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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. My name is Dick Anderson.

I am alcoholic and I am a member of the Mlin Group in Powder Springs, Georgia. Uh, and if you looked on the flyer, it said I was from Lithium Springs, Georgia. It's actually in Lithia Springs.

But for those of you who are manic depressive, come and visit us. The spring does have lithium in it. There is hope.

We're grateful to be here. Um and um Barbara spoke here last year and had a great time here last year and and uh one of my uh the people that I've been friends with who's helped me stay here for a long time is Bob B, one of your founders and Linda is uh Barbara's sponsor. So it's been a real blessing for us to be here with them and we spent some time with them here on Thursday night.

We got in it was about uh I guess 50°. We were out at the the big mall yesterday and 48, 50°, whatever it was. I was cold.

I was kind of chilling and everybody was wearing short shorts and flip-flops and we understand this is what you all call spring weather for us. This is the deep of winter. So, I want to thank Jeff and the committee for the invitation.

I want to thank my hos my host uh Ross who has been uh an excellent host. He's given me whatever I needed, taking care of it. I appreciate VISTA with him.

And he was at our table tonight. There were a bunch of people that were I don't think anybody was above 25 and they were all active members who had five, six, seven years and they're on committees and they're working and and that's the future of our fellowship and it's what's going to keep it here for a long time. And a good friend of mine, you know, we there are lots of friends here this weekend.

Um, uh, Bill, uh, and you do need to come here. Bill, Bill, uh, gave us My Name is Bill W. And more recently, uh, the Lois Wilson story, When Love is Not Enough.

So, those two films are his films, and you certainly want to be here tomorrow afternoon when he when he talks about he was friends with uh, uh, with Bill Wilson and friends with Lois and and you do not want to miss his session tomorrow afternoon. But we've been friends. There are a lot of other friends here.

uh Rick who was up here who was originally scheduled to introduce me and I got to work together at uh uh at the general service conference when I was a delegate. Um the speakers this weekend are tremendous. But one of our friends, one of my close friends is from Louisiana.

He was a delegate when I was delegate and he is um uh his name is Irvin and I'd like for him to stand up because this was his 22nd birthday this weekend. And for those who would like to know, he's single and he's making a lot of money in the oil business over there. He'll be around all weekend.

Yeah. Lily is going to speak. Uh, one of my favorite people is here.

Lily is going to speak uh Saturday night. Um Frank's message uh and the work that he's done with his group has has been an example to me and helped keep me here. Um and uh Palmer we've been friends with.

The only two new people were Jennifer who you heard earlier this afternoon who uh was just gave a tremendous story and um Magdalina. So I'm looking forward to hearing her and just looking forward to spend the rest of the weekend with you. But one of my great privileges here is going to be able to introduce uh Sandy B on Sunday morning.

Sandy is my favorite AA speaker and I don't have to to hesitate at all. There's not I mean Sandy is I don't know anybody that gives a talk like Sandy Beach and um and and Sandy has been a good friend to me for a long time. Sy's also a Marine and that reminds me that the reason for this weekend is it is Memorial Day.

I come from a family of of everybody serves men and women and I'd like for everybody who is a veteran to stand right now so we can recognize you. Like Jennifer, I come from a family where you wouldn't think that uh there would be a large insulence of alcoholism. I am the first alcoholic of record in my family.

I don't come from a family of wealth, but I come from a family of honor. My dad's one of the most decorated pilots during World War II. Um, and uh, my little sister's a retired bird colonel.

Served well and with distinction. Her husband served in Vietnam and retired as a bird colonel. Their boy graduated from West Point.

Um, I'm named from my great great-grandfather who was Richard Anderson, three star general under Robert E. and he was named for his grandfather who was uh General Dick Anderson who was a captain and commanded the first boat across the Delaware in 1776. So that's the family that I grew up in and if you know anything about me, you know immediately I don't fit in with that family.

I got drunk and enlisted and I was a staff sergeant in Vietnam and uh I had two tours in Vietnam. I seem to do well in combat, but but uh uh but the rest of life was a I was clueless about. And from the very beginning, I didn't feel like I fit in with the family.

I didn't feel like I fit in with the rest of the family. All my uncles would show up and they're all in uniform and they would take off and they would go and do their duty and and our family didn't go down to the VFW and drink. I I joined the VFW when I got back from Vietnam because I found out you could always get a drink in a dry county.

So, a tip for those who are planning to have a slip. And so, but I but but in my family, I just felt like I didn't fit in. I was I was scheming to get a nickel off my mom's dresser so I could get a candy bar while the rest of the family is quietly serving honorably.

They didn't brag. You know, my dad was given the uh Army Cross, which is like a Navy Cross next to the Medal of Honor. Had couple of silver stars, distinguished flying cross, all of these decorations.

I never heard any of those stories. There wasn't any bragging that went on. Everybody in the family just served.

And I didn't get that. I wasn't part of that. I didn't feel like I fit in.

We didn't go to church. Um we there was nothing pragmatic or dogmatic about the the way we were church, but they were people of great faith. Um you know, one of my dad's heroes was Stonewall Jackson.

Stonewall Jackson was called Stonewall because he believed that if we trust God, we're going to go when it's our time to go. And so he stood straight up even during combat. And his troops admired that.

There was no fear. And so that's the family I came from. I didn't remember seeing a lot of fear.

Honest. If they had a nickel too much change, they would take it back. And from the very beginning, I was scheming and trying to And if you live like that, you can't really tell people what's going on.

And if the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, we have somebody called a sponsor where we can tell these things to. But I had no sponsor to tell these things to. So I just kind of faked it the whole time.

I pretended to be somebody I wasn't. Even when I was four, five, six years old. All the activities that I was involved with were activities that taught me the principles I'm supposed to know in AA.

The things that we come to know in AA. I was a member of Little League, YMCA, the church, vacation bible school, 4H, Boy Scouts. If you remember what it said in the Boy Scout handbook said, "We please God best when we do something to help another person each day anonymously." And that's exactly what we do in this fellowship.

But I didn't get it. Doesn't make any difference why I didn't get it. I just didn't get it.

And so, uh, I lived kind of a play life. And the only place that I found any kind of solace when I was a kid, we had a new invention. It was black and white.

It had kind of a lot of static on it, but it had these pictures. And it had just come out. This is in the 50s.

And it was called a television. And on this television, there were shows like Azie and Harriet, Leave It to Bieber, Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show. And somehow or another, I could relate more to the characters in that show than I could the people around me in my real life.

I couldn't tell my little league coach or my boy scout leader or any of these people what was really going on with me. But if Opie or Wall-E ever got off the beam, by the end of the show, Dad would take his pipe, turn it to one side, say something gentle without judgment. Opie or Wally would get the message and they'd get back on the beam.

And that became my moral compass. I became one of the characters. Didn't see myself on the screen, but it was real to me.

And I became very much a part of that. I had my first spiritual experience when I was about six or seven. I went to the drive-in theater with my dad, my little sister, the soon to be retired Burke Colonel, my dad, the colonel, all the heroes, and me.

And we go to see this movie, and I had never seen anything in color cuz television was black and white. And up there on the screen, 120 ft wide, there was the most power I'd ever seen. And the big book says, "Lack of power is our dilemma." And I actually thought there was something inferior about me.

My family, they were one way. They had something I didn't have. They had some power that I didn't have.

And up there in that screen was the most power I had ever seen. It was not only in color, it was in technicolor, 120 ft wide. And it was a guy up there named Moses.

And he had a staff, and he would just push it to one side. The name of the film was The Ten Commandments. And I made two decisions that night.

One, I wanted to be around whatever that was. Turned out God was listening because I've been around film and TV for a long time. But the second decision I made was I wanted to be on God's side cuz I saw what you Charlton Hston had done to UE Briner.

And so the next day, much to the surprise of my mother and father, who did not know I was having a spiritual experience in the back of the 55 Ford, I went down the aisle in Lyndon Baptist Church and got dipped and dunked to a song called We Surrender All. And I was about 3 and 1/2 ft tall. And I surrendered all there was of me.

And uh but I was like, and I had a real emotional experience. I thought that this was the answer. I didn't fit in.

my this family that I was around talked about God. So, I'd give myself to God and I'd be okay. I'd be like them.

But I was like the newcomer who comes to AA who comes to our meetings and sits and may make a decision but doesn't do anything about it. I wasn't taking any steps to change. And because I didn't take any steps to change, after a few days, months, weeks, whatever it was, I was still the scared little Baptist Boy Scout.

And I felt like there was a an expression they used back then called the chosen ones. And I felt like I was not one of the chosen ones. So when I now I don't fit in with my family and God doesn't want me.

And I made a decision that God didn't want me. I walked away from that church and I became as angry as I could be towards God. And I carried that until I've been into Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time.

And I behaved that way. I faked it for a long time until I had my next spiritual experience. I was 14 years old and my buddy Dave and I were playing a Babe Ruth League baseball game the next day.

He was left field, I was center field and he got I had never wasn't around alcohol. Our family reunions we had iced tea and lemonade and he got a half pine of jin and a six-ack of beer and I drank the beer and he drank the gin and for the first time in my life I felt that power. It's called distilled spirits.

I felt that spirit that they were talking I thought they were talking about in church and it's easy to get the two confused. Jennifer was talking about it earlier. Suddenly I felt no fear.

Everything dropped off my back. I felt like I was about 6 ft tall. I felt like Moses must have felt when the wind was blowing through his hair.

And so from the very beginning I was not a stay-at-home drunk. I was a go to town drunk. And going to town when you're 14 means hitchhiking.

And we hitchhiked up to a place called the White Castle. And I don't know if they have them up here or not. Do they?

Okay. It's a place where you go when you're drunk at 3:00 in the morning to get about a dozen cheeseburgers with all those onions on them, which seems like it's a good idea when you're drunk at 3:00 in the morning. So, we head to the White Castle.

We're up there. My buddy Dave is not having the same spiritual experience I am. I discovered table hopping that night.

I was scared to death of anybody who was an adult that night. I was meeting people, you know, getting to know people. Um, and uh, uh, I was flirting with a redhead behind the counter.

My buddy Dave is not having this spiritual experience. Dave was getting a little woozy. And um, I had never had a cup of coffee either, but I had seen in Perry Mason where if you have too much to drink, you get a cup of coffee and it soers you up so you can talk to the police.

So I ordered a cup of coffee from my buddy Dave and it didn't have the desired effect. Dave threw up down the stainless steel counter. As it turns out, if you're looking for a Louisville city policeman at midnight, the best place to find them is at the White Castle.

So, they came down to ask me what was wrong with my friend. I would have been scared to death to talk to a policeman before this, but I'm feeling fine now. And they said, "What's the matter with him?" He's just had a little bit too much to drink.

Really? How old is he? 14.

How old are you? 14. So, I was in Louisville City Jail 4 hours after I took my first drink.

And that was pretty much the end of my social drinking. I drank as much as I could on every occasion from that moment until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was arrested 22 times before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would have told you when I got here that I had a drinking problem and it started the last two or three years of my drinking. And during that period, I had lost control of my kidneys and bowels. I was staying in a basement apartment.

I was had been fired from my seventh job in a row, my last job. I wasn't paying my rent, but because of the arrangement where I had been an officer with the company, they thought the company was going to pick it up. So, they let me stay there longer than they might have.

And I had no furniture in this apartment and I'm sleeping on the uh uh the bathroom floor and I'm uh coming to and shaking and I would dry heaving. Then I would get a drink or two down. I was hallucinating.

I was hearing voices coming out of the heating ducts. I knew something was wrong then. But here's what happened.

The first three times I take a drink. The first time I take a drink, I come from a family where nobody has a drinking problem and nobody gets locked up. I get locked up and I cannot think about anything except the way I felt and the next drink I'm going to have.

The next time I took a drink, I just transferred to a new school and one of the older kids on the football team got me something that I would highly recommend if you're going to have a slip. Cherry vodka. And believe it or not, it didn't taste good the first time.

The third time I took a drink, I drank what I drank until I got here, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. And it didn't taste good the first time. I never drank for the taste.

I drank for the effect from the very beginning. And I want each time I got something with more proof. The other thing that happened during that few week period, there was only one person on the planet that I related to and she was this girl that I absolutely idolized.

I was infatuated with her. I loved her with all my heart as much as you can love somebody when you're 14. I talked to her every day for about 3 or four hours.

We talked on the phone. We went to hayrise. We went to movies.

I was the quarterback on the JV football team. She was the captain of the JV cheerleaders. And just shortly after that first occasion, she called me and she said, "I need to tell you that my dad has a drinking problem, but I haven't told you about it before because it he gets mean and it's ugly and I didn't want to talk about it, but I need to tell you that I'm not comfortable with you having a drink when we go out." And it took me less than a day to break up with her.

She was the most important person in my life and I had only had one drink or one night and I broke up with her. That's how much alcohol I had on me from the very beginning. So I said I got locked up 22 times.

Only one of those was a DUI. I was smart enough when I came back to Vietnam. I hung my uniform with the ribbons in the back.

And back in those days they didn't have computers or anything else. And I'd be drunk out of my mind if I had the uniform in the back. They'd usually let me go.

The 21 other arrests were not for crimes of commerce or intelligence or anything else. They were crimes of defiance. If you're trying to find out what humility is, it is the opposite of defiance.

Defiance is nobody's going to tell me what to do. Humility is God, please tell me what to do. And I I every I was the guy where if you were pulled on the side of the road, my friends love me.

If you're pulled over on the side of the road by a state trooper and I would get out, I'd been drinking Country Club malt liquor. I was a morning and uh noon and daily drinker in high school. I would pull over behind the state trooper, got out of the car and say, "Officer, what seems to be the problem?" And my friends love me because within a short time period, they were going home and I was the one in handcuffs being carried off.

I was arrested six times my senior year. I was arrested at my senior prom. Now I'm 18 for two felony counts of assault and battery on a police officer.

And uh because of the way I behaved and because of the family I came from, I was told that I if I couldn't behave any better than that, I would have to find another place to stay. So what I did was I emotionally blackmailed my mother to go back now and then. But I found an apartment with some older kids.

So even in high school, I had a place to go to. So they never knew where I was. They didn't know where I was that died that my uh mother's father died.

I I didn't realize how much I had done to damage my parents until I'd been sober for a long time. I put a lot of other things on my men's list way before that. But that was the behavior that I had in high school.

But they found out where I was after the oppressed the arrest of my senior prom because we have something in Louisville at the same time of prom called it's a little horse race called the Kentucky Derby. And um this time they didn't throw me in the juvie tank or the DUI tank. They threw me in the felon tank.

And there were eight bunks in the felon tank. And the next morning on ABC, NBC, and CBS News, my parents and everybody else found out where I was because I thought I knew all about race relations in high school cuz I knew two kids that were black and got along with both of them. But that night, I came out and I was in in the the tank with seven Black Panthers who were arrested in Louisville, Kentucky.

This was in the 60s. It made national news. They were there to blow up Church Hill Downs and been caught with a bunch of explosives.

So on ABC, NBC, and CBS News, here come the seven Black Panthers and me in my little powder blue tuxedo jacket. And the other kids didn't get to do things like this. I was a kid who made uh when when600 was the highest you could make on the SATs.

I made 1480 good enough to go to Brown, Harvard, Yale, any place else who had to use my connection with my uncle who was a dean at the University of Kentucky just to get into state school which had to accept you if you were a state resident unless you had a felony arrest. And so uh I went down to UK and I was down there for a while. I was continuing to see a lot of films.

The year that I went down there, they had a film called The Graduate. I'd made it all the way through school without smoking at all. And uh I saw The Graduate 10 times, started smoking, had an affair with an older woman.

She'd be about 89 now. But one night, and I've been I still read a lot, and I was reading a lot of Hemingway. We sat, we drank, we enlisted and uh was with a bunch of guys and we all got drunk and we talked about how we didn't want to miss out on Vietnam.

Our dads had been off to World War II and we didn't want to miss out on Vietnam. What should tell you? I was the one with the drinking problem.

I was the one who went down and enlisted the next day. And so I go off to Vietnam. Now I found a group of people that I could look down on.

I had pretty much been the lower companion in high school, but now I found a group of people I could look down on because in Vietnam there were people who were doing drugs. And I know Kentucky is kind of cutting edge of hip, but I actually never saw any drugs when I was in high school or college. My drug was a bottle that had a Confederate flag says Rebel Yellow.

It was Stitchweller whiskey. And um and so I go over there and there are people doing drugs and and I'm not I'm not saying that and I just felt like if you did drugs you lacked self-discipline. And I'm not saying I didn't smoke a few joints or accidentally do LSD on a plane ride one time.

But Wild Turkey 101 was my primary drug and I knew where I was going to go. Well, not really, but I mean I I kind of knew the the rev up and the feeling and all that stuff. So, I just kept drinking and um I had two tours in Vietnam.

I put down on my dream sheet. I wanted to go to Key West. They had a detachment down there.

And I I put on my dream sheet that I was going to Key Key West 21 times. I got to go to Vietnam twice and to the Pentagon the third time. And I did okay in combat.

I came back. I did not do well at the Pentagon. Pentagon, they get up early.

My idea of a breakfast meeting is 10ish. Their idea is about fiveish. And so I knew I wasn't going to be a career uh marine or soldier like the rest of my family.

And so um um I got out. Now uh I think Jennifer said she was engaged seven times. She has me I was only engaged six times.

And everybody that I was engaged to was somebody who looked like somebody I'd just seen in the film. When Romeo and Juliet came out, the Franco Zephr film, I found somebody a nurse who looked like Olivia Hussy and I got engaged and we were together for three months and then that fizzled. And um but the guy I worked for, my drinking buddy was a Gunny named Frank and he was married back in Louisville.

We come back and the girl that lived upstairs looked like Olivia Newton John. I know there's some very young people in here. If you don't know who I'm talking about, Google them.

But um she was a hottie. And uh and so so I'm at so so I we just immediately fall in love. I'm getting out I'm I'm transfer back.

I go back to Louisville. I got a job. I started working at an ad agency there.

I'm I'm writing and producing commercials. I'm doing really well. We're talking about we're absolutely infatuated.

We're spending every minute together. We're in love and we're talking about getting married. We're just trying to figure out what to do with her husband.

And um he was an attorney and an advanced man for Nixon who was running for reelection. And uh so he was on the road all the time which was convenient. And uh I was an expert marksman and uh uh had been and uh uh we had a few run-ins.

I went after him a few times with a shotgun. He came after me a few times. He was an attorney with a warrant.

And so um so so but you know how we are. We do not give up. We I don't know who says we don't have willpower.

We stick in there and stick in there. I stuck in until I got her out of that bad marriage. And uh we were about to uh we were we're close.

We were within 2 or 3 weeks of getting married. And um uh I was a daily drinker as I mentioned. I started with Country Club, Malt Liquor, and before home room.

And I was drinking. By this time, I'm drinking everything round the clock, bourbon, round the clock. And uh they didn't really care that I was drinking at this ad agency.

They just cared that I showed up. But they they didn't care that I was drinking. It was a different time.

And so we're 3 weeks from the um wedding and um I was because I was a daily drinker, I didn't have a lot of blackouts. People who drink all times, in my case, I didn't have a lot of blackouts, but now and then I would go on a binge on top of the daily drinking. And when I went on a binge on top of the daily drinking, I could lose a day or two.

And about 3 weeks before we were supposed to get married, I missed 2 or 3 days. I don't think I was doing anything improper, but I just don't know where I was. And so I'm trying to explain this to my fiance, and my fiance is concerned.

And she says, "I think we need to postpone this wedding." And I was one who from the as young as I can remember, if something happened and it didn't work out right, and all you had to do was reject me a little bit. God had already rejected me. I didn't fit in with my family.

you reject me. And immediately I was gone. And so she said, "Let's think this over again." And I took that as a rejection and I ran out of there.

And the only thing that was important to me before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous was making me feel better. That could be the center of my life was how I could make me feel better. Now, I don't do drugs very well.

I couldn't drink any more than I was. So, how am I going to make myself feel better? There was a magazine we had seen in Vietnam, and it was called Penthouse.

And it had a section in there called the letters or forum where they discussed philosophical ideas about different kind of lifestyles and alternatives. Now I had not seen penthouse before I went to Vietnam. I had seen Playboy.

But when I was growing up and we live in a different time for those of you who can go on and find, you know, buy mega whatever it is you want, you can find online. The closest thing we had to that when I was growing up was the tribal section of National Geographic. So, we're over in Vietnam.

We're seeing this magazine section and I'm seeing I'm I'm looking and I'm I'm we're talking about this idea and a terrific idea. It's called a Minaj choice. And so, um and and obviously I didn't speak French at the time.

Um but but the idea of two women and me, it was just for all of us, all of us guys, we just thought it was a whoever thought this up was very bright. And so um um so it was one of those ideas that just stuck with me. So now I'm wounded.

My fiance has cast me out. We're not going to get married. I'm hurt and I need to comfort myself in some way.

And so I go looking for this Minaj in Louisville, Kentucky 45 years ago. And I bring this up because this is the kind of trouble you can get into without a sponsor. There was another concept in there called that I now know I did not quite understand called lesbian.

So I'm thinking I want to get together with these two women. I would like for them to like each other. And so I'm now looking for a lesbian bar in Louisville, Kentucky 45 years ago to find two women that want to be with me.

And if you're not sure what's wrong with that, keep coming back. But you, we have willpower. Now, I lived in an apartment where there were 11 of us.

We all knew each other. It was Marine Corps, Army, Navy, whatever. We all had our flags out there.

Every Sunday morning, whoever got up first would pop the cake. We had a pool. We played volleyball.

If you had a stayover, you'd bring her out to introduce her to all your friends um and all your alcoholic friends out there. It was a great life. And so, but these guys are square.

they're not going to know where I'm going to find a lesbian bar. I've just heard about the concept myself. And so, um, so, but I stuck in there.

I'm working on an ad agency and there was an art director in the back who I was talking about it one day and he said, "Well, I know where to go." And, um, and so, uh, he told me and I go down to this place and I'm down there and I'm I'm drinking my uh, Wild Turkey 101. No water. Bruises the flavor.

um drinking my and I'm smoking four packs of L&M's today cuz I like the couple on the pack was walking along in the leaves in the fall and so uh but nothing's happening. There's a guy playing at the piano bar and there's a woman at the piano bar with me, but I know there's not going to be any managing and uh and I'm thinking I got some bad information here and I've got that, you know, you just smoke enough and get enough whiskey down, you got that kind of sexy kind of come hither voice and you are not going to get any sexier. So, if it's going to work, it's going to work now.

And suddenly, like in the movies, at the other side of the room, there was something going on upstairs. doors opened and there was a staircase, a long staircase and cascading down the staircase was the most beautiful redhead I'd ever seen. Just like in slow motion, she moves to the middle of the dance floor and I'm starting to move to the middle of the dance floor and we hold on to each other and we're kissing and we just cannot get enough of each other and you know when you're in love, you take three steps over this way and you hold on to each other again to make sure that you haven't fallen out of love yet and it's just this is real.

And then I remembered my mission. I said, "By the way, do you have a girlfriend we could add tonight?" and and her name was Erica. And and Erica said, I'm just going to wait and see how the signer does this story.

And Erica says, um, Erica says, "Why don't we get to know each other tonight and we'll add somebody else tomorrow?" And I'm thinking, "Thank God I did not marry that Republican woman." And so we get back to my place and drugs rears its ugly head one more time. Erica had a pill big enough to choke a horse. It was actually a horse tranquil laser called a quaude and pulled it out.

She took it. I said, "No thanks. I don't do drugs." I took another shot of Wild Turkey and two things happened.

Erica passed out and I found some equipment I wasn't looking for. And after 3 or 4 days I said this is not right. This is the point at which my moral compass stopped working because I had never seen Opie or Wall-E ever deal with this in any episode.

And it was a time for a change. I I got fired from that job shortly, not for drinking, but they said, "Are you aware that you missed 91 days this year?" I don't know how many days that is out of a year, but apparently it was more than they wanted me to miss. So, I got fired from that job.

But like everything, I knew I was going to fail. Once I started drinking and got used to what it did to me, I knew I was going to fail. So, I'd have another girlfriend lined up or another job lined up.

And so, I had a job lined up. I was very good at what I did for a short time each day. And so, I had another job lined up with the biggest ad agency in New York.

So, I left Louisville to go to New York. I'm working for this big agency. It's the biggest agency in the world.

I'm doing Coca-Cola commercials. I'm flying around on a LAR jet. I've got a production assistant whose primary job was supposed to be to help me produce, but I considered uh their primary job to make sure I had Wild Turkey 101 no matter where we went.

And um and and I I won I did some good work. I won a couple of Cleos. I had a commercial that I worked on worked on with Coca-Cola with a football player.

There were lots of things that I was involved with that um that that reflected a good life that looked like I was doing okay, but I was only doing okay just a little bit, just enough to hang on. I was getting overpaid and uh that allowed me to get by with a lot of things. But it didn't change what alcohol did to my body.

one o' at 10 o'clock in the morning, I was at a recording session and we were recording music. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony and we didn't have computers in those days and there was a a large group of people and musicians and singers and u I couldn't talk. I thought I'd had enough to drink that morning but I hadn't and I couldn't talk and I walked around the corner to a bar where is one of those bars you look in the mirror and you see yourself about 5t away and I walked in and I didn't know the place.

It was a hole in the wall. And the guy said, uh, he just poured me a triple. He didn't ask anything.

And my thought was, I wonder how he knows I'm a big drinker. Because I thought of myself as a John Wayne combat big drinking guy. I had no thought of myself as somebody who was an alcoholic.

And he poured me that triple and I spilled it all over. I shook it across the bar. And I had seen another movie called Lost Weekend with Ray Milan where he uses a towel to use as a bar as a leverage to bring up a drink.

And I used it to get that triple up and another triple up. And I eased off and I went back and they didn't fire me. They sent me to they sent me off of the major account, sent me to a secondary account down in Atlanta, and I go down there.

But I did get fired from there. And before long, I'm sleeping in that basement apartment where I didn't have any furniture. I wasn't eating.

I had nothing to eat for my last two years. I was bleeding from the I thought the stomach, but it turned out to be the esophagus and I'm sleeping on a bathroom floor. I'm estranged from my family.

Um, even the guys that I used to drink with aren't hanging out with me anymore. And all I could do was go up to the liquor store and come back. I wasn't driving anymore.

And so, I got evicted from that apartment. And when you get evicted, they don't give you two days or a week. They give you six weeks or two months.

But that's never enough time for an alcoholic. And um, I went up. I had been evicted.

I just didn't deal with it and I was evicted and I went up to the liquor store and I thought as long as I've got my whiskey I'll be okay. And I went into that liquor store and the guy there's only one around there and I was the guy said just a minute he called out the owner and the owner said we know that that check is no good and we know that the last few checks you've written are no good and we need to ask you not to come into our liquor store anymore. And as humiliating as that was, the only thought I had in my mind is, "Oh god, I hope he gives me that whiskey." And he did.

And I walked outside and I only owned and I still have them in a box. What I owned when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous was a pair of yellow uh brownish pants that I thought made me look like a blond country club, but they were very practical. A blue polo shirt, some loafers with holes in the bottom, and I was carrying a 45 cuz I gotten real paranoid my last couple of years.

And I had no food the last two years. And I walked around the corner. I was going to get a drink out of that.

and almost like slow motion. I don't know what happened, but I had their concrete landing and something happened where that bottle just fell out of my hands and slow motion hit the concrete and spilled all over the place. And I was more afraid and more hopeless at that moment than I ever was in a firefight in Vietnam because I had nothing to fight back with.

And I got angry and I got angry and I pulled the 45 out and I wasn't going to write a note cuz there was nobody I'd been talking to. I just wanted to end it. And there was a bullet in the chamber and I put the safety off and I got ready to pull the trigger and I started screaming at God because all this anger at God, the one who had made my life this way, the one who wouldn't accept me, the one I was angry at the most.

And I started screaming at God, got blanket, got blanket, got blanket, just cursing God. And something happened and I broke and I started saying, "God, help me. God help me.

God help me." And for just a moment, there was this piece that came over me. And I saw another scene from a movie I'd seen 50 times called Days of Wine and Roses, written by one of our members, coordinator with our public information office up in New York. And it was that scene where Jack Cluckman walks up to Jack Lemon and says, "I understand you need help.

I'm from Alcoholics and Islands." And I swore I was in the middle of that scene. And I just felt peace. And I walked up to a phone booth on a street corner.

We didn't have cell phones in those days. This was 35 years ago. week after next.

It was a hot summer day and I called the operator. I didn't have a nickel and I was crying. I said, "I'm an alcoholic.

I think I'm an alcoholic." And somebody from a public information uh uh committee had told the the phone company about what we do and how we do it. And they said, "Hold on a minute." And she connect me to a woman named Helen who had just started working in the central office of Atlanta. And Helen is still there.

She had nine years then. She has 44 now. and she said, "I know you're hurting and you stay right there.

We're going to get some help to you." And I got a guy coming out to talk to you. His name is Ed. And Ed came out.

And Ed was a railroad man, somebody I normally wouldn't have associated with. Had a bad toupe pipe. He had, as I remember, striped shirt and plaid pants, bad ensem.

I'm trying to figure out whether or not to listen to this guy or not. Shoot myself or listen to go with a badly dressed guy. And he did what the big book said.

He had read it. He had lived it. He relived the horrors of his past.

And he shared with me his story. And I looked behind all that and I saw somebody who had the same thing as me. He's the first person that I sat down to talk with who had the same disease as me.

And I did the most complete third step I've ever done in my entire life. And I turned all of me over to Ed. And I was shaken badly.

And Ed took me to a place to dry out. There was another man there named Joe Hubard who's dead now. And Joe stood with me for 5 days.

I had DTS. And if you hold somebody's arm who has DTS, it brings them out of the delusions. Human contact brings us out of that lost world.

And he did that for me for 5 days. And I came out of that. From that day until now, I've never been without a group of men who would do anything 24 hours a day to make sure I had the opportunity to stay sober.

And that was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous. I had brain damage and it took me about a year to learn how to read again. And so I was not good at a big book study.

I was not good at But that isn't what I did. I had no home to go to. And and the big book says when we take that third step that everything is provided.

And uh I decided to go back to my hometown of Louisville. and my parents weren't back there anymore, but I thought I would go back there and uh I went back and within a short all I had was written my new sponsor whose name was a rail another railroad man named Jack Sullivan who's been passed for a number of years but some of you may remember him and it was written in ink on the back of my hand and I had somebody gave me a car to drive up there and drop off and then when I got up there one of the old-timers had a place in his basement where they had two cotss and my job was to sleep in one cot and I had room and board the cot cut and meals and stay up with the drunks that came in at night because we didn't have a treatment center. And so that's what I did.

And I stayed sober helping these guys throw up. And many of them at first I'd get irritated because they they come for three or four days, soon as they got to feeling better, they'd leave. But I stayed sober and now and then one of them stayed sober and then I'd have somebody that I had more time then.

And I and I and I had a job. The other thing that I got, if you're new, I had a job in my home group. At that time when you came into AA in Louisville, they wouldn't let me have a job that required math or anything because I wasn't thinking straight uh like making coffee.

But they but the job that they gave me if if you came into AA in Louisville at that time, if if you didn't smoke, it was mandatory that you learn how to smoke. So I was the ashtray guy in my home group. And we had 10 round gold, blue, green, and red Christmas tree colors.

Um, ashtrays, which GSO sold at one time many years ago. And so, uh, we we had these and I was the ashtray guy. And they were designed in a corrugated way to allow the ashes to chemically fuse with the metal.

And my job was to take a brillow pad and get those ashes out of there. And I was a good ashtray guy. I was an excellent ashtray guy.

And I actually felt more like I fit in in this job. I was proud of doing that job and I had been creative director of this big agency in New York and uh until I found out about something that's very nasty in Alcoholics Anonymous called rotation and that is where we have this thing where we don't want any of us egoomaniacs to try to control Alcoholics Anonymous. So we can only serve in any position for a limited period of time.

So when my this was maybe a year after I got here somebody came up and says we have a guy named Raymond. He's going to be the new astray guy and I said I don't think so. They said, "No, no, no.

Raymond needs this to get sober." You know, that's the kind of stuff they pull on you. Raymond needs this to get sober. And so, um, they said, "But you're going to have another job.

You're going to be the chair person." I said, "I'm going to be the chairperson." No, the chair person. And, um, but look, this is the way it works. There were only 10 astrays and there are 40 chairs.

So, this was a promotion. So I have had a job in Alcoholics Anonymous from that day until now with one period between 12 and 15 years. That was a period um um some 25 years ago when uh people were getting in touch with their inner child and I felt like I needed to deal with some issues and so I started going to a few less meetings and I started doing a few less things and I was imposed upon by all these guys I was sponsoring and if you let the guys you're sponsoring know that you're imposed upon they'll take care of it for you.

You won't be sponsoring them. And so suddenly I am not sponsoring anybody except one very sick guy who didn't know the difference. I'm barely going to meetings once a week and I find myself in a hotel room in Los Angeles trying to figure out where I can get a gun so I could put a bullet in my head and I got 15 years without a drink.

And so fortunately I was able to I didn't take a drink but I got back into alcoholics anonymous. I got a new home group. We got a new sponsor.

I started doing the things in a home group that one does. And from that day until now it's been kind of like that trip in the fourth dimension. The second thing that I did, I had been here for a long time and I knew all about the steps and the steps are those those principles that help me learn how to live with myself.

But the principles where we learn how to live with others are contained in the traditions, not the steps. The steps are where I work on me so I can be a better tool to be of service to others. But the traditions are those principles contain those principles where I learn how to live to be one of to turn it over to God to have a purpose in whatever I do to be specific about my life to have a useful life and not to to give the credit where credit is due and that is to God not me and all of those things are contained in the traditions and I started studying the traditions and so um uh it it was a wonderful thing.

Now, now during this first two or three years after I my brain started kicking in, I'm now in my home group. They give me I'm the chair person and I start doing these inventories. I'd done three of them while I was brain dead, but I only had one a one person I resented.

Now I'm finding out and got to one of those root cause where I find out I resented everybody. And I will tell you the secret of life. I had done graduate work at one point in intercultural studies trying to study all this is popular in the 60s.

We studied all the Eastern religions. I studied, you know, everything from Buddhism to Teaoism to to anything a lot of miism. Um, and I studied all these things and and uh trying to find this relationship with God.

It is impossible for me to find that conscious contact they talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous when I'm trying to find something for me. The only place in which I find it is when I'm trying to do something for you. And so I start working through the steps.

I got through those amends and the the secret that I was looking for is in how it works. It says it's too much for us. It's too much for me.

But there's one who has all power. That one is God. So if God has all power, that means you don't have any power to ruin my life.

And I don't need to spend all this time resenting you. It also means I don't have any power. So how do I get connected with this God who's going to take care of me?

And that was the rest of the step. So I get through the ninth step. I go to this Lynon Baptist because I got a real problem with God.

I'm angry at God. And I go to Lynon Baptist Church. And on a Sunday night, out of fear of sponsor, I apologized to that church.

And I got up and and I said, "I'd like to stay here for a couple years to make amends." And two things happened. I found a group of people that absolutely loved me unconditionally and treated me as though I was one of their children, one of their brothers, the same as we do in AA. And the second thing was I had been allowed to date.

I'd been sober long enough to date. It wasn't going all that well in AA. And uh there was a girl there who was two things I wasn't looking for.

She was a seminary student and a good girl. I was kind of looking for a new dancer who needed spiritual guidance. But because I didn't do the picking and God put us together, that girl um is here today.

She spoke, she was an Alman speaker here last year. She's been Allan for a long time and she and I are married 28 years. And this is my wife Barbara.

Stand up. My experience is that things the gifts that God gives us are a lot more legitimate and they last a lot longer if we get them on a ninth step than a 13th step or in the service of others. And so Barbara and I are spiritually connected because we're both aimed at being of use to others and we've learned the traditions and that's one of the reasons we're still married.

I'm not easy to live with. Barbara and I have we love each other very much. So now I go back.

I make the next amends, the last amends in this process. I'm still angry at God. And I go into this uh Harvey Brown Presbyterian Church.

My family's all Scottish. And this is the church that my 90-year-old dad still belongs to. My mom died six years ago.

My dad got remarried there two years ago when he was 88 to a younger woman who was 82. And I had actually defaced this place. And I go in there trying to find somebody to apologize to.

And in there, nobody was there. And I go into the chapel and nobody is in there. And I realize who I'm there to deal with.

I'm asking God to keep me sober each morning and thanking God each night and I don't trust God at all and I'm still angry at God. And that day I forgave God. And they may sound like an arrogant uh statement, but the Aramaic Aramaic for forgive is not absolution.

It means I changed my mind. I changed my mind and I said, "God, I don't know about you at all, but I know you've been keeping me sober and whatever's going on, I ask for your forgiveness and I ask that I can forgive you." And I had one of the most profound experiences I've ever had in my life. I felt like I weighed nothing.

I felt like there was a wind that was blowing through my heart and through my soul. And I felt lifted up and I felt like I was just absolutely free. And that was the day that the knots came off and the the knots in my stomach and the weight off my shoulders.

And from that day until now, I have known one thing for certain. I am a child of God just as you are. I have everything I need to do what I'm put here on earth to do.

I just need to find the opportunities to do it. And I need to work to get rid of the things that prevent me from doing it, which is my self-s serving nature. And Alcoholics Anonymous gives me every tool to do that.

And it also provides unbelievable uh beauty and wonder in this life. And when I look at life that way, now I am connected. You don't have power.

God has all power. But now if I'm a child of God, what father is going to deny one of his children what they need? And so the very next thing that happened, now I've had this spiritual experience they're talking about.

I see what they're talking about. I see what Chuck Chamberlain's talking about in a new pair of glasses. And I go to this retreat.

The men that I got sober with believed in an annual house cleaning. You know, our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to God and the people about us. And I don't do that by going through one house cleaning.

I have to keep growing. And so I went to this retreat with them and they went to Gethsemane and it was a place where I had studied. I'd read Thomas Merin.

It was a place I went to. I wasn't Catholic. Half these guys weren't.

But we went there cuz it was quiet. We went in February. There was a fireplace and we were gut level honest with each other.

And the priest gets up before we leave to do communion with us. And he said, "Do you men know what God's will is?" Right. And that's what I was looking for.

It says, "I'm praying for God's will." He said, "God's will is simple. is to do the best you can right now with what you've got. No more, no less.

If you're a son, be a good son. If you're a father, be a good father. If you're a brother, be a good brother.

If God gave you the gift of getting sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, be the best possible member you can be of Alcoholics Anonymous. Do things take whatever you've been given and use it for others. He said, God gives the grateful more and more.

It's ingratitude that stops the flow. And he said, it's simple. We're his children.

If you men had two seven-year-old boys and you gave both of them little red wagons and one of them takes that red wagon and spreads joy around the neighborhood and the other one takes that red wagon and kicks it aside and said, "I want a scooter." Who would you give more to? And I'd always been the one who kicked everything aside because I wanted the scooter. I wanted something else.

It never occurred to me that what I was given was not for my joy. It was for me to use for your joy and for your help. And it changed my life because now I could become useful.

And I will tell you something. Everything I was looking for in life, if I am useful to you, I have just found everything I was ever looking for. You're going to like me.

You're going to want me to be around because I'm useful to you. You're going to care for me. You're going to love me.

I've had expensive cars, nice houses. I've had all kinds of things. I've had lots of titles.

None of them ever got me the appreciation of another person like me working with a drunk. But that's not only in this fellowship. It goes outside of here in every step we take in this world.

And I learned that in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was could not learn it any other way. And when you learn a lesson like that, it's tremendous.

Barbara and I've been to AA in 40 countries and 48 states. And we love Alcoholics Anonymous and Alanon. And we were over in speaking in 1987 at the All Scottish convention.

and I'm seeing where my relatives come from and seeing why I dress a certain way and why I eat a certain food and and they stay up all night partying over there and we had a great time and we met some Irish people and Irish people fun. You just have to be careful around them and so we left Scotland and went over to Ireland and we stayed with one of the guys over there and and we we were in Colani and we went up this this actual the path was made of fourleaf clovers and goes all the way to the top. We're looking down over a waterfall and seeing this valley with the greenest greens and the bluest blues and this lake and this castle called the Muckra House and Barbara and I are just sitting there crying.

We can't stop crying. We're so grateful. And people are coming by and saying, "Are you all okay?" I said, "Oh, God's just so good." And um so we're we're grateful.

We're having a great time. But there are other days when when life doesn't treat you that way. And in 2005, we had gone to Toronto to the International.

I've been to seven of them, by the way. I'd like to invite you to the next one, which will be in Atlanta. We'll I'd like to have about 100,000 of you come in 2015.

I haven't checked with Barbara, but you're free to stay with us. And so, we go up 2005, and that year, just right before that, we'd had to put our dog to sleep. And we weren't able to have children.

So, this dog was a Norwegian Elcow named Booger Bear. And we absolutely loved him. He was supposed to live 12 years.

He lived 18 years cuz we weren't going to let him go. And finally, we came home from a roundup and he was ready to go. And we had to put him to sleep as I held him in my hands and and Barbara touched him and I went down and buried him beneath a tree on our lake and we're crying like we said we probably not cry that much for each other.

Dogs are never mean. And so um we're we're we learn this about grief. Then we go to um within just a few weeks, Barbara loses her mom and dad.

We're the caretakers for her mom and dad. And when that happens, that experience makes you like almost like the parent. And it was very difficult.

And Barbara was hit with this. And I loved her mom and dad and they were very wonderful people. And the next thing that happened is is my mom dies about a month later.

And in the middle of this, we're in Toronto. We come back from Toronto. And two weeks after coming back, I go to the doctor and I'm told I have esophageal cancer.

And for those of you who don't know about esophageal cancer, it's over 99% fatal. It's a rare cancer, but nobody ever lives with it. And so I can't tell Barbara that I have this cuz she just lost her mom and dad.

And there's nothing but grief in the household at this point. And I can't tell because I can't tell Barbara. I can't tell you cuz you don't gossip.

And the only people that knew were my prayer partner, Keith Lewis. And he was he and I were talking about it every day and another fellow named uh Ed. And Keith and Ed are both gone now.

Ed M. Big Ed from Davenport. And they're both gone now.

And they're praying for me. My sponsor knows. And the doctors and my sister who's in medicine.

And I found a place where they had come up with a technique where they removed all of your esophagus, everything in in there, including the lymph nodes, removed part of your stomach, and formed this tube. It's not it's the latest technology. And they'd had some good success with it out of the University of Southern California.

And I'm speaking that weekend down at uh they told me I only had about a month to find some place to get this done or my chances weren't very good at all. And I find this place out at University of Southern California and I'm going down to speak at Key West on a Saturday night. And I get the phone call from them.

They said, "We we can solve the problem, but we can't take your insurance, but if you will give us put up an equity account of of I think it was $350, $400,000, we can accept that. Now, I'm not a good money manager and we didn't have that money and I'm going down there and I can't pray now. I found the sunlight of the spirit in this fellowship, but suddenly I'm in this big dark hole because I cannot find I'm going to die because I don't have the right kind of insurance and I found the place that I can go.

I found the right doctors, but I was praying for God to do my will. And it says that we pray for God's will for us. And so a friend of mine down there, and I couldn't even pray.

I was so angry. And a friend of mine down there said, "Look, say whatever prayer you remember." And I had recited the 23rd psalm in the PTA in the third grade. And I said it over and over.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. I started saying that and suddenly something broke right before I went get up to speak and I remembered what I had heard Jack Sullivan say.

And he had just walked out of the doctor's office. He had six malignant brain tumors. He was one of those old-timers that smoked until the end.

And he'd had lung cancer and spread to his brain. And he would had no fear. And I realized he's telling me he's gone and he's saying goodbye.

And I said, "Jack, you don't seem afraid." He said, "God, if God has been this good to me here, just imagine what he's got waiting for me on the other side." And the big book promises we will lose our fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter. And I believed the promises in the big book. The rest of them had come true.

And so I just relaxed. As Ed used to say, "How can you threaten me with paradise?" And so if I'm going to go to a place that's full of joy, why should I be hurt about it? I was concerned about Barbara.

And I just said, "God, you're going to take care of Barbara, whatever you're going to do." And I relaxed and I and I accepted God's will. I said, "I'll do whatever you want." And that was on Saturday night. On Monday morning, we were back in Atlanta and I get a phone call from this place out at USC.

And I'm the kind of guy I always like the the the clouds to open up, the sunlight to come through the clouds, and they're going to say, "It's a miracle. We're going to accept you." And they didn't say that. But they said, "Our chief of surgery, who's actually perfected this, has gone to Rochester, New York.

Why don't you call him?" So, I call the chief of surgery at a Rochester, New York, which is a very prestigious uh hospital at Strong Memorial. I can't even get my primary care provider to call me back, but I'm calling the chief of surgery. Within an hour, he had called back.

He had looked at my labs. He had looked at all of the reports. He said, "I don't care about the insurance.

You're a good candidate for this and I want to teach this procedure to some of the people up here. Can you get up here tomorrow?" So, now I've got to tell Barbara. And uh I had told her that I had some high-grade dysplasia among the tissue in my esophagus and I was going to have to have a lot of that tissue removed.

Now, that's not a lie. I was just I was telling the truth creatively, just like we lie creatively. So, that's what she knew.

And we head up to Rochester, New York, where we don't know many people. And if your granddaddy was a or great-granddaddy was served as a general under Roberty Lee, you really don't want to make your exit in Rochester. It's like almost in Canada.

And so we're on the way up there and um somebody had called ahead because we had been active and and they called a woman named uh Rosemary who had been a delegate up there and she and her significant other Bill come over and they're waiting for us at the hotel and that night we had 23 people that we had a new home group and a a new home group in Alanon who were taking care of us and they were there and they took care of Barbara. They did her laundry. They were there with her every moment.

Um we had a new family. If you have come to Alcoholics Anonymous, this is the most wonderful family you're ever going to find. And so we were there.

The next morning, we went to the hospital to see where God had taken us. And we walked into the chapel to say a prayer cuz if he wasn't there, this wasn't going to work. And there on the wall in letters there were a foot and a half deep in gold, 30 ft high.

It says, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want." And we walked out into the lobby to find out where God had taken us. And it was Strong Memorial Hospital endowed by the family of Dr.

Leonard Strong who was Bill Wilson's brother-in-law who started the Alcoholic Foundation. My experience is this. All my life I looked for some way to be connected to you and to God.

I found both when I was willing to help a new drunk and to follow you in the steps and the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. The big book says, "The age of miracles is still with us." Our own recovery proves that. And it's not limited to not drinking.

It affects every area of my life. May you enjoy every blessing God has for you. 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.