Give Up, Clean Up, Make Up, Grow Up: AA Speaker – James T. – Duluth, MN
AA speaker James T. from Duluth, MN breaks down the steps into four stages: give up, clean up, make up, grow up. He shares his journey from marijuana to AA.
James T. from Duluth, MN got sober on December 6, 1982, after switching from alcohol to marijuana for a year before finally finding AA as a “visitor.” In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his complete journey working the steps with his sponsor Donna, using his memorable formula: steps 1-3 give up, steps 4-6 clean up, steps 7-9 make up, and steps 10-12 grow up.
AA speaker James T. presents a systematic approach to working the Twelve Steps, organizing them into four phases: give up (Steps 1-3), clean up (Steps 4-6), make up (Steps 7-9), and grow up (Steps 10-12). He shares his personal story of transitioning from alcohol to marijuana before finding recovery in AA, emphasizing the importance of sponsorship and step work. James discusses specific experiences with resentment work, making amends, and how the program transformed his relationships with family and his ability to be a husband and father.
Episode Summary
James T.’s approach to recovery is both systematic and deeply personal. After 33 years of sobriety, he’s developed a framework that makes the Twelve Steps accessible: “give up, clean up, make up, grow up.” This simple formula masks a profound transformation story that began with confusion about his problem and ended with clarity about his solution.
His drinking career followed the typical progression, but James describes it with characteristic humor. He talks about the mislabeling problem with alcohol – you never know if you’re getting “smart whiskey” or “dialing whiskey” (the kind that has you calling people at 4 AM who don’t want to hear from you). By the end, he was getting a lot of “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization” whiskey, which finally convinced him something had to change.
What makes James’s story unique is his detour through marijuana. Convinced his problem was specifically alcohol, he quit drinking but continued smoking pot daily. For about a year, he maintained this illusion until his sister invited him to AA meetings. He came as a “visitor” – not identifying as an alcoholic but drawn to something he felt in the rooms. That something was love, and despite his head telling him AA was crazy, his feet kept bringing him back.
The transformation began when James found his first sponsor, Donna, through a counselor named Howard. After telling Howard the complete truth about his life for the first time, Howard wrote him a prescription: “Get on your knees and pray.” This $50 fifth step equivalent marked the beginning of James’s serious engagement with the program. Donna required four meetings a week, daily journaling, step work, and weekly meetings – a structure that gave James the framework he needed.
James’s step work reveals the practical magic of the program. His Fourth Step work began with his deepest resentment – his father. The moment he put his father’s name on paper and began writing about the hurt, tears came that “washed away that anger.” His relationship with his father healed that day, something he describes as “the weirdest thing.” This connects to the broader theme found in AA speaker talks on step work and resentment inventory, where seemingly impossible emotional shifts happen through the simple action of working the steps.
The Fifth Step brought another breakthrough. Done on a rainy November day in the same countryside where he used to grow marijuana, James experienced the promises from page 75. He describes feeling like his life had been a garbage can that he’d finally tipped out, followed by seeing a rainbow on the drive home. The spiritual dimension wasn’t theoretical anymore – it was lived experience.
Steps Six and Seven coincided with major life changes. James got married to a woman he met at a meeting, becoming a husband, father, and uncle on the same day. The man who had surrounded himself with barbed wire to protect his marijuana crop was now responsible for relationships he had no idea how to navigate. His character defect of faultfinding created immediate problems. His solution was practical spirituality: he started doing dishes, standing at the sink until he could approach the task peacefully. With his seven-year-old stepdaughter Angela, who announced “you’re not the boss of me,” he treated her like a newcomer – the same kindness and encouragement he’d received in the program.
The amends process brought both financial and emotional healing. James describes two small financial amends – one for $5, one for $10 – that produced profound spiritual experiences. The $10 amend to a restaurant owner left him crying tears of joy in front of other customers, calling it “the best $10 high I ever had.” But the most significant amend was to his stepson Sean, whose drunk driving accident in James’s “sobriety car” initially triggered anger. The Alanon suggestion that maybe it wasn’t his sobriety car but Sean’s proved prophetic – it was Sean’s last drink at age 17, leading to 28 years of sobriety.
James’s discussion of the ongoing steps (10-12) emphasizes maintenance and growth. Step Ten helps him identify that he is the problem, not external circumstances. He uses the metaphor of a traffic light – it just does what traffic lights do, but he brings an agenda to it wanting it to be green instead of red. The disturbance is in him, not in reality. This acceptance theme resonates with many AA speaker talks on surrender and acceptance.
For Step Eleven, James simplifies prayer to three words: “Help, thanks, and wow.” He reframes “sought through prayer and meditation” as “sought by paying attention,” emphasizing presence as the key to accessing spiritual power. Step Twelve manifests as improved relationships across all areas of life and active service work, including making CDs to carry the message to people who learn better through listening than reading.
The talk’s structure mirrors James’s systematic approach. He breaks down each step group (1-3: give up, 4-6: clean up, 7-9: make up, 10-12: grow up) and contrasts it with “working the steps backwards” – a humorous but pointed description of what recovery looks like in reverse. This systematic presentation, combined with specific personal examples, makes complex spiritual concepts accessible and practical.
James emphasizes two crucial elements throughout: sponsorship and step work. His relationship with his current sponsor Jack (an air traffic controller while James taught in prison – “corrections and control, Jack and I have issues”) demonstrates the ongoing need for guidance. His experience connects to other AA speaker meetings on sponsorship and carrying the message, showing how this relationship provides accountability and direction throughout long-term sobriety.
The transformation James describes is complete but not finished. From a man who isolated himself with barbed wire, planning to drink and smoke himself to death (but be healthy with vitamin C and brewer’s yeast), he became someone who could be a husband, father, uncle, son, and friend. Every good thing in his life, he states emphatically, is a direct result of being in Alcoholics Anonymous. His story demonstrates that recovery isn’t just about stopping drinking – it’s about learning to live, love, and grow in ways that were impossible in active addiction.
Notable Quotes
Nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking as active work with other alcoholics. If you have a problem, there’s a spiritual solution.
I created my problems as a result of my thinking, and I cannot fix my problems as a result of my thinking.
Either you change or your sobriety date will.
Those tears just washed away that anger I had towards him and I could see how spiritually sick he was from where he came from and my relationship healed that day.
Everything good in my life, absolutely everything that’s good in my life is a direct result of being in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Step 5 – Admission
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Acceptance
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-sunrise.com. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker.
[applause]My name is James. I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, James.
It's been a great roundup so far. You familiar with Smart Water here in Minnesota? I brought some Smart Water. Hope it helps with my talk.
I get sidetracked sometimes, so I drink some of this. The first time somebody gave me this, one of my sponsees gave me a bottle of this and I couldn't get the lid open. It's a really tricky lid. I guess you have to drink it first. Just out of curiosity, how many people here tonight have sponsors? All right, fantastic. How many people here tonight have sponsors who are with them here tonight? Notice my hand is up. I brought one of my sponsees from California with me. I don't like to leave home without him. Fantastic.
A little while ago, I went to a conference and I had a problem with a plane connection and I didn't know if I was going to make it to the conference. Kind of what's happening with Adam, but he'll be okay because it's tomorrow. But this was on the day I was going to speak on the day that I was flying. And I called my host to ask him what I should do. I was in fear. Didn't know what to do. And he said, "Read page 449 and go to a meeting." I knew I was in good hands. I'm in good hands, too, because Nelly has been showing me around as my sponsee. So I felt like I've really been in good hands here in Duluth.
I've only been talking for like a minute, maybe two, and maybe I've said the two most important things that I'm going to say. If you want to stay sober, have sponsors. That's what the book says: "Nothing so much ensures immunity from drinking as active work, intensive work with other alcoholics." And if you have a problem, there's a spiritual solution. So I'm going to go another hour or so, but I wanted to get those two things out of the way in case you stop listening before I stop talking.
So I got to thinking about this Smart Water and I thought it would be a really good idea. I used to be in advertising a long time ago. It would be a really good idea if you could go into the liquor store and buy some smart whiskey. I loved having some whiskey and trying to solve my problems, you know, taking a lot of notes and then trying to read them the next day. But the problem is that liquor or whiskey is not labeled properly. So when you go into the liquor store, you don't know what you're going to get.
You might get some of that smart whiskey. That's possible, I guess. Or you might get some of that conviviality with friends or colorful imagination. You may get some of that stuff. Or you may get some of that dialing whiskey. You ever had that? Well, it's about four in the morning and you're just dialing people that don't want to hear from you. You ever have any of that traveling whiskey? You have to get up and look at a newspaper to see where you are. I thought it was a girl. I really did. I was very drunk.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. That's kind of a fifth story. But what happened for me is I started getting things like quicksand whiskey and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whiskey and rapacious creditor whiskey and had it could have had the skull and crossbones on it whiskey. And then I had drunk a lot of that stuff called pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. So that's kind of my drinking. That kind of covers my drinking. I never knew what I was going to get, but more and more towards the end, it was not colorful imagination with friends.
But drinking isn't my only problem. I've got a problem called thinking as well. I don't know if you've seen the twenty questions for drinking. Have you ever asked the twenty questions for thinking? Is thinking causing you problems at home? Do you like to think alone? I'm driving down the street having this argument with about three other people and I look around. I'm the only one in the car.
And I like something that Einstein says. He says, "None of your current problems can be solved by the thinking that created them." I created my problems as a result of my thinking. And I cannot fix my problems as a result of my thinking. And what I've learned in AA is to not spend time thinking about things that thinking is not going to help.
But I need help. So I have a sponsor. I'm on my second sponsor now. My first, I had a woman sponsor to start with. I didn't know that was potentially controversial, but I had a woman sponsor and I'll tell you how I found her later on. But her name was Donna and she died when I had eighteen years of sobriety. And the last thing I remember Donna saying to me is: "Sobriety is no fun when you can't breathe." She was a really heavy smoker.
So let's all take a deep breath in memory of Donna and the fact that we're here breathing and we have this wonderful gift of sobriety.
Let's bring ourselves present here. So there's a saying in AA: "Be nice to the newcomer who may be your sponsor someday." So I was nice to Jack when he was new and now he's my sponsor. And Jack, he retired recently as an air traffic controller. And I retired recently from the prison system. I taught landscaping in a prison called the Department of Corrections. So corrections and control. Jack and I have issues.
But I heard a good story outside of a meeting a little while ago. I heard a good reason to have a sponsor because somebody was asking this guy that he appeared to be relatively new what his sobriety date was. And he said, "Which one?" And that was already a clue. He said, "I got out of prison about three years ago. So my sobriety date from meth is three years. I quit pot about six months ago. So my sobriety date from marijuana is six months ago. And I celebrated yesterday. I celebrated ninety days without drinking, but I had a beer last night, so I guess I have eighty-nine days today."
So it's called newcomer math. I only have one sobriety date. It's the first one I've ever had, and it's the only one I've ever had. And it's said around here that if either you change or your sobriety date changes, it will. So I'm here to share with you how I've changed because my sobriety date has not changed. It's December sixth, nineteen eighty-two. And that's the last time I smoked marijuana. Thank you.
[applause]I'm coming up on thirty-three years. And clapping for an alcoholic who quits drinking is like clapping for a cowboy with hemorrhoids who stops riding his horse. So thank you for that recognition there.
I was smoking marijuana because I had determined myself that I was having a problem with alcohol. I'm not sure if I wanted to quit drinking or not, but I wanted to quit having the consequences of drinking. And so I didn't really know how to quit drinking because I hadn't found you yet. So what I decided that I would do is I would smoke pot because my problem according to me was alcohol. So as long as I wasn't drinking, I thought that I would be okay.
So I quit drinking. I tried thousands of times like most of us to quit drinking. But this one time, because of the availability of shopping bags full of marijuana because I was a grower, I quit drinking and I smoked non-addictive marijuana before I got out of bed in the morning for about a year or so. And during that time, my sister came to AA and she invited me and she encouraged me to come. She knew what my drinking was like and I kept reminding her that I was not drinking. I was putting a lot of visine in my eyes when I saw her.
But I finally ended up in AA as a visitor. I actually introduced myself as an existentialist. I was not an alcoholic. I hadn't even had a drink for I don't know, a year maybe. So I'm in AA as a visitor guest and I'm listening. I could hear what you were saying. I didn't agree with a lot of things, but I heard what you were saying. And I went to meetings and I could ask myself the question: if you're not alcoholic, why do you keep going to those meetings?
And what I know now that I didn't know then is there was something very powerful going on in the rooms of AA that was very attractive to me. And it was, I felt love. I felt love here. And my head was telling me, "Don't, this is crazy. Don't do this. This is nuts. You don't need this." But my heart kept bringing me back or my feet kept bringing me back. And I kept coming back.
And what happened for me is I caught this damn disease from you guys. It's like alcoholism is contagious and I caught it from you. I remember when I finally raised my hand and said I was alcoholic and someone said, "Oh, it's finally unanimous." Everybody else knew.
There's a speaker named Father Terry who says, "You can't change something you can't name. You have to know what the name is in order to do something about it." And I knew that I was damaged goods. There was something really wrong with me. I used to like to buy a carton of Marlboros, a bottle of scotch, and a self-help book and just try to figure out what was wrong with me. It's like there was such a disconnect between what I thought about myself and where my life ended up.
And I know now there's a word for that. It's called alcoholism. I have alcoholism. I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it, but I have it. And I'm here tonight to treat my alcoholism. I need you way more than you need me.
I remember saying early on, "This AA is a bunch of brainwashing." And I thought, "Well, my brain needs a good scrub. So I'm going to meetings and somebody says, 'You have an allergy to alcohol and you have to go to meetings for the rest of your life.'" I got to thinking about that and said, "My dad had an allergy to bananas. He never went to a meeting in his life. There is no such thing as AA."
[laughter]But what I know is that bananas did not do for my father what alcohol did for me. Bananas didn't talk to him. He got a rash from them and he quit eating them. I get these rashes from alcohol and I just keep drinking it. It's a very different thing.
So I mentioned that my sobriety date is when I last smoked marijuana. Do we have any other marijuana smokers here?
That's a trick question. It's ex-marijuana smokers. Okay. We don't smoke marijuana in AA. We don't do that. It's a mind-altering chemical. But I started hearing all these stories about people, what people did to control their drinking, other things that they tried. And I know a guy whose sobriety date is the last time he did freon. I mean, that's got to be really nasty. But I sponsor a guy. You can't make this up. He went to Amway one time to help him control his drinking.
Yeah. He thought that would help his drinking. You know, some people get divorced and get help with their drinking or they get married to help their drinking or they go in the army to help their drinking or they go to Oprah or they go to Chopra or, you know, we do all kinds of things and then hopefully we end up in AA.
So I'm going to AA and I start meeting these characters and I'm thinking, "How in the world are these people going to help me?" There's a guy named Boxcar Bill and Dumpster Don and SWAT team Ron, Booger John, Machine Gun Tony. A lot of the names have kind of weapons involved with them for some reason. Shotgun Nancy. Inappropriate Dave. Dave, that's inappropriate. Oh, Dave, don't say that.
So all these people, I think, "Oh well, maybe they can help me." So I'm going to meetings and I'm not doing much else, just going to meetings. And this guy, this old-timer, you know how they are, he comes up and he kind of pokes me in the chest. I was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor at the time. I wasn't a kid. And he said, "You're working the steps, boy?" And I said, "I don't really like your twelve commandments. Are you reading the book?" Said, "No, no, I don't even know, Mr. Brown. I'm not reading the book. Are you praying?" "Nah, I don't really believe in God. Are you meditating?" "My head's too busy for that."
And then he asked me the kicker. He says, "Well, how's it going?" It wasn't going very well. I wasn't doing good because all I was doing was coming to the meetings.
And as I see it, my experience, and I think a lot of other people see, there's only a window of time between putting down the drink and putting down the drugs and starting to work this program. And I was coming to the place where I was very close to the end of being able to hold it together myself.
And then I looked at this "How It Works" that part of what was read today. And I started to ask myself: "I wonder if I have the skill set to do this. Am I clever enough? Can I do this?" And then the first thing is: "Okay, I have to thoroughly follow a path."
I got to thinking about my drinking. Well, I know how to follow a path. I had a rut going between me and the liquor store. I mowed a lot of lawns in my day and when you walk on a lawn, it pops right back up again. If you look behind you, you can't even see your footsteps. In order to create a path, you have to go over that lawn over and over and over, hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times, and you create a path.
So I know how to create a path because I've done it before in my drinking. And this says something about people who do not recover or people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to the simple program. Well, I completely gave myself to alcohol. I know how to do that. That shouldn't be too hard.
Then it says something about being honest. I think, "Oh, that's a tough one." I had lied to myself for so long. And I really wasn't able to tell the truth from believing my own stuff in my head. And I don't remember ever reading a book to explain to me how to be honest. But I could hear it in your voice when you shared about yourself. I knew you were telling the truth about yourself. And I believed that I could learn how to do that by watching you do it.
So, okay, I can learn how to be honest. Then it says something about "half measures avail." And what does that mean? Well, as I understand it, it means quitting drinking and not working the steps. So only doing half of what we need to do as alcoholics. We need to do two things. We need to quit drinking and we need to work the steps.
Then it says something about getting rid of our old ideas. And I didn't know that I had old ideas, but I knew that the ideas that I had were killing me. I needed to change my mind. And it's not just a bumper sticker to say "change your mind, change your life." And I needed to do that.
Then it says something about "without help, it's too much." I understood that if I get in the ring with alcohol, put your money on alcohol. Don't put your money on me because alcohol is going to kick my ass. That's what it does. So I think I need help. I cannot beat this by myself.
Then it says something about finding God. I think, "Oh, does it have to come to that?" I studied philosophy in college and again, one of my old ideas. I had some ideas about that and they were not serving me well.
And then it says something about going to any lengths. And I thought that one bothered me because I wasn't sure what that was going to mean. Are you going to splash water on my face? Are you going to have me go to the airport and hand out literature in a white robe? I didn't know what was going to happen. I had these crazy thoughts in my head.
But I think I know what it means. I know what it means today for me. It means today I will go to any lengths to not have a drink today. Today's the day that counts and I'm not going to take a drink today.
And I also knew that I've been to, I was a bar drinker and I never went into a bar and watched somebody else drink and thought that I'm going to cop a buzz off of it. I knew you had to drink it yourself to get the buzz. And that's kind of what AA is, too. I can't watch you be sober and it's going to rub off on me. I've got to do it myself.
So with all this kind of reflection, I was ready to start doing something, but I wasn't too sure what. And what ended up happening for me is I went to a counselor. His name was Howard, and he was a member of AA, but he also had a family practice.
And for the first time that I could ever recall, I told somebody else the truth about me. I'd never done that before. I'd gone to shrinks and psychiatrists and stuff, but I always lied to them. I heard somebody say that people in AA really ought to go to veterinarians instead of psychiatrists because veterinarians always have to guess what's wrong with their patients, you know, because we never say.
But I told Howard the truth. I cried. It's not raining down my face. And my drinking, I would characterize it, I would describe my drinking as being sleazy and secretive. I'm in the book. If you're new, find yourself in that book. I'm in that book all over that book. But the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one kind of personality here and another kind of personality here and the two of them don't get together. That was very me. I wore a tie in the daytime and I had these sleazy places I went to at night. So I was very secretive and I pushed people away from me.
So after an hour of being in Howard's office, he got out a piece of paper and he wrote "prescription" at the top: "Get on your knees and pray." And I paid him fifty dollars for that. It was like a fifty-dollar fifth step, I guess. A four step, but it was, you know, I did that.
And I think for some reason I was going to start to do that. It's like the menu is not the meal and the map is not the journey and the prescription is not the medicine. Okay, this "How It Works" is like the menu or more like the map. But I have to take the journey. And I started to take the journey by asking God that I didn't believe in to help me. I said, "God, what do you want me to do and give me the power to do it?" Which is what the literature says. And at night I'd say, "Thank you for another day of sobriety."
And through Howard, I got a phone number of a woman, Donna, and I called Donna and asked her to be my sponsor. I'd never met her before, never seen her before, knew nothing about her. And she agreed to do that as long as I would go to four meetings a week, write in a journal, and work the steps with her, and then see her once a week and share my journal.
And I started to do that. And about that same time, I bought a new car. I had an alcoholic truck prior to that. Seen those? I didn't look in the parking lot too carefully, but usually there's one at an AA club. It's windshield's cracked. Springs are coming through the upholstery. Tires are bald. Doors are different panels. You know, the panels are a different color. Somebody else's tags are on the back. A lot of rust on it and a lot of bumps, a lot of drunk bumps on it.
And this truck was so ugly that I didn't have a date in about five years because I would not have wanted to go out with any woman to get in that truck with me. That's how bad it was. So I was really lonely and I bought this nice new sports car and I called this my sobriety car because it was really a gift for starting to get my life on track again.
And so I started to go to a lot of meetings. I was trolling.
[laughter]I didn't know how lonely I was till I stopped being so lonely. But I don't know if anybody's planning on using AA as a dating service, but I will say this about it: the odds are very good, but the goods are very odd.
It was one of my early, I guess you could call it a little bit of a miniature spiritual awakening, where I had this realization that I was doing a lot of things that didn't make a lot of sense to me that I really didn't believe in and my life was getting a lot better. So it started to give me some encouragement and some hope of being able to change.
So I launched out on this, on doing what you did, and I went back to step one and I looked back over my life and it was real clear to me that when I took a drink I couldn't stop. And when I wasn't doing that, I forgot that, which is really what alcoholism is.
And I had done an experiment. I didn't want to be alcoholic. So I did this experiment to prove to myself that I wasn't alcoholic. And so I thought, "Okay, I didn't even know what an alcoholic was. But I, an alcoholic could not not drink for thirty days. I know that for a fact. If a person is alcoholic, they couldn't not drink for thirty days." So I decided to do that. So I didn't drink for thirty days. And I had a glass of wine to celebrate not drinking for thirty days at lunchtime. And I was in jail at midnight that night.
And I thought that that was proof that I wasn't alcoholic. Turned out it's proof that I am alcoholic. So I had it completely backwards. That's a real good sign of being alcoholic.
So that's kind of the first part of step one. But I call it step one part B because I did not understand that I didn't have the power over alcohol and my life became unmanageable. So I could see clearly that I was a very poor manager of my own life because I didn't understand what power over alcohol meant.
And what I've come to understand about it now is that I'm not in charge. I need a new manager. My life looks pretty good today because I'm not trying to manage it. I've got a new manager. And for sake of simplicity in AA, we call that manager God.
And one of the things that I do to remind myself that I'm not in management is I don't ask the question "why." Why is a management question. I'm in footwork. So the question that I ask myself is "What am I going to do about it?" I used to get really hung up on things like "Why am I alcoholic?" Not a good question. It's asking for an argument with God. The question I ask is "What am I going to do about it?" And I ask that in all questions rather than why questions. It really suits me well.
And a visual that I like to remind myself that I'm not in management is that I'm at a circus and I got a bucket and a shovel and I'm not in charge of how many elephants are in the parade, okay? I just do what my job is. I'm not in charge of that stuff.
And what I also found out is that when I fight reality, when I'm not accepting something that's going on, I lose. But only a hundred percent of the time. So I make a real effort to not fight that, not fight reality.
And the biggest thing I could fight or the most obvious thing I could fight is being an alcoholic. I accept that. And then I can move on when I do that.
So I'm at step two already. Only been in AA for probably nine months by now. Moving right along.
And we all have crazy stories of stuff we've done when we're drinking. I'm sure if we go around the room, everybody's got a crazy story. At least one, two, maybe ten. But I realized that the craziest thing I ever did, I did sober. I picked up another drink. For a guy like me to pick up a drink is crazy. So I'm insane. I need to be restored to sanity.
I mentioned that I worked in the prison system for quite a while. I worked as a teacher. I taught landscaping. Back to our theme again here. Pot grower teaching landscaping in a prison. God's got a sense of humor. I can assure you.
And I got the job doing H&I at Folsom Prison, which you probably heard of out here. So anyway, I asked my students in this prison where I worked, and I had the same students for quite a while. Usually they didn't turn over that fast. I had like a lot of them there for quite a while. Maybe out of thirty, maybe twenty of them committed murder and maybe the rest were drug addicts and burglars and that kind of stuff.
But I asked them if they'd ever heard of AA. And as you can well imagine, most of them had. And then I asked them some more questions. I said, "Have you ever had a sponsor in AA? Have you ever worked the steps in AA? Have you ever had a service commitment in AA? Have you ever had more than a year of sobriety in AA?" And in fifteen years, probably twenty-five guys answered yes to all those questions.
I asked him one more question: "What are you doing in prison?" You know what the answer was? Everybody knows what the answer was. They stopped going to meetings.
So the way that I see it is if you stop going to meetings, you go crazy because you have to go crazy first to have a drink if you've been restored to sanity. So I go to meetings so I won't go crazy. And I get to see what happens to people that don't go to the meetings. They go crazy.
So I'm already up at step three. And I go to my sponsor and say, "That's about as far as I can go. I don't believe in God still." And I said, "AA is just full of these silly contradictions. It doesn't make any sense." I was trying to make sense out of it. And she said, "What are you talking about?"
I said, "Well, you know, you go to the meeting and on the wall there's a sign that says 'Think, think, think.' You look at the book, it says 'The problem with the alcoholic is in his mind.' I don't think that's a good idea. Or someone says 'You have to surrender to win.' Tell that to your military friends. 'Give it away to keep it.' Sure, the bank managers like to hear that. 'Recovered, recovering. Taking a trip, not taking a trip.' Um, someone will say, 'Keep it simple, stupid. This isn't rocket science.' And someone else says, 'Yeah, it's way more complicated than that.'
Or someone says, 'Don't make any major decisions in the first year.' I said, 'I think quitting drinking is a pretty major decision.' Or 'If you don't remember your last drink, you haven't had it.' The book says, 'You can't remember the misery and suffering of a couple of weeks ago.'
And you know, 'We're not bad people trying to get good. We're sick people trying to get well.' Why do we have to do a moral inventory? People with cancer don't do moral inventories. 'Oh, I'm so glad it's only suggestions. How come there's a hundred musts in the book?' 'Oh, don't worry. You just hurt yourself. How come I have to make so many amends?'
'Don't get in a relationship the first year, but get a sponsor and tell him all your secrets. Don't make any major decisions in the first year, but turn your will and your life over to the care of God. That's a major decision.' My favorite one is 'Half measures avail. You'd be amazed before you're halfway through.'"
So I go to my sponsor. I'm telling her all this and she says, "How about you? You got any contradictions in your life?"
I thought back to a time not that distant in the past where I just graduated from UCLA and I took this trip to Europe and somebody had loaned me two hundred dollars. A friend of mine wired me the money. I was out of money and I asked them and they wired it to me. I was in Germany someplace and I got the money. I went to bed at noon and I woke up the next morning and it was gone. And two hundred dollars in the sixties was a lot of money. I don't know what happened, but all the money was gone.
And that's a little bit of a disconnect from the life that I thought I was living. I thought I was just traveling through Europe. I was actually homeless. That night I went into a mission and I got sprayed with all this disinfectant and stuff. And I still had ten more years of drinking.
And there's a line in the literature about how in a lot of ways we're normal except when it comes to alcohol. And I thought, "Well, I've never gone into a grocery store and say, 'Hey, can I buy everybody a loaf of bread?'" But I was doing that. I was always a big shot when I was drinking.
So what I decided, and this for step three was key to me, is I focused on that word "decision." I made a decision to try to stop changing AA and let AA change me. And I made a decision to work steps four through nine. I still had a very unclear concept of this power. And I was praying to the power, but I wasn't really chummy with the power, but I was able to take step three to move forward and say, "Okay, I'm going to work this program. I'm going to believe that you're not all lying to me at the same time and that my life will get better when I do the things that you said that you did."
And I can look back at it and I see it's a lot like gravity. Gravity doesn't just let some people down. Gravity lets everybody down. And AA, these principles spiritual in nature, work for everybody that works them. It's not that I got lucky and they work for me and they won't work for you. They work for everybody who works them.
So our job is just to get willing enough to do it. And so I got to that point where I was willing to do that.
So I got out a piece of paper and I have a bad memory. My wife calls it purposeful forgetting, but I can barely remember being in high school. And I don't want to remember, I guess. I don't know what it is. And I didn't think I had a lot of resentments, but I knew I had a lot of hate in my heart for my father. I hated him. And I spent years not even talking to him and he was an alcoholic.
So anyway, I started. I put his name at the top of a paper and I started to write about the hurt that I felt and I started to cry. And I called my sister and I called in to work. I couldn't work that day and I just cried and talked and cried. And something happened that day. Those tears just washed away that anger that I had towards him. And I could see how spiritually sick he was from where he came from. And my relationship healed that day. It's the weirdest thing.
And the literature says something about that. My fears list, I had God and women on my fears list, which is two key relationships in my life. And if they're based on fear, they can't be good relationships. And then all my secrets were around my sexual inventory.
And then I went and did my fifth step with my sponsor. It was kind of a rainy day in November when I did it. And we drove out into the country where I used to raise pot. And she saw a lot of trash along the side of the road. It must have been the day that you put the garbage cans by the street and they get picked up and maybe some dogs have gotten into it or not. But she was talking about having to change her focus because she was focused on this trash.
And I do my fifth step and we're driving back to her house and there's a rainbow. It just touched me deeply that my life to me was like a garbage can. And I tipped this garbage can out and I just felt wonderful. And the book talks about that, and page seventy-five there's some wonderful promises that happen when we do a fifth step. It's like "Why did I wait so long to do it?" Because I just felt a closeness to my creator and I felt that I was a solid member of AA like I was doing what you were doing, like I'm a member. And the fifth step was crucial to me.
So I go to do six and seven. In the meantime, this sobriety car thing worked out really well. I go to a meeting and this woman says, "You want to step outside?" And I'll see if I can work you into my story. And I end up getting married to her. And you know, my idea of a date, we go to a meeting and I'd take her home and I didn't know whether to kiss her or say the Lord's Prayer, you know. But we got married.
And I had about two years of sobriety at the time and she had a couple of children. So I got to be a father and a husband on the same day. And she had her sister who had children nearby. So I got to be a father and an uncle and a husband on the same day. And I didn't know how to do any of this stuff.
Just prior to getting sober, I was living on this property and my best thinking was to put barbed wire around the outside of it to protect my marijuana from the teenagers in the neighborhood. And I had a case of vitamin C and some brewer's yeast. And I was just going to drink and smoke myself to death, but be healthy when I was doing it.
And I realized much later that the worst punishment we have in America is solitary confinement. That's the worst thing we do to anybody in this country. And I was doing that to myself in my disease. That's where I ended up.
And now I'm getting sober. I'm working this program and I'm a husband and a father and an uncle and I don't know how to do it. But