My Sponsor Took Away My Big Book – AA Speaker – Dick S.

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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. >> Good evening.

My name is Dick Skellyy and I'm an alcoholic. At this point in my life, I hope I'm an alcoholic cuz if I'm not, I've wasted 34 years of my life coming to these damn meetings. The um want to thank the committee for having well the extreme good judgment to invite me here tonight.

It includes those you just saw uh Rich and Don and Dennis, Darcy, Annie, Greg, Dan, Warren, Lisa, Mihan, Christine, Deborah, Larry, Bill B, Bill M. Thank you all for your service and thank you all for being so kind to me and my wife and greeting us when we came here both in person and by uh by letter. And a special thanks to uh Maryanne and Arch for being so kind and considerate to me and my wife during our short stay here.

We we love Vancouver. This is our third trip here and we spent the afternoon uh going over to North Vancouver. uh where among other things you can find many good places to eat, particularly if your preferences go toward Greek or sushi.

Now, Atlanta and Georgia are not thought to be cutting edge communities, but we've had sushi for a very long time. We just didn't know any better. We just called it baked.

the uh by the way I want to uh apologize or at least explain uh the vest. Um I'm a lawyer by trade and it's kind of a uniform. But more importantly than that, at the end of my drinking, I knew I was a a very high bottom drunk.

Oh, I I did. Uh, I always had a hold in my silk tie when I threw up. I got around that by wearing a vest and the vest held in the tie.

Except that the vest created other problems. I used to stagger into the men's room, stumble over to the latrine, open my vest, pull out my tie, and pee in my pants. I don't want to frighten you, but I did come here armed with notes.

Um, this is for your benefit more than mine. Uh, in addition to being an alcoholic, I'm also a a Celtic mystic. For those of you unfamiliar with the Irish, a Celtic mystic is an Irish bullshitter.

And I brought these notes so you don't have to stay here and listen to me till 1 or 2 in the morning. in which case you'd be walking out with com just happy with your bargain getting five CDs for $10. The uh like most of you I uh I drank alcohol uh because in the beginning it worked.

It did what it was supposed to do. In my case, in my late teens and early 20s, it got me over the rough spots in life. It uh made me comfortable talking with girls.

A little bit later, as I got into law school, um I went through college and law school on scholarships. My my dad was a steel worker. Most of the people I went to college and especially law school with were the sons and daughters of judges and doctors and bankers and the Catholic Arts Dascese of Newark was kind enough to place Satan Hall Law School on Clinton Street in Newark right next to a tavern.

How considerate could they be? And we would adjourn after classes next door to that tavern and I'd be there drinking with my fellow classmates and and they'd all be talking about their prep school lacrosse team. I didn't go to no prep school.

I didn't I didn't play lacrosse. I went to a small parochial high school and I played stick ball in a playground. But after a couple of drinks, what the hell?

I played lacrosse, too. And although it worked for a long time, there was a point in time when it stopped working. I had used alcohol into the beginning of my career as an attorney.

And um sometime in January of 1977, I didn't get silver till May, but I went to an AA meeting just to get uh some pamphlets to prove I had been there and come home with the pamphlets. And of course, I come home drunk, staggered into the kitchen, threw the pamphlets on the table in front of my wife and insisted that the damn thing didn't work. This allowed me to continue drinking for another several months.

And during this time is when alcohol stopped working. I remember I was preparing for a trial. And as I usually do, I prepare for trial in those days by putting myself on half rations of liquor for two weeks before trial.

And I went to trial law prepared. And I got to the courtroom and I found out that the prosecutor was going to ask for a continuence because his chief witness, a police officer, had been called up by his guard or reserve unit. It would not be available for several weeks.

And he was going to ask for a continuence. Well, I was furious. Fury was the first reaction.

The second was frustration because I could not argue to that judge, "Your honor, I've had myself on halfrations of liquor for the last two weeks. Who do you think you are granting a continuence?" And my last reaction was terror because I recognized that I could not guarantee my conduct. I could not guarantee my condition 3 months from now.

If you're going to put it off for a couple of days or until early next week, I could keep a lid on it. 3 months from now, I had no idea what condition I would be in. And that's when the terror struck because I knew I could not control me.

So I went back to the clubhouse I went to was at Reebus. See lawyers, everybody has their own. Lawyers have a barrier to recovery in many ways because alcoholism is a disease of consequences.

If you're an alcoholic who keeps drinking, consequences are going to come upon you. Well, lawyers make their living postponing, diminishing, eliminating consequences. That's what we do.

We're experts at it. And we can put off those consequences. And meanwhile, the damage done by alcohol progresses because we haven't had to face them.

I was lucky to have to come to face mine and I wound up going back to the same place where I got the pamphlet. It's a place called Reebus. That's sober spelled backwards.

And it was a clubhouse in Marietta, Georgia. And uh you know those groups where they where they love you till you can love yourself. Rebas didn't go for that stuff.

They had people there. Uh there was one guy there named Speedy and uh I walked in there for my first meeting and was still debating whether I really belong there or not. This is the mid 1970s and Speedy died just about a year ago.

But he came to me in the mid70s respended in a lime green leisure suit. >> >> with white patent leather shoes and a matching belt and a buckle you could serve a turkey on. And he came over to me in that southern draw of his and he said, "You want what we have?

Not right now. And at this group, they have a process. They if it was 12step chairman in this place is in charge of getting you a temporary sponsor if you don't have one.

Meaning even if you don't want one, >> >> um you'll have one before you leave there. And I had this fellow uh he was um what's the word? He was inflicted on me.

His name was Jim. And he he wasn't as smart as me. And I spent the most of my first year of sobriety explaining the true complexity of life to Jim.

Jim said stupid stuff like uh I'm going down to Florida for a week and uh there's not going to there's people that go with me. They're going to have booze and I'm taking a soccer. Oh, by the way, I at the end of my drinking, I had apparently coached a soccer team to a state championship.

And I remember getting a letter from the state soccer association and reading it and going, "Damn, I must have been good." But we went down to the I kept telling I said, "You know, the people are party people. There's going to be beer around and how am I going to stay sober down there?" And it's simplistic as ever. He said, "Well, don't drink." Later on, I went to him and I told, "Jim, I'm having a problem with honesty.

He's not tell the truth." I had to spend a lot of time explaining things to Jim because he didn't understand. And I guess it was during the the months between my first meeting in January and my sobriety in um in May. Um, I had had the big book and I bought it when I was there on the first meeting and I brought it home and would occasionally take it out and read it of an evening and I would uh have a big book in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.

This by the way is not the best way to go through the big book but I would sit there. was trying to get the essence of it and I heard at the first this guy Bill W was the founder saying Bill's story I'll find out how he got sober and I'm reading and he's in New England with the other kids drinking at the country club and then he's goes to the military school and he's drinking again and he's over in Europe at World War I he's drinking he comes back he's on this stock market he's drinking where's he gets sober and he finally goes into the hospital okay he's sober he's in the hospital And he tells he saw the wind and the lights and guess I got to wait for the wind and the light to come through here. Soon as it does, I'll put this drink down.

But having gone through the big book the first time, I had also taken one of those Evan Woods speed reading courses. I went through that big book in about a 2 and 1/2 hours. And I went back the second time and I was making notes in the margin because at two weeks over I thought I had, you know, some good ideas for the next edition.

I may be the only pigeon in the history of this program whose sponsor took away his big book. He told me to go to meetings and listen. He'd let me know when I was ready to read.

Of course, the truth was I read the big book like the opposition brief, you know, and let's see the parts that don't apply. And yeah, that one's not on all fours, you know. So, I went to him and I see go to these meetings.

I said, "How many how many of these meetings I have to go to?" He said, "I'll get back to you on that." A few days later, he come to me and said, "You know, we've been talking and uh in view of your obvious intelligence and extreme education, we figure you ought to go to seven meetings a week." I said, "That's every day." He said, "See, you're getting better already. The Jim got me working the steps and uh I began a serious effort at the program at that time. It was battered and scarred and the auctioneer hardly thought it worthwhile to spend much time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile.

"What am I bid for this fiddle?" he said. Who start the bidding for me? A dollar then who make it two?

$2 who make it three? $3 once, $3 twice, and going and going. But no.

From the back of the room, an older man stepped forward and picked up the bow. And wiping the dust from the old violin, and tightening its loosened string, he played a melody pure and rich as caroling angels sing. The music finished and the auctioneer in a voice that was hushed and low said, "What am I bid for this fine violin?" And he held it up with a bow.

$1,000. Who make it two? 2,000?

Who make it three? 3,000 once, 3,000 twice, and going and gone, said he. The crowd stood and cheered, but some of them said, "We just don't understand what changed its worth." Quick came the reply.

the touch of the master's hand. My God began to touch me and get in touch with me by working these steps and dealing with you people. And I got here and I I took the I called them the 12 steps, but in my case, there were the 12 missteps.

And I could admit I was powerless over alcohol, but I didn't think my life was unmanageable. I had had a a streak of bad luck, but it wasn't unmanageable. After all, I had five D four DUI arrests, no convictions.

See, I I made a point of always carrying a half empty, half pint under my seat. So if I did get stopped, I'd grab the keys in one hand, the pint in the other, and get out, polish off the pint in front of the cop, and later on it would be impossible to tell whether I flunked the breathalyzer because of drinking I did before I stopped driving or after I stopped driving. See, I was insane.

I wasn't stupid. Don't try that in Georgia anymore. Um, there's a law now they if you're tested, you're presumed to have been that way for at least a couple hours.

It's called Dick's law. Not really. Really?

Not really. And I got that second step and I prayed there for only as much sanity as I could handle. I thought I had considered myself a believer because I held the opinion that there was a God.

I thought that made me a believer. I didn't live or act like there was a God, but I held that opinion. And I might have been a functional agnostic.

U never be an atheist. U fact I always felt sorry for atheists cuz they have nothing to holler out in the middle of sex. They said they're absolutely silent, you know.

And I took that third step and made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. And I hear people when they talk about the third step, they're always talking about, "Well, I turned it over and then I took it back and, well, I turned it over again and I took it back." The operative word in the third step is not turn it over. The operative word is make a decision.

And a decision is just that. In our case, it's a decision to take the rest of the steps. But it's a decision.

It's not an action. The first three steps are all mental functions. Admit, believe, decide.

Uh, nothing really to do. There's a friend of mine who's a pilot in this program, he he tells me on a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco, the plane in terms of hairline accurate on course is only on course about 2% of the time. The other 98% of the time it's correcting.

So we make a decision. All we're doing is setting the course. There's no guarantee we're going to be specifically on course every moment of the time.

We may like that plane only be on course 2% of the time, but we know what the course is. And the other 98% of the time we can be working toward correcting it. And that's how it's had to work with me because I've never been totally on course all of the time or even close to half of the time.

I uh had a sponsor that sponsor came to me and he see the first couple of months I kind of wallowed around in the first three steps and the fellowship. In July he was going on vacation and he came to me he says do your fourth step. When I get back in early August we're going to do your fifth step.

I said, "For yeah, you got a lot of anger and resentment." And I didn't think I had any anger and resentment. And in fact, it really pissed me off when he told me that. So, I did my first searchless and fearful moral inventory, and I've done a bunch since then.

And there were some old-timers around at the time that told me only take one fourth step. I don't know why you take all the other steps repeatedly, but the fourth step, you're taking inventories all the time if you're doing it right. And the 10th step is a good dusting and cleaning step to get rid of the daily stuff.

But once every year or two, you know, you got to pull that refrigerator away from the wall and see what's under there. Pull that sofa away. See what's behind it.

lift those cushions out. You got to do a good fall step every once in a while. You can't get by on 10 steps exclusively.

The fifth step, it says uh admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature. And I had to do that and I uh admitted to God and myself. I could not find another human being.

So I used my sponsor And uh the fifth steps I I was always just the one that keeps you you do that's where you don't most people don't do a full step. They read the fifth step. Oh no.

And uh over the last 30 plus years I guess I've heard a dozen or so fifth steps and they're all the same. There's not a unique sing in the world. You know, I I think I've heard everything except maybe cannibalism, you know, and I had the same hesitation when I started, you know, I I didn't want to do that fourth step and I didn't want to do that fifth step.

And I uh I was raised to believe you should try anything once except incest and folk tensing. So I did the fifth step and you know the good part about it is when it's over with you haven't told everybody everything but you've told one person and it's no longer inside of you. You're not taking that defensive posture so nobody sees it.

You've let it out and you can open yourself up to other members of the fellowship and to the world at large because you're not protecting it anymore. One of the guys I've sponsored over the years is a uh a Methodist minister and he told me he thought one of the biggest mistakes of the reformation was the abandonment of the practice of confession as a regular habit. And uh in fact when they when they stopped regular confessions that we started seeing psychiatrists you got to tell somebody you know so it uh it it it helps just to get it off your chest and and one guy told me the my sponsor told me I said you know even the pope has a confessor you know who do you think you are you know so I uh I sat we had to get into the sixstep and entirely ready to remove those defects of character.

And it says ready. In my case, I I wish it were another mental function, but no, it's ready. In the law, we have a phrase ready, willing, and able.

There are three different things. And ready just means you've done the work. You've done what's necessary in advance.

I was a DCM for my home group, my home neighborhood. and went to the state assembly and I had an alternate DCM who was an engineer and you know kind of obsessive. We had a 9:00 a.m.

meeting scheduled for Sunday morning in Mon Georgia and uh he's calling me at4 to 7. I was willing to go to that meeting at quarter to 7, but I was not yet ready. I had not yet gotten out of my pajamas, taken a shower, done anything.

I hadn't done the things necessary to go to that meeting. Despite my willingness, I was not yet ready. And there's a separate things.

Just remember those. They're total different. In that seventh step, we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.

It does not read humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings and he did. Doesn't say that I have most of the shortcomings I came here with. The only difference is they don't run my life anymore.

Used to be if you came up and told me you didn't like my tie, that gave me the right to burn down your house with your wife in the kitchen. I've learned to take things more proportion now. I uh you know, I'm on Money Expressway in Atlanta and some little old lady cuts me off.

I'll still speed up to get up next to her to give her the finger. And the only difference now is I after 34 years I don't find it necessary to follow her past my exit. Little enlightened self-interest sets in there.

And at a step and we made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And you make that list in writing. You make it in writing.

That's why they tell you you don't have to make it in writing for yourself. You know who you've done wrong. You've taken that first step.

You put it in writing so you can review it with your sponsor or some trusted member before you go fumbling out there to deal with earth people, which you're totally unequipped to do at this point in your sobriety. You write it down and you review it so you know what amends have to be made, how they should be offered, how somebody should be approached. Maybe somebody should not be approached right now.

He may, you know, still have the knife in his back. Uh and in that ninth step, it it tells us that uh made direct amends to people. Now it says amends.

It does not say apologies. My sponsor called me up on that one. He said, "You're a lawyer.

What does amend mean?" I said, "It means to change." Right? Change. If you come home drunk and knock over your neighbor's mailbox, you don't owe him an apology.

You owe him a mailbox. Build him a mailbox. That's your amend.

And I ast continued to take a personal inventory and when I was wrong, promptly admit it. I I used to read that as if I was wrong. That saved a lot of admitting just like they say, you know, contempt prior to investigation.

Contempt prior to investigation will save you a lot of investigating time. We got to 11 step. is the longest and for me the powerhouse step in the in the 12 steps.

So through prayer, meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. And uh I was raised in Catholic schools. We knew a lot of prayers.

We had a lot of prayers for we had prayers for everything. We prayers for the men in the service, prayer for the president, >> prayer for the crops. I grew up in New Jersey.

We didn't have any crops here. Guy in the corner growing marijuana. But one thing I I found particularly helpful, we'll speak about later, but uh I u it says in the 12 and 12 in the treatment of the 11th step, it says in even in times of sorrow in the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust.

New lessons in life were learned and more courage was uncovered to know eventually that his will is best for us. And that 12th step says a spiritual awakening is the result of the steps. It was not as most people frequently interpret it anything similar to that hot flash that Bill had in the hospital.

The old-timers referred to the wind and the lightning as as Bill's hot flash. And uh that was not it because when he got to Akran uh when he held back on his experience to help Bob, he did not think back on that night in the hospital. He thought back on all those drugs he'd been working with for the last 6 months.

And it couldn't have been the spiritual awakening as a result of these steps cuz this steps hadn't even been created yet. And Bill may have taken one or two of them including surrender, but that was about it. But those uh this pure awakening we talk about as the result of what we do here.

And then he carried the message. Um everybody's had different experience in carrying the message. A lot of people talk about getting those 12step phone calls at midnight and 1:00 in the morning.

In my early sobriety, my calls used to come at supper time. And we had four kids at the time. I mentioned we're Catholic.

And um you know, supper time with four kids in the house can be kind of hectic. And I get a call and if the guy seemed halfway all right, I try to meet him around 7:30 and that were good, I'd take him to an 8:00 meeting and that would be good. I made this announcement to my wife and she said, "Well, before you go, can you help get the kids ready for bed?" Sure.

You ever try and convince a two and a four-year-old that just because they're putting their pajamas on now does not mean they have to go to bed right now? Go on, get your pajamas on. It's not bedtime.

>> I know you're going to go to bed later and put your You're going to make me go to bed. No, I'm not going to make you to go to Just put your pajamas on. We'll go to bed later.

Mommy, HE'S GOING TO MAKE ME HURT. God damn it. Put your pajamas on.

And I'd be leaving the house. And she said, "When do you think you'll be back soon as I give this son of a some of my serenity? That wonderful wife of mine, by the way, is in the audience tonight.

And last August, she celebrated one year in this program. The um she'll be around after the meeting. We've been married going on 44 years and I have been sober 34 years.

And if you'll speak with her after the meeting, she'll tell you how I got through the first 10 years on Charm. I still call her my current wife. Uh, I find it keeps her on her toes.

I do that 12step and I guess, you know, I sponsor people the way I was sponsored. I I guess you parent the way you were parented. I don't know.

But I uh I have people I sponsor and the people I sponsor tend to have less than 6 months or more than 5 years. Somewhere around 6 months they get sensitive. Hey, one guy I was sponsoring, he he was doing well sober-wise, but I kept telling him, you know, you you ought to get a job.

I said, I have something to do between meetings, you know, and I'd see him all the time. You get a job? No, I didn't get a job yet.

And I finally went to him after a month or two of pestering. You get a you got a job. I said, where you working?

He said, Bed Bath and Beyond. I asked if he were in the beyond department. They fired me, got another sponsor.

But the uh the program has helped not just in my own sobriety, but in life, which is what it's supposed to do. Uh when I got sober, I had gotten a job with a a company that had gave seminars to doctors on how to run the business end of a medical practice. And they wanted to add a lawyer to that mix.

So I did. And it so happens that doctors were the first of the really small businessmen to start getting into many computers and laptops. and we developed a a process to help them acquire it because a small business like that was for the first time a a business that did not have internal programmers and system people on their payroll to advise them.

So we offered that service and and because they were doctors, they knew everything and they do it on their own and I'd get a call a month later, you know, can you get me out of this contract? And I tried or two or three of those cases and in the process of trying them, you learn what you have to learn to try a case. And after three or four cases of computer law litigation, I looked around and I said, you know, I know more about this now than 99% of the attorneys in the country.

I am an expert. And I'd uh people would, you know, come and ask me, you know, g how did you get in into computer law? I said, well, I' I'd like to say it was a matter of astute career planning.

But really what you do is you you almost drink yourself to death and you scramble for any job you can get. And I wind up those early months uh with folks in the program that come, you're a lawyer, if you can, you help. And you know, I wind up spending the morning in depositions with systems engineers trying to get them to speak English.

And in the afternoon, some guy from the program who was, you know, 10 weeks sober and something had happened 8 weeks ago was coming home to roost. And I'd go into court with this three-piece suit and this gray hair and this voice. And I stand here and address the court.

Yes, your honor. The defendant was running naked down Highway 92 with a fist full of Q-tips up his butt. insisting he was the Easter Bunny.

But we do have an explanation, your honor. Sing Peter Cottontail for his honor. So you You do what you can.

I'm semi-retired now and I put my name on a public defender list just to keep myself off the streets. And not all the problems are people have problems other than alcohol. And one of the guys I tried to help and we kept him out of jail, got him on probation.

But about a month before I got here, the court sent me a letter. They were going to revoke his probation. It turns out he punched out his anger management counselor.

Yeah. Sometimes I get these files and I'm reading them. Hey, you're doing this just for me, aren't you, guy?

Another guy had a felony quantity of marijuana in his bedroom closet and hadn't paid ran and got an eviction order. And the sheriff wrote them and said, "If your belongings are not removed by next Tuesday, we will be there to remove them." And this would have behooved most people to move the marijuana to a less discoverable spot. This guy was pretty complete burnout.

And uh he had a full six-pack, but he didn't have that little plastic thing that holds it all together. He gets a letter from the sheriff saying, "If her belongings are not removed, we'll be there." They should have removed him, but he was at a friend's house sleeping on off the night before. Shows up about 11:00 Tuesday morning to find the sheriff and his belongings out on the curb.

My client walked over to By the way, he was respended in thong slippers, cut offs, and a t-shirt that read poetically and prophetically, "Shit happens. He walks over to the deputy, points to the marijuana with surprise and delight and said, "Where did you find that? I've been looking for that for weeks." The sheriff immediately accessorized his outfit with a pair pair of handcuffs.

Joe man and I met him a few weeks later again time served drug evaluation. We're walking out of the courtroom and he asks in all innocence, "Who do I see to get my stuff back?" I said, "What?" You know, that cost me $800, you know. So, I gave him my card.

You tell the sheriff I said to give that back to you. I got a call 2 days later. The sheriff said, "No." 5 minutes after that, I got a call from a deputy.

Skill, you son of a Why are you sending these guys down here, General? Well, he wouldn't believe me. I thought maybe he believe you.

But these things happen. And one incident that kind of makes a lot of the other things worthwhile. There was a girl named Pat.

Um she went to a group called 811 across the river from me. And she went to those meetings, but she was living in a halfway house for women. And one day she took me aside after the meeting and said she had gotten a letter from the district attorney to go down for an interview.

And I found out what happened. Apparently at the end of her drinking and drugging, she had become pregnant. And because of her drinking and drugging, she had miscarried the baby.

And because she was taken to the hospital by law enforcement, the file made its way to the DA's office. and some hot shot young attorney decided he was going to pursue it under a Georgia fetal drug and fetal alcohol law they had. And he wrote her a letter telling to come down for the interview.

And the first thing I told her, of course, that she was not going to go down for that interview. And I did some research and sent a letter to the DA telling him that the um I had researched other states and they were still going to have to prove intent. They'd have to prove that she knew she was pregnant when she was taking the drugs.

And they might also have to prove that she knew this particular drug she was taking was capable of permeating the placenta and damaging the fetus. And he dropped the matter. Uh never heard from him again.

I guess he decided to go after some more defenseless woman. And was a only a couple of weeks after that I found out that Pat despite all their difficulties had graduated college with a very high grade point average had applied for and was being admitted to the Georgia Medical School in Augusta. Uh she would not have been admitted with if she had ever had a criminal record.

And I didn't see her for a while. She went off to school. Uh I'd see an email catch her on vacation time.

She cruised by 811. And about 2 or 3 years ago, another woman at doctor from with my home group. Used to be my home group.

She's now a neurologist in Savannah. She had apparently shared a room with u Pat when they were at medical school and wrote her and told her. And Pat wrote me this letter, which just kind of makes up for a lot of other things that don't go right.

She addressed me as she always did. It's my dear, blessed, and profane hero Dick. I got a call from Susan last week, and after her return from Marietta, she called to say how she spoke with you at some length and reports that you are, thank God, still the same.

When we last met at 8111 a few years back, I had just graduated and was in the process of moving to Kentucky for my residency in pediatrics. You probably thought I was either trying to strangle you with hugs or drown you with tears. You seemed a bit embarrassed, but told me to show my gratitude by using my skills occasionally without pay to help others.

You told me that it's a rare blessing from God for people like us to be put in a position to do that. I can never forget how you did that for me. I pulled out your three-page lawyer letter to the Atlanta authorities and I read it again.

It was at once strong and elegant and poetic. Your explanation to me, however, was less elegant and less poetic. As you summarized it, I threatened them with more than they could shovel.

It's nice to have a bilingual attorney. I've tried to follow your example and direction. There's no way we can pay back what we owe.

The only repayment is to pass it on. One weekend a month, we take a volunteer van to Harlem and Verda and Evers for well baby care and vaccination and general pediatrics. What the hell is that?

13 years ago, I wrote a letter and today a couple hundred kids in Appalachia have a pediatrician. What is that? That was not That was not me when I wrote that letter.

I was an arrogant, wise ass defense attorney trying to get one up on a prosecutor. My motives were not there but God took that behavior and did something with it that was not part of my intention. So the opportunity comes you take it and do what you can.

You never know. You just never know. Now my recovery is not all that different from other people's.

When I first got here I had lost the wife and the family, the home and most of the money. and I hurt and I cried and I didn't drink and I went to meetings. And when I was two years sober, we found out my son Brendan was a child and needed open heart surgery.

And I hurt and I prayed and I didn't drink and I went to meetings. And when I was three and five years sober, two more children were born to a reconstructed marriage. and I shared that joy and I didn't drink and I went to meetings and when I was 8 years sober my youngest son Kevin was diagnosed with cancer and leukemia at 5 years old and I hurt and I cried and I didn't drink and I went to meetings and I was 13 years sober he was declared cured of his cancer and I shared that joy and I didn't drink and I When I was 20 years sober, my oldest son, Brendan, died at age 22.

And I heard and I prayed and I didn't drink and I went to meetings. In the years since then, I've had cancer and a heart attack. My daughters have gotten married and I've been there to give them away, including the only daughter who knows it of a drinking father.

my mom died. Good things and bad things have happened. And each time I I didn't drink and I went to meetings.

When I was 29 years sober, my son Kevin, this cancer survivor, had met and married a girl he met at a camp for kids with cancer. And I was there to participate in their wedding. And when I was and I shared that joy and I didn't drink and I went to meetings and I was 30 years sober.

this disease came to my home again tried to take the love of my life my wife of 30 years 40 years and I heard I prayed and I didn't drink and I went to meetings and at 32 years sober she found this program and I prayed and I was joyful and I didn't drink and I went to meetings and I when she celebrated her first year of sobriety. Within a day or two of that, we had our first grandchild. That cancer survivor son and his cancer survivor wife gave us our first grandchild and they shared that joy and I didn't drink and I went to meetings.

It's just that simple. Just that simple. Not easy, but simple.

And they tell us here that you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. But first it will make you miserable. And our job is to hold on to that truth through the misery until the freedom comes.

And we're not bound to recognize truth here. We're only bound to be honest. I only have one truth.

I have to hold on to. And that's the truth with which I began my remarks to you this evening. And that truth is that my name is Dick and I'm an alcoholic.

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.