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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. >> Would y'all please welcome Clint H.

Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

I'm really delighted to be here. I am very very delighted to be here. And I was touched by the flag ceremony and about the the history of AA in this area.

Uh I had my last drink on August 14th, 1966. And so in these years that I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you can be sure uh that it's become very very important to me. It's become very very uh vitalizing to me that there is uh an organization like this, a movement like this, a fellowship like this in my view is really a miracle.

that could not have could not have survived all that craziness and all of our craziness and all of our well-intentioned tapping our way to the curb over the years. And it did. I was in uh Pete's uh archives over there and I was uh reminded looking at that motorcycle the Bill and the founder and one of the founders and his wife Lois moved around New England in a motorcycle with a sidec car.

And that thing looks like a wreck in those photographs. God, in the book someplace when it talks about Bill's uh drinking and his coming back and his ongoing promises to Lois, there is a wonderful phrase getting drunk and then sobering up. The phrase is he stilled her forings.

Isn't that wonderful? Is there a guy in here that doesn't know what that means? He stilled her for bodings.

And he must have cuz he got her in the sidec car of that damn motorcycle time after time. That's hard work. You know, this guy is a genius at stilling for boating.

Got to like a guy like that. So, we're very fortunate to be here. Howard, thank you for your talk tonight.

Lovely, lovely talk. Howard and I have known each other over the years and uh I'm just so glad you're here. I'm just so glad you're here.

And we'll hear uh my friend Bob tomorrow night and along the way we'll hear Mickey and Burns and I don't know who all is in here yet. Uh but I'll be glad to hear Bob. I brought uh a good friend of mine, Oscar, in here from California today.

Uh, and I've been talking about these people, these uh, extraordinary human beings from all over the country that uh, Maryanne and Eleanor have uh, pulled together for a remarkable weekend for you. Uh, and Terry, thank you. Terry picked us up at the airport.

U, he was worried that we wouldn't recognize. We're always worried that we won't recognize the person that uh uh we're supposed to. A few years ago, some years ago now, I got a I called into my office for messages and the receptionist said, "Well, you sure lead an interesting life." I said, "What do you mean by that?" She said, 'Well, there's a note here that says you're going to the guy that's going to pick you up in Indianapolis uh at the airport uh is going to be uh he's going to he has a wooden leg and he'll be carrying a big book and I Yeah.

And by God, he had a wooden leg and a big book. It's great, isn't it? And he was driving a Pinto by that time for which I was very, very grateful.

There's a note here that says Joe is 111 today. 111. Is that right?

Is there Joe? Wave something. 111.

Oh, Joe is ill today. Oh. Uh, I'm sorry.

Never mind. I don't think so. All right.

No wonder you're not here, Joe. I Oscar is looking at me like that. We have a meeting that we go to in LA.

It's the West LA men's stag group of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's been in place about 12 years and there's maybe 80 guys there and it is uh there's such a sweetness in that meeting. There's just every Thursday night I get to go sit with a bunch of guys and uh talk about the amazing transformative experiences that take place here. And I feel it here.

I feel it here. I feel welcome and comfortable here and loved. So, thank you for that.

Thank you for that. Are there any uh if you're here in AA in your first 30 days of sobriety, would you just There's one right over there. Anybody else?

A few in the room. Couple around here. Thank you.

Good. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's a weird place to go, isn't it?

I mean, did you ever ever in the sparkling city by the sea? And here we are. Here we are.

And you may not know it yet, but you're free. This is the deal. We get here by invitation.

The universe issues an invitation. And we come in. We don't all stay, but some come back.

And those that stay, those that leave and come back and stay uh are just as welcome as if they had stopped drinking on their very first meeting. I I had u gone to AA 5 years before I got sober in Portland at a meeting occupied primarily by guys that just seemed terribly old to me. And uh uh I knew that whatever was wrong with them was not the same thing that was wrong with me.

And I left that meeting knowing that I could cross one more thing off my list and my search for what was wrong and what would become of me. And 5 years later, a very interesting thing happened. I was living in Glendale, California.

I had just gotten off of active duty from in the Marine Corps and I had not yet started a reserve commitment and I didn't know if I could because one of the big problems on my acting duty tour was the fact that I was a bad drinker. Bad drinker. And I hated that.

I loved the Marine Corps. I went into that with all the enthusiasm and commitment and sense of honor and pride and duty that you can have. And when I was commissioned a second lieutenant, it was a big day for me.

A big day. And I had had drinking problems up until that time. And they had sequestered all of us through this officer candidate program.

And we came rolling out of there and assigned to different places all over the country and the world. And I hadn't been allowed to drink during that time. They just sequestered us.

And so I did just fine. But it wasn't long before I knew that Marines drink, but not like me. Not like me.

And I got a letter of reprimand and another letter of reprimand and commander saying things like, "Lieutenant Hajes consistently fails to live up to the low standards he has set for himself." And those kind of it's hurtful really. I um the the commander at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station said uh as I stood in front of his desk, a general officer, he said, "There's no room in the Marine in the Marine Corps for an alcoholic lieutenant." And he finally dismissed me and I marched out of his office knowing how wrong he was. I mean, my brass was shine, my hair was cut, my shoes were shine, my uniform was clean.

And God, he thought I was alcoholic. And the irony of that day is I had to buy a fifth of vodka. I had to drive out into those orange groves north of the base and lay on the front seat and drink that hot, terrified that the next thing I'd see would be a military police jeep coming out there to pick me up.

Both marriages had already failed. I had three sons and they were kind of a hazy, distant part of my life. and I got out of active duty with an honorable discharge just by the skin of my teeth, moved to Glendale, lived in an apartment for oh maybe five weeks or so and uh that's all he could stand to me there.

I moved out of there and I I moved uh into a car you get used to it, but it's still, you know, and then the car disappeared. I heard somebody one night at a meeting say that their car disappeared right as they were saving up for an oil change. And I thought, "Yeah, that's my deal.

That's it." And and I moved into a place that for years I described as a double garage. Four of us lived in this place. Four of us had a little room in the double garage.

Except 10 years ago, I guess my wife and I were in Glendale. She said, "I want to see the garage." I said, "I don't even know if it's there." She said, "Let's see it. Let's go by there." And we drove down there and she said, "Is that it?" I said, "Yeah, right there." She said, "That's not a garage.

That's a shed." Is what that is. A shed. I mean, it's just like Oh, yeah.

Wow. I had just like 11 bucks a week and hopeless and terrified. And I had a little radio.

They still have them around here. These radios are especially built for alcoholics because they just pop into playing music. Uh pretty music really.

Uh but you can't turn them off. You pull a plug out of the wall and it's just a little scary. Take them outside and put them in the dirt and they play.

You learn in AA what's there's a lot of explanatory material here that you don't even ask for. But I knew one night when I heard a gal in a meeting when I was just six months sober say that she had taken a hammer to a parking meter and was arrested while she was beating it to death. I uh I asked her later I said what were you what was the deal with the and she said it was broadcasting every rotten thing I had ever done.

I get that, man. Yeah. And my radio was kind of like that.

A bit of a mystery, you know. And there was nothing. This threadbear little room with the steel cot and the wet mattress on it and the bad smell and the sticky lenolium floor and that awful sense of desolation and terror.

And the rat. There was a rat. over in the by the door.

Uh just you could see it the light coming under the door from outside middle of the night and that rat was just looking at me and I'm on the floor under the cot and the rat is kind of got these eyes and I knew he would charge me and I just knew he would win. It was makes a long night of it, doesn't it? And the first light of day, you look again and that rat in some magical fashion has turned into a pair of socks laying over there.

Tricky, tricky little son of Rick. So, for those that are new and thank you for raising your hand and for those that didn't, uh, we want nothing but the very best for you. And if you've, uh, had one of those radios, uh, I'm your guy.

We'll talk. If you've been held hostage by a rat all night, uh, I wanted to say it more gently. Have you been held hostage by a pair of socks?

All welcome home. We You found us. This is it.

Those people that just stopped coming to the bar. Here we are. So, um, in the middle of that, after more than a few turns before the judge at Glendale Municipal Court, a guy by the name of Ken White, who was harsh with us and a little cell time and waking up in the park and going back to that awful, smelly room that I lived in, all of my dreams gone, all of my days of uh, feeling like a a worthy uh contributing member of society gone.

All of my ideas that one day I would uh make it all up to those women who had born children of mine. One day I would uh do something very noble and they would see after all who I am. Those days are gone.

That flickering hope was no more. There was a guy I met years later whose mother was an author. And I'll never forget an essay she wrote about her entry into Alcoholics Anonymous.

She said, "After this long sterile diet of snake pits and manure piles on which no roses ever grew, we longed for hope. and you gave me hope with your stories, with pointing out to me in the book the things that are there. I wouldn't have picked up Bill's skill at stealing her forings except it was pointed out to me.

There's a sentence in there that I just love. It says that uh our problems arise out of ourselves. That awkward goofy language.

accept that the subtext is this for me. No one has to change for me to get free. Isn't that good?

No one has to change for me to get free. And I always wanted people to change. And if they would, I'd be okay.

That an interesting way to lead your life. The guy in the next lane, if he'd shape up, I'd have a good day. doing that if my mom had done it better.

I wanted dead people to change. I you know, if you want a really frustrating and unfulfilled life, demand that people that are dead 30 years shape up. give all your power away by blaming those people.

They're not going to change. And I wanted that. I wanted it desperately.

And then I'm in the little room and I'm living there and one day I'm walking down the street and a bail bondsman came by and honked his horn and I walked over to his car. He and I had done some business uh together in better days, I might add. You don't call a Bale Bondsman when you're in that kind of shape.

I'm going to take you someplace today, he said. And I really didn't know he knew that it was a problem. Oh, sure.

He bailed me out a lot, but that can happen to anybody. You know, I didn't even I'll tell you where I was that day. I didn't ask him where were we going.

I didn't ask. It didn't matter. Isn't that interesting?

It did not matter. Where is he going to take me? Jail, county, hospital, psych ward.

It It just simply didn't matter. I got in his car and he took me across Glendale and uh there we were in front of something up a long flight of stairs that had a sign, the Alleno Club of Glendale, whatever that means and we walked in there. Nothing but they were just sitting around.

They started a meeting around a t a couple of tables put together a dozen people no more and I stayed there for an hour after the meeting but I don't know what I was looking for but I didn't hear it or see it or feel it and I left and I came back that night and I came back and I came back and then about a week later I ran into I loved Howard's uh talk about uppers and downers and all of that. I I came across a stash of amphetamines and cash in my little room and uh that calls for a drink as you know. I got as far as uh a little lot in Oklahoma.

Uh yeah, outside of Fort Sil. Oh, that's a Oh, and finally made my way back to Los Angeles into my little room. Looked a little better since I'd been in Lton, if you want to know.

But that morning, I walked to the club. I knew where it was. Nobody was going to come along.

I walked to the club and I walked up that flight of stairs and it was about 10 in the morning and somebody was doing his job in AA because the door was open and the lights were on and the coffee was made and a guy dead now, Bill Kennedy was there when I pushed open that door and he was smiling. I've never forgotten that beautiful smile that he had. Oh, he'd seen me before at the meetings.

He didn't really uh have any interaction with me. Uh but he smiled when he saw me. I could not have felt worse.

Coming back finally to the one place I knew would not provide any help to me, but maybe a short brief bit of shelter against the hot sun, shelter against not having to go to the park that day. And he smiled. How you doing?

Oh, not so good. Come in. Come in.

He said, "What happened?" And I I said, "Uh, well, I got drunk and let everybody down like Glendale laa was going to go south now that I have." He asked me such a great question. It's not a It's a wonderful question. He could have asked me a lot of things.

He could have said a lot of things to me cuz I had after all been going to meetings for a couple of weeks before I took off. And he just kept smiling and said, "Oh, are you alcoholic?" Isn't that great? What a wonderful question that is.

And of course, I knew, but I didn't know. sort of like uh it depends on what you mean by alcoholic, but I knew what the right answer was. And after a minute, I said, "Uh, cuz I needed to be there." I said, "Yeah, I've been an alcoholic about a month now.

just a mild case. I just uh I just caught it, you know. Um some kind of a toilet seat transaction.

I don't know what the hell it was. And he kept smiling. He blew right past.

He said, "So, you're an alcoholic and you got drunk?" I said, "Yeah, yeah." He said, "That's it. That's us. That's who we are and what we do." It was not a big relief to me.

But he and he didn't try to comfort me. He was cheerful. He never stopped smiling.

He was glad to see me. And he did not really in any other way verbally try to cheer me up. He said, "Uh, if you're an alcoholic like I'm an alcoholic, you will drink no matter what.

Drink no matter what." And for some reason that day I got that on the 14th of August, that hot summer day. I got it. I got it.

I drink no matter what. He offered me no hope. He offered me nothing but a definition by the detail of my life.

The quiet dignity of the truth of the matter. I drink no matter what. I know that.

Uh, I drink when I promise I'll pick up the kids. Someone else has to pick up my kids. I drink when I'll promise to come home right after work.

I I stop in for one beer and cash a check, my paycheck. Here's a bit of interesting economy. You You cash the check and you're going to go home.

God knows they need the money. They're at home. And I put most of the cash except 20 bucks I I stash in one pocket and the rest of it in another pocket.

The family money is in another pocket. But since I've cashed it in a bar, it's only civil to order a drink, which I pay for out of the family money because I'm not drinking. I mean, if I were drinking, I'd just drink my with my money.

If you understand that and you raised your hand a few moments ago, get a sponsor tonight. Don't delay. And then the family money's gone.

I don't know how that happens at 1:00 in the morning. And and there's such a load. day.

I just I I have to now drink on my money. I drink no matter what. And I got it.

And I got it right up until today. That's what I do. That's what I do.

And it was 14th of August. And that guy was kind to me, loving of me, and kind of took a certain odd joy in the fact that I'm alcoholic. And you'll drink no matter what.

Smile and lot of teeth. And I do. I do.

The cat is out of the bag. I drink no matter what. There's no more talk of quitting.

None. And it's the one thing I cannot do. And it was mentioned earlier today.

It's the thing we cannot do. Can't quit. Isn't that the most confusing thing that you can ever imagine?

Can't quit. Howard spoke of it uh beautifully. And I knew it was true for me that day.

And I stayed there and went to the meeting that night. Bill Kennedy died a couple of months ago, but he certainly had a huge impact on my life. He said, "Good people in AA will tell you don't drink no matter what, and you," he said, "will drink no matter what." And it was kind of like a little secret to me for a while in AA.

You seem to be kind to me. You were very very uh uh welcoming to me, but you didn't know that I drink no matter what apparently or you would not have been kind to me. And I knew that I wasn't going to stick around there very long.

And so it's with a great sense of joy and gratitude that I thank you for these 38 years of sobriety cuz I drink no matter what. That's what I do. And I haven't had a drink since that day.

And there were people that were kind to me all the way through. They've been remarkably kind to me. And I was given a copy of the big book and I was determined to read it, determined to do something with it.

I didn't know quite what I was going to do with it. It seemed significant and it seemed annoying. You know, it's a clumsy read by any standard, but uh maybe there's something here.

Maybe for me, I kind of doubt it. You know, I I uh I really kind of doubt it. We're not lazy people.

And I think that the reason that we're slow to the steps, slow to the book, is this terrible dread. Mine was this won't work for me. It works for you.

I get that. It will not work for me. And what happens if I really try these steps and they don't work for me?

Where am I going to go then? Where am I going to go? Why just not leave everything the way it is in some kind of a queasy balance?

And I did that. I did that. And it it's kind of strange, you know, you read that uh there's a there's a interesting thing in there.

Uh Wilson says uh uh God God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. And that didn't come for me. I thought, "Oh, how nice for you, Bill.

Oh, isn't that cute, you and that white light deal and all of that, but that's not for me. That's not for me. Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus.

I I picked it up. I had that uh early training in a in a uh relatively tough fundamentalist Protestant background in uh Billings, Montana. Uh nowhere near the buckle of the Bible belt as Howard was talking about today.

Strange goings on there in churches. From my point of view, I didn't believe much of it. the people that carried the message to me never seemed like they were very happy about what they believed or about what they'd done with their heart.

It it it just uh my uncle went down to the front of that church one Sunday morning and got saved and it seemed like they were sending him off to China to be a missionary. Uh oh man, stay away from the front of the church. You know, I don't have to.

No, thank you. Years later, he came to Austin and was uh uh had become a minister and was part of a big church there and a friend of AA there. I found that out after I got sober and he and I became pretty good friends.

His name was Carl Eat and he's gone now. I asked him when we got to talking to each other and laughing about our craziness in As I Grew up and all of the goofy stuff that happened in their home. I said, "Why did you go to China?" He said, "You know, I'll tell you, I I knew God wanted me to be a preacher, and I hated preachers, and I thought if I went to China to be a missionary for four years, he'd let me off the hook.

Yeah, wonderful guy. Wonderful guy. I said, "Did you like it?

Anything about you?" Oh, no. He said, "I I have no gift for language. I were supposed to learn this dialect." And it was awkward at best.

There's just nothing in it that I really in fact he told me one night that the in the dialect the word for Lord uh was confusingly similar to the word for pig. Uh and it gave his sermons a little tilt that you know he hard to talk about pigs when you're really getting in there. Lovely guy.

Lovely guy. And one day, one day, so there was a lot of religion in our home, a lot of uh unwelcome preachings, a lot of uh beatings to reinforce uh uh God's love. you grow up some weird ideas, you know, weird ideas and they come they they followed me into Alcoholics Anonymous, I can tell you because I had uh some strange notions about God that were in the nature of the baby elephant beliefs that Howard was talking about earlier today.

These earlier commitments, cognitive commitments to a notion that helps you explain how life is. And kids that grow up in that kind of a a terrorized home need to know as much as they can about how life is. And we grabbed these beliefs and uh I had a bunch of them, bunch of them about God and about my mom and about families and about all kinds of things.

I got thrown when I was four, five years old, I guess, out of my little sister's nursery uh by my mom. And I knew before I hit the wall on the other side of the hall that she didn't love me. It just went into my midbrain and I knew she didn't love me.

And I knew you can't trust women. I I didn't have to. No one had to tell me.

It just went in there. And all I wanted was uh for my baby sister to move out so I could get the attention I had been getting before she was born. you know, get on the road.

She was 6 weeks old, but I wanted her out of there. So, I'd thump her on the head and that scared my mom and the thing I went I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? We give meaning to these things that don't have inherent meaning.

There are a lot of explanations for what happened that day. One, maybe you can't trust women, but look at all the others. Your mother doesn't really love you.

That's another one. Your mother is exhausted and not showing good judgment. That's another one.

You frightened your mother with that kind of treatment of your infant sister. That's another one. Your mother doesn't have great parenting skills.

That's another. You need a counselor. That's another.

But we pick one. It's no more true than all the others, but we pick it and live with it. And the belief becomes the life.

And so I had that and all the the life becomes a series of experiences. And when I was 16 years old, it was uh vodka after a football game. My mom had died two months ear, two years earlier.

I stood at her grave in Billings, hanging on to my belief, what I knew so much to be true. And I I thought I didn't cry. We had watched her die a terrible death.

It had been brutal. My grandma the day she died woke us up that morning by yelling down into the basement where four of us now slept and said, "Your mother died last night. Are you going to go to school or not?" And we went, "Okay, okay." And four days later, I'm standing or three days at the Laurent part of the cemetery in Billings and they're burying my mom and I am standing there dryeyed and angry and furious and thinking you don't love me.

Well, I don't love you. And that's all I could say about my mom. And my dad was a bad drinker.

and he and he was there that day, but there wasn't really any family. That that the dramatic violence that went on was just something to be dealt with. And no amount of religiosity would ever take it into any nicer place than that.

And so we have these beliefs. I remember uh my brother, I have a twin brother, which is kind of a confusing piece of business all its own. um good-looking guy, but you know, he asked a question about sex.

Boy, that turned everybody to concrete. I'll tell you that. Uh and you don't ask again, but you know it's bad.

You know, no good can come of it. It's danger. You come down, you distill it down to a simple enough idea.

Sex is filthy and disgusting and ugly and you should save it for the one you really love. Oh my god. Clear enough, Grandma.

Thank you. Terry showed up at the airport with Chuck sees a new pair of glasses in case I should miss him. He's hiding it coily under his sweater and pulling it out like this.

I don't know what brought that to my mind, but it was just darling to get off the plane and f We'd been talking about that. Oscar said, "Do you know who's picking you up?" I said, "I don't know nothing but a name. We've talked on the phone." He said, "Well, how will you recognize him?" I said, "I don't know, but we always hook up." Chamberlain's a new pair of glasses.

That's great. It was plenty enough for me. I saw it from quite a distance away.

Interesting talking about Chuck because the archives have a lot of uh Chuck. Chuck was one of these amazing people, amazing people in Alcoholics Anonymous that could kind of cut through it. he could kind of cut through it.

I asked him toward the end of his life if I couldn't drive him to some meetings. And he said, "Why? It's the only chance I get to be alone." I said, "Well, I I don't know.

I I kind of I didn't, you know, I said, "Uh, there's an awful lot of traffic up there in LA and I just it's just getting worse and worse." And he looked at me and he said, "Son, I just drive the one car." And I drive every car I see. Interesting to me. So, we're bumping along.

When I was 5 years sober, somebody told me to go to law school. And I never ever would have ever ever thought of that. Last time I'd had any education, I was drinking badly and I got thrown out.

And I didn't really want to risk all that again. I went to law school. I worked during the day, went to meetings, and at night, three nights a week, I went to law school and I studied on.

And when I was nine years sober, the state of California gave me a license to practice law, which is like, man, courtroom feels a lot different from that side of the table. And I love it. I really love it.

But for a while and because there wasn't anything about this program that invited me to actually tap into real power, I was using that for power. Not a good substitute. Not a good substitute for me.

The practice of law became kind of got distilled down to uh exercise my character defects, call it advocacy, and send out a bill. uh you know not pretty not pretty and the day came as it will for all of us uh and has for us that we have to come to terms with the fact we have no power that is not easy stuff that is just not easy to begin to take a look at that and I'm never going to get any power and what am I going to do? I have the power substitutes that I use.

And they came out in response to a very simple sounding question asked of me by somebody. Uh, what five things will you not give up for a better relationship with God? Oh, that's rude.

Is that rude? You bet. I got five things.

I have seven. I think it was on my list. Anger, control, sex, greed, uh, all of that.

Image. Oo, big one. Image.

Man, do I have an image. When I was in the Marine Corps, they taught us to camouflage tanks by putting branches on them so they'd look like trees. And uh, my tanks always look like tanks with branches on them.

So, it's like that's how you look holding an image in place. But it really focuses you down on that question that I never ever wanted to answer. Is God everything or nothing?

Oh, man. Let it go. I mean, if I told the truth, it would be, well, I I don't think he's nothing, but he isn't all he's cracked up to be, and I don't know quite what to do with him.

And yet, and yet, and yet in me is a in me is a seeker. In me is a yearning. In me is something that for a while was put out by alcohol and drugs.

Those amphetamines and I'm sober and it's not going away. And it seems once in a while at an AA meeting when I'm brought to tears by a speaker or to great wonder by seeing somebody take a chip or a cake who I know cannot stay sober and they're sober. There is a knowing and it's not going to come again soon or ever.

But there is a moment of peace and I don't know what to do with that. But it just kind of intensifies the need I have to look at that. And the time had come in my life after some years of sobriety when I was there when I'd gone through uh terrible reversals in every area of my life.

And I didn't think I'd drink. I just was always involved in AA at one level or another uh and sponsored guys and did all of that. But I had no spiritual life and I knew that the pretense was over.

I knew it was all over and what am I going to do? Just limp my way the rest of the way afraid. afraid that cold fear doesn't ever quite leave me and using this for power and that for power and never being in a satisfying relationship with a woman.

In fact, I called things relationships that didn't even come close. Arrangements would have been a much better word. arrangements, a a contract.

You do this and I'll do that. Not a relationship that has that wonderful fundamental deeply committed covenant to it. No, no, not that.

An arrangement against the cold. And this is gone. And I know they never work.

And this one's gone. and on and on, on and on. And now the things that I had been using for power, my partner had come to me and said, "I don't want to practice with you anymore." And the this lady came and said, "No more." And the house is gone and the car is gone and my income is just tanked.

And I was very frightened. My little brother, not an alcoholic, died pushing a cart in uh Atlanta, Georgia. We he was hard to find, but I could find him in about six or seven days.

And I went back to and I would find him. I said, "Come back to California." He wasn't a drinker. He didn't care about alcohol, but he had a point to prove.

And we do. I think it's not that unusual. And the point is this.

It's a like a statement to the universe, to the world. We think the world is watching. And so we push a cart and smell really bad and say in effect to the world, "Do you see what my parents did to me?

Do you see what they did? If they had done it right, would I have to be pushing the cart and I see them on the streets in Los Angeles making their statement and my brother did that and then he got beat up and he went into the VA and he came out and what little he had was gone and he had a heart ailment and we went back for his funeral. My brother and I were both sober.

My little sister, not an alcoholic. And my brother, the youngest, was gone. And when I came into this crisis in my sobriety, I thought of him and I thought of my future.

And I thought of where it might go. And it didn't seem so far-fetched that I would be pushing a cart. Insane thinking, yeah, of course.

But it was my thinking. It was my thinking. And so we're at a very interesting part of step two where it says uh suggests in some odd way that I may be in uh insane.

I mean they were really getting rude with me in those days and I didn't really think that was a particularly apt description of me. The guy said I'll tell you what to do. Let's meet next week.

Write down the 20 craziest things you ever did. Well, I've got some stuff. I'll give you the a few of them that just were kind of that I can discuss here.

The first time I got a arrested for drunk was at the University of Oregon. I was in a beer bar and there was a very pretty girl there and uh she almost looked at me so I felt we had something you know this could go someplace and I turn around again she and she was gone but I found out she lived at the Tridel house on campus and at midnight that night I'm calling up the fire escape ladder at the Tridel House to discuss our future. Uh, and I went to jail that night.

So, I put this down. And then I uh by some hideous charade got accepted to the dental school at the University of Oregon. Uh, I don't belong there.

Not even. the the I was laughing at Howard and the because the amphetamines I took just to get me up on Saturday morning and get me down to the clinic where there was a clinic from 8 till noon on Saturday morning for the students and somebody sitting in a dental chair waiting for me to do something and they just come out with that new high-speed art driven handpiece and you could really make teeth disappear. appear faster at that time.

They don't like to hear you saying whoops, you know, when you're screwing around. I made a set of dentures for a guy my first year and I stayed two years before they threw me out. He came back the second year and I'd see him at the end of the clinic and he'd go, "Say something wrong with my teeth.

When they threw me out, I was greatly relieved, as you can imagine. And I uh I lived on Skidro waiting to go into the Marine Corps. It was 7 months that I was supposed to go in.

And Skidro drinking is much easier than the pretense attached to all that other stuff. easy drink and nobody asks you goofy questions like how are you, you know, it just doesn't come up. But I did write down that night I sat across a carved up wooden table in one of those places on Burnside Street in Portland.

They called them cafes. Can you imagine? Uh maybe the pickled pig's feet or something.

I don't know. But uh here was across this table a woman se seated uh and she had paper bags with her and I knew at once that it wasn't just a let's have a drink together. There was something going on.

You know, you just uh and I knew we were traveling. I don't know what our destination was. I don't know who she was.

I don't know her name. She was a sleeper. I would have asked her something.

You know, she's kind of passed out there at that table. Little chili on her cheek. So, I know we'd had dinner.

Some delicate flower I'd invited to dine that night. I wrote that down. I wrote down about that last drunk driving arrest where the cop said, uh, on the report, I discontinued the field sobriety test because a suspect was injuring himself.

That there's a lot of power in that life, isn't there? I had a bunch of stuff and I wrote it down and I took it to this guy and he asked me a fascinating question. He said, "This is crazy stuff and a lot of it is attached to drinking." I said, "Yeah, yeah, there's no question that I'm an alcoholic, I guess." He said, "You know, it's what you didn't put down here that uh tells the tale.

It's what you did between every two drunks with all this evidence that you should never drink, ever, ever, ever drink, knowing what chaos it can cause. between every two drunks while you were sober before you started to drink again. You did the craziest thing you could ever do." And I said, "What?" He said, "You did it repeatedly and you did it sober." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "You decided it would be a good idea to take another drink." That's insane.

And I finally began to get it. And he said, 'You brought that mind into Alcoholic synonymous and about the only shot you got is to tap into some power that is not generated by your mind. And I began living at a little different level.

And I it's funny I the greatest analogy I ever heard was a a guy in a a life raft and he's got one paddle and he's out in the ocean. This I'm getting a lot of feedback on this. Did the volume come up?

Um and he tries with all his might to get that life raft moving in some direction. And all you can do with that one paddle is to make it go around in circles. And then one day through some weird divine guidance, he has another different approach to exactly the same problem.

He takes off his shirt, ties it to that one paddle, sticks it up in the air, and catches real power. Not his power. Isn't that annoying?

But he gets moved and he has choices and he finds a different life and any direction will do as long as it isn't my direction cuz that's been the problem all this time. And so there came a day when I was in trial in San Diego that I looking at step three and all of its ramifications. What'll happen to me if I leap into the abyss?

What'll happen to me if I don't? And I had one thing that I never could get out of my mind that this power, whatever it was, had done exactly what Bill describes. move me abruptly from drunk to sober.

Isn't that interesting? God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden. The 14th of August, I was a drunk.

The 15th, I was not a drunk. Now, that's moving right along. Isn't that amazing?

Isn't that stunning? And everyone in the room that's an alcoholic has that amazing event. And if you're new, it'll happen to you.

You won't do it. You're not going to quit. We know that.

You wouldn't be here if you could quit. We're people that can't quit. And we're sober.

Now, that has to be that has to be recognized. Oh, we come up with all kinds of formulas. Well, I just made up my mind not to drink anymore.

Really? Wow. Well, how are you staying sober?

Well, I go to seven meetings and I have 28 commitments and I call my sponsor every day and I don't get No kidding. That ever worked anywhere before? Well, no, not really.

So, we're not not only could we not quit, we're not even keeping ourselves sober really. Well, we're keeping ourselves busy, don't get me wrong. We're finding useful things to do with our sobriety.

But it turns out it's been a gift. Been a gift. And you can't lose sight of that about that last drink, whatever formula you have wrapped around it.

Look again. Did you really quit? I don't think so.

God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. It was profound because it went right to that little piece of me that needs a drink and healed it up. And he did it without my consent.

Isn't that great? He met me at the level of my needs, certainly not at my merit. And so the picture gets a little clearer and it gets a little clearer.

And now am I going to leap into the abyss? And it turns out yes. Yes.

Yes. I will surrender to this whatever it is. And you know we talk about God as I understand God.

And I think all it means is a God that makes sense to me. That's all. Whatever God makes sense to you, grab it.

if it makes sense to you because it will never make sense out of the context of that remarkable moment when you didn't drink again and then you know you didn't do that and there is a power and does he have a personal interest in you apparently he does in me can I have a relationship with that power apparently I have one can I have a an arrangement with that power No, no, no. Isn't that great? He talks about employer, employer, principal, agent, and some of us hope.

The word partnership will sometimes be put in that book. It's not a partnership. Don't go for a partner.

Oh, it would start out God and Hajes. I know that pretty soon it'd be Hodgees and God. We know that.

And then it's God of counsel over here at the edge of the No, I don't want a partner. No, I want a father. I want a father.

And I have that and happened in a goofy hotel room in San Diego in the middle of a trial when I knew within me just because I looked when I believe I was silly enough to believe that goofy statement at the end of p chapter 3. It says, "For those of us who seek him, he will show himself to us." I said, "Show, show me. I've been looking.

Show me." And he is not boggled by my impatience. It turns out my discourtesy is not a big deal with him. But since I love God, the discourtesy drops out all by itself.

The the thing that's interesting here tonight is uh that part of the book that's read, that part of the book that's here at page 72 after we've written an inventory, the thing we never wanted to do. Now it's step five time and I got to sit down with somebody and with God. And he finally tells us the purpose of the inventory.

He says, 'We've been trying, Wilson says, 'We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator.' I said, that word attitude is interesting. The dictionary is very helpful with this. You want to look, you want to have some fun, look up goofy words like recovery.

It said one of the definitions of recovery is the extraction of something precious out of that which has no value. It's a mining term, but what the hell? That's where we are here.

We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator to discover the obstacles in our path. Attitude. Attitude.

What is that? One of the definitions is the relationship between an airplane and the horizon. And the tower says in a small airport with small aircraft.

What's your attitude? And the guy says, "I'm either climbing or diving. I'm banking left.

I'm climbing out right." And gives the tower guy a shot at identifying the airplane visually. What's my attitude with God? Leaning away.

Leaning away. Yeah. And it changes a new attitude.

Put your arm around me. Take care of me. If I go do that, will you go with me?

And I know. I know. He'll let me know.

You're going alone if you go do that. Okay. Okay.

Okay. And now it says in that same thing, and this is one of these very amazing sentences in this remarkable book, it says about our defects, now these are about to be cast out. God, that's an amazing sentence, isn't it?

And at step seven, that seems to be what's happening. When we let them go and ask them to be taken away, our life changes and we go make the amends and we go on to a different consciousness with God. And life, as Howard said, gets incredibly sweet.

And I have a lady in my life that I am absolutely goofy about. We've been married just eight years or nine, Linda. And we laugh and love.

And I trust her. I trust her because I knelt at a grave in Billings, Montana, and made amends to my mom and saw her completely differently. Rewrote my history in this spiritual way we have.

I knew how wrong I had been about her. How wrong I had been. She was there every day for me.

Every day there was clothing and food. And I can't trust her. My dad was halfway around the world at war.

And it was Billings. Nothing sophisticated about it. And she was doing exactly what she was to be doing, taking care of four kids with love and patience and kindness and losing it once in a while.

And forgiveness is a big piece of the action. And so we have this life. We have this life.

Well, I'm I'm going to sit down, but I I I just feel impelled to tell you. Um about a year ago, I got that uh diagnosis that uh I didn't even think it was coming up, but the guy says, "You have prostate cancer, and you got to do something about it, and you don't have a lot of time." So, I had the surgery maybe at the end of April or so and uh now I'm home from the surgery and I'm in a lot of pain and I'm in a lot of turmoil and I'm you know that what's going to happen? It's changing my life.

I don't know what's going to happen with my marriage. I don't know how we will be intimate now. I don't know how important that piece of it was.

And Howard Poland's called me in the midst of that turmoil, this remarkable human being. And I guess I was two weeks past surgery and not doing real well and afraid and in pain. And he didn't much do any introduction at all.

I there wasn't any warm-up. He said, "I got a story for you." I said, "Hi, Howard. I'm fine, too, thanks." He said, "There was this guy that loved skydiving." Howard doesn't tell stories without any point to him.

He loved skydiving. Every minute, every nickel that he had was skydiving. That's all he did except earn enough money to skydive.

And one day he's at altitude in the plane and the pilots's up there and the doors open and he's getting his gear together, pulled it together to do what he loves doing most in the world. He had not yet put on his parachute and the plane got caught in an updraft up updraft and there was a overreaction and this guy popped right out of the door of the airplane without his parachute. I'm going, "Oh man." And Howard said that guy at that moment had the choice that we all have.

He could spend the rest of his life in abject fear or doing the thing he loved to do most. And I got it. I got it.

Do what you love to do. What do I love to do? I love to practice law.

I love to coach trial lawyers. I love my wife and I love you. Love being here.

and I love God and he loves me too. And a couple of months went by and Linda and I had gone swimming and she was driving back and I said, "Pull over. Pull over.

I got to talk to you about something." She pulled over and she said, "Yeah." And I said, "You know that sex thing isn't coming back." and we haven't talked about it at all. But I want you to know that I know it's not coming back. And I want you to know that I'm at peace with that.

And I want you to know that in some weird way, I've fallen in love with you all over again. And she said, "I've fallen in love with you in a completely different way, too." She said, "I'll miss you very much, but I No, she didn't say that. And so we have a wonderful life, a wonderful life.

And I'm useful in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I love these steps and these amends and the wonderful things that happen when we get a relationship going with some power that's not our own. Thank you.

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.