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>> Wow. Thank you, Donna. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Ditcher, and I tell you, when I first came in this fellowship, I never thought I'd be standing up here today with a 22-year chip. But thank you very much. I don't know what I'm going to do tonight. My head's been rolling around all day long. But my regular birthday is Monday, May 5th. My sobriety day is 1981. My home group is this meeting here, Saturday night open door speakers meeting. And my sponsor is Tommy Hicks from Crawfordville, Florida. We've been together since 1995 when Tom Duffy died, who was Carl's sponsor as well as mine.

When Donna touched on the teacher will appear, I thought about Tom Duffy an awful lot because he gave an awful lot of his time to Carl and me. And maybe, for whatever we are today, maybe Tom Duffy had an awful lot to do with that. I would always like to thank Alicia for being here. I don't know if she left or not, did she? She always says, "Well, if it's Derby Day, it's D's birthday." That's the way she remembers it. The first Saturday in May is always Derby Day, and usually that's my birthday except this year it's two days early.

Let me tell you, there is significance there. Those of you that watch the Derby today may have heard the song they played before the running of the Kentucky Derby. Anybody know what the song was?

>> Oh Kentucky Home.

>> You know who that was written by? Stephen Foster. Do you know what Stephen Foster died of? Alcoholism. Isn't that a crazy connection? But I'm not going to go there. I just thought I'd reminisce for a little while and then maybe in the last half hour I'd tell you how I got sober.

But there's an awful lot of people that I'm indebted to that have helped me a lot. I was hoping one of them would be here, but Donna is my poster girl. Holly told me that Kathy wasn't going to be here. Kathy Schoffer was one of the first women that I got the opportunity to sit down with. We were answering the phones up in Intergroup, and I would come in a half hour earlier than my scheduled time was to answer the phone so we could just talk a little while. She'd stay over a half hour so we could talk even more.

Kathy told me about her drunker log and about her sobriety. After she got to know me a little bit, she told me about her cancer, being a victim and also about being a survivor. I think when you can get that personal between a man and a woman, that's AA. That's the way I feel.

I always read this book every year, cover to cover. I've done it for 22 years now. My grandponsor did that, and because he did it, I thought I should do it too. I always find something new in there. This past year has been one of the best learning years I've ever had.

A lot of times when I find something in this book, I call Joe because I can get ahold of him real quick, or I call Doug because I can get ahold of Doug real quick, and I'll run something by him that I've seen. This past year, Nancy's ex-husband was found dead in his home up in North Carolina in early December. He had died on Thanksgiving Day supposedly. The cause of death was chronic alcoholism. His blood alcohol content was something like 2.28 or something.

We have four stepchildren, and Nancy has her kids, of course. I thought a lot of the time. I kind of laid back whenever talking about their father because I didn't feel I could or should really interfere in that. I was always just supportive of what Nancy was doing with her kids, and I never put my two cents worth in about this disease. I got a lot of secondhand information from Nancy, mostly talking with her daughter.

Of course, there were many red flags that popped up. He had lost his job at the place where he had been working for about 15 years. That was a big red flag. He was engaged to a lady and the engagement broke off. That's another red flag. He started isolating himself and not answering the phone. That's another red flag.

As I always do whenever something like that happens, I come back and I start reading the book. I just want to find something to make me comfortable, to calm me down a little bit. All of a sudden I was reading the book, and this popped up on page 20. It says, "Our very lives as ex-problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs." It didn't say alcoholics. I got to thinking. I called Joe and I read that to him and I said, "Do I understand that to mean that we're supposed to help people outside this fellowship and be available to them?"

Joe says, "Yes, as individuals." I think sometimes we're maybe too secretive and we don't really let people know that we suffer from this disease and we may be of help to them. I don't worry about my anonymity. If I don't break it myself, Nancy does. But I think she does it because she really thinks that I'll be helpful to people. She doesn't break it just to be breaking it.

You know, everybody quotes page 77, and it also says a lot of things. It says, "Our real purpose, our real purpose, is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us." It didn't say alcoholics. It said the people about us. And there again, it got me thinking that maybe I'm not doing what this book really tells me to do. I believe in this book. I've had a love affair with this book for about 21 years.

I was telling somebody my sobriety day is May 5th, 1981. My recovery date is September 1982. The reason for that is because I came in here and I started working this program, walking the steps off the wall, and all I ever had was an off-the-wall program. I did that for 14 months, so I was still a sick individual. I think I've been trying to be helpful to more people, not just alcoholics.

I'd like to encourage you maybe to read this book and find out if that's what you're supposed to do too. It's been a learning year for me. I think God really wanted me to get a master's degree in education about working with others. This past week, he allowed me to go up to Thomasville, Georgia, and sit with Nancy's grandson, Jake, who had his tonsils out last Friday. He's three years old.

He had kind of a hard time. They had him out on Friday, sent him home on Saturday. He wouldn't eat or take his medicine so they put him back in on Sunday and kept him Monday and Tuesday. I really got kind of angry. I really had to say some prayers for those people who I thought were mistreating him. I knew that three-year-olds should be helped a little bit more, especially when it comes to having their tonsils out or something that traumatic.

But anyway, I got up there at 7:00 in the morning and his mother left. She started a new job so she couldn't take off to be with him. The first thing we got to do was watch Scooby-Doo. I sat there and thoroughly enjoyed it. After Scooby-Doo was off, he grabbed me by the hand and said, "Come on, D." He went out, we opened the door and went outside to his sandbox.

In his sandbox, we got to dig holes. We got to build mountains. We got to move dirt and sand from here to there, and then later we moved it from there back to here. The whole time it was just the two of us. He gave me his shovel and he went and got another shovel. He gave me his bucket and he went and got another bucket.

After that he said it's hot and we went back inside. He said need drink. He goes to the refrigerator—he's three years old—and he reaches up and gets this blue Pepsi. He takes the cap off and he's got a great big cup that he got from the hospital, and I had a little cup that he probably normally uses. But he filled up his cup with all that blue Pepsi and filled me up about a mouthful. I said, "Hot," and I said yeah. I just went ahead and drank it.

He looked over and saw I didn't have any. He said, "Need some more." He took his cup and filled my cup up again. After we drank that, he said, "Come on, Dis." He allowed me to sit on his chair and he reached over and got two coloring brushes. He gave me one and he kept the other one and he said, "We're going to paint." We painted an airplane. We painted stars. We painted houses. We painted about eight or nine different things until he got tired of it.

Then we went back out to the sandbox and went through that routine again. He entertained me the best way he possibly could and he shared with me every single thing that he had. I think God's telling me that sometimes we don't do that in working with others. We don't share.

I came back and Les is one of my friends. I always share with her. I remember there was something I read one time on the internet about everything I know I learned in kindergarten. I went in, I found that and I sent it to Lee. We got to talk about it. Thursday we sat down and talked a little bit about what we could really learn to help other people with.

But I really think that God really put me in Jake's day that day just for me to have a good time. And I did. I left at 10 minutes till 6:00. I'd been there almost 11 hours and I wasn't tired. I just had a really good time. I came home and I probably would have gone up the next day if anybody had wanted me to because it was so good. But I had other things to do, so I stayed here.

I really appreciate that day and I thank God for giving that day to me.

A couple of things popped up in my head I wanted to say because I sponsored some people and there's a couple people that the past couple years have worked with that I really think have done a really good job. I'm not going to mention anybody's name, but one guy came to me about a year and a half ago. He had about three months and asked me if I'd sponsor him. He said he hadn't had much success at getting sober at all. He probably had about 26 or 28 white chips. I said, "Well, yes, if you want to, if you're just willing to follow a few simple rules. That's all I ask. If that's it, we'll go ahead and work together."

We did. He did good Fourth and Fifth Steps and went on along to his amends and pretty much I thought was going along pretty good. One day he called me up and he said, "I think I need to talk to you." I said, "Well, why don't you come on over and we'll go downstairs and talk."

I thought maybe it was about something else. I didn't really know what it was about. When he came over to the house, we got a cup of coffee and went downstairs. That's where my office is. Nancy moved me down there two years ago. I think that's why she got rid of me.

He came in and he said, "I'm having troubles making an amend." I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, back when I was drinking and using, I was dating this girl and everything was going pretty good. And then she ODed. I'm just having a hard time trying to figure out what I'm going to do."

I said, "Well, the step itself says to make direct amends." He said, "So?" I said, "Come Monday, come Sunday morning. I want you to put a lawn chair in your truck and I want you to drive over to the cemetery. I want you to get out and I want you to plop that lawn chair down beside her grave and I want you to tell her everything that you need to tell her."

It was the first time that ever happened and I don't know where it came from. I'm sure I heard it along the line somewhere. About two days later I bumped into him and he said, "I really feel good. All that burden I had on my heart is not around anymore. I really feel like this program is going to work for me this time." He said, "I think making amends is the best thing I could possibly do in order to straighten out my life." He's coming up on two years pretty soon. Some of you might know who he is.

The other thing I get, I get some emails every now and then and people want to know where it is in the big book or ask me some questions. One of them very interesting this week said, "Every time I go to a meeting, the chairperson said, 'We're going to have a moment of silence followed by the serenity prayer.' By the time I start doing something in a moment of silence, they start the serenity prayer."

I started laughing. I said, "I thought that was funny. What are you trying to do in a moment of silence?" She said, "She was trying to set some prayers for herself." I said, "Well, I don't think that's really what AA meant to do with the moment of silence." She sent back, "What are we supposed to do?"

I said, "My sponsor always told me to use the moment of silence to ask God to be into this meeting." She sent me back, "I knew it had to be something simple." She's got six years of sobriety so she's pretty good at doing that.

A lot of times people will get and ask me who wrote this or who wrote that. I think if there was anything that I wanted to change in the big book, I think it'd be the chapter Two Wives because I think there's been a misprint there. I think it should be Two Wives because everybody's got mostly two wives. Maybe more people would read it if it was titled Two Wives.

One lady asked me one time, "Diz, is there any song that's actually related to Alcoholics Anonymous?" I said, "I don't know." She said, "Well, what song would you think it to be?" I said, "Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There's a land that I thought of once upon a lullaby." She said, "Thank you."

I don't know where all this stuff comes from, but I just love this fellowship so good. When they ask me for my opinion and I'm going to tell you, Carl says I can have opinions if you all listen to his 12-step program. I do give my opinion a lot of the time. One of them I did this year—I think the people that were in my last big book workshop—somebody asked me what was my favorite book outside of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said it's a book that was written by former presidential candidate George McGovern about his daughter Terry.

A lot of you have gone out and read that book and I think it probably gives us the best lesson of what to do with people and how to work with them and what not to do. George McGovern did everything the experts told him to do and it still failed. His daughter still died of alcoholism. It's a great book and I think there's a good lesson there if somebody ever wants to read it.

Someone asked me one time, "What changes in meetings would you like to have?" I thought of one the other day, and I also heard this from somebody else. I think when we tell newcomers to get phone numbers, I think that ought to be a two-way street. I think we ought to give them our phone number and we get their phone number. If we get a newcomer's phone number, I think we ought to call them at least three times to encourage them to come back.

Sometimes we leave these newcomers out there just like a fishing wader. You know, every now and then you got to throw them a hook and get them in. I think we need to pay more attention to our newcomers. We're getting an awful lot of them in here and a lot of them pick up some wrong things to say.

I remember Carl was in a meeting one time and we talked down on the front porch at C, and some of the young people in there had said, you know, just work these steps to the best of your ability. Boy, you don't say that to an old-timer. Carl said, "No, you work the steps thoroughly, precisely, and completely. You don't do them to the best of your ability. That's not in this book."

You know, those are some of the things I think we should get around to the newcomers because I know we can't teach them all. I know it's kind of crazy. I guess Carl and I were lucky. We had some really tough teachers. Of course, most of you heard about my first sponsor, Slick. Slick was as tough on me as any drill sergeant is on any new soldier. I mean, he really was.

Every time I did something bad, he'd call me a dumbass hillbilly. And then even if I did something good, he'd still call me a hillbilly. I really didn't think he liked me. And yet when I finished all the steps in the program, that was one of the best times I ever had. I'd go over to his house one Sunday afternoon and we'd sit there and drink a pot of coffee and just talk.

You can learn so much from old-timers. I think that's what all the young people ought to do—take advantage of the old-timers. Carl told me one time he wasn't going to do the 12-step anymore. I said, "That's not true. You got to do it." He does. He has to continue doing it because there's nobody else that's come around that's going to do it like he does it, and he does it very well.

I'm hard on him too, by the way. I don't know whether he told you or not, but I gave him a birthday card when he celebrated 25 years. On that card I wrote, "You've got 15 minutes to enjoy this, then you got to get started on the next 25." He said, "You're a tough man."

I do it lovingly because I do appreciate what he does for this fellowship. I think we should take advantage of him more often. We should take advantage of the old-timers. I'm very lucky. I've got a lot of people that call me and people I can call on. John is good. John Works is very good. Doug, Joe, you know, I go around here and just talk about Keith. Anne will blow me out someday. Kathy Schoffer.

I get a lot of telephone calls and believe me, you don't know how important those phone calls are to us. You know, as we get older, we lose more of our friends that we were in this fellowship with. You know, it's a dying breed. We don't have contact with those like we used to. So we depend upon you young people, you know, maybe calling us up and checking on us or finding out something. We do appreciate it. Believe me.

I never thought I'd be talking like this as an old-timer. I didn't know I was an old-timer until Nancy one time. We went to a meeting. I had 10 years sobriety and there was this meeting. Nancy doesn't drink coffee but she does. She went and got a cup of coffee and came back. She said, "See those two girls over there?" I said, "Yeah." She said they were getting a cup of coffee. I said, "I know who they are." She said, "Well, Dave, one of them was telling the other, 'That's D over there. He's an old-timer.'" I knew I finally had it made. You know, I was an old-timer and I could be recognized as an old-timer.

I wrote this statement down because I believe it's really true. I said, "Many people say that AA is believing in God. I don't think that's true at all. I think it's more about believing that you're not God." It sinks in a little while, doesn't it? And that's what it says in the big book too. First of all, we had to quit playing God.

The other thing I talked about one time was anonymity down at C, and you know, sometimes we take that anonymity statement too far and we think we have to be very protective of it. And that's not true. You know, NA has no anonymity. My name's Diz Titor. That's Doug Biggs. That's Carl Armstrong. That's Donna Duffy. We should let people know who we are. A lot of times people go around and say, "Well, I know a guy named Tim." Tim—they don't know his last name. So don't be scared if you're in an NA meeting to tell people who you are.

I don't watch TV too much. Sometimes Nancy and I like certain shows, but it was miserable TV last night. She went to take a bath and went to bed. For some reason or another, I turned it over and watched Larry King. I do watch him occasionally. I haven't too much lately because I was getting tired of watching War, but last night I had on Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. They're going to be in a movie tomorrow night on public television.

But at the end of the show, you know what they both declared? They both were members of Alcoholics Anonymous and they both gave praise to the fellowship. They thanked AA for all the help that they've given millions of people. Ain't that amazing? They didn't protect their anonymity. You know, it's pretty good.

Like I said, I stumbled around for 14 months in Alcoholics Anonymous. There would be many times when I'd be sitting at a table and somebody would walk by the table and point down like this to me because I wouldn't get anywhere at all. I went to a meeting one night and felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and looked and there was this old man standing there. He said, "Your name D?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "My name's Slick. I'm your new sponsor." I said, "Uh, who said so?"

He turned around and pointed and there were three guys standing over there. He said, "Those three guys over there. We drew straws and I lost." Later I found out that those three guys, one was Earl Dominic who had 38 years, Red Davis had 33 years, and Clarence Pritchard had 29 years. So there was over a hundred years sobriety in those three guys over there.

I don't know why I didn't get arrogant like I probably would any other time. Something just came over me. I thought maybe I better pay attention to what this man's doing. I really don't know why, but I said, "Well, okay." He said, "Well, I live at so and so." He said, "I want you over at that house on this Sunday at 2:00." I said, "Okay."

I had to look it up on a map to find out where he lived and at 2:00 I was over there. I parked in front of his house and he came out and met me at the front door. We went in the kitchen. He had a pot of coffee on and an old porcelain kitchen table, must have been 70 years old then. That's where we sat at that porcelain table.

That man at that time had 22 years sobriety. He started spoonfeding me this book and everything in this book on that Sunday afternoon, and probably for the next year we met him every other Sunday and he would spoon feed me everything in this book. He started taking me through the steps and along the steps he would explain everything to me. He was an old newspaper man. He worked for the Winston Salem Journal and his notoriety was that he covered one of the largest murder trials in North Carolina history—the Smith Reynolds death. He was murdered and they had a big trial and Slick covered it for the AP.

One of the things he used to do, he used to really stand over top of me. But because he was a newspaper man, he always had ink on his hands. He had a habit of standing like this, standing like that when I was out sitting at the kids' table and just look at me. That was very demeaning, especially, you know, alcoholics are sensitive and I certainly was.

But we talked about Step One. It says, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable." I learned this from Ian too, afterwards, because he broke down the word admit. You know what the word admit means? To let in. If you go to a theater and buy a ticket, it says admit one. That ticket will let you into the whole theater. It doesn't put you in a projection booth. It doesn't put you anywhere else. It puts you in the whole theater.

When Ebby called on Bill Wilson to try to give him his program, Bill just couldn't believe it because Ebby was sober. He just couldn't believe it because Ebby was the worst kind of drunk. He was a lot like us, especially me. As Ebby was trying to give Bill the program, Bill noticed one thing about him, and it's on page 11. It's always in this book. Everything is in this book. It said, "Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible." It didn't say that he was doing all this in his head intellectually. It said here was something in a human heart.

If you really read what the first step says, it says that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. There's no definition of innermost in the dictionary. The only thing I could even think about that had the word inner in it was inner tube. And an inner tube goes around the whole tire. It doesn't go in a portion of the tire. I said, "Okay."

There's another statement in here on page 25 that says, "The central fact of our lives today is that is the absolute certainty that our creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous." Slick said, "You don't work this step, the first step, in your head. That's where intellect is and that's where self-will is. Self-will won't keep you sober. You got to work this first step from your heart. That's where your emotions are and that's where you can accept things.

If you accept this program in your heart, there's another positive thing that may happen to you. Something traumatic might happen to you. Could be the death of a loved one, could be a divorce or something like that. If that happens in your life, you can accept it because you can accept it from your heart. If you try to do it intellectually, you might go get drunk over it.

I believe that you got to work the first step in your heart. I want to thank Slick for giving me that. Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I had a lot of tough time with that. I attended church regularly as a Presbyterian, fairly regular. I don't mean every day. I was a Sunday school teacher. I was an adult advisor to the senior fellowship. I sang in a chorus. One year I served a three-year period as a trustee. I did every single one of those things.

And you know, I never got any closer to God than what anybody else would in that situation. I look back on it today and I think the reason for that is because I thought I should get something in return for all that I was doing. That's not the way this program works. I didn't have any kind of relationship with God because I wouldn't allow it to happen. I wanted something else out of it.

I had a lot of problem with Step Two, but I told Slick, "Okay, I'm going to believe there is a higher power and I'm going to believe that that higher power is going to restore me to sanity, at least." I was about 60% that way. I was a traveling salesman at that time. I traveled back to Ohio and I was going through West Virginia. I got a good friend named George Day up there. He and I went to different schools together.

George has a meeting at 7:30 in the morning called the Mustard Seed Group. I said, "Okay, I'll be there." That day I went and there were eight men there. We were just sitting around the circle. George opened the meeting and we started talking about different things. Everybody went around the room until it got to a certain point and there was a man. He introduced himself. His name is Ted and he said he was pretty worried. He said that the next day he had to go in the hospital for a triple bypass operation and he just wasn't feeling good about it. He just kept talking about it and you could just hear the fear in his voice.

After he went ahead and told about all his fear and everything else, one of the guys sitting about two chairs over from him was a man that worked in a Ford garage. He was a mechanic because he had on that Ford uniform. He said, "Ted, he says, 'What time tomorrow are you going to be operated on?' Ted said, 'Well, they got me scheduled for 8:00 in the morning.' This mechanic looked over and he said, 'Ted, I tell you what I'm going to do. Tomorrow at 8:00, I'm going to ask my higher power to be with you and help you through that operation.'

I knew right then and there that Step Two was exactly the way it was written. I believe more than anything in the world that that higher power was with Ted the next day to help him get through the operation. I couldn't hardly stand it because I went to Ohio and worked. I was over there about five days for a trade show and I had to come right back. The reason I had to come right back was to go to that meeting to find out what happened to Ted.

When I did, they said Ted had come through the operation very well and was doing super. I convinced myself then that a higher power can restore me to sanity too.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Make a decision. That's all it asked us to do. Make a decision. I had known about making decisions. When I was in college on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, there was a break from 10 to 11 that we could do anything we wanted to.

A couple of the guys that I ran around with like to go downtown and have a cup of coffee or a cup of hot chocolate at McCory's because they had a doughnut machine. We'd never seen one of those doughnut machines. You'd fill this thing up with dough and it'd pop out a little circle in this hot grease and it would go around and flip that doughnut over and it would cook on the other side. Then it would kick it out. Then a girl would either put vanilla icing, chocolate icing, or powdered sugar or something on it.

You know, we could go down there for 10 cents and have two donuts and a cup of coffee. That also tells you how old I am. We were sitting there one day and we said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to put in a doughnut shop. We ought to sell all kinds of donuts—jelly donuts, all chocolate covered, powdered sugar, every kind of doughnut there is. We ought to sell every kind of drink there is—orange juice, lemonade, hot chocolate, everything. And we said, you know, we could get a lot of people here in Charleston coming through and buying that. We could be real successful." We all agreed that was a great idea. We went back to school and two years later, Mr. Donut came to town.

See, we made a decision, but we didn't take any action on it. That's what happens to decisions. If you leave them laying there long enough, nothing's going to happen to them. And so I always say that what it asked me to do is what I refer to as twin steps. The twin steps are Four and Five, Six and Seven, Eight and Nine. In one of those steps I prepare and the other step I execute. So we're preparing one and executing the other.

I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. The first thing we had to look at was our common manifestations—resentment. The first resentment I ever had was against my father. I was about 10 years old and one day going to school, he said, "After you get home from school, I want you to call and cut Mrs. Robinson's grass and I don't want you to take any money for it."

I got real resentful at it because my brother, three years older, he just went to school. Mrs. Robinson had four grandsons that could have been available to come and cut that grass. I got really upset with my dad because I had to do that after I got off from school. I couldn't go do what I wanted to do.

Today I'm doing the same thing, aren't I? I'm helping other people without getting anything in return. I did not heed a lesson that my father tried to give to me. That was a long time ago.

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Slick said, "I want you to go home and I want you to find a quiet place outside." I said, "All right." He said, "I want you to admit all these things to God that you have put on these papers." I said, "Okay." By the way, I wrote 38 pages. I'm trying to hurry. I probably shouldn't do it. I had a lot to get rid of.

I never asked him why he wanted me to do it outside, but I did. I sat outside on the patio in the nice light and everything. I admitted all those things to God. As soon as I got finished, I called him up the next day and I told him that I had done that. He said, "Fine. Come back over."

I went back over to his house and I said, "By the way, how come I had to do that outside?" He said, "Well, I want you to do that under God's roof, not man's roof." It makes a lot of sense to me. He said, "Well, what I want you to do now, I want you to go back to that same place that you admitted all these things to God, and I want you to admit all these things to yourself. But this time, I want you to say them out loud so you can hear them." I said, "Okay."

I went back to that same place where I sat and I admitted all those things to myself out loud so I could hear what they really were about. After I completed, I called him up and told him. He said