AA Speaker – Don M. – Moorhead, MN – 2019
AA speaker Don M. from Moorhead, MN shares his 38-year sobriety story: from a 25-year drinking career and multiple hospital stays to finding divine intervention through the steps and daily prayer.
Don M. from Moorhead, Minnesota got sober in April 1981 after 25 years of heavy drinking, losing his law license, spending time in psychiatric hospitals, and nearly dying in a car crash while intoxicated. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through how divine intervention, the Big Book, and a willingness to follow directions he didn’t understand or believe in saved his life and rebuilt everything he’d destroyed.
Don M. is an AA speaker with 38 years of sobriety who spent 25 years drinking, lost his law license, and was institutionalized 18 times before getting sober in April 1981. He describes how his fundamental problem was self-obsession and an ego disorder that made him unable to accept any power greater than himself, and how following the steps without understanding or believing in them became his path to recovery. Don emphasizes that taking action consistent with faith—getting on his knees daily, reading the Big Book as an instruction manual, and sponsoring others through the twelve steps—has maintained his sobriety and led to miracles including the restoration of his legal career and a peaceful marriage.
Episode Summary
Don M. opens with a striking admission: for the first 37 years of his life, he had zero openness to God. Growing up on a tobacco farm in southwestern Kentucky, he saw himself as an “evangelical agnostic” whose mission was to dispel believers of their “superstition.” His drinking began at 12 or 13, but he was sharp enough academically and came from the right family that he evaded consequences for years. He made it through law school, built a successful criminal defense practice in Louisville, and told himself a romantic story about pulling himself up from poverty—a complete fabrication he didn’t see through until his first week sober.
What he calls his “ego disorder” sat at the root of everything. Without divine intervention, he was obsessed with how he stacked up against others, and that obsession created a pain and emptiness he couldn’t stand. The only relief came from alcohol. When he drank, he felt like a fellow among fellows, like he had peers and belonged. He’d finally found the magic—something that made him feel good enough inside to stand himself.
For the next 25 years, he drank almost every single day. He used other drugs too, but the booze was the main tent; everything else was a sideshow. He was materially successful, had money, a law practice, cases with publicity—and he threw all of it in people’s faces when they suggested his drinking was a problem.
In February 1978, at the height of his drinking, he got behind the wheel of a Corvette at over 120 miles per hour, loaded on scotch, vodka, and other substances. The crash crushed both his knees, tore an artery in his lower leg (requiring a vein graft that would later fail), separated his pelvis, and destroyed his internal plumbing so completely that he lost urinary function for over a year and had to live with a catheter. Doctors said he’d never walk without braces and never regain urinary function.
Lying in the hospital, still with a blood alcohol level of over 40, Don performed a perfect demonstration of powerlessness. Friends would bring him booze and drugs while he lay there with a prognosis that looked like a death sentence. He’d say things like, “It takes a man to lay here with it when the bills start coming in.” Pure insanity. He was still letting how he felt in that moment be more important than his child, his profession, his ability to walk, his ability to urinate—more important than whether he lived or died.
He lost his law license. He lost his homes. He was institutionalized 18 times in two and a half years. The last time he saw his only child, his daughter, was January 1980. He didn’t see her again for over three years. He lived on the streets with no home, no car, no address, just an expired insurance card. His teeth were rotting. He was destitute.
In the fall of 1980, at his seventeenth institutional stay, he had nowhere to go and no way to get there. A young man in the hospital invited him to stay with his family in Nashville for “a few days.” Don stayed a year. For the first six months, he didn’t stay straight, but he got better. He went to countless AA meetings at a place called the 202 club—meetings he didn’t want to attend and didn’t believe would help. His brain was still telling him that you all were religious fanatics, that what he really needed was to get his head straight, quit fooling with this “myth of a higher power,” get back to Louisville, get money, get his law license back, be somebody.
But something shifted. In late March 1981, he got drunk again—his most recent drunk—on vodka and Listerine. By April 8th, after being drunk for ten to fourteen days, he was sitting on the edge of a motel bed in Nashville when he felt his loving God begin to give him a gift he didn’t recognize as a gift at that moment.
What the gift was: for the first time in his life, he began to voluntarily follow suggestions about how to run his life—even though he didn’t understand them, didn’t agree with them, didn’t think they’d work, and certainly didn’t want to do them. That gift is the only reason he’s here instead of in a pauper’s grave.
The rooms didn’t tell him to believe first or feel like it was working. They told him to do the work. Don was convinced the Big Book was a philosophy book full of things to learn, but his sponsor and others straightened him out: the book is an instruction manual for actions. They told him to read it line by line, looking only for what it says to *do*, not interpreting or arguing or trying to learn. And they told him the twelve steps are a prescription for alcoholism, just like penicillin works on an infection. He didn’t need to understand his alcoholism, didn’t need to believe the steps would work, and didn’t need to want to do them. He just needed to take the action.
In the first 60 days sober, Don went to over 150 meetings—meetings he didn’t want to attend, still convinced his brain was right about all of this being nonsense. But he had been given the gift of following directions anyway. He was so intellectually arrogant that he couldn’t even use a knife and fork properly after getting sober—he’d sit in restaurants under the table mimicking his friends so he could relearn the skill.
The big turning point came when his sponsors told him about prayer. Don said he couldn’t pray because he didn’t think, feel, or believe the right way. They told him: “Oh, Don, you’ve got that backwards, too. We have never suggested that you think, feel, or believe anything. You are far too ill to have any valid thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. The issue of whether you live or die is going to be determined solely by what you do. So regardless of what’s going through your head, you get down on your knees and start saying those words.”
To his own great surprise, over his brain’s loud veto, Don found himself getting down on his knees every morning and every night. Embarrassed as he was, talking to a woman he didn’t believe existed asking something he didn’t believe could be done, he kept doing it. And he’s kept doing it for 38 years. He can count on his fingers the mornings and nights he’s missed.
By taking action consistent with belief and faith—getting on his knees, reading the Big Book as an instruction manual, working the steps as written—Don came to believe and developed faith. The twin miracle: he began getting all the benefits of being a believer before he actually believed.
He worked through the steps in Nashville with his sponsor. The first three steps set him on the track of turning his will and life over to God. Steps four and five helped him form a picture of what a spiritual Don ought to look like. He spent an hour reviewing steps one through five on his bed with a Timex watch, then said the seventh step prayer.
But nine years into sobriety, something shifted. In May 1990, Don realized Steps 6 and 7 weren’t about him becoming what he thought a spiritual person should be. The seventh step prayer doesn’t ask God to remove his character defects or make him perfect. God shines a pinlight on his path, not a floodlight—one step, one stitch at a time. God’s will isn’t something he’ll ever understand in full; he can only see it in the right now, in his next action.
From that day forward, Don stopped trying to script his life, stopped trying to steer the log like an ant convinced he was steering it. He accepted that his only power is over his next action. When he does that, when he tries to help God’s kids do what they need to do instead of running everything, the miracles are unbelievable.
Twenty-one months sober, he went back to Louisville. His law license was restored—not because he made it his objective, but as a byproduct of genuine willingness in steps eight and nine. By February 1983, 21 months sober, he was put in front of 2,000 people to tell his story. Two months later, he saw his daughter Dana for the first time in over three years. She moved in with him and lived with him through her high school years. Today, 38 years later, they text every day and are dear friends. She’s been in Al-Anon 34 years.
The bar association, the very institution he once brought into disrepute, has honored him repeatedly. They put him on committees interviewing judicial candidates. They made him chair of the committee. They gave him the pro bono lawyer of the year award. Then they gave him the most coveted award at the bar: the award for professionality and civility. A man who’d been institutionalized 18 times, lost everything, nearly died. Then they put him on the ethics hotline, where lawyers in Kentucky call him with ethical dilemmas and are 100% insulated from disciplinary action if they follow his advice.
Don’s been married to his wife Sharon for 29 years. They’ve never argued, not once. He tells counselors and psychologists who say that’s not healthy that they’re welcome to their healthy relationships—he’ll wallow in his illness on that one. God has relieved him of the awful need to be right. Who cares who’s right? One of the handiest phrases is, “Gee, you might be right”—and just let it go.
The forgiveness of non-alcoholics for us when we finally try to do the right thing passes all understanding. There’s no human way to get from where Don was in April 1981 to where he is now. It’s impossible. But when we quit trying to steer the log and accept that we can’t do this for ourselves, when we let God take care of us and we focus on loving and comforting our fellows and helping God’s kids—that’s when God’s so much better lawyer, sponsor, husband, father, and friend than we could ever be. The miracles are unbelievable.
Notable Quotes
Without divine intervention, I will always wind up letting how I feel be the most important thing in the world.
For the first time in my life, when I got enough of that booze in me, I was okay inside myself. I felt good enough inside myself that I could stand the way I felt inside without running.
The gift was that for the first time in my life, I began to voluntarily follow some suggestions about how to run my life. Even though I didn’t understand those directions, I didn’t agree with them, I didn’t think they would work, and I certainly did not want to do them.
Recovery is not a learning process. What’s killing you isn’t what you know and don’t know. It’s what you’re doing and not doing.
I’m never going to get a glimpse of God’s will except in the right now for my own next action. And when I accept that and accept that the only power I’m ever going to have in this world is over that next action, there’s usually not any confusion about what the next right thing is.
When I’m willing to truly let go and come like a little child to my God and say, ‘I don’t know where we are, how we got here, or where we’re supposed to go,’ and I’m going to at least behave like a person who’s trying to do God’s will by taking one stitch at a time—where God leaves me is unbelievable.
Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
Steps 6 & 7 – Character Defects
Hitting Bottom
Spiritual Awakening
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
- Steps 6 & 7 – Character Defects
- Hitting Bottom
- Spiritual Awakening
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Good evening everyone.
My name is Michael Dolly. I'm an alcoholic. >> And uh just uh really um going to make this very brief, but it is extremely heartfelt.
Um gentleman that I'm about to uh introduce is my sponsor. Um he has touched my heart and my life for many years. Um and uh over the last I don't know two years we've gotten a lot closer I guess.
Um I asked him to be my sponsor um about a year and a half ago I guess. Um and uh I am humbled that I get to learn from him and I feel very graced uh that God put us together. I appreciate our friendship.
God bless you Don. Come on up. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Hi, everybody. My name is Don Major and I'm an alcoholic.
And uh y'all have been putting up with me all weekend, but this is the last time. We've needed some divine intervention ever since I got up here the first time, but we're really going to need some over the next little bit here. Um, probably you all going to need it more than I do.
And the first place we're going to need it is something has got to get me out of the way and it's not going to get me be me. Um, my sobriety dates April the 9th of 1981, and I'm not a bit more capable of getting me out of the way tonight than I was in April 1981. It's just way too big a job for me.
I've got to have what I call divine intervention. Um, and I'll probably mention divine intervention several times. And if any of the newer folks are anything like I was when uh I got here and are intellectually offended by some old fool up here talking about divine intervention, not only do I understand you in my old seat, uh and I've got a suggestion for you.
When I talk about divine intervention, just substitute the magic from the steps and it'll get you to the same place and it won't offend your sensitive intellect so terribly. But uh at any rate, we need it to get me out of the way. And then we also need it because I'm going to try to follow directions and and believe me, I've got a long and sad history of the with the directions.
Uh they have never applied to me. They've never meant what they say because with my extraordinary understanding of things, you see, u I've always understood who is in charge of the directions and it's always just really conservative nerds, just square jobs, anal retentives who are usually being advised by insurance lawyers who are worse than they are. And and I've always understood the target audience of the directions.
It's morons, just stone idiots. So So these conservative nerds are overstating everything to manipulate idiots into doing things. And in my special case, it's always been necessary, I guess you'd say, to extrapolate to figure out what the directions might really mean, because they clearly don't mean what they say.
And I assure you, if I haven't done the work I need to do today on Saturday, because if I've learned anything in my time around here, I've learned that I don't get much divine intervention on Saturday based on what I did on Friday. And if I haven't done what I need to do today, I'll go back to my default position. And if for instance I were to see or hear some directions that say do not exceed 6 in 24 hours, my brain is very apt to really register that as meaning something like do not exceed 36.
So, I need the help with the directions and u I want to follow the simple directions that we hear every time we hear how it works. A little bit about what I was like and what happened and what I'm like now. And there's another set of directions in the book that we don't talk about nearly as much, but it's it's just absolutely critical for me.
It says words to the effect that our personal stories tell in our own language and from our own point of view. How we've been able to form a relationship with our creator. And I really hope my story carries that because the first 37 years of my life uh I had no openness to God whatsoever.
U I grew up on a tobacco farm down in southwestern Kentucky. And um I remember at 4 years old sitting in a Baptist church in the Baptist church about a half mile or so down the road from the farm and it was Christmas time. And I remember specifically still believing in Santa Claus and not buying one word that preacher was saying just not a word.
And I have no idea where that came from. But I spent the first 37 years of my life as uh an evangelical agnostic, I guess you'd call me. And uh it was clear to me that believers were weakminded and weak willed.
And uh it was my mission to uh to dispel them of their superstition. And uh believe me, that's where I was coming from. So up until I got sober at the age of 37, I had never asked a god for anything or even acknowledged a god that had anything to do with my life.
I mean, I was okay with intellectual theories about a creative intelligence somewhere, but certainly not with anything that had anything to do with my life. in April of of in 1981, a loving God that I had never acknowledged or asked for anything. And I believe I think it was Michael that mentioned it today.
Uh I believe it was prayers of others that caused this miracle to happen from for me. Uh that loving God gave me the most lifesaving and lifechanging gift that I've ever had. And that same gift saves and changes my life today.
And what it was, it wasn't a change of anything in my thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. And I wasn't aware that there was any change in anything. I only recognized it in the rearview mirror.
And that's true of the way life is. U Massor Bob B says that life is lived forward. but understood if at all backwards.
Um, and what the gift is and was is that for the first time in my life, I began to voluntarily follow some suggestions about how to run my life. Even though I didn't understand those directions, I didn't agree with them. I didn't think they would work.
And I certainly did not want to do them. And folks, that gift is the only reason on earth that I'm here at this great great little roundup that's got such a neat spirit and personality to it. And I hope it thrives and grows through the years.
The only reason I'm up here with you sweet folks tonight instead of having been rotting in a pulpous grave for something over 38 years is that gift. So, I hope my story carries that. my early life on that farm.
Uh u probably the most informative thing I can tell you is that it wasn't a thing like I thought it was. Uh my uh my capacity for self-d delusion is astounding. And if I haven't done the work I need to do today to get my help, it's fully intact.
And up until I got sober, I had the most interesting and romantic saga. It was way past a mere story about my early struggles and my subsequent rise to power. And of course, it was all about how by my Aaron will and my sterling intellect, I had pulled myself up by the bootstraps to these st from the depths of poverty to these staggering heights I'd reached in life.
And I believed that crap so sincerely, I'd have us both cried before I got halfway done telling it. And I honestly don't think I was sober a week until I realized, man, what a load of baloney. We weren't even poor.
We weren't anywhere close to poor. We were middle class farming people that had everything we needed and most of the things we wanted. In fact, we were better off than anybody else in the whole farming community.
And those staggering heights I thought I'd reached were a great deal more staggering than they were high. Uh, and what was really going on the first 12 or 13 years of my life. Wasn't any of that stuff at all.
What was really going on was the selfishness and self-centerness that the big book tells us is at the root of our alcoholism. And the way I've described that for ever is that I've got an ego disorder. Had it all my life.
And that ego disorder has been front and center. I mean, right stuck to my nose every day of my life, drunk and sober for 75 years. And on account of that ego disorder, without divine intervention, I'm so obsessed with myself.
I'm so obsessed with how I believe I stack up against other people in the world. I'm so obsessed with how I feel that for many years I boiled the bedrock of my alcoholism down to one sentence. And I believe this is where it really starts for me.
I think the physical algae and the mental obsession kicked in much later. But where it starts, I believe, is here. Without divine intervention, I will always wind up letting how I feel be the most important thing in the world.
Now, without divine intervention, I can give some lip service to something being more important than how I feel. And I might be able to act out something for just a little while, but when the chips get down, if I haven't done what I need to do today to maintain my spiritual condition and and get my daily reprieve, I'll go right back to my default position. And my default position is to let how I feel be the most important thing.
And all that obsession with myself uh has always had the only results that I think they can really have on a human being. It it's always created so much pain and and emptiness and a partness and difference down inside me that I've never been able to stand the way I feel inside without either just running as hard as I can andor stuffing something in there and try to make me feel good enough that I could stand it. Now, thank my God, for the last 38 years and some months, it's been the 12 steps that are the only program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And you sweet folks who are the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous who fill up that hole, who ease that pain, who take away that apartness and that difference. But I didn't know there was anything to do it until I got drunk the first time when I was 12 or 13. Uh, and what was really going on for that first part of my life was a a totally self-obsessed kid desperately trying to stay a half a step ahead of a screaming fit.
And by the way, I don't know whether we're born alcoholic and I and and I haven't cared for decades because as long as I know what's wrong with me and I know the solution, I'm not all that interested in figuring out where it might have came from. But uh something was wrong. I already told you about sitting in the church when I was four.
The first day of the second grade, I was six years old. I started school when I was five. I went into the office of the principal, Miss Vanny Wallace.
And I said, "Miss Fanny, I have been in a car wreck over the summer and have brain damage, and I can't be expected to do nearly as well this year as I did last year. I knew I'd set the bar too high and I was trying to Miss Fanny laughed about that the rest of my her life, but looking back on it, I'm not sure it was real funny for a kid that young to be thinking that way. But but u at any rate that that obsession with myself makes me an egoomaniac with an inferiority complex.
Uh, and what I mean by that is that without divine intervention, I'm perfectly capable of feeling too good for something or somebody at the same instant knowing I'm not nearly good enough for that same person or that same thing. All my life, I've known that I could do anything at the same time. I've known I couldn't really do anything.
And that's been bouncing around my head for all these years. And you see without divine intervention or the things that I've tried to use, I've never had any peers. I can't be on anybody's level without the divine intervention.
I can be above you. I can be below you and insanely I can be both at the same time. But I cannot be a fellow among fellows unless I've done what the work I need to do to get my help.
And that's the mess I brought to my first drunk. Um, and that first drunk I got in an awful lot of trouble. I puked.
I I blacked out and I passed out. And I woke up next morning. I had a terrible hangover.
And I swore all those Baptists around there were right about that one single thing, boobs. And that I would never touch that crap again. And not only was I sincere, it was actually fairly effective because it was nearly a week until I got drunk the second time.
And that was a near miracle over the next 25 years for me to go a week without getting drunk. And after that pain and misery, I woke up that first morning with that horrible, horrible hangover. And and the terrible four horsemen already gathered around me, every one of them.
Um, and I didn't wake up and think, "Wow, that was great. I can't wait to do that again. That was magic." All I knew was that for a few minutes on my way to all that puking and trouble, I had passed through a white pleasant neighborhood.
But since I've been sober, I've known that what really happened was the magic happened for me. Because for the first time in my life, when I got enough of that booze in me, I was okay inside myself. I felt good enough inside myself that I could stand the way I felt inside without running, without trying to stuff anything in there.
I was a fellow among fellows. I had loads of peers. I had people that were that I was okay with and I was okay with me.
So what it did for the first time in my life, I found something that made me feel good enough inside that I could stand it. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no mystery about why I got drunk that second time and there's no mystery about why I got drunk the other thousands of times over the next quarter of century after that. But it was because of the magic that I didn't recognize as magic because for the next 25 years I didn't know there was anything other than the booze and in the latter years of my drinking the things like it that could do that trick for me.
So there's no mystery to me about my powerlessness over alcohol and the things like it because since I didn't know there was anything else that could make me feel the way I wanted to feel and the way I feel is the most important thing in the world. The bottom line was really simple. When I wanted to change the way I felt, it didn't matter what it cost and it didn't matter who it cost.
You know, I I said this at the core of my alcoholism and I may have mentioned this answering a question. I don't know. But I'm absolutely convinced that after we know we are an alcoholic or an addict.
We know what we are and we put that first one in us. I'm absolutely convinced that that is the most selfcentered act on the face of this earth short of suicide. Because what I'm doing when I do that, I'm making a decision that the way I feel in this instant and my desire to change it is more important than my child.
It's more important than my profession. It's more important than all of my responsibilities. It's more important than any relationship I might have with God that I'm making how I feel the most important thing in this universe.
But I didn't know any of that. Um, and I had a drinking career 25 years that I'm not going to dwell on, but I'm I'll let you know enough to know that I didn't come in here because it gave me the hiccups and I woke up one day and decided, gee, I'd like to get some spiritual enlightenment. Um, I literally stumbled uphill for 20 years.
Um, I was born with uh a lot of academic gifts. Uh, and a kid that drank and acted the way I did from the first time I got drunk in today's world would find his young butt in an asylum before his 14th birthday. But in the 1950s in Trigg County, Kentucky, if you were cute enough and smart enough and had the right last name, you could practically get away with murder.
And I practically did. I left there as an early because it was time for me to get out on account of my drinking. I I left and came went to 200 miles up to Louisville by myself on a Greyhound bus.
And I wound up taking a bunch of tests. They let me in the University of Louisville as an early admission student. I never graduated from high school.
Um with an academic scholarship and and my reaction to that was I stayed so drunk the first semester that I'd literally lost all concept of day and night. It was just a matter of passing out and coming to course I blew the scholarship. And then for the next seven and a half years, I worked full-time, drank full-time, went to school full-time, and somehow got through undergraduate and law school with good grades.
And I have no idea how that happened. When I look back on that whole eight years, I don't have a handful of clear memories that I could sit down with you and say, "Let me tell you some details about what happened during that eight years." is just a a swirling gray mass of of alcoholic insanity. Spring of 1968, uh I graduated from law school, passed the bar that summer, and my daughter Dana was born that spring.
Um and Dana, if you're doing the math, that makes Dana 51. And when your child is middle-aged, you're just old. Forget it.
You know, you don't have any excuses left. Uh, but Dana was my only child for over 20 years. I have a wonderful 30-year-old son now, but Dana, she was 21 or when Katon, my son, was born.
Um, I practiced law for about 10 years in in Louisville, Kentucky, which is a city of our metropolitan area is about a million. Um, with a good deal of material success. I've always been a criminal defense lawyer.
Um, from the time that I began practicing law, I quit my job soon as I passed the bar. And I I've never had a boss. Uh, I've always been self-employed private criminal defense lawyer.
Um, and things got worse over the next 10 years uh, than they were the time preceding that. And I just told you how crazy that was. Um, and I was pretty darn materially successful.
Not nearly as much as I used to think I had been. That's a peculiarity about staying sober a while is we get a better focus on the past. You know, they tell us out here in the world, you can't change the past.
Don't you believe that crap? We do it in here every day in several different ways and some of them positive. Uh but uh at any rate, I I always had a knack for getting involved in some cases that had some money and publicity in them and and that's what I'd stick in your face when you suggested that the way I was living was not just exactly right.
Um during that 10 years, the the whole 25 years that I drank, I know that sometime in at least 80% of the 25 uh 24-hour periods, I was drunk. I had no idea that I was drunk that often because the only standard I ever had for drunk was whether or not I blacked out. If I remembered it, that discussion was over.
I was not drunk. and and during that 10 years of practicing first 10 years of practicing law, my honest best estimate is at least a third of the nights uh uh I did not take off my clothes like a normal human being and go to bed. I either passed out in some other situation or I just changed the combination of what I was putting in my body and tried to fly on through the day.
Uh, and when you stuck that in my face, I would uh I I would stick my material success back in yours. Uh, things got worse because I no longer had a boss looking over my shoulder. I had some money to escalate things with.
And alcoholism simply progresses in everybody that's ever had it. Uh, alcoholism is like being pregnant. It does not stand still.
There's nothing you can do to make it stand still. You know, you Again with the with the pregnancy analogy, you don't look or feel the same way when you're 20 minutes pregnant you do at 8 and a half months. But just hang on and see what happens.
Uh it'll it'll it'll progress. Um, and during the latter part of that 10 years, um, by the way, another analogy, man, which is even worse than that one, but but but but it helped me so much to finally get sober when somebody told me that, you know, Don, intelligence and willpower are really, really good things. And there are a lot of things in this world that intelligence and willpower do a really good job on.
But two things that they don't have any impact on are alcoholism and diarrhea. And and for some reason that caused a penny to drop in my head to realize that truly that my my brain and and and willpower was just as useless against alcoholism as as it was then. But um at any rate, during the latter part of that 10 years, I used a world of things other than the booze, and I used a world of them.
But now, before you get your singleness of purpose, nickers, all in a knot. Let me explain that to you. Uh I'm going to take it out my story as soon as they take it out of Bill and Bob's.
Just soon as they do, I'm going to do that. Uh, my story is just like Bill and Bob's. Um, I used different things than they did and certainly more of it, I'm sure, but it's still the same story.
Everything else that I used was a sideh show and the booze was the big tent. Everything else was something to somehow change the effect of the booze. maybe increase it, maybe decrease it, maybe help me try to function on the hangovers, but it always went back to the booze of the Big 10.
February 10th of 1978, u I I had been practicing law right at 10 years, and I got full of scotch, vodka, and four separate outside issues. Uh and and I drove a Corvette off the road at over 120 m an hour and it did really horrible things to my body. Uh it uh crushed both knees.
It tore out a good deal of the artery in the lower leg and they had to do a bypass in the upper leg to take out a vein and and grafted it in to replace that artery. And just just informationally, I'm supposed to be in the hospital right tonight having a vein pulled somewhere else out of my body to replace that 41-year-old graft. But I talked my surgeon into let me put that off till the first week in December.
Uh, and it uh it that separated my pelvis and it pulled my internal plumbing into so that I didn't have a urinary function for over a year. I had what they call a supra pubic catheter, which is simply a plastic tube with a flange on it where they blow a hole in your abdomen. Pop it into your bladder to to carry your urine out to a bag.
I was in hospitals for more than six months of the year following that wreck. And I I had a half dozen major surgeries. The night of the wreck, uh, I was closer to Nashville, Tennessee than I was to my home in Louisville.
So, they took me to Vanderbilt. Probably took me an hour and a half to took him an hour and a half to get me from the scene of that wreck to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. When I got there, I still had a blood alcohol of over 40 with all the other things I had in my system.
And I woke up two or three times during the emergency surgery because they were terrified to give me enough anesthesia to keep me to to to keep me under. Um, I stayed there in Vanderbilt seven or eight weeks. Uh, but they didn't know who I was there and didn't treat me with nearly the appropriate difference.
And, uh, as soon as I got out of the operating room, the recovery room, and intensive care long enough to get moved by ambulance, because I wasn't stood upright for the first time until almost three months after that wreck. U, I got moved against medical advice back to Louisville where folks knew who I was. And uh once and the prognosis by the way was that I would never walk without at least a brace on one of my legs and that uh we had never find a surgeon who would even attempt to try to put my plumbing back together so that I would ever have a urinary function.
U the doctors were wrong and it had nothing to do as we know with me following directions. It was purely the grace of God. I've been sober 38 years and I haven't owned a brace for over 39.
And about a year after that u wreck, uh the head of urology at Duke University did put my plumbing back together and restore my urinary function, but I didn't know that was going to happen. After I got moved back to Louisville, I laid in the hospitals in Louisville for months. And after I got back there, to the best of my recollection and the best the recollection of the couple of uh friends who survive from that era, there not many of them.
Uh and those two of course are in recovery. I'm one of their sponsors. Um every day that I was lay laying in that hospital with that prognosis flat on my back, they would come in and bring me booze and more dope than the doctors were giving me.
And I would lie in that hospital bed and say really intelligent things. I would say things like, you know, fellas, anybody can stop drinking when the going gets a little tough, but it takes a man to lay in there with it when the bills start coming in. And then I would explain to them that a man ought not be out there doing the crime if he's not prepared to do the time.
So just because we'd hit a bump in the road, they weren't going to hear me whining. give me another drink and let's go on with it. Of course, that's insanity.
That's powerlessness. And when you really think about it, it's letting the way I felt in that instant be more important than my child, more important than my profession, more important than whether I ever walked, more important than whether I ever peed, more important than whether I lived or died. letting the way I felt and my desire to change it be the most important thing in this universe.
I wound up not practicing law for um a total of five years after that wreck. Um I lost literally everything. I'd had a young lady with me when I had that wreck uh who was not my daughter's mother and at the time of the wreck I was remarried to my daughter's mother.
And I'm not proud of any of the pain that I caused people in that area of my life. I've had to do a lot of amends and I I live a lot of amends on it today. But I'm not going to fail to laugh at myself where I've been ridiculous.
Uh and I'll share one sociological observation. Please feel free to ignore it. It's not in the big book.
Uh but uh over the last 38 years, I've just kind of looked around and observed and I've come to the conclusion that the fact that I was remarried to the same woman probably establishes my alcoholism without further authentication. I just don't believe a normie would do it. I think if it even crossed their mind to jump right back in a frying pan they just got out of, they' tear the door off an asylum getting in trying to protect themselves.
But we do it just willy-nilly drunk and sober. You know, old Joe and Sue divorced, but they had date and they'll probably get back together. And it works for us sometimes.
It's not necessarily bad. It's just really different from ordinary folks. But uh obviously I got a brand new divorce right after that wreck and and I wound up u pretty quickly married to the young lady who had been with me.
She had on a seat belt of all things. So she was hurt terribly but not nearly as badly as I was. Um and during the ensuing period of time she had to leave me on account of my insanity and she was staying with some girlfriends and and died in an accident.
Um, I was in what I call asylums. About half of them were psychiatric hospitals. About half of them were jitter joints or treatment centers of some kind, the kind they had back then.
But Bill used the word asylum. And my my mama used that word. When I was a kid, people didn't have substance abuse and alcohol problems and go to treatment.
nor did they have emotional problems and go to the hospital. They went crazy and were put in asylums. And that's a whole lot more descriptive of what kept happening to me, I'll assure you.
So, I was in them 18 times in two and a half years. I last laid eyes on my only child, Dana, in January of 1980. I didn't see or have any contact with her for until Janu until February of 1983.
over over three years. Um, my partners and I had built an office building in downtown Louisville, a little law firm of nine or 10 lawyers had built up around this other guy and myself. And the Internal Revenue took my portion of that and a couple of other things.
And the uh mortgage companies took the homes the ex-wives were in. the guys had to kick me out of the law firm I'd founded on account of the social and legal pressure that my behavior was bringing on them. And I'm really grateful for that because uh I don't know that I would ever have hit bottom had it not been for that.
And for anybody that's new or struggling in any way, if I had my choice of only one thing out of my talk that you could remember, I believe I would ask that it be this. Please don't wait for bottom to happen to you. I've seen hundreds of people die waiting for bottom to happen to them.
I don't believe bottom happens to us. I believe bottom's a decision over which we have a great deal of control. And I wasn't going to make that decision as long as I had a Timex watch.
I certainly wasn't going to do it as long as I had a law firm. Right after the guys kicked me out of the firm, the state of Kentucky jerked my law license. Uh, for almost a year, I lived without an address on what I called the street and an expired Blue Cross Blue Shield card.
Um, I did not sleep under the bridge, but the only reason on earth I didn't was I could always get somebody to take me in and it was frequently strangers. Um, I had no home, I had no car, I had no clothes, my teeth were rotting out of my head. fall of 1980, um I wound up back in Nashville, Tennessee at asylum number 17, the next to last one so far.
Uh and uh they kept me in there a little over a month and it was time to boot me out and I had no place to go, no way to get there. I wouldn't have gone back to Louisville. If you give me the choice between chopping off my right arm or or not going back to Louisville, I would let you chop off my right arm because of the terror of going back there.
I wouldn't have opened a a box of mail from Louisville and I'd been destitute for couple years and I wouldn't have opened a box of mail from Louisville for $50,000 just because of the terror. And uh I'll tell you that from this stage of sobriety, I still don't believe there was any paranoia in that. I believe the crap I done in human terms, I had no business ever showing my face back there.
I believe a loving God poured oil on the troubled waters of my past to keep the worst of my chickens from coming home to roost on me. But at any rate, I had a roommate in that asylum number 17 and he was a young guy. Of course, I was ancient.
I would have been 36 at that time. But Matt was 21. And his sweet family lived there in Nashville.
And they felt sorry for me and said, "Don, why don't you come stay with us a few days and let's try to figure out what to do with you." Well, I went live with him a year. Uh, and the first six months I didn't stay straight, but I got better. and I had to get better before I could grasp recovery or anything else.
Uh just as an example, and I was ashamed to tell this for the first 30 years I was giving talks when I was 60 days sober, I had still not regained the ability to use a knife and fork on food, not just properly, effectively. And I was just embarrassed to ask anybody, would you give me a few hints on on how to use this these things? I I seem to have lost it somewhere.
So, we'd go to meetings at a clubhouse in Nashville that we called the 202 club. And after the meeting, we'd go down to a Shauny's restaurant down the street, and I would sit there with my knife and fork under the table trying to mimic what my friends were doing so I could regain the skill of of using a knife and fork. So, I had to get better and I did get better during that six months from the f getting out of that asylum in the fall of 80 and getting sober in April of 81.
Um, I went to a world of AA meetings, almost all of them at that 202 club during that six months. I got to where sometimes I could go up to two and I think one time even three weeks without getting ripped. And that was a world record for me.
uh since the first time I ever got drunk. And how I really know I got better is they only put me back in an asylum one single time in that entire six-month period. And the rate I'd been going twice a year in the asylum looked like the picture of mental health.
Well, late March of 81, I got on my most recent drunk, and it was another one of my pop off vodka/lististerine drunks. And I have honestly drunk buckets of both those things. And this is not a joke.
I have better memories of the Listerine. I can stand to smell Listerine today, but I can't stand to smell that old hot cheap vodka. But on this most recent drunk, I was drinking and taking everything I could get my hands on.
about the time April the 8th of 81 rolled around, most recent day that I that I drank. Um, I'd been drunk 10 days or two weeks and I was sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel in Nashville. And I know now that my loving God started giving me that beautiful gift that I that I talked about.
I certainly didn't know I had any gift then. I still had the same insane combination of of of insane ego and pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization for a couple of three years being intensely exposed to AA and all these treatment centers and asylums. Uh one second one of you folks would tell me how AA had saved your life and changed your life and my brain would go, "Yeah, I know.
I know it works for you, but you don't really understand the width and depth of my intellect and my specialty and my u uniqueness. U and I was apt to get teeyed that it would work for the simple-minded. U but alas, I was just my soul was too big for my body and I I was wounded by my own understanding.
So it couldn't possibly work for me. And here's the nightmare. The very next instant, one of you would tell me the same thing, how EA had saved your life and changed your life.
And that same brain would go, "Yeah, I know it works for you guys." And I'm glad it does, but you don't know how bad I am. You don't know about the parts of me that are just missing and always have been. You don't know that I've never really been able to be consistently responsible about one single thing in my life.
Anything in my life that looked like it was even okay, much less good, is some kind of pack of lies in a house of cards. And you guys don't know what I've done. That first 10 years I practiced law, I I represented some genuinely multi-statewide bad and successful people.
uh and um the things that I done when I got so bad uh I really believed and I think again I don't think it was paranoia that if I did manage to not drink for a while it might be just be blown into by a saw off shotgun or maybe spend the rest of my life locked up somewhere I didn't want to be locked up so it wouldn't work for me because I'm so terrible and then the very next instant it'd be back telling me it wouldn't work for me because I'm so special and great and intelligent. You see, my alcoholism is the perfect sociopath. It has no reason for existing except to get itself that next drink.
And it has absolutely no compunction about who it damages or kills, me or you or both of us, in order to get me to take that next drink. It'll tell me totally inconsistent lies, you know, inconsistent with one another. back to back, just slams it all up against the wall and hope some of it will stick.
And the rest of the nightmare is that on account of the disorder of my perception, without divine intervention, on some day or the other, I'll believe one of those lies and I'll pick up that first drink and I'll trigger that god awful physical allergy and I'll feel that phenomenon of craving again. And the last two or three years I drank that phen withdrawal from ethyl alcohol. Each one of the last couple hundred times I had to do it was more painful than any of the 14 or 15 major surgeries I've had in my life.
Most horrible experience I've ever gone through. It reached the point where once I got physical alcohol in my body, I just had physically lost the ability to stop. the need was so bad and the physical addiction was so bad something had to intervene and prize me loose from it.
And when it did that, it took three or four days for me to be physically able to do something like sit up in a chair. Well, I didn't know why I was doing it, but I shook out that most recent drunk. And when I was able to stumble, I was still badly crippled from the wreck when I got sober.
Had had braces on both my legs. Uh I uh I made my way back to the 202 club and I didn't think they would let me in. And again, today they would not have because I had passed out in their AA meetings and had to be bodily carried out.
They had caught me in their men's rooms with illegal outside issues. Uh, and they had warned the people they sponsored to stay away from me, that I was a loser and I was going to die. About two months before I got sober, I was walking through that clubhouse and a big old boy who's been dead many years, Joe Wall.
And Joe was uh taller than Mike or anybody here. Joe was about 6'5. and he walked up and looked way down at me and said, "Don, I'm beginning to think you really are too intelligent for this program." And I thought he was giving me a compliment.
My knee-jerk reaction was, "Thank God they finally figured out who they're dealing with." But Joe went on and it may have saved my life. And he said, "That's a shame, Don, because we have never had anybody too dumb for this deal. and we bury you buttholes all the time.
And that felt like an icy hand closing over something inside me. And thank God that icy hand has never completely gone away. You let me get a couple of stitches off the pattern on my recovery.
And so far, when I feel the tips of those fingers, it's jerked me right back onto the path. And I I hope those fingers never go away. They did let me in.
I remember what was said and who said it. They said, "Come on in, Don. You are keeping us sober." And I said, "Will you tell me one more time what I need to do if I want to live?" They said, "Sure.
Don't drink. Don't take dope. Go to meetings." By the grace of God, the first 60 days and went to over 150 meetings.
I had no idea why I was doing it. To the best of my recollection, I did not want to go to a one of them. Oh, I expect there after I got feeling better, I was hoping I'd run back into some woman or something.
But as far as going to any of them for a legitimate reason, I I didn't go to one of them for a legitimate reason. It was still perfectly clear to me that you all were religious fanatics. And my my brain was still assuring me what we need to do is get our head out of the scan.
Quit fooling with this copout little thing of this myth of a higher power and head in the sand group therapy. Get my butt back to Louisville. Get some money.
Get a law license back. a good-looking woman, a big car, be somebody for God's sake. But I've been given this beautiful gift I didn't know I had of turning around to my brain and saying, "Yeah, no, you're right.
But we are out of options. We're just out of options. So even though these silly meetings can't possibly solve our terrible and unique problems, we're just going to keep going because there's nothing else to do." See, I've been given that gift of following the directions even though I didn't understand it, didn't agree with it, didn't think it'd work, didn't want to do it.
And thank God, I had the same thing backwards about that that without divine intervention I've had backwards every day of my life. I make it all about what I think, feel, and believe. That's the ultimate reality.
You see in nature if I don't feel like doing the right thing it doesn't occur to me to go ahead and do the right thing. I want to get me fixed so I feel like doing right so I can do the right thing. You see, all my life I was absolutely convinced.
I mean, so convinced I didn't even think about it. That the difference between good people and me was they felt like doing right. And if we could just get me fixed so I felt like doing right, I could be good people, too.
Well, I've known for several decades now, those good people, and they were good people. They may have been resentful as heck about what they were doing. They may have been cussing under their breath.
They may have had less than stellar motives what they're doing. But they did right and that made them good people. And despite all my rationalizations and my grand intentions, I did not do right and that made me bad people.
See, I we were asked a question about turning point the other night and there's no turning point in my life bigger than this one. was understanding that all those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that I think are the center of the universe have never one time left a footprint on reality. Not once.
Now, if I abdicate my behavior to them and say, "Yeah, you know, I'm going to behave however you tell me to behave." That behavior leaves a great big bootprint on reality. But the thoughts, feelings, beliefs are really just a will of the whisp in my head. they have have never had any impact on reality.
You see, I thought in order for AA to work that first I had to believe it would work and then I thought it had to feel like it was working while it was working. And I think I also thought that I had to be able to see the causal relationship of A causing B. Turned out none of that had anything to do with it at that time.
I just needed to get my raggedy butt to meeting after meeting and let my old sick brain and soul get dragged in there kicking and screaming behind the raggedy butt. And then they told me if want to live I was going to have to read the big book. And I mentioned that I'd read it a few times and they said that they knew that that I had been quoting it to them while I had been dying.
They said, "The first thing I needed to get straight is that that book is not a philosophy book. That there's nothing in there that I can learn that's going to keep me sober for a heartbeat." In fact, they said, "Don, you better get this silly notion about recovery being a learning process out of your brain." They said, "You got to learn about that much." And they said, "In your case, Don, you've had enough information about AA and recovery for over two years to stay sober a day at a time the rest of your life without learning one single new piece of information." They said, "What's killing you, dummy, isn't what you know and don't know. It's what you're doing and not doing." And they said, "What this book is is a simple instruction manual for your actions." And they said, "If you want to live, you better say that set aside prayer and try to set aside everything you think you know about yourself, about your alcoholism, about recovery, about the big book, about God, or in your case, your belief of the lack of one, and start at the front cover of that book and go through it line for line, reading only the black part, not interpreting, uh, distinguishing or arguing with or memorizing anything, not looking for anything to learn but looking for what it says do.
And then they said, "If you want to live, you better do it." It was about then that they explained to me that the 12 steps are the prescription for alcoholism. They work on alcoholism exactly like penicellin works on an infection. If I've got an infection that's going to kill me if it's not treated, but will respond to penicellin, I don't need to understand the origin and the nature of my infection.
And I don't need to aggravate the people around me in the medical profession whining about that. The truth is I could learn every piece of information there is to know about that infection and if I don't take the stupid pills, I'm dead meat. What difference it make what I know about it?
I don't need to understand a single thing about how penicellin works in the human body. I don't need to believe that that little bottle of pills will take care of all these terrible things wrong with wonderful me. And probably the most important one they told me to me is I don't need to want to take the pills.
Whether or not I want to take the pills couldn't be more irrelevant. If I take the pills as directed, I'll get just fine. Thank you.
And they promised me that if I would take the action that is the first nine steps of AA as set out in the big book to reach a state of recovery and then immediately begin doing the action a day at a time that is steps 10, 11, and 12 in order to maintain my spiritual condition and get my daily reprieve. That that action would work on my alcoholism exactly like penicellin works on infection. And the fact that I'm here instead of in that popper's grave is testimony that they were right.
And I've been so blessed in seeing that same miracle happen in hundreds of other lives over the years. Then they told me if want to live, I was going to have to get on my knees every morning and every night and ask and thank a power greater than myself. Well, the little part of me that wanted to live, there wasn't a big one, but there was a little part that wanted to live had known for the a couple of years that the only outside chance I had of living was to somehow try to get this thing that you had.
And I believe with all my heart that in order to get it, I had to somehow make myself start thinking, feeling, and believing more like it looked like to me you thought, felt, and believed. And I had tried every way I could in the condition I was in. And I hadn't been able to change a thing.
Not a hair. So I remember sitting there in that clubhouse with tears running down my cheeks looking up at the steps on the wall and explaining to them that I couldn't do the praying because of because of that. And I finally heard them when they said, "Oh, Don, you've got that backwards, too.
We have never suggested that you think, feel, or believe anything." and my mouth probably fell open because as far as I was concerned that was the center of the whole ball game and they said well no said we wouldn't do that said in the first place you are far too ill to have any valid thoughts feelings or beliefs they said in the second place the issue of whether you live or die is going to be determined solely by what you do what's going through the old crazy picture show in the back of your head won't have anything to do with it so they said if you want to live regardless of what's going through your head, you get down on your knees and start saying those words." And I tearfully nodded at them and thought to myself in a pig's eyes, craziest thing I've ever heard, I won't do any such a thing. In the latter part of that month, April of 81, to my great surprise, over my brain's loud veto, I found myself getting down on my knees every morning and every night. and as far embarrassed even though I was by myself and as far as I was concerned talking to the woman asking something I didn't believe was there to do something I didn't believe could be done and I kept on doing it kept on doing it and I could count the mornings or nights that I've missed since then on my fingers and I don't know any other way to stay sober other than getting on my knees every morning and every night.
Now, I'm not a dictatorial sponsor as I think Michael can tell you, but I told him like I've told everybody I ever sponsored. The book doesn't say you got to get on your knees. And I'm not telling you to.
But I am telling you this. Don't ask me for any hints on how to stay sober without getting on your knees every morning and every night because I have no experience with it. I've been unable to stay sober other than getting on my knees every morning and every night.
And the twin miracles, the second step happened. I think I mentioned that and I ask it basket question. The first one was when I became when I began behaving like a person who believed, I began getting all the benefits of being a believer.
And the second part of that twin miracle was that by taking the action consistent with belief and faith, I came to believe and I developed faith. If I had kept insisting that my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs get changed before I took the action cuz God knows I didn't want to be a hypocrite. Uh if id kept insisting on that, I'd have been in that popper's grave.
But at any rate, um they led me through the first nine steps in Nashville. I lived there 21 months. So after I got sober, unemployed, unemployable, happier than I'd ever been in my life, uh they find my original sponsor, Cherry Carpenter, finally convinced me that the third step is is not a great process and it not a process at all.
It's the first action step. And the book tells me exactly how to do it. Since the understanding people everywhere for us today, I've either gone in a room with an understanding person and intended for that to be the watershed moment where I commit to do the rest of the steps and try to do that next right thing when what my brain wants to do conflicts with it.
Or I haven't. And if I haven't done that, I haven't done the third step. They got it through my head.
That third step in descent doesn't turn a thing over to God. It's not supposed to. It's simply a decision to get on a track that will turn my will in life over to God.
They led me through four and five and I formed a picture of what a spiritual don ought to look like and I went back to my attic. I'd moved out from the folks I was living with had my very own attic. Uh I followed directions exactly except the book says take the book down from the shelf and spend an hour going over the first five steps.
And I didn't have a shelf. So, I laid it up on the bed and pulled it back down off the bed and I looked at my Timex and got me a Timex by then and uh and I timed it for an hour. I reviewed steps one through five.
Looks like I done all right. So, the big book gives us less than half a page on steps six and seven. The top 40% of page 85 76.
What's wrong with me? Um looked like to me I'd done okay, you know, good enough on steps one through five. I got on my knees, said the seventh step prayer, and believed that was where with God's help, I went to work on me to make me into what I decided spiritual don ought to be.
And I proceeded in good faith on that till I was nine years sober. Um, when I was 21 months sober, well, my my law license had gotten put back in order when I was a year and a half sober as a total byproduct of steps eight and nine. I'm convinced if it had been my objective to get a law license back, which I really didn't want because I didn't think I could stay sober with a law license, I would never have gotten it back.
But when I really and truly became willing to behave like a person would behave if they were really just trying to set the past straight without looking for any benefit out of it. As a byproduct, it was put back in order. January of 83, 21 months sober, I went back to Louisville because I could not get a minimum wage job in Nashville.
I told you about my terror of going back. If I could have found a job at the 7-Eleven, I would not have gone back to Louisville to practice law. But all sorts of miracles started happening.
The second month I was in town, February of 83, they st me up in front of 2,000 people to tell my story. And I thought it was terrible. As my judgment of events in my life usually is, I had it 180 degrees off.
It wound up being the beginning of the rest of my life. That was about 36 and a2 years ago. And in the last 36 and a2 years, I've spent considerably more time on AA traveling, speaking, and more important than anything, sitting down one onone with individuals and looking them in the eye and going through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with them.
Everybody who asked me to be their sponsor, whether they've been sober 24 hours or whether they've been sober 40 years. Um, and I've got them in both categories. Um, I suggest let's take a trip through those steps together.
Let's go through there. And every time we go through it, I get to see the light light up a lot of times in the other people's eyes. But a light lights up in me, too.
We were talking about that today on the uh altruism that there's nothing like nothing like sharing the magic and the joy of this program with somebody and and showing them what we did in order to get out of the humanly hopeless dilemma that they are in and that we were in. We share that with them that we were in a humanly hopeless dilemma that could only be alleviated by by our power. Um but uh at any rate um that same month I saw my daughter Dana for the first time in over three years and u two months later she moved in with me and lived with me throughout her high school years and we are dear friends today.
Um she's been in Alanon 34 years now and uh occasionally she's the Alanon speaker at a conference where I'm the an AA speaker and it's just it's just marvelous and we text every day. Um all those things were going great, but the first nine years I was sober, relationships with the ladies and financial chaos like to have killed me. And something happened in May of 1990 that caused me to look back at six and seven a different way.
And for every day of my sobriety since then for the last 29 and a half years, uh six and seven have been the most important steps in my life. I told you what I thought they were and it turned out that what they are is nothing like that. The sevenstep prayer doesn't ask God to remove all my defects of character and it certainly doesn't ask God to remove the ones that I think need to be gone to make me spiritual.
How arrogant of me to think that I would know what God wants me to be. You know, my God does shine a light on my path, but my God doesn't use a flood light. My God uses a pin light and just lights it one step or one stitch at a time.
And you know, we get all confused about what's God's will. Truth is, I'm never going to get a glimpse of God's will except in the right now for my own next action. And when I accept that and accept that the only power I'm ever going to have in this world is over that next action, there's usually not any confusion about what the next right thing is.
I get confused if I want to jump half dozen or 220 steps down the road. But if I'll come into the only reality, and that's the right now, that spark of the divine is always there and shows me where to take the next stitch. Um, and I've been stumbling that way since then.
Um, and real quickly, I will tell you that the miracles that have happened are unbelievable. If I'd made a list of the best that I thought I could have in May of 1990, when I was nine years sober and I'd been speaking all over the country for years and was sponsoring somewhere between 50 and 100 men and my law practice was going really, really well. And if id made a list of of uh the best I thought I could have in every area of my life, spiritual material in AA, my law practice with my children, with my relationship, house I live in, car drive, and God had given me that.
I would have shortch changed myself in every single area. When I'm willing to truly let go and come like a little child to my God and say, "Mom, Dad, I don't know where we are, how we got here, or where we supposed to go, and I can't begin to understand how to untangle this thing or understand the patterns of my life, but I'm at least going to behave like because I can't control this brain, but I can control my behavior. And I'm going to at least behave like a person would behave if it was their objective to do your will by taking one stitch at a time as directed by you.
And when I do that, where God leaves me is unbelievable. Um, my sweet Sharon and I have been married it'll be 29 years in December. And we've never argued, not once.
And uh I I sponsor some guys who are counselors and some a couple of psychologists and they tell me that's not healthy. Uh and uh I tell them they're welcome to my healthy their healthy relationships. Thank you.
That uh I'm going to wallow in my illness on that one. And and also if you've caught me arguing in the last 30 years, somebody was paying me. I will not argue with you for nothing because God has relieved me of that awful need to be right.
Who cares who's right? It's always subjective anyway and it changes with the wind and what's right for you is not right for me. And I have enough trouble knowing what's right for me.
How will I ever know what's right for you? One of the handiest phrases in the world is, "Gee, you might be right." and just let it go with that. And that's from a guy when I was drinking one night.
I drove 200 miles in the middle of the night to prove that a room was green instead of blue. So, it's a great change. And uh in my professional life and my life in AA in the last since May of 1990, the bar association uh has honored me until it's truly embarrassing.
Um remember here's a guy that had been in this asylum 18 times and when I lost my license, it wasn't whatever happened to Don Major. It was on the front page of the Louisville paper and I brought the bar into terrible disrepute. The vote of letting me back in with the board of governors was by by one vote.
But the miracle of it was that the way it shook out when I borrowed my back dues from my lifelong best friend. They reinstated me retroactively. So if you check my record with State Bar of Kentucky, I've been a bar member for 51 years with no disciplinary action against me.
I like starve to death when uh without a law license. But God healed the record for me. But at any rate, they have called me and said, "We want you to uh come down and be on this committee that uh interviews people that wants to be judges and passes on whether they're qualified." And then they said, "Don, few years later, we want you to be chair of that committee.
We want to put your name in the chair paper is the guy that's that's running this passing on judicial qualifications." And uh then they called me and said, "Don, we want you to be a master at end of court, just the most important lawyers and judges in Kentucky." And one little tongue chewing, drunken criminal defense lawyer that's been in the asylum 18 times. Um, and then they called me and they said, "Be sure to the come to the bar dinner. We're giving you the pro bono lawyer of the year award." That's doing good for nothing.
The first 10 years I practiced, nobody thought about me and that in the same breath. Then they called me and said, "Come back to the bar dinner this year because we're giving you the most coveted award at the bar. We're giving you the award for professionality and civility.
And God God has got such a sense of humor when I was about uh or was about 14 15 years ago. I was sitting in the barber chair and my cell phone rg. It was the president of the state bar and he said, "Don, we've got a vacancy on the ethics committee." The first 10 years I practiced law, the only people on earth I was more afraid of than the ethics committee were the IRS and the FBI.
Uh, and they put me on the ethics hotline. So if a lawyer in Kentucky has an had an ethical dilemma, they could call me and ask me what to do. And if they did what I told them to do, they were 100% insulated from disciplinary action, even if I was dead wrong.
That's a lot of trust to put in a guy that's been the asylum 18 times. The point I'm getting at is two points. Number one, the forgiveness of non-alcoholics for us when we finally try to do the right thing passes all understanding.
And the other thing is there's no human way to get from where I was in April of 1981 to what I just described. It's just humanly impossible. But when we start trying to do the right thing and we quit trying to live our lives by being an ant floating down the river on a log thinking he's steering the log.
And I live so much my life being exactly that. Going just like an ant driving himself crazy. I got to steer this log, man.
This log's not going the right place. I got to steer it. when if he'd just be still and pay attention to the little ant crap that's right in front of him that he can do, the log's going where it's going anyway and the ain't be a whole lot better off.
And when I'm willing to accept that I don't want to be the hand on the log and I can't figure out the patterns in my life and that I can't do this for me, what I've got to do is let God take care of me. And I've got to love, comfort, and understand and take care of my fellows. I've got to try to help God's kids, as Chuck C said, do what they need to have done.
And when I do that, God's so much better lawyer than I. God's so much better sponsor than I. God's so much better husband, father, friend, everything that when I try to script my conversations, figure out what I want to say.
And by the way, scripting conversations would be good if the other people ever got their lines right, but they never do. But at any rate, thank you all for letting me go five minutes over here. And I love you all.
Thank you Nolan and Ryan and and Kelvin and every one of you. And thank you, Terry, for those wonderful brownies. And uh and thank you, Michael.
It's been such a joy to do it with you and and Derek and and Kelvin and uh all everybody involved. It's just been a great weekend. I love you and good night.
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