans a lot as I was opposed in the Vietnam War and they were viciferous, but Ted was beyond that. He was a World War I veteran.

So, I picked him as one of my major sponsors. The man never, to my knowledge, ever mentioned the word God. And I don't believe he or his wife had ever darkened the door of a church, which is really something when you're finding people in their 60s and 70s who haven't done that.

I don't know how they got through life, but Ted would sit me down and he'd say, well, he had a lot of silence in him and he just said, "S say please in the morning and thank you at night." He never defined what to say it to. Um he was my first lesson in somebody who was living their faith rather than talking about it or reading about it. He also said, as I said, he had a fifth grade education.

Maybe he couldn't even read very well. He said, "Michael, two kinds of books you just don't need to read." I mean, I had very directive sponsors. He said, "Don't read anything about alcoholism and don't read anything more on religion or faith.

Everything you need is in the big book." And of course, when I came to the 11th step, I just devoured I tried to figure out how to do it through prayer and meditation. I knew it wasn't squatting in the dust and lighting candles in front of an image. I knew that wasn't going to work.

Yoga and a lot of Buddhist things that I had going, lighting little josh sticks with incense, and that wasn't probably going to work for me because I had to find something new about prayer and meditation. And what I found was a really horrifying thing in the big book. It said, "We are not cured.

What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. I mean, I wanted the answer. I wanted it fixed.

I wanted to get into that clubhouse, get cured, and leave. And I also wanted to find God in a flash. Well, you know, the 12 steps says we had a spiritual awakening.

Bill, one of our co-founders of a a had a flash, lights, fells, and he had it. I mean, he was sort of nutso in many ways, but he was also a genius. And I thank God for Bill and Bob, co-founders of AA, but I don't think as a person I might have really liked him.

He was far too intense and far too crazy. and he wanted the 12th step to read having had a spiritual experience as a result of the steps blah blah but uh that part of the 12 steps was changed before it was published in the book and it was having had a spiritual awakening because in truth for me it's been very gradual this growing spirituality and a lot of it has been prayer and meditation I had in my very first few months in AA the luck to spend one time in my apartment alone for five minutes where I didn't want anything. I didn't need to turn anything on.

I was just in the silence and I was totally at peace. And it was so powerful. It was like that child in the grasses at 5 years old looking up at the blue sky and being at home.

And of course, like an alcoholic, I thought, "Wow, this is going to keep happening." Well, it didn't happen for a while again. I guess I needed just a tidbit there. You know, I was always saying, "God, you just show me a a little I just want a vision.

I won't tell anybody, you know." Well, I never got a vision except when I wasn't, you know, drunk and hallucinating or something. But I did learn that prayer in fact was doing my life, working on the steps, going to meetings, a living prayer. And it's a wonderful concept.

You know, the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, all those Orthodox churches have the idea of the sacrament, which is the outward invisible sign of your inward life. And that's what I needed to do. I needed to translate my talk into action.

And uh so actually I do still ask for help. I physically ask for that every morning. I open my little book and I don't usually read it very carefully, but I do look at it and it reminds me a I'm an alcoholic and b I can't do this alone.

And then in the evening at some point or another I will say thank you for the day that I'm sober today. That's another thing I heard in a is you don't stay sober on yesterday's sobriety. Every day is a brand new day.

It's very easy for me now at 53 because I have a memory like a civ and I can't remember anything anyway. So every day is a brand new day. So you know the program and age has been very good to me that way and I now found that meditation for me is long periods.

I am now really basically a Buddhist in practice. Uh well I'm not. I also go to Eucharist or mass a lot too.

Uh but I'm not a fanatic about those things. Uh I just find a comfort in the physicality of the bread and wine. To me, anyone that I relate to, each of you in this room is Buddha or Christ.

Any man or woman, there haven't been a lot of them, but they've been exceptional, that I sleep with is God incarnate. This is a thing. I'm sharing my body maybe with somebody.

They're sharing it with me. But it is Christ that I'm dealing with. I'm dealing with that mystery.

And um I don't know where I was going from there. As I say, I have no memory. So anyway, I've become sort of a Zen Buddhist Catholic.

That's what's happened to me. And you know that's sad because I thought it would be simpler than this. Keep it simple.

Well, I do in one way. As I say, my program is very simple. But now I can run around and read all these books and do all these things completely free of this terror of getting drunk because I'm not looking for the answer.

I know better than that. I just find it today. How to stay sober.

That's the answer. But I do find that I have a fascination with drawing closer to that mystery. And for me, Zen Buddhism, Catholicism together combined work.

And I'm not going to go into the philosophical ramifications of it, but it brings me peace. We finally come to the 12th step, my spiritual awakening. Well, this is a risky thing to do, but it was a risky thing to get up here in the first place, I think.

Even though I can talk a lot, I sometimes say nothing. But I have had an awakening. And if you can't see it in my eyes and in my demeanor and in the laughter and in each of you in this room, then um then you're missing it because I see all of you as having had a spiritual awakening.

You people are my doctors. Now, um you're priceless. Unfortunately, I don't have to pay anything for it, but uh you're a peculiar collection of doctors, but you're also my spiritual teachers.

And I find if I look carefully at each of you, that you have the same look in your eyes. I mean, we don't know exactly where we're going, but we know we're doing it sober. And we don't really know where we're going to get to.

Uh but, um we're sober and we're doing it together. And and that's That's a lot of my awakening. It's also part of carrying the message.

You know, the 12th step is in three parts. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. I always hated that part because it always meant I had to go back through and see if I, you know, was keeping my job done in aa they say you don't stay sober on yesterday's sobriety and you don't work a good program by having done it once.

or I don't anyway I always there always these tag ends so I have to look back at the steps to keep my awakening awake the maintenance of my spiritual condition then there's the middle part which is fun for me working with others that's carrying the message to other alcoholics and I have a workshop on sponsorship and I'll go into that at length then but basically to me it's been some of the most thrilling things in the world and all I have to do is is look at my sister there Because the the gift that was given to me, I passed on. Not because I'm anything special, but because I didn't pick up a drink a day at a time. And I knew enough to just be sober.

And when she called, I wasn't hung over. I wasn't drunk. I didn't have to lie.

I didn't have to make excuses. I was there. and um you know she went off she's gotten sober in her own way and she's always done everything in her own way and she's not nearly like I am or as elegant or anything else but I come we're both sober alcoholics and there's a lot of love there and that's the 12th step hearing the message and there's coffee and speaking making coffee and speaking and all that other stuff.

The thing that I dislike the most about the big book and the 12 steps is there's always a catch and something. You know, a doesn't cost anything. It's free.

That is in terms of money. There's some time involved. There's a lot more time than I expected.

But the 12th step, you know, it's wonderful. A spiritual awakening is a result of these steps. That's kind of a catch in there.

and then uh carrying the message to others. But then there's that practicing the principles and all your affairs. Now I think that is really crummy.

It is one thing for me to get up here and laugh and talk to you and talk about my program and I have gone through all the 12 steps as you noticed and I did work hard on them and I had sponsors and I've been to hundreds and hundreds of more meetings than I ever expected to. Thank God I don't have to go to as many meetings now as I did in the beginning. But uh you know I put in my time I'm getting the benefits.

But the 12step requires me to live this kind of principled decent balanced dayto time life in my work life in my love affairs in my friendships in everything else that I do. I told you that one of my major character defects was procrastination i.e. laziness and that to me was very sad when I read that because it required in fact for me to change my whole life around and work these steps in every aspect of my life.

And I'm going to have to close now in about two or three minutes because much to my surprise, I've been up here talking for a whole hour and feel I've said nothing. And of course, I want to wrap it up in one dazzling flash of insight that will leave all of you breathless and me joyous at having given us all such an epiphany. such a life experience.

Uh I'm a drama queen, I guess I would put it bluntly, but I can't think of anything so dazzling to say. What comes into my mind is that my 21 years of sobriety. Uh and I'm going to hang on to it a day at a time because I don't have enough energy to try to recover again.

And I'm going to continue. And I do work with people still. I go to two meetings a week.

Not like our leaning five or six or seven, whatever it is. I didn't drink every day though either. So I don't Oh, thank goodness.

You know, my mind is still quick. I can think of the reason. I don't have to go to meetings every day cuz I didn't drink every day.

So that's cool program. But I still put in my time. I go to meetings and I sponsor people.

One reason I sponsor people is that I can see that I don't want to be there anymore and I don't think it will work. So I'm going to hang on to my sobriety to be at the time. That's the whole story.

in 12step work or AA work or how you feel about the meetings or whether you like the speaker or you don't like the speaker. If you don't pick up a drink, you're 100% successful and everything over that is just crazy. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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