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And hi everybody. My name is Don and I'm an alcoholic. >> Real grateful to be here this evening and I want to thank everybody that was involved in inviting me to be here.

Um, Oie has just been great following up with me and uh making sure I wasn't getting you wasn't getting drunk or something between the time he asked me and now. And uh maybe it helped. I didn't get drunk, so don't knock it if you hadn't tried it, but it helped only.

And everybody's just real real kind to me. And um I love AA in this part of the world. Uh, in fact, I was telling some folks and I think we got some folks here that were over there that uh just two weeks ago I was over in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, which after I look at the map realized wasn't very far from here.

So, I I hope none of you folks are getting double dipped to the point that you get bored to death with me. But, uh, I I love the spirit of Alcoholic Anonymous up in this area. And I just thank you for letting me be a part of your conference.

And you know, it always really does make me feel great to be invited to come somewhere to to share my experience, strength, and hope. There's several reasons for that. In the course of my drinking, I got to the point where nobody ever invited me anywhere except to leave.

Uh so I'm just grateful to be invited somewhere. And and I truly feel that every time I'm invited. So So thank you.

And I've had trouble with the directions all my life. Um, you see, I've always thought I was smarter than the people that made the directions. And as a result, I've kind of had to interpret the directions, you know, because the people that make the directions are trying to manipulate really, really stone idiots into doing things.

It's like if it says do not exceed 6 in 24 hours, then you kind of figure that out that that really means something like do not exceed 36 in 24 hours. So, so the directions have always been a big problem with me. But, but if I'll let God get me out of the way, and it's going to take God to get me out of the way.

I used to stand up at podiums and say, "If I can get me out of the way, I'm going to do this." Tell you something, guys. If I could get me out of the way, I wouldn't need to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. Getting me out of the way literally takes divine intervention.

It took divine intervention the month I got sober in April of 1981, and it takes no less divine intervention today. But if I'll let God get me out of the way, I believe the directions for what I need to do this evening are simple enough that maybe even I can follow them. Um, the book tells me that I need to talk in a general way about what I used to be like and what happened and what I'm like now.

And something else that's really gotten important to me the last few years. The the book says 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 God. And I really hope my story carries that message because when I first started being exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was literally lur allergic to this whole God and higher power thing.

Every time it was mentioned, I guess I thought it insulted my intellect or something that you guys would talk about such clap trap in front of a fellow like myself. And uh so the talk of how powering God would run me out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I'm one of the ones that's been so blessed because I was allowed to live long enough for alcohol to keep running me back in here because I didn't have anywhere else to go until the miracle began to happen and I began to come to believe.

So, I'm absolutely convinced it's only through the the grace of a loving God that I didn't even acknowledge was there as far as having anything to do with my life that led me to you guys. And you guys took me by the hand and led me through these 12 steps that are truly our only program of recovery. And those 12 steps led me back to that loving God.

And that's the reason I'm alive and here this weekend instead of rotting in a pulpers's grave somewhere around Nashville, Tennessee for over 20 years. And I'm not guessing at that. I know it for an absolute fact.

My body grew up at least a little bit u on a tobacco farm down in southwestern Kentucky. I live in Louisville, Kentucky now. And and before I got sober, I really and truly had had just a terribly interesting and romantic childhood and subsequent rise to power.

In fact, you could have put me on a lie detector machine and I would have passed with flying colors when I told you the saga. And it wasn't just a story. It was a saga uh about how by my iron will and my sterling intellect, I had picked myself up by the bootstraps from the depths of poverty to those staggering heights I'd reached.

And I was so sincere about it that I would usually have you and me both crying before I was halfway done with it. And and by the time I was sober a week, I realized that was all a bunch of crap. We weren't even poor.

Uh and and I was 37 when I got sober in 81. And for 37 years, I was absolutely convinced that we had been poor and and we weren't even close to poor. We were middle class farming people that had everything we needed and a lot of the things that we wanted.

And and those staggering heights were a whole lot more staggering than they were high. Uh I've had to be careful all my life, drunk and sober, not to be a legend in my own mind. You you know, alcoholism is an illness of superlatives.

We don't tend to think in terms of good or bad, much less ordinary. You know, ordinary never crosses our mind, but we don't even tend to think in terms of good and bad. We think in terms of best and worst.

You know, just as far away from ordinary as we get. And the truth is, the truth is that my whole life drunk and sober, I have been just a whole lot more nearly ordinary and mundane than my ego has ever been able to stand. Uh when I look back on my childhood now, the first 12 or 13 years of my life, uh it it really seems like that all that was going on was selfishness and self-centeredness.

And you know, the book tells me that that's the root of my troubles. And my first sponsor, who was Cherry Carpenter from Nashville, Tennessee, Cherry's been dead about 12 or 13 years now. Uh Cherry told me real early on, he said, "Don, what that means is that the first thing wrong with you is that you've got a disorder of your ego." He said, "It's from that disorder of the ego that all the rest of it has flowed.

the physical algae and alcohol, the mental obsession with it, the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual illness. He said it all started, the root of it is that disordered ego. And he said on account of that disordered ego, all your life you've been so obsessed with yourself, you've been so obsessed with how you feel.

In fact, he told me, he said, "Don, the way you feel has always been the most important thing in the universe to you." And I'm sure that I had a blank look on my face when he said that. And I'll tell you why. I'm not joking about this.

To the best of my recollection at age 37, the the possibility had never drifted across my mind that there was any other basis on which a human being could live their life other than how they felt being the most important thing in the universe. And he told me that I'd been so obsessed with with how I believe I stacked up against other people that all that obsession with myself had created so much pain and so much emptiness down inside me that I'd never been able to stand the way I felt inside without either running as hard as I could or trying to stuff something in there to make me feel good enough that I could stand it. And and the first 12 or 13 years of my life were basically just keeping all the bells ringing and the mirrors flashing and the smoke going, trying to stay a step ahead of a screaming fit and trying to keep you from seeing what was down inside me and what was missing down inside me.

Because I believe a part of me felt like and knew that if you saw what I was and what I wasn't, I might have to face it. and and something in me just felt like the earth would swallow me up through that own emptiness in my middle if if I had to face that. Another couple of things about I was always an egoomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Uh in fact I remain one today. Thank the good Lord I don't have to act on it all time but these days but what I mean by that is real simple. I've all my life been perfectly capable of feeling too good for something and not nearly good enough for the same thing at the same time.

Too smart for something and too dumb for the same thing at the same time. The only thing that I absolutely cannot feel again without divine intervention is okay for anything on this earth. It's just not in me on my own without God's help to feel just okay for anything on this earth.

Another couple of things about what I was like um on account of that ego disorder of mine. I I don't believe that I was ever able to give any consideration to the possibility that there might be a power greater than myself that had anything to do with running my life on a daily basis. Now, I was usually all right with the proposition of some sort of, you know, central intellect, I guess, kind of like a celestial CIA or something or creative force.

But when he got down to what I know my religious friends today call the the idea of a personal God. When it got down to the possibility of a God that was more important in the actual conducting and the unfolding of every minute of every hour of every day of my life than my little old brain. My ego vetoed that big time and said we absolutely cannot and will not consider that.

And on account of that same ego disorder, I don't believe that I had any teachability or humility in my life. Not one bit until I got sober at 37. And the reason I don't believe I had any is I've never been able to remember a single time that I voluntarily followed a suggestion that anybody made about how to run my life unless I understood it and I agreed with it and I thought it would work.

And you know, not only did that sound like a good idea for 37 years, it doesn't sound bad tonight. Cuz after all, there's a whole lot of difference in crazy and stupid. So why in the world should I do something about my life voluntarily if I don't understand it or I don't agree with it or I don't think it'll work.

When I get honest about it, it's really simple. You see, I've got a talking illness. And now my illness has been talking to me all my life.

Whether you'd be an alcoholic before you ever take a drink or not, I don't know. And I could care less. Before I got sober, I was so interested in all of these details because I was a victim of one of the deadliest and most pervasive myths in our society.

And what that myth is is that if somehow I can just figure out what's wrong with me, it magically won't be wrong anymore. Well, I probably figured it out drunk several dozen times, but didn't do anything about it. So, it didn't do me a bit of good in the world to figure it out.

The truth is if somebody were sitting down in that parking lot with a foul that had all the wise and wherefors of my alcoholism, where it came from, whether you can be an alcoholic before you drink or not, and all those other things that to me seem to about be about as important as how many angels you can get on the head of a pen today, if somebody had all that information, I wouldn't waste an hour going out there and going through it because I know I've got alcoholism. I know it's incurable, progressive, and fatal. and I know what to do about it.

I've got a solution that works just beautifully. So, I really don't need to know one other thing about it. But, but whether or not you can be an alcoholic before you took can take a drink, you can certainly be a crazy little sucker.

Uh and and I always was and and still am today as far as what goes in my mind. You and all that talking that my illness does to me. And by the way, if I talk about my alcoholism talking to me or my brain talking to me, they're one and the same.

I just don't want to use the same word too much. And I've always had an old crazy picture show rolling in the back of my head. And I've still got that old crazy picture show.

And I've still got my alcoholism running its mouth to me. And I'm so grateful that I was told early on that recovery did not necessarily mean that those things would go away. But what recovery meant was that I would get to the point where I could usually recognize that they were not reality and that I did not have to obey them.

That just because little Donnie had a feeling, he didn't have to build a shrine to it. Now, and and all my life and incidentally, some people hear my talk and get the impression that I'm saying stuff or feelings. And nothing could be further from the truth because our steps, our program of recovery, I believe, give us a marvelous vehicle for confronting our feelings.

First when we go through the first nine steps in order to reach a state of recovery and then on a continuing day-to-day basis as we're living on 10, 11, 12 every day in order to maintain our spiritual condition and get our daily reprieve. I believe they give us a wonderful vehicle for doing that. What I have finally learned by the grace of God is that while my feelings are real and my thoughts are real, they are not reality.

And I don't have to build a shrine to them. See, all my life, if I had a feeling, all of my behavior had to fall in immediately behind my feeling. And I also went to work to get your behavior to fall in behind my feeling.

because it had never occurred to me as I said earlier that a human being could live their life on any basis other than how they felt being the most important thing in the universe. So I'm not saying stuff the feelings but as you'll probably hear a little more of in the next few minutes I am saying that what works for me is my action. If I keep waiting to feel like doing the right thing to do the right thing and that's what I always want.

I don't care what it is. If I don't feel like going to work, every fiber in my body wants to do something like get up and aggravate one of y'all on the phone. Say, I don't feel like going to work.

What can we do to make me feel like going to work so I can go to work? Well, I got to go to work. What difference does it make whether I feel like going to work?

But see, I want to fix the feelings. I want to get that right before I take the action. And here's what I just hate.

I can't stand this. whatever it is, whether it's going to work, which I'm just using for an example, or it's making up the bed, or whatever it is that I know needs to be done and I don't feel like doing what needs to be done. The only therapy, and I want to tell you, in sobriety, I've worn sponsors out.

I've prayed. I've used the steps. I've dominated discussion meetings.

I have gotten outside counseling on not wanting to do the right thing. And the only therapy that has ever done any good at all on man not feeling like doing the right thing was going on doing the right thing when I didn't feel like doing it. And I just absolutely hate that.

But but but at any rate, I kind of got on the side there that that all my life my illness has been talking to me and I don't think it's ever tried to kill me because I don't believe my illness cares whether I live or die. Now, I've nearly died on account of alcoholism dozens of times, but I believe my alcoholism is a perfect sociopath. I believe it's only got one reason for existing, and that's try to get itself that next drink.

And it'll tell me something that might kill me or might kill you. It'll tell me totally inconsistent lies backto back with one another without ever dropping a stitch. It doesn't care.

Just slings it all up against the wall, hoping some of it'll stick. Now, if I could always recognize that that was just my illness talking to me and say, "Oh, I'll chuckle at that and I'll go to a meeting or I'll give somebody a call or I'll get down on my knees and pray or read the big book or whatever and go on about my business." That'd be fine. But you see, my alcoholism is truly a many splendered thing.

I mean, that thing has got more heads than a hydra. A and one really big part of my alcoholism is that if it's anything at all, it is an illness of perception. And what that means is real simple.

That means I don't see things right. I don't hear them right. I don't always recognize them for what they are.

Bottom line, if I put that ultimate veto power in the universe in my brain, which incidentally I never name the ultimate veto power in the universe because it always feels like common sense. So I name it common sense. If I put that ultimate veto power in the universe in my brain that I'm not going to do it unless I understand it, I agree with it and I think it'll work on account of the perception part of my illness.

On someday or the other, I will wind up believing one of those deadly lies that my illness is telling me and I'll pick up a drink and in my case, I will die. You know, not only is the that ultimate veto power in the universe masquerading as common sense, all my crazy ideas do that. In the years that I've been sober, I've never had one single insane idea walk up and say, "Good morning, Don.

How are you? I'm a crazy idea and I'm here to try to kill you today because you see, if it did that, I probably wouldn't mess with it. I'd step around it." So, they all come up, grinning, and say, "Good morning, Don.

How are you, buddy? I'm common sense." and they immediately start talking about how special I and all the pressures I've got on me are and how different I am from the rest of y'all. And whatever it is that I know in my heart just exactly what I need to do or not do.

You know that that little spark of the divine always knows that next stitch. We keep trying to get it to tell us the pattern so we'd start stitching. And that's where I get messed up because I can't comprehend the patterns when when I'm trying to deal with the patterns.

I'm in worse shape than a chimpanzeee trying to master quantum physics. I hadn't got the horses for that. But but that little spark of the divine will tell me where to take that stitch if I'll listen.

And and when I know what that next right thing to do or not do do is or isn't. And my brain is spinning around with all that fear and telling me that if I do that next right thing, I'll lose things I don't want to lose or I won't get things I I want to get. That insane idea is telling me, you know, those other people in AA, if they had the pressures on them that you've got on you, they'd do it that way, too.

And then it'll tell me a lot of you probably doing it that way and just won't admit it, you know. and it tells me how, you know, I've got to do it that way because it's just common sense. And that's why I just can't put that veto in my brain.

When I do that with what I've got wrong with me, I've put myself under death sentence. And I believe that I've made myself absolutely unteable because I've made my brain the God of my universe. when I'm not willing to come as a little child to spiritual things and do things simply because I am obeying and doing them.

I believe that with what I've got wrong with me that I'm running the real risk of dying. U one more quick thing about what I was like. I always wanted to grow up to be an alcoholic.

That was my ambition. U but I didn't know that till I've been sober about a year. And and looking back on it, it's real simple.

about by the time I was four or five, I looked around at the decent, responsible, hardworking men in the area where I grew up. And here's what I saw. I saw the dulllest looking old guys you've ever seen in your life.

Uh they were driving old, beat up, paid for pickup trucks, you know, 12 or 15 years old. And and more often than not, they'd be married to a lady that didn't look interesting to me, even though I was a little kid. Uh, in those days in the rural south, they'd wear those old dresses, look like flower sacks, and and and most of the time they'd have a whole house full of little snotty-nosed kids.

And and those guys would get up every morning, eat breakfast with that drab looking woman, and all those kids go get in that old beat up page for pickup truck and go right exactly where somebody had told them to go. And all day long, they would do what somebody had told them to do. And then at the end of the day, and this really did, it just blew me away.

I couldn't understand it at all. At the end of the day, they would go back to the same people they had left that morning, and they would eat supper and and go to bed with the chickens, get up next day and do the same fool thing. And then maybe on Sunday, you'd see them load that crew in the pickup, go up the road to Julian Baptist Church or down the road to Locust Grove Baptist Church, and then on Sunday afternoon, they might do something like go visit people for heaven's sake.

Yeah. And and see part of this ego disorder mind is that I'm not able without divine intervention to have but one knee-jerk reaction to anything or anybody. And if you're an alcoholic, you can pretty quickly figure out what that is.

Sure. What has this got to do with me? So I looked at those guys, made those observations, had the only reaction I could have.

And it came to me, well, you're a little boy and they're grown men. So maybe when you grow up, some parts of your life will be something like these decent, responsible men like to have scared me to death. It absolutely terrified me to think that I'd grow up in anything in my life would be remotely like those decent men.

Now, by the time I was about seven or eight years old, my older brother Dan, and Dan's 13 years older than I, as far as I know, Dan did not cause my alcoholism. Uh uh I have no idea what a dysfunctional family is. I'll tell you that.

Uh the reason I don't have any idea what a dysfunctional family is is that I've never met anybody that claimed that they came from a functional family. So unless I can identify a functional family, I sure don't know what a dysfunctional family is. But what I'm pretty sure of is that I was the most dysfunctional thing in my family.

Uh and by the time I was seven or eight, I had aggravated brother Dan until to shut me up. He would occasionally take me over into the wet county. We had all these dry counties in Kentucky where they had the beer joints.

And he'd let me sit around, drink big oranges, eat pickled eggs while he drank beer. And and I would observe and listen. And first thing I observed was that a lot of those honky tonk heroes had the big flashy cars that they couldn't afford, but they had them.

And then we'd walk on in there and and I I couldn't be more sincere. It still just burned into my brain what those guys looked like sitting at those bars. Man, I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

They they were doing things like sitting there and gazing down into that beer. You could tell that they were just plumbing its depths. And I look at it, looked at them, and I intuitively knew immediately that those guys were deep and intelligent and romantic.

And they were so much more interesting than those old drones out there on the farm doing what people told them to do. And and then I'd look over in the booth and I'd see one of them with his arm draped around some lady looked a whole lot more interesting to me than those old gals in the flower sack dresses. And and these fellas didn't care if they were married to somebody else.

They didn't care if those women were married to somebody else. But the most magic thing of all, I didn't get to finish the first big orange until I had overheard enough of those fellas conversations to know that nearly every one of them was only about that far from being rich and famous. Every one of them had at least one great big deal going that was going to pop flat going to be somebody.

Now, it was usually a good big deal, but not always. Important word was big. If they had a bad deal, it was a big bad deal.

And and and I was told early in surprise said, "Don, what's wrong with you? You got a disease of big deals." Said, "Your whole life's been one big deal right after another. Good big deals and bad big deals all stumbling, falling over one another." Said, "There's no mystery to that." Said, "On account of your terribly disordered ego, anything that you can imagine has got anything to do with you, you blow up into a great big deal." Same thing be happening to somebody say, "Oh, that's nothing.

He handle that." You know, but it happens to you. Oh my god. or if you think it's happening to you.

Uh and and and he said went on to say said you are far too sick, I'm sure, to ever get to the point where you will be able to feel this way. But he said if you're ever going to have any comfortable sobriety, you're going to have to get to the point where you're going to have to act like you feel and believe that anytime you make a big deal out of anything. And over the next few years, he got it through my head that anything includes my health.

It includes my freedom. It includes my kids. It includes those things that we're pretty well in unanimous agreement are far too important to turn over to God, money and sex.

Uh it it it includes all of those things that anytime I make a big deal out of anything that is not God and not these 12 steps, what I'm really making a big deal out of is me. And when I do that, I'm back into ego and I'm back into alcoholism. But 50 years ago, sitting in those beer joints in Kentucky, I didn't know there was a thing wrong with big deals.

And and what happened is obvious. I took one look, one good long look at self-will run, at total lack of consideration for other people, at total disregard for honesty on any level. And I fell in love with everything about it.

From the first time I got a good look at those guys, the only true ambition I ever had was to grow up to be just like them. look like them, sound like them, put off the very vibrations that they put off, treat people the way they talked about treating people. That was so cool.

You could just listen. They didn't take anything off anybody. And I got my ambition.

I just didn't know what the right name for it was. And I got drunk the first time when I was either 12 or 13. That first night, I got in an awful lot of trouble.

I puked, blacked out, passed out. Woke up next morning, had a terrible hangover. Swear all those Baptists around there were right and I would never do it again.

And I was sincere and it was nearly a week until I got drunk the second time uh because the magic had happened. And at the time I didn't know the magic had happened. At the time all I knew was that for a few minutes on my way to puking and getting in all that trouble I had passed through a right pleasant neighborhood.

Uh but looking back on it I know the magic could happen. When I got enough that stuff in me that for the first time it did something about that pain and that emptiness that that obsession with myself had created all my life. It made me for the first time feel good enough that I could stand the way I felt inside without either running as hard as I could or trying to stuff something else in there to make me feel okay.

And since remember the way I feel has always been the most important thing in the universe to me for the next 25 years when I wanted to change the way I felt badly enough. It didn't matter what it cost and it didn't matter who it cost because how I felt was the most important thing in this universe. And I believe with all my heart that that's at the very core of my powerlessness over alcohol and the things like it.

I'm not going to give you much of a drunk log tonight. I want to want to get on and talk about getting sober and living sober a little bit. But I'll tell you that from that first drunk until I got sober was about 25 years.

And from that first drunk until I got sober, alcohol dominated everything in my life. Not just alcoholism, alcohol did because I was not an occasional drinker. I was not a binge drinker.

For that 25 years, I'm real confident that I went to be a drunk more than 80% of the nights. Uh everything that happened in my life happened around alcoholism because or around alcohol because of alcohol in spite of alcohol. But alcohol was the center of everything.

By the time I was 15 or 16 years old, I had figured out that if you stayed close enough to me in any capacity whatsoever for long enough, you'd wind up blowing the whistle on my drinking. You'd wind up saying, "Wait a minute, Don. You know, being around you is nice in some ways, and it really does get exciting from time to time, but there's something wrong here.

There's something wrong with the way you drink, and there's wrong with the way you live. And we need to look at that. we need to talk about that.

And when you did, if I couldn't change your mind, you had just punched your ticket out of my life. And as a result, I really didn't have people in my life. I had positions.

And whatever your position was in my life, I probably had your replacement interviewed at any time. I'm not proud of that. I believe it's a pretty good partial description of a sociopath.

I've had to make a lot of amends based on that, but that's simply the way it was for about 25 years in my life. School for me was was was very easy. By the time I was 16, I felt like I'd gotten in enough trouble with my drinking that I had to get away from that farming community where I'd been born and grown up.

So, I left school and took a Greyhound bus 200 miles to Louisville, the big city in Kentucky. And I wound up on the doorstep of the University of Louisville after a little while. and they gave me a bunch of tests and let me in as an early admission student.

And over the next eight years, I drank and worked my way through undergraduate and law school. And I've got very few memories of that. That's just a a drunken blur.

And in the spring of 1968, I graduated from law school. And Dana, who was my only child for for over 20 years, was born. I started practicing law in downtown Louisville in ' 68.

I practiced until 78 with some degree of material success. uh you know our stories change after we've been sober for a while and and the first several years I was giving talks in fact there bunch of tapes out there of me in the early years proclaiming my fantastic material success during those 10 years in my law practice and and I couldn't have been more honest. Uh the truth is now if I stay sober and live to stay sober 35 years I may have been a total failure.

I don't really know. But but the best I do right now is I I I had some some moderate financial material success. And and that's what I would stick in your face when you suggested there was something wrong with somebody who lived the way I did.

During that 10 years, easily a third of the nights in that 10 years, I made no attempt to go to bed like a normal human being. I passed out in some circumstance other than going to bed. I've tried many occasion front of a jury without laying my head down.

just take a handful of something to try to offset the booze and get in there and try the case. Uh it was totally and absolutely insane. I not only didn't have any I didn't have any relationships with any people in my life that had any reality to them.

Honesty was totally out of the question. I began during that 10 years to use some things other than the alcohol. And during that period, just like they were with Bill Wilson and Dr.

Bob, they were sideshows to the booze. The booze was the big tent. There were things to change the effect of the booze, to increase it, to to decrease it, to help me try to function with the hangovers, but the booze was at the core of everything.

February 10th, 1978, I got full of scotch, cocaine, quaudes, vodka, and speed. Uh, and I drove a sports car off the road at over 130 m an hour. Now, since the roads were icy, that probably was not a real good judgment to be driving 130.

But I I drove it off the road and I did an awful lot of bad things to my body. I broke both legs, crushed both knees, lost the main artery in one lower leg, had to do a bypass, take a vein out of the upper leg, graft it in to replace the artery, and it separated my pelvis and pulled my plumbing into. So, I didn't have a urinary function for over a year.

I had what they call a super pubic catheter, which is just a plastic tube with a flange on it where they bore a hole in your abdomen. Pop that sucker into your bladder to carry your urine out to a bag. And I was in the hospital for about 6 months of that first year.

And I had a half dozen major surgeries. It was 2 and 1/2 months before they stood me up on an electric tilt table for the first time. Early on, the doctors gave me the prognosis that I would probably never walk again without at least braces on both legs and one or two canes, and that they doubted that we could find a surgeon anywhere that would ever attempt to put my plumbing back together so that I would have a urinary function.

Uh, just for the record and purely by the grace of God, because we've already discussed the fact that it didn't have anything to do with me following directions. Uh but but just for the record, I've been sober a little over 21 years and haven't owned a brace or a cane for over 22 years. Uh and about a year after that wreck, the head of urology down at Duke University did reconnect my plumbing and restored my urinary function.

But I didn't know that was going to happen. And my reaction to that prognosis, I didn't go broke after that wreck, right immediately right away because a little law firm of seven or eight lawyers had built up around this other guy and myself. So, some money kept coming in for a while.

U my reaction to that prognosis is that I would lay in my hospital bed every day, not occasionally, every day. And I would have my friends bring me in booze and more dope than the doctors were giving me. And I would lay in that bed and say really intelligent things like, "Fellas, anybody can quit 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'd give them my talk about a man ought not be out there doing the crime if he's not prepared to do the time.

And they weren't going to hear me whining and give me another drink. And that's real insanity. And it's real powerlessness.

Um when I had that wreck, I was remarried to my daughter's mama. And just as an aside, I've been making an observation of this over the years. I believe that proves my alcoholism without further authentication because nobody ever does that but us.

Not ever. And we do it all the time. If a normie even considered going back and remarrying somebody and jumping back in a frying pan they just got out of, they'd tear the door off the asylum to protect themselves.

And we do it all time drunk and sober and and it seems to work for us a pretty good percentage of the time. It's just a difference in us. But anyway, I was really next time you see that happening, look and I will guarantee you that at least one and very frequently both is alcoholic, dope fiend or so alanon sick they cannot crawl.

It just it just doesn't happen to norm. But at any rate, um my daughter's mother understandably was very disturbed with the circumstances of the wreck since had another lady with me. And so we wound up divorcing uh shortly after the wreck.

And I wound up married to the to the other young lady who was hurt, but not as badly as I. About a year after that wreck, I made my first trip to the asylum. And I don't use that word to be cute.

Bill Wilson uses that word in the big book. And my mama used that word. Um and by the time I made that first trip to the asylum, sometime around the first of the year 79, I still had my braces and my crutches and my catheter bag and my tube in my belly.

And the phenomenon of craving that the big book talks about and that's a simple thing all the world it is is the physical addiction to ethyl alcohol that once you once that thing is set in when you get some ethyl alcohol in your body not only does your mind and your soul want another drink body needs it and as that thing progresses it the body needs to be begins to need it really bad for 25 years of drinking and I had the phenomenon of craving first drink I ever took to my knowledge I have never set out intentionally to have a couple or three drinks. I have never wanted a couple of three drinks. A couple of three drinks has never done anything for me except make my mouth cottony and make my head feel like somebody stuck a basketball pump and hit it about a pump and a half.

Uh I' I've never set out to have two or three. Never even told myself I was going to do that. Uh and nobody ever had to tell me that drinking the next morning would cure a hangover.

I was born intuitively knowing that somewhere in the marrow of my bones, I knew that. But for over 20 years, the terror, see, what motivated me wasn't ambition. What motivated me was terror.

The terror that if I didn't lay there in that bed and smoke three or four cigarettes, then jump up scared to death to try to remember things that happened the night before, be afraid of what I had to deal with that day, stick a toothbrush in my mouth, and half the mornings of my life for a quarter of a century puke. And by the way, did not know that was abnormal. I I started doing it at about 12 or 13 when I started getting drunk all the time.

So I vaguely associated it with puberty. And I thought everybody did it. And and you know, you don't talk about that much.

You didn't stand around a cocktail part party and say, "Hi, sweetie. Did you puke when you brushed your teeth this morning?" You know, you just don't talk about that a lot. But I I want to report that to my knowledge, I'm not thrown up when I brush my teeth one single time since April of 1981.

But but at any rate, that fear would motivate me to do that. And then I I' I'd throw on the clothes that I thought I was supposed to throw on and try to go where I thought I was supposed to go and make the noise that I thought I was supposed to make. Not because I had ambition, not because I had emotional health or responsibility, but because I was terrified that if I didn't do that, that you would see what I was and I'd have to face what I was.

And I knew I couldn't stand that. Uh, excuse me. Needed a little little little water there.

But at any rate, the scales tipped a little bit. And that phenomenon of craving progressed until it was greater than the fear. It progressed until there wasn't any force that I knew of inside me that could stop that thing.

Uh, I have never felt a physical force of any kind. And I've had a dozen major surgeries altogether. I've come off a lot of hard drugs.

I've never felt a physical force even in the league with the last couple of hundred times I had to withdraw from ethyl alcohol. Most horrible thing physically that I've ever done those last couple of hundred times. Uh and I'd reached the point where I just pretty well lost the ability within myself to stop drinking.

Something usually had to intervene and get me prized loose from alcohol. And when it got me prized loose, then it took three or four days for me to be physically able to do something like set up in a chair. Well, they got me in this first asylum.

They got me through the three or four days. And they set me up in a chair. I'm sitting there with my my braces, my crutches, my caster bag, and my tube.

And they decided for some reason that an AA meeting would be appropriate. So, they had somebody get up and read how it works. They got step three.

Made a decision. turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And that insulted my intellect.

So I climbed up on my crutches and straightened up my catheter bag and said as loud as I could, "Do you mean to tell me there are people in this world who believe such crap?" Then I hobbled on over the telephone, called somebody to get me away from the religious fanatics before they somehow polluted my pristine intellect. Now that was sometime around the first year of 79. I got sober about 2 and 1/2 years later in April of 81.

And I really don't remember much of that. But some things that I do know happened during that 2 and 1/2 years are that I went back to the asylum 17 more times. I became addicted to hard narcotics.

I became a needle street junkie. And I'm real grateful for that because that brought enough pressure on my law partners to cause them to kick me out of the law firm that I founded. And I wasn't going to hit bottom.

As it turned out, as long as I had a Timex watch, I sure wasn't going to do it as long as I had a law firm. And and you know, bottom used to be the most mysterious thing in the world to me. And it seemed so unfair.

The first few years I was sober. You know, it's bottom. It was like we were little dry leaves out here on the wind.

And and if we were just real fortunate and caught a downdraft, we'd get blown to bottom. Then we could get sober and do the steps and have wonderful fellowships and get all spiritual and just have a wonderful life. But if a poor fella caught a bad updraft, you know, and couldn't get blown to bottom, then they just had to die mad dog death.

And it just didn't seem fair. And my bottoms are a whole lot different thing today. Um, by the way, booze and dope was my first bottom that I'm aware of.

I once did a little mental calculation, figured I've hit some sort of bottom every 8 and 1/2 days since I've been sober. Uh a and my bottoms today are nothing at all like being a little dry leaf on the wind. My bottoms are about 85% a decision.

A decision over which I've got a world of control. And my decisions today, and this is really important in my life, my decisions are different from my intentions. You see, my intentions do not become decisions until I am acting on them.

So if I tell you, hey, I've decided to go to New York tomorrow. You say, what have you done about it, Don? I said, well, in the morning, I'm going to tell me, nah, you had decided, Don, you just got an intention.

And my bottoms are always the same. They are decisions that I'll do anything. I will do absolutely anything to keep from feeling the way I've been feeling and living the way I've been living.

And when I've made that decision, by definition, acting on it, I've hit bottoms. And the good news is I've got so much control over that. But any rate, I wasn't going to hit bottom in that spot as long as I had anything.

The state of Kentucky helped me out a little further by jerking my law license. Uh my new wife had to leave me and and she was staying with some girlfriends during that period and and died in an accident. I last laid eyes on my daughter in January of 1980.

I didn't see or talk to her for over three years. The Internal Revenue took my portion of the office building we built in downtown Louisville and a couple of things like that. The mortgage companies took the homes the ex-wives were in and it was just all gone.

And after all the material things were gone, my daddy was on the farm in his late 80s with nothing but his social security. And I went and stole that to keep on drinking. And I've got a much older, badly crippled sister, and I endangered Sarah's health and her very life by using her and abusing her to keep on drinking and drugging.

Um, I used up everything and everybody. I burned all of my bridges. And for almost a year and a half, up until the fall of 1980, I lived without an address.

I lived on what I call the street and an expired Blue Cross Blue Shield card. And during that year and a half, I lived every day of that with the conscious conviction that I had to die of alcoholism. The way that happened seems clear to me now.

You see, a good half those places I'm calling asylums had treatment programs based on the 12 steps. And when I was able, since I had no place to go, I would sometimes go to a number of AA meetings between trips to the asylum. So, I had a headful of information about AA.

In fact, it's one of my frequent and sincere prayers today that I never ever know as much about AA as I did before I could get sober. And I couldn't be more serious than I am about that prayer. And what would happen in that year and a half is one of you guys would tell me how AA had saved your life and changed your life.

And my brain would go, "Yeah, I know it works for you guys, but y'all don't understand how complex and intelligent I really am." You know, if I could just be simple-minded like you guys. Well, it'd be wonderful. But but y'all don't understand what a broad stage I've played on.

And my Lord, my tentacles have just reached so far and touched so many. And and and and what y'all don't understand is that I see things more clearly than ordinary people. And my God, I feel them so much more acutely.

I'm just wounded by my own understanding. And and and and y'all didn't understand. Of course, I knew I was an alcoholic.

And for that matter, a dope fiend, too. But what y'all didn't understand was that those were just little symptoms or results of this terrible and complex thing that was my real problem. And I couldn't be simple-minded and address those little symptoms over there and expect this terrible and magnificent complexity to go away.

You know, talk about y'all's myth of a higher power and compulsively go to your little meetings and I'd get a tear in my eye but so grateful it would work for the simple-minded. But it couldn't work for me because I was so magnificent. Now the very next heartbeat, this is the cunning, baffling, powerful part of this thing.

The very next heartbeat, one of you guys would tell me how saved your life and changed your life and that same brain, that same illness would go, "Yeah, I know it works for you guys, but y'all don't know about the parts of me that are missing." Y'all don't know that I've never been able to love anything or anybody, not even myself. Not really. You don't know that I've never been able to be consistently responsible about one single thing in my life.

And you don't know that anything in my life that looks like it was good or even just okay is some kind of pack of lies in a house of cards. And y'all don't know how bad I've been. You guys have got people and things left to get sober with and to get sober for.

You don't know that I've destroyed everything and there's nothing and there's nobody left for me. So it won't work for me because I'm so terrible. Very next heartbeat hits back telling me it won't work for me because I'm so magnificent and I'm believing it both times, you know, just rolling on.

The fall of 1980, I washed up on the doorstep of asylum number 17 in Nashville, Tennessee. They let me in. I found out later because they didn't think I would live a week if they left me on the street.

As I said, I had no home. I had no car, had no money, had no clothes, teeth were rottening out of my head. Uh they kept me in there about a month until it was time that they had to boot me out.

Uh and I had no place to go of course. And my roommate um in that place had a his family lived in Nashville, Tennessee. And they were not even really involved in aa.

They they were just good spiritual people. And they said, "Don, we feel sorry for you. Come stay with us a few days while we try to figure out what to do with you." And I went and lived with them a year on charity.

And for the first 6 months, I didn't stay straight, but I got better. And I believe in my case, I had to get better before I could truly grab hold of this program. You I've always said this is an illness of superlatives.

So, I don't believe I'm bragging about how bad I was. But I am telling you what it was like for me. My my original sponsor, Cherry Carpenter, told somebody when I was three years sober.

And incidentally, I didn't find this out until about three years ago. There was about 15 years in there when I didn't know that he had said that. A fell had come to him in Nashville and I was sober a couple of years, you know, couple of three years.

And and this fell had come to him and said, "Cherry, I've gotten drunk again. I've done so many times. I don't think it'll work for me.

Uh I I'm constitutionally incapable of being honest. I've got these grave emotional mental disorders and I'm too egotistical. I don't think it'll work.

But if you'll agree to be my sponsor, I'll try it one more time." And what I found out that my loving sponsor did was look at that guy and say, "Jim, let me tell you something. If Don Major can get sober, anybody in the world can get sober." And I've never known whether he was complimenting me or insulting me. But but I really believe that I was in such a bad shape that I needed that 6 months.

And during that 6 months before the before April of 81, uh I went to an awful lot of AA meetings there in Nashville, most of them at a clubhouse called the 202 club. Uh I got to where I could go two or three weeks without getting ripped. And that was a world record for me.

I'd never done that in or out of an asylum since the first time I got drunk. And they only put me back in one rubber room in that whole six-month period. And the rate I'd been going, I thought twice a year in the asylum would have been the picture of mental health.

You know, that would have been wonderful. Uh late March of 81, I got on my most recent drunk and uh spilled water all over your thing, too. Um I'm get a little better, but slowly.

Uh I got on my most recent drunk in late March of 81, and u it was another one of my pop off vodka/lististerine drunks. And I have truly drunk a barrel of both those things and have got better memories by the way of the Listerine than I do of that old hot popoff. And not just cuz you could get it 24 hours.

Of course, that was the big attraction to start with. But but but it actually tasted better in old hot popoff. Get you just as drunk.

Now, now for any of you all that are not done drinking, my medical friends tell me that drinking the Listerine is playing Russian roulette and that with some regularity it kills us when we drink it. But I it did not kill me on that. most recent drunk once before it.

By the time April the 8th of 81 rolled around, I'd been drunk 10 days or two weeks and I was sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel in Nashville, Tennessee, and a loving God started giving me a whole lot of gifts. Now, for the first few weeks I was sober, I had no idea that there was any such thing as a loving God or that anything was giving me any gifts because, and this is real important to me, coming off that most recent drug did not feel any different than the 200 before it. If I had kept waiting to see a burning bush, if I kept waiting to feel like AA could take care of all those magnificent, terrible things wrong with me.

If id kept waiting to believe that AA could take care of all those things, to start blindly doing what you guys in this big book told me to do, I would have been rotting in that popper's grave for over 20 years. The biggest gift that my loving God had given me was the first tiny little bit of teachability or humility I'd ever had in my life. And I had no idea I had that gift.

uh three or four days after that most recent drink uh I was able to stumble and I stumbled back to the door of that clubhouse in Nashville and I didn't think they would let me in and really they should not have let me in. Lord I've been on the board of directors of a club at home for 15 years and we wouldn't consider letting some clown back in ever that had did what what I did. Uh I had passed out in their AA meetings and have to be bodily carried out.

Of course, it's a little different world today. If somebody passes out at the club, they call EMS and the police. They just threw me in the back of pickup truck, went on with the meeting, you know, checked on me after the meeting was over.

Uh, and they had caught me shooting dope in their men's room. And, 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 2 months before I got sober. I was walking through that clubhouse and a big old tall boy about 6'6 named Joe Walked up and looked down at me and said, "Don, I'm beginning to think you really are too intelligent for this program." Now, remember, I had been around intensely for over two years, and I thought he was giving me a compliment.

I really did. My knee-jerk reaction was, "Well, thank God they have finally figured out who they're dealing with here." But he went on and he said, "You know, Don, that's a real shame because we have never had anybody too dumb for this deal. And we buried you buttholes all time." And something about that stuck inside me.

It was still stuck there two months later when I stumbled back to that door. And I said, "Will y'all let me in?" They said, "Yeah." And I said, "Will you tell me?" They said, "Yeah, you're keeping us sober." Is what they said. And I said, "Will y'all tell me one more time what I need to do if I won't live?" and they said, "Sure, Don.

Don't drink. Don't take dope. Go to meetings." First 60 days, I went to over 150 meetings.

Now, I remember specifically that it was very clear to me that I didn't need to be going to all those meetings. It was very clear to me that they really weren't doing a whole lot of good most of the time. And my brain was assuring me that what I really needed to do was get my head out of the sand, get my butt back to Louisville, get some money, get a law license, good-looking woman, big car, be somebody for heaven's sake.

But I've been given that beautiful gift that I didn't know ahead. have been able to turn around to my brain and say, "Yeah, I know, partner, but you and I have nearly killed one another, and we don't have anything else to do except go to these dumb old meetings, even though they can't possibly take care of all this terrible and magnificent complexity that's wrong with us." And guess what? The meetings worked just as well as if I had thought they were exactly what I needed.

I had it all backwards. I thought in order for a to work, it had to feel like it was working. I thought I had to believe it would work.

The truth is I thought I had to be able to see the causal relationship between this cause and that. Didn't have a thing in this world to do with it. All I needed to do was get my raggedy butt to meeting after meeting after meeting and let my old sick brain and soul get dragged in there kicking and screaming behind my raggedy butt.

Then they told me if I wanted to live I was going to have to read the big book. I said, "But I've read it several times." They said, "We know, Don." They said, "You've been criticizing the literary style and quoting it to us while you've been dying, dummy." They said, "You've got that backwards, too." They said, "Somehow you've got it in your head that that big book is a philosophy book, and there's something there you can study or master that's going to somehow transport you to a sublime state of sobriety." They said, "Pardon, it ain't going to happen." Said, "There's nothing in that book that you can learn that will keep you sober for a heartbeat." In fact, they said, "Don, the book of Alcoholics Anonymous is not the solution to your problem. It's the description of the solution to your problem." And they said, "This deal of sobriety is not a learning process." They said, "Don, you have known enough for a couple of years to say sober the rest of your life, a day at a time, without learning a single other piece of information about AA." They said, "What's killing you isn't what you know and don't know, dummy.

What's killing you is what you're doing and not doing because what this book really is. It's a simple instruction manual for your actions. And what so Brad in recovery really is is a doing process, not a learning process.

And they said if you'll come to this book like a little child and you'll start at the front cover and you go through it line for line, reading only the black part and not looking for a single thing to learn, but for what it says do. and you'll start doing what it suggests doing. You're not only going to be able to stay sober a day at a time indefinitely, you're going to be rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence.

And that's been exactly that way with me. They explained to me that the steps work on alcoholism just like penicellin works on an infection. If I've got an infection that's going to kill me, but will respond to penicellin, I don't need to understand my infection.

I don't even need to be convinced that that infection is causing all those terrible things wrong with me. Don't need to understand one single thing about how penicellin works in the human body. Don't even need to believe that that little bottle of pills can take care of all those terrible things wrong with magnificent me.

And don't even need to want to take the pills. If I've got the infection and take the pills as directed, I'll be just fine. Thank you.

I was told that these steps and I've in my life, it's been true, are the only program of recovery. In fact, the only program for alcoholics snobs and be a member of this fellowship on any day I've got a desire to stop drinking. Thank the good Lord that the membership requirement is only that.

But if I latch onto this fellowship like a leech without doing these steps, I might stay dry for a week or for 30 years. But if I do it that way, I'll have absolutely no healing of what's really wrong inside. No healing of that disordered ego, of that inability to be comfortable inside myself, except just exactly as I do those first nine steps the way the book says do them.

And having done that, live on 10, 11, and 12 the way the book says do it. Then they told me if I wanted to live, I was going to have to get on my knees every morning, every night, and ask a power greater than myself to get through the day without drinking and drugging. and thank that powered night and the tears came to my eyes and I tried to explain to him that uh on account of the second step that I couldn't do that that the second step was killing me because it had been clear to me all along that if I was going to live I had to somehow change what I thought felt and believed and make it more like what you guys thought felt and believed if I was going to live and I couldn't change it I tried every way I knew to change man's sides I couldn't change anything so I'm sitting there with tears in my eyes when I finally was given ears to hear when they said, "Don, you've got that backwards, too.

We have never suggested that you think, feel, or believe anything." And my mouth fell open because you know at the heart of this disordered ego is this insane conviction that what I think, feel, and believe is the center of the universe. Lord, we can't have a little Donnie doing something he doesn't feel like doing. You know, it'd make him a hypocrite.

We're funny about being hypocrites. If we get sober and after been sober a while, we can chuckle at uh, you know, discreetly chuckle at some past larseny and adultery and things like that. And and even if a homicide's old enough and the circumstances were right, we get a little smile out of that sometime.

But my god, we don't want to be hypocrites. You know, it's just the worst thing in the world for us to be hypocrites. But they said, "No, Don, we would never suggest that you think, feel, or believe anything." said in the first place you are way too sick to have any valid thoughts, feelings or beliefs whatsoever.

It said in the second place your thoughts, feelings, beliefs are your illness. And the third place, the issue whether you live or die is going to be determined solely by what you do. So they said if you want to live, you get down on those knees mornings and night and you start saying those words and don't worry about what's going through your head because it won't count.

Well, sometime in April of 81, over my brain's loud veto, I started purely acting as if and getting on my knees and saying those words morning and night. And the miracle of the second step began to happen and I began to come to believe. To my knowledge, I haven't missed a morning or night doing that since April of 81.

It's the second most important thing in my sobriety. The first most important thing in my sobriety is real simple. You know, they talk about AA not being about not drinking.

For me, AA is kind of all about not drinking. And if you don't agree with that, next person you know that has a slip, check their spirituality while they're slipping. You know, see how they're doing on that.

Uh but the most important thing in my sobriety, a day at a time's real simple. That's today just for today. With God's help and yours, I'm not going to drink or take dope even if my butt falls off.

And that's my responsibility. That's not God's. I had to learn the hard way that neither this God you were talking about nor you guys were ever going to knock a drink out of my hand.

That I had to learn that powerless over alcohol did not mean powerless over my elbow. And that just because I wanted to drink did not mean Alcoholics Anonymous was not working. I had to do the first mature things I'd ever done in my life in order to get to the point where I didn't want to drink a drug anymore.

For anybody that's new, don't want to leave you with the impression that I've been wanting to drink and drug for the last 21 years. In fact, I haven't wanted to drink a drug a single day since I was maybe 90 days sober. But I would never have lived to get there if I hadn't been willing to recognize that there's no way in the world I can abdicate the responsibility for what I put in my body.

That's not God's job. That's mine. And after I'd done those mature things long enough, then God and this program took over.

and I haven't wanted to do it a single day for over 20 years. Uh they led me through the first nine steps in Nashville and um finally got it through my head that the third step is only a decision. I thought my third step was going to be like a Cesal Deal movie.

either turning my will in life over to the care of God said no it's just a decision Don it's very vital and crucial and it's an action step if you haven't gone in a room with an understanding person because today we always have understanding people if you haven't gone in a room with an understanding person gotten on your knees said words very like the third step prayer u you hadn't done third step out consonous said third step out third step is not something that happens to you it's specific action you've either done it or you hadn't So if you hear somebody wondering whether they've done it or not, don't worry, they haven't. Then they explained to me that the third step was great, but it would have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a fourth step. And and being as willing as I was, you know, uh sure enough, at once about 8 months later, I started my fourth step.

And and I can tell you that that little little promise in the book that the third step will evaporate if you don't start at once on the fourth step is valid. It works. Do your third step.

Don't do your fourth step. Your third step will evaporate on you precisely like book says. Book says it won't amount to a hill of beans.

They led me through four and five and I did those and formed a picture of what a spiritual dawn ought to look like. Uh I blew past step six and seven. Figured that that was where with God's help, I went to work on me to make me into what I had decided a spiritual dawn look like.

I got into 89 when I celebrated a year sober. I still was unable to find a job in Nashville. I was living in an attic with no phone, no car, happier than I'd ever been in my life.

Uh, at about a year and a half sober as a byproduct of steps eight and nine, my law license got put back in order. And scared to death in January of 83, 21 months sober, I went back to Louisville. Didn't think Louisville Aa would work.

Had a lot of good reasons why it wouldn't work like it had in Nashville. But I threw myself into their dumb old Louisville meetings. And guess what?

It worked just fine. After about a month, I thought it might be better than Nashville AA. Second month I was in town, a couple of really big miracles started happening by God incidents.

I wound up talking at the Kentucky State Convention in front of 2,000 people with uh uh and 22 months sober. And and that same month, I saw my only child for the first time in over three years. And two months later, she moved in with me, lived with me all through high school, and she's 34 now and and a successful artist in Virginia.

and very very active in Alanon and we we are good friends. We can get on one another's nerves terribly, make the other one break out in the hives, but we've got a close and a beautiful relationship for God has given me that from what I had totally destroyed. On account of that talk, people started saying nice things to me, you know, will you talk here?

Will you talk there? Will you be my sponsor? And I started making some money right away.

So the first thing you know I'm wearing decent clothes and wearing driving a decent car and all those things were wonderful and the first nine years of mass soiety were wonderful. I've always gone to four or five meetings a week and tried to do what I was asked to do in AA and those first nine years were great but first nine years I was sober relationships with the opposite sex and financial chaos like to have killed me. They like to have beat me to death.

And I worked on them so hard. And man, I was working on them with the best tools you can imagine. Prayer steps, meetings, sponsors, outside counseling, rigorous honesty.

You see, whatever character defect was inconsistent with this little picture of a spiritual dawn I had in my head, and whatever character defect was making my self-centered butt uncomfortable, I'd grab that sucker by the collar and slam it up against the wall and say, "Come here, God. Give me a little help. we'll get rid of this.

And God never showed up. Didn't seem to have the slightest interest in giving me a little help. And I didn't know what was wrong.

I thought maybe, you know, we capable of a little grandiose thinking. I thought I was kind of like Moses being shown the promised land. Said, "You didn't really think we were going to let you live a normal life after all the crap you did, did you, Don?" Uh, and my original sponsor had died.

And I'd wound up with Tom B from right outside of Cleveland, Ohio in May of 1990. And right after I asked Tom be my sponsor went up and spent a weekend with him. I'm going to abbreviate this and sat down.

But uh during that weekend there was a bunch of old heads up there. They had a Cleveland Akran AA golf tournament that weekend. There was one old boy there that had drank with Dr.

Bob. Uh Tom had been sober 29 years at the time. They truly treated him like a newcomer.

And before I left there that weekend, they had said things to me that had made me begun to begin to realize, for it to become real to me. And that's so different than knowing. You know, realize is the form of the word real.

And when I've realized something, it has become real to me. And I've known things for 30 years that I had not realized. And I began to realize that weekend that I had missed everything that I could have missed about step six and seven.

You see, I could have quoted that sevenstep prayer to you backwards, but in my heart, I thought what it really meant that I was asking God to remove all my defects of character and especially those that were inconsistent with what I thought a spiritual dawn ought to be and the ones that were making me so uncomfortable and embarrassing me. Hey, my illness is self-centeredness. This deal at age, a selfish program, that's not in there, folks.

What is in there is is that it's a selfish and self-centered illness and that our solution, our recovery is an otheroriented and a god oriented solution and recovery to this thing. And when I'm trying to treat an illness that is self-centeredness with more obsession on self, it doesn't make any difference if I'm dressing that up in psychological clothing or spiritual clothing. I'm trying to put out a fire with gasoline and it's simply not going to work.

So you see, I had blown past six and seven thinking it was where I went to work on me to make me into what I thought ought to be and make me comfortable. And that's not what the seventh step prayer says. It ask God to remove every defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to God and my fellows.

And I don't have any idea which ones they are. You see, when I was praying for those character defects and working on them to be gone because they were making me uncomfortable, inconsistent with what I thought I ought to be, I might as well have been praying for a Ferrari or praying to be chairman of General Motors or Ford because I was praying for my own selfish ends. But I couldn't see that for nine years sober.

They explained to me that if I wanted things to get better, I better go back to Louisville and understand that that prayer does not say that I asked God to help me. It asked God to remove it. 67 turned out not being where I went to work on my character defects.

It wound up being where I quit working on them. And thank the good Lord, I don't have issues in my life. I've never seen a single issue look like it was really comfortably and truly resolved.

So, I don't have issues. I have character defects and I found out that those character defects that I can lay at my God's feet and say, "Mom, Dad, you take what you want and you leave the rest and I'm going to concentrate real hard on trying to take that next stitch and I'm going to quit trying to figure out the pattern and you just tell me where to stitch." And I found out that when I came to my God as a little child and did it so imperfectly the last 12 years, just like it's always been, my spiritual progress has been stumbling a couple steps in the right direction, getting knocked over by self-heal, getting up, starting over and say, "Oops, mom, dad, excuse me." Used to think that was an interruption of my spiritual growth. I know now that that's the only spiritual growth of which I'm capable is that stumbling and that getting up.

Uh, the way that's worked for me over the last 12 years is that if I had made a list of everything that I thought at 9 years sober was the best I could have, I would have short changed myself in every single area of my life. About a month after I spent that weekend in Cleveland in May of 1990, I started dating uh Sharon. Uh, I didn't have any agenda with Sharon.

I wasn't trying to fix anything. The only trick I used on Sharon was that 11th step trick. And that'll work on anybody anywhere to pray to love, comfort, and understand them rather than to be loved, comforted, and understood by them.

Most magical thing I've ever found in human relations of any kind. And my Sharon and I will have been married 12 years come this next December. And you know, the psychologists say that it's not healthy not to have disagreements and and arguments and that sort of thing.

I want to tell you, it feels awful healthy. It feels just real real healthy. Um, I have three stepdaughters.

Um, my middle stepdaughter was sworn into practice law the first day of this month. She has never had a career objective except to practice with her papa and she is now my junior partner. We are major in Savatil.

Um, there's a line of young lawyers that want to practice cases with me for no money just for practicing cases with me. I was run out of the bar association because I brought it into absolute disrepute by what I've done. The forgiveness of non-alcoholics is amazing.

That same bar association has me tell my story at the state bar convention and gives people ethics credits for listening to it. I've been made chairman of the cit of the committee in Louisville that interviews people who want to be judges to determine to pass on whether they're qualified or not. There's no way that I can get here from there.

And that's all the result of these steps and of you folks and of my willingness to keep stumbling in the right direction. As many times as I failed, getting up and keep on stumbling. And for you new folks, keep coming back.

And for you older folks, let's all just keep on with those steps and keep on going because there's more beauty in this program than any of us can imagine. I love you and thank you for having me. >> >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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