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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't found it necessary to take a drink, drug, mood altering chemical, nor stick a gun in my mouth all day long.

And for that, I'm eternally grateful and forever in debt. My home group is simple, not easy. We meet in Cambridge 5:00, Sunday nights.

Uh, if you get a chance to come on in and go through the Big Book with us, you're more than welcome. The Big Book asked me to share in a general way what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. I'm going to do my best to do that, hopefully mixing in some experience, strength, and hope along the way.

Uh, real quick, I'd like to thank Clark for allowing me to come up here and speak and for the people that came out to support me tonight. That being said, I might as well get right into it. I was born in Cambridge.

Uh I come from an alcoholic home. That is not an opinion or a judgment on my part. My parents met and were married in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Uh and gave birth to the wonderful guy you see standing before you. Um you know, there's some threads that run through AA that I can really identify with and and one of those is that I never felt like I quite fit in. And the way that manifested itself for me is that either there's something very wrong with me or there's something very wrong with all of you depending on the mood I'm in that day.

Um, growing up there's a lot of chaos going on. I don't think that just alcoholics go through that. Um, there was a lot of drama and quite frankly I took it way too personal.

There was things that didn't have anything to do with me that I made about me. My mother at a very early age had some issues with losing her mother that she was trying to deal with. And just to give you an idea of sensitive how sensitive I was, um I remember sitting outside of the bathroom one day trying to get her to come out trying to I don't know comfort her, ease her as she was crying in the bathroom, not knowing how to deal with the situation that she was dealing with.

She yelled at me and told me to go away. I know today that she was doing the very best she could to deal with that situation. At the time though, I took that very personal that that was something about me.

Now, what does that have to do with my drinking? Well, if you're uncomfortable with every situation, take everything very personally, are sensitive to everything going on around you, it leaves you a little restless. I needed a drink long before I ever got one.

Um, one thing that I do mention that I don't get into details about from the podium is that I have been abused in every sense of the word, physical, emotional, sexual, mental. Uh, the only reason why I bring that up is cuz I know there's a lot of us that crawl through these doors who have been through that stuff. We think that their situation is too bad or that they're different or it's been too hard for them that they can't have this.

And I want you to know my experience shows that that's just not the case. Um, so on to the drinking, I suppose. There's a whole lot of drama going on.

Uh, and you know, coming where I come from with some of the abuse stuff that happened, uh, I am very uncomfortable in my own skin. I do see these family members that fight and argue and can't get along drinking. They're having a good time at the holidays.

Everybody's laughing and talking and and it's a good thing. I want to know more about that. You know, I I just from a very early age, I remember wanting to know more about that.

I would try to smuggle a little here, smuggle a little there. I never quite got enough in me to do what alcohol would end up doing for me. So, the first drink I had, I mean, I remember it, but I didn't get drunk.

You know, it was a sip of beer when I was like 5, 6 years old at the babysitter's house. But I do remember the first time I got drunk. First time I got drunk was with my father.

Uh, we had had a rough day doing some chores and whatnot. and he decided that, you know, I was say 14 and he would uh buy me a couple of cold 45 22 oz and and from right out right out of the gate it was I'm going to drink one tonight and I'm going to drink one tomorrow cuz this is a pretty big deal. My dad bought me some beer.

You know, that night I drank both of them. Laid on the floor acting like a fool. And uh the drinking didn't just take off from there.

I wasn't allowed to. I mean, I was 14, 15 years old. I do know the moment from which I turned from possibly hard drinking to an alcoholic.

In a sense of events that happened, drama that I'm not going to share from the podium cuz it ain't my deal. Me and my father ended up moving from Colorado to Michigan. And uh things got rough out there.

I will say this, we had ourselves a little gunfight and no guns no guns went off. No shots were fired. I'm not going to sit up here and say that, but guns were drawn and there was a heated exchange.

And I made I made a decision that night through all the stuff that's gone on in my life up to this point. The fact that my father blames me for his life, which I already do, and the fact that he would pull a gun on his own son, I must not be much of a person. And if I'm not much of a person, there ain't really a whole lot of reason for me to be here.

And I made the decision to kill myself that night. I grabbed a whole bunch of booze and I grabbed a whole bunch of pills. I grabbed a Smith and Wesson and 41 mag, put it all in a backpack and went to the apartment we were first staying at when we moved out to Michigan.

And I took those pills and I took that booze and I had a couple of cigarettes. And when it came time where I determined it was time to pull that trigger and I stuck that gun in my mouth, the thing that happens to me that doesn't happen to normal drinkers had happened. Everything was all right.

I I really honestly couldn't tell you what I was so upset about as to why I would stick a gun in my mouth. I mean, I was at peace and ease. I knew the meaning of the word serenity.

I was good to go. They found me. I drank some charcoal, went to the emergency room, went to the nut ward, stayed there for about a month and a half.

I got out and got back to Minnesota just in time to get the news that my father committed suicide. If there's one day in my life that forever changed the course of it, it would have to be January 8th, 1999. And I don't blame that for my alcoholism.

I was I was going to be an alcoholic one way or another. I just caught the bullet. That's just all there is to it.

But that day, right then and there definitely sped things up a bit because I made the decision right then and there that I was going to do what I had to do to feel comfortable in my own skin. That I couldn't take this world. That I was too sensitive for it.

I could not walk like this anymore. I started drinking and using every day I could. My 16th birthday came up shortly after that.

I lost my virginity, dropped out of school, and hit the streets. Not going to get too much into the next year and a half, two years of my life because there's a whole lot of outside issues in there that I just don't feel comfortable talking about from a podium. But I will say that I got absolutely burned up by the streets.

I got absolutely burned up by drugs and it was way out of hand. Absolutely out of hand at the age of 17 years old. I'm doing the crappie flop on the floor of a gas station 7:30 on a Sunday morning getting hauled to the ER by the paramedics and checking myself out of treatment within 24 hours because I honestly meant when I said I don't have a problem.

That was a lie. I don't have a problem. just having a good time, you know, living on the street, selling outside issues, doing massive amounts, not a problem.

That was just a little OD. Happens to everybody. Um, got out of treatment that time, spent a day there.

About 3 months down the road, finally, I'm just burned up. I called my mom up. I said, "I need to go to treatment.

I need to come off the street. I I'm going nuts. Absolutely insane." And she brought me to treatment.

I went through well I detoxed in a nut ward first of all after the nut ward they sent me to a 28 or a 10-day treatment program after the 10-day treatment program I went to a 28-day treatment program after the 28-day treatment program I went to an outpatient treatment program after that was the aftercare and that whole deal I was basically in treatment for just under a year I went to a ton of alcoholics anonymous meetings there wasn't a whole lot of any around and I went to a lot of AA meetings. I mean, 10, 12 a week, maybe a little bit less sometimes, but definitely made up for it other times. I stayed sober as long as I possibly could on the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I hung on for dear life from fear. Fear alone. Fear kept me over for just over a year.

At some point, I started breaking down and I started going nuts. And I started coming to the tables of Alcoholics Anonymous saying, "I I don't feel better. You told me if I came to 90 meetings in 90 days, if I got a sponsor, if if I just, you know, didn't drink and didn't use and came to meetings, I was going to be all right." And I'm going nuts.

And the answer I got to my dilemma, to the insanity that was going on in my life was, you need to go to more meetings. I held on a little bit longer. Eventually, I can't take it anymore.

I'm done. I'm out. I'm out of here.

I handed my key to my spons. I said, "You need to you need to chair that meeting. It'll be good for your sobriety.

What do you do? I'm going out drinking." See, but I had convinced myself along the way that I wasn't an alcoholic, that I was a drug addict. I just I could drink.

I could have a couple of beers with the guys at work, you know? I I I just wanted to be a normal 19-year-old. That's all.

I can have a couple of beers, right? My first night of drinking, I'm going to have a couple of beers. I end up chugging down 12-pack of Mickey's Grenades, end up drinking a whole bunch of keg beer and fall up a hill.

How you do that, not quite sure, but I did it. Fell up the hill, went home, called my girlfriend by a different name, and we were off to the races. You know, it's, you know, good times.

Good times. Uh, and it got worse. You know, I I really have a deal with talking about drugs from a podium.

I'm going to illustrate this one point and then that'll be about it. The line for me always, what a person that had a problem with alcohol and drugs, whatever. We all I think we all have that line.

Some of us it's a a hobo on the street drinking out of a paper bag and some of us it's people that's lost everything he owns. Whatever. I'm never going to be that bad.

I'm never going to hit that line. My whole deal was this. If you shoot up drugs, you got a problem.

If you don't, well, you're not an addict. And after a year in Alcoholics Anonymous, after 90 meetings in 90 days, five times, I found myself drunk and shooting up. One thing I said I would never do.

So, they talk about a progressive illness. I know that. I know that.

And I tried to commit suicide again. And I drug my butt back into AA again. And I said, "You guys are right.

What do I do? Where do I go from here?" What I heard was, "Go to 90 meetings in 90 days. Keep coming back." I tried it for about another month.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. The same old insanity was running through my head again, and I left. I'm out of here.

I'm gone. See you. And it was no big deal.

It wasn't a production. It wasn't a slip. It was just somebody said, "Hey, uh, you know, the guys after work, we have a few beers.

You want to come with us? How you get to know people?" and said, "Yeah, sure." Did not even think about the fact that I had just went to an AA meeting yesterday. We were off to the races.

I drank for about the next 5 years. And all the signs came along the way. You need to go back to AA.

You need to go back to AA. And with my prior experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, I said to war cry, I will never go back to AA. Never.

Absolutely not happening. Sometimes it was I'm not an alcoholic. That's what I tell myself.

Sometimes it was AA doesn't work for me. It all depended on the time of year, I suppose. So, I drank and I drank and I drank.

A lot of things happened. A lot of drama, a lot of war stories, a lot of I mean, I could spend all hour talking about it. I lost a job.

Well, quit a job before I got fired. Got a new job where I get laid off in the winter time. I was able to not get drunk during the week most times.

Towards the end, it wasn't that easy. But as long as I don't have a beer, I'm not getting drunk tonight so I can go to work tomorrow so I can make the money I need to make so that things can look good and so that I can get drunk this weekend like I like to get drunk. It's a very easy deal.

See, as long as I have the house and the cars and the motorcycle and the wife and the kids, I can justify that I'm not an alcoholic. Cuz alcoholics don't have those things. I've never had a DWI.

I'm not an alcoholic. I've never been to detox. I'm not an alcoholic.

So, I got laid off. My anchor's gone. There's no job to hold me to being sober during the week.

The anchor's over with. And I started hitting her hard every night. You know, there's a part of the big book that talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

I know that I woke up day after day at about 3:00 in the afternoon after coming home at about 7 8:00 in the morning absolutely lip dragging drunk. I would wake up at 3:00 in the afternoon and my two little baby boys would be laying in bed next to me with dirty diapers, not having eaten. And I I don't want to do this.

I don't want to be that type of father. This is not me. And every day I would tell myself, I'm not going to drink today.

I'm not going to drink today. By 5:00, I'd be having my first one. And by 6:30, I'd be out of the house.

So that goes on and that goes on. I'm drinking and I'm drinking and I'm drinking and and this voice starts coming in my head to anybody who's came here and then left. Maybe you can relate.

You need to go back to AA. You need to go back to AA. I will never go back to Alcoholics Anonymous.

The last week of my drinking was absolutely a blast. It was absolutely a blast. I had separated from my wife, was getting new numbers, was was hitting the bars, was having a good old time.

Saturday night, I drank myself into a stuper. I'm dancing on the bar, girl in one arm, Budweiser in the other. Life is good.

Got a picture of that, in fact. Um, after the party, after the bars closed, we go back to the house and just sit and drink and drink and drink. start doing a little bit of outside issues, getting a little bit of a Superman complex.

There's two people sitting in the kitchen and they're playing chicken where you hold your arms up together and put a cigarette between them and whoever pulls away first is a chicken apparently. Um, I'm like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. I cannot hear someone call me a chicken.

I I'm sitting there trying to ignore it. You know what I mean? I just that's not going on in there.

I'll just drink and it'll be good. And you know, eventually they started throwing the insults and calling me uh female anatomy on from a podium. I guess it's not what they called me, but I'm not going to say it.

And I had to do something. You know, I have to act because I'm a scared, frightened, abused little boy living in a 23-year-old 6'4, 250 lb body. And I got to prove to you that I deserve the body I got.

I guess I go into the kitchen, put a cigarette out on my neck, say, "Let's do this." Throw my arm up, guy backs off, I win, right? That ain't good enough. We alcoholics are very good at going above and beyond the point of destruction when we need to.

You know, I can go above and beyond as long as it's horrible and painful. And I decided to burn about a 2-in scar into my arm with a cigarette blowing on it to keep the cigarette going. You know, people would say stuff like, "Oh, you're probably too drunk to feel that." No, I'm pretty sure I felt it, actually.

I felt it. I uh smelled it. I You know, it was just it was a lot of fun.

Now, I still hadn't proven that I was a man. You know, to these guys, they're thinking I'm psychotic. I'm thinking, "Well, we must go further with this." I take my shirt off, start pushing the guy around.

You know, it's just a big scene. It's about 7:30 in the morning, you know. Sunday.

Bad things happen to me on Sunday mornings. I don't know why, but we get into a pushing match. We get into a little fight.

This guy's supposed to be staying at my house where I'm separated from my wife. Well, the logical thing to do after having a few more shots of liquor and after my buddy sits there and calls me more wonderful names is to go kill this guy. I'm going to go get him.

I hop in my car, barely make it there. By seconds and inches, I don't crash. I just about going to the ditch.

just about hit a car. It I'm annihilated. Doesn't bother me.

I've never had a DW buy. I'm not an alcoholic. I get home and I'll never forget it as long as I live.

It don't keep me sober, but I'll never forget it as long as I live. I walk into that house, I start kicking in closets, I start looking under beds, I start just absolute insanity and anger to find this guy. And if I would have found him, I would have killed him.

At that moment, I was like, "Well, we're going to prison." You know, it just it was like watching a horror movie. I didn't find him. He wasn't there.

Believe it or not, I'm paranoid sometimes. I remember my kid coming up to me and he looked at me, my 2 and 1/2year-old, and he said, "Why are you doing this, Dad?" And I pushed him out of the way. Breaks my heart.

Absolutely breaks my heart. Pushed him to the ground, out of the way, and continued my search. Eventually, I fizzled out.

I faded out. I passed out, went to sleep, whatever you want to call it. And I wake up about 4:00 in the afternoon with my now soon to be ex-wife sitting on the corner of the bed looking at me with my two little boys.

and she said, 'You know, we have a mortgage and we have a lot of bills together and I have to put up with this until we can find a roommate for this house, but your boys don't have to grow up like this and they don't have to see this. I'm taking the boys. I'm putting them in my mother's.

And when you get your stuff together, then maybe you can see them. There's no fight. There's no big deal there.

I just said, "Okay." She was right. I should have been around my boys. They shouldn't have seen the things they were seeing.

And I was going above and beyond what a bad father was to me. And it broke my heart. And I made the decision right then and there like I always do.

When the chips are down, when the booze stops working, when the life stops working, I'm checking out. I'm done. I'm killing myself.

I cannot live like this anymore. Once again, these bad things are happening to me. I spent the day watching TV with my son.

I picked up my stuff, put my clothes on, went to the bar to give alcohol a shot one more time. Closed the bar down that night, went home. My youngest son woke up as I walked in the house and I got him a bottle.

I gave him a hug, little kiss, told him I loved him and I laid him back to bed. I then proceeded to grab a bottle of fina barbatital, mix it in with cottage cheese, pretty glamorous suicide attempt, I think, and try to kill myself. I'm washing it down with rupture schnops.

That's all we had left. It's not my favorite or nothing. And you know, I grab a rifle and I put a bullet in the chamber and I try to shoot myself.

I'm feeling way too good to do that. I hop in the tub and think maybe if I go to sleep I'll drown. But I got to do something before this pheno kicks in because I am going down.

I know I'm going down. I lay in that tub. I slice my arm open.

I'm bleeding all over the tub. The fenobarbital kicks in like I know it's going to Everything's right in the world. I don't know what all the suicide business is about.

I'm going to bed. I get up out of the tub. I don't dry off.

Go lay down in bed and I go to sleep. Now, this next little part is all hearsay. It's what I was told.

I wasn't there. Medical records. I I was not coherent.

My wife woke up. I was gurgling. I was stopping breathing.

And she called the sheriff's. The sheriff's come out. They pick me up.

I'm nonresponsive, I think is the word they use for it. They bring me down to Redwing Medical Center. They administer a shot of narcine, which any of you have seen Pulp Fiction with a shot of adrenaline in the heart similar to that.

Bring me out of it. Uh, I come out of it kicking and fighting. Apparently, hitting doctors and nurses and just I don't know.

I wasn't there. They were straining me and they start preparing my wife and my aunt for me to die because they can't get my phenobarbatital levels to go down. They're pumping charcoal into my stomach.

They got me on a ventilator so that I can breathe. And they don't know. They don't know if I'm going to live.

They don't know if I'm going to be brain damaged. I mean, I'm brain damaged, but you know, more so, I guess. And they transport me by helicopter, a helicopter ride I paid $8,000 for and don't remember to St.

Mary's Medical Center down in Rochester. I woke up out of the coma like two two and a half days later. And I'll tell you this to scare you.

I know I cannot ski scare real alcoholics, but it scared me. I woke up medical restraints tied down with a tube running down my throat and I could still to this day hear the sound of me screaming around that tube cuz I had no idea where I was. I had no idea what had happened.

I was terrified. Now, after I come to a little bit, I start yelling and screaming. All this vile anger and pain and hurt starts flying out of my mouth at the people that I love the most.

My family, my friends. Two days ago, I'm dancing on a bar with a girl in one arm and a Budweiser in the other. I got a picture of that.

Now I'm laying in a hospital bed with tubes running in and out of me, possibly brain damage, possibly dying. I got a picture of that, too. The duality of alcoholism is astonishing to me cuz I was feeling all right on Friday night.

Alcohol was working. Sunday morning, there was no escaping. Now, all that suicide stuff, that whole suicide attempt, that's not what makes me an alcoholic.

That's just the drama that some of us have in our lives. What makes me an alcoholic is this. When that psychiatrist came in, sat down next to me and asked me, "Do you think you have a problem with alcohol?" I honestly honestly said, "No, I just have a little situational depression." Okay.

Now, if these things would just sort themselves out, I'll be fine. Nothing to die over, then, you know, but I meant it. You know, it's it's funny to me now, but at the time I was very serious.

I was like, "No, I'm not an alcoholic. I just have a couple of problems." They didn't quite see my point of view. I'm not sure why, but they thought I might have a drinking problem.

Uh, they decided to send me up to the nut ward for a few day vacation. And I don't mind the nut ward. The nut ward to me is not a scary place.

I like free chocolate milk. I like free orange juice. You know, there's pretty crazy girls in there.

Pretty crazy girls in there. You know, it's good time. It's a vacation.

And if you play your cards right, you can even get some meds, you know. So something was different about this trip. Something was different about this.

Uh by God's grace, I told him absolutely not. You are not giving me any psych. You are not giving me anything.

And the reason why I say by God's grace is this. I know how to talk to psychiatrists. I know how to talk to people in the mental hospitals and the treatment centers.

And if I would have said, "Sure, give me some meds. Just give me a couple of pills." They would have said, "You have a nice day, Mr. Barnes, and come back for your checkup on Friday." And I would have hung myself or shot myself or drank myself to death.

By God's grace, that didn't happen. And something inside me said, "Absolutely not." And when I said absolutely not, they said, "Well, we're going to file papers with the county. We're going to commit you.

You're going up in front of the judge." And I'm like, whatever. You know, okay. I was very laughing one second, crying the next, screaming.

You know, I was absolutely nuts. I was messed up for about my first week of sobriety. Fina Barbar's always still detoxing in my liver.

And it comes down to court date. And I'm going to walk in there and I'm going to say a whole bunch of hips looking cool stuff to this guy. I'm going to tell him the terms of my surrender, if you will.

and the undercover cop comes to pick me up. Now, it's been worse than this before. My life has been more screwed up than this before.

I have been crazier than this before. But my moment of clarity when all the lies that I've been telling myself and everyone around me failed to be acceptable to me anymore was when we get down and I got my stuff together and I'm going to tell him and I'm going to tell him and I'm going to get what I want and I'm going to talk my way out of this one more time and he pulls out the Hannibal Lectctor restraint belt and I just started weeping. I did just tears start falling from my face because I'm going up in front of a judge and I haven't broken a law yet.

I I I haven't done anything as far as criminal goes. The lie is up. I'm nuts.

I am absolutely insane. I am an alcoholic and they're going to sentence me to a nut ward or treatment depending on how I behave. And it was it for me.

I put on my little Hannibal Lectctor restraint belt and they shoved my 6'4 body inside of a box about that big and brought me to the courthouse. And after I got the Hannibal Electric restraint belt off and they put me in the handcuffs and walked me up like some sort of crazy person. Well, I guess I was a crazy person, but walked me into the walk me into the judge and something happened.

See, because I didn't fight anything. I said, 'Yes, sir. It's a new concept to me.

He says, 'Are you an alcoholic? Yes, sir. Do you need some help?

Yeah, I do. And he said, are you willing to go today? I said, yeah, let's do this.

I spent a couple hours with my aunt who was nice enough to drive me so I didn't have to ride in a van and I smoked some cigarettes and you know we talked about stuff and I walked into treatment down at Johnson Center in St. Peter. I've been in treatment before.

I know the game. I know what you know. just walk in, you know, oh, I don't know if I don't want to drink anymore, you know, and then you just kind of slowly get better over the next couple weeks and then you get out.

It's a pretty easy game. Anyone can figure it out. Ain't a big deal.

The treatment center I was sent to didn't have a whole lot of fluffy wonderful things to do. We didn't get to go on nature hikes. We didn't get to go play all sorts of fun games and activities and crafts.

We had group almost all day long. handed you a big book, said, "You're going to need to return that. We're a state facility.

We don't have money to give them out." Okay, that's great. I sat in my room most nights reading through that big book. I should say that I called my old sponsor from when I was 17 and I said, "Where do I go?

Where do I go from here? Where do I start again? If I knew anything about AA, I probably wouldn't be in here." And he said, "Read the doctor's opinion." And I started there.

And the guy very casually led me through the steps. Read the book. Read this.

Do you have any questions? And I sat in my room with my big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, going through the steps the way that they're outlined to me in that book. And calling him to make sure that I wasn't screwing it up.

Something changed. It was for real this time. I could start to sense that something was going on that was amazing.

I did my fourth step in there. I did my fifth step in there. But more importantly, when that man picked me up, put the restraint belt on me, the game was up.

The big book says, "If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot stop drinking. Or if once you start, you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably an alcoholic." I could look back at my life and go, "Yeah, that's me." Real quick, a time when I honestly wanted to stop drinking was when my first son was born. I held that baby boy in my arms and I meant with everything inside my body that you're not going to grow up the way I did.

That I'm not going to be the type of father that my father was. I'm going to stop drinking. I'm going to stop going out.

I'm going to stop all this. and I meant it with everything in me. Within a week, I was drinking, celebrating the birth of my first child.

And by the end of the month, I was never home, drunk all the time. I missed pretty much the first year of my kids life as a result of my drinking. But things had changed because now I had to live with the guilt and shame of making that promise and breaking it.

So, I can't even drink at my own house anymore. I got to leave all the time to drink. And I'm gone all the time to drink.

little control over the amount you take. I'm an upand cominging supervisor in a company about to be the youngest supervisor in company history by 15 years. Talking 10 $15,000 difference worth of pay.

It's just about secured and the Christmas party's coming up. Oh yeah. So, I'm going to have a couple of drinks, right?

Not a non-alcoholic couple of drinks, two, but a real alcoholic couple of drinks, you know, six or seven. I'm just going to take it easy tonight. That's not what happened.

I ended up going through a couple hundred worth of booze. Yeah, some of them I gave to other people, I imagine. But by the end of the night, I'm just drunk enough to just about run the president of the company over walking.

Sorry, not driving as I'm on my way to the bathroom to puke all over myself, all over my clothes, all over my hands so that I can go out order another drink. I mean, I don't want to not have anything to puke up while I'm curled up in a fetal position outside of the place in the middle of January wearing a glad bag like a poncho. I got to have something in there for that, you know, save some puke, you know.

And as I lay there in that bag and the president walks by and the owner walks by and the foremans walk by and the plant manager walks by with their family saying, "Have a good night, Dustin. It's funny now. It wasn't a whole lot of fun back then.

You know, I didn't mean for that to happen. I was going to have a couple of drinks, smooge with the big guys, secure my place in the company. we're going to be good.

I can buy a new truck. You know, it just lost it. Dropped the ball.

Look what happened to me. I did end up making supervisor there. Don't know why.

Honestly, don't know how, but I did. And that was a job that I quit before I could get fired. So, my first step comes to life for me as I'm sitting there doing some inventory in this treatment center.

My second and third step happened in an afternoon with a man who's paid to be there, which is a huge deal for me. Like, if you're paid to be a psychiatrist, I don't want to talk to you. You know, this chaplain sits me down and I can't bring to you guys with enough force to understand the moment that I first came to believe that there was a God.

There's no way I could duplicate that from a podium. But I remember a couple of things that he said and one of them was that you don't have to live the way your parents made you feel. And you know, I was explaining to him how if there was a God, I couldn't believe in it because I was mad at God.

I hated God. I I was hurt by God. And if there was one, there's no way that he would take me under his wing being as I felt that way about him.

And he said, "I can understand why you're mad at God from you telling me what's gone on in your life and the decisions you've made and the things that have happened to you. If I can understand it, don't you think that maybe God can? How big is your God?

Your God's about this small. If I can understand, God can." And something just snapped in me. Something changed right then and there.

Wasn't a white light. It was some crusty old guy in a Mr. Rogers sweater.

But it was my first real spiritual awakening. And I made a decision right then and there to turn my will and my life over the care of God as I understand it. Well, I'm not very bright when it comes to knowing what I'm supposed to do if you couldn't tell from my story so far.

So, I go back to this book that says, "You've done your third step, start your fourth." We're off on a course of vigorous action. Let's do this. Being as I have nothing better to do.

I mean, I don't know anything else to do. Yeah, sure. God's here.

What now? Do this. And that's what I did.

I'm not going to sit here and outline the fourth step for you. But I'm going to talk about a couple things that really hit me in the chest. One of them was this.

See, I had tried to do a four step before after about six months of sobriety when I was in the fellowship. And by the time I had 6 months, I could see that a lot of my resentments were kind of childish. You guys have any childish resentments?

I had a few. Some of them are a little bit, no, I would just say weak. Like there's no real reason for it, but I was very angry.

So I left them off there. If they're goofy, if they're if there's no real reason for it, I'm not putting it on my doorstep. I mean, come on.

We got to get down to the real resentments here. And I read the line that said fancied or real. Fancied or real.

Huh? So, I talked to my sponsor. He said, "Yeah, doesn't matter how stupid they are.

Write them down. Was it going to hurt?" So, I did. I wrote him down.

Another thing was I was insanely resentful at God. He said, "You're going to have to write that down." Well, what? God will know that I'm angry at him.

You know, just insane thinking, but he told me, "It doesn't matter. Write it down." So, I did. I did.

fourth column. My different opinions on this whole deal. It was made very apparent to me that it's not what my part is.

Cuz if I got a part, you got a part, right? We have a problem. What's your part in it?

Okay, I see that. This is what you did to me. I don't have a part in it.

It's where am I to blame? What were my mistakes in that relationship? Where have I failed in this relationship?

And that's what I did. I wrote that stuff down. I go in to take a fifth step and I don't want to because I'm in a paid treatment center place.

Well, I don't want to take it in here. It won't be very spiritual because this guy's being paid to listen to it. But then I had a thought.

This guy is the chaplain for the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center where he gets to listen to fists of mentally ill and dangerous and the sex offenders. there's nothing on my list that he hasn't heard or heard like 10 times worse.

And I'm like, "Sure, I'll give it a shot." You know, and I do that and I go back to my room and I do what the big book asked me to do. And I sit quietly looking at what I've done prior to this. Am I good to go?

Do I have a foundation? I did. I started making a list.

took most people from my eight step and and was looking at how am I going to take care of this? I get out of treatment which some amazing absolutely wonderful things happen in treatment. Wonderful.

Got a relationship with my mother for the first time in years. Start to actually see who I am and how I walk in this world. and I get out get out of treatment and I go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and this wonderful wonderful thing that has happened in my life and I just want to talk about it.

I want to go to a meeting of AA. We didn't have a whole lot of speakers. We didn't have real AA meetings in there.

And I get out and I feel like I'm lost. I really honestly do. I I don't even know where I'm at.

I don't hear about this stuff that I had just done. I come to Cambridge moving up here. I meet a guy from the moment we met sitting in a group.

There's 65 people in there. We happen to get in the same group together and we're talking about the fourth step and we're both so excited afterwards that we found somebody that is actually talking about the fourth step out of the book that we're jumping and down like a bunch of little kids after the meeting talking and chatting and we get each other's numbers and we're going to go on from here. That's my sp that's the sponsor that I have today.

His name is Paul G. Any of you that were here on Tuesday, he was your speaker. And we continue on with this work.

Now, I have at this time about 60 days of sobriety, right? And I got a headful of treatment AA. I got a headful of middle of the road solution because that's what I was doing before when I was sober in AA.

So, that's got to work, right? I got drunk. People get drunk, leave the treatment center all the time.

this man started asking me to do some things that you know I wasn't I kind of wanted to just walk my amends out you know make a living amends to the people in my life and he said absolutely not you must face them why do I have to you know I can just walk it out right no says we must take care of this we must or we'll drink remember we agreed at the beginning that we would go to any length we started working together. I wrote my list. I brought my list to him.

With the ones that were pretty easy, cut and dry, I took it upon myself to make my amends. And basically, if it was something that I just did to you, he outlined it to me like this. I want you to know that when I did this, that that was wrong of me.

I don't expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know that I'm very sorry. And if there's anything I can do to make things right, I want you to let me know. And I'll do my best to do that.

Nothing more, nothing less. After the amends is made, get out of dodge because I will try to manipulate you. I will tell you about my wonderful spiritual quest that I'm on and try to get something out of you.

So, I don't get to do that. Make your amends. If there's something that they need to close this up, do your best to do it.

And after that, it's a clean deal and walk away. These people that you owe money to, these companies you owe money to, they do not want your money. They want theirs.

Give them back their money. Hell of a concept to me. I, you know, they're trying to take my money away.

Not the case. As I start to make my amends, I'm going to milk that out to the bitter end. You know, I'm going to I'm going to wait until I got them all done.

Don't know some of these people's names. Don't know where they live. But until I get them all done, I'm going to just kind of hang right here.

Sponsor said, "No, you're going to start taking personal inventory right now. You're going to pause. You're going to do the whole deal what it says in the big book.

I'm not going to recite it to you or read it to you. It's in there. But you're going to do that.

You're going to start looking at how you act as a result of inventory. I see. I got to strip away a lot of that stuff and I got to see who I am and what I do in this world.

So, how are you living today? What are you doing today? Are you stabbing people in the back every chance you get?

Are you lying every chance you get? Why is that stuff important? Cuz I'll drink.

Plain and simple. If I'm walking around with a guilty heart, cuz I know that what I just said to you is BS. It'll eat me up.

It ain't going to be from one conversation. But if I'm lying to every single person I know, and I'm lying to myself, I'm going to get drunk. For me to drink is to die.

For real. So, I started looking at that stuff. I came in and I was like, "God, I I'll let you in this much.

This much. That's it. You know, I don't really need you to take care of the rest of my life or to come in too much, but take the drinking deal.

That'll be good. We'll work with that." My sponsor tells me, "No, you will seek God through prayer and meditation." Okay. praying only for knowledge of his will for you and the power to carry that out.

It's in the book, the questions, all that stuff. And that's a new concept to me cuz I pray to God in four-letter words. When things go bad, I kind of believe in a God and I'm calling him names and yelling at him and screaming at him.

I'm not begging for things good to happen. I'm just saying, "F you. F you." Once again, you know, look what you did.

I don't get to do that. There's these questions in this book. I try to look at that stuff.

I try to pray for that. I seek God. I'm not a religious person.

I'm not a memorized whole bunch of prayers and yada yada yada. Not very smart in regards to that sort of stuff. So, I take the prayers in this book.

I take what this book asked me to do and I try to run with it. I try to do that. Now, here is the real tricky deal.

My sponsor sits me and another one of his sponses down one day and says, "You guys got about 65 70 days of sobriety. I need your help. I need your help in the trenches.

I need you to start sponsoring guys. I'm speaking a lot and I cannot deal with all the people that are asking me sponsoring. But but Paul, I'm I'm not ready.

I'm you know, I only have 60 something days. I need a year at least." He said, "No, you're going to start sponsoring people now." And here's why. The 12 steps says, "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics.

This is my 12 suggestion. Work with other alcoholics. I've done 1 through nine.

I'm currently doing 10 and 11, but I'm going to wait until I get better and healthy before I do 12. You know, it really comes down to this. If I'm going to wait until I get better before I help others, I'm not going to get better.

>> That's the 12th suggestion. give of myself freely to do this deal to embrace this way of life to carry the message that I've had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps not to carry the message that if you go to 90 meetings in 90 days you don't have to drink not to carry the message that wake up in the morning and tell yourself you're not going to drink that didn't work for me guys I'm not trying to offend you or belittle your experience if that's your experience but It doesn't work for me cuz I told myself every day that I was drinking that I wasn't going to drink today and I got drunk. I have to help others.

Alls I can do is take them through the steps, guide them a little bit with my experience, take them through the book work and get them to God. I can't fix them. I cannot even fix myself.

How am I supposed to be somebody's psychiatrist, somebody's group therapist? I'm not I I I cannot fit that role. But what I can do is say, "Hey, I went from an absolutely hopeless suicidal alcoholic who could not imagine stopping drinking nor walking, living drinking to someone who believes for the first time ever that there's a God that can restore me to sanity.

to a person that starts to pay his bills, to a person that doesn't wake up wanting to drink every day, to start being a little bit responsible. I'm not a perfect example of aa. I'm just a person who doesn't have to drink anymore.

I don't have a choice in that. I don't wake up and say, "I choose not to drink today." Maybe you do. That's cool.

I don't. The obsession to drink was removed from me as a result of these steps. I was brought to a power which can restore me to sanity and is.

So you're an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic as well. Here's my story.

There's your story. Okay. So we got the common problem down.

You know, we're alcoholics. Here's the solution as was laid out to me. If I'm sitting here making up a whole bunch of stuff that is not in this book and I'm giving them my opinion, I could be killing them.

Plain and simple. I can be killing them. I'm insane.

Certified mentally ill. Put it on the page. Here's what I think you need to do about your relationship.

Well, I don't know. Let's talk about this and really get into it a little bit. How does your boss treat you?

I don't know what you need to do with that problem. What I do know is this. If you take these steps, the way that they're outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, our program, you will be led to a higher power, a God, bugaba, Buddha, whatever you want to call it, that does know what you need to do about your relationship, that does know what you need to do about your job.

I'm not a career counselor. I'm not a lawyer. I've never been arrested.

Can't help you, bud. Does that mean that I don't talk about that stuff with people I work with? Does that mean that my personal stuff does not get talked about?

It does. I talk to my sponsor about it. Doesn't always have the answers.

And if he's giving me his opinion, he states that it's his opinion. That's an important thing for me because I spent a lot of time in Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 17 taking everything that you had to say to heart because they sent me to you because you could save me. So I thought it's nobody's fault.

It It's Nobody can be blamed for the fact that our fellowship has drifted, but it has. I'm not the only person that has that opinion. There's more and more people that are standing up and saying we need to get back to what we were doing.

because we're killing people and our success rate is absolutely in the toilet. Why? Because we want to sit around and talk about how our day went.

We want to sit around and talk about how acceptance is the answer to all my problems. That's a very great page. There is a lot of great things in there.

But I'm a member of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, not Acceptance Anonymous, not Philosophers Anonymous. While that's a very great and inspiring page for a lot of people, handing that to a newcomer and saying, "Well, just read this and do that is misleading." No. If you even want to actually understand what that's saying, maybe do the steps.

God is the answer to all my problems today. Higher power, whatever you want to call it, is the answer to all my problems today. I'm not perfect, but I try to carry this message.

I try to carry this message that you don't have to drink again if you're willing to do some pretty simple things. Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, I'm opinionated.

I have all sorts of opinions and I'm not going to say that I don't share them with some of my friends in the fellowship. But when it comes to the people that I meet in treatment centers because my sponsor asked me to go to the treatment centers on a regular basis to speak and to work with these guys, it's as simple as this. You don't have to drink anymore if you don't want to.

If you're an alcoholic, like I'm an alcoholic, these steps will work for you. This deal is not Some of us get it, some of us don't. It's a lottery system.

You have to relapse. It's not that. Some of us do it, some of us don't.

And if talking about God and the steps offends you, I'm sorry. And if it runs a newcomer out of the room, alcohol will bring them back. Our program is about God in the steps.

Plain and simple, cut and dry. Should I be the one that sits up here and says it? No.

A lot of people with a lot of time in our fellowship need to start saying it. Need to start bringing it back to the fact that this program is about the power of God in your life. It isn't about relief.

It isn't about getting the heat off. It's about doing this deal so that you can live a life that is full of joy. My life is good today.

A lot of bad things have happened in sobriety. Stuff that would have crippled me beforehand. Losing the house, lost the wife, barely get to see the kids.

Job is uncertain. Doesn't matter. Does not matter.

Cuz I got hooked up to this power. I got hooked up to this deal. I call myself a recovered alcoholic.

The reason why that's what the big book says will happen to us if we do this. Ain't trying to get any controversy into it. Somebody told me not too long ago that that was arrogance.

That was cocky. Personal opinion here. So, caution.

I think it's far more arrogant of me to sit up here and say I know better than the first hundred men and women who documented the miracle that our fellowship is based upon than to say I'm a recovered alcoholic cuz I had the steps. The drink problem has been removed. It's been solved.

Good deal. I go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and I feel like I don't even fit in at times, you know, and it beat me down for a while. I said screw it.

I'm just going to join Philosophers Anonymous and get all deep and, you know, really get in there and mix it up. That just about killed me. I'm a real alcoholic.

That is not a braggadocia thing. It's not like I'm more alcoholic than you. It's I'm a real alcoholic because I need a spiritual experience if I'm going to recover.

I need to follow these simple rules. I need to do this deal or I'll drink. And for me to drink is to die.

It might take 3 months or it might take 30 years. I don't know that. But if I don't do this deal, I will drink again.

See, there's a huge difference for me between dying with alcoholism and from alcoholism. It is very apparent in my family the difference. My grandpa Vern died with 8 years of sobriety with alcoholism.

My father shot himself and died from untreated alcoholism. There's a huge difference. I'm going to have this thing for the rest of my life.

I understand that. I cannot drink again, nor can I use other outside issues. I get that.

But I don't have to today. I don't have to. I have so many opinions.

They're not even funny about this fellowship. And most of them I try to keep to myself nowadays because I don't want to pick fights. I don't want to come to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and have five people after the meeting want to tell me how wrong I am.

That's, you know, it's fun for a while. I like arguing, you know, but the plain and simple fact is this that I firmly believe in our primary purpose to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers. The lawn form on that says we're supposed to be a spiritual entity that carries this message.

I believe in our singleness of purpose and I've done all them other drugs. I don't believe that this is a place where a drug is a drug is a drug. That's treatment stuff.

It's treatment stuff. Just one person. And I don't think that anything I said from the podium tonight as far as what I hope we can get back to or what we ought to be doing is going to make an impact or change anybody's mind on anything.

The only way that it changes is through strong sponsorship. The line of sponsorship I come from is plain old AA. I'm not going to tell you to impress you, but to impress upon you the fact that the message I got was clear what this deal was about.

My sponsor is Paul G. His sponsor is Dale M. His sponsor is Clarence S.

and his sponsor is Dr. Bob. That don't make me better or worse than or than anybody else.

But the message was given very clearly. This is a simple program, stupid. Do this.

You get to have a new life. You get to recreate your life. You get to have a god in your life.

You can't cram that down anybody's throat. And I'm not here to convince you that the steps work or that there is a God. Alcohol will convince you.

I don't have to. Alcohol convinced me. I have a lot of fun.

I have a lot of friends in this fellowship. But I have a chance to start playing baseball with my little boys. I have a chance to walk a free man, to be a good employee, to be a good friend, to be a good father.

I've gotten a whole lot of stuff. And it's the simplest of things. The things that I can't do in life that I can't deal with is the everyday grind of this world.

I can put up with absolute trauma and chaos in my life, but I can't balance a checking account. I get to start learning how to do some of these things to walk a free man. Direct result of the steps.

Direct result. I have a lot of fun and I joke and I play and you know it gets out of hand at times. And there are times when I say things I ought not say.

A lot of times I say things I ought not say. But you know I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love our fellowship and I love this program.

saved my life. I ain't really got much more than that. It's all I got.

>> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.