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My name is Jim Shields and I am an alcoholic and I'm grateful to be here tonight. I actually live in Laguna Hills, but Irvine's close. I work in Irvine. It seems like I live there sometimes. Well, when I actually do work. It's good to be here tonight. I want to thank Valerie for asking me to come and speak and share my experience, strength, and hope. And maybe I will. I'm old because I can't remember everything, and I can't see either, so I don't know why I like speaking. That's what happens when you get old. I never expected to live past 30. It was just not in my plan. I had to take better care of myself if I was going to live this long. I didn't know. Nobody told me. I figured I'd be dead long before I'm 30, so why do I have to be here?

It's amazing to see how many people came out to hear Nelli speak because everybody likes her. I'm not that popular, but it's good to be here tonight. She did a great job and she is a shining example of the program. People who come in and will actually do some work—their life changes. That's the amazing thing about Alcoholics Anonymous.

There are four things that qualify me to be up here to speak tonight. The first one is I have a sobriety date. My sobriety date is January 31st of 1986. That was 8,120 days ago. You know what? I worked for every last one of them. I remember a few years ago I was taking a cake at a meeting I go to called the soup kitchen. They actually put a candle on for each year, and each person takes a cake separately. I had like 18 years, and they were trying to give me 16 candles. I said, "No, no, no, no. Those two years almost killed me. I earned those. I earned those."

The other thing I have is a home group. I actually have two home groups. I have the Do It Sober meeting, which meets at 7:30 every morning over on Molton Avenue. I'm there almost every morning unless I'm not. Usually I'm there. I go there not necessarily because I need a meeting. I go there because I want to be available. That's what my sponsor tells me. That's why he goes to so many meetings, and he's somebody that needs to go to a lot of meetings.

Then I have another home group, a new one—a book study on Thursday nights in Aliso Viejo. We sit down and actually study the book word for word, line for line. That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. It's all about the book and it's all about doing the steps. It's not about thinking about the steps, analyzing the steps, talking about the steps. It's actually doing them. Actually sitting down with a pen and paper and doing an inventory and sitting down with a sponsor and doing a fifth step. All that stuff.

The other thing I have is a sponsor. My sponsor is Jim Stevens. He's going senile and he needs to go to a lot of meetings. He wasn't important enough to be here tonight, but he sent Courtney in his place. He has his own representative here tonight. I guess that's okay.

My sponsor has a sponsor, and my sponsor's sponsor is Ralph. If you're around here, you know Ralph. Ralph is a constant in the world around here. Ralph has a sponsor, and his sponsor is Alice. So I know where the chain goes up. I'm lucky enough to have a few people that I sponsor. Believe me, if you're not sponsoring people, you're really missing out. I learn more from the people I sponsor than I could ever learn from my sponsor. Not because he's senile—because I just learn a lot from him. But anyway, nobody's allowed to rat me out on that. What he said here stays here.

I tell him he's senile all the time. Not long ago, Mary and I were sitting in a meeting and somebody shared about something. We saw Jim raise his hand, and Mary looks at me and says, "Oh, he's going to tell the story about blah blah blah." Of course he is. He starts talking and tells that story. What is that, number 42? He tells the same story, and people try to stop him. I don't stop him because I always like to listen to see if he actually changes the stories. He usually doesn't, unless he does.

The other thing I have is that I've worked all 12 steps. Recovery is all about the steps we take. It's not about the meetings we make. You don't get sober by going to meetings. If you believe that lie, then you're on a wolf ticket because it's not true. You can go to meetings and they'll keep you sober for a while. They will keep you abstinent. They will not help you to recover from alcoholism.

Because I worked those 12 steps, I've had a spiritual experience and the obsession to use and drink has been relieved for me. That's a miracle. I never thought I could stop. It never occurred to me to really stop. I didn't realize that alcohol and drugs were my problem because it was everything else. Alcohol and drugs were my friend. You can't talk bad about my friend because it saved me. I believe alcohol and drugs were good for me. When I was a teenager, had I not had alcohol and drugs, I would have gone crazy. I'd have killed somebody or I'd have killed myself. They absolutely saved my life. They worked really well for me right up until the time that they didn't.

Because I worked all 12 steps and because I've had that spiritual experience and the obsession has been relieved, I am recovered. I am a recovered alcoholic. I'm not recovering. I'm not trying to recover. I am a recovered alcoholic. I say that because that's not what you hear in meetings, but that is what you will see in the book if you actually read the book.

There's this yellow and blue book sitting back there on the shelf. It is the best kept secret in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's so very few people that know anything about it. But it's actually the reason we're here. In the forward to the first edition it says, "We, Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book." That's what it's all about. It's not all about the social things. Those are great and they help make sobriety fun, but it's all about how did I recover from this? How did I get better?

I never planned on getting sober. I never planned on living past 30. So I'm surprised to be here. I want to welcome all of the newcomers. If you got here like the rest of us got here and you did a bunch of stupid, crazy, wild things, then you're one of two things. You're either really stupid or you're an alcoholic. Now, if you're really stupid, I got nothing for you. Fred and I have talked about it a lot. You cannot cure stupid. We have tried. You cannot cure stupid. But if you're an alcoholic, we've got some good news for you. We actually have a way that you can get out of being who you are now.

I didn't wake up one morning and say, "My life is going pretty good. I got money in the bank. I got money in my pocket. People love me. I've got no grief going on. I think I'm going to go down and check out AA and see what's happening with those guys and teach them how they can live a better life." I got here because I was just done. I was at the end of my rope.

I don't talk a lot about my drinking and using. I got here because I drank and I used a lot and I did it as much as I could as often as I could, and then I did it some more. That was my story. Fortunately, somehow I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. I really believe there's an old Buddhist saying that says when the student is ready, the teacher appears. That's come true for me so many times in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I remember being about 10 or 12 years sober and flying back from the East Coast. I had to fly through Dallas, which is hell. Dallas is an awful place to fly through. It was winter time, and I had booked it just right. You fly in, land, get off the plane, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, stretch your legs, and then get to the next gate. Apparently there was a rumor that somebody saw a snowflake, which shuts down Dallas. Apparently they're not able to do anything if there's a snowflake in Dallas. They shut down the airport, and like three or four hours later there's no end in sight. I'm at the airport and I'm pissed. I'm pissed. It's awful. I'm sitting there. The airline sucks. The weather people suck. The airport sucks. The travel agents—everybody sucks. All the people in the airport besides me suck. It's awful. It's awful.

I'm not accepting any of these things that are going on because I'm a big shot. I'm an important guy. I got people to see, places to go, things to do, which I'm sure was nothing, but in my mind I had things to do and I was important. I'm sitting there on the aisle at the gate with my elbows on my knees, staring down at the ground. I'm burning a hole in the floor. I'm pissed. I am just pissed. What is wrong with these people? Why aren't we getting on the airplane and leaving? Maybe it's not such a good idea that professionals think you shouldn't be flying, but that's not what I'm thinking.

I'm sitting there and the longer I'm sitting there, the more angry I am. Finally, I'm staring at the floor and all of a sudden there are a pair of shoes between my shoes. I look up and there's a belt buckle right here, and I'm getting ready to swing because I don't like anybody in my personal space. It's crowded and I don't like crowds, and all of a sudden this person is standing there. I am not in acceptance of anything in the world at that moment, and I look up and it was Dr. Paul. He looked down at me and had this funny nasal twang, and he said, "Young man, it looks like you could use some ice cream."

I'm like, "Okay, God, I guess I'm in acceptance now." The man who wrote the chapter in the book that says "Acceptance is the key to all of my problems today" is here to give me a lesson. I guess I'm a student that's ready to learn. We went and sat down and had some ice cream and talked about acceptance for a while, and all of a sudden it was okay. The weather was okay and the delay was okay.

Time and time again when I needed God to bring somebody into my life to teach me a lesson, that person has always been there. One of the great things about being around for a long time is I got to know some of those guys that had been around for a long time. If you're new, that's such a loss for you that you didn't get to know Dr. Paul and you didn't get to know Eddie C and you didn't get to know some of those other old-timers that were around like Bill Marcus and Ted Harbach and some of those guys that paved the way for us to be here today. That's the great thing about being able to be sober for a long time, and I really owe a debt of gratitude to those people.

But if you are new, it's good that you're here. I'll tell you that there will be no shortage of people to tell you what to do. They'll be telling you sponsor meetings, blah blah blah, until you're sick of it. I gotta tell you, if you're new tonight, there's one thing that you should probably do, and that's pick up the book. There's some really good information in there. Figure out whether or not you're an alcoholic. Maybe you just had bad luck. Maybe you got in the car and had one too many cocktails at the party. Maybe you only drink on New Year's Eve or whatever it is. But for the rest of us, we're probably here because we need to be.

If you're new, just check it out for a while. We have some really good information that will help you make up your mind before you actually get a sponsor and work some steps and things like that.

I don't like to talk too much about drinking and using because frankly, I've heard every war story, every drunk log, that if I never hear another one the rest of my life, it will be too soon. I don't care how much you drank. I don't care if you were the king of cocaine. I don't care. I have encyclopedic knowledge in my head about how to get loaded, and I don't need any more information. I don't need any more information about how to get drunk and how to get stoned and how to sell or manufacture anything else because I've already been there, done that.

If you're sitting in a lot of meetings and people are talking about their drunk logs, stop them. If you've been sober for a little bit, you have the responsibility to do that. Going to meetings isn't about sharing your drunk log. The only time you need to share your drunk log is when you're on a 12-step call. You should be going to meetings to share your experience, strength, and hope. The newcomers in the meeting need to know how to stay sober. They don't need to know how to drink. They need to know how to work a step. They need to know that you know how to do it. They need to know that somebody else has been down that road before them.

If that's not what's happening in the meetings you're going to, you're responsible to help change that. I'm one of those radicals that think treatment centers and some other things have really diluted the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. You will hear a lot of lies in Alcoholics Anonymous in the meetings. I guarantee every one of you within the last seven days has heard something like "don't drink, go to meetings and it'll all be okay." I'm telling you that's a lie. If you read the book, it'll tell you it's a lie. That's not what they talk about in the book. That's crap out of some treatment center from some psychologist who's making a train load of money out of some suffering alcoholic.

If I could not drink, I would not be here on a Friday night. When I got sober in 1986, Nancy Reagan was the first lady and her big thing was "just say no." I never said no one time in my life. That's like such a foreign concept to me. I don't understand it. Just say no? What? I don't get it.

You don't get sober by going to meetings. You don't. There's good information there, but you don't get sober by going to meetings. You get sober by working the steps. You get sober by getting a sponsor. You get sober by doing the steps. Not by thinking about them, talking about them, worrying about them, procrastinating about them. You get sober by actually doing the steps. I'm sorry I already said that like four times and I'm good for about six more times in the next 15 minutes.

What you'll hear is that the steps up here on the wall are just a suggestion, and that's what you'll hear. That's true. They're just a suggestion, but they are the only suggestion we have. They are the only thing that we have to suggest to you: work the steps. That's how you will recover from alcoholism. That's it.

But I'm only going to talk about two times that I drank. I'm going to talk about the first time I drank when I crossed that invisible line, and I'm going to talk about the last time that I drank.

The first time I drank, I was about 13 years old. I'm the youngest of six kids. My brother, who's four years older than me, was home. Everybody else was gone. My parents were going to go on this short business vacation trip and leave us home alone. Nobody ever accused them of having good judgment. They had six of us. I remember they left and I think the party started about five seconds after they got to the stoplight at the end of the street. We had this little three-bedroom house and there must have been 300 people in there. It was packed.

My brother was a senior in high school and he wrestled. He weighed 132 pounds, but he could bench press 350 and he was a stud. He still is a stud today. He met everybody on the way in and said if you break anything I will break you. Amazingly, that many drunk high school kids and nobody got nothing broken.

My mother actually didn't find out about this until shortly before she died. We were talking about it—my brother and I were talking about it. We were like, "Oh yeah, remember that week that they left?" And my mom's like, "What are you guys talking about?" I said, "Well, yeah, that's when I kind of crossed that invisible line." My mom's like, "What?" I mean, they were gone for a week and I was drunk for a week. I was drunk the entire week. I was not able to make it to school. That's just the way it was.

But I remember that Friday night. Everybody that came to the party had to bring two of whatever they were bringing—one for the host of the party and one for them. I snagged a bottle of Boon Farm Strawberry Hill and a couple of Schlitz malt liquors. My brother's best friend Matt Stone, who I know I'm going to meet in the meeting one of these days, was selling joints for 50 cents a piece. I got out my crisp $1 bill and I was ready to go.

My best friend Wayne Patterson and I—I always look around to see if Wayne is here tonight—but we were in the basement and we had a couple joints and a bottle of wine and a couple of malt liquors and we proceeded to get loaded. I remember getting loaded and being totally drunk, totally stoned, totally out of control and totally terrified. Just terrified. It was the first time I'd really been outside of my head. I was terrified and I remember having the conscious thought, "I can't wait to do this again." And for the next 14 years I did as often as I could.

I was 13 years old when I got loaded for the first time. I got to tell you, I really needed to drink when I was 10. I really needed one when I was nine. I probably needed one coming out of the womb. I needed a little mixed in with the formula or something. That's just the way I am. I am an alcoholic and alcohol goes to the core of my very innermost being.

For the next 14 years, my pattern was real simple. If I was here and the drink was here, anything that came between me and the drink, I was going to make disappear. That's what I did. I made educational opportunities disappear. I made career opportunities disappear. I made a wife disappear. I made a child disappear. I made three brothers who loved me disappear. I made two sisters that love me disappear. I made two parents who really did love me disappear. I was their baby. I was the surprise child. They had five and seven years, and then four years later they had me. I was that surprised child. My parents really did love me. I made them disappear. I made them go away. I made everything disappear. I made jobs disappear. You name it. Anything in my life that could have been positive or good, I made disappear if it came between me and the drink. That's just how it was. That's how my life was for the next 14 years.

The biggest thing that I made disappear is I made a big piece of my soul disappear. All that drinking and using did not come without a price. It took me a long time being sober to find out exactly what that price was. It was a heavy one. I don't like to share a lot of war stories about what happened, so I won't.

I'll fast forward to Thanksgiving in 1985. I was living in Laguna Beach, sharing a three-bedroom house with a roommate. She was the only woman I ever knew. She was the only person I ever knew that smoked more pot than I did. But we were home and it was Thanksgiving and we were going to cook dinner for all of our friends that had no place to go. Really, what that meant is we had no place to go, so we were going to cook dinner.

It was about 10 o'clock in the morning and I was smoking a joint and drinking some bourbon and cooking. The phone rang and it was my buddy Rod. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "The party's already started." He said, "I'll be there in an hour." I'm pretty sure that Rod got there that day and I'm pretty sure we probably had dinner that day, but I just don't have any real recollection of it.

You can fast forward a month till Christmas and I'm sure that there was a Christmas and a Christmas Eve of 1985. I have no recollection of it at all. I'm sure that there was a New Year's Eve and a New Year's Day. I have no memory. I can't tell you. I don't know anything about it. The only thing I remember from January is the space shuttle blew up that year. I remember watching on TV and crying.

The next thing I really remember is January the 30th, 1986. I was working that day. I was working from 3 in the afternoon till 9 at night. I was selling new Porsches in Orange County and all the things that went with that. I was coming home that night at 9 and my plan was to go straight to bed because I had to get up in the morning and go down and talk to the district attorney about why I never paid child support for that child that I had abandoned. So I was going to get home, go to bed, get a good night's sleep, and go take care of business. I was going to man up and do the right thing for a change.

What happened is I got home and my buddy Rod was there and my roommate was there and they were drinking and they were using. I said no I don't want to. I ended up drinking against my will. That sounds strange, but it's actually true. For some reason I didn't want to drink that night and I drank anyway, which was not a usual occurrence for me.

At the end of my using and drinking, I was suffering from a physical phenomenon that some alcoholics have. I abused my body so much that I suffered from a condition called reverse tolerance. One night I might drink a fifth of wild turkey and be pretty sober. The next night I might drink two beers and be completely shitfaced. There was no pattern to that. It was Mr. Toad's wild ride.

I got home that night and we started using. We started drinking and I drank a lot of bourbon that night. I drank and I drank some more. There were some other things that we did. I was sitting there at 4 in the morning in the absolute worst place that an alcoholic can ever be—inside my own head, completely sober and cognizant of my life and what was going on, and I couldn't get loaded. I could not get drunk and it was awful, awful, awful.

It was 4 o'clock in the morning and there's a silence at 4 o'clock in the morning that's deafening. It's loud. So quiet. I'm sitting there with my best friend, Rod. He was my best friend because he was my only friend. He was the only person that I didn't make disappear from my life because he never got between me and a drink. We each had pretty good drug connections, so that was a lot of the attraction there, too.

We're sitting there and for the first time in my life at 27 years old, I got honest with another human being. I was sitting on the couch and I looked at my best and only friend Rod and I said, "Rod, I'm really miserable. I'm really miserable. My life isn't working. I'm really unhappy and I don't know what to do." Now, this isn't the kind of conversation you usually have with somebody when you're getting loaded. Usually the closest to that is "I love you, man." That's as close to emotion as you get. We have those kinds of conversations sober, but not when we're out there.

Rod had to think about it for a minute. It was really quiet. I could hear the gears turning in Rod's head as he tried to decide what he was going to say. He thought about it for a minute, looking straight ahead, and he finally goes, "Well, Jim, I don't have any answers for you, but I know some people that do." I had arrived at step one. That was my 12-step call.

I didn't know it at the time. I didn't find out till later that Rod was 30 years old and he'd been trying to get sober for 11 years. The most he'd had was 5 months. He went out after 5 months on Thanksgiving Day at my house.

I pressed Rod for some information and he was having no part of it. He was just dodging every question I had for him and he left shortly after that. Much later I figured out that I was technically what was called a buzzkill. Apparently that head full of AA and that body full of dope was just not a good combination for him.

Then I go through the calculation. It's 4:30. If I go to sleep now I can sleep for an hour and 30 minutes. I got up and went to court and did some chuck and jive to this poor woman. She didn't know what was happening. One more time I slid by. One more time I slid away.

Then I did something that I can't swear to this day. Instead of going back home to my three-bedroom house in Laguna Beach overlooking the ocean, I went and checked into a motel on South Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim. That was before it was the Anaheim resort area. All the motels over there were hooker dope motels. I guess I wanted to be around my people.

I checked into that motel and I didn't drink and I didn't use. I got up the next day and it was kind of a fog. I drove around and I don't really remember anything that happened. I decided I need to seek out some answers. So I drove up to Rod's apartment in Rosemead. I showed up at his house at about 7:30 and knocked on his door, unannounced, and he invited me in. We sat down on the couch and I told him, "Rod, you know, my life's not working. I'm miserable and I don't know what to do." He stood up and said, "Jim, I don't have any answers for you, but I know some people that do. Come with me."

We walked out of his apartment. We walked down the steps. We walked around the pool and we walked into the clubhouse of the apartment complex. There were a bunch of people in there and there was an eight o'clock meeting getting ready to start. I haven't had a drug or drink since.

That's been 8,120 days ago. That's not because of my power. By my own human power I could not get sober. I could not stop drinking. I could not stop using drugs. It was all about getting into the steps. I got into doing the deal and that's what I did. I got busy and I got sober and I got married and I started a business and I made a train load of money and bought the big house on the hill and did a lot of things.

I can remember a morning—it was a Saturday morning—I was 14 years sober. I was standing out in front of my house smoking a Cuban cigar, standing in the driveway of this house. It was a big house on a big acre lot with a big swimming pool and a big horse corral. There are a few people in this room that were at that house. It rocked. It really did. It was a great house.

The problem with all these people in here that know me is I gotta keep on my toes because I gotta tell the truth because they know me. I'm standing there in my driveway. I got this driveway where it comes up and kind of goes to a wine, so you can park like five cars and not block anybody in. I'm standing there smoking this Cuban cigar and I'm looking at my BMW convertible and my new Corvette convertible and my Cadillac and my four-wheel drive and my Harley sitting in the garage. I'm looking down the street. The street in Fullerton is up in Sunny Hills in Fullerton and they called this street Pill Hill because that's where all the doctors live. It was a beautiful street with big Chinese elm trees.

I'm standing there smoking the cigar and I've got a wife in the house who loves me, who thinks I'm a great guy. I've got a girlfriend across town who loves me and thinks I'm a great guy. I'm smoking the cigar and I'm thinking, "God, I don't think I could be any more miserable than I am today."

It's not about what you get. Shortly after that, I had to start getting honest in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had to start over again. I had to go back and work some steps and get another sponsor and do a lot of stuff because I was either going to drink or I was going to kill myself. One of the two. I knew I couldn't be dishonest like that and stay sober.

Ralph talks about when we get sober, that it's kind of like a whack-a-mole game—you know, like they have at Chuck-E-Cheese. You got this one problem: alcohol. You pound that down. Gambling pops up. It's a son of a… And then it's sex and then it's food and then it's work and then it's always something because we want to obsess on something. We want to get outside of our own heads with something. That's what it was all about.

But I got busy and I got sober and I changed my life. The message is that if you're sitting in this room tonight and you've been sober for a while and you haven't done the work, you can do the work. It's not too late. You don't have to go out and drink to start your program over again. You can get back into the steps and do the things that you need to do. It will be worth the journey.

There's no coincidence that I've known six people since I've been sober who, stone cold sober, walked out in their backyard and put a gun in their mouth and blew their brains out because that's just how miserable it is. Because if I can't drink and I don't have God in my life, I'm screwed. I've got no place to go. I got no place to hide. I got no place to run.

The last year and a half has been busy for me. I ended a relationship that I'd been in for about four years that I was ready to stay in for the rest of my life. Against my will it was ended. I guess that means I got kicked to the curb. That was really tough. I got into another relationship and they say that pain is the touchstone to growth. If that's true, I grew like a son of a… But I stayed sober and that was the important thing. I stayed busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. I got busy and always sponsored five or six guys, and then there was seven or eight, and then there was nine or 10, and then there was a dozen, and now there's 16. Sixteen people is a lot to sponsor.

If you just had that thought in your head that "he's sponsoring too many people," well then get off your ass and do some work. I need some help.

Last August, I went to the doctor for a regular checkup to renew a couple of prescriptions. He looked at me and said, "Jim, how long have your lymph nodes been swollen?" I said, "Well, doc, I could tell you that if I knew where my lymph nodes were." He said, "Yeah, they look a little swollen." To make a long story short, I did some blood work. He called me a couple days later and said, "Jim, I've already cleared it with the insurance company and you need to go make an appointment at Hoag Hospital. Here's the number. You need to have a biopsy done on your lymph nodes. I've already sent them the order to do that."

I hung up the phone and I knew that I was sick and I knew that it was serious and I knew that I wasn't going to die and I knew that I was going to be sick for six months. Don't ask me how I knew all this stuff, but I knew it. I talked about it to some people. Sure enough, I went and did the test and I had lymphoma and leukemia. I just finished chemo about six weeks ago and it's all good now.

But somebody recently said, "Oh, I'm so sorry that you were sick and so on and so forth." It was like, I can tell you that being sick was one of the single most great experiences of my life. When I got sick, it showed me what life was all about. I didn't have to do that "God, get me out of this one" prayer. I was sitting there and I said, "God, I will do whatever. I'm whatever you want, I'm here to do it. If whatever's going to happen, I'm okay with it." The only thing I asked was that I be able to walk through with a little bit of grace and dignity and that's what happened.

I got sick and the Army showed up. It was pretty overwhelming for me because I'm a pretty low-key kind of guy. I had four people tell me immediately, "Here's what we're going to do. We're gonna pack up all the stuff in your apartment and put it in storage and you're gonna move into my extra bedroom and I'm gonna take care of you." That was pretty amazing. I had a lot of people praying for me and a lot of people calling me every day.

I got to tell you that I've done a lot of drugs so I have a lot of comparative analysis. I got to tell you that the chemo drugs really suck. They're not fun at all. Yeah, it was not a good buzz. Let me tell you that. But I was able to get through that. I was able to walk through that and go to the other side. It was all because I did the footwork and I did exactly what the doctor told me to do. That