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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. I brought my napkin in case I cry. First of all, I just want to thank you guys for having me here.

I've had a wonderful time this weekend. My name is Hollis Dodge and I am an alcoholic. I love Alcoholics Anonymous and I love an opportunity like this.

I want to thank you guys for just a beautifully constructed weekend. This has just been slick as oysters on a doornob the whole weekend. I want to thank you particularly for two groups of people that I've seen here and have had a wonderful time with.

And that's a noisy bunch and a silent bunch. And they're all over on this side. Here's a bunch of babies over here.

I don't often get a chance to be at a conference where people feel so comfortable bringing their little ones. If those kids start screaming, you just let them scream. It's just like music to me.

And then the hearing impaired. There's a group of folks over here who've been here all weekend and this conference has made a commitment to the hearing impaired. And I tell you what, it's a beautiful thing to see.

I work with deaf people and a lot of them need what we have, but we can't get it to them. and they're afraid of us because we're hearing people who use big words. And when you provide this experience, strength and hope in the language of signs as you have done this weekend, you open the door to a group of people and it is truly passing it on.

And I thank you. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will.

Take away my difficulties of victory over them. May bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do well thy will always.

That's the reason I'm here. This is 12step work for me. This is carrying the message.

This is doing something with you and receiving from you and trying in some small way to pass it on. I got sober on the first day of November of 1977. I'm a firstn nighter.

I came to AA after I had done all the drinking I could stand and I haven't left AA nor found it necessary to take a drink or anything else since I walked through the doors of this fellowship. I don't take the credit for that. I knew a lot about AA and I knew the people who came to AA were serious about not drinking and I guess I did all my slipping before I came to you and I did plenty.

I don't know whether I'm the only alcoholic in my family or not. You know, there's some folks who say that alcoholism is a family disease and that is passed on. I don't know.

My dad died when he was younger than I am today and drinking at times is a problem for him. My mother very seldom drank. I have a sister who gets sick every time she drinks, so she doesn't she doesn't drink.

And then I have a brother who drinks like a civilian. And then there was me. Now I guess it has to start someplace.

So it may be me that brought alcoholism into our family. I may be the guy that turned our gene pool into a swamp where booze is concerned. But I drank enough of it for all of my family members.

And I hope that in sharing my story with you that you will come to understand several things about me. One, that I am sober because of you. Two, that I am grateful.

Three, that Alcoholics Anonymous is a way of life that touches every facet of my existence. And four, I've had a hell of a lot of fun being an AA member. Sometimes it isn't fun.

It seems like we go through periods where it's mighty dry running and it's very difficult. But as we look back over the years, the months, and we see that we're still staying sober one day at a time, then this thing was working. Now, I I'd say that um one of the things that I experienced very early in coming to AA was that things had to change and that I needed to go to a lot of meetings.

And I experienced the fact that being an AA member uh at age 30 at that time, I was the youngest AA member in my town, which was Richmond, Virginia at that time when I came in. And the fella said, "You can't be an alcoholic. You couldn't have drank enough.

You could have drank like the rest of us." And my I remember clearly saying to them, "For God's sakes, don't send me out to suffer more. Can I just kind of ride in on your shirt tales?" And it was 3 months before I heard my story in Alcoholics Anonymous told by the a female, a principal of an Episcopal girl school from the eastern part of Virginia. And she described my drinking to a tea.

And I felt so comfortable and so grateful to her that I went up to her after the meeting and I said, "You know, although you said in your lead that we were seldom really, really drunk, I was never really really sober. There was a time in my life where I didn't have booze out of my system in a given time. But I was in a profession and it was necessary for me to function and I needed to work in order to drink.

So I was a maintenance daily drinker. My problem was is that I was maintaining at the level of a fifth a day. And I found that my product wasn't quite as good at the end of the day as it was at the beginning.

So I was a nine to nooner at work and then not worth a damn thereafter. And in my profession at that time, it was very difficult for me to subsist on a fifth of day and not be a little bit uh obvious. I've been an active AA member goer ever since I came into the program.

I've always maintained a steady uh number of meetings a week. In fact, I write them down so I'll be sure I got to enough. And I keep paper and pencil always at meetings so that I can write down these great oneliners that I hear from people, ideas that I want to think about, things that I disagree with, things that I want to appropriate for my own use and and pretend that I'm the one who thought of them.

And friends of mine have said who are not alcoholics uh themselves or not members of AA they say well gez you have to go to all those meetings you know you you're pretty well educated fellow and I think that a few of those meetings would do you I I wonder if you're not wasting a lot of time going to those meetings and hang around all those degenerates and maybe you ought to just kind of get over it and get on with life and I wonder what would have happened to you if you you know hadn't become an alcoholic maybe you wouldn't have to go to all those damn meetings and I I am reminded of a story that illustrates very clearly the idea of what I might have become. In Winchester, Virginia, which is at the northern end of the Shannondoa Valley in which I live in Virginia, apples is the number one cash crop. And back during the depression of this country back in the 30s, when no one had any work and everything ground to a halt, a poor old fellow from the mountains thereabouts came into the city of Winchester looking for work.

When he got into town, someone said, "Well, there's a joint around the corner that's looking for some help. Go on around there." So the man went and knocked on the door and was ushered into the parlor of Winchester, Virginia's most prestigious cat house. And when the lady at the place said, "What can I do for you?" He said, "I'm looking for work." And she says, "Well, we're looking for an accountant.

Can you be an accountant?" And he said, "Well, ma'am, I left school in the first grade. My daddy needed me to farm. I can neither read nor write, but I can cipher some.

So, let me see if I can take the job." And she said, "No, I won't do." He says, "Ma'am, I'm so damn hungry my stomach thinks my throat's been slit. Do you have something for a poor man to eat?" And she said, "Yep. There's a bunch of apples in the kitchen.

Go on out and get a few and let yourself out the back door." So this old mountain boy goes into the kitchen and figured, "Well, what the hell?" took all the apples out, picked the 12 best ones, put them in a paper bag, polished them up on his coat, left and was walking down one of the main streets of Winchester eating an apple when a man came up and said, "God almighty, that's a beautiful apple. Do you have another one? I'll give you a nickel." Well, he just happened to have another one.

So, he sold it for a nickel and he ate another apple and he sold another apple. And by the day's end, he had a full belly and some silver change rattling in his pocket and an idea was born. The next morning with the money he had collected the day before he goes down to this the produce market and it first opened up and he spent that money only on the very best that he could find.

Put it in the same bag and sold it all. Sold another bag that day. Soon he graduated to a little box that he tied around his neck with a rope and he put a little handlettered sign saying I take the time to get the very best.

Not too long after that he graduated to a little push cart. And 25 years later, the man was wealthy beyond his wildest imagining with truck lines running up and down the valley of Virginia and all over the east coast. And his logo was, "I take the time to get the very best." And one day his lawyer came into him and says, "Mister, you're being eaten up by the IRS.

We've got to funnel some of this money into some sort of a charity. And I would like to tell you that I've done the research and I have set up a foundation for you. I'd like you to read through these documents and sign them and and tell me what you know just let's get this on the way.

The guy said, "Well, man, I'm just poor old mountain boy. I only got through the f first grade in school. I had to help my daddy farm.

I can either read nor write. Um I I can't do this." And the lawyer was dumbfounded. He said, "My god, you're sitting there in that beautiful suit behind that beautiful desk.

What the hell would you have become if you could have read and written?" He said, "I'd have been a bookkeeper in a wh house. So for you and me being members of Alcoholics Anonymous may be as good as it'll ever ever get in our lives and I'm living breathing proof of that fact. I'll tell you I've been an AA over 21 years and I've counted it up on in my heart and in my soul and I don't have one thing today that I had when I was drinking.

I either got fired from it, quit it, it left me, left town, rusted, wrecked, got stolen, burned up, or I misplaced it. Not a damn thing that I have from the day that I got into AA, but I do have the very first big book somebody gave me when I walked through the door and asked for 350 for it. And I've collected a whole new life.

I want to tell you a little bit about that because this is this is what we're all about. But we're sharing experience, strength, and hope. I was born to a fine family.

My mom and dad loved me and all three of us kids just loved us. I don't think we were poor by any means. We weren't rich by any means either.

My mother and father were cared about us children and loved us very much. As I say, my father's drinking created some problems. And he was killed when I was 16.

And I remember that I consoled myself with booze at his funeral. And it took the pain away of losing the man that I loved and admired. But I was drunk at his funeral.

The night before he was buried, I crawled up the steps to my bedroom, past the rest of my grieving family, laughing hysterically about the wonderful things that had happened to me during my drunken 16-year-old experience in the next town over. It was not appropriate. My drinking started out inappropriately, but it cut the pain.

I did not like the man who was living inside of my skin, and it was me. And I discovered then that booze would anesthetize me against me. I didn't have to live with me anymore.

I'd found the answer. From the time that I found booze, I ceased maturing as a human being and commenced manuring as a human being. I'm educated far beyond my intelligence.

I've got a good college and university background, but I I developed that while I was drinking, and I am here to tell you that college is an excellent place to develop your drinking, get a PhD in it. I joined a fraternity. having the lethogiest idea what the hell the name of that fraternity was.

Tap a keg a day appears but uh I was in that college for one year and I had deep spiritual convictions because when my father was killed I turned to the church and I decided that I wanted to go to the seminary. I did not realize at that time that already alcohol was a very important factor in my life. But I went to a Roman Catholic cemeter seminary cemetery seminary.

Dr. Freud, where are you? And uh I went to a Catholic seminary and all the rest of the guys drank too or at least the ones I hung around with.

And we had a wonderful time. For Roman Catholics, there may be a few in the room. Um, I've heard alcoholism described as a Roman Catholic illness that's treated in Protestant church basement.

And lo and behold, while I was developing my alcoholism, I also developed a degree in philosophy and a post-graduate degree in theology. And some poor damn fool bishop ordained me to the priesthood in 1974. And when I quit the priesthood, it was one of the happiest days of that man's life, I might add, cuz a few things began to happen to me.

By this time, I had the illness. I It just hadn't started costing me too much yet. I This is a physical ailment.

And when I drink alcohol, I break out. Might be Baltimore, might be Philadelphia, might be New York City, cuz I have been drunk in all those towns. I'd like to go to Portland someday.

I'd love to see that town sober. I hear it's very attractive. I've been drunk in a lot of places.

I've awakened in places that I wasn't even tired with people I didn't even know. Sometimes I discovered when we peaked under the covers how well acquainted we become in the evening. But we never got to the point of exchanging names.

Just body fluids. I'm awful darn glad I got sober when I did or they'd have buried me with something progressive and fatal as just a result of my friendly nature. They ordained me to the priesthood and sent me to a very nice church in Richmond, Virginia.

And here's where the the spiritual part of the element got me. You know, you hear it called physical, mental, and spiritual. I had it physically, mentally, and spiritually, but it showed up the other way backwards.

It showed up first in my life spiritually, then mentally, and finally physically. The spiritual part, I had convictions galore when I went in. I can't imagine anybody going into the ministry except what they want to serve.

And I did want to serve, and I wanted to do good things. I understood a little better about that after I'd gotten sober as to why I wanted to do good things. I think it had something to do with because of how bad I felt about myself.

And I also chose a profession where I didn't need to get but so close to people on an intimate basis. I didn't have passing acquaintances but I wouldn't have to engage somebody where they really get to know me and get to know my soul. So I chose a good field where I could do good and keep you at arms length and that was the priesthood.

But spiritually I had begun to die when the alcohol began to pick up. As I my tolerance for alcohol increased, my values began to decrease. I found all the cynics in the seminary, including the professors.

I broke every rule there was of decency and humanity and morality and Christianity while I was in the seminary. And they still ordained me. They sent me to a very nice church.

There were wonderful people in that church. And a few episodes happened there in the spiritual part that showed how kind of depraved I had become. I had a great belief in the sacraments of the church.

Loved them very much for me. Celebrating the mass was a very mystical experience and prayer was a wonderful experience for me. But I remember being drunk, so drunk at times at mass that I could I just barely got off the altar before somebody had to take me away.

One instance I recall in particular, I was uh helping a friend open a swimming pool. We got drunk and sober three times that afternoon. You know, you get about half in the bag and dive in that cold water and climb back out and drink some more and fall in the cold water and climb back out and slither in the cold water.

And then I got to the church to discover that I was the priest for the 6 p.m. mass that Saturday night. The other guys were gone over the hill and I was as drunk as an owl.

They stuck me in the vestments and I managed to get through a sermon. Oh, I gave beautiful sermons. In fact, they gave beautiful sermons.

I was given this lead one time and one of my ex- parishioners came up to me and says, "Now, now that we're both an Alcoholics Anonymous, I understand why the word you delivered from the pulpit had such deep meaning for me. I don't know what the hell she was on, but I know what I was on. This one particular evening though, after I'd helped my friends open the pool and they finished the sermon, they brought the Eucharist or the bread and the wine to the altar for me and I consecrated it and I was absolutely plowed.

And I knew that after I raised the host that I was supposed to genulect, which is a very neat kind of a curtsy behind the altar. And then when I raised the cup, I was supposed to curtsy again. And I knew better than to try to curtsy because if I ever got down behind that altar, I was not coming back up for a while.

So instead, in all of my fine pontipical vestments, I bowed from the waist, hit my head on the front of the marble altar, split my scalp head open. Blood is running into my eyes. I'm taking the purificator and wiping my bleeding forehead with it.

got on with the mass. Somehow I had a group of people, maybe as many as there are in this room this morning, and they all probably looked at me. What the hell is he up to?

Is that post Vatican crap again? He's a damn nut. But he's ordained, so let's cover for him.

Another time, I'm saying mass down in Norfick, Virginia. I was in a hospital chapel. I was a chaplain to the hearing impaired, to the deaf.

If I know sign language, I was saying the Catholic mass in sign language. I was wearing contact lenses. Somehow I hit myself in the face and knocked one of those contact lenses off the center of my eye.

I don't know if it's ever anybody here has ever worn hard contact lens. It's like somebody just put a hot ember in the middle of your eyeball and this eye bursts into flame and the snot is running out of this nostril and I'm trying to wave around up there making sense. about three sheets to the wind and it occurs to me that on the patent under the blessed body of our Lord and Savior is a very shiny plate.

So I swept the Eucharist off the plate, brought it up here and put the then put all the communion bread back on and on with the service we go. You know, death people are going, you know, what the hell is he up to? But nobody jumped my bones about it.

They just figured, you know, he's leaving town soon, I think, if he can find his way to the city limits. I was visiting friends at Christmas time, having one of those wonderful prech Christmas dinners at late one Saturday night after I had said the mass somewhat sainly, and I got absolutely bombed at their house. These were drinking buddies, and I was numb from the jaw south.

I and on my way staggering to the car, I saw their crash, their little Jesus scene on the front porch with the lights and the angels and the straw. And there was this red chicken, a big plastic Rhode Island red chicken. And I thought, "What hell?" So I stole him.

I took him with me, put him in the front seat and talked to him all the way back up to church. And went in and promptly passed out. And next morning, I had a 7:00 a.m.

mass. And I come into church and I say the whole mass, you know, a beautiful altar and the beautiful sanctuary. The lady's artillery of the church had decorated the tree, all these little angels and stuff.

And I'm sitting down after the communion and all these people are looking up very very piously at the tree. And I'm decided, well, I'll look piously at the tree. And I look up from the top and there's that damn red chicken sitting up in the top of that.

They might have been saying, "What the hell's wrong with that tree?" The chicken a sign of chastity or something. So, I got the got the people out of church and got rid of the chicken and found the Virgin Mary's statue and stuck that. These things were happening more and more often.

I mean this would be confusing to explain if I remembered what the hell had happened but some of this stuff I wasn't able to remember. I thought I was, you know, spiritually. Well, there are other things that happened to me, too, that were the mental part, you know, and the mental part sometimes is where all of our body and what we think are nowhere near connected.

And that's just sort of a working definition of alcoholic insanity. And I had all these values and stuff, but my behavior didn't go along with it. And um I'd taken some vows, you know, that I would try to uphold certain things, and I broke every single one of them.

I mean, I've uh misappropriated funds. Um, I've um um been caught in uh some very compromising positions and um I remember one time going on a convention and um it was a convention out in um Kansas City, Missouri and I was in this hotel and I got a private room just in case uh I decided to do a little canoodling with the first class while I was there for the week. I didn't do any canoodling.

Hell, I just iced down my bathtub, filled it full of Kors beer and uh drank my way through it and then showered ankle deep in ice and went out to do some real drinking. And after I've been doing that 2 or 3 days, I couldn't have raised an umbrella. So I left Kansas City and Birkshire was intact through no fault of mine.

That's damn sure. All those people just mattering hell at me. I was serving on two or three boards in that convention.

Never made a one of those meetings and stumbled back home. I mean, just crap like that was going on all the time. Then the physical stuff started to happen to me, too.

And that was the blackouts. And then I don't know about some of you folks, but dying seemed to be very attractive to me, you know, and uh I I tried it a number of different ways, very subtle ways, like driving drunk. And I used to say that I drove a car better drunk than most people drove sober.

And I was on the road. I had a job that took me 60,000 mi a year on the road. And I'd drive and I'd black out while I was on these trips.

And I'd come to some very exotic places. Sometimes in Virginia, sometimes not. I remember once waking up down in Nags Head, North Carolina.

That's 400 miles from where I lived. I had the thoughtiest notion while I was while I was there. And I didn't have any place to stay.

So I slept in the back of uh the pickup truck that I was driving. And I decided this is just no way. you know, just waking up in strange places, not knowing where you are.

So, I bought a travel trailer so that I could hang it on the back of whatever the hell I was driving and I could wake up in it. The problem with that was I wasn't always sure where the trailer was. I uh I tried to stop drinking a few times.

It just was didn't work a damn. I'd say, you know, you're having a problem with your drinking, so don't drink before noon. But I it with me it was if I started at noon, I drank as much as if I had started at 8.

In fact, I had a good friend of mine who also worked with hearing impaired people. He was the Episcopal Vicor for the deaf. And when David moved to town, uh I looked him up and and we teamed up and decided that we kind of combine our ministries.

I realized later on that he was one of us, too. And we figured that the odds were a little better that one of us would be sober so that we could handle the service for both of us. In fact, I'm in it now.

We used to have an altar. Now, of course, now that I'm out of the ministry, I don't mind telling these stories, but I would hope like hell that the deaf people would never tell either bishop what we were up to. He would have one end of the altar and I'd have the other.

And he would be he didn't know how to sign very well. So, he'd copy my signs and he would do everything that I did in the Episcopal service at the same time I was doing it at the end other end of the altar for the Catholics. So, the Episcopals are over here and the Catholics are over here and David and I are up here not realizing both of us about shot in the ass and um trying to get through the service and we tried to figure it out theologically one time.

I said, you know, these services are so confusing and I have a feeling that our Lord doesn't even know how he got here. So, he suggested that we tap the communion bread and if it said Joe, it was mine and if it hello, it was his. I didn't realize that David is a problem drinker.

And we used to have our staff meetings during lunch at a very nice restaurant in town. One that served very good drinks, by the way. So, uh, I got there at one time and I had a couple of drinks and David had a couple of drinks.

Well, we were to meet there the next week and I got there 15 minutes early so I could have a drink. But, you know, David showed up before the time and he had a drink. So, I had two, he had one, then we had some, then we then we both went off to finish off the day.

Finally, uh, I got started getting there around 10:30 when they were still getting the chairs down, and David and I decided, screw this. Why don't we just show up here at noon, drink all we want openly with one another, and just get on with life? Because my tolerance and my need to sustain a buzz was with me all the time.

I happen to note that David is, I think, 19 years of sobriety now. Uh he he said to me one day, "My wife has a terrible drinking problem. It's me." So the physical part got to me too.

I had worked around drunks for a lot of years. I'd sent great many people to Alcoholics Anonymous. When I was in seminary, I took courses on alcohol studies.

Have you know then I overtrained. I was living in the city of Richmond, Virginia at that time and I stood at the turning point just like all of us have. Every single one of us stood at the turning point and we asked his protection and care was completely abandoned.

Mine happened to be on the first day of November 1977. I'd been in Norfolk the day before interpreting for a deaf member of my congregation and I had driven back to Richmond and had gotten pretty well shot in the butt that night and showed up at my office and opened my mail and there was a little newsletter in there that said alcoholism and I opened that up and I said hm and put it down. I opened up another one and it said priests and alcoholism and I thought well the jig is up.

So, I read them both and I made a decision at that point that booze and I had to part. You know, I'd had that thought many times in my drinking career. You're drinking too much.

You're not controlling the amount you're drinking. You're drinking alone. You're drinking at times when it is the worst time to drink.

You don't remember that you said you were not going to drink this morning, but you drank anyway. Why the hell did you drink so much? Those questions have been coming to me for a long time.

But I think the God of my understanding allowed me to be in the same room with that intention that day. I believe that happened to you. We were given many opportunities, but the one that matters is the one we grabbed a hold of.

And from that day to this, I not found it necessary to take a drink. I went to I called a priest that was in the program. He was running a drying out joint at one of the local hospitals.

And he must have thought I was writing a paper or something cuz he made an appointment for the next week. I called another priest that I had known, the guy who gave me the idea of buying the travel trailer. So, at least I know where the hell I was.

and he was on vacation. And the third guy I was called was a fellow named Bob who was a non-alcoholic with whom I had lived. And he knew how much booze had meant to me.

And he had been worried about me for a long time. And he put me in touch with my first sponsor. I say that word very, very carefully because I would not be caught sober without a sponsor, somebody to help me.

And Jim was the most fantastic human being I ever met. I made an appointment and went up to talk to Jim and he sat me down and he listened to me and he told me a little of his story and we went to the meeting that night and I picked up all the literature and I I said, "I think I have a problem with drinking." And they said, "You're welcome here at the closed meeting until you figure it out for yourself." And it was a Thursday night and I read that stuff and it just made great sense to me. So the next Monday, Jim was chairing a meeting downtown and I went to that speaker's meeting and I remember what that guy said.

I don't know if you all pass chips and medallions around here, but in my part of the country in the east coast, they give them for variety of colors and for lengths of sobriety. A white chip was the beginner's chip. And he told this group, he said, "Oh god, if I could give you a one year's medallion worth of experience when I hand you this white chip, I would.

But friend, you got to get it a day at a time." Is there anybody who wants a white chip? And I wanted a white chip, but I was too proud to get up and go get a white chip. After the meeting, I stole my white chip.

And Jim was sitting right across from the table and I said, "Jim, I'm in. Will you sponsor me?" And he came around. He took me in his arms.

That's what sponsors do. He took me in his arms and he got me so close to him I couldn't get away. And that's what sponsors do.

And he laid it out there for me. He said, "Don't drink. Go to meetings.

More will be revealed." And I didn't drink. And I went to meetings. And Jim was a fireball.

I had just been elected to the priest council of my dascese. I don't know why they did that. Maybe they thought they needed a guy to run the bar or something.

But Jim was on the council and together we set up a health panel for drunk priests and we kicked the door down on 18 of them in my first year of sobriety. And I did 12step work that would stand a hair up on anybody cuz there are very few people that are harder to crack than a priest. And I I tell you the clergy just know too damn much.

And they are too good to be involved with the likes of us. But we got them anyway. We would get I remember one guy the bishop got a letter from a beloved adoring parishioner who says, "Father Joe is a wonderful priest." This is a classmate of mine from seminary.

She said, "But at the picnic on the 4th of July, he got drunk and we had to carry him to bed. And the next morning, our little boy got up and he came downstairs in tears. And he said the tooth fairy had forgotten him.

And we didn't know he'd lost a tooth. And we found out later that he'd shown Father Joe where he'd lost a tooth. And Father Joe said, "How much you get for the tooth?" And he said, "A buck." And Father Joe gave him his upper plate and said, "Put this under your pillow.

You'll wake up in the morning a rich man. So the beloved parishioners got Joe's teeth out of hawk and carried him up to the church and we followed two days later and Joe got sober. And this happened to me a lot.

I was all over the state with that guy. I got right into 12step work before I'd even taken the third step. Jim was a beloved and patient man with me.

But he told me that we go to the meetings and we don't drink and we read the big book and more will be revealed. So I read the big book. I was already not drinking and going to meetings.

And soon after he said, "We don't drink, we go to meetings, we read the big book and we work the steps." And I began to work the steps. And then I finished my fifth step which was a doozy. And I was ashamed.

But Jim put his arms around me. They said, "Buddy, we're in this thing shoulderto-shoulder." That's what sponsors do. And soon after that, Jim left town.

And I stayed sober on not drinking, going to meetings, having read the big book once, having worked the steps sort of up to five. And I stayed sober for 5 and 1/2 years on that. After been sober three and a half, the bishop decided that the dust had settled a bit and named me as a pastor of a small church up in the Shannondo Valley.

And I loved those people and they loved me. Just absolute love affair at the beginning. I Well, I have to tell you that I had not changed any of my lifestyle in any other area than drinking.

And I paid a hell of a price for that later. I was in that small parish loving those people and being loved by them and being important. And I stopped going to meetings as regularly and I der got drunk over it.

Turns out God takes care of us. We haven't the brains to take care of ourselves. I had to go on retreat that year and I remember being in church the Saturday afternoon to open it up for the services before and the words of an old hymn came to me.

Spirit of the living God, fall aresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, fall aresh on me.

I didn't realize that I stood at another turning point. I went on that retreat and I took this book with me and I took the 12 and 12 and I said to the retreat master, "I'd like to rework the steps." And he said, "It's your daughter. Go do it." It was a nondirected silent retreat.

When I got in that room, I realized I had only worked first the first half of the first five steps. I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol, but I had not admitted that my life was unmanageable. I was still just as undisiplined and as screwed up and as paranoid as I had been from drinking.

And with my behavior, I had reason to be. You know, as a priest in a small town, you just you're pretty visible. And there were things that I was up to that I'm not very proud of.

The second step, I came to believe that there was a power greater than myself, but I didn't realize that I was insane. I just thought that once I quit drinking, the wonderful guy that Hal and Aggie had raised had just come bobbing to the surface like a cork. I didn't realize that I needed a change of attitude and ideas.

That some of my thinking was pretty screwy. I'd made a decision in step three, but I never turned my life and my will over. I'd made an inventory, but it wasn't searching and fearless.

I had told God and myself everything, but I had withheld some of the worst stuff from the human being. And it was during that retreat that I tried to set that straight. And that that poor non-alcoholic manscior got the whole load.

He said something to me right then. And he said, "Dodge, if you think that Alcoholics Anonymous and those 12 steps were put on this earth so that you could just not drink, then you are a fool." And it still hurts to say that word in that context cuz he was right. I realized that I also had not worked any of the subsequent seven steps in this program.

No wonder I was a basket case. And at that point, I got serious about aa It was a painful time for me, but it saved my life. From that point on, folks, I took off on AA like somebody stuck a rocket up my ass.

I did the hard footwork. I made the amends. I made the list.

I wrote them all down. I put them in my wallet. I carried them.

I did my daily meditation. I took my inventory every day to see where I was right or wrong. I did the things that the book said for Christ's sakes.

And I opened the book up and I began to read this thing as part of my morning quiet time. And this is a recommendation that I have for any of you. If you got a big book, I suggest you get one that doesn't have a thing underlined in it.

Not a mark in the book you're reading for your morning quiet time, because you're going to get distracted by what a genius you were to have underlined that. So, get a book that you've never written a thing in. and get a bookmark and start out right at the very first the very very first thing the preface.

Start right out with that and read a little bit in your morning. Put the bookmark in and you'll be surprised how quickly you can chase that bookmark from front to back in that book. I read the big book and I'm not bragging when I say this, but I read it about three or four times a year as a result of doing it in my morning quiet time.

I've gotten to the point now where I have a little variety, a game I play with myself. If I read the multilith edition, then I read the first edition, then I read the second edition, then I read the third edition. And as a result, it's not real easy to lose me in this book.

And and I discovered that this is the basic text. The next thing that happened with me was I knew that I had to change some things and I didn't know how. And I have always had a sponsor, but I really began to use one at this time.

And I discovered then that I needed to give it away, too. So I got involved in AA work. had a small home group at that well a pretty large home group at that time and I had done everything in that group since stand at the door and shake people's hands to wash the coffee cups and the ashtrays to sweep the floor then they let me order all the goods from toilet paper to coffee then they put me in charge of being the secretary and then they put me in charge of getting the speakers for this meeting and I graduated from that to getting all the speakers and being the speaker chairman for the state convention in Virginia one year and I had such a good time with that that uh I finally I founded my own home group.

I founded a new group and I did all that stuff with a new group. And along in the early part of the '90s, I got started getting invited to go talk places. And my attitude was this.

I I would never say no to AA if I could possibly say yes. So, I've been in a lot of places talking to a lot of people. And what it's done for me is it's broadened the AA horizons for me.

I it all goes back to the Tuesday night study group though in Stanton, Virginia where it took us 5 years to get through the big book the first time and we're in now we're 7 years old and we're only to page 58 the second time through. Someone says Jesus Christ you guys why it takes so long. I said well why the hell bother?

We're just going to have to start over when we're done. I'm the district committee member of my uh of my little part of Virginia, which means that I hear it all and I can influence nothing. I even went back to school after I'd been in the program a long while just and took a course or two in American history because I was interested in it and ended up getting a masters in American history with a with my thesis title having been why aa left the Oxford group and I had a great time.

I got a chance to meet some really fascinating people and got to see a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have under any other circumstance. I in fact I I'm so into a a history and I love old cars. I have to tell you that.

Just love one. One day I was at a little antique uh car dealership in our area and there was an old 1948 Ford twodoor super deluxe with the old flathead 8 cylinder engine on it and it really was cute and it was the cheapest thing there. And in the front seat was a paper box.

And in the paper box was a newspaper from Hopeville, Virginia. And on the front page of the newspaper was a picture of that little old 1948 Ford. And it says, "Local car appears in Warner Brothers movie." And then as I read it, it says the movie was My Name is Bill W.

I hacked every damn thing I own. And I'm driving that 1948. and his name is Old Bill.

Doesn't have a radio cuz I said this is a fifth step car. I got a pigeon in that car doing his fifth step. I was going to speak probably 60 mi away and he needed to do his fifth step with me and I said just take a little bill and go on up together and we can eat and I'll talk and then we can do the we can talk about more on the way back.

Well, this old car had the vacuum windshield wipers and they don't work with a dam when the car is new. But when it's 50 years old, they don't work at all. And it commenced to pour.

So, poor old Mike is sitting next to me driving and I'm on a country road with this 48 Ford and the windshield wipers go and that's it. So, my arm is up under the dashboard working these stupid armatururs and the things going back and forth. Mike never missed a beat.

I think he probably went into the sex stuff while I was trying to keep us on the road in the hopes that I get diverted and I've had an awful lot of fun. So, I tell you what, I I have a great time in AA. One of the things began to happen to me as I told you, I got this illness spiritually first, then mentally and physically.

I got well from alcoholism absolutely backward from that. The first thing that happened to me is I got well physically. If you don't drink, you don't get drunk.

after you've shaken it out once, if you don't put more in, you're not likely to shake it out again. And I discovered that not drinking was very important to long-term sobriety. And I had seen enough guys that I sponsored in the sip and see method of sobriety that would come back in shaking like a dog craping peach pits.

And I didn't want to go through that. I got I had guys I sponsored I have to serve them coffee in a mixing bowl. And the damn thing had white caps on it and they knocked the damn front teeth out or chipped the enamel off my cookware in order to drink the coffee.

I didn't want to go through that. So I said, "Bring them on." Have you know I was taking a little walk this morning, you know, before breakfast and this guy comes up to me on the street and he says, "Pardon me, sir. I don't want to bother you, but I'm trying to get to." And his face is the color of a tomato.

And he was shaking like this. And I said, "Well, sit down and talk with me for a minute. You're doing me an awful big favor here.

If you'd like breakfast, I can get you a free breakfast this morning. And you'll be in the company of about a thousand members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Have you ever tried Alcoholics Anonymous?

Yeah, I have. I I I didn't do very well. They love you.

Hell, I might have even got rid of your big book for you. But he wouldn't come in. You know what that guy did for me?

He kept me sober and I told him, "David, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to try to con you into the arms of AA and you know it.

And I'll let you go, but God bless you." And that's what I've had with my pigeons. Some of them who've made it and some of them who haven't. I've been in that parish church for eight years loving those people and they love me.

And folks, I hit the wall. I'd had it. With me, the decision to become a priest may have been to fulfill something in me that was empty and it got filled in this program.

I don't want to say that the priest was just a passing fancy for me. It wasn't. It was a way of life.

But I left. I was offered a job as a pastoral counselor in a treatment center and I took it. And then I realized that all the crummy stuff that had ever happened to me was useful to the drunks that came in the door there.

And I thought, geez, I can tell these guys things. I can't tell. of the lady's artillery.

And while I was working in that treatment center, I also was around some fine mental health workers. They had a psychiatrist there who explained why I kept wanting to kill myself, even sober. There were social workers there who explained to me in their own way in working with others and in just chatting over bridge with them to understand a little bit about the inner workings in mind of my mind and soul.

And there was one psychologist in particular was a very very fine individual. And that psychologist was bright bright bright bright and just it was wonderful with the drunks and the addish. Loved them was not an alcoholic.

And I got so close in my relationship with that psychologist that I married her. Then I had to get rid of this bishop or he had to get rid of me. And I embarked on something that was a real risk for me.

Another turning point. I must have gotten well enough so that a fine woman like my wife would be willing to spend the night with me and to take a risk at spending a life with me. Boy, that was powerful stuff.

I was 45 years old when I married this woman. She's considerably younger than I am, though not as young as she says. She pulls out those gray hairs and then comes, lays them on my side of the bed, and says, "Look, what you doing to me?" He says, "Come here, sugar, and we'll finish it off." We were married.

Oh, we had decided because I was a little long in the tooth, you know, and I wasn't too sure I wanted to have babies and um we decided not to have any kids, you know, she had her reasons. I had mine and so I had a little nip and tuck taken care of and became a galing and and uh I figured, you know, enough of this business. You know, I'd spent all this time trying to get a partnership going.

I wasn't sure I wanted a corporation. So, one night I came home from the area assembly and my wife says, "William is down at the club room. He wants to see you.

It's a big deal. You better get your ass down there." So, Donn go and Will go like, "Okay, John, drive me home after the meeting." So, I drive Willie home after the meeting. He won't tell me what's going on.

We get into his house and it's dark. It's like 11:00 by this time. We walk into the house and he walks me.

He says, "Stay here a minute." And he comes out with his little bitty papoo, a little bitty guy, just born the day before, and lays him in my arms and he said, "I want you to meet Hollis." Wright. >> Wow. I didn't have a kid, but I had a namesake.

Oh, what a wonderful baby that little guy is. Cute as he can be, smart as his namesake. My dear sweet wife, you know, women do change their minds, don't they?

One day after coming back from speaking at the North Carolina convention, my wife says to me, "I've reconsidered the baby issue." And I said, "So, who's the father?" Guess I went and got an unnip and tuck. And four months later when he was pregnant and as in temper she delivered our daughter Sarah Jane. >> What a powerful experience.

I was in the middle of a mystery and God let that woman in me pass it on. I heard bald all weekend when I heard what had happened to kids and alcoholic homes. I know and I take that baby in our arms and we say, "Oh Jesus, please don't let my alcoholism be in her.

But if it is, let her be raised in a home where there's a chance to get well. My wife is a very practical woman and a deeply spiritual but somewhat private lady when that baby was born. She was born 10 weeks early and we had to fly mama and the baby over to the hospital 40 mi away by helicopter and then we waited 5 weeks to get her out of hawk.

We weren't sure if she was going to make it for a little while but oh she's a tough little girl. And we brought that kid through the door of our home and we got on our knees and we we welcomed our baby to our house. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm just not so grateful that that kid didn't have to put up with the bastard I was during the drinking years.

She just has to put up with a bastard that's left. >> God's been awfully good to us. Better than we deserve.

I don't have a thing left that I had when I got to AA. My mom and dad are dead. The old family home is gone.

The cars I dented. The lie that I warped, the job that I took for perhaps less than noble motives, the houses I lived in, the clothes I wore, the books I read, the people I knew. But it's all no today.

Every bit of it. And every bit of it in my estimation is due to my membership in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I just am unspeakably grateful to total strangers who are not strangers because we share this wonderful language of the heart.

This is my attitude about aa today and I'm looking forward to the next adventure. I just can't wait for what's around the next turn. My understanding of God today is all that I ever learned and more.

But I was trying to explain him one night to a friend of mine who's agnostic. And I said to him, Ken, will you accept that God has a great sense of humor and that you have been invited into the mansion with many rooms and that our heavenly father is leaving hints for you of his presence and his love in each room, but stays just one room ahead of you. And the greatest joy that that heavenly father can have is knowing when you have found the clue to his presence in the room you're in right now.

And you'll hear a soft giggle as he knows that you're on to him. You're on to him. The keys of the kingdom has one of the most beautiful ways that I think any of us can look at Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I share it with you. Aa is not a plan for recovery that can be finished and done with. >> It is a way of life.

>> And the challenge contained in his principles is great enough to keep any human being striving for as long as he lives. We do not cannot outgrow this plan. As arrested alcoholics, we must have a program for living that allows for limitless expansion.

Keeping one foot in front of the other is essential for maintaining our arrestment. Others may idle in in a retrogressive move without too much danger. But retrogression can spell death for us.

However, this isn't as rough as it sounds, as we do become grateful for the necessity that makes us tow the line. For we find that we are more than compensated for a consistent effort by the countless dividends we receive. Those dividends that I've received have been one sponsorship two this book three not drinking today four the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous five the mysterious and wonderful strangers who immediately become friends six a wonderful mate who decided that I was healthy enough to live with and seven that gorgeous baby that I'm going back home to tomorrow so that I can try my best to live like a responsible human being and hopefully live long enough to raise that little tight What a what a blast I'm having.

Aa is a lot of fun, folks. If you've been in AA for 3 days, stay around. There's more to be revealed.

If you've been in AA for six or seven years and you've sort of hit the wall, good. Hit it. Get it over with.

Get on with things. Start enjoying a a life. If it's over 15 or 20 years and you think you know it all, oh, shut the hell up.

Don't be a sponsor. If you're sort of If you're sober 35 or 40 years and you don't think that anybody wants it, you have, you're dead wrong. Don't cheat AA of your seniority.

I intend to stay as long as I can walk through the doors of AA and be a colossal pain in somebody's ass. and know that I probably am saving their life. Folks, you've made this weekend just absolutely incomparable for me.

And I feel like the caboose on a long and powerful train cuz I've listened to those other speakers very, very carefully and I'm happy to tell you that I agree with them. And that what we have to say to one another from our very lives is essentially the very same thing. We were once were lost but now are found.

Thank you very much for your patience. >> 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.