My Feet Went to a Meeting, My Heart Went to a Bar – AA Speaker – David N.
AA speaker David N. shares his journey from homelessness and daily jail cycles to 12 years sober, emphasizing surrender, spiritual awakening, and the power of meetings and sponsorship.
David N. spent years living on the streets of Minneapolis, cycling through detox seven times in a single month, until a moment of total surrender changed everything. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through how meetings, the Big Book, and his sponsor’s no-nonsense guidance pulled him back from the edge of death and showed him a spiritual life was possible—even for someone who’d rejected God entirely.
David N. is an AA speaker who describes hitting bottom through homelessness, chronic public intoxication, and multiple jail and detox stays before getting sober at age 30. He details his early sobriety in treatment, working through his religious trauma to develop a personal spirituality, and how daily meetings, Big Book study, and sponsorship became the foundation of his 12-year recovery. The talk emphasizes the importance of going back to basics—meetings, gratitude, and connection to a power greater than himself—especially during times of restlessness and loss in long-term sobriety.
Episode Summary
David N. opens by reading a passage from the Big Book about the fellowship and common peril that binds alcoholics together—a passage he says is essential to his ability to tell his story authentically. He then walks through a childhood marked by poverty, rejection, and early signs of the disease: running away on his tricycle before school, being labeled a juvenile delinquent in a small Minnesota town of 600 people, and discovering alcohol as the ultimate escape from shame and pain.
By age 18, David had left his hometown and was living on the streets of Minneapolis. He drank for blackouts, not pleasure. He worked daily labor jobs that paid cash, slept in a recessed bank doorway on the Nicollet Mall, and wrapped his feet in newspaper to avoid freezing to death. His last drunk lasted nearly two years. He was arrested so frequently for public intoxication that he spent 21 days out of one month in detox—in and out, in and out, always finding a way to get another bottle. At one point, standing on a bridge crossing the Mississippi River, he wanted to die but couldn’t even do that. He believes God was holding him in the palm of his hand.
Throughout this period, David had been exposed to AA meetings while in and out of detox. He watched people in recovery who seemed inexplicably happy and joyous, yet he couldn’t believe it was real. He thought they must be on drugs. The disease kept him convinced he was too dirty, too far gone, to ever belong to such a fellowship.
The turning point came when a counselor named Pat—the same counselor he’d seen repeatedly through detox—finally got David to say yes to treatment. David spent 45 days in a 28-day program at a state hospital. There, he witnessed hallucinations (snakes on his arms, spiders from light sockets, voices), saw the progression of alcoholism in others around him, and came face-to-face with what awaited him if he kept drinking. He was assigned to be a hall monitor, which taught him responsibility—the ability to respond to his surroundings, something he’d never possessed.
A major obstacle emerged: the steps on the wall had God in them, and David had rejected God and religion as a child. He spent hours with a woman minister working through his spiritual confusion. Together they distinguished between religion (external authority and doctrine) and spirituality (an internal connection to love and care). This distinction freed him. His God today is not the vengeful, damning God of his childhood church but an all-loving, all-caring power that wants the best for him.
When groups from outside the hospital began taking David to meetings, a woman in the program put the Big Book in his hands and told him he was an absolutely beautiful child of God—not bad, just sick. That message, combined with watching others who had what he wanted, gave him direction. He became obsessed with his sponsor’s phone number, carrying it in his pocket for almost a year because he couldn’t remember it. His sponsor made him call every day, teaching him discipline. David attended a meeting every day that first year, lived in a halfway house, and worked through the steps using the Big Book as his text, not the wall. He considers the practices he established in that first year—daily meetings, calling his sponsor, working the steps, gratitude lists—the things that have kept him sober ever since.
Around five years sober, David hit a restless, irritable, discontent phase. He witnessed long-timers bickering over details, and he told his sponsor he didn’t want what they had. His sponsor responded with wisdom: learn from that behavior, decide now who you want to be at 12 or 13 years sober. That feedback prompted David to make a geographical move to Omaha, Nebraska, where he reconnected with the Big Book, the fellowship, and a deeper relationship with his Higher Power. On October 7, 1987—his second surrender—David got down on his knees for the first time and gave everything to God without holding anything back. Within a week, he had his old job back in Minneapolis and was connected to a Big Book study group that has been central to his recovery ever since.
The talk includes profound experiences of grief and grace: reconciling with his father (whom he hadn’t known) before the man died sober; standing at his father’s grave and experiencing a rush of freedom and forgiveness that healed a deep wound; and sitting vigil with a close friend dying of AIDS, witnessing the spiritual beauty of death and care, and realizing he was sober and present enough to honor that experience.
Throughout, David emphasizes that recovery isn’t about getting easier—it gets simpler. He returns again and again to the basics: meetings, the Big Book, gratitude, sponsorship, and a willingness to be taught. His title—”My Feet Went to a Meeting, My Heart Went to a Bar”—captures the early struggle of showing up physically while mentally and emotionally still craving escape. But by staying, by following people who had what he wanted, by working the steps, and by developing a personal spirituality, his heart eventually followed his feet into the rooms.
Notable Quotes
I drank to get drunk, you know. I drank and I had tried drugs, but they didn’t get what I wanted. And what I wanted was blackouts. I wanted to escape the pain that I was in.
There was a voice said and it wasn’t mine: ‘No, don’t let me out of here, cuz I’ll never come back.’ So I sat there for 10 days.
She put a big book in my hand and she told me I was an absolutely beautiful child of God, that I was not bad, that I was sick and if I wanted what she had to follow her and that’s what I did.
I’ve absolutely experienced it where my feet are going to a meeting and my heart was going to a bar, you know? I mean, it saved my life.
After your years of sobriety, does it get easier? And I said, no, it gets simpler. I complicate it, you know.
My God loves me very very much and he wants no holes in my soul, you know. And that day another piece of me healed.
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Hitting Bottom
- Sponsorship
- Big Book Study
- Spiritual Awakening
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Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> My name is David and I'm an alcoholic.
>> And if I hadn't become an alcoholic, I probably wouldn't have become anything. And I think as I tell my story, you'll understand what I mean by that. Um, I first want to thank the committee for inviting me.
Um, I needed to be here this weekend more than you needed me here. Um, I've been going through a lot of losses this year. I buried a very, very close friend this spring that died of AIDS.
Um, my roommate is moving to Hawaii the 1 of September. This is breaking up a very close relationship. Um, another very, very close friend and probably the person that knows me the best besides my sponsor is is moving out, is being transferred.
So, I've been going through all these losses in my life. And I had forgotten about the fellowship and about the love that's in this program. And I've gotten that here this weekend.
Um, it started when Ed and Ellen picked me up Wednesday at the plane. Um, it's that that rejuvenation that just letting myself be loved by you people. And that's been real important for me here.
And I want to thank you very very much. The speakers have have been incredible and and if just being asked isn't isn't enough um to be with the lineup of speakers that I've been is is is just incredible. Um let's give all the other speakers a game.
I'm going to open my talk with something that I do every time I speak and it's real important for me because it's it's and it's from the textbook. It's from there is a solution and it's what it allows me to open up and tell you exactly what it was like for me and it goes like this. We are people who normally would not mix.
But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner. Excuse me.
The moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness, and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to captain's table. Unlike the feelings of the ship's passengers, however, our joy and escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of shared the feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the power of excuse me.
The feeling of having shared in a in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement that binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution.
We have a way out in which we can absolutely agree and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries for those who suffer from alcoholism. I uh like Lisa said, I think there's a lot of things in in that happened to me as a child and before I took my medicine for the first time that are real important in my story.
Um I ran away from home on my tricycle. serious. Before I was even in school, um I was a juvenile delinquent.
Um my mother told me numerous times as a child and in later years that if she knew what I was going to be like, she'd have strangled me with my biblical court. Um, and I think that has that has permeated a what a a lot of how I felt about myself throughout my life. And it wasn't until I got here that I was able to let go a lot of that.
Um, I'm one of these people that I don't remember dates that happened in my sobriety. I think John was real clear and at least and some of the others about when they took their first drink and when this happened and when that happened. I don't remember those days.
Um I was exposed to AA for about 4 years before I got here and and I know that I was drunk on Christmas but I wasn't drunk at New Year's. So my sponsor and I talked about it and and discuss it and and we picked December 28th. That feels like a good date.
It was in there somewhere. And on December 28th of last last year, I celebrated 12 years of continuous. And that's an absolute miracle because in the end I couldn't go 4 hours without a drink, you know.
Um I know I started smoking at age 11. Um I don't know when I took my first drink. I saw my first alcohol-related jail at age 14.
Um and I'm one of these people that never crossed the line. I'd already crossed the line before I was born. I don't know what it is to drink socially.
I never drank socially. I mean, there was never enough for me. Um, I didn't drink to drink.
I drank to get drunk, you know. I drank and and I I had I tried drugs, but they didn't get what I wanted. And what I wanted was blackouts.
I wanted to escape the pain that I was in. Um, I was hated as a child. I was from the wrong side of the tracks.
I only played or had friends with people that were poorer than I was. And the only difference between them and us was they had dirt floors and we didn't. You know, I don't know what it is as a child to get a lot of new new school clothes and all that other things that kids got and we got a pair of shoes and and a pair of jeans when school started and that was the extent of my school clothes.
Um, I didn't do well academically. Uh, being a juvenile delinquent. I didn't school wasn't for me.
I wanted out. I wanted to drink, you know, and and alcohol gave me that escape as a very very early age. Um, I discovered I was born and raised in a little town in northern Minnesota, population at that time of about 600.
So everybody knew what everybody was doing. Um, so everyone knew I was a juvenile Lincoln. I was looked down upon and beat up and u I got out of there as fast as I could.
I mean, I didn't even go to my graduation party or anything and my suitcase was packed and I had was in Minneapolis as soon as graduation was over. And at that time drinking age was 21. But if you're young, blonde, blue-eyed, Scandinavian, um the streets of Minneapolis were wonderful.
You know, there was a lot of people that that that would give you what you wanted just for for um to be with you. And um in later years that uh that kept me alive being young blonde blueeyed Scandinavian um I did a lot of things to my body with my body um just to stay alive, you know, just to make it on the streets of Minneapolis. and and I drank as much as I could whenever I could from ages 18 till ages age 30 when I finally got the miracle.
Um I lived on the streets and I I I wasn't going to pay rent. I mean that was good drinking money. I mean why I mean why waste it?
I mean you know I I I don't mix drinks. I never did mix drinks. That was a waste, you know.
Um, I drank for the brown paper the brown paper bag. And um, my last drunk lasted me um, 3 months shy of two years. And the only time I drew a silver breast during that time was when they stopped me.
I couldn't stop on my own. Um, John talked about the freedom of choice, you know, Friday night and that is one of the greatest gifts I think of this program is the freedom of choice cuz when I was drinking, I had no choices. The bottle made every choice for me.
You know, I uh just to qualify myself, I'm going to tell you a few things of what happened to me. And they said I was living on the streets in and out of jails, detoxes. Um, my record.
Now, in Minnesota, you have to understand the law says if you're picked up for public intoxication, you can pale for 72 hours. Well, every time I was in there, I was in there for 72 hours. There was a detox center and my record is seven times in one month.
Now, if you count that up, that's 21 days out of a month I spent in detox. I mean, I would be out in the morning, I would get a jug and I was back in. And that and that's how I lived.
Um, I I have a very specific recollection where uh was 8:00, liquor stores opened at 8:00. We had just gotten a jug. We're in the park drinking.
The police came along and picked us up and they said we're going to detox. That didn't bother me cuz I was going home. What bothered me was that they got my jug of alcohol, you know?
I mean, they got and I had just capped it. I mean, there was that whole bottle gone to waste and that's how I lived, you know. Um, as I said, I lived on the streets and I and and in Minnesota, it gets very very cold in the winter.
Um, and and I worked daily labor, which is an alcoholic dream. Uh you go in in the morning, you get sent out, you come back and they pay you cash that day. Well, you know, that that was wonderful.
And I had worked that day and I had worked in a restaurant and it was very wet and my feet were freezing and and I lived, if you want to call it that. I mean, they tease me now about having one of the best addresses in town um in the Nicollet Mall, which is the main um street in town. A lot of very exclusive places on there, but there was one where there was a bank and it was recessed and there's a little cubby hole with with with hedges in front of it and and I could crawl back in there and and that was my home.
And and I remember one night um it was probably 20 below 25 below some that was in the middle of winter and my feet were freezing and and I knew if I didn't do something I was going to freeze to death. So I walked out, dug through the garbage cans and found newspapers and wrapped my feet in newspapers to keep from freezing to death. And the horror of all of that is that I was living like that because I truly believed I couldn't have what I have today cuz I had already experienced AA at that time.
Um I was um been to several meetings as a result of being in and out of detox. uh the counselor that I got that I got every time um would talk to me about AA and and and new people would come up and put on meetings and I would go cuz it was something to do and and you were as the big book says happy, joyous and pretty and I could see it in your faces and your eyes and and I can remember sitting there thinking, you know, you may not be drinking but I'm sure you're smoking funny cigarettes or cuz there was there was there was no way there was no way people could be that happy without some sort of chemical in your body. And um so that just continued and continued and continued and and I remember standing on the bridge.
There's a bridge that crosses the Mississippi River and and wanting to die. wanted to die in the worst worst way and I wanted to jump and I couldn't I I just could not kill myself and and I believe it's one of those times when God was holding me in the palm of his hand and doing for me what I could not do for myself. I mean there was I just couldn't do it.
I mean and I was at that point where it talks about in the big book that the alcoholic will reach a point that he cannot differentiate the truth from the false you know and I was at that point and I wanted to die. So I went about killing myself the only way I knew how and that was to drink myself to death. Um, living on the streets, uh, my, um, every morning when I took that first drink, wherever I could get it, I knew it was coming back up.
So, I had to be someplace that that I knew that I could. And every morning, I threw up blood. And that lasted for almost a year.
When I got into this program, got into the state hospital where I sobered up. The amazing thing and it's another one of those times when God held me in the palm of his hand. I have no physical damage whatsoever to myself.
I mean, it's amazing that I haven't even have a liver left, but there was none. I was malnourished, of course, but um I have no damage. As I said, I had been to to meetings on and off and and I remember one meeting in particular.
I was sitting in the back of the room. People up front were talking about this this slumber party they were having all night slumber party and I thought, you know, you guys are nuts. I really need a drink.
And I want to be part of that. Ironically, one of the people talking about that slumber party is my sponsor and has been for 12 and a half years, you know. Um, so and and it just continued that way and and I don't know what happened.
I don't know why. Um, I sober up when I did. Um, I've heard it said that God's kids can see when they can see and they can hear when they can hear.
And I guess I was just sick and sick and tired of being sick and tired. And um I, as I said, I got the same counselor every time I was in the detox center. And um I went in on I was male nurse.
In fact, I had called his name was Pat. And and and another one of those ironic things is been to to meetings on and off. And and I remember one meeting in particular, I was sitting in the back of the room.
People up front were talking about this this slumber party they were having, all night slumber party. And I thought, you know, you guys are nuts. I really need a drink.
and I um and I had lost all identification. I lost my wallet, absolutely everything. But I never lost Pat's card and and I called him that day and said, "I need to go to treatment." And he said, "Well, you get her to detox right now." And I got over there and um he pulled me in his office and and and the next morning and he said, "Are you serious about going to treatment?" And I said, "Yes." And the relief just flooded through his face cuz he had tried and tried and tried to stop me and go to treatment and I would never go.
That was probably some of the best therapy for me was to sit there for because they couldn't get me into treatment. Now, I had no money. So, I was on the county, I was on the state to to go to a treatment center and they couldn't get me in right away.
So, after about 3 4 days, you know, the fog starts to clear a little bit and you start to see what's going on around you. And um and in fact in during that period you know Pat had had called me in his office and said you it's going to be about 10 days before you can go you know do you need to go out and take care of anything you can come back in then u a voice said and it wasn't mine no don't let me out of here cuz I'll never come back. So I sat there for 10 days.
Now what I saw was myself. Um I saw the people that were talking to the doorork knobs. I saw the people going into DTS, you know.
I I saw myself if if I continued. See, I had all and what I know now is that I had gone through the DPS because I saw the snakes on my arms, the spiders coming out of the light sockets. Um, voices of people that were impossible for them to be in that room, but they were talking to me.
And um, and I know today now that that those were hallucinations. And and it's much like Lisa says about kissing the doors of death. I mean, that's how close I was at that time.
And that was very good for me. I spent 45 days in a 28 day treatment program. Um it was it was at the state hospital which again was very very good for me.
I mean, we were separated for the program part of it, but we ate with the general population. And I saw again what happens to people that don't quit drinking, you know. Um, today I work in the field of mental health and and I'm absolutely astounded at the number of people that that I deal with that are mentally ill as a result of alcohol or drugs.
Um, it's justice family and I saw myself and I saw I saw the people doing what we call the anopa shuffle in Minnesota, but it's it in a lot other parts of the country it's called the Forzine shuffle where it takes you half an hour to make a corner, you know, and that was neat. I mean, I was that close to being that when when I got there. I mean, I went in with clothes on my back and that's all I had.
Um, they had to start from scratch. I mean, I I I I I hardly knew my own name. Um, somehow the counselor picked up that I needed to be taught responsibility.
So, they made me the hall monitor and all this other good stuff. And people have been telling me all my life that I needed to get responsible. And I and then I could never figure out what that is.
And I heard a speaker say once and it's real important to me. responsibility is the ability to respond to your surroundings and and and that makes sense to me and I didn't have it you know um as I said I was there 45 days I uh I had throughout my drinking I come from uh a very fundamentalist religious background so and I had rejected the church. I had respect rejected God at a very very early age.
And so when I finally got into these rooms, and I think it's part of what kept me from from sobering up, I would look at the steps as they were on the wall, and I rejected them cuz they had God in it, cuz I didn't believe in God. Um, so I I spent a lot of time working on on other than doing steps one through five in treatment, I spent a lot of time trying to to figure out this God crap, as I call it. And and there was a woman minister that that came in and did spiritual counseling.
and we spent like 4 hours together just just talking about spirituality and God and and all that other stuff and what we finally came up with and it works for me and and if it works for you fine and if it doesn't that's fine too. Um, see I had such a hangup about religion and I wasn't able to separate that from spirituality and what works for me is this. Religion is the love and manifestation of a person outside of yourself.
Spirituality is the love and manifestation of a person inside of yourself. And that I could accept. Um my concept of God today is is totally changed.
Um my belief is that if there is a God, it's not the one that we see in the churches today. Um he's not the vengeful, hateful, damning one that churches teach us about because if that was the case, none of us would be here, you know. Um it was a miracle I sobered up and um in fact there's a line in the 12 by 12 and that that Bill Wrote that says you know it's truly awful to think that glass in hand we have warped our mind into such a pattern of obsessive drinking that nothing short of an act of providence can remove it and and that's not the god I grew up with, you know, um my God is all loving, all caring.
Um he only wants the best for me. Um and and as I was in treatment, I um groups would come in. Now having compromised myself and it talks about a book and having compromised myself to the point that I no longer felt to compromise.
Um you know and seeing every living being as the enemy and hating you till the point that I no longer felt the hate. Um I thought I was too dirty. You know I thought I would never be accepted in this program.
And there was a group of people that came in and and I'm so grateful to them um because they came in and started taking me to meetings outside of of of the state hospital and and I was trying to trying to grasp this program somehow because it was the only thing left. I had tried everything else and it didn't work and I couldn't kill myself. if I I couldn't make it without drinking and and they took me under their wing kind of came and got me and took me to meetings and and and I was talking to to one of the gals in the meeting and and trying to get this and and just really hating myself and feeling real dirty and and real ashamed of what I had done.
and she told me something that's that's very very important to me. Um, she put a big book in my hand and she told me I was an absolutely beautiful child of God, that I was not bad, that I was sick and if I wanted what she had to follow her and that's what I did. Um, I become a student of the big book.
Um it it is our basic text. Uh mine is all all written up, scratched, you know, highlighted and that's been real important for me. Um and and and I and I watched this this woman and my sponsor was going to that meeting and and um you know I I had forgotten how it was to live without alcohol or any other way and I would watch people as they came in to the meeting how they dressed you and what colors they put together cuz I had forgotten.
I didn't know. Um, I still get uncomfortable when they go out to a very nice restaurant. There's more than two forks and I don't know what to do, you know.
I mean, it took me a long time to figure out the short one was the salad fork, the salad fork, you know. I just didn't know. Um, and I followed those people and I watched cuz I wanted what they had.
There was something about that group that I wanted what they had. I um I carried my sponsor's phone number in my pocket for almost a year cuz I couldn't remember his name or his number. You know, I would pull it out to call him.
He made me call him every day. And that was part of teaching me some discipline was to call him every day. You know, I had to be taught from day one.
Um, I was told and it and it's happened to me that the things I did in my first year of sobriety were the things that would save my life the rest of my life. And it's absolutely true. I um I went to a meeting every day that first year um every single day.
I I lived in a halfway house. Um I couldn't work, you know. I didn't have any profession other than prostitution and burglary practically.
Um, and those things have kept me sober the rest of my life. I mean, I've absolutely experienced it where my feet are going to a meeting and my heart was going to a bar, you know? I mean, it it it saved my life.
Um, I started working the steps and my sponsor says take them off the wall and put them in the big book and and I work the steps from the big book, not off the wall, you know. Um, I really appreciate what Lisa said about the fourep, you know, that that I mean, some of us came in here, most of us, probably most came in here with such sexual hang-ups or sexual problems and we don't talk about that in a and yet the old-timers thought it was important enough. You know, they devoted a whole quarter of the inventory to it.
you know, and we don't talk about it and they we need to I mean, I came in here with such beliefs about sex that I needed to work through them and I'm real glad my sponsor was there for me to do that. Um, and I knew there had to be uh a power or something or God or something that was going to keep me sober cuz I had never been able to do it by myself. Um, the big book talks about, you know, lack of power.
That was our dilemma. You know, this spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it, you know.
We have to find a power that can keep us sober. And for a long time, the groups and my sponsor were my high power. I mean, my sponsor is what kept me sober.
He's the one that kind of got me and took me to a meeting, you know, told me to shut up and listen. And it's it's I consider myself to today to be a very spiritual man. I'm not a religious man.
Um I still I go to several meetings. One is in in in the basement of a church and we're walking down the hall every once in a while going eff it eff it. Friend of mine turned to me and says, "What are you doing?" you know, I I'm swear in church, you know, I don't have any resentments, of course, but and I had to find a power that was not connected with the church and and and I've been able to do that.
Um, it's and and and how it's worked for me is is is that I mean, it's like talking to to Hermon, you know, if if I don't talk to Hermon, I wouldn't get to know him. And I've had to do that with my power. You know, I I choose to call it God.
Um, but I've had to talk to him. I' I've had to sit still and let him come into my life and and and do what what needs to be done. Uh, about 5 years sober.
Uh, I was what the big book calls restless, irritable, and discontent. Um, I was going to meetings. They weren't working for me.
Um, I uh there's a group that was very involved in and I had about 5 years sobriety and they had like 12 years at that 11 years 10 years and they were planning um a Thanksgiving dinner for people that had nowhere to go. And um they started arguing over the guest list and uh and and I went to my sponsor and and and I said, you know, that's what long-term sobriety is. I don't want it.
You know, and and sponsors like old-timers sometimes I think they have brain damage, you know. I mean, John says, "You're absolutely right. You know, you don't want it." He said, "David, learn from that.
Learn that when you get to be 12 and 13 years old, that's not how you want to be." Well, I needed to make a geographical cure. I've done it sober. Um, I had gone to a conference in in Kansas City, Missouri.
and um and I met some people from Omaha and and just had a wonderful wonderful wonderful time and and also at that conference there was a woman that spoke that I've heard speak before and has been huge influence on my life. Um, I was still trying to get this higher power stuff and this God and and she talked about in her story and she tells a little story and and it makes sense to me too that we can think of our higher power or God as and as you know with all of our drinking you know our minds are like great libraries and the books have been turned pulled out torn up the pages thrown around and and our higher power is that little man that comes in at night and reminds those books and puts them back on the shelf. And he's also the one that makes sure when we lay down at night that our heart is beating, that our temperature is what it's supposed to be.
And I could I could comprehend what she was talking about. And I grasp that. And that is what I think is one of my spiritual experiences.
Well, I made the decision to move to Omaha, Nebraska. As I said, I was restless, irritable, discontent, and um I surrendered for the second time in Omaha. Um and I think most of us go through that the second surrender.
I was reintroduced to Big Book Aa. I'd gotten away from it. Um I was reintroduced to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Um, I I can remember sitting in in one of their meetings in the back room, arms across my chest. You know, I don't know anybody here. Well, they made me greet her at the door.
I got to meet a whole lot of people real fast. Um, there you didn't just say hi, you shook their hand and said, "My name is David. Welcome to the meeting." And I got to meet a whole lot of people.
And I had left a fairly decent job here in here in Minneapolis. Um I was living in Omaha and um was not I had taken a severe cut in pay. Um spiritually things were wonderful.
I was reconnected with a I was reconnected with God. But on October 7th, 1987, I surrendered for the second time. And I totally surrendered.
There were no more deals. I mean, I was one of these people that throughout this period, I mean, there were things that I would give to God to do, to work on, but I kept some of them. Um, and what happened was that I had to surrender totally, you know.
Um, and I got also got down on my knees for the first time ever on that night and gave it all to God. And and my life hasn't been the same since. Um, as a result of that, uh, one phone call, I got my old job back.
Within a week, I was back in Minneapolis. I mean, it was just that quick. I mean, it was God doing for me what I could not do for myself again.
I came back um and then this this this gal kept telling me about this incredibly wonderful big book study group that was meeting at the Cavalere Club and um and that I should go cuz I was looking for big book a big big book aa again. So I went and I didn't see her there. So the next time I talked to her, you know, I said, "Well, I I went to the meeting.
Where were you?" So, well, I don't go to that meeting. And it was another one of those jobs that someone in my life to get me to that that meeting. I've been at that meeting ever since.
And if you're ever in Minneapolis, he's at the Cavalier Club on Thursdays 5:45. Um, I've gotten I I've I've through that meeting um I've gotten involved in service. Um I've become a student of the Big Book again.
Um, it's it's truly amazing to me how sometimes some of us with a little length of sobriety forget that the things that worked at 1 year, 2 year, we think they're not going to work at 10, 11, 12, you know. Um, I I was talking to a friend a couple months ago and it was like throughout what I've been going through, you know, what makes me think that that the things that I did when I first sobered up aren't going to work now or the gratitude list. My sponsor has when I first sobered up having me do a gratitude list and then um you know I was grateful I was in a warm place.
I was grateful I could brush my teeth, take a bath, you know um and I need to be brought back to that absolute simplicity of the program. you know that whatever is going on in my life, I need to be reminded that the greatest miracle has already happened. And for me, that's physical sobriety.
You know, all the rest of this is just icing on the cake. You know, whether I have a good job, the right car, you know, the right lover, I mean, any of that, that's immaterial to me. The most important thing is I'm sober.
So, I started doing that and it's working. Those simple basic things that that that kept me sober first are keeping me sober today. Somebody asked me once, you know, after after your years of sobriety, does it get easier?
And I said, no, it gets simpler. I complicate it, you know, and it's very true. You know, that that absolute basic Um there's a couple things that happened um that I want to talk about and then I'm going to sit down.
Uh my dad left when I was a very very young age and I never saw him again until in 1988 when he passed away and he passed away sober. Um when I had made the decision to move to Omaha, um most of my family went crazy, uh my mother, in fact, one of her comments was about moving to the the hell hole of the world or some awful thing like that. And and my dad called and and now you have to realize I have ne I had never known my father.
I have no recollection of him being around when I was a child. And um he came back into my life. He moved back to uh sobered up and moved in with his father to take care of my grand I I went home was living in Omaha at the time.
I went home and I walked into my brother's house and my dad and I passed. We didn't even know who we were. He didn't know I was his son.
I didn't know he was my father. So I and and so we were reintroduced to each other. And what happened as a result of all of that is that all those questions and all those things about who my father was, what he was like were were removed.
And when I was moving to Omaha, he was the only one that called and said, "Is there anything I can do? Do you need to store something? you know, um, is there anything I can help you with?
Well, um, so I had gotten to know my father. I mean, we started to develop a relationship and he died very, very suddenly. Um, and he had said to my sister-in-law on Sunday that he needed to call me and he died on Tuesday.
I never made the phone call. Um, so I came back for the funeral and they had done the at the graveside service. He was a veteran.
They had done the last rights and and all that other stuff. Taps were over and the family was moving away and I felt a real urge to just stand there. and I stood by his grave and um I got this incredible rush of freedom and of forgiveness and it was like my dad could go in peace and so could I.
Um you see my God loves me very very much and he wants no holes in my soul you know and that day another piece of me healed you know um it's an incredible experience as I said I'm going to talk about this and then I'm going sit down I lost a very very close friend May 5th he died of AIDS Now he was the type I mean he was him and I were uh we laughed that our mothers were stirred with the same stick. I mean there was just incredible connection between him and I. First time I saw him in a meeting.
I mean it's kind of like I was cuz he was sitting in the kneehole of a desk. Um and that's where he felt safe. That's where he felt comfortable.
Um and um as he was getting sick, we got to spend a lot of time together um talking about death, talking about life. Um and I watched this man that came from the same place I did about God and spirituality and I watched him transform over the years. um to a very incredibly incredibly spiritual man.
Um he was ready for death. He accepted it. Um, and uh, the day that he died, uh, I we we were he died at home and we had a schedule set up where there were two of us that would sit 24 hours with him.
Now, that day, it was not my day to sit with with him. And yet I show I ended up at the house and there were three or four others that did. And and I realize now that that was God moving me there to be a part of that.
And um the end was coming. We knew it was coming. They had called me on Friday at work to come.
He was dying. I went, he rallied. Um, Sunday morning at 5:00, the nurse called me.
She was sure he was dying. Um, she would say my name and he would squint his eyes. There was no communication at that point.
And so I went, he rallied. Well, he finally let go Monday evening and we were all there. And um I had an experience.
Death is very painful, but it's also very beautiful. I mean, much like Lisa, what Lisa was talking about, cuz we were there when he died. And his family was there.
They were from Iowa, small town in Iowa. The family's minister was there. And and after Gro passed away, um the nurse brought us all into the room and uh we washed him up, combed his hair, and he had already expired at this point and put on his favorite shirt, his favorite pants, and had a little service.
lit an eighth candle, held hands, said goodbye, and the minister was there and and watched all of this. And um after after we had done that and the body was gone and we're all sitting around, we heard him on the phone and we don't know who he was talking to. But um what he said was that he had never been had the experience of experiencing an AIDS related death.
And what he saw that night was one of the most spiritual things he had ever saw. Now, this was coming from a minister and I turned to a friend of mine and and I said, you know, thank God I'm sober that I get to experience that, that I get to I get to to take care of someone in life and in death, you know, it was an absolutely absolutely incredible experience. Um, as I said, I want to thank you for being here.
I'm really nervous, so I'm just going to sit down. Um, it's been an incredible weekend. Thank you very much.
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