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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> My name is Paul Martins and I'm alcoholic. Paul, >> um, and my sobriety date is May 5th of 2001.

Um, and as I like to say, that is due to the grace of a God that will never help me. Um, sponsorship that really should not be trusted in a simple program of action that is never going to work. Anyway, um, kind of a skeptic.

I uh nice job on the steps and traditions. Um I think the best uh misread of any step or tradition I've ever heard was that someone got up and said that uh alcohol cunneling, baffling, powerful. 5 minutes later when they could start reading again, they finished off quite well.

It was fun. But um wearing a coat and a tie um because Casey said if I didn't, he was going to have me thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Um I just sit here, but uh I'm going to take that risk anyway.

I uh so I'm alcoholic. Um, really what that means is that when I take a drink of alcohol, I get thirsty for another drink of alcohol. Um, normal non-alcoholic, normal non-alcoholic people don't seem to have that problem.

Um, and I'm not going to go into the scientific BS behind that and the acid alahhide condensation or all that junk because nobody really cares about that. Bottom line, what it comes down to is when I take a drink, I get thirsty. And when I don't take a drink, I start thinking about taking a drink or thinking about not taking a drink.

I get to thinking about whether or not other people are drinking safely and whether or not it's going to be okay for me to take a drink. And I spend all day long thinking about drinking, not drinking or trying to drink and and and somehow someway manage to control and enjoy that um experience. And uh not very good at it.

I mean, I'm good at drinking. You know, I can hold my liquor at least three out of the five days a week. Um I only throw up when I drink too much, which is only two or three days a week.

Um and and I guess the thing about that for me is um the first time, well, okay, let me back up a ways. Um first time I got loaded was when I was 15. Now I'm an alcoholic pthead.

I'm not going to talk a whole lot about smoking weed, but I have smoked a truckload of this stuff. Um, and the first time I got loaded, that was what it was. And it was the first time that my brain ever stopped making all that noise that it makes cuz it's busy, man.

There's a lot going on here. Imagine 12,000 Swiss watches with microphones um, all working at the same time. And that's kind of the rattling noise in my head.

Um, constantly thinking about, you know, what you're thinking about me as I'm thinking about what you're thinking about me. And if you think that what I'm thinking about me might be the same as what I think you're thinking about me. Um, and you know, I'll I'll God, it's just loud.

Um, and so what happens is when I get loaded, that noise quiets down. And uh, now I got alcoholism in my family. Um, there are there are drunks all through my family tree and all through my family history.

And, and one of the things that I found is that uh, I didn't want to be a drunk. I did not want to be an alcoholic. Um, my mom's an alcoholic and I love my mom dearly.

She's got more sobriety than I do now. So, um she can call time on me anytime she wants to. But she, uh, back when I started getting loaded, um, my mom was still drinking and she was not doing well.

And, uh, what what ended up happening is I decided I was going to get loaded without drinking, you know. Um, and so I initially started out as a pthead, but I drank, you know, here and there. But I found that what I really seem to have a problem with is I do not like to be sober.

Once I'd gotten loaded a couple of times, um it occurred to me that uh and I don't know if it's a conscious thought, but I don't like being sober. I need to get loaded. I need to get something and I got to catch some kind of a buzz.

And so what happened is uh about 6 months after I started getting loaded, I wound up dropping out of high school. I wound up checking into a nut ward. Um they threw me out of the nut ward because they felt that they uh could not get me to be honest with them.

Um, Big Book talks about, you know, how these doctors that that try to help us seem to have a problem with that because we won't tell them the whole truth anyway and we won't do what the hell they tell us to do, you know. Um, we come in and we say, "I'm hurting." Well, what are you hurting over? And I'll tell them a couple things I'm a terrible victim of.

And, uh, they'll, uh, give me some suggestions. I go home and don't take and decide the doctor doesn't know what the heck he's talking about anyway. And I'll go off on my merry way and stay drunk.

Um but anyway, so the psychologists uh wound up telling my parents that uh you know, most people come in here wearing a suit of armor. We can find a in the suit of armor. We can work our way in and work with these people.

And and they told my parents, you know, Paul's got about 19 sets of armor on and we can't help this guy um until he's going to be honest with us. They sent me off to a boy's ranch um from which I immediately began running away, hitting the streets and getting into all kinds of trouble until they threw me out. Dropped out of high school, hit the streets.

Um, I lived on the streets of Spokane, Washington for, you know, 2, three years. The, uh, the details are not overly important. Um, but I was a street kid.

I have slept in doorways that weren't in my house. Um, I have, uh, called Pizza Hut and ordered pizza. Um, and waited for a few hours till I threw out the trash and then took the pizzas out of the trash.

Um, knocked on the back doors of uh, churches and asked them to give me sandwiches. Uh, they had this place called the Crosswalk on the corner of uh, First and Jefferson in Spokane, which is kind of an outreach program for teenagers. and the kids on the streets and you can go in there and you can eat and in the winter time they'd let you crash there.

Um I've slept on heat grates in Spokane in um drive up parking garages. Um this wasn't something that I planned on doing, but I got to tell you, I could have gone home at any time. I could have um it wasn't about that.

It was just I I wanted to do what I wanted to do the way I wanted to do it, and I didn't want anybody telling me what to do. And out here, I can I think I can do what I want to do. Um so end result of that, I wound up getting in a whole bucketload of trouble.

Um, and I had everybody from the police to my drug dealers looking for me and everybody was upset with me. And uh, so I wound up heading out to Wisconsin to live with my mom. Um, moved out there and I'm out there with about, you know, foot two and a two feet worth of hair and looking scruffy.

Didn't shower more than once every month or so. Um, wear the same pair of socks. I was grubby all the time.

My feet always stank. My shoes were rotten. Um, I was a wreck.

I got out there and my mom took one look at me, checked herself into treatment, and sobered the hell up and has stayed sober ever since. Um, So, for what that's worth, um she'd been drinking for about 20 years at that time and and uh I'd been only getting loaded for about four or five. So, it was it was not going well.

Um I was out there, I stayed with my mom until she had to leave and go to treatment. They put me in with my grandma and grandpa. I got an apartment um and did not pay the rent in that apartment for 10 months.

Apparently, they don't like that. Um after about 10 months, they asked me to leave. It was some just ratty trashy apartment with mold on the walls.

It was nasty. And I was living there rentree with a, you know, a sink full of dishes with the flies swarming around them because it's too much work for me to do the dishes and I just sit around doing nothing. Um, reading comic books and everything else.

Uh, they threw me out of there. I wound up staying with um, a couple other friends here and there. Got thrown out of there.

Got thrown out of there. Pretty soon I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. Um, and I'm homeless again and I'm back on the streets again.

I was like an old Aussie song. and uh I wound up going into this I don't know if it's a mission or a homeless shelter or what the heck it was but uh went in there and slept there sometimes and didn't show up when I was supposed to show up and and uh came back loaded and didn't get a job and they asked me to leave. I don't know where you got to be to get thrown out of a homeless shelter but um that's apparently what happens to guys like me.

So, I hooked up with Doc and Bear and Kid and we pulled some of our state money and bought this $150 beat up GMC pickup truck that spit oil and gas and crap out from underneath it all the time. Um, and would not go over 55 mph because it start doing this rock and roll shuffle and uh looked like it was going to fall apart. Pulled up to a dumpster, took two old easy chairs, threw them in the back of this truck facing back.

Me and Doc hopped in the back and kidd Bear hopped in the front cuz they had licenses. And, uh, we drove out to North Dakota to join the carnival for a new start. Um, worked at the carnival for the summer.

I had at one point had a tantrum or a snit or whatever you want to call it and um was upset with Bear or Doc or somebody and I took my glasses and threw them at a wall, broke them cuz that was smart. Um so the next thing I had was these prescription sunglasses that weren't even my prescription. It was the only way I could see.

And so here I'm working in the carnival wearing sunglasses day and night. Couldn't see a damn thing. And and uh this guy uh knockout Dave, one of the carnies that was known for knocking people out with one punch, came along one night and offered to beat the hell out of me for uh wearing sunglasses at night and thinking I was so cool.

Um I took off the sunglasses and I don't know whether he saw the alcoholism in my eyes or what, but he left. Um I was not well. I was not well.

So uh we went through one town and I ran into this girl and and uh she spent a little time with me behind the tools truck the first day I met her. So I knew she was the one. Um we uh she she left home and joined the carnival to be with me.

So a few months later when I left the carnival because they were um offering to beat and rape her and kill me if I tried to stop them. Um we decided we were going to go back and stay with her parents who graciously took in this absolute loser homeless bum. Um I didn't have a single bit of clothing without holes in it, you know.

Um I mean I I was no vision for you, you know. And he took us in um let me stay there for about a I got a job and she got me to get my GED and got another job and she pushed me into going to uh uh college. I enrolled in a tech school and got a degree in electronics.

Um all this time I'm I'm becoming an increasingly regular drug user. Um I was smoking a truckload of pot and I was drinking at any available opportunity. I tried not to get too drunk, but it seemed like every time I drank I drank too much.

Um I'm a puker, so you know, at least half the time I drink too much and I wind up throwing up. I do not like doing that. Um however, I can't seem to stop.

In fact, for the record, the first time I got drunk was when I was 15 or 16. I was on the run from that boy's ranch. And uh we hadn't eaten in a couple of days.

We'd stashed our stuff in some house that we'd broken into. And uh me and this guy Mike met up with a buddy of his and we broke into his buddy's or they broke into his buddy's basement um of his dad's house and took this big old gallon jug of vodka and we went over to somebody else's basement and we went down in the basement to uh uh have a party. Now, I hadn't really ever drank before.

I'd had a couple of sips of my dad's brandy when he wasn't looking, but I never actually like drank. And uh so they hand me a 32-in slurpie cup and they're like, "Do you want to mix your own drink or you want us to mix it for you?" I gotta be a tough guy. I can't let them know I'm an idiot.

Gotta act like I know what I'm doing. So I'm like, "No, I'll make my own." So they're like, "Okay." So I fill this cup up almost all the way with vodka. And they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You want like some orange juice with that?" And I'm like, "For what?" And they're like, "Well, flavor." I'm like, "All right." Splash a little orange juice in there, mix it around like, you know, orange Kool-Aid style. Um took a drink. So I did what children do.

plugged my nose and hammered that sucker. Drank it all down. Um, I didn't breathe for another minute or two after that.

It was a bad experience. It damn near came up right away. And then they're all cheering me on going, "Man, you really know how to drink.

You know how to drink. You want another?" I'm like, "Yeah." So, I drank another one like that and under 15 minutes I downed probably a fifth of vodka. Um, on an empty stomach.

I hadn't eaten in two days. It was really a grievous error in judgment. Um, that wasn't because I was alcoholic.

That was because I was stupid is what that was. I didn't know what I was doing. And uh 20 30 minutes later when I'm uh unswallowing all of my booze and and uh orange juice, um that's not my word.

I picked that up from someone else, but it's a good word. I uh I was not thinking this was such a good idea. And for the next several hours, I continued to throw that up and it it stopped being orange juice and vodka, and it started being just orange colored.

Ouch. And uh pretty soon it was this black tar paste I later found to be stomach tissue. Um, I found that uh what had happened is I had given myself alcohol poisoning um to the level that it could have killed me and I didn't know that.

The next day I woke up, threw up all over the guy's house one more time and he told me to leave. I called up the boy's ranch and they said they're not going to come get me, but they could uh pick me up from the hospital. So, I went to the hospital and checked in and they wound up pumping my stomach and feeding me charcoal and running fluids into my veins and all kinds of stuff and told me that I probably could have died if I hadn't made it to the hospital.

Um, you'd think a guy like that would never ever drink again, right? you know, guess who's speaking at an AA event tonight. Um, Jesus.

So, years go by, married to this girl, I'm running drugs because that's the only way that I can afford to have drugs because I have a family and I was trying to be a considerate, responsible adult. So, I'm dealing drugs out of the closet while they're uh, you know, in their uh, while they're in my family and I got a job. And apparently that's illegal.

I got pulled over one day and and they noticed that I had this stuff. The reason I don't consider myself an addict is because given a good enough reason I stopped. Given a good enough reason I was, you know, an alcoholic given a good enough reason um cannot stop or moderate.

Non-alcoholics can. They can stop or moderate. And moderate means they don't have this phenomenon of craving that an alcoholic seems to have where when I get alcohol in my system, I get thirsty.

You know, I was not able to stop or moderate with alcohol, but I was able to do that with the drugs. I just knocked it I did it, you know, for a couple of more months and um just a little bit here and there. But I got to the point where, you know, doing that was no longer fun.

Doing it was no longer a joyous experience. Doing it, I'd do it about, you know, smoked couple of hits and suddenly I'm doing window patrol, realizing they know. And uh it just stopped being fun.

So I quit. Um what I did is I turned to the solution for me, Mickey's Fine, Malt Liquor Brew, which is uh one of my favorite things in the planet. It tastes wonderful, although it's not nearly as cheap as uh uh old Milwaukeee's worst.

Um, dear God, that stuff is rot gut beer. So, what I do is I would uh I would pick up a 2 liter of Mickey's Fine Malt liquor brew and I'd drink that in a night. And after a while, I had two of them.

And after a while, I had two of those and one of one of those little shots of Joseé Quervo, which is one of my favorite people in the whole planet. Um, after that, I'd get a little bottle of Joseé Quervo and a couple of those 40s. And then after that, I realized that it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper if I just bought a 12-pack of beer, which I did, and drank on a daily basis.

Um, after drinking two 12-packs a day for a while, it occurred to me I could save a dollar if instead of two 12-packs, I bought a case, which I did. And I drank that and I said, "I'll make it last all week." And two days later, I'd have to buy another one. Um, pretty soon I needed a bottle of Joseé Quervo in the freezer as well.

Um, and I would go through a half a fifth or a half a gallon of Joseé Quero, a fifth or a half gallon of Joseé Quervo every two days and a case of beer every two days. And every two days I'd have to run down and I'd have to buy a new bottle in a new case. Um, I didn't think it was a problem.

I just uh due to some other events that have absolutely nothing to do with um alcoholism or recovery, I'm not going to go into it. But my wife and I decided that we were uh no longer fit for one another. And so we split up and I got my own place and uh I really really took off.

I could buy all the beer I wanted. I could drink whenever I wanted to. And then I could get on the internet and tell people what I really thought.

Um yeah, I met some girls kind of like your group is named, you know, Big Easy. Um, >> oh my god. >> Just trying to help.

Um, I was, my judgment was not even questionable. My judgment was awful. Um, and you know what wound up happening is I met this girl um on the internet, which is where you meet the good ones.

And uh, hooked up with her and she uh, she later saved my life. I'm not going to say anything bad about her, but she uh, she needed more help than anybody I knew was able to give to her. and she and I got together and within 5 months it went from um dubious to absolutely awful.

And uh during this time I'm drinking all the time. I'm sneaking drinks on Saturdays before I go to work on Saturday. I don't drink at work unless I drink at work.

Um I didn't drink at work during the regular days. Um but I would go home and I would uh I would drink. I can go all day without a drink as long as I know I'm going to be able to drink when I get home.

I can handle that. Just stay the hell out of my way or I will light your face on fire. Um I a little testy when I'm waiting for a drink.

Little edgy. Um, and so, you know, 5 months into this, this girl and I are clearly suited for one another because we're both equally out of our minds. And, uh, I wound up getting in a fight with her.

Something had happened um, similar to what had happened in my my marriage. And, uh, things had gone kind of sour and we had a big fight about it. And then I came home one day and she was online meeting up with guys online and it was not good.

And I kind of went off the deep end and we got into a big fight. That Monday, I had already made a decision that I was losing my mind. And I went to my supervisor at work and said, "Um, I I need to talk to you." And he said, "What's going on?" And I said, "Well, I think I'm a paranoid, schizophrenic, panic, depressive, bipolar, alcoholic." And, uh, he said, "Whoa, okay.

Well, uh, here's some flyers and stuff and maybe we can get you some help." Um, so I had gone down to, you know, the local nut warden and a couple other counseling places and so forth who had all indicated that perhaps I definitely needed help. um talked with those people, set up an appointment for the following Tuesday because they couldn't even take me in right away. I think they needed to pad the cell a little better.

Um and what happened is on uh on Monday I set up to check into these places Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Um I couldn't even go to work. I couldn't even go to work.

I stayed home those days. Friday, I decided I was going to go ahead and go to work. Went into work, came home and found that she had been online chatting with guys and it was a bad deal.

So, we got into a big argument and I started uninstalling the little chat program from the computer and escalated into a big fight. And uh she and I wound up um wrestling with one another as she tried to shove past me. I grabbed onto her, we fell down, I got up and I smacked her across her rear end three times real hard in anger.

I never hit a woman in my life. Um never pl Well, I slapped my ex-wife once when she was throwing dresser drawers at me, but I don't know if that wasn't uh justified. Um but I digress.

Anyway, the uh the fight we got into, I struck her in anger, and I swore I'd never ever do that in my life. See, what happened is when I was four or five years old, my mom and my dad split up over my mom's alcoholism. And she was staying with this guy Jim who uh lived out in the woods and uh Jim was a drunk.

And Jim was a a very nasty drunk. And this guy Jim, when I was about four or five years old, wound up uh when we were visiting mom, he wound up coming home drunk. And he wound up slapping her around and punching her and kicking her and hitting her and almost breaking her leg and knocking her on the ground, stepping on her glasses, and generally being a real douche.

Um, and I was sitting there, four or five years old, looking at his bar darts, thinking maybe if I threw one of those at him, he'd stop hitting my mommy. I'm really glad I didn't do that. Uh, it would not have gone well for me.

Um, but what happened is that day, um, May 4th of 2001, I wound up after she left the house, um, I wound up throwing all the stuff I could find in the house up against the door cuz she had a key and I didn't want her to get back in till it occurred to me I wanted her to come back. So, I had to move all the crap away from the door. Um, and in the process, I had torn something of her uh of her possession.

And I and she came home and she saw that I had torn that and she said, "Yeah." She said, "You going to just wreck my stuff, huh? Is that how it's going to be? You're just going to tear my stuff up?" And she said, "Maybe we should destroy your crystal chessboard, your precious crystal chessboard.

How would you like that?" And I in my state of mind, I was like, "Yeah, what a good idea." I had this crystal chessboard that had been given to me for Christmas a few years ago. And and the the chessboard was real precious to me. I still had the original box, the styrofoam with all the pieces in there, little slots, and I took very good care of it.

And I said, "Yeah, you know, that sounds like a really good idea. Let's do that." I went and got a hammer and I went and got the chestboard and I threw it down on the ground and she tried to take the hammer from me saying, "No, no, I didn't mean it." And I said, "Whatever." And I shoved her up onto the bed and I got down on my hands and knees and I went wham wham wham on this thing for 5, 10, I don't know, 15 minutes over and over and over until I couldn't move. Pieces pieces of cardboard and crystal and stuff flying all over the place.

Um, by the time I moved out of there, there was still pieces I was finding laying around. Um, and she's up there on the bed crying and she says, "I'm leaving. You're crazy." And I said, "Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea that you leave." Um, she left and that night I drank myself to to sleep.

Before I did that, I called up my mom and I talked with my mom who was now sober and kind of told her what was going on in my life. And my mom said something to me that today I understand. Then I I thought it was kind of strange, but what my mom says is, you know, I'm telling her I want to kill myself.

I want to die. I can't live like this. And she says, you know, why don't you just grab another beer and keep talking to me?

I think because she knew that the only thing that was going to keep me from blowing my brains out, hanging myself, stabbing myself, or somehow or other killing myself is that booze is the thing that kept me from killing myself for a long, long time. I got to say that, you know, an alcoholic of my type, one of the treatments for alcoholism is alcohol. Says it in the big book, one of the treatments for alcoholism is alcohol to drink on till the bitter end following this endless procession of SS.

You know, the other option is I'm going to need to accept some kind of spiritual help. I'm going to need like hell, you know. I think not.

And uh my family is all very very religious with a very uh um what's the phrase? I don't want to diss their religion because they're great people and their religion is great people, but they're very uh uh articulate about Bible and scripture and all that jazz. And uh so what I did is as I was growing up, I learned how to win.

I didn't learn how to help anybody. I just learned how to win arguments is what I learned how to do. Um which is a really bad thing for a guy like me to have.

Um, so you know, I I knew that you guys didn't have any answers because I could prove everything about what you said as wrong. I could find a loophole somewhere. I couldn't come to you guys for help.

Um, so anyway, that next day she came home and uh, she said, you know, I sat there and I I woke up in the morning and I picked up a beer and just kind of sipped at a beer. I didn't really get drunk. I just kind of sipped at a beer, a couple of beers that morning from about, you know, 5 or 6:00 in the morning until about 11:00.

She came home and we sat and talked for a little bit and she said, "I'm going to an AA dance tonight with my friend Keith. He's got 6 months. You can go if you want." And I thought, "Ah, Christ.

Aa and a dance cuz I ain't going to go dance for crying out loud." Um, and she says, "Yeah, but uh I was thinking there ain't no way you're going to a dance with another guy without me. I don't think so. I'll go." She says, "Well, then you're going to have to stop drinking." 11:00 May 5th of 2001, I put down my last beer at about 11:00 in the morning.

Um, I went with her to this dance. It wasn't a dance. It was a freaking roundup.

There's 300 of these meattheads are all running around in suits and ties and smiling and asking me questions I can't answer. Like, how are you? Um, I don't know.

You know, this first thing that happens is this guy Kane comes sliding across the room with his hand out and says, "Hi, I'm Kane. Are you new?" In my mind, I'm like, "No, I'm not new. I'm not new.

I'm not new here. I mean, I'm not gonna be coming to here or anything. I'm not involved in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I've got myself a place in the treatment center and I'm going to be able to go on the treatment because they're probably going to be able to help me a little bit better than you lay people can. And uh I'm not in a position to be in here trying to talk about whether I knew or not. Um I just I just want to get back together with this girl that I had this big fight with the night before.

I didn't have time to say all that crap. So I just said yes. And uh what he did is he went over to this guy Jeff V.

Um who everybody at the time called him Chief because he sponsored a lot of people. He's one of the two guys that put together the Northern Plans Group, him and Chad B. And uh they kind of stole formats from Montana.

stole formats from South Dakota, stole formats from uh Minneapolis and California and kind of patched them together into something they wanted. They wanted this roundup environment every single week. And uh they wanted people to come in and be able to catch this buzz every week and get the energy that that we get in an exciting meeting.

Um and so he brings me over to Jeff and he says, "Jeff, this is Paul. He's brand new. Can he sit by you?" And Jeff says, "No." I forget it's the story of my life, right?

Um says, "No." He says, "I'm going to do a sobriety countdown. Why don't you have him sit way up there?" And they sent me up like the third row in the front and I'm thinking everybody can see me. This sucks.

Um I knew they knew who I was too cuz they're all in suits and ties and dresses with, you know, perfume or cologne and they're smiling. I hate that. Um I show up in jeans and leather, you know, my hair is due for a haircut.

I'm a little bit spiky. And it's like I walk in the room and I don't know this really what happened, but it seemed to me that every single head in the room all turned and they're like, "Ah, new guy." Um Jesus, if I could only be invisible. Now, at this point, Jeff gets up to do the sobriety countdown.

I'm in the third row, and he says, "All right, we're going to do a sobriety countdown. We're going to start at 30 years and count backwards, and whoever has the least amount of sobriety in the room gets a free copy of the big book." And I thought, "Shit, um, this is not good." Cuz she knows how long I've been sober. This Keith guy knows how long I've been sober.

Kane clearly knows how long I've been sober cuz he just met me. And this Jeff guy that's up there doing the thing was just told that I'm new. Okay.

And he starts counting down. He gets down to a week. And what's happening is people are standing up and clapping and cheering and they're all rowdy and I'm thinking, "Oh no, they're going to get down to one day and they're going to realize I don't even have a whole day of sobriety.

I was drinking this morning and they're going to throw me out cuz they don't want people in a they can't stop drinking. I didn't know what this was all about. I didn't understand.

I didn't even know what was wrong with me. I thought I did. I thought I knew what was wrong with me.

I did not know. I had no idea what I was up against." instance. So what happened is is he starts doing this countdown and he counts down, you know, gets down to a week, looks around the room, looks right at me.

Anybody with six days, looks around the room, looks right at me. I'm thinking, "Oh no." He gets down to two days. Anybody in the room with two days, I still haven't stood up yet.

And he got to the end and he didn't say, "Who has one day?" Which saved my life. He didn't say, "Is there anybody in the room who's still drinking?" Which saved my life because I probably would have just walked out in shame. what he said and I will never forget this.

He looked around the room and he said, "Is there anybody here in their first day of sobriety and I stood at the turning point and I made a decision and I stood up and what happened is instead of throwing me out of Alcoholics Anonymous, 300 people came out of their seat and they cheered and they clapped and they patted me on the back and they pushed me up there to get the stupid book. I got the book and sat down in a state of shock and listened to the speaker get up there. It was a lady named Nancy M from Minneapolis.

Nancy got up. She shared her story. Shared her story.

And uh it wasn't some kind of a big book meeting. She wasn't out there sermonizing about how to do AA right and you're all doing it wrong. She wasn't up there giving some kind of beautiful super duper AA talk.

She got up there and she talked about her story. She got up there and talked about what she felt like. And she put words to things I could not describe.

and she described behaviors and attitudes and actions that I was doing. And then she said she's an alcoholic. And it occurred to me that these things that I was experiencing, these things that were going on with me weren't because I was a bad person.

They weren't because I was evil. They weren't because I was possessed by some demon. They weren't because I was insane.

They were because I'm alcoholic. And I didn't understand that before. And it really changed the way that I look at the world.

Um, so what happened is after the meeting, I'm walking around in a state of dumb shock because for the first time in my life, these people are all there. You know, she's telling these awful stories that I wouldn't dare tell anyone for fear that it'd be back to the room with no doororknob. And what happens is all these people are laughing and clapping and thinking this is the greatest time in life.

And I'm just stunned. It occurred to me, maybe I'm not alone. Maybe I'm not the only person who's going through this.

And maybe I'm not the only one who has to deal with this. And so what happened is after the meeting I wandered up to this guy Kane and my eyes are like rolling like slot machine wheels right and he's like so how's it going? I'm like good.

I said I think I'm going to try this. I said but everybody's talking about getting a sponsor. I don't know who to get for a sponsor.

You know who's in town? There's people from out of town. Who do I talk to for a sponsor?

What do I do? And he said I'll sponsor you. He says I'll be your sponsor.

And I thought ah hell that's not what I meant. And he did. Um this book I have incidentally is the book I got at that soiety count.

I've carried this book with me all over the place. Um, I also actually read it. And not only do I just read it and uh talk to other people about it, I actually do the stuff in it because a guy like me doesn't stay sober just sitting in meetings.

Um, I'm an alcoholic who needs to experience recovery, not just meetings. I uh if you think about it, if you got a bad tooth, I know most drunks don't ever have problems with our teeth because we take such good care of ourselves, but if you think about it, if you got a bad tooth or a couple of bad teeth, and you decide you've reached the point where it hurts so much, you're finally willing to do something about it and you make a decision, you're going to go to the dentist's office and you go to the dentist office and you sit down in the uh in the waiting room and you kind of look around. There's a couple other people in the waiting room.

You're like, "So, what do you do here?" The guy says, "You just keep coming here." Okay, my teeth hurt, though. Well, maybe you should get yourself a commitment. Straighten out the magazines.

Straighten out the magazines. My teeth still hurt. Well, maybe you need more than one commitment.

Why don't you take out the garbage? Okay, the garbage is out. My magazines are straightened.

My teeth are killing me. What do I need to do? Well, put on a coat and a tie.

Okay, so I put on a coat and a tie. Magazines are straight. The garbage is there.

I'm still in terrible pain. My teeth hurt. What do I do?

And the guy says, "Well, maybe you need to go get some other people and bring them here. Be of service. Be useful." Okay, so I got a bunch of guys.

We're all sitting in a room. The magazines are straight. I'm wearing a coat and a tie.

The garbage has been taken out and I'm dying. I take a drink of cold water and my teeth light up like the 4th of July. And I think I'm going to die.

And I stand up and I'm like, "God, I don't know what to do here, man, but I'm dying. What do I do?" And he grins at me with the four and a half black teeth that he still has and says, "It's been working for me for 25 years." Staggering backwards, I bump into the counter and the lady behind the counter says, "Can I help you?" I'm like, "Yeah, my teeth are killing me. I don't know what to do, but sitting here ain't doing nothing about it." She says, 'Well, you know, it's possible that the dentist might be able to help with you, or is that something that you're interested in?

Yeah, absolutely, cuz I can't do nothing about myself, you know, and her teeth are shiny and clean and they look good. She says, "He takes care of my teeth. Maybe he could do good with yours." I make a decision, you know, okay, I'm willing to do this.

So, I come to believe the dentist can help me and I make a decision to do something about it. Off to the dentist chair I go. And we sitting in a dentist chair and we do a little inventory work and I tell him, "It hurts here and here and here and here." He says, "Okay." And he goes in there with little picss, you know, where he's like poking around and he finds a couple that I didn't even know about, which is why you do a fist with a sponsor because they know more about you than you do.

And he says, "Okay." Shows you the X-rays and says, "This is where it hurts and this is why it hurts and we're going to have to do some serious work here. Are you willing to trade this for whatever's behind door number two?" And that I think is a six and seven step right there. You make a decision.

Yeah, I want to make this right. What do I got to do? And then they go in with the drill.

And you start with the Novacane, which is a really good idea. And uh when we come into Alcoholics Anonymous, we have a similar experience. We got that time that sometimes is uh condescendingly referred to as a pink cloud.

I don't think it's a pink cloud at all. I think it's a period of grace and I don't think that the grace of God should be understated. And that period of grace is a period of time where a guy like me is given the opportunity to take some actions to get well.

And that's kind of like that novacane. And if you wait until the novocaane wears off to do do that dental work, you're going to really regret it. Do it now, you know.

And so what happens is he goes in and he drills and he picks and he scratches and puts in fillings and cleans your teeth up. And then he says, "From here on out now, you're going to have to brush and floss and take care of yourself and not drink all that damn sugar pop and you're going to have to do better with your teeth. In addition, why don't you go out on the internet and look up a little bit about how to take care of your own teeth and grow in your understanding and effectiveness and learn a little bit about how to take care of yourself." And then he says, "And on your way out, why don't you tell those jackasses in the waiting room that they can come back here and get well if they want to?" You know, cuz that for me is what it's going to take.

Yeah, the waiting room is a good place, but I think meetings are a waiting room where we meet people that can give us a solution on what's wrong with me. Now, I'm an alcoholic and I'm an arrogant little son of a And what happens is a guy like me gets a hold of an answer and a solution like that and I jump up on my soap box and begin evangelizing and soap boxing and generally condescending. I talk down from my spiritual immoral hilltop to people with way more time than me and uh let them know that they're doing alcoholics or anonymous wrong and I become a general nuisance and annoy the hell out of the people around me.

Nobody likes that. And I wonder why nobody wants to hang out with me. And about four and a half, five years of sober.

Um, I'm engaged to this girl and I'm letting her know how she's doing a a wrong and she's not doing it good enough. She should tighten up her work on the steps. And I'm letting her know all the various ways that she moved out um as well as she should.

And I found myself alienated, isolated from other members of Alcoholics Anonymous and wonder why I hurt so bad. I call up my friend Steve and I'm talking with Steve W. Um, Steve is one of my litter mates.

He and I grew up in sobriety together and we were nuts. And uh he was 8 months sober and he was absolutely stark raving, not working any kind of a program at all. He was waiting in the waiting room and wondering why it sucked, right?

And uh Steve and I ran into each other and he heard me talking, you know, um outside of meetings while we were playing hacks with the hacky slackers around the outside of the meeting and he looked at me and thought, "That guy's more crazy than I am." And I was doing the steps and I was starting to get well. And he thought, "Well, hell, maybe this will work for Paul. Maybe it'll work for me." And Steve and I started doing this thing together.

And uh Steve's one of my heroes. He's my brother. You know, Steve's my adopted brother, and nothing will ever change that.

I love that guy. But five years sober, I'm dying. I'm dying from the extreme right-wing jackass attitude that I have about how all you people are doing your program.

And I call up Steve and let him know all these different reasons why I'm falling apart and why it's not fair that these people are victimizing me with all of their actions that are wrong. And uh about 5 minutes into it, I'm like blah blah blah blah blah. Take a minute to breathe.

And Steve says, "So Paul, you're struggling." I'm like, "Yeah, man. I am." He says, "Don't struggle." Like, "Screw you, Wells. I got to go." You know, I get off the phone and I It's absolutely true.

Whenever I'm struggling, I'm struggling. That's the problem. I'm kicking and screaming and fighting and I wonder why it hurts.

And what happens is they talk about me in the big book. They talk about me in the big book. I know you guys never seen that before.

Um, what happens for me is they keep adding things when you're not looking. And a couple of years ago, we were doing a big book study. Yeah.

You know that one? Yeah. We were doing a big book study and we got into one of the forgotten chapters.

And I'm going to read something to you here out of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And if that disturbs you, pray for me. I could use it.

But check this out. Says, "Assuming, on the other hand, that father has at the outset a stirring spiritual experience overnight as if he were a different man. Becomes a religious enthusiast.

He's unable to focus on anything else. There's talk about spiritual matters morning, noon, and night. He may demand that the family or his AA group find God in a hurry.

He may tell mother who has been religious or sober all her life that she doesn't know any what it's about and that if she'd better get his brand of spirituality while there's yet time. Says many of us have had experienced dad's elation. We had indulged in spiritual intoxication.

Dad will soon see suffering from a distortion of values. He'll perceive that his spiritual growth is lopsided. Dad's current behavior is but a phase of his development, a phase.

The vagaries or erratic, unpredictable, extravagant behaviors of dad's spiritual infancy will quickly disappear. Those of us who have spent much time in the spirit world of spiritual makebelieve have eventually seen the childishness of it. Damn.

Ring any bells, Paul? You know, I look at that and that's that's who I was. That's what I think everybody gets that way at one point or another.

Anybody who gets into this thing, gets into the steps, has a spiritual experience, their eyes are awakened to this whole different way of looking at things and we realize that people are doing it wrong, you know, and I think it's a phase and I know I certainly go through it and a lot of other people go through it and it's okay. It's okay. It's not perfect, but we don't have to be perfect.

We don't have to do this perfect. We just have to do it. You know, we talk about people in Alcoholics Anonymous being on the beam.

On the beam. Well, think beam is like a balance beam. Okay.

Balance, right? And then you got way over here on the far left side the um just don't drink and go to meetings meeting makers make it which is nah but way over here on the other side you got the rigid book thumping tell you how to do things and straighten out all of alcoholics anonymous chicken little types because the sky is falling and we better fix a hey oh my god oh my god somewhere in the middle I think is where a guy like me needs to be I need to be involved in not only working the steps and working on my own recovery but being able to sit down in a meeting and look eye to eye with another alcoholic and share my experience um in a way that they can identify with rather than waving a book around and sermonizing from my spiritual hilltop. You know, a guy like me needs a little bit of balance in my recovery.

And so, few years go by, few more years go by. Um 9 months after uh that girl left me, um we wound up getting back together. I was down in uh Raleigh, North Carolina for some business.

And uh this is one of my powerful moments in sobriety. It may not mean nearly as much to you as it does to me, but um I got down there and I knew my life was falling apart and I surrendered to the fact that none of this is my business. None of this is my problem.

This is on God. I made a decision to turn my will of my life over to God. And I've been trying to arrange the lights, the stage, the actors, everybody into my way of thinking, you know, in sobriety.

And so what happened is I wound up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and our training session got done at 1:00 in the afternoon. I had all day to do stuff. I never been to Raleigh, North Carolina.

I like it. They got like trees and stuff down there. It's cool.

I live in North Dakota, you know, we got like four trees and no hills. It's boring as hell. Um the roads are straight.

You can let go of the steering wheel and drive all the way to Montana. Um but what happened is I I called up my boss and said, "Hey, if I pay for gas, can I drive out to the ocean?" They said, "Sure." I drove out to the ocean and I drove and I drove and I drove and I didn't get a map and I didn't ask directions. I just started heading east and I effectively said, "God, I'll let you make the roads and I'm just going to drive and we'll see where we go." And I took some pictures and I thought it was pretty and I got out there and I got close.

I couldn't find the ocean. So, I finally asked somebody, "Which way is the ocean?" They said, "That way." Said, "All right." Got on a road and I drove. And I finally went over this bridge onto what turns out later to be, I think, an island.

Um, and just up as I got onto this little bitty island, um, it has this sign that says Cure Beach. Next, left. Cure.

K U R E. But cure. And I thought, neat.

I hang a left and here's the beach. And there's almost nobody there. And parking is immediate.

And I step out of the car and I looked around and I said, "All right, God. I'm here." And I walked out onto that beach and God said, "I'm here." And I felt the presence of God in no uncertain terms. And there was no religious experience.

There was no nothing. There was just a an absolute unquestionable understanding that I am not alone in this. Sometimes I run off by myself, but I am not alone in this.

And that I am taken care of. I'm not going to be taken. I'm already taken care of.

I'm already okay. Sometimes I forget that, but I'm all right, you know. And I stood there and I just kind of grinned and cried and had a hell of a good time and took a bunch of pictures and uh headed home.

And the next day, that girl that had broke up with me called me up and she said, you know, I'm willing to take another run at this. And I kind of looked up and thought, "Wow, all right. It's how it's going to work.

Cool." Few years ago, we got married on Friday the 13th because it seemed about right. And uh we've been we we're coming up. It's going to be uh it's going to be four years this year that we've been married.

And that's that's an absolute treat because I'm married to somebody I actually like, you know. Um she's cool. We sit and we just laugh and talk and have a hell of a good time.

And and uh she's beautiful and I love her. And by the way, I'm she asked me to formally announce I'm married. Um I took my ring off cuz my hands were all swollen and sore from my job.

I type a lot and I've been playing a lot of video games and my hand was swollen. Took my ring off and couldn't get it back on. And I uh I was on the plane and I realized as before the plane took off, I called her up and said, "Oh my god, I forgot my ring." She says, "Fine, you just need to make a formal announcement every time you go into the room that you're married and it'll be all right." I'm like, "Okay." So for your information, um so anyway, what it's like today, um I have the opportunity to be here and to be now.

I have the opportunity to be in this moment. I have an opportunity to be with you. You know, I when I was early in sobriety, there's this Earl Age talk I heard that uh he talks about this whole get right between the claps right here, right now.

And I love that talk and and he's one of my heroes, you know, and I understood the principle. I got it. I got it to be in the here and now in this moment no matter what all the time, which I don't always do, but it's a good principle to follow.

So, what what happens for a guy like me is in order to get in the moment, think of it like a movie projector. Okay, I know there's at least one person in this room has seen one of those before, but um maybe not more than one. Who knows?

Movie projector. You got the supply reel supplying all this film. Goes all through these little wheels and cogs and it goes past this light which flashes on each frame as it goes by.

And then it goes to all these other wheels and cogs and gets wrapped up by this takeup reel. Okay? And what happens for a guy like me, if I'm in the now, I'm where the light bulb is.

Okay? I'm not worrying about what's coming. I'm not worrying about where it's coming from, how it's going to get there, whether it's on the supply reel, whether it's coming through the wheels and cog.

All I'm looking at is on this moment when I shine on this moment. As each frame passes, I'm in the here and now. And I don't worry about how it gets to the takeup reel.

I don't worry about how it gets through all the wheels and cogs. It's no longer my problem. Once I've gotten past that moment, I'm now on the next moment.

When I can be in this moment, in the now, I can be okay. When I can be, my sponsor Scott tells me, "Be where your hands are. be where your hands are.

That means I'm over here worrying about where my hands are, not whether John Gunner is working a strong enough program back there, you know, which I could, but um it's probably a bad idea. So, when I can be in the moment, I thought, "Wow, this is such an original idea." Did you know that that's actually in the big book? Check this out.

This is so cool. I found it. It was in there.

It been there for a while. Says, "We most of us feel we need look no further for utopia. We have it with us right here and now.

Right here and now. Utopia. The ideal place to be where everything is okay.

Everything is right. Nothing bad is going on here and now. Not 5 minutes ago when I experienced a problem I'm still obsessing on.

Not 20 minutes from now when something's going to happen that I need to spend a little time worrying about. None of that. When a guy like me can be in the now, when I can be in the moment, I can be okay.

you know, they have actually I thought, you know, when Bill talks about being rocketed into the fourth dimension, as a result of doing these steps, as a result of getting well, um, we get rocketed into this fourth dimension. I thought, you know, I look that up. We got internet and stuff.

They didn't have that back then. So, I went and I looked up the fourth dimension and there's this picture. If you look on Wikipedia, they've got this picture and it's called a tesseract in case you give a damn.

Um, but it's a picture of this wireframe cube inside of another wireframe cube and they're connected at the corners with little wires and the inside cube is pushing forward and going out to become the front of the box and then moving back to be the sides and then moving back to be the back of the inside box. Kind of like when you roll up a pair of socks over and over and over and never reach the bottom. It's about that kind of a motion.

Or if you watch clouds in slow motion or speed motion as they kind of grow and change. It's the same mass just moving and changing. When I can be in the fourth dimension, it's not just the height, width, and depth.

And it's not just a matter of time. It's a matter of being with each individual frame as that tesseract folds and unfolds. It's in this moment as this moment folds and unfolds.

It's my ability to be here and now and be okay. And what happens when I do the steps is I am able to connect with a higher power on a level that is in this moment. How about this moment?

Right? And then so how much time do I got? I got a little time left.

Okay. So I did the steps in case you wondered. Um, third step, I was uh couple days couple weeks sober and this girl that I had been dating was living with another guy and sleeping in his bed, telling me that she wasn't having sex with him and and uh I was over there visiting with my kids and I'm two weeks sober and I'm out of my mind and uh just focusing on every single thing in the room and worrying and worrying and worrying and uh we're having this cookout and I'm thinking this is terrible and she tells me that you know she's pregnant and it might be mine even though it could have been easily several other people's.

Um, and what happens is is afterwards I'm ready to go home and then she comes up to my kids and says, "Hey, you guys want to go bowling?" Awesome. I don't want to go bowling. Kids are absolutely certain they should go bowling.

We go bowling and these guys are ripping through traffic, dodging through cars like they're trying to lose me and I'm trying to keep up. I'm two weeks sober. I'm ready to kill people and I'm ready to run people off the road.

I'm losing my mind. My daughter's in the front seat going, "Hey dad, hey dad, hey dad, hey dad, dad." In the way that little children can do. She's like three and a half, four years old.

And at one point we stop and they're like, "Oh, this bowling alley is closed. We're going to go to another one." Awesome. And my daughter's, "Hey, dad.

Hey, Dad. Hate adding me." And I turned to her and I yelled at her to shut the f up. Shut your mouth.

I'm trying to think. Don't you know when to be the hell quiet? And blah blah blah blah blah.

And it occurred to me shortly after that what I had just done. And I realized what an awful thing I had just done. And I just was so awful.

And I started apologizing. And my son reaches up from the back seat, puts his hand on my elbow, and says, "It's okay, Dad. Go to the bowling alley.

Do some stupid bowling." Afterwards, my daughter's tired and behaving crazily, and she's up there playing with the water dispenser and won't quit. And I try and get her to stop, and I pick her up, and she starts screaming bloody murder, kicks her shoe off, flips out, and then this girl that I'm broken up with who's seeing somebody else comes up and picks up my daughter, and she quiets up for this girl instead of me, and I feel like such an absolute loser. She puts her in my car, and I drive home and put her to bed, and I go over to my son and help him say his prayers.

And as he's saying his prayers, and he gets done, I tell him, you know, Jake, I'm sorry I flipped out today. I don't realize sometimes what I'm doing. And I said, "But daddy's not drinking." And it's been a long time since I've not drank.

I always used to be able to have a couple of drinks and take take the frustration away. And I said, "I just I don't have anything to do that right now." And he leaned up and he put his hand on my shoulder and it said and said, "It's okay, Dad." And I went into my den, my bedroom, I guess. And I went in there and I hit my knees on the side of the bed and I cried my face off and I prayed and I cried and I prayed and I cried and I prayed for about 15 20 minutes.

And I got to the end of this prayer and I religious reference here. Bear with me. Um, as my as I was growing up, they always used to have me on my prayers with this whole through Jesus who you gave, you know, for me, amen thing.

And at the end of my prayer, I say this and it suddenly struck me that if he if you know, whoever's out there was willing to give his kid so that some sorry loser boob like me could have another shot at life like I do right now, imagine how hard it was for him considering how much I love my son right at this moment for telling me it's okay twice. And I lost it and I cried for another 20 minutes. um and said, "I'm willing to do whatever it takes." And that was my third step.

Nothing fancy, not a direct quote of the third step, prayer out of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. It was me making an honest, personal, individual connection with a God of my understanding and saying, "What do I do?" I did a fourth step in the middle of the four step. I was not well.

Um that's the part where I hooked up with uh Big Easy. Um good god, it was an awful experience. I was getting well known.

And there was this girl I was I was seeing that uh on the internet that looked like a porn star, you know, Ron Jeremy. Um yikes. She was nice and I actually was friends with her for a while afterwards, but it was something I wasn't proud of.

It was not cool. And I'm doing my four step and I had to add her on there once or twice and and I get together with my sponsor and I do this fifth step. And as I was doing my fourth step, there were some things on there I didn't want anybody to know about.

So I wrote them and I'd been studying J.R.R. Tolken's uh Lord of the Rings and such. And uh I got in the back in the appendixes and found how to write in Elvin Tangoir handwriting.

And so one page of my fourth step was an Elvin. And uh we're driving along doing my fifth step and he looks over. He's like, "What the hell is that?" So what's Elvin?

He says, "One day you will sponsor people just like you." And I I thought that was a compliment. You know, it'd be cool. Guess what?

So and I have Wow. um get done with the fifth step and uh I went uh after my fifth step, I did not go home and take the book down off the shelf. I was at his house and I went out in the yard and I laid in the yard and I rolled up and down in the grass with my kids and I looked at the sky and I said, "Oh my god, I've let it all out.

What do I do now?" And the answer was, "Keep going. Keep going." You know, so it came to this sixth step and I was absolutely not willing to make a change and release some of these defects of character because some of them were quite fun at the time. And uh so for a little while I cons continued to see that girl and one day I realized I don't really want this.

This is not what I want, you know. And so I did a uh called up Kane and said, you know, I'm ready to go with the sixstep. What do I do?

And he told me the page number. He said, you go in there and you read these two paragraphs and say this prayer. And uh that's it.

So I did. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

The heavens did not open up. A chariot with thundering horses with flaming breath and lightning bolts did not come down and sweep away every single defect of character that I had. Nothing like that.

Nothing happened. I called him back up and I said, "Dude, nothing happened. What do I do?" He's like, "Your eightstep." Oh, yeah.

So, I did an eightstep. I started putting together this list, which I already had done in my four step. Thank god I didn't burn the stupid thing.

It kind of was nice to have notes. Um, and I started working on my amends. And I went into it with a a level of desperation that you would see with a drowning man.

And I went into it because I knew I was going to die drunk if I didn't do this. And uh I didn't want that. I was I had reached that I had reached that level of uh hopelessness that a guy like me reaches.

And I was hopeless when I got sober because I knew I had all the religious answers and I could prove all you wrong. And you guys, since you're all wrong about at least one thing, aren't going to be able to help me because your solution is fake. It's fake and I can prove it.

And uh thank God I had to let go of that fixed idea, tradition, superstition, whatever you want to call it. I had to let go of some of these old ideas because uh what I thought I was right about and how many answers I thought I had were not keeping me sober and you were. I'm not sober and you are, but I'm busy over here being right about everything.

Right? So, I had to change that way. I had to change the way that I looked at things.

And I went into this thing with a level of desperation. I started making amends. I was making amends left and right.

I got a hold of my sponsor one day and he I'm like, "When are we going to do the 10th?" when are we going to do the 10th? It says in the 9th that about halfway through we start doing the 10th, right? He says while we're cleaning this up, we're doing the 10th.

I found out later that he actually hadn't been doing the 10th, 11th, and 12th and he had had to call his sponsor and ask him to take him through that stuff cuz he didn't know. Um, so I actually pushed my sponsor into doing some step work. And what ended up happening is uh we went through the steps and we went through 10, 11, and 12 and I started making these amends and I started trying to keep track of what a jackass I was being um and trying to make things right as I went along.

And I started trying to increase my understanding and effectiveness as an alcoholic and alcoholics anonymous. There's some debate sometimes, we were talking about this earlier today about whether or not you do lots and lots of four steps for the rest of your life or whether you do one forever. Um the answer is yes.

Yes. Um the the 10th step says we continue to look for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Sounds like a four step to me.

When these crop up, which is one of the promises, there's lots of those through the book. Um when these crop up, we ask God at remove them. Sounds like six and seven to me.

We make amends promptly if we've harmed anybody. Sounds like eight and nine. And then we turn our thoughts to someone we can help.

So it looks like I'm going to be doing steps four through nine every day, several times a day, as often as possible, unless I decide to rest on my laurels and not do that. If anybody has ever looked up what laurels are, um which is another reason it's good to have a sponsor take you through the book to have you explain to you words like channery and what they mean. Um what laurels are other than things that you rest on is back in uh in Greece what they would do is is uh when you had completed a particular achievement or project they would make you a crown of laurels.

You ever see the old pictures of the Greeks with the funny little plant things on their head looking like a half seed crown? That's what they are. It's a crown of laurels.

And what would happen is if uh if a guy like me goes and I achieve some thing like I've done my steps, I've done my, you know, and then I put sit down on my on that achievement that I've already done and don't do anything else. I'm back to getting sicker and sicker and sicker cuz a guy like me does not do well to just sit there. Um so as I'm doing this, I'm also trying to continue to grow in my understanding and effectiveness.

But I'm also trying to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding. Which is why sometimes I'll hear folks in meetings say, "I'm trying to work on my third step. My sponsor says he won't take me through the rest of the steps until I have an understanding of God." Really?

Then what do you need an 11th step for? Third step, you just make a decision. I'm going to do this.

It's almost like saying, "I'm going to make a decision and do the steps." That's, you know, pretty good place to be. But I'm going to have to continue to grow in understanding and effectiveness. And I'm going to have to continue to work on my relationship with my higher power.

And what I'm going to do in the process is I'm also going to talk to those guys in the waiting room and I'm going to go up to them and say, "Hey, I know where you're at." And I'm going to have to tell them drinking stories and bad living stories in order for them to identify with me to believe that I had what they had in order for them to actually consider taking a shot at doing what I did because otherwise they're not going to, you know, if they don't think that I have the problem they had, why are they going to try the solution that I have? So if I am telling them what I was like, what it was like out there, and I'm also telling them how I managed to have a spiritual experience and the way things changed for me, and if I'm also then able to tell them what it's like to be in the here and the now in this moment, living sober, having a connection with a conscious a conscious connection with a higher power, you know, if you if you envision a conscious connection with a higher power, think of it as a uh telephone call. When I'm thinking about you and thinking about calling you, I'm just thinking about it.

When I actually pick up the phone and I call you and we start having a conversation and I start asking questions and maybe listening for answers, that's a little bit more of a conscious connection here and now, you know. So, in a couple of weeks, it's going to be May 5th. Um May 5th is the day that I wandered into the Northern Plains group all those years ago and heard a solution to a problem of the type that I had.

Um, it's the day that I identified with another person for the first time in my life. It's the day that the light switch snapped on and I suddenly realized I'm not alone and there may be a solution for what's wrong with me. Um, Bill, I guess, is coming out.

Bill C is coming out and he's going to speak at this roundup. Now, they uh they shuffle around the dates a little bit from time to time, which annoys the hell out of me because every once in a while I have to have the same sobriety date two years in a row um because it's, you know, my sobriety birthday happens a couple days after the roundup sometimes. And uh this year that's going to be the case.

You know, it's going to be a few days after we actually have this roundup. But when this roundup kicks in, um it's going to be the 11th time and I sat in the Northern Plains Group roundup. Um it's going to be in my heart whether or not we want to go by dates or not.

It's going to be in my heart. Um 10 years of doing this thing, you know, and for me that's a huge deal because guys like me don't get to do this. guys like me don't get to have friends like John and and Zach and Brent and Billy and and all the guys, you know, Jeff, um all the people I've been hanging out with today, ladies.

Um you guys are awesome. Um all the people that came up, shook my hand, and said hi today. It's really really neat.

Uh David, um it's really neat to be able to come down here and walk into a group that is almost exactly the same as where I'm from, you know, and I've I've been to meetings like this in other places. I can walk in and it doesn't take more than 30 seconds and I'm home. I'm not nervous.

I'm not afraid. I'm not uncomfortable. I'm all right.

I'm all right. And you guys are the part of that. Um I have a higher power today and I talk with that higher power regularly.

I have a sponsor. Um it's important that I have a sponsor because it's somebody outside the noise in my head that I can call up and share with him my latest good idea and uh maybe get his take on that and find out whether or not I'm actually out of my mind or not. because I get so wrapped up in this self-obsessive I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta that it's terrible for a guy like me because it's overwhelming it's noisy you know and that is that is a reason why it's important for me to have those periods of quiet during the day where I'm able to stop drop and pray and I'm able to take a few minutes to meditate um take a little bit of time to just kind of be quiet you know but to meditate also means to contemplate ponder to dwell upon to consider to think about and for me it's good for me to have things to think about you know in the 12 and 12 um we got the prayer of St.

Francis of Azi listed in there and it says that it's not listed in there so much as an 11step prayer. Mind you, it says we have various things that we use for meditations. We take a few set prayers and use these for meditations.

Here's one we really like. And they throw in the prayer of St. Francis.

Well, if you look at it as a meditation rather than as a prayer, what are we going to meditate on? Okay, make me a channel of thy peace. Well, it's a channel.

You guys got channels around here. Water go through them. They go from one place to another, right?

You make me a channel of your peace. That mean that doesn't mean God give me peace. It means God, let me be the conduit to give somebody else some peace.

Make me useful. Put me in a position where I can carry something of value that doesn't start with me and doesn't end with me. Put me in a position of usefulness where I can actually carry something like what I've gotten from others and you to someone else.

Help me carry this buzz to somebody else so that I can be useful to God and others, not just myself. And it puts me in a position where I no longer feel useless. I no longer feel like I have no purpose.

I have a purpose today is to carry this message to other alcoholics and to stay sober. And in order for me to do that, I need to continue to work this program um daily. Daily.

You know, I can't be in the now all the time I'd like to be. You know, seems like a really good idea for me to be there. It's a beautiful ideal, but uh I'm not wonderful all the time.

I make mistakes. I screw things up. I'm human.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I sometimes get on my little big book thumper. Nothing wrong with big books.

something wrong with Thumper sometimes and I get on my little kicks and I make an ass on myself and there's other times when I don't make it to a meeting that I should have made it to. You know, I don't do everything right. Sometimes in traffic, there are really other jerks in traffic and I know it, but I don't have to swerve at them today, you know.

Um, thank you for bringing me down here. Thanks to, you know, Casey and and Sher for putting me up and and being gracious hosts. Um, thanks to John and all the other guys that allowed me to hang out with them today.

I could think of a time when nobody wanted to invite me to hang out with anybody, much less fly my dumb ass across the country to do so. Um, so I am really privileged. I am really honored.

It's really cool to see that you guys are having this kind of a buzz down here. Um, thank you for letting me come out here. Happy birthday.

>> 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.

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