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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> I'm Jack Hol. I'm an alcoholic.

Yeah. Great. Glad to be here.

I'd like to welcome a new people here tonight. You may be wondering what an alcoholic is since you have been out there on the trail for a while. Non-alcoholic and an alcoholic and a social drinker walked into a bar and over the bar it said, "All you can drink for a dollar." The social drinker laid down his dollar and went over and drank all he wanted.

The alcoholic says, "I'll take $2 worth." That's the behavior of an alcoholic. So if you don't you know what one is now why and the other definition is comes out of our book. You're a person a man or a woman who lost the ability to control their drinking.

So that's enough of that. Now you know who you are and what you are. Next thing is when you're going to admit it.

Next thing is when you go to do something about it because that's the only time that you will change is when you do something about it. My alcoholic life started when I was well the first nine years I was sober. I didn't have a drink and I got drunk helping my father bottle homebrew.

See I was born and raised in the state of Tennessee where they make that terrapin spit and white lightning and things of that nature. That's stuff that you know that you get up the next morning after going on a drunk and your hair hurts and your teeth itches and the only thing you can do to get rid of that is have some more of that same stuff. So that's what I brought up.

I was brought up on the age of 15 years old. I was poisoned on some of this rock. You got whiskey and a noi hold down.

You don't know what that is? >> That's a dance that's been held out in the farmer's house and all the people from around miles around come to it and they dance and drink, fight and raise help. I drank one half a teacup full of this stuff that night and that's the last thing I remembered.

And they come, my father come and got me and took me home. Then he called the doctor. And in those days, I didn't have stomach pumps to pump your stomach out with.

So the old country doctor, the only thing he knew to do was to push and shove pure lard down my throat. So I vomited. That's how they got it out of me.

And to this day, I hate grease. And I uh decided I wasn't going to drink any of that hard stuff for six months. >> >> It never crossed my mind to quit drinking.

I just shifted over to Tennessee beer. Home brerew. We called it homebrew.

That's the kind of stuff, you know, you take the cork out of the bottle, the blue smoke will go in the air four feet. Four bottles of it and you know, and you're winding your ass and scratching your watch and the hell you been. So, this is the kind of stuff, you know, I came up on.

Come from a good family. No alcoholics in my family except me. So I command a unique position and across the state of Tennessee and Montgomery County, Tennessee, there's still scars back there that's left by this man standing here.

In fact, I'd go back there right now and the people say, "You got old Hope boy used to live around here, aren't you?" So I uh went on with my drinking at the time and I didn't drink any more hard stuff for 6 months and of course I got back into it again. But I was a little more careful next time. I only drink stuff that I knew where it came from and that was strong, you know, but it was good stuff.

So this is how uh I was introduced to John Barley Horn. And when I was introduced to John Born, I was a timid type of guy. And when I drank him, you know, I became 10 ft wide and 20 ft tall.

Everything about me changed. I became something. I didn't know what in the hell it was, but I became something.

I didn't feel the same way. That's what he made me feel like. See, so I continued on with this.

I said, "Man, I have met something that's going to be with me the rest of my life. I'm never going to let it go." and I damn nearly didn't. But this is something, you know, that damn near killed me.

So I hound old John, took him with me wherever I went, drank him on every occasion I could find. At the age of 18 years old, I went to my father and I said, "Dad, I'm going to join the Navy." And he says, "Where's the papers, son? I'll sign them right now." He didn't give me any argument whatsoever.

So I joined the United States Navy 1939 and I was sent to Northport Virginia for a boot camp and this is where I got a little bit of resistance about being drunk like I did because out in North Virginia that got all over the grass, you know, it says sailors and dogs stay off the grass. Well, being a being a rebel, you know what the hell? First thing that I did was get on the grass.

So this is how I've lived my life you know up until few years ago was rebellious defiant you say I had to do something h that gave me an idea start searching immediately for a way to do it the opposite and sometimes not searching immediately for a way to do it the opposite just the hell with you and all for me well the Navy don't like that they don't really like that so they told me to be back on that ship at 8:00 in the morning the next day. Sometimes I arrive at 8:00 in the morning 10 days later. They don't like this.

So they court marshes with these things. So I u in the Navy I was in the Navy a year shipped around here to California and I put in for Asia duty to China and the executive officer says your papers are ready. You may go.

And I never seen a man do something so fast. So I headed Hong Kong. I landed in Hong Kong in March 1940.

I had arrived at the places I've been looking for. The nirvana of the alcoholic was the Asiatic Fleet. Discipline was not near as bad was here in the States.

You could buy good booze for a dollar and a half a quart all day long. The exchange was 22 to1. You could take a $10 bill and you got 250 Chinese mechs in your pocket.

Hell, 10 cents a bottle for beer. Man, this is what I've been looking for. And all the people out there, you know, we're nuts.

Asiatic. That's what they called it, the Asiatic fleet. We were Asiatic, you know, had to be rum dums and misfits.

That's what we were. And so I stayed out there until a war broke out being a rum dum and a misfit. And I was one of the lucky ones I got out too.

I don't know how in the hell I did it because I'll tell you something, not too many got out, but I was one of the lucky ones. I got out and we retreated down through the islands. You know, we sailed through blockades and minefields and didn't know we were in them because we didn't have anything on our ships to tell us that.

I was on one of those old four stack of destroyers. We hit Singapore and we wired in, you know, where we were at and they said, "You're in the middle of the minefield. Try that on for size.

It makes you do this, you know." I'm nervous. So, what happened? You know, we went up we went to the dock and the British, you know, they carry Grog on their ships.

rum. They call it broth. And they said, "Blimey, fellows, we're willing to share with you how you pack a few barrels." Well, we were five.

We had a We had a captain was a Jew. His name was Cart. Hell of a fellow.

Loved to drink. He said, "Great." You know, but the commander of the whole squadron wouldn't let us jog aboard our ship. Well, anyway, we got dropped to Singapore and on back into Australia and on down to the line, back into the United States, and I, you know, I retreated backwards all the long time, you know, and I can stand here tonight and tell you that my war record was because of me being an alcoholic, but it wasn't.

I was in a hell of a lot more danger on the beach than I ever was at sea because, you know, I would walk off into anything drunk, you know, like dry dock with no water in it, swimming pools with no water in it, you know, ball down hatches aboard the ship all the way to the bases of that son of a 150 ft, you know, take all the skin off my chin as I pass those ladder runs, you know. I don't know why I'm standing here tonight. I'll tell you, I am living on somebody else's time.

The good Lord said to me, I suppose a long time ago, "You ain't going, fella, until I'm ready." Because as an alcoholic, you see one of the primary things about an alcoholic is that he is constantly trying to destroy himself. So you see as an alcoholic I hear you hear many people say in their program that they don't have any suicidal appendages. We have suicide.

We're suicide all the time. Self-destruction is our main course. Self-destruction trying to destroy that damn thing.

I don't know why, but we do. So if you're an alcoholic, I'm I might have to disagree with you if you had to say suicide sentences. So this is my some of my brief things when I was a young man just getting started have an anchor to carry around with you.

Absolutely. This happened to me, you know, and I was I like I went all out through there and got back to the States here in 1942. And uh I was court marshal three times before I was 20 years old in the Navy.

So they don't like, you know, for guys to say they're going to be back at 8:00 in the morning on Wednesday and get back the following Wednesday at 8:00. You know, that's called overly court margins for those things, you know. Well, I'd lose track of time.

Fact is, they told me that I had to leave one ship, you know, and go to another one over here in San Francisco, just from the Hunter Point out to Goat Island, which is out in the middle of the bay. Took me 5 days to get out there cuz around the rim of that bay, there's a lot of bars. So, they court marshal for these things, you know.

And uh the captain called me down to his cabin, you know, and he gave me a follow advice and says, "Hope, he said, I want to give you some follow advice." You know what an alcoholic does when somebody says they're going to give you father advice, you know. So I listened. He said, "I'm going to give you a 72-hour liberty and I'm going to give you let you go ashore." So I want you to go down here in San Francisco to Third and Howard Street.

I want you to pay particular attention to the people that's laying in the gutters with their head on the curb and sleeping in the doorways. So that's where you're going to be before you're 25 and I'm going to help put you there. You don't sober up.

I said, "Yes, sir." I went ashore and got drunk. I don't know where I went. Any rate, this went on and on.

So, none of these trips down to San Jose that I would over leave on. I met a lady, my wife Alice. Some of you know her, some of you don't.

And she's the only wife I've ever had. I get to talking sometimes. I forget bring my wife up to date.

You know, somebody asked me after the me, "Whatever happened to your wife?" I left her back along about the first part of the talk. You know, she's still with me. We'll be married 39 years.

It's pretty quick. So, her and I got married. We had a son, we had a daughter, and I went on through the rest of the war and I didn't need court marshals anymore primarily because I guess I was out in the South Pacific all the time.

And the only thing we had out there was this raising jack, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, you put all these fruit in one of those 10 cans. You put it in the back after at after at the gear locker, you know, where it got about 192 in the in the out there in the goddamn prophets, you know, and it boils, you know, and you drink that stuff and Jesus Christ, you know, you hear it go voom just like that. You took a snort of it.

So that was about the only thing that I got in any trouble, you know, sand dabs and coconuts out there. So I really didn't get any trouble out there. So I got back to the States and got out of the Navy.

I sent landed in Tokyo Harbor with How's his third fleet and the signing of all the papers and all that kind of stuff. And I made a decision then when they offered me a lifetime in the United States Navy and I said, "Well, I looked at my record and I said, "The Seven Oceans, United States Navy, and Jack Holt will not mix. So I'm the smallest.

I'd better move." So I went out and came out in civilian life and became a cabinet maker at 86 cents an hour and uh Alice and I then we went on we had we had two children went on down the road and I didn't like working with somebody else. I went to work for myself. I went into business and like alcoholics you know worked hard and played hard and made money.

The harder I worked the more money I made. But also the harder I worked, the more money I made, the more I drank until finally, you know, started running around. The more I drank, the less money I made.

So I worked. So in 1952, I decided pressure was too great. Sold the damn business.

Alice and I went for three or four months all over the United States, you know, and travel. And during this time, why uh I was getting this pressure off me. So I came back and immediately back in the business again and again, you know, went to work, worked hard, drank hard, played hard and uh went on, you know, and I built up a big business, the largest cabin shop in Santa Clara County, St.

Leon. Had 30 men working for me. And I'll tell you that just like eating me up alive.

So, you know, we had recessions back then, too, you know. But anyway, just going on through this, you know, my drinking was getting worse and I was getting worse. I was getting meaner, you know, and this kind of stuff.

And I can remember, you know, I always thought it was my privilege to drink. I didn't think anybody had any right to tell me by God that I couldn't drink all I wanted to and all I could hold. So I remember I I'd leave the bar 2 or 3:00 in the morning where it was didn't make any difference.

And on the way home, I'd get fighting mad. always started homing on and I'd get on the attack because when I on the way home I said by God that's my right to drink. I knew damn well Alice was going to raise holy hell cuz she felt just the opposite.

By the time I got to the house I was raging mad you know and she met me at the door of course raging mad. There's where we had the battle right at the front door screen doors flying face you know and I can remember one night I went and standing there you know I passed out. I used to be able to pass out on my feet and not know where I was.

I could walk around, you know. I never did stagger sideways. I always ran backwards, you know.

I'd run backwards. I'd run backwards a half a block, you know, before I'd fall on my ass. And I can remember one time I was I was where Mel Carton is on Santa Claus.

Used to be a drive-in restaurant there who was coming in from this bar and I stepped out and there was this hedge there. I always like to take a leak in the hedge. I don't know why.

flight. I hauled her out into the leaking hedge, you know, walked halfway across this parking lot and all of a sudden, you know, I started running backwards. I went a brand new suit, paid $150 for it, and that was way back in those days.

That was a hell of a lot of money. I fell right in that subtle patch where I took a leap, went right back into it, and Alice brushing me off, you know, trying to clean me up. I was doing all kind of things like that.

And uh I'd go home, you know, and I'd sit down in my big chair and I'd grab back, go to sleep and pass out. We had shoelaces in our shoes and I was tied my shoelaces together, you know, and give me a hot foot, you know, with these great big old wooden matches, you know. Well, I always had scorch shoes, you know, goddamn polish, you know, cuz polish burns on shoes, you know, when you get them going good.

And I had I had squirt shoes, you know, and uh to get up, you know, and I'd tear the furniture up because I, you know, god damn that hot suit. I'll tell you, that's blistered. And of course, you know, I'd tear up the coffee table and fall down cuz those days I weighed 240 lbs.

You know, I look like a goddamn tank coming down the road. Really? And uh god damn, I look back on this crap out there.

It's funny as hell. It was tragic to you really, you know. Hell, I was just about I was just about to die and didn't know it, you know, or about to get killed and didn't know it too, you know.

So, I was all these things was going on and I was getting worse, you know. So, I used to like to drink at the house sometimes, you know, especially when Alice the kids would leave and I used to pay out of motel rooms in those days cuz I'd run them off, you know. I got to where I'd get mean, you know, I'd get home and I'd be mean.

And I always told her when I was sober, I said, "Look, when I'm drunk, you and the kids, get the hell out of the house. I don't want to hurt you." Cuz that was my house by God. So she and the kids would leave.

So I was always paying, you know, two or three nights a week motel for her and the kids. So there'd be nobody at the house but me and my dog and my parakeet. And parakeet's name was Pety.

And I I said, "Well, I don't like to drink for myself." So one day I found out that Petey loves bourbon. So I poured Pety a of bourbon, you know, and he'd get up on the side of that bourbon, you know, glass. He'd take a couple of snorts, you know, and he sneeze a little bit, you know, and he immediately, I don't know what the hell get into him.

He'd get just amorous as hell. He'd start chasing my female dog, you know, and she'd run on the bail. He he'd chase anything in skirts, you know.

Didn't bother him at all. He was a nut, an alche from the word gold. And so he and he and I drank together all the time.

We'd get on some hellacious drunk, you know. He'd pass out. And one day he was passed out on the floor and I stepped on him, you know, and like I said, I weigh 240 lbs.

And I I heard this little, you know, squeak, you know, like I stepped on my bird, my drinking partner. I reached down, you know, and I picked him up and hell, he was out on his home. He was God, he's dead.

I was crying, you know, and I cry. All of a sudden, you know, I felt a little flutter in his head, you know, come to a little bit, you know, he come to and I took him on, I laid him on the table, you know, and he He went over there, you know, he stigger, you know, he gave him a couple of pops of that bourbon everywhere. Oh, God.

I'm telling you, that was the damnest that was the damnest animal I ever owned in my life. So, a lot of time in my house, there's nobody's there but me and Pety and the dog. And the dog was on the bed peeing and I drunk.

That's how it was. God, he could talk. You know, he he used to hang over my dining room table.

We used to have those drunken poker parties, you know. He learned all the language of a drunken poker game, you know, full house, raised 10, son of a bastard, you know, and go to hell, you know, and you and all this kind of stuff, you know, and um he was a linguist. He could call that dog in from outside.

He could call the kids in from outside. You know, he was a smart son of a I'll tell you. But he didn't know, you know, he just like all he's smart but dumb too.

You know, didn't know when to quit. But, you know, at the time he was a hell of a companion for me. But I'll tell you, but these are the things that goes on in Alfie's life.

You got to be pretty goddamn to drink with birds. You know, you don't very many people drink with birds. Heck, I don't know what anybody has but me.

I never heard anybody talk about drinking about drinking with birds. you know, drinking with dogs and cats, not birds. But any rate, Pety and I, we we had a hell of a time together.

So on in the 50s, you know, the drinking was getting worse and worse. Now it's getting meaner and meaner. I thought once every two months down to divorce attorney, you know, I ain't signing those damn papers.

Attorney, you know, I didn't know it. I knew it, but she didn't know it. But his wife had burned herself alive in Honolulu.

She was an alcoholic and she had set the bed on fire and burned herself up to death in Honolulu. And so the attorney was on my side. He'd write up all the papers and stash them in his safe and tell Alex, "Well, I haven't been able to get a hold of Jack." And uh so this is one way I guess the reason I'm not divorced today was because of my attorney.

And he was he was a non-alcoholic. Hell of a man though. But his wife burned herself up in on a lure.

She was she was an alcoholic. And he had a great understanding of the alcoholic, great compassion for me. And uh to this day, I believe that's probably the only reason I was able to get through with it, you know.

But any rate, that's one of the things, you know, and as it goes on, my life just started getting worse and worse and and and things got worse. I got sicker and sicker. By this time, you know, I in 1957, by this time, you know, I was uh the kind of a drunk, you know, I'd be sitting in the house and uh I used to get this weird weird whistle in my head, you know, and it was like a vacuum, you know, be like in a vacuum and there'd be somebody talking to me, you know, you know, and these shadows would be flying by, you know, Jesus Christ, I could just catch one, you know, there must be somebody there, but I never could.

and uh weird things, you know, like things like that, feel things on you, you know, and you couldn't find anything, you know, crawly things and things like that and all of these things going on, you know, your mind coming in and out and coming and going and goddamn just playing a player playing tricks on you, you know, all the time. I'm sitting there just drunk as hell, you know, and I burnt all the ass out of my pants and the chair I was sitting in, you know, I was always forever dropping cigarettes down between my legs alive. I wonder if I got anything left really.

But anyway, this is what was going on in my life. One Sunday morning, I came to March the 17th, St. Patrick's Day, 1957.

I came too and I thought a horse was trying to stomp me to death and I had him by the leg and I was hollering, "Whoa, you son of a bitch." Whoa. And now I was laying on that goddamn piano. I had a piano buddy leg, you know, screaming and hollering, yelling, not a stitch of clothes on.

Just laying there bare ass naked hollering that horse drunk Pety drunk and the dog hiding under the bed. Alice, the kids gone. My phone rang.

Man on the other end of that phone said, "How you feel?" I said, "Pretty goddamn bad." It was my father, Ali, as you know him. He'd been on the program six years. He said, "How'd you like to do something about your drinking?" I said, "Well, see, Al and I had drank a business down there at two together before." and uh I said, "Well, I'd like to do something about it, but that's as far as I would go." And so he said, "Well, I'll be over and talk to you." So he came over and went down to used to be Old Tiny's Bar restaurant there on the corner of Ray Street in the Alamita.

And the man that owned that was an alcoholic na. So we went in and talked to him and uh they convinced me to go to a meeting that night. So that was my first day a meeting, March 17, 1957.

And I went into that meeting, you know, about half crap because I didn't dare go down there with those drunks, you know, sober. So I'd had a few belts. So I went into this meeting, you know, the only thing that I heard in that first meeting that night was, "If nothing else, stay sober for 90 days and you'll have saved enough money to get on a good drunk." I said, "Shit, that sound like a hell of a good idea." I wasn't ready to quit.

Hadn't even crossed my mind to quit drinking at all. So I left that meeting that night without firmly implanted in my mind. 90 days by God I'd do it.

90 days. And I did for 90 days. I didn't take a drink through sheer goddamn willpower.

Nothing else. I wanted to drink so bad goddamn I could shoot a quartile of a bottle. Nope.

90 days. On the 91st day, I drove to Selena's where Al was working to tell him, "By God, I was no longer an alcoholic and never had been." After 2 hours of that he said, "Why don't you step over to the nearest bar and try some control drinking, Jack?" I said, "Thank you, Al. That's what I've been to." Just had to make sure I was an alcoholic.

My record didn't mean a damn thing to me at that time. Look at your record. What the hell?

Tomorrow I might be able to set a new record. That's the attitude of a hard head. There may be one of you in here tonight.

It's just started. Don't be a soft head. Don't be a hard head.

So I went back out into the drinking field. Of course during this time I I'd had Pety shut off. You know, he had hell resentment.

Little bastard. You know, he was uh he got a big resentment for not drinking. You know, he'd sat in that cage and muttered and talked to himself.

And I guess he had to be teased, too, a little bit. You know, he was going through an awful lot of motions. So, I went back out in the drinking world and uh decided that this AA was not for me.

Well, I'll tell you something. For about two months, I controlled it pretty good. I never got fallen down drunk.

And after that, it just seemed like everything went to hell. Those little people come flipping through my room. Bigger people this time, you know, and I still couldn't catch them.

I could hear them talking to me. Pety was happy. He and I was drunk together all the time.

The dog was hiding on the bed and had us and the kids back out in the motel rooms. So this went on and I, you know, wrecked a few automobiles, did a few things like this. And finally on March the 5th of 1958, I was sitting in that same old bar on the corner of the Alamita, Race Street, tiny.

And I'd been on a three-week drunk and I was sitting in this bar and all of a sudden I come to just as clear as a bell. I mean clarity, absolute clarity. And then I turn to the guy sitting next to him.

I says, "Charlie, this is my last drink. I'm going back to AA." He said, "God damn, I'm going with you." Cuz he did all that drunk with me, you know. So on March the 6th of 1958, there were four of us, three other fellows that drank with me and our four sponsors went into the old Prune Ridge meeting on Thursday night on March the 6th.

Like a squad of soldiers, we marched in there, you know, four babies and four sponsors. And I began to hear different things in that meeting that night cuz I was there because I wanted to be there. I was there because I was sick.

I was there because no one had asked me to come. My god, I was there because I was looking for some way, somehow to feel better. I was tired and I was sick.

I heard those guys that night when they said, you know, go to meetings and don't drink. And there's no reason to drink. Period.

There's no reason to drink. You can manufacture me 5,000 excuses in 15 minutes, but you can't give me one reason to drink. Fact is, my sponsor said to me at that time, said, "If you ever find a reason to drink, come and get me and I'll go with you." And he I have never been able to find a reason to drink.

And I looked pretty goddamn serious for a while, too. But I wasn't by any means, you know, satisfied that this was it at that time. So, I went to meetings and I listened and I heard things like, uh, first things first, and easy does it.

You only have to say so a day at a time. Don't take the first drink and all this kind of stuff. But mostly, you know, go to meetings.

They pounded that into me. Go to meetings. Go to meetings.

Study the book. Go to meetings. So I did.

I went to meetings every night. Every night. I had two weeks in the program.

I got my first 12step call. And in those days, you know, you never heard anything like you hear today. You know, sometimes don't make any 12step calls for a year.

here and this kind of you know. We never got started if we' started that way. They kicked our ass out in the 12step calls immediately.

I had my first 12step call with two weeks in the program. I didn't know a damn thing, but I was enthusiastic. I went down to this cellar where this guy was in the goddamn cellar.

He was laying on the couch, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth and his eyes were wide open staring at the ceiling. I said, "Christ, he's dead. I'm too late, you know.

So, I went over, you know, and I felt his a little bit and I put my head down, ear down. I could hear his heartbeat. And he stunk so bad I couldn't stand him, you know.

He he just uh he let loose everywhere. So, I picked him up and he weighed about 95 lbs, I guess, and I was still, you know, 240 lb. picked him up and I shoved him down into a goddamn wash trailer, turned the water on him, washed him off, shung him over my shoulder, took him home with me, you know, no other place to take him, you know.

So I threw him in the back of my picked up truck, took him home with me, like a sack of wheat, you know, lay there, god damn it, don't you move either. took him home of me, you know, took him in the bathroom, you know, stuck him in the bathtub, you know, drew the water, you know, for him, shaved him, you know, and sliced him hide off his face, cleaned him up. Alice took his clothes out and washed them, you know, and I said, "Now you stay there and soak.

You stink." I went out in the living room. I'm sitting out there about 30 minutes, you know, and all of a sudden, one of these thoughts come beam right in the side of my head, you know, you tongue. I said, "Something's wrong." That son of a is doing something in there.

So I went in there, you know, and here he was, water, black water wrapping around here, you know, foam coming out of his mouth, just rolling out of his mouth, you know. Holy Christ, what's the looked down alongside the bathtub, you know, and here's a quart empty bottle of this rubbing alcohol, you know, with a strong crossbow going, you know. I said, "Holy Christ, he's killed himself." So I picked him up and I wrap a blanket around him, throw him over my shoulder, and head to the doctor, you know.

I get down to the doctor's doctor named Love Lace. So I walked in with Johnny across my shoulder. I said, "Doc, this guy's dying." And I had this bottle with me.

He said, "What makes you think so?" Said, "You drank this whole damn bottle of crap here." He said, "Oh he could drink a gallon of that." Said, "What else you been drinking, Johnny?" He knew the guy. He said, "I've been drinking shampoo." So I've been drinking shampoo and blowing bubbles, you know. Here I thought he was foaming at the mouth, dying.

So I said, "Well, hm, I'll fix you." You know, so I started the vendetta right then and there. I'm going to sober that son of a up if it kills him. And I'll tell you right now, boy, I worked on him night and day for 10 months.

And somebody still drinking to this day. Really? 10 months.

I worked on it night and day. Last time Johnny ever called my house was in January. Then he said, "I'd like to come over and stay a couple of days." I said, "Fine.

Come on, John." Took him over to my house, you know, and I took him out my swimming pool. I hadn't had any heat on it all winter. I threw him in the pool and every time he'd come up, I'd shut him down again, you know.

So, I kept him in there. After he come out, he was acting blue, you know. He was standing there like this, you know.

He says, "Now you son of a bitch." He said, I said, "You stay here 3 days." And I went out and I got my 306. You know, I said, "I'll blow your goddamn legs off if you try to try to jump that fence." I guess he believed me because he stayed there 3 days. He's never been back and he never asked me to come back.

So that was my first 12step call. But anyway, after that, you know, I said, "Hell, this is great." So I decided I got I you know I became a crusader. I started making 12step calls and gathering up drunks wherever I could.

And my second 12step call was on a tile set out in Santa Clara and he was out trying to kill his wife with a 12 gauge shotgun and out in those days had prune archers out there and he was running she was chasing through this prune orchard you know boom bage shotgun you know trying to shoot her All he was doing was blowing prunes off the field cuz he was drunk. So I run him down took the gun away from him. I wouldn't do that today.

I'll tell you right now. Took the gun away from me, you know, and threw his threw him in a motel and I called up. I said, "What the hell am I going to do with this wife and four kids?" She said, "Bring him home." So, I took him home, you know.

Hell, we had Alfies all over the place. Christ had him sleeping out in the backyard and in the living room and on the couch, in the bathtub, in the patio. That's the only place you could take them.

They had no other place to go. You couldn't get them in the hospital. They wouldn't take them.

Hell, cops don't want drunk. They don't know what they'll do with us anyway. You know, all they can do is block us up and all we do is just mess up their place.

Don't do any good. You know, we just puke all over it and pee all over it and do things like that. We never do any good.

No good lock up on Alfie. What the hell? So, I took them home one day.

This was my first two years and they ate. That's how I did it. The old time was jumping up and down.

God damn it. That ain't the way you do it. You ain't supposed to take them home with you.

You're not supposed to carry the alcoholic. I said, "By God, I'm going in and length for their sobriety." I didn't know it was going into the mine, you know, cuz I stayed sober. And I'll tell you right now, I had to have something like that to keep me sober cuz I had a lot of doubts about the whole everything.

But those guys, you know, they kept me busy, you know, like I had the time I was in here 6 months, you know, I had 12 babies. Hell, and I was hauling the meetings, you know, on my pickup truck a lot of times. And my six months I was standing up in Tun Ridge and I was crying, tears coming down my eyes.

And I was standing up there telling a big story. What a lousy sponsor I was. Every one of those bastards was drunk.

There wasn't one sober. And I got all through, you know, and sat down. This old timer, he had 10 years.

He was an oldtimer. He had 10 years. Little guy about this tall.

His name was N. Leblah from Louisiana and he had he had been kicked out of the Jesuit order because he was an alcoholic and he got up in the back and he says I don't know who in the hell you think you are. He says you're not God.

He says you can't get anybody sober and you can't keep anybody sober but he says you missed upon this whole program you idiot. You're sober. You know it never crossed my mind before what is actually happening to me.

Those guys was actually keeping me sober. So I got that settled. Fine.

That's good. On I went then right on down the line. This little guy, you know, he had emphyma so bad he was in a wheelchair.

And he I used to hate his goddamn guts because he was always telling me the truth. Little bastard, you know. He was always telling me the truth.

I couldn't hit him, you know. He just I just sit there just in a rage, you know. I couldn't hit him.

First time he ever he I ever invited you to my house. You know, you sit in my living room. He told me to shut your goddamn mouth.

Nobody want to listen to your He told me that. My own house, you know. But hell, you know, I felt like picking him up, throwing him out the window, you know, but he, you know, he knew how to handle me, you know.

Hell, I was a raging goddamn tornado. And he'd sit there, you know, and he'd tell me all about this kind of stuff. He knew the book.

He was a book man. God damn it. The only place this program existed in the book said, "You ain't going to find it no place else.

You got to go to the book to find it." He beat me in the head with that. So, as time go on, I grew to love this man. Really, along with my sponsor, Al.

Al's a gentle kind. This old boy just roughing a goddamn car, you know, from Louisiana. Southern boy, you know, tough, mean, you know.

All the time though, he was quaking inside, I guess, like all of us do. But this fellow, you know, he got real sick. And just before he died, I went over to his house.

He was sitting there in his chair. He said, "Jack, doctor told me that a glass of wine would be good for me. What do you think about that?" I said, "Well, Christ, at this point in time, I guess it would make a hell of a lot of difference." N Boy, he'd come me.

God didn't get up out of that chair. I'll tell you, I'll tell you right now, I'm born out sober and I ain't drinking that goddamn crap. I said, "Okay, you know, but this kind of man he was." He did.

He went out sober, too. He never took that wine and he was dying. And my second birthday, I went running into his house and knew today I've been sober two years.

He says, "So what? Who's my damn cat been sober for two years? What's so great about that?

My mother never had a drink in her life and backed with smile. Nothing wrong with her either. You come running in here tell me you've been sober.

I know you've been sober 2 years. Half of Santa knows you've been sober two years. Said you're the only one that don't know it.

So he sat there and he sat there, you know, and he sat me down and he said, "Sit down. Shut up and listen. He talk to me.

Said, "Jack, I want to talk to you about something." He says, "You're known as a two-stepper. First part of the first step and part of the 12 is the only thing you've ever paid any attention to." I said, "That's right. That's the only thing that pertains to me.

All the stuff, all that in the middle, they're weak guys. I don't need none of that stuff in the middle. just that all I've got to do is don't drink, go to meetings, and make call step call.

He says, "Yeah." I say, "You can last a long time that way." But he says, "I want to tell you something because this is serious." And he sat me down. He said, "I" he says, "You know something," he said, "G" says, "You know, I come out of Jesuit order." He said, "I had some of the finest training probably in spiritual Christianity that's known to man, at least as written down in the book." But he says, "I'll tell you something." He said, "If you want to find the greatest way to live that's ever been put in writing for you humanity to follow, he says go to the program in the big book." He said, "That is the greatest." And he talked to me about self honesty is here you'll learn to be honest with yourself. Here you'll meet yourself.

And the old man peaked my attention. piqu my interest. I left his house that afternoon with one thing in mind.

I'm going home. I'm going to get my book down. I'm going to start studying.

And I went home and I got my book down and I start studying it. And some of the things that I got out of that book is still in it. And all the things I haven't found yet in that book are still in it.

And I'll tell you something. I'm going to share with you tonight some of the things that I got out of that book because it's been important to me cuz I'm the kind of a guy the first year on this program I could shoot a cork out of a bottle any day I wanted to drink but I didn't. And it wasn't because of me.

It was because of something bigger than me. It was because of something that I didn't even know at the time was working in my life. All I knew that there, you know, I thought it was me because I was arrogant.

I thought it was me and my willpower. But you know something, willpower isn't worth a damn after you've taken a drink. It's just like the first member of this valley said, Mickey Carter when he was on Fiverr McGee's radio show in New York City.

They asked him, he says, "Mickey, why don't you guys use your willpower to control alcohol?" And Mickey says, Willpower is soluble in alcohol. Soluble in alcohol. So that's what happens to willpower to the alcoholic.

You give an alcoholic a drink and tell him to stop. It's just like giving an alcoholic a quarter of Epson sauce and tell him to stay out of the bathroom, you know damn well he can't do it. He's got to go.

So this man peaked me an interest in our book. Many of you have heard the word pride. Many of you have damn near died because of pride.

In fact, all of you have damn near died because of pride. And on page 25 of our big book, it talks to us about pride. Cool, unadulterated pride.

Not false pride. Pride. The real pride.

The kind that runs you up the wall and drives you back down, the son of a and right into the ground. And it tells us in there that leveling of our pride is so important that it is required for the successful consummation of the rest of this program. Now, if that ain't pretty damn death, I don't know what is.

It goes to further to say, I put it in another way. If you don't do it, god damn it, you ain't going to make it. Because I know I tried it and I'm one of the ones that came back and could tell you about it.

That's how important it is to learn about this emotion, pride. Just sit here tonight and ask yourself two questions that I did years ago. Where has pride caused me to do things I didn't want to do?

And where has pride kept me from doing things that I wanted to do and should do? That covered my whole damn life. But it tells us that if we will level this pride that we will be rocketed into a third dimension of living that we didn't even know existed simply by having placed at our feet.

little old kit of simple spiritual tools placed at our feet so that we can stoop over and pick them up. I wonder why they placed them at alcoholic feet. Why the hell didn't they put them up on the table up on the shelf?

Why didn't they suspend them from the ceiling or something we could look up and get them? You know, they put them at our feet so they teach us some humility. So stoop over and pick them up.

Now you can sit down alongside those spiritual tools and they won't do you any good. You can lay down alongside them and not do you won't do you any good. But you pick them up and put them into your mind, into your heart, into your hands and you use them in your daily life and you'll know what it means to be rocketed in this life of spiritual living.

And you'll find that there on page 25. Very simple. Ain't a damn thing secretive about it.

I found it. God damn it, you can find it. And you'll find them.

You'll find this one thing that has kept you all these years saying, "Guys, I think I can control John Barleyorn." What kept you fighting all that time to control him when he was killing you? Why would we as alcoholics fight so hard for something like that? first place.

We didn't know we had a damn disease. We didn't know that. But this pride just kept us going on and on and on all the time.

The only way to conquer pride is to become humble, to become teachable. That's the only way that I know. And don't start talking about it because the minute you start talking about your humility, you just lost it.

So you just live it. You see it's an existence. It's a living.

In chapter three, I met Jack Holt, the alcoholic. I met him face to face. Found out what it was.

And there you'll read where it says, you know, some of us will pursue this thing, you know, the gates of insanity and death to try to control John Bicorn. We're like people that have lost their legs will never grow new ones, will never be cured of alcoholism. I'll be an alcoholic as long as I live.

I have a choice today though of being either a drunk alcoholic or a sober alcoholic, but I'll be an alcoholic as long as I live. So in chapter 3, I met Jack Ho. I come face to face with him.

I didn't like him, but I didn't hate him either. There's a difference. See, I didn't hate him.

I didn't condone the things that I had done, but I had already done them. And I knew I couldn't do nothing about it. In chapter four, the old agnostics, the guys that was like me, I wasn't an agnostic, but they were something like me.

I was a skeptic. No, really don't know for sure. I was a skeptic.

And those little boys on page 55 will give you some damn good thoughts, some good action. They said this, you know, as hard as we tried. We could get up to the shore.

We couldn't get out of the boat. Just couldn't get out of the boat. Couldn't get on dry land.

We couldn't trust our own logic. We couldn't trust our own reasoning that had let us down. We couldn't trust those two things that we had put so much DEPENDENCE ON ALL OF OUR LIFE.

Our logic, our reasoning, you know, they had let us down. It dropped us. It fell flat of our kester until we looked deep down within oursel and we found this thing and they call it the great reality.

And they found this thing they call the great reality. They got in touch with this great reality. This God, higher power, the great reality.

They call it the great reality. That's the thing you get in touch with. And when you get in touch with that, you'll find that your logic and your reasoning is just that don't have much body to it.

It leads you into these other places. It takes you out on these tantalizing detours as you walk down this road of happy destiny that we talk about. You see them leading off, you know, you find yourself out there on them.

That's your logic and your reasoning taking you out there. So you get back on the road and you say, "Hey, father, god damn it, guide me." In chapter five, in the first sentence in chapter five, you hear it written, you have you hear it read in every meeting. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

Path. One path. Doesn't say anything about two paths.

Doesn't say plural. Doesn't say path. Now, most of us when we read that say, "Well, it's got to be another way.

What the hell?" You know, these guys wrote this book 45 years ago that, you know, that don't hold true today. For Christ's sake, let's go look for another way. So, you'll find us hardheads off down in the gulies down in the gorgees bringing at the moon like a jackass.

You know, there's got to be another way. We won't accept the simple teachings of the program. We got to go find another way.

You may have been told, "Go out and work this program your own way." Don't you believe it? I did it and got drunk. I went out and worked it my way and got drunk.

You work it the way in this book and you'll stay sober cuz I've never seen a man get drunk and work his program in this book. Even the onetenth as well as he had as he could really say you know that there's only two kinds of people that come here that do not become successful in sobriety and alcoholic synonymous and there are the ones who cannot or the ones who will not accept these simple teachings. If you're a cannot, I feel sorry for you.

You're a blabbering idiot. Nobody can do anything for you. Thank God we're wills.

Egotistical jackasses with an inferiority complex saying to the world, you know, we got something to work on. I had me to work on then. Me, the egotistical jackass, Jack Hope.

>> Godamn, what a JOB THAT'S BEEN. I WOULDN'T take nothing for it. And he goes on to say, you know, this program is one that demands rigorous honesty.

Now I call it trying to be rigorously honesty. Really honest sometimes like tough clumsy. But that's okay.

You see, it comes in little spurts. I found I can be rigorously honest in any given moment in any given situation, at any given time. And that's as far as I can go.

I can be honest. I either am or I aren't. I am or I ain't.

There's nothing in between. I used to talk about that gray matter in between. You know those gray areas, you know, about honesty, you know.

Well, what the hell? That was just, you know, wasn't quite as honest as the other. Well, it was dishonest.

Whether you steal a penny or a dollar, it doesn't make any difference. See, the principle is the same. And that's what I never could get through my head.

I always felt you only stole a penny wasn't near as bad. You stole a dollar. Well, what the hell?

The principle is the same. See, now the guy on the other end of the line naturally, he'd rather have you steal a penny from him than to steal a dollar. But that isn't what we're talking about.

I'm talking about what I had to come face to face with in me. And one day as I was studying this page, first page of chapter 5, a little word jumped out of that page at me. It's called it.

He said, "If you have decided that you want what we have, and you're willing to go to any length to get it, and there's a little hyphen behind the it don't say another damn thing about it." I said, "What the hell's it?" You know, so I started doing search for it. Got to go find what it is, you know? So, I did and I'm glad I did cuz right behind that it says if you decide you want what we have and you're willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps.

And some of these we bought. How many in here has been bulking steps lately? One or all.

There's a hand went up back there. Great. Goddamn.

You're a good man to work on. Yeah, man. Really?

But I started on a search for it. And it goes on to tell us, you know, that half measures availed us nothing. We tried those old ideas, you know, we tried to keep them around.

They keep coming back and we tried to hang on to them. And we found out, you know, that they just kept us in turmoil all the time. the old ideas.

They'll keep you in a turmoil. But they'll keep coming back and banging on the door, you know, saying, "Let me in. Let me in." You know, John Barleyorn is cunning, baffling, powerful.

Remember that. He's not a little goddamn ringneck feeant hanging on the ground. That son of a is cunning.

He's baffling. And he's powerful. And he's patient.

He'll wait for you in the weeds just like a snake. and he'll bite you as you pass by unless you keep making the payments on your insurance policy which is called going to meetings. So let me tell this, you know, there's one has all power.

You don't have to fear John Barley Horn's power. There's one has all power and that one is God. May you find him now.

May you find him now. Who stood the turning point? Maybe some of you in here tonight.

I have every alcoholic stands at turning point. Many of them. The first turning point you stood at was the day you said, "Okay, I'll come to a I'll admit I'm an alcoholic.

The next time us is when you accept something as a higher power stood the turning point. We ask his protection and care with complete abandon. In other words, to hell with it.

Father, just take me and do me with me as you will. Thy will be done. I'm tired of fighting me.

I've been chasing me all of my life. And every time I catch me, all I ever get is trouble. Help me.

Do something with me. That's the prayer of the alcoholic. These are the steps we took.

T O K took and use in our daily life. Doesn't say a damn thing about memorizing them. You can do that if you want to, but it says take them.

Took suggested as a program of recovery. And the only reason they put the word suggested in there is because we're alcoholics and hard heads. If I stood up here and I told you you had to do the steps, you'd say, "Go take over." Thought I was going to do it, didn't you?

We're rebels, kids. We're rebels. I can't give a damn what anybody says.

We're rebels from the word go. God bless us. That's why we're so great.

We're rebels. We rebel at anything. We wear our emotions four feet out from each side of us.

If somebody comes along and brushes one, voom, we're gone. Throw a rope around me, kid, and drag me back to earth. First step, admitted I was powerless over alcohol.

Powerless over alcohol. doesn't say anything about admitting you're an alcoholic. Admit you're powerless over alcohol.

Powerless. Most American men and women will probably stand up and say, "I'm powerless over nothing." Well, you're pretty sad sack of when you're drunk. I'll tell you when alcoh is.

I'm powerless over nothing. That was a reservation I carried for four years in this program sober and didn't know I had that son of a I damn near got drunk over reservation back there. Way back in the recesses of the mind, you know.

I really don't believe I'm powers over alcohol. I'll just go along with this thing for a while. I say this because there's probably somebody in here tonight that may have the same problem, that reservation back there.

Admit your powerless over alcohol. You can even say if you drink it if you want to. I don't give a damn.

Your life would become unmanageable. I said, why hell? When I was sober, back when I was drinking, days that I was sober, I was managing my life well.

Some idiot in this program says to me is if that's the case, what tells you get drunk three or four times a week? You know, and I started realizing in my my life I become unmanageable, drunk and sober both. Life has become unmanageable.

You want to know what the word life really means? It means thinking, thought. Go to your dictionary.

Get out your web dictionary and look at it. You'll find another definition of life as fault. My thinking had become unmanageable that I could buy.

My thinking had become unmanageable. Life was a huge thing. You know, thinking I knew cuz I was having trouble with it all the time.

That is the first step. It's like the guy that the people opened the elevator doors. There was a guy laying in the middle of the floor.

He'd fallen four floors and he was drunk. They said, "How kind of a hotel is this, my friend?" Fine, but watch that first step. It's a He'd walked off into this elevator hatch.

So, this is the one you know that gets you started. You never admit that you're powerless over alcohol. I'm going to tell you something right now.

You're like a one-legged man with ass kicking. You ain't going to get many kicks in. you're going to get kicked on.

Admit your apology over alcohol, your life will become unmanageable. When a man admits these two things, you know, he ain't got nothing left. He better look around for something to help him out.

John Baricorn's gone. His old friend, you know, he ain't got him anymore. And his life and his thinking is unmanageable.

What the hell? Thank God they designed this program the way they did. And I brought the second step in.

came to believe that a power greater than I am could restore me to sanity. I came I came to and I came to believe and a power greater than I. Now that's pretty hard for an alcoholic to do to figure anything greater than he is.

But all got to be is about 16th of an inch higher. Remember that 16th of an inch taller than you are. Restore my life.

Sanity. I said, "Oh don't want to be crazy." I had a school teacher that put in the same asylum when I was a little boy. Always left an impression on me.

I didn't want to be crazy. So, I kind of rattled around that word for a while, you know, ricocheted off of it. Back again, you know, nuts.

Okay. I didn't mind being nuts. That was okay.

Didn't like the word crazy, though. And the second step is very simple. There may be some of you here tonight that don't believe in God.

That's okay. Don't worry about that. He don't give a damn whether you believe in him or not.

I found that out. He keeps on running the universe, you know, and we can keep beating our head against the wall. He don't really care.

But I believe when he did this one time, he looked out upon the earth and he says, "Hey, I've got a bunch of people out there that just don't do damn thing I tell them to. He won't listen to any of my priests or my ministers or my psychiatrists or my doctors or nobody. So the hell would turn upon loose upon one another and he started alcoholic synonymous.

That's how we got started. One alcoholic talking to another. So if you don't believe in God, that's okay.

He'll say he'll still accept you. You may say to yourself, "I know all about this p situation." You know, you may say to yourself, "Ah, what the hell?" Let me ask you something right now. Have you ever had a damn thing to do with your hair growing or your fingernails growing or your eyesight seeing or your skin replacing itself when you go to sleep at night?

Have you ever had a damn thing to do with keeping you alive? That's the thing that kept us alive as practicing alcoholics. That's today and keeps me alive today.

It's deep back in the recesses of me is a thing, a thing, a higher power, a soul. It's deep in the recesses of my mind. It is the power.

It's the energy. You take that energy away and you ain't got nothing. If you don't believe me, you go down here to City Morg and look at those stiffs on those slabs and you won't find no movement.

You take that one. And that one thing leaves that spirit. Ain't nothing left.

It's gone. That my friend is what I'm talking about. I don't give a damn what you call it.

The third step is made a decision to turn my life on a little care of God as I understand him. Why the hell you think they put that in there? Why they have to put those words in there?

Made a decision. Why they just say, "Go turn your life. You owe the care of God." As you understand it.

No. No. They had to get smart.

Put that. Made a decision to turn my life over the care of God. You know why they did that?

So that you'd have to think about it. So that you'd have to say, "What am I really doing?" They don't let you get by in here as easy as they do in church. You know in church they don't uh you know they don't make you make a decision and he says make a decision plan your life will the care of God as you understand him that's because you're supposed to think about that before you do it take some time with it don't flippantly say okay if you're spiritual enough to do that all right but I've never seen an alet that was you know >> so As we try to do this step and we look at it, we ricochet around it.

We fool around with it and mess with it. One day as I was studying it, trying to figure out how to get around it, you know, it suddenly dawned upon me, you know, it seemed like that God put in my head, what would it hurt? What would it hurt to let God have a chance at, you know, what would it hurt?

The only thing I was resisting was trust. You see, I was afraid to trust God with my life and my will. You know why?

Because I had I was afraid to trust me. I'd screwed myself all my life. I was afraid to trust God.

And then as I kept all thinking about it, you know, one day I says to myself, "What the hell?" When it's going to come right down to it, who in the hell else is he around to turn your life will over into Carol? I wouldn't turn it over to you. I'll tell you that right now.

And I wouldn't turn it over any church body. Now, I'm damn sure not going to turn it back over to me. Well, I screwed it up bad enough in the first place.

So, what the hell is it left to turn your life you will over the care of? There's only one thing big enough, and that's God. You finally come to that kind of reasoning if you want to.

That's how I arrived at it. But don't fall in a pitfall, you know, don't get paralysis by analysis, you know, don't analyze too much. But that's how that's how I came to it.

And I turned my life and my will over to the care of God. I trust him with him today. And I've been able now to go out and work and play and have fun for a long time.

My life and my will is his hands. I always have been. I just didn't know it.

I thought I was running them, but I wasn't. Rebel, defiant, proud, egotistical, vain, alcoholic. That's us.

You'd think that'd be enough, but they said, "No, let's clean up our act now. Let's get on with the fourth step. Take a fearless and searching moral inventory of me." Fearless and searching, moral inventory of me.

The first thing that we alcoholics used to do is take an immoral inventory. We sink oursel right back into the crap. We put an I am right in front of that moral.

Said immoral. We do that, you know. We said, "Well, Jesus Christ, I'm a lousy son of a God damn." I've had guys call me up taking the fourth step literally shattered cuz they'd found out for Christ's sake what they hadn't been admitting for many years.

They didn't find anything new. They just found out a lot of things I hadn't been admitting. And you won't find anything new.

You know about it. Nobody ever arrived at this program at the age of being an alcoholic didn't know the difference between right and wrong. What the hell?

Who's kidding who? But we refuse to admit it. Damn right.

I ain't going to admit that. Christ, no. And I'll go to hell and I will burn.

Can't do that. And it says, "Write it down." Why should you write it down? I'll tell you why you should write it down.

Because it'll talk back to you. That's why. Go ahead and take an immoral inventory you want, but write on a piece of paper.

I'm a little good son of a And go back and look at it tomorrow. Still read the same thing. But also, when you're taking this inventory, you should take one that gives you a few assets, too.

You know, you're not all bad. You're not all bad. You can't be all bad.

If he was all bad, he'd already took you. You got to stay here and clean up your wreckage. That's what the whole thing is.

You're not all bad. Fearless and searching moral inventory. Don't take a fearful and search less.

That won't do you any good. Don't stand in the middle of a square room and sweep in a round circle. Go to the corner, sweep it out.

Get it all out there in the middle. When you get your together, you'll find a pretty good sized pile. You'll find it in that fourth step.

You'll meet yourself in that fourth step. You'll find out who you are. I found out every goddamn thing about me in a fourth step.

I found him, met me face on, head on. And many times I sat and I said, "I'll be damned. I'll be damned." But I'll tell you something right now.

That step is not to be approached with fear and apprehension. None of these steps are be approached with fear and apprehension. Remember that.

That's a liberating step. The fourth step is a liberating step. It liberates you from you.

It liberates you from all this stuff been going on the back of your mind. I wonder who knows. I wonder who knows.

Gee, do I dare expose that? Well, I'll tell you something. The only thing you're doing in the four steps is exposing it to you and God.

There's nobody else around. So you don't have to be afraid. He already knows it and you do too.

So the fifth step becomes like a water hole in the desert. You know why? You're twothirds of the way there cuz you've already admitted to yourself and God.

He's you've already told it to him in the fourth step. But it says in the fifth step to sit down with you and God and another human being and tell them the exact nature of your wrongs. We've already done it to you and God told you got to do it to this other guy or gal, whoever it may be.

Pick some browneyed old son of a It won't be easy on you. It'll drag stuff out of you. You know that will tell you and help you or some blue-eyed old bastard.

Don't make any difference or lady. Get somebody though to listen to you in your fifth step. And don't go dumping your goddamn crap at the meeting level.

I hear more newcomers getting up and telling things at meeting level it should be told only in a fifth step with their sponsor. You wonder why things get back home before you do. That's why god DAMN IT.

YOU BETTER LET THEM LIVE in these goddamn meetings yelling your head off in the meeting level. You just tell those things. It ain't going to hurt you.

That's what you tell these things that that come from your innermost cell that nobody knows about, you tell them with your sponsor. But be damn sure you tell them with him. And the fifth step, exact nature of our wrongs.

What does that mean? Means to be honest again. Tell exactly what the hell's wrong with you.

You've been out stealing the exact nature of your wrongs. You're a damn thief. You know, simple.

Keep it simple. Damn it. Don't mix it all up with a whole bunch of crap.

Six steps says we're entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character. We're entirely ready to have God remove all of our defects of character. Well, why shouldn't we be?

But if you're like most of us, you won't be. We're entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character. Not us remove them.

God remove them. Six step. One step at people's step over that one.

You know all it says in the sixth step in the big book it says God take all of me the good and the bad and do with me as you will. That's what it says. The good and the bad.

They knew that you and I wasn't going to be all that perfect. Seventh step is to humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings. Humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings.

Shortcomings. I used to say, "What the hell does shortcoming?" I really didn't know what the hell they were, you know? all their resentments and self-pity and remorse, lying and cheating and all this kind of stuff.

These little bastards, you know, that nibble at you every day, you know, the kind that if you don't do something about, they'll take you back into those other things. You know, they'll keep you forever. They'll molest you every day.

So you pray, "Father, please help me remove my shortcomings." And the eighth step is made a list of all the people I'd harm. Become willing to make amends to them all. That's all it says do in that step.

Now, you could take a 20 years on that step if you want to, but that's all it says do is make a list and sit there until you're willing to make amends to them all. But I'll tell you something. You start making the list and you're going to find those dirty rats on there and bastards that you feel has done you more harm than you've done them.

But that ain't what it's talking about. You make the list, you become willing to make amends to them all. Thank God they brought the ninestep in right back behind it and said go out and make direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.

go out and make direct demands. I went out and I started making direct demands. And I'm telling you right now, I took the easy ones first, too.

I didn't go out belligerently trying the first ones, hard ones to hell with it. I wanted to get some practice. So, I went out, I made those amends.

Nobody hit me and nobody kicked me. Some of them didn't ask me to come back, but that was their trouble. That was their problem.

I was doing what I had to do to clear me. So the first nine steps. Now what does it mean to go out and make direct demands except when to do so would injure them or others.

It means that you don't go out and tell somebody something to relieve your own goddamn conscience. That's what it means. At the expense of somebody else.

You've been shacked up with some guy's wife. Don't go tell him about it. What the hell?

That's a simple analogy. It's dangerous if you do. You can go on and on all kinds of analogies of that stuff.

But the main thing is is you go and do it and you do it to every one of them. You make amends. Takes guts to make amends.

But I'll tell you something, it gets easier as you go along. I got through the ninth step and the first nine steps had done exactly what the big book designed them to do to clear away the wreckage of my past. Clear it away and not cover it up.

Now my past is history. I don't fear it. I don't hate it.

I don't think about it. It's just there. It's my past.

It's my history. Everything has a history. Even a tree.

Ain't very many people have history like alcoholics. But you know, we have a hell of a history. It's worth telling about.

That's why we're always talking about it is our history. Now, my history, you see, is something that I can look at and say, "That used to be me." But it isn't anymore. I don't do those things anymore.

I'm not that same person. I have changed under the eyes of God and the eyes of people and the help of people and all this kind of stuff. They have changed me.

This program following these principles, practicing these principles have changed me. So that past back there, it's just there. I accept it.

I accepted the sick old Jack Hope and I turned him loose. I said, "Father, take him. He's too much to me and I've left him there for a long time.

You say now when they wrote this book, I imagine they probably said, "Now we got to keep these drunks busy. We got them all cleaned up now in nine steps, but we know we got to keep them busy. If we give them nothing to do now, the bastards will all be out drunk again." So they give us a 10 step continued.

And you'll never find an ending to the word continued either. >> >> There's no ending to continued. It's like a circle.

Continue to take my personal inventory. When I am wrong, promptly admit it. Promptly admit it.

Promptly used to be 3 months. Cuz I remember I told you first, you know, I was stubborn. I was a rebel.

Got down to 3 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours. Now I can do it sometime. Bang.

Just like that. Just like that. You see the 10th step was brought into so I never again have to go back again and take care of those defects of character.

I take care of those little shortcomings as they come along and they're going to come. I take care of them right now and the 11 step sought through prayer and meditation for a closer conscious contact with God's understanding. Praying only for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out.

seek through prayer and meditation. What is prayer? I used to pray by wrote.

Used to pray everybody else's prayers, you know, memorize them. You know, didn't do me any good. Now I get down that gravel pit with my father.

I say, "Father," and I pray specifically, too. Specifically, he gives me what I need automatically. That's just automatic.

I tell him what I want. If I tell him anything else, I'm a damn phony. And I used to feel like a phony every time I prayed.

Now I just say, "Hey, Father, thank you for what I already have. Now give me what I want." Very simple. Pray like a child.

Be simple. But I'll tell you something. The wisdom is to accept what he gives you.

You see, then you don't get in trouble. Meditation is something that takes a little while to learn. If you're new, you may be a little quick by the muscle and you may be shaky or something like that.

But don't worry. Sit down and try. Meditate.

Meditate. God will talk to you. And you don't have to be afraid either.

He'll talk to you. He talks to me when I'm sitting in in when I'm sitting in meditation. And sometimes I have to laugh because he's just it seemed like he's really uh laughing at me.

You know, I don't hear the thunder of the laugh, but it just feel like there's a feeling there. You know, he's laughing at me. He's saying, "Son, it ain't near as bad as you think when I'm in there just growling and talking and crying, right?" You know, going through my act.

He said, "God, what's the matter with you? Open your eyes. Look, look what's around you.

I know I'm going too long. The hell with I'm going to finish. The seventh step has to become my number one goal in life.

Constantly seeking a closer conscious contact with God as I understand it. That's my number one goal in life. It's been a good goal.

It's been my goal for a long time. It's been a good goal. Hasn't been easy.

It's been good. The 12th step, the first sentence in the 12th step is the definition of it. I was telling you back back on the first page of chapter 5.

Having had a spiritual awakening, that's it. As a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all my affairs that I've never been able to do. I practice some of these principles some of my affairs some of the time.

That's good as I've ever got. I really doubt if I'll ever get much better cuz I'm one of these kind of fellows, you know, that uh if I was ever perfect, I'd probably be bored as hell and get drunk. So, I'm just going to be simple as I can be and live this life as good as I can and do everything that I can for my fellow man that I can to help him and love him and serve him because that's the essence of this program is love and service and we alcoholics are in a rich field of love and service.

So that's what my second goal in life is is what I'm doing now. And alcoholics anonymous making 12step calls, going to meetings, talking, yakking, loving, understanding, getting mad, doing all these things, you know. And no wonder that the first sentence after the 12th step says, "Some of us exclaimed, "What an order.

I can't go through with it. That's why they say don't worry about it. You're only seeking you're not seeking spiritual perfection.

All you're doing is trying to improve a little bit every day. And as you hang up your old deal on the wall and you draw line down the middle of the paper and you put on one side what I did good and what I did bad or how's it going or whatever, you can write. You can make your old Ben Franklin decision if you want to how your day has been.

You know, just by putting on one side of the paper what you've done good and on the other side what you haven't done. At the end of the day, you're probably going to find if you're living in this program the way you should be, it's going to be heavy on the side that you did good because you've radiated good out to your fellow man and you've helped somebody every day. Every day you help somebody just by being an example of sobriety.

By going to meetings, you never say a damn word to meet. Just by being an example, being there. When you go home tonight, you new ones especially, and you are those who are still telling yourself, "I hate me." When you go home tonight, go into your bathroom and look in the mirror and do this for 30 days and you and I guarantee you, you won't hate yourself.

Look way back behind your eyeballs. Turn your eyeballs around. Look way back there in the back.

You'll find that thing called a soul. That thing called a spirit. You see, you belong to a fellowship of a spirit.

And that's where that spirit dwells. You look back there and you say, "I am sorry that I have harmed you the way I have." Cuz nobody has hurt you as much as you've hurt yourself. And you've hurt no one else on this earth as much as you've hurt you.

So go home and apologize to yourself and say, "I love you and thank you and God bless you." Thank you. >> >> 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.